We are facing an educational crisis in our country of pandemic proportions. Accordingly, we may want to occasionally unstrap ourselves from the figurative thermonuclear catapults of our government educations, because this is not what you think and, fortunately, won't include any gratuitous boosts to your precious self-esteem(!)
The education we are in the process of receiving is a timeless, harsh reality; greed, and laziness, an ill brew by themselves, combined with ineptitude creates a dangerous and self-perpetuating chain reaction.
Unlike what we faced prior to the Great Depression, however, this perfect storm is foundational and unprecedented in our history, not the financial unraveling which predicated October 29, 1929.
How long can our foundering economy and home-grown labor markets expect to absorb the seasonal harvest of societal flotsam produced in abundance by our self-serving educational bureaucracy. When did learning to read, write and converse fluently in English become tertiary to just showing-up and assuring 'no child left behind'?
Having once been a child, and knowing a few in my time, I can assure you; some of them need to be left behind(!)
Well, here we are, and who knew?
The hamsters, (or gerbils, for those that choose to swing that way) that run in the little wheel powering the economic engine have finally come home to roost...if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors. The immediacy of wants and needs of generations who've been taught money does indeed grow at the tree of the ATM, actions today don't really have consequences later, and no matter how bad things get, there will always be someone wealthier and therefore of greater visibility on whom you can blame your insidious woes.
Watch carefully now, as Fed Chairman Bernanke ponders yet another rate cut in an ever escalating spiral downward. He is desperately chasing the inevitable, trying to stabilize credit, and hence, equity markets built not on productivity but on overheated, irrational speculative exuberance. But, never mind all that because we have our on-board DVD's, McMansions and political correctness. What could possibly go wrong?
In a productive society or sustainable civilization, as in general accounting theory, assets must equal liabilities. For far too long we have been padding the wrong side of the balance sheet.
If an entitlement mentality combined with insolence and a keen knowledge of "American Idol" can be considered assets, then we're on the right track.
As if this weren't enough to convince you, we now have Senator 'wide-stance',
'Larry ToiletHands' out in, of all places, Idaho(!)
I couldn't make-up this kind of material...well, maybe I could.
Perhaps it's time for Sen Craig to 'reach-out' to his constituency....uh, I mean maybe Craig should put this disgrace 'behind' him. ....OK, that's enough.
And while we're on that track, put your head back in the sand, because that train coming around the bend has a "Made in China" stamp right in clear view. DR
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The "perpetual motion" of political maneuverings.
Recently I've developed a remarkable affinity for shifty politicians. With their array of evasions and dances around what are not very complex issues, they make such easy targets for my derision. Some of these characters, OK, almost all of these characters, talk out of so many corners of their mouths I would think they're going into the Utah coal mining business(!)
Witness the latest bandwagon loaded with mindless rhetoric about renewable energy sources and "alternative" fuels and independence. This is politico-speak for the various classes of ethanol, an alcohol distillate. But, you don't dare hear ethanol
defined by these guys and here's why; concepts by themselves are such honorable and noble 'Causes' when equated with ambiguous phrases like "renewable" and "alternative", concepts the average half-wit voter will never understand.
Reference one of the defining principles of our known universe, that energy is neither created nor destroyed, but merely changes form. Do you ever hear the masterful liars in public office disclose that the energy content in a quantity of ethanol is only 85% that of gasoline? Of course not. Vehicles achieve lower mpg with ethanol because there is less potential energy to convert back into combustion.
Billions of our tax receipts are being spent on disrupting our direct food-chain with corn-ethanol and chemical plant construction for that politically motivated purpose.
Here's a relevant comparison; one gallon of ethanol requires more than one gallon of oil to attain usable grade. So let's siphon-off the agricultural product which is an integral part of our food-chain, combine it with the petroleum we could use to travel further, and create a much-less-efficient "alternative".
Are you surprised OPEC and the big oil companies seem to Love this great idea?
Just keep those huge campaign contributions coming...and "remember to build that ethanol plant in my district".
Witness the latest BP television commercial in which various actors masquerading as concerned and mentally engaged consumers parrot the basic party myopia, energy independence and "alternative" fuels. Are we as a society so starved for good ideas that we attach our collective consciousness to the first dumb idea marketed down our throats?
We are repeatedly focusing on illusory, short-term schemes rather than long-term realities. We must dedicate ourselves to solutions and not mere panacea. The only non-renewable resource in short supply is innovation, without which we will surely perish. DR
Witness the latest bandwagon loaded with mindless rhetoric about renewable energy sources and "alternative" fuels and independence. This is politico-speak for the various classes of ethanol, an alcohol distillate. But, you don't dare hear ethanol
defined by these guys and here's why; concepts by themselves are such honorable and noble 'Causes' when equated with ambiguous phrases like "renewable" and "alternative", concepts the average half-wit voter will never understand.
Reference one of the defining principles of our known universe, that energy is neither created nor destroyed, but merely changes form. Do you ever hear the masterful liars in public office disclose that the energy content in a quantity of ethanol is only 85% that of gasoline? Of course not. Vehicles achieve lower mpg with ethanol because there is less potential energy to convert back into combustion.
