32 Articles

Thursday, November 20, 2008
Will You Go Quietly?
(3 comments) Can we cut the crap here? Can we look dispassionately at the issue before us? This is a class struggle; it has always been a class struggle and it is always going to be a class struggle. We can cloak the issue of globalization in the mantle of altruism, that this is good for all concerned, but that is just not so. Globalism is good for the investment class and the ownership class and the banking class.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Its Only America Bleeding
(1 comments) To what do I owe the pleasure of this company? What is owed to me and to what account do I owe by the nature of my birth? Solemn allegiance and my blood poured out on foreign fields for the honor and glory of brass buttons and medal-resplendent generals?

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Too Poor for Bankruptcy
We, as a country, seem to have little problem saving the wealthy from the clutches of poverty. We'll bail out banks and insurance companies, mortgage funds. The formerly big three automakers will meet with the new administration this week to arrange a further multi-billion-dollar bailout.

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Let's Call It a Palinism
(2 comments) Watching the demise of the big three automakers and the attempts to save them I cannot help but listen to the pundits. "It is the large retirement structure that is sinking them and making them noncompetitive in a world market." Gee, but that has a familiar ring to it. "They took those loans knowing that they wouldn't be able to pay for them."

Saturday, November 1, 2008
A Single Lifetime
(2 comments) Surviving to over age 50 is no major accomplishment, in and of itself. It's only a chance to see things and experience things, and sadly, most of it for the worse. As a child, playing in the sun was not seen as a danger; the polar ice caps weren't melting, or at least we didn't know about it yet. Gasoline was .29 cents a gallon and seat belts were a novelty only required in the front seat.

Thursday, October 23, 2008
Letting The Market Place Work
They tell us that we must let the marketplace work, we must never allow the heavy hand of government to impinge on our freedoms. While the rest of the industrial world has national healthcare, we in America have our freedom. Our freedom and forty-seven million people without healthcare.

Monday, October 20, 2008
The Great Divide
(1 comments) I had to attend class on Saturday, a poll workers class on provisional voting held at the government center over in Marietta. Marietta, Georgia is a very old and historic city. The Yankees once occupied her, and during World War II her Bell Bomber Plant churned out thousands of aircraft for the war effort.

Friday, October 17, 2008
You Think I'm Rich, Don't You?
(3 comments) Poor Joe the plumber, plucked from obscurity and thrust into the national limelight, his life has now become an open book. After all, all he did was ask a question about tax policy. Little did he know the McCain campaign and Fox News would seize upon him and try to make him an icon.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Gone with the Wind
(3 comments) As we sat around the dinner table celebrating a family birthday, the conversation turned to the stock market. My in-laws are retired and in their seventies; they, for the most part, just shook their heads. Then my mother-in-law, with a nervous certainty, remarked, "It'll come back, you wait and see." My first impulse was to remind her of some of the events that have already transpired to the contrary, but her tone quieted me.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Shot Heard Round the World
(4 comments) When 90-year-old Addie Polk put the gun to her chest and pulled the trigger she was seeking an escape from foreclosure. The first shot failed to do the job so the elderly widow pulled the trigger a second time as Sheriff's deputies waited on the porch to serve her with an eviction notice. She was rescued by her neighbor, Robert Dillion, who grabbed a ladder and climbed in a back window.

Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Terminator Cries Uncle
Yes, Governor Arnold cries for his Uncle to save him! He warns Treasury Secretary Paulson in his best Austrian accent, "You must help us, ve are close to running out of cash to fund day-to-day government operations and we are unable to access routine, short-term loans."

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The World You'll Come to Know
(5 comments) I was talking to my son yesterday about the economy and politics in general. He's twenty-three, self-employed, and ambitious. Even as a child he was ambitious. "Dad," he'd say, "can I borrow the lawnmower?" Then he'd come back at sundown with $150.00. He never cared for cartoons, video games, or school but his one weakness was the Three Stooges

Monday, September 29, 2008
A Piss Snow cone
(1 comments) How can I put this politely? For years I have been warned, "Dave, you're too negative!" Well, I can't help it; I've tried to change but it's no use. So let me describe the revised, sanitized, scrutinized, super-sized bailout bill as optimistically as I can. How about half a hammer? Or nothing for something? Or my favorite, a piss snow cone.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Betting Against America
(3 comments) There is an apex, an apogee, a point of no return, a point when many will throw up their hands. It is indeed difficult to ask for blind faith as a Bush administration appointee, and even more faith is required to believe a Bush appointee.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Same As It Ever Was
Be afraid, be very afraid, the angel of economic calamity has visited disaster upon us and hovers over us still. The proposed trillion-dollar bailout is just that, a bail out, it does nothing to fix the hole in the boat. In 2007 when the so-called "credit crisis/ mortgage crisis" began, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and flooded the decks with cash and the situation was stabilized for six weeks.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Communist Obama Waffles
(1 comments) We've all heard the expression " bringing a knife to a gun fight." A mismatch and a fundamental underestimation of the situation. We lament the loss of civil politics in favor of emotion-based attack politics, where truth becomes a useless appendage, almost an appendix in the body politic.

Saturday, September 13, 2008
Fractured Fairy Tales
(1 comments) Once upon a time, that's how fairy tales begin, isn't it? Don't we all want to believe? Our personal relationships and our family relationships are all based on telling the truth, aren't they? I had a cousin with emotional troubles who was incapable of telling the truth. If she was twenty minutes late she couldn't just say, "Sorry, I overslept."

