blackjax29

And, I'm Awake...

Wow...

What a difference a day makes. While I was working on the office the world turned upside down. Maybe I’d been reading a wee bit too much of the weird history stuff, things like in 1897 on the evening of April 14. 100 citizens of  Mount Vernon, Illinois, including Mayor B. C. Wells, saw something that, as press accounts had it, "resembled the body of a huge man swimming through the air with an electric light on his back."

Time slips, oddness. Forteana. Maybe the paint fumes, but still, I’ve emerged in a opposite, bizarro world...

Nancy Pelosi was mean to the Republicans? Who was this woman, or rather, where was this version of this woman for the past 5 years? She gave a speech on the floor she should have given right after Florida in 2000, or after a myriad of blunders, crimes and shameful acts in the past 8 years, but I guess better late than never.

Obama took the Bronze in Olbermann’s Worst Persons in the World? Well, Obama mentioned to the press that Saturday will be his 15th wedding anniversary. According to Michelle, it’s his 16th. Whoop. Can’t wait for the McCain Attack ads there.. “If he can’t Remember his OWN Anniversary, will he forget to answer the phone at 3 A.M.?”

Wachovia is now bought out. Who’s next? Which is the next bank to go belly up? The Dow tumbled to the lowest point since Bush took office, a number BELOW he took office. Then again, we also had a trillion dollar surplus, a good name in the world, productivity, honor, and a lot more soldiers, so to lose something else was just another thing the next president will have to search the Oval Office sofa cushions for later.

It turns out that Boener and the rest of the Crybaby Conservatives needed to blame somebody for this bailout fiasco, which, all around, just smells like a dead skunk’s balls for the Republicans no matter how they slice it. The screw-up happened under a Republican President, presided and goaded by Republican majorities, the bailout would screw the voting public, but not doing anything at all will...

Just curious? What would not doing anything do? We’ve been following this Administration’s lead for too long and look how we’ve ended up. Maybe, just maybe, if we do a 180 on what they want this time we’ll be okay?.
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And yea, McCain is falling in the polls due to handler idiocy and being as warm and genuine as a velour toilet seat cozy, but he’ll probably die from Melanoma Cancer in the first year of his clusterfuck, raunchy Fox Sunday Night Comedy of an administration, leaving us with a rapidly unpopular and moronic Palin who thinks that the Prehistoric times looked like the Flintstones with Cavemen riding dinosaurs 6000 years ago, and so to dodge responsibility on a rapidly declining American Economy and falling poll numbers after they steal the election, her escape plan will be to spur on Armageddon  by launching nukes, believing that she, her kids and ‘First Dude’ along with a teeny amount of the populace will be Raptured Away before there’s any blowback from her actions.

I can see her right after Israel is been reduced to a sea of black glass, the kids, and a few hangers on, standing on the White House lawn, holding hands and beaming, waiting for that last, ultimate ‘copter airlift as thousands of pissed off citizens, the hungry, the unemployed, crash the gates and rush them.

Her (rumored to be) tattooed lipliner grin starts to twitch as the unwashed rush past the gunfire. Was that... doubt?

The last paragraph sounded too plausible.

A Quick Thought on Palin...

The Right-Wing and the Media doesn’t want to brook any critique of Palin because she’s a ‘mom’, as if to question her is to question motherhood itself. 

Not to question motherhood, but Lucrezia Borgia, Susan Smith, Joan Crawford, and Barbra Bush were mothers too.

"...and by that time there was no one left to speak up."

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. And then they came for me.

...and by that time there was no one left to speak up." Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. From Wikipedia.

After a long day painting a friend’s office, I’m back home this Sunday night.

Rita the wonder hound is scratching and looking for a place to lie on my bed, my roomie Nanci is recovering from whatever crud that’s laid her low and scared me half to death this morning.

I’m awaiting a moment of clarity before I take a bath, read, and collapse, but I’d thought I’d spew a little.