Billions of our tax receipts are being spent on disrupting our direct food-chain with corn-ethanol and chemical plant construction for that politically motivated purpose.
Here's a relevant comparison; one gallon of ethanol requires more than one gallon of oil to attain usable grade. So let's siphon-off the agricultural product which is an integral part of our food-chain, combine it with the petroleum we could use to travel further, and create a much-less-efficient "alternative".
Are you surprised OPEC and the big oil companies seem to Love this great idea?
Just keep those huge campaign contributions coming...and "remember to build that ethanol plant in my district".
Witness the latest BP television commercial in which various actors masquerading as concerned and mentally engaged consumers parrot the basic party myopia, energy independence and "alternative" fuels. Are we as a society so starved for good ideas that we attach our collective consciousness to the first dumb idea marketed down our throats?
We are repeatedly focusing on illusory, short-term schemes rather than long-term realities. We must dedicate ourselves to solutions and not mere panacea. The only non-renewable resource in short supply is innovation, without which we will surely perish. DR
Monday, August 20, 2007
The hidden evolution of political power
The sudden, albeit measured, emergence of Democrat candidate Obama is no fluke. His positions, scripts, gestures of appeasement and entire campaign is a political amalgamation, engineered and created by the most likely of sources. Watch carefully here, for the masterful slight-of-hand.
Assume you were the collective strategists of the dominant political party aligning
yourself to maintain control of not just the WhiteHouse but also the country and international policy. Unfortunately, the agreed national agenda as defined by your party is not proceeding as planned. An ongoing and escalating war, homegrown economic calamity, collapsed foreign policy, and an unprecedented lack of confidence in our government conspire to shift the leanings of the electorate away from your favor.
What to do? What to do? ....You manufacture a candidate. Not just any candidate, mind you, but someone without a defining history, someone so junior in his career that the person himself is a direct result of central casting's request for an untarnished, unassailable character, so remarkably generic and pre-packaged that he appeals to the widest and basest demographic; someone not-too-black, but, God Forbid.... surely not-too-white.
Barrack Obama is an engineered candidate, created by the Republican Party to counter the political juggernaut that is the Clinton-Senator from New York. Obama's positions and poll rankings are carefully controlled to represent an "underdog" in a contest run and managed by political "machines" and insiders like Clinton.
The Obama Leftist leanings are timed and scheduled to coincide with the early stages of the campaign. Recognizing full-well the microscopic and reptilian short-term memory of the average democrat voter, watch for the Obama positions to emerge as "refreshingly" centrist, as the campaign progresses. Naive voters of every variety and persuasion...(not just caucasian) will openly and publicly glad-hand each other for their forward-thinking, "progressive" outlook. Watch as the term "progressive" becomes from all angles the operable theme of this campaign.
If your chances to claim victory in a fray already fraught with political "land-mines" looks in doubt, find your way into an arena where you can win. Karl Rove left the Bush WhiteHouse to quietly accomplish the impossible for his side, maintain control via the only sure routing.
Is it any surprise Obama warrants Secret Service protection? I don't think he arranged that for himself.
The political party itself is only an ingredient of the winning formula to the politically uninformed outsider. The agenda and resultant ideology will sustain itself and thrive in whatever incarnation necessary. These leopards don't ever change their spots. DR
Assume you were the collective strategists of the dominant political party aligning
yourself to maintain control of not just the WhiteHouse but also the country and international policy. Unfortunately, the agreed national agenda as defined by your party is not proceeding as planned. An ongoing and escalating war, homegrown economic calamity, collapsed foreign policy, and an unprecedented lack of confidence in our government conspire to shift the leanings of the electorate away from your favor.
What to do? What to do? ....You manufacture a candidate. Not just any candidate, mind you, but someone without a defining history, someone so junior in his career that the person himself is a direct result of central casting's request for an untarnished, unassailable character, so remarkably generic and pre-packaged that he appeals to the widest and basest demographic; someone not-too-black, but, God Forbid.... surely not-too-white.
Barrack Obama is an engineered candidate, created by the Republican Party to counter the political juggernaut that is the Clinton-Senator from New York. Obama's positions and poll rankings are carefully controlled to represent an "underdog" in a contest run and managed by political "machines" and insiders like Clinton.
The Obama Leftist leanings are timed and scheduled to coincide with the early stages of the campaign. Recognizing full-well the microscopic and reptilian short-term memory of the average democrat voter, watch for the Obama positions to emerge as "refreshingly" centrist, as the campaign progresses. Naive voters of every variety and persuasion...(not just caucasian) will openly and publicly glad-hand each other for their forward-thinking, "progressive" outlook. Watch as the term "progressive" becomes from all angles the operable theme of this campaign.
If your chances to claim victory in a fray already fraught with political "land-mines" looks in doubt, find your way into an arena where you can win. Karl Rove left the Bush WhiteHouse to quietly accomplish the impossible for his side, maintain control via the only sure routing.
