Day: October 6, 2008

Please, A Little Sanity

WARNING:  I want to let anyone reading this that I am a bit pissed about the subject and I will be using wording that may offend others.  This post may be offensive!  Please read this post at your risk.  Thank you.

Goddammit!  It is way past time for this shit to cease!  American needs a statesman and all we have are scum sucking , bottom feeding, worthless fucking politicians.  One who claims to be a” maverick” and uses the same tactics as any other politician.  That is NOT a maverick.  Then we have a candidate that is the “change we need” and is doing nothing different than any other worthless parasite that is trying to reach the pinnacle of ego, the presidency.

Guilty by association?  This is just fucking stupid and pathetic!  Guys stop looking into the rear view mirror–stop letting consultants call the shots and please–please talk about the two crisis we have in this country.  We have two fucking wars and an economy circling the crapper–going down maybe for good.  Is that not more goddamn important than who knew who and when?  Pull your fucking head out of your worthless asses and get to doing the people’s work.

The American people deserve better than this.  They have suffered since the beginning of the country from shit eating pigs that want to run the country.  The current crop of candidates is doing nothing that suggest they will be anything different, so their claims of “change” are just that….claims nothing in their actions illustrate that there is any change in the words.  “Win at any cost” is the only words that we can depend on.

There is a wino in my neighborhood that I would vote for before any of these two would get it.  At least I know the wino would drink up my money, these guys are not that fucking reliable.  Tit for tat campaign ads is just silly.  But beyond that the absurd part is it works.  The American people will believe that because you know some asshole that did some detestable thing in the past, that it somehow makes you just as guilty of the crime.

All we should be asking from these dipshits is some sanity.  Is it too fucking much to ask that the concerns and desires of the American people be addressed and you assholes leave the petty horseshit in the crapper where it belongs? There is too much at stake for the American people to continue this line of attack.

I do not care if some  broad wears lipstick or is from po-dunk or if a candidate voice sounds like a cat being butt fucked by a skunk or his/her color or what mode of transportation they use to get to work…none of that matters!  What matters is which of the pricks will do the best job for the people of the United States.

Please–a little sanity and just shut the FUCK up!

Again if this offends anyone I apologize….but you were warned.

Professor’s Classroom

Another Monday…another quiz…another attempt at education……a daunting task at best…….Ok, political philosophy….

A political philosopher at a theory of an “organic state”, who was it and what does the theory say?

Come on this is not rocket science and there is a google button somewhere that can help….good luck….good day…

Wait! Did I Miss Something?

Here’s a safe bet for uncertain times: A lot of banks won’t survive the next year of upheaval despite the U.S. government’s $700 billion plan to restore order to the financial industry.

The biggest question is how many will perish and how they will be put out of their misery — in outright closures by regulators scrambling to preserve the dwindling deposit insurance fund or in fire sales made under government pressure.

Enfeebled by huge losses on risky home loans, the banking industry is now on the shakiest ground since the early 1990s, when more than 800 federally insured institutions failed in a three-year period. That was during the clean-up phase of a decade-long savings-and-loan meltdown that wound up costing U.S. taxpayers $170 billion to $205 billion, after adjusting for inflation.

The government’s commitment to spend up to $700 billion buying bad debts from ailing banks is likely to save some institutions that would have otherwise died, but analysts doubt it will be enough to avert a major shakeout

The banking outlook looks even gloomier through the prism of Bauer Financial Inc., which has been relying on data filed with the FDIC to assess the health of federally insured institutions for the past 25 years.

Based on its analysis of the June 30 numbers, Bauer Financial concluded that 426 federally insured institutions are grappling with major problems — about 5 percent of all banks and S&Ls.

About 15 percent of the banks on Bauer’s cautionary list have more than $1 billion in assets. Not surprisingly, the troubles are concentrated among banks that were the most active in markets where free-flowing mortgages contributed to the rapid run-up in home prices that set the stage for the jarring comedown. By Bauer’s reckoning, the largest numbers of troubled banks are in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Minnesota.

Let me see….they get $700 billion and they cannot save the banks….then where is this money really going?

A Goat Condom?

Maasai herdsmen in Kenya have turned to an age-old contraceptive device, the “olor”, to protect their precious goat herds from an ongoing drought.

The olor is made from cowhide or a square piece of plastic, and is tied around the belly of the male goat.

It prevents the bucks from mating with the female goats.

The herdsmen are using the device to limit the goat population and ensure there are not too many animals grazing on sparse vegetation.

The rectangular piece of cowhide is passed over the buck’s head and front legs and secured under the belly in front of the hind legs with a rope or elastic strap.

If the rains fall in October and November, the dry landscape will turn green again and the herdsmen will be able to settle with their livestock.

Until then, the herdsmen will have to employ the olor to protect their livestock and livelihood safe.

Those who do not use it could face a hefty fine if their bucks are found guilty of impregnating another herder’s doe.

Who Saw The Crisis Coming?

Back in the 1800’s there was an economist David Ricardo and yes he sorta predicted stuff.

David Ricardo had visualized the process of capital accumulation getting constrained by the non-availability of adequate supplies of land. As accumulation proceeded and the demand for wage goods, primarily foodgrains, increased, cultivation would have to be carried out on less and less fertile land where yields got progressively lower. Given the fact that a subsistence wage in terms of foodgrains had to be paid, the lower yields meant a declining rate of profit in agriculture. And since the difficulty of obtaining a unit of output from agriculture increased relative to industry, the price of foodgrains would rise relative to industrial goods, which, given that a subsistence wage in terms of foodgrains had to be paid in industry too, would push down the rate of profit in industry as well. Thus according to Ricardo the rate of profit would decline over time and would eventually fall to zero, bringing accumulation to a stop. He called this state of affairs the “stationary state”.