As I was painting the accent wall in something she’d called creamsickle, the grey-blue carpeting was covered with newspapers, which I prefer anyway. Plastic tarp is irritating, never lets whatever dropped on it to dry, as if tailor made to insure stepping and tracking paint.

It was, oddly enough, a pastiche of events that I missed this week. There was the usual articles on the bailout, the impending debate, then there were others that leaked out from under the radar, buried on the double-digit pages.

Especially this one. Did you know that there’s a increase of homeless camps across the United States? Some are the usual suspects, and some are others who’d been foreclosed on to be sure, but for a while now, it’s been a steady trickle of people who’d just been scraped off the grid and are now... drifting. And they’re growing.

There was a time when the idea of homelessness would be considered something of a personal failure. They’re a drunk, an addict, mentally deficient, somehow they’re just... faulty to have ended up in that state. Somehow, someway they could have prevented it.

I remember the stories out of Silicon Valley after the Dot-Com bubble burst. The ex-techs who’d ended up at the shelters and soup kitchens, guys who’d started crying after looking at the free sandwich in their hands, sleeping in cars that they’d leased with those stock-options not so long ago.

Maybe there was a sense of Icharian schadenfreude in hearing about it, that they got the khaki and blue-shirted just desserts of that insane era. Then we forgot about them.

Some people fall off the radar out of choice, or addiction, or affliction, but it appears a rapidly growing population of them are ending up there out of dwindling economic choices. It was said that we’re all a paycheck or two away from the street, but that being said a few years ago, I’m thinking we’re a lot closer to that concrete and asphalt that we want to think. 

Personally? I don’t have credit cards. Haven’t had a bank account for 3 years or so. I’m inches away from sleeping in the Black Mariah if I don’t get myself in gear.

The Homeless, I think to a degree, were a tool to remind people to shut up, to not complain about dwindling options and safety, to remain placid while this economic date-rape continued for these past 28 years while we’ve gone from a country of Unions, of production and well paying jobs, to one of Wal-Mart and beggary, from cash and equity to debt and credit-instabilty. We’ve become enslaved, robbed of our futures, betrayed by a Government that should have had our better interests at heart.

What’s the point of being a citizen of a country if that country doesn’t care if you live or die? If that government allows you to become bankrupted by a sickness, to become homeless from some economic Butterfly Effect? 

Maybe, just maybe, decisions and choices in out Government will start to address this. Maybe another W.P.A. to face this economic downturn we’re headed for to give jobs and dignity and hope for citizens. Correction: One we hit and are still going to be dealing with for a while. Currently icy air is wafting with the sound of the band and the scrape of deck-chairs, but we’re sinking. And it’s not looking too pretty.

The bailout will give comfort and succor to the ones who screwed up mainly, but to the ones falling through the net? Not much. And we’re all heading there one way or another.

So, maybe, to bastardize, Niemöller, maybe his saying should go a little like this.

"In America, they came first for the Unions, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t in a Union. And then they came for Welfare, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t on Welfare. And then they made homelessness Illegal, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t homeless. And then they came for me.

...and by that time there was no one left to speak up."

So, I’m going Reno this weekend to work for Obama.

It’s now or never, people.

I'm sticking a fork in it and calling it a night. ..

Rita is asleep on my bed, kicking.

“Seat firing handle pulled, initiation cartridge to fire, releasing top latch while detonating cord initiates canopy fracturing system. Secondary cartridges fire in turn as seat rises...” Martin-Baker Company, UK.

There’s No Ejection-Seat On This Jet, Mr. McCain...

In his military career McCain crashed 3 aircraft, and lost two more due to being shot down, one was enemy fire, the other friendly. A mediocre pilot at worst, below par at best, McCain was the son of an Admiral, so he skated...

There’s a rumor going around D.C. that Mooskinner MILF Palin isn’t ready for primetime. Conservatives are spooked after the stellar performances she gave in the Coric and Gibson interviews and reports from the disastrous mock debate sessions that she’ll fail badly against Biden during the real thing, if they have one, that is.

