October Week 1, 2008

I am calling around to different brokerage firms to get my investments out of Smith Barney... The more I think about it the more I feel like one of PT Barnum's newborn suckers. I would feel angrier at the incompetence of my Financial Advisor if my gullibility and unwillingness to face reality wasn't complicit in this mess. I knew in 1999 that Bush and his 'Deregulation' proclivities were not good for the Stock Market. Enron, Global Crossing, Anderson Accounting and all the others were proof of that but I listened to the pros at Smith Barney instead of my own brain and stayed the course. Now I have to pay the piper...

I took Christian to the DOL (Department of Licensing) and he failed the written...

Personally, I have no idea what is really going on, every 'loonytoon' with a forum has an opinion on the Who, What, When and Why. I suspect that every opinion has a germ of truth but none of them amounts to a pile of beans unless we have all the facts... and we will never have all the facts.

If the $700 Billion dollar resuscitation is going to mean a tinkers damn it had better pass with some old fashioned hard-line regulations. Without a will and a way to crack down on the greed and arrogance, and some sort of plan to bail out the poor bastards stuck with the bill… like me, we are just throwing money away!

I am OK, our home is paid for, no pension, my IRA was my pension and it is in the toilet, I have approximately half the principal left, I am trying to ensure I don’t lose any more of it. I need some sort of income for my daughter with CP when I am gone and I was counting on the proceeds from my IRA… going to be tight now.

I hope that the people in charge have enough sense to realize that without regulation and oversight with strong enforcement, this ‘rescue / bailout / god-knows-what is going to destroy the world’s economy.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.

I like that quote, I gave a copy of it to Amanda. It is true of all of us but sometimes we need to be reminded, yes there are instances where our fate is taken out of our hands, 'Shit happens' as they say, but for the most part we are who we are and we are where we are because we made decisions and commitments along the way.

I watched Al Pachino and Robert DiNero in 'Righteous Kill'. I enjoyed the movie but damn, those guys really chew up the scenery. Someday I would like to see them acting like real people instead of machismo caricatures of every Italian mobster I have ever seen since the Untouchables was canceled. Silly cinematic mind-games are a bit passé too, if you can't fake us out with legitimate plot twists then just play it straight, don't do that thing with the surveillance camera.

I have not had a real good day, I think that part of the problem is that our financial situation is starting to hit home. The cluelessness of some people around me is starting to get on my nerves. I had it brought home to me at the game on Friday that what I write here is actually read by others so I will remind everyone that what I write here is always the truth as I see it but not always all the truth. Bare in mind that my life is as complicated and full as anyone's but only a tiny fraction is on these pages...

I was extremely comfortable with our financial situation when we came up here, actually pretty smug about the decisions I'd made. I am just coming to grips with the extent to which we have been betrayed by our government and how bewilderingly naive I was to entrust my families life savings to someone else. Smith Barney... it's a big company and I have come to realize that thinking that they were competent and trustworthy simply because they were a BIG COMPANY and they said they '...were competent and trustworthy.' and I was stupid enough to think that they were right.

(PS: I lost the last three days of my Journal to a computer glitch, this is a recreation...(another ambiguous word, Recreation= Remaking...or... Recreation= Leisure in this instance, I guess both meanings apply)

Word History: Although glitch seems a word that people would always have found useful, it is first recorded in English in 1962 in the writing of John Glenn: "Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was 'glitch.' " Glenn then gives the technical sense of the word the astronauts had adopted: "Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical current." It is easy to see why the astronauts, who were engaged in a highly technical endeavor, might have generalized a term from electronics to cover other technical problems. Since then glitch has passed beyond technical use and now covers a wide variety of malfunctions and mishaps.

Canadian Oxford lists it as a 20th century word of unknown origin. Some reference books, including Random House's American Slang, say it comes from the German word glitschen ("to slip") and the Yiddish word gletshn ("to slide or skid"). Either way it's fairly new. So new, in fact, that on July 23, 1965, Time magazine felt it necessary to define it in an article: "Glitches — a spaceman's word for irritating disturbances."