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Remebering February 27
The day after Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany his deputy and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary, "In conference with the Fuehrer we lay down the line for the fight against the red terror. For the moment we shall abstain from direct counter measures. The Bolshevik attempt at revolution must first burst into flame. At the proper moment we shall strike."

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The Last Hurrah
There is a cancer in our economy and it is spreading rapidly. The administration's standard policy is to at first ignore it, then to deny it, then blame the victims for it, and then to claim that intervention won't be necessary just before it intervenes.

Sunday, September 7, 2008
McCain: Maverick, Mad Man or Sad Clown
(4 comments) McCain, Palin, old man, empty suit, young demagogue, blind ambition, it becomes easy enough to focus on the foreground and ignore the background. Was Sarah Palin a good choice made by McCain? The better question to ask would be, who picked Sarah Palin in the first place?

Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Happy Happy Joy Club
Being the youngest of three children I grew up cynical, it was only natural. After being used and manipulated a number of times by my siblings, I learned to read the fine print. "Mom says we can have some cookies if you go get them." "David! What are you doing in that cookie jar? You know better than that! You know that you have to ask first! Now get out of there!" "But, Mom?" "Don't but mom me, get out of there!"

Monday, August 18, 2008
His Time is Short
"I am the Obergruppen Fuehrer for the state of Kalifornia! You will do what I say, ya? We must not be held back by this economy! There is only one course to follow! We must make an example of state workers! We will shoot a thousand a day until the economy gives in and turns around.!" "Sir you can't shoot state workers!" "Then fire them! Fire them all, the temporary workers, the interns, fire them all!"

Monday, August 4, 2008
All In the "McCain" Family
(1 comments) "Boy da way Glenn Miller played," "Songs I've heard on my I-pod today" "Gee, those S&L's were great" "Those were the days!" "Didn't need no welfare state!" "Enron contributions pulled the weight." "Gee my Exxon stock did great!" "Those were the days!" "And you knew who Jews were then!" "Girls was girls and Larry Craig just friends" "Mr. we could use a man like W in there again (piano trill) Me!

Friday, August 1, 2008
Leased, Last, Lost
Chrysler announced the other day that they would discontinue their automotive lease program. When I first heard this I assumed that it was to due to credit-related issues and Chrysler being under new management. Then I heard that Ford and GM are mulling over the same idea, and it has nothing to do with credit.

Monday, July 28, 2008
It's All your Fault
(3 comments) It is easy to be angry these days; it could be said that to be an American these days is to be angry. If you're not angry, maybe you need to stop watching American Idol, put down your cell phone, and look out your car window for a minute as you drive on your $4.00 a gallon gas. I have seen things that I thought I would never see.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Calamity John
(2 comments) Oh boy, they're really mad now! First, in May, John McCain and the RNC challenge Barack Obama to go to Iraq to see for himself the facts on the ground. The RNC installs a clock on their website; "Obama has done shockingly little to educate himself firsthand about the war in Iraq. Instead, he displays an arrogant certainty gained on the campaign trail. ... Obama's failure to visit Iraq, listen and learn firsthand

Friday, July 11, 2008
The Seething
People generally are passive and understanding, but as the pressure builds the passivity evaporates and what is left behind is a crystallized seething. A feeling that says, "I'm being screwed and I'm tired of it and you hide and watch what happens to the next person that tries it." President Bush made a You Tube appearance where he waved to onlookers as he stepped off Air Force One and they just stared back at him.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
When Money Goes Out the Door, Love Flies Out the Window
(2 comments) How do you explain it? Without need or justification Barack Obama has begun the Democratic death spiral. Like a moth to a flame or a lemming to the cliff, the presumptive Democratic nominee has started moving toward the center. Like Charlie Brown, running at full steam towards Lucy with the football, unburdening himself of his principles along the way to build up speed.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
"As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation"
(6 comments) "As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation." Such was the conventional wisdom in the 1960's when GM churned out Chevelles, Camaros, Cutlasses, Catalinas, and Cadillacs by the millions. Maybe the saying "runs like a Cadillac" will outlive the company; maybe "As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation" has never been truer. GM's future is bleak, analysts predict that GM may soon go broke as new car sales stumble.

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Independence Day
(2 comments) There is nothing new under the sun, the murder of Caesar or the shots in Dallas. Conspiracies demand either victims or adherents. You're either with us or agin us, sound familiar? We must all hang together or certainly we shall all hang separately. Ah, but that's the point entirely! To hang you separately!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Tomatoes Are Like Motorcycles
Across the vast wasteland of the American dreamscape there is one who dare not show his face. Considered meaner than the lowest child molester and kicker of small dogs, this is one who would pee in swimming pools just for spite. Republicans revile him while Democrats look at the floor and slowly shake their heads with unadulterated disgust. A virulent strain of villain who would dare propose protectionism.

Monday, June 30, 2008
The World They've Always Wanted
(1 comments) There is seeing and then there is sight; the things which we have seen help us to bring our sight into sharper focus. As a child I was of the generation whose fathers had fought in the Second World War. It became almost natural, as an adolescent, to ask, "What did you do in the war?" My father was a Navy pilot and one of his best friends was a sergeant in an infantry platoon.