Even the Nation Review is asking her to step down. Wow.

Personally it may be true, or it’s the usual Rove/Slimeball trick of lowering expectations prior to the debates so that when she doesn’t come across as a complete moron, she looks like a winner. Remember all of the hullabaloo before Bush went up against Gore? All Bush had to do was not slam his head against the podium to make him look dashingly ‘Presidential’.

Then again, Flailin’ Palin really does look like an idiot. Then again, so does Bush, and look where we are now.

Evidently there’s a lot more of Coric’s interview with Palin that’s sitting on a computer somewhere that makes her look a lot worse, the blooper reel of sorts. We need some patriotic, woefully underpaid intern at CBS to ‘accidentally’ release it onto Youtube or send to  Brave New Films.

McCain lost his first jet in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while landing.

McCain is flying blind. He’s dropping in the polls, and it’s showing that he doesn’t have neither the temperament or the spine to do the right thing from day to day. He’s being advised to appear like a political figure that mattered, like going to D.C. to demand a sit-down at the White House, then actually speaking very little during it.

Oh, and the meeting at the White House? The one McCain asked Bush to convene? The one that the Democrats weren’t invited to until they forced Bush’s already weakened hand? Pandemonium doesn’t describe it. Bush struggled to keep order and I guess, remain relevant. When Democrats headed to the Roosevelt Room to caucus privately, Paulson dogged their heels begging they not "blow up" the negotiations and legislation. As he went down on one knee, genuflecting, Nancy Pelosi joked, "I didn’t know you were Catholic."

I guess this is how the Big Boys at Big Businesses like Goldman Sachs do it. Wow...

McCain's second crash was caused by him flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula and running into power lines. He was let off the hook because he was the son of an Admiral.

Oh, and the deal McCain and the Bush-Republicans wanted to pass during that meeting? It contained more deregulation and more corporate tax cuts. The usual hyperbole that got us into this mess in the first place. And if these were things that McCain actually believed in then maybe he should give some kind of barn-burner speech filled with logic and sweeping rhetoric on why it needed to pass. You know, leadership skills. Instead, after sitting silently for 40 minutes he gave a vague impression on his stance, one filled with an obvious lack of understanding of the details of the bailout.

Obama? He gave a real stab at bipartisan consensus building. He acted Presidential at the meeting the Republicans tried to turn into a shot in the arm for one of their own, perhaps one of the last ones they’ll do for the old boob.

McCain’s reminds me of an underage Beauty Queen way over her head, thrown into these sideshow photo-ops, looking around befuddled, puzzled and blinking in his $5,500 make-up job while his advisors hiss from the sidelines “John, JOHN! Tax Cuts. Remember - oh, Don’t look into the camera, not in the - Christ. Your lines... Remember. Tax Cuts!” or maybe in his mind it's like he’s arrived at Little Big Horn a few days after Custer and the 7th Calvary were slaughtered and claiming that he alone drove off the combined Lakota and Northern Cheyenne attacker, standing there among the bloated, scalped, naked soldiers as Buntline comes up with his usual florid prose. A photographer’s flash powder goes off, scaring the swirling crows.

McCain's third crash occured when he was flying a Navy trainer to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. He ejected as the plane slammed into a clump of trees.

Substance? Zero. Photo Op for a desperately flagging McCain? You fucking bet. Another Hail Mary pass fumbled. Another stab at trying to outflank reality.

The McCain campaign isn’t working and he knows it. He’s locked in this crumbling jet, buffeted by winds, lost in the clouds, engines screaming, the lights are blinking red.

Yank all you want, John. The ejection seat’s not going to work this time.

S.O.S... S.O.S... S.O.S...

The H.M.S. Titanic was the first ship to use that emergency signal. It wasn’t supposed to be meant as ‘Save Our Ship’, but just a simple --- ... --- to get the message across. The Carpathia heard it, but still, thousands were lost that fateful night.