"If you had only known the man you were trying to kill, you would have risked your life, to save his." Harry Pope, ww2 , - Pacific USS LSM 41, 1944 - Occupied Japan, 1950
"I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. My oath of office is to protect and defend America's laws and its people. By refusing unlawful orders for an illegal war, I fulfill that oath today." - U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada
"Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice...Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed...but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.": Thomas Caryle

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. - Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870), David Copperfield, 1849
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. - Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
There is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty! - Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. - H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Please don't ask me what the score is - I'm not even sure what game we're playing. Ashliegh Brilliant

Isn't it a nice coincidence that you and I are both alive at the same time! Ashliegh Brilliant

Single-handedly, I have fought my way into this hopeless mess. Ashliegh Brilliant

I'm looking for the perfect pillow - I think it's somewhere near yours. Ashliegh Brilliant

I'm sorry for not communicating, but sometimes it's very hard to write on a moving planet. Ashliegh Brilliant

I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must be from you. Ashliegh Brilliant

Please don't tell me to relax - it's only my tension that's holding me together. Ashliegh Brilliant

If God had approved of the metric system, he'd have given us ten fingers. Ashliegh Brilliant

We must have courage, faith, and lunch together sometime soon. Ashliegh Brilliant

Communication with the dead is only a little more difficult than communication with some of the living. Ashliegh Brilliant

Our meetings are held to discuss many problems which would never arise if we held fewer meetings. Ashliegh Brilliant

Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules. Ashliegh Brilliant

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once. Ashliegh Brilliant

One thing travel teaches is why living at home is so popular. Ashliegh Brilliant

Sometimes I make a mental note, but then forget where I put it. Ashliegh Brilliant

Just because I'm happy doesn't mean you couldn't make me happier. Ashliegh Brilliant

Here is a guaranteed way to get more of what you want: want less. Ashliegh Brilliant

Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream? Ashliegh Brilliant

It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others. Ashliegh Brilliant

There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about. Ashliegh Brilliant

Due to circumstances beyond my control I am master of my fate and captain of my soul. Ashliegh Brilliant

What Others Say
It is time for an FDR moment

By ROSA BROOKS
Special to the Los Angeles Times

We established its basic contours in 1789, half forgot about it until the Civil War and Reconstruction, practically abolished it during the Gilded Age, remembered it again during the Depression and then, during the reign of Reagan the Great Communicator, forgot about it once more.

The government, I mean. It comes in handy in times of crisis, but somehow we just keep misplacing it.

And now, with our economy teetering, we're frantically searching for it again, finally hauling it out from the basement along with some dried-out duct tape and leaky batteries. But after all those years on the shelf, don't be too surprised if it's a little rusty.

On Monday, the House voted down the proposed $700-billion financial bailout. The Dow plummeted, and congressional negotiations collapsed. Although no one liked the bailout plan, no one appeared able to offer a viable Plan B.

But what did you expect? Liberals and conservatives suddenly want the government to fix our broken economy by doing something big and fast -- but Congress long ago lost the habit of thinking big and moving fast. Since the Reagan era, prevailing leadership ideologies have encouraged members of Congress to think small, slow and stupid -- to forget about regulating, to forget about governing and occupy themselves instead with trivia: debates about constitutional amendments to ban flag burning, for instance.

So even as many outside economists began to argue that there were dramatically different rescue packages that could be cheaper and better, congressional leaders of both parties seemed unable to do more than tweak the original package.

That's a shame, because this is a time for thinking big.

Some sort of bailout package will pass, but that should be only the beginning. A bailout is an emergency system save, designed to prevent a catastrophic freeze. But after hitting "save," it's time for the United States to do a complete system reset.

If we're willing to re-examine our history, we might get some good ideas about what a reset might look like. Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden recently generated bipartisan giggles when he urged political leaders to learn from Franklin D. Roosevelt. ("When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed," Biden told CBS News anchor Katie Couric, apparently forgetting that Herbert Hoover was still president during the Crash of 1929 and that Americans had no TVs then.) But Biden's basic point is well taken: We could learn a lot from FDR.

