Author: fifteenkey (Page 39 of 95)

The blue ticker says “Deal or No Deal,” but it’s been preempted for a CNBC special on our nation’s latest financial crisis. Electronic voyeurs fix emotionless on employees leaving Manhattan towers with their office belongings. Reality TV. As 158 year old Lehman Brothers stands on the cliff of bankruptcy, insurance giant American International Group struggles to find capital and restore investor confidence, and Merrill Lynch desperately seeks a buyer for itself, tomorrow may go down as an infamous “Black Monday” on Wall Street. Lehman and Merrill Lynch gone in a weekend… Before tonight, that was unthinkable.

I have no idea how these financial black holes will impact the day to day of American businesses, but as they suck available capital and again shock the confidence of American consumers, it cannot be good.

So how did we get here? Well, some blame can be um, leveraged on John McCain’s primary financial advisor, Phil Gramm, he of the “nation of whiners” comment who sponsored the deregulation responsible for much of the speculation that depression-era legislation was designed to limit. The Glass-Steagall Act was passed in 1933 to address the rubble of a large portion of the American commercial banking system that collapsed from over-speculation.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 repealed Glass-Steagall and in the opinion of some economists, contributed to the risk driven subprime mortgage crisis which has now snowballed into a full-fledged financial system crisis. The Gramm law has been described as “corporate welfare for financial institutions and a moral hazard that will make taxpayers pay dearly.”

Oh, here’s how the voting went on Gramm-Leach-Bliley:

• 53 Republican Senators including John McCain – AYE
• 44 Democrats no Republicans – NAY

Are these the guys we want running our country?

Barack Obama is a black man with a Muslim middle name and he’s smarter than you.

Get ready for the onslaught of coded racism and xenophobia that will make the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry look like an afternoon sail off Martha’s Vineyard.

It’s already happening. When Sean Hannity of Faux noise often spews, “Barack Hussein Obama,” he’s implying Obama is somehow a covert Muslim. Of course, let’s not forget their describing Michelle Obama as “Obama’s baby mama,” a term used to describe unwed mothers. I don’t think Faux used that one on Gov. Palin’s daughter…

Then there’s Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) recently using “elitist-class” (smart) and the racially-loaded term “uppity” to describe Sen. Obama: “Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” When astonished reporters asked him to clarify his use of “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.” Behind closed doors, I’m sure he adds the noun.

The right has some history here. In the 1988 presidential election, I was leaning toward voting for George H.W. Bush until his campaign used the despicable “Willie Horton” ad against Michael Dukakis. I could not support a candidate that allowed racial smearing.

We have time for another example, right? In 2006, Republicans smeared Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, a black man, with an ad featuring a white woman saying she had met Rep. Ford at a “Playboy party.” Get it? Black man – White woman – Playboy Party…Sex! Ford lost the tight Senate, um, race.

The wheels of the Repugnantan slime machine are cranking right now and I expect that around Halloween we’ll know the names of any white women Barack Obama has ever dated… One last “Mandingo” scare before the erect… uh, I mean election. Boo!

I haven’t seen the whole interview, but this exchange reminds me of a scene in the first “Austin Powers” flick when Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley) begins repeating herself in tape recorder fashion and Austin realizes she’s a fembot.

But I guess I shouldn’t second guess the coaching job the McCain team is doing…

GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don’t think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.

GIBSON: So if we wouldn’t second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.

PALIN: I don’t think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right.

PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.

The 2008 Presidential campaign is a perfect illustration of the societal decline we’re gunning down in our Hummer, foot to the floor, toward a thick redwood of national oblivion. Instead of focusing on the war, the deficit, education, healthcare and energy independence, both major parties are stuffing our ignorant faces with a fast-food orgy of bridges to nowhere, Muslim smears, lipstick on pigs on private jets on eBay, and the endless adventures of Reverend Wright. And a sad majority of voters are eating it up like stumbling, drunk teenagers on a midnight run to Taco Bell.

This election is going to be decided on “issues” suited for “Access Hollywood” and supermarket tabloids, not “Meet the Press” and “The New York Times.” I’m really concerned about the country my children and grandchildren are inheriting from their elders. I wonder how they’ll pay a national debt that’s nearly ten trillion dollars, and I worry about them paying for healthcare in a system spending billions marketing boners while driving margin by denying care.