Speaking of simple messages to cover up a whole lot of screw-up, Bush goes on national television last night to warn us all that the ‘entire economy is in danger,’ unless this 700 Billion (and who’s to say that’ll be enough, or who’ll end up with it in the long run) but he sort of dodges the main point that he’s the one who’s ‘steady hand on the helm in high seas,’ according to lickspittle Peggy Noonan, who, against a steady stream of warnings on his policies, sailed us all into this particular iceberg. So now we’re supposed to listen to Mr. %19 Approval Ratings on this issue? Or any issue?

Turns out the H.M.S. Titanic was lost, not because of hubris or an act of God, but because they left port without a pair of binoculars. Because of ignoring a minor bit of common sense, they sank. And so here we are. Then again, less people died on the Titanic than under this President’s careful watch (9195 Americans dead sofar, and counting).

Facts are facts. Bush’s going down as the worst president in American History. The question may be asked if he’ll be the last president in American History as well. As in will there be a country left after he’s gone. I mean, yes, they’ll be flags and borders, but not the power or influence after he boards that ‘copter in January. We’re becoming Puerto Rico, a place full of National Pride but not much else. No economy, no industry, just flag waving yahoos betrayed by an oligarchy of wealthy families, military juntas and companies.

So, again with the furrowed brow, again with the dire warnings, again with the usual bugaboo of immediate action or ‘we’re all dooooooomed...’ Come on. In trials the last tactic for a losing side is to break out the voodoo masks and try to scare the juries with dire warnings and bugaboos of economic collapse if they allow, say, an asbestos case to reach trial or another tobacco company to face fines. Boooo...

To get us into Iraq, it’s been confirmed that this Administration, ‘with eyes of steel and tongues of fork’, told  935 lies to the press, to the Media, to our collective faces. 935 lies of aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, yellowcake and W.M.D.’s.

There’s rationality, then there’s running on fear. Senator Chuck Schumer stated that, maybe, the bailout could be 100 billion or so as a stopgap measure until January. Common sense. Let’s see how bad it is before we piss all the cash away. Let’s not go nuts here.

Weathervane McCain and Mooseskinner MILF Palin Lurch Towards A Better Tomorrow...

I guess McCain’s $5,500 make-up job by Tifanie White, the American Idol makeup artist won’t be used on the upcoming debates set for tomorrow. Turns out he’s got a new plan, one carefully laid out and accidentally sent out by his crackerjack staff to the Media instead of loyal ‘Fake Letters to the Editor Writing’ staffers. His new campaign tactic seems to be this Buddhistic in it’s simplicity: Not campaigning.

According to plan, he’s going to try to make himself appear too busy to talk to the Media or, you know, campaign, and just look like he’s trying to save us all from impending doom his own Republican party helped us get into. Brilli-fucking-ant.

He’s losing. Bad. And it’s getting worse. He’s lost the Media’s fawning, he’s lost the Conservatives (the real ones, not the snake handling, tongue spewing, Armageddon and Rapture nutballs who are in charge of the Republican Party as of late), he’s lost the faith of Business, Wall Street, Opinionists and Talking Heads. He’s lost common sense and reality.

And, if push comes to shove, who wants a President who panics in a clutch? Who throws a half-assed hail Mary and then fumes when it fails to work? According to David Letterman, ‘we already have one now.’ McCain is not ready to be president, nor will he ever be. His decisions are hurried, badly thought out, and lack all common sense as of yet.

And yea, he’s been a P.O.W., something he’s been reluctant to divulge yet runs on as his ‘little black dress’ of excuses whenever he’s faced with a problem or a lie. Too many houses? P.O.W. Memory loss? P.O.W. Less than stellar Economic smarts? P.O.W.

Okay, he’s been a P.O.W. He’s been tortured for 5 years. He’s been abused in horrible, horrible ways in body and mind. Do you trust this guy to make the right decisions as President?