Though land was what he focused on, Ricardo’s argument can be extended to any exhaustible natural resource. This exhaustibility would make the relative price of these resources rise, bringing the process of capital accumulation eventually to a halt.

Doctors Pick Obama’s Health Plan

While the looming economic recession may have displaced the country’s broken health care system and the Iraq war as the top concern for Americans in recent weeks, universal, affordable access to health care remains a vital issue for voters. Many groups from the labor movement and health care advocates even to the Obama campaign have linked the need for health care reform to economic recovery.

This past week more than 5,000 physicians endorsed Barack Obama’s plan for health care reform. In a press statement, Doctors for Obama-Biden 2008 described the Obama plan as “the first step in ensuring that all Americans have access to a quality, affordable and secure health care.”

With skyrocketing costs totaling at least $2 trillion annually, 45 million uninsured Americans and many millions more with inadequate health care coverage, health care is an immediate issue for most people. “Furthermore,” the statement read, “the on-going fiscal crisis gripping the nation makes the need for reforming the health care system even more compelling.”

Doctors are backing Obama because in addition to the decline in affordable access, the quality of health care is also suffering. Emergency rooms are overcrowded and funding for research and development for serious illnesses has dried up.
Both the Economic Policy Institute and a separate study published in Health Affairs have indicated that under McCain’s plan as many as 27 million Americans would lose their employment-based health insurance and be forced to deal alone with private insurers for expensive and often inadequate health care coverage.

Crisis Will KO The Workers

John McCain was right about one thing. Jobs are being lost. This week the Department of Labor reported that 159,000 American workers lost their jobs in September, a five-year record. The Labor Department reported the ninth straight month of job losses, approaching 800,000 lost jobs in 2008.

Why was McCain right? During his Republican presidential primary campaign, he asked one audience, “Have people lost jobs” due to the economic policies of free trade and low taxes for companies that move jobs out of the country which he has supported? “Yes,” he inexplicably continued, “they have, and they’re gonna lose jobs.” But McCain offered no solutions and appeared to suggest ignoring with the pain.

The Economic Policy Institute reported this week that weakening job numbers did not begin in 2008, despite Labor Department data. Bush administration trade policies, which McCain has steadfastly supported, 5.6 million jobs were lost or displaced, with 4 million of those lost jobs in manufacturing. Hardest hit were Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California and New York. But South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and North Carolina were among the biggest job losers as well.

This month’s jobs numbers don’t tell the whole story, however. The AFL-CIO reported this week that long-term unemployment has steadily worsened over the past few years. According to Labor Department estimates, the number of long-term unemployed people grew by 167,000 last month.

This is an immediate problem because about 750,000 unemployed workers are about to lose their unemployment benefits, throwing thousands of families into deeper crisis.

The labor movement has called for investing in job creation, helping working families renegotiate their mortgages, make their payments, and keep their homes, and for extending unemployment benefits for the jobless.

“Working people are suffering real economic pain, and if there is money enough for Wall Street, Congress and the president need to dig a little deeper and find the funds to take care of people who are shouldering the burden of this economy,” Sweeney concluded.

Emphasizing that no economic recovery can happen without addressing the needs fo working families, Barack Obama, in a statement this week, said, “I also call on Congress to pass an immediate rescue plan for our middle-class that will provide tax relief, save one million jobs, and save our local communities from harmful budget cuts and painful tax increases.”

What Is A Liberal?

If one spends much time on line, especially if you are interested in politics, one would see that Conservs and liberals seldom agree on much.  As a matter of fact, being a liberal is akin to being mentally ill.  But the problem is that not many really understand the term liberal.

For years I have been analyzing, reporting and debunking the American political system.  Most Americans think that they are either conservative or liberal, a bit simplistic, at best but that is the way they think.  For instance, if youare not a Republican then you are on the Left(?).  I have yet to find one person that thinks that way that can explain it satisfactorily.  To think that a Democrat is somehow a Leftist, is beyond humor and flies straight into ignorance.

First, if a person is to be labelled a Liberal–what type of liberal are they?  Classical or Modern?  Ask that question and then observe the face of the person being questioned–”a deer caught in the headlights” comes to mind.  Confusion is a good description, but really not that accurate.

Let us take a look at the types of Liberals there are:

Classic Liberal–the so called father of liberalism–John Locke pretty much defines it as thus:

Individual is more important than the state and becomes a citizen of the state only through consent.

The individual is rational and capable of making his/her own decisions.

Progress is possible in political affairs, so change should not be feared.

State power should be limited.

Economic inequality is not necessarily a bad thing.

Economic freedom is more important than economic equality.

Next is what we shall call a Modern Liberal–

Government intervention into individual and social life is sometimes necessary to prevent individuals from denying freedom to others.

Liberty should be understood in broad, expansive, positive terms:  as the liberty to seek out ways to develop the human potential and contgribute in a meaningful way to society.

Economic inequalities is to be regarded with suspicion, as a condition likely to undermine the welfare of those who have lower incomes and thus erode their chances of being free.

These are a bit simplistic as I have said and could be expanded on which in turn would make the whole thing so confusing that no amount of trying could bring about an understanding.

I sincerely hope that this has assisted the reader in some way, to help identify the differences in liberals and has help in the identification of what a liberal really believes.  They are not all Leftists, as some would have you believe.