We have been a “guns and butter” economy for a very long time. World War II got us out of the great depression by putting everyone who could work to work either dying or building weapons to perpetuate it. Since Ike’s warning about the perils of the “military-industrial” complex, it has grown into a near indestructible monster, protected by thousands of defense contractor lobbyists. Like any business, growth is key. Beginning seven years ago tomorrow, the neocon Bush administration scared the shit out of us and lied us into war. Should we expect world peace anytime soon? Not as long as profits depend on killing and countries are lined up to buy F-16’s and Patriot missile systems. As of ten seconds ago, the cost of the war in Iraq is $552,996,911,265 and most of it’s been borrowed from China, Russia and others. Some estimates calculate the tab will hit $1Trillion dollars before it’s over. Many American corporations are reaping huge profits on this death and destruction. I wonder how much they pay in taxes…

There are voices of reason like former candidate Ron Paul, but instead of reporting the sober reality he speaks, the mainstream media dismisses him as “eccentric” and instead satiates us with “Celebrity Fit Club” chased with a bag of Doritos and a 2-liter Mountain Dew. With more and more of our population uninterested in the civics of our republic, what is the incentive for change?

I’d like to be more optimistic, and echo the flowery lies of candidates telling us about how wonderful we, the American people are, but the reality is they ignore the real issues for salacious sensationalism and half truths and we lick it up along with the cheese from our Doritos. One of these days when we pull our collective heads out of the shiny packaging, we’ll see our country that was once great, is no more.

I’m sitting in a dense “waiting lounge” at the very efficient Acton Toyota Service Department and Neil Young just dropped in. Yeah, evidently he’s their car rental shuttle driver. Most people don’t recognize him, but I do…

AWOL since August 22 has two explanations… I haven’t been inspired to make stuff up and I’ve been wasting time arguing with the delusional right-wing on a singles message board.

Speaking of the right wing, the RNC has been interesting. And what’s up with the term “red meat?” The bloviating heads covering the conventions use it to describe language used by speakers to fire up the crowd. Like when VP nominee Sarah Palin described her job as mayor of Wasilla as “something like a community organizer, except with real responsibilities…” Something like that. Governor Palin is a V-PILF all right, but as shallow as I am, she’s not hot enough to get my vote, even with her promise that parents of special needs kids would have a friend in the White House if she and Uncle Fester are elected.

Actually, the more I listen to John McCain and ignore the press filtering of him, the more I think he’d make a good president. Aside from the “war on terror,” he doesn’t share much policy position with Dubya and Dick. Still, his support of the Iraq war is a biggie. I don’t give a shit whether he was right about the “surge.” We shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Another big issue for me is taxes. The right hits Obama by saying “he’ll raise your taxes.” (Btw, that’s a tepid scare tactic compared to what we’ll hear in the next 60 days…) We either need to raise taxes, cut spending, or both. Dubya lowered taxes and then spent like a “tax and spend liberal,” mostly on a destructive war that has enriched his oil constituency by raising the “risk” factor in oil pricing, and corporations like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton through their war profiteering. My point is the cynical Republicans cling to their religion and guns and “no new taxes” pledge, but bury our children and later generations with a national deficit approaching ten TRILLION dollars.

Is that what they mean by “Country First?”

18-1. There are tee-shirts done in Patriots colors to mock the blemish on my home team’s just-short-of-epic season. Yesterday, baby-bro threw a one on the board and “the streak” is over. Today my ego is bruised and my muscles sore after a miserable 118 from the blue boxes. Yeah, I spent the glorious afternoon flailing aimlessly like a peasant swinging a sickle in an endless field of weeds. Still, I have to credit bro for playing a smart game. While I hack away with the heavy lumber spraying errant orbs every direction but straight, Corey wisely pokes an iron safely into the fairway. The big difference though, is in his putting. The three and four putts are history, and that was always my advantage.

Win or lose, it was a way over par day for golf and a heartwarming experience to see how far my brother has come.