Take his first decision, Sarah Palin. Palin is, as it turns out, impossibly less popular than he and Obama, and she’s stinking up McCain’s joint with her carefully planned, crash and burn, moose in the headlight interviews and building taint of corruption, lies, half-truths and out and out inane and vicious Leadership style. Not to mention the Christian Rapture stuff. Or the Book Banning. Or the myriad of stuff sticking to her shoe. No amount of prep, of spackle, of imagery will convince the voting populace that she’s ready to assume the Presidency in case McCain croaks.

Speaking of which, his left eye seems to be drooping quite a bit in the past few days. Rumor has it that he may have had a minor stroke or Bell’s Palsy. Or maybe Cindy was a little too rough with the beatings he (I’m assuming while wearing black pj's and saying things like 'You, running dog! Lick my boot' or whatever. Again, it's just plain political conjecture) needs to feel complete. He may not live past the Election, and he looks it.

So, he’s going to dodge the debates, carrying on the Republican Tactic of avoiding the Media lights by staying in the suddenly continent shadows of hurricanes and other disasters, ones they’ve ignored for the past 8 years.

He’s not ready. The Country is waking up to that. And he’s going to lose. That is, unless the Republicans try to steal it. Oh, If you got friends in borderline states, have them check their voter registrations. Now. There’s too may hinky tactics going on to explain here, but have them cross and double check it. Today.

As For High Weirdness...

I’m compiling a timeline of such, from Springheel’d Jack, Mothman, Flying Humanoids, things and happenings of those who enter out reality to visit, spook, kill, eat some roadkill, attack women, and vanish for, sofar, the past 200 years and counting.

Fun stuff. More later...

Oh, New Venture, Rough New SIte...

http://acejackdaw.webs.com/

Had a Dream Last Night...

I was on the Olbermann show with, oddly enough, Bill O'Reilly. It was light, funny with a live audience. There was some kind of political gameshow on a screen, sort of a C.G., swoopy, candy colored Tic-Tac-Toe with Weathervane McCain a the center square. It was mainly answering questions on the current lies, spin, hyperbole...

Maybe some of the questions would have included how his campaign had staffers and volunteers write fictitious letters to the editor in praise of, oddly enough, McCain.

Or how, in an odd reversal to the reality that John ‘Older than the State of Alaska, The Pop Top, the Golden Gate Bridge...’ McCain really isn’t much in touch with the newfangled gizmos and contraptions we common folk use everyday, McCain’s Economic Adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin held up a BlackBerry last week and credited McCain’s work on Chairing the Commerce Committee in its invention. Even the McCain website states that “Under John McCain’s guiding hand, (got to love that messianic turn of phrase, like Daddy’s home, kids), Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology.” The wireless spectrum was made available in 1985 and the FCC green-lit “unlicensed national information infrastructure devices” in January 1997, just as McCain was reaching for that particular gavel. McCain spent his tenure on that board more concerned with, you guessed it, Market Deregulation. Basically, as usual, being a whore for Media Conglomerates.

Or how he’s keeping away Palin from the Media during her meetings with world leaders at the UN besides the inane photo-ops before closed door meetings. I mean, they had CNN walk out in protest over that move. Even FOX news got nasty. FOX news? She’s running for V.P. now, and keeping her away from the press is just raising more questions about her already questionable creditability, not to mention raising issues of sexism. Behind that door I can see Karzai rolling his eyes and praying silently for an Obama win, then breaking down in tears. Personally I’m thinking that McCain wanted to keep Palin in her place for a while after that ‘Palin-McCain Administration’ gaffe of hers, but that’s me. It sounds like something the vindictive Old McBoob would do.

