Something for Nothing

You know a saying among conservatives is "I never saw a poor person give anybody a job", (unless it happens to be at an alley behind a gay bar, ha ha) And the same could be said that "I never saw a poor person loan money". They don't hang around here much. If you are borrowing money around here, it's most likely from a poor person. I myself have been pressured this week to loan out a lot of cigarettes, when the truth is I'm not fully solvent myself. Logic would dictate that it's the person who knows he'll have a surplus of cigarettes at the end of the week that loans out, but in my case and other's, it doesn't work that way. In like matter, you'd think it's rich people who would be under the most pressure to give to the church. For some reason you never hear about pressure on rich people. It's us poor peons that bear up under that pressure to give. I think "the Obama factor" is at work here. These pastors are afraid if they let a rich person finance them they'll somehow "owe" the other person. While we're on the subject of lobbyests, I'd like to say that according to one liberal group, this is one area where President Obama has not kept his promises made during the campaign. He hasn't kicked the lobbyests out of the temple yet. But today I'l like to talk about Chrysler Corporation. And I'd like to mention a strange reversal of Thom Hartman's position about whether corporations are people or not. You know, I looked up "Leveraged buy-out" in the Wickepedia and it says it's receiving a large loan by say a guy with a few million dollars, to buy a corporation worth ten times that much, and for the corporation's assets themselves to be used as collatteral. I can't help but think that if this were such a sound financial practice, they would let anybody, even poor people do it. But that's not the case. What Hartman is pissed about is that the "rights" of the corporation- - as a Person, are being stepped on. Before the corporation was bought out it was sound with the workers and management both happy and profits rolling in. Now the corporation, as a person, through no fault of its own, now finds itself deep in debt, and so the pension funds are raided and workers are fired and wages are cut by renegotiating a deal with the unions, as it were "out of financial necessity", which wouldn't be a Necessity were not the corporation being bought out. So I guess the bond holders are caught in the middle of all of this because they want their money. But in reality the culpibility for everything lies with the jerk who bought the corporation in the first place, but he gets off scott free. It's not his problem any more- - at least under rules set down by the Ronald Reagan administration. They've never done a movie on Ronald Reagan, have they? Has Michael Moore done a movie specifically on Ronald Reagan and his legacy? Another term you'll be hearing a lot about is a hedge funds. According to the Wickepedia, while short selling was originally intended to mitigate or "hedge" risk, today it is often used to heithen risk. If Obama has any balls he'd spell out all these problems plainly to the American people, but he can't do that because he's still in their back pocket.

The basic truth is that Obama has had a remarkable first one hundred days. Now the economy is showing unmistakable signs of turning around. And apparently it's turning around even with all the crook's jobs still intact and not threatened in any manner. Whatever these bankers and speculators want, Bush and Obama will give them. I can't help but wonder just how much better off everybody else would be if the financial pyramid wern't so skewed in favor of the rich. But it does show that even though the democrats have sold out, that they are the victorious political party. Many republicans have spoken with alarm about Arlen Specter's departure from the republican to the democratic party. Many have spoken of how it's self-serving and how he's just protecting himself politically in the next primary. That doesn't matter. Because Specter would not HAVE primary worries, and shouldn't have primary worries at this stage of the game- - were not his party drifting off further and further to the right. Now Olivia Snow is making noises like perhaps she'll be the next to leave and make it 61 in the senate, after Al Franken is seated. We can hope. I still need to change my own registration. But the Republicans have been on the wrong side of history. They were hoping and praying that President Obama's economic plans would blow up in his face and we'd be in an even worse recession. That didn't happen. Even Thom Hartman was swept away with their madness, saying that the stock market would plunge downward to new low levels. That didn't happen either. Instead, both Bush and Obama were prooved right. We provided the right ammount of stimulus at the right time. There was one Republican on the internet that was saying how Roosevelt passed the Smoot-Holly terrif during his administration. It was passed under Hoover. The same speaker spok of the "stimulus of a tax cut" under President Coolege that was lifting the US out of the recession of the early 'twenties. This statement is also wrong. Harding was President then. The Republicans love to make misstatements. They are wrong about everything. Even when I was a ditto head, I knew that Rush Limbaugh's statements about the economy during the Clinton adminestration were just plain wrong. Now they are wrong again. The Republicans are fast becoming a party of fanatical right-wingers and rural southerners. But I wouldn't call it a one party system. People talk about "a one party system running polotical rough-shod over the legeslative process". The truth is that just as under Lyndon Johnson, the wheels of progress can at long last assume a forward direction. We can finally get needed measures passed. With the Republicans, their slogan these days has degenerated into, "We have nothing to offer but fear itself".