Infinite words are poised at a bottleneck looking for a way out, but haven’t yet found their way. A few trickle…

Fuck Your Fear
I took some acting classes after college. I recall the spotlight fright when I did that monologue from “All My Sons” in front of humans. It turned out fine. The fear was unwarranted. It usually is. There’s a book on improvisation by Mick Napier called, Improvise – Scene from the inside out . One theme says fear causes actors to “freeze, or stick to safe-but-boring actions and scenes.” Napier tells the reader to fuck our fear. Do something. Anything. Even if it’s wrong, and see where it leads you.

Highway to Hell
Looks like I won’t be buying any AC/DC. Not that I’ve actually bought a record of theirs since “Back in Black,” but Walmart sucks and won’t be getting quid from me.

America’s Outrageous War Economy!
Eisenhower warned us, but the Bush administration has pushed the evil of the “military-industrial complex” to new depths. Read Paul B. Farrell’s piece on Marketwatch.com to get a sense of what it’s costing your children and grandchildren.

There are places in the desert where the sun and wind work tirelessly like a potter’s wheel and oven and no one notices. They are vistas of stunning natural art, but nobody’s looking.

Speaking of stunning, natural art, mother and child is always a good theme…

Awake from my Olympic coma, I’m seeing this year after not watching with any interest since Montreal’s games of 1976. The US-USSR boycotts of ’80 and ’84 soured me, and by 1988, my Seoul was devoted to incumbent children and the reinforcements on the way. The doping scandals of recent games impairs enjoyable viewing, but we now know the phenomenal, fraudulent records of the East Germans beginning in 1968 were in part a result of a government sponsored, systematic doping of more than 10,000 young German athletes. East Germany is no more, but for many of these former Olympians, health issues linger, including birth defects in their children.

Speaking of children, some of the Chinese gymnasts from the “Women’s” team look more like peers of my 7 year old granddaughter than the 16 year olds they’re purported to be. The distorted pressure etched into the young faces of the US team members was striking; the pressure on them to win immense. While they made some big missteps last night, the protocol of composure was maintained. It seems these girls are trained to shed blood before tears and it makes one wonder about the long term psychological impact of crushing competitive stress at such a young age. The Chinese age debate is not the only question regarding those tumbling, vaulting and balancing. Enrico Casella, the coach of the Italian women’s team, has one about the Americans. “They are so muscular. My gymnasts in Italy aren’t that big. You begin to wonder how they got that way.”

This year, the number of drug tests will increase to 4,500 and the International Olympic Committee expects 30 to 40 positives. Doping is a competition just like other Olympic events, and as testing becomes more sophisticated, cheating advances to deceptively strive for gold. Next on the horizon is “Gene Doping,” as cheaters hope to avoid discovery by altering themselves on a cellular level. The latent effect on these athletes and their offspring as they try to biochemically engineer themselves into legends is unknown, but potentially devolving into a remake of “I Am Legend.”

Why, in 2008, are athletes still cheating? How is it cheaters can celebrate deceitful victory? Sure, some rationalize their con and reap stolen reward. What about those with any functioning conscience? That must be a brutal existence, especially since the IOC now keeps blood samples 8 years for retesting using exams not yet invented. Once caught, the legacy is forever changed. I know former US Olympian Marion Jones is sitting in prison for lying to federal investigators about using steroids, but I have no idea in what events she comp-cheated.

I had originally conceived this post to highlight the stunning performance of American swimmer Jason Lezak in the anchor leg of the Men’s 4×100 freestyle relay. Lezak made up a full body length lead on boastful Frenchman Alain Bernard with the fastest 100-meter split in the history of the games to help the US upset the heavily favored French. Bernard looked like a man who had been tasered as he disbelievingly stared at the scoreboard. It was as if he saw his words from earlier in the day flashing on the huge LCD screen: “The Americans? We’re going to smash them.”

According to this online tool that guesses your gender according to your surfing habits, the likelihood of me being a man is 99%. Based on the numbers below, if you want to be more manly, shop for tires and avoid Cafemom.com…

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 1%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 99%

Thanks to an online English-Chinese translator, the title of this post describes what I wore on my face watching Li Ning “run” along the top of Beijing’s “Birds Nest” Olympic Stadium. Unfortunately the Chinese characters wouldn’t view correctly, so it’s the English to Chinese to English translation of “shit eating grin.” Actually, that’s kinda gross when you think about it, but I was smiling… broadly. It was beautiful.