Taking office during the depths of the Depression, FDR didn't just talk, and he didn't just tinker. He launched the New Deal, the ambitious package of relief, reform and recovery programs that most economists credit with helping steer the nation back to prosperity.

FDR wasn't afraid to experiment, and some programs ended up on the scrap heap. But many proved to be crucial investments in America's future. Tighter New Deal-era regulations helped keep our financial system stable for decades. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guarantees the safety of our deposits when banks fail, was created. So was the Social Security Administration. (And hasn't this week made you glad the GOP didn't succeed in privatizing Social Security?) Programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration helped stabilize wages and stimulate employment. They also left us a long-term legacy of roads, dams, parks, schools and electricity grids.

But over the last 30 years, that legacy has been badly neglected. Our infrastructure is decaying, our educational system is in disarray and our healthcare system is scandalously poor. Today, we can throw as many billions as we want at Wall Street, but in the long run, if we don't push the reset button and get serious about spending on the true fundamentals of our economy -- people, infrastructure and knowledge -- the bailout can't save us.

FDR knew what most small-business owners instinctively understand: If you want to make money, sometimes you have to spend money first. Yes, we should cut wasteful government programs -- but this is no time for a spending freeze, as John McCain has proposed. This is a time for renewed public investment in infrastructure, technology and education.

That's the choice: We can bail out Wall Street but then put the government back on a shelf. Or we can tell our leaders we want our government back.

Brooks is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. E-mail Brooks at rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com.

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)

62 Million Morons Will Vote McCain/Palin

By Jon Faulkner

Created Oct 4 2008 - 7:53pm

"On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H. L. Mencken (1920)

George Bush has faithfully personified stupidity, only to see his claim to first place as the dumbest American ever suffered to lead the Free World eclipsed by Sarah Palin who completely redefines the definition of intellectual vacancy. The woman is an offense. Alaskans, by a significant majority, and in spite of buckling roads, marine animals showing up thousands of miles from their natural habitats, the Spruce Bark Beetle eating through Alaskan forests because the winters are no longer cold enough to keep their numbers down, scornfully insist that Global Warming is a Liberal Conspiracy.

Alaskans won’t be duped into believing the findings of scientists the world over. Palin dismisses Global Warming as, “I don’t believe in it.” Nor does she believe in evolution, although the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are personal friends of hers. Sarah, is a person who thinks her proximity to Russia qualifies her as an expert in foreign relations. Live close enough to a nuclear facility to see it out your window? Alaska, under Palin, will hire you as a nuclear physicist. Palin embraces the Christian farce that 6,000 years ago the Planet Earth convulsed into existence. Dinosaurs? Who are they? Am I one?

But Creationism is Palin’s bag! You betcha! By all means, give Sarah the nuclear codes. She’ll wink fetchingly as she orders the destruction of Russia, or any other nation that God may have selected for annihilation. The world’s leaders will find excuses for absenteeism when Sarah is hovering nearby, all ready to wow them with her folksy manner, and perky personality. How impossibly stupid can Americans get? Sarah believes in the “end times,” as do Christian Fundamentalists. Americans should encourage all the wooden, Christian Soldiers, to spare themselves the wait and check out early. Seems reasonable.

McCain, who only wants to bomb someone, doesn’t see his mission as God’s plan as much as he sees it as his. By his own account, he despises the government, and his running mate is an insult to any American with an IQ above shoe size and that’s before she winked. Sadly, over 62 million Americans somehow believe that McCain and Palin are viable alternatives to a Yale educated lawyer, who is also a professor of constitutional law, and his running mate who is a man with over 30 years of experience on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. There are so many truly stupid Americans that laws should be immediately enacted to control their breeding.

Henry Paulson, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, left Goldman Sachs a scant few years ago with over $100 million in compensation. Henry led the charge against regulations and government oversight of the Holy Market. He speechified against government involvement in the private sector. He preached the Economic Gospel that Wall Street knows all. George Bush saw Henry as a perfect fit for the office of Secretary of the Treasury. Who could possibly be a worse choice than Paulson, a known pirate, who Congress has given $700 billion to spend as he sees fit? Congress fully understands he’ll reward his cronies in the banking industry and do nothing to assist the millions of Americans who have lost their homes to foreclosure. There are few conditions that come with the bailout, and absolutely no measures have been taken to regulate/oversee that bankers use the money as intended. Congress needs to be voted out of office, as quickly as Wall Street got its money.