Then again, being V.P. doesn’t mean what it meant to Cheney either. He went in to quell (read, whip into line with his manifactured gravitas) the Republican Revolt on the 700 Billion dollar, no strings, no enforcement bailout, and the Reeps actually showed some, well, common sense and turned him down flat. It seems that fear and fear alone won’t save this boondoggle. The mojo is gone. I’m assuming Petco will deliver another box of doomed kittens to Cheney’s home later that afternoon for his enjoyment, forcing Lynn to squeeze into those extra pointy shoes again, getting the camera ready and setting the lighting just so...

Meanwhile, Keith had some kind of hand held device to make the Tic-Tac-Toe game graphics work. Halfway through the segment, it started to screw up. As Keith was making light of it, I yelled out “Hey, was that thing made by Diebold? Wait, they’re called...?” I looked at an oddly subdued Bill O'Reilly, then in unison we said “Premier! They’re called Premier now!”

Diebold hasn’t died, it just did the thing another dismal company did when the taint of its own name became synonymous with, well, something bad. Phillip Morris? Now the Altira Group. Diebold Now it’s called Premier, and they’re still in the Election Machine business, complete with vote flipping, Republican poll advancement, what have you.

Meanwhile, the Audience laughed. So did Keith. Segment saved with a bit of my usual smart-assery. After the show, Keith and I had what was a rather awkward, distant, celeb to citizen conversation. He’d cut his finger and had it wrapped in some kind of surgical tape, but it was sticking to everything, getting unwrapped. Before his girlfriend whisked him away, we shook hands. Nice guy.

Odd dream.

And Last Night...

I went back to that Drawing Group in Emeryville. Coffee, homemade plum cake, gorgeous model and conversation that ranged from the comic-book geeky (some are dreading the upcoming ‘Watchmen’ movie partly due to the shortening of the format. It’s an epic Graphic Novel, worthy of a HBO mini-series, while others are a little perturbed at the overall puffy look of Dr. Manhattan, while others can’t wait to see the tiny, luscious Carla Gugino playing Sally Jupiter and Jack Haley Earle playing everyone’s favorite psycho, Rorschach), while others are dreading the coming of the Sin-City-esque ‘The Spirit’.
Oh, the  Watchmen site. Very cool promo.

Weathervane McCain loses Cool, Brain To Follow...

Reports on Republican Candidate McCain’s War on Reality...

Man, who do you have to piss-off to have Glamour Magazine on your shit-list? McCain, I guess. He’s banned his side from giving interviews with that pinko rag from now on, boy.

THAT’LL show those hippies at that left-wing, Obama glossing, gloss... sparkly... white...

Tell it to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. McCoo. They wrote in an editorial that, to horribly paraphrase ‘McCain untethered, disconnected from knowledge and principle, had made a false, deeply unfair, and unpresidential attack on Cox (Unfireable head of the SEC, Chairman Christopher Cox, and not the head of the FEC. And Spain isn’t part of Latin America, Johnny) which demonstrated that McCain doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.’

McCain then sputtered on 60 Minutes that he’d replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo. He’ll probably deny saying that in record time. Just watch.

Meanwhile, he’s losing The Wall Street Journal, owned by the Anti-Christ, Rupert Murdoch. If they lost Satan, then McCain has no friends left in this world. If I remember my ‘Devil and Daniel Webster’ lore, he’d sold is soul anyway, so he’s got nothing left to bargain with.

He’s lost (for the moment) Right-Wing windbag George Will. “For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive.”

He’s losing the electorate 2 to 1, if they can connect the dots. In a recent poll, 47 percent of this country blame the GOP and Republicans for this current economic screw up.

I’m just wondering if the Media is mentioning that McCain is a Republican in any press these days? Just curious. Currently the McCain-Palin ticket hasn’t had a press conference in 39 days and change to, I’m guessing, avoid that teeny yet crucial connection to reality. Watch the trend continue.

Oh, Republican Candidate McCain is a Republican. Thought I’d remind you.

Republican Candidate McCain’s Election team is so deep in the rot of every major screw up in this rapidly crumbling empire of an Administration that it isn’t funny anymore.