Is it any surprise Obama warrants Secret Service protection? I don't think he arranged that for himself.
The political party itself is only an ingredient of the winning formula to the politically uninformed outsider. The agenda and resultant ideology will sustain itself and thrive in whatever incarnation necessary. These leopards don't ever change their spots. DR
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Market action and reaction. Newton never saw this coming.
Why can't you CNBC experts seem to find commentators or guests
who understand what is actually happening in these markets?
You conspire to prove at least to me that you and your
accomplices are either naive, stupid or congenital liars.
That funny sound you hear is the financial TrainWreck in
progress.
Countrywide and the rest of these "bottom-feeder" outfits
are in trouble because they made loans with investors' money
to low-lifes and losers. Countrywide needs to go back to
peddling trailer parks or, well, double-wides!
The political Hack we have masquerading as Fed Chairman is
nothing but a complicit toady in the pockets of various political
benefactors and contributors to our wonderful "elected"
government officials, all the way to the top.
Are you listening, Bushies. Be careful here. Madame DeFarge
is watching, and the knitting continues. (This, a Dickensian
reference to "A Tale of Two Cities").
The markets collapsed before the opening. Bernanke put
$83 BILLION of our money into Dow issues so his cronies,
and manipulators (Schwartzman, et.al), could escape
their bets at YESTERDAY'S prices. Think you could do that?
Think again.
Al Capone was a choirboy compared to these rotten and corrupt
insiders.
The Dow is not the market, it is merely an index of heavily
manipulated BlueChips. Look at the price history of these issues.
You know exactly what is happening and yet you perpetually refuse
to report the truth.
Let me know if you need someone to explain how this system
really works. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. DR
A "subprime" Crisis of Integrity and Complicity
Where can we even begin to explain the exploding economic crisis gripping our nation and the world? Perhaps the so-called "ownership society" our government has long espoused is not turning out to be such a great idea. What ever became of personal responsibility? Now the government vote-buying machines are claiming all sorts of "predatory lending" and various schemes took place.
Is it even possible the borrowers, who received these loans which are destined to be a problem, should never have qualified for loans in the first place, or maybe they chose to mislead lenders regarding their assets and repayment abilities? Now watch our government stick their pointy fingers of blame at the lenders, instead of where it belongs; aimed at the bums and losers who can't or blatantly choose not to repay their obligations.
There has always been a portion of our society who choose to make themselves irresponsible and incapable of managing their own personal finances. For those people, society has forever provided tenements, ghettos, cash-for-titles and pawn shops.
But for how many years has our government promoted and effectively financed what amount to giveaways and freebies to the burgeoning underclass, the same characters politicians made sure lenders didn't dare exclude from our economic largesse. Ahh, the political pandering never goes out of style.
Well, now the chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak, and guess who's going to be left holding the bag? A sack stuffed full of these IOU's isn't ever going to be worth much.
This "subprime" mess has scarcely begun to unfold, eventually reaching its sticky tentacles into every aspect of our economy. "The world needs ditch-diggers, too". We just don't need an entire country full of them!
Economic woes beget insolvency and eventually collapse. This is as true in the halls of the Federal Reserve as it is in our personal lives. Fed Chair Bernanke's $80 billion (of our money) attempt to curtail the Dow collapse is but a politically mandated drop in the bucket.
Bad planning is always a cancer in government, creating a multiple-choice variation of lies and corrupted revolving-door policies to delirerately obscure the inevitable truth. Watch-out ahead. The "four horsemen of the apocalypse" have quietly become a small army.
Is it even possible the borrowers, who received these loans which are destined to be a problem, should never have qualified for loans in the first place, or maybe they chose to mislead lenders regarding their assets and repayment abilities? Now watch our government stick their pointy fingers of blame at the lenders, instead of where it belongs; aimed at the bums and losers who can't or blatantly choose not to repay their obligations.
There has always been a portion of our society who choose to make themselves irresponsible and incapable of managing their own personal finances. For those people, society has forever provided tenements, ghettos, cash-for-titles and pawn shops.
But for how many years has our government promoted and effectively financed what amount to giveaways and freebies to the burgeoning underclass, the same characters politicians made sure lenders didn't dare exclude from our economic largesse. Ahh, the political pandering never goes out of style.
Well, now the chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak, and guess who's going to be left holding the bag? A sack stuffed full of these IOU's isn't ever going to be worth much.
This "subprime" mess has scarcely begun to unfold, eventually reaching its sticky tentacles into every aspect of our economy. "The world needs ditch-diggers, too". We just don't need an entire country full of them!
Economic woes beget insolvency and eventually collapse. This is as true in the halls of the Federal Reserve as it is in our personal lives. Fed Chair Bernanke's $80 billion (of our money) attempt to curtail the Dow collapse is but a politically mandated drop in the bucket.
Bad planning is always a cancer in government, creating a multiple-choice variation of lies and corrupted revolving-door policies to delirerately obscure the inevitable truth. Watch-out ahead. The "four horsemen of the apocalypse" have quietly become a small army.
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