McCain was making noises about turning the Social Security Trust Fund over to the Wall Street Wizards. They’d invest it wisely, and Americans who receive Social Security would see their checks double, maybe even triple! Bush had the same idea but the market stumbled so much that George was advised to stay off the subject for awhile. These days, it isn’t smart for McCain’s campaign managers to let him emote about his big plan to privatize Social Security. McCain has shifted gears, and in spite of his 30 years of railing against the government, taxes, and those pesky regulations, he now embraces everything the democrats believed for years, but didn’t have the courage to say.

The democrats have learned to lurch right when in doubt. Even when doubt is confused with core principles of liberal political philosophy. Capitulation is the name of their game. Years of missing leadership have reduced the democrats to frightened mice, petrified of cheese. Not the qualities one would applaud if leadership were in demand.

The democrats finally have the Mother of all Issues drop into their laps and what do they do? They obey a known moron, Bush, while kowtowing to Henry Paulson. Bush poked Pelosi and her entourage with the scary stick and she jumped on que. The republicans, known to dissemble and keep the truth at arms length, will claim they tried to defeat the bill, but the tax and spend liberals rushed it through. Every American is mad enough to chew nails, even the 62 million, Main Street Morons who voted for Bush and will vote for McCain and his goofy sidekick.

But the democrats can’t bring themselves to point their fingers at the republicans and say to the nation, Thank the G.O.P. for this disaster. They’re the deregulators, the supply siders, the privateers, the trickle down aficionados, the Free Market Disciples.” After 30 years of hammering away at the evil, grown too large for its britches government, the republicans are finally reaping their just deserts and all the other side can do is shout, “Hey America! Over here! Kick me! I’m the one who voted to cash out America and send the money to Wall Street!”

Congress has handed Wall Street over a trillion dollars while Americans wonder if they’re going to have a job tomorrow, and if they do, can they afford the gas to get there. But don’t despair. Palin is always ready with a wink, or a nudge, if you’re a blind man. Her homegrown homilies will lend courage and a sense of purpose to at least 62 million Americans. You betcha.

I Can Fly This Plane Just Fine, Darn It!

By RJ Eskow

Created Oct 4 2008 - 6:32pm

Why, hello there, folks! May I call you "folks"? I'll be your pilot today. What? Am I "qualified" to fly this jalopy? You betcha! Why? Because I'm a mom, that's why. No, I don't know what all these switches and handles and whatnot are. I don't CARE what they are, to tell ya the truth. The important thing is that I'm ready, I'm willing, and (wink) I'm eager as heck to get the job done! THAT'S what matters.

Doncha think? O-kay then. Here we go!

Whoops! Whew. That's a lotta noise. And just a teensy bit of fire back there. But what the heck, right? It's fuel, and energy happens to be my specialty.

What? Who's that fella yellin' over the radio? Air traffic control? Well, who the heck cares? No, honestly, really: Who cares? I sure as heck don't, and I don't think my passengers do either.

What's my heading? What's my heading? We're on the right track and we know where we want to go, that's for darn sure.

No, I'm not going to give you my "bearings," or whatever it is you call those little numbers. Look here, Buster, I might not answer those questions the way you or the other pilots might like. But you know what? I'm going to talk straight to my passengers here, without the filter of any darned air traffic controllers or FAA or whatever the heck you all are calling yourselves now.

I mean, how good can you guys be at your jobs, anyhoo? There are just a heck of a lot, I mean a HECK of a lot of plane crashes all the darn time. So real people like me and my passengers figure it's time for some fresh air in this whole flying business anyway.

What? What are you saying there in your fancy-dancy tower down there? We don't have towers like that on Main Street in Wasilla, buster, you can bet your life. Nope. Just a whole heck of a lot of common sense, which is all too rare in this world today, doncha think?