So who’s left on Team Republican Candidate McCain? Economics advisor, Treasury Secretary shoo-in, Swiss Bank UBS lobbyist, Glass-Stiegel Law Killer with his ‘Financial Services Modernization Act’, and yea, I can still that creepy intonation of his when I write ‘Good Friend’? Phil ‘Nation of Whiners’ Gramm helped this current fiasco along. Well, greed and these Companies blowing past the bleeding red warning lights helped too, but let’s thank the guy who made it all possible. Thanks Phil!

Oh, what happened to all that talk about privatizing Social Security and having people invest in the Stock Market, John?

Phil’s been bumped from his official Republican Candidate McCain’s post, but not his influence, so he may be another come back kid.

How about Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae lobbyists on Republican Candidate McCain’s Team? Republican Candidate McCain Manager Rick Davis pulled in $30k a month from Fannie Mae. William Timmons Sr? His firm Timmons & Co. received $260,000 this year from that now publicly bought-out institution. Republican Candidate McCain’s Economic Adviser Aquiles Suarez ran Fannie Mae’s $47,510,000 lobbying warchest. Top Republican Candidate McCain Aide Charlie Black made around $820,000 from Freddie Mac. Republican Candidate McCain’s Campaign's Vice-Chair Wayne Berman and John Green (who also pocketed an extra $80K from Freddie Mac) raked in $1.14 million shilling for Fannie Mae via Ogilvy Government Relations. Palin-vetter and selector Arther B. Culvahouse Jr. earned $80,000 via O'Melveny & Myers LLPs.

On and on and on. No conflict of interests here on the Straight Talk Express.

How about Republican Candidate McCain’s bizarre stand on the breakaway Russian republic Georgia a while back? Republican Candidate Adviser Randy Scheunemann recieved $200,000 to shill for the Georgian Government, so there’s the breeze of Weathervane McCain on that issue.

He doesn’t have a spine, he has a pivot-rod.

On and on. And this isn’t mentioning the 13 cars (and a Jet) Republican, anti-elitist McCain owns to Obama’s 1 Hybrid. Or the $540 dollar loafers. Or the hushed up affair with Alcalde & Fay lobbyist, the now vanished Vicki Iseman. Or the myriad of homes he owns. (It’s rumored in Hamburg, Germany that the locals have set up fake bus stop benches near hundreds of Old Folks Homes to corral escaped and eternally waiting dementia patients. Maybe that’s why McCain has so many houses? Just a thought.) Or to him, that wealthy starts at $5 Million. Or the political or geographical flubs on Iran, Iraq, Al Quieda, Czechoslovakia, Spain. I’m just saying, any of these would have stopped a Democratic Candidate in his tracks in the Media with a 24/7 blatherstorm of covenanted opinion and feigned outrage. So McCain’s now bitching that his free ride is slowing down.

Time for a war. On Reality.

The most recent shot fired? Republican Candidate McCain’s strategist Steve Schmidt stated in a conference call “Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today, not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain Campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama.”

Fighting reality. Next they’ll be blaming gravity for making Republican Candidate McCain’s jowly, cancerous face wobble, or sending out a press release on enthropic time for making Republican Candidate McCain look so friggin’ old, or blackballing Republican Candidate McCain’s Brain and mouth for all the gaffes, double and triple talk in the past few months? 

The economy is tanking. The EU is washing their collective hands of us concerning an economic bailout. Houston is a mess, Galveston is destroyed with thousands missing, millions are losing homes, jobs, lives...

I’m thinking, on the Republican Candidate McCain’s War on Reality, that they’ll try something, ANYTHING, to shift blame or dig up some kind of red herring as a distraction.

Don’t worry. Still President Bush is searching for Osama Bin Laden and, I’m assuming and rumoring wildly, snorting anything off the Oval Office Desk and tossing back Bushmills to kill the chemical nasal dripping down the back of his throat, killing time before he can get a divorce. With him on the job, it’s a done deal that Osama will be a free man come January.