Demographically, perhaps there is one hope for the far right. It seems that Conservatives reproduce at 1.6 times the rate that liberals do. I'm a bit surprised the ratio isn't higher than that. Apparently the Cherokee Indians were astonished that white women spent virtually all of their years from twenty to forty being pregnent. This seems to be the preferred state white husbands like to see their women in. But it's also a fact that The Population Bomb isn't going away. To quote Captain Queeg, "These are things we're going to start noticing again". You know about 1100 AD or so Europe was in the dark ages, but there were other civilizations all over the world. There were the Incas, and the Aztecks, and Babylon was a high culture then, and Islan was actually an intellectual religion. Marco Polo went to China and saw amazing things there. It was a lot harder to be Euro-centric a thousand years ago than today. But back then there were only a half a billion people people populating the whole planet. All those civilizations I discussed had a lot more breathing room. Ghengis Khan's empire spanned the largest land mass of any empire in the world. Back then somehow distant rulers managed to enslave people. And there no worse slaves than women. Man has enslaved woman from day one. There are times I"ll admit that the thought has occurred to me "Sex wouldn't be viewed as a comodity to men, if it wasn't regarded as a comodity to be bought and sold- - by women". But then another part of me says "No- -don't pawn off this subserviance onto women- - it's men who instituted it". It's men who want to own as many wives as possible and empregnate as many women as possible. You know the barnyard principle, don't you. You have one rooster and many hens. Just as you have one Lion and many lionesses in the pride. Even if they sterilized the men, because it's anatomically easier than for women, make no mistake about it. The remaining men would soon take up the slack. Which brings me to Hartman's lead statement today. In the future the issue won't be abortions - pro or con - - but rather unwanted conceptions. And men foist these on women to but their "seal of approval" on them. And the women put up with being pregnent all the time even though they'd rather have a carrier or something else to "enlarge their capacities" intellectually or spiritually or athletically. Getting the population of earth down will do more than a lot of other steps to solve the energy crisis. In a perverse way we westerners owe China big. Because of their draconian births policy, we westerners profit from them because we don't have to do as much ourselves to save the planet. Were you a hyper-moralist you might even say that the blood of all those Chinese aborted fetuses is vicariously on our hands.

I like to check C-Span to see what's going on there. There is a bill I've only heard about on C-Span and it's the national "Hate Crimes" bill. I am stallwartly against this bill and I believe people of contience should do everything we can to defeat it. It violates several constitutional amendments - particularly the first and the fourteenth. If muzzles free speech. People have the right to speak their mind in this country. If you don't like homosexuality, if you're a Christian, you have rights- - and among these is the right not to have your personal beliefs legeslated against. I don't know what might happen to Church Pastors if this bill were passed. But more to the point- - there are principles and precedents in law. One of these if that it's your job to prove intent and the will to comit a crime, and whether the individual is of sound mind. However going into all the psychological motives of the individual isn't necessary or even relivant. Neither is it relivant the fears of the victum- - if such fears might be unfounded and "unreasonable". If you hit an old lady in the crosswalk - -should that be a lighter penalty than if you his a gay man in the same crosswalk? There is a little thing called the fourteenth amendment. That's equal protection of the law. Remember the statue of justice is blindfolder, and she holds a ballance. That ought to tell you something. It means that gender or race or sexual identity- - is irrelivant in determining guilt. We keed to keep America indeed the land of freedom and Justice under Law. The things early Civil Rights people fought for are at stake here. If who you are determines how the law will treat you then I must say "This isn't America any more".