Place your bets anyway.

Darwin, Economics and You...

February, 2008. A Canadian Goose was flying somewhere over Derbyshire, minding his own business, when suddenly - WHAM!

Very soon after, Adrian and Fiona Manning heard a loud noise  in their driveway and went outside to discover what it was. On the roof of their now damaged Mini cooper lay the Canadian Goose, flailing weakly.

Amid the shattered glass next to the car lay a 9 pound meteorite. The goose picked up an unexpected hitchhiker.

Damages to the car ran up to $4000.

The Meteorite was sent to the University of Derby.

The Goose was dragged off by a Fox and assumed very, very tasty.

And As For The Bailout..?

It’s the usual hyperbole. Scare the country to cut a check without oversight then ignore the fallout when it vanishes or fails to meet the minimum standards. And the standards and rules for this one is insane.

Remember Katrina? If I recall, Rove was put in charge of doling out that cash. How’d that go sofar? Planning your vacation to the Big Easy yet? Cash gone in overruns and failed projects? Billions.

Iraq? Oversight? Not a chance. Never will with Cheney’s Son in Law in charge of investigating it.

I read somewhere that the estimated cost to buyback every foreclosed home in the US would cost around $600 Million. To me that sounds like a bargain instead of this $700 Billion boondoggle. Eliminate the middleman, buy the houses outright, then sell them at a modest profit. Let these companies sink under their own rot.

What happened to letting these failed institutions fail on their own? Isn’t that what businesses are supposed to do in what we’re calling a Free Market? Isn’t that the whole Economic Darwinian ethos these Conservatives keep touting? If a company fails then let the liquidators and bonecrackers have at it and start anew.

Use the cash to offset any ripples in the economy, but don’t bail these long forewarned greedy nimrods out. Let the hallowed Marketplace of Ideas start with a new venture. Something that won’t fuck up nearly as bad. Learn from the mistakes and move on.

These institutions now on the block are begging the Government to be bought out at top dollar, not the realistic junk ratings that they’re now knee-deep in. And as for the brass in these companies? They all want to keep their bonuses, blow, hookers, limos and parachutes for a long line of inept and corrupt decisions. Does that sound like Economic Darwinism? The Miracle of the Marketplace?

These failed companies knew the risks. And now they don’t want to assume the fallout. As usual. Who’s next? Who else wants to be rewarded for forewarned ineptitude?

The former homeowners, the ones who’d been foreclosed on? They’re not getting a dime out of this bailout and they’re angry, finally, and are waking up to the reality of this world we have, of this faux-folksy Republican Administration we’ve been saddled with for 8 years.

Finally.

The Goose wasn’t warned. To him it was an accident. The Fox was fed. And the world was set right. Well, $4000 dollars too, but still. A glass manufacturer was paid, insurance was spent...

It’s odd to consider the Goose' story more real than the bailout, but here we are.

"I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind." Gordon Gekko.

“Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He has fired rockets to the moon. Split the atom. Achieved miracles in every field of human endeavour... except crime!” Goldfinger in ‘Goldfinger’

Remember Savings and Loans..? The whole fiasco back in the latter days of the last Bush administration? It’s the old game of deregulation, looting and public bailouts. The last one cost taxpayers around $124.6 billion dollars. This time it’s on a grander scale. $700 Billion Dollars.

Goldfinger would blush. Gert Frobe is rolling in his grave.

Someone made a killing on this and they’re not paying it back, in either jail time or cash. In fact the CEO’s of the failed institutions want to keep their Golden Parachutes, the pay for driving these institutions into the ground.

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. They gain. We lose. No one’s accountable. More mysterious invisible hand of the free market talk.Pay for incompetence? It’s like a Valet balking that you didn’t tip him when he totals your car and still won’t give with your keys.

End this. Vote.