And if I can handle a crying baby and ban a book and milk the federal government for all the pork my little town can hold, all at the same time, then for cryin' out loud don't you think I can fly your darn little airplane?

What? are you TALKING again? Saying that most crashes are due to pilot error? Like, because the pilot didn't KNOW stuff?

There you go again with your LOOKING BACK. We'd rather look FORWARD where I come from. But then, heck, I guess that's just the darned difference between you and us, isn't it? But you're a good talker, though. I'll give ya that.

Why aren't I changing my heading to zero-one-niner as instructed? Because I'm the mommy, that's why, Mr. Smarty-Pants. I think I've got enough sense to know when to turn a darn airplane.

What's that? Raise flaps? Raise FLAPS? Raise flaps or we'll CRASH? There you go again, raising the white flag of surrender just when we ....

..... [static] ...

Wait. Team, I think we found a survivor. He's in critical condition - looks like he'll need surgery right here at the crash site. But a routine depressurizing of the skull should save his life. Thank God the neurosurgeon's here. Save this one, Doc.

Oh, heck. Ouch. That's gotta hurt, right? No, I didn't go to any fancy-dancy medical school but I'm a Mom so believe-you-me I've seen a booboo or two in my day and if somebody around here just has a sharp thimgamajig we'll have you fixed up in a jiffy. Don't worry. This won't hurt a bit!

RJ Eskow blogs at:
A Night Light [1]
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog [2]
Future-While-U-Wait [3]

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)

Bailout Is Capitalism Murdering Democracy

By David Sirota

Created Oct 4 2008 - 6:13pm

The United States has always struggled to balance its capitalist economy with its democratic ideals. We've spent the last many years telling ourselves that the two go hand in hand, only to watch capitalism thrive in China in the absence of democratic freedoms. Indeed, if there's been any lesson the last few years, it is that authoritarian capitalism -- rather than democratic capitalism -- may be the dominant ideology of the 21st century. And as I write in my newspaper column this week [1], that ideology may be coming to America.

The Wall Street bailout bill is a lot of things -- a giveaway, a heist, a legislative manifestation of crony corruption. But it's structure is pure authoritarian capitalism. Whether you think handing over $700 billion to speculators will help our economy or not (and many economists believe it will hurt it), it is undeniable that this bill vests authoritarian power in the hands of the Treasury Secretary -- and that is a radical departure from the fundamental tenets of our democracy.

What has differentiated America from other countries is our reliance on institutions rather than individuals. When we have faced crises, we have built institutions (think about the alphabet soup agencies out of the New Deal), not czars. That's what democracies do - they build nations of laws and institutions, not cults of personality.

This is clearly changing now. We saw Paul Bremer appointed monarch of Iraq after the invasion and we see Congress about to hand over its power of the purse to Henry Paulson so that he can be the financial despot, free to buy and sell whatever securities he feels like, with almost no oversight.

Perhaps this reflects a wider trend. We have become a country that has one national religion: presidentialism [2]. That's the religion that says the president is an all-powerful deity - and the Oval Office is a position that is the only one that matters. That this outlook is fundamentally undemocratic and offensive to the principles of our Founding Fathers seems completely forgotten. We have embraced czarism with the zeal of cult worshipers -- and now this zeal has global economic forces at its back.

We are trying to economically compete with anti-democratic forces that can make financial decisions without any public input at all. As we saw with the debate over the bailout bill, the transnational corporate elite tell us our democracy and its careful deliberations are hurting our ability to make quick decisions in this global market -- and therefore that democracy must be subverted to the will of capitalism. Thus, a bill is rushed through Congress in a week that hands 5 percent of our entire economy to one man, Hank Paulson.

What will be the effect of this tectonic shift? It's hard to say, but with both parties [3] endorsing the shift, we have to first and foremost realize that it is real. Capitalism is trying to euthanize democracy in the name of economic competitiveness -- and that is going to make this country a very different -- and in my opinion, a much scarier -- one from what it once was.

You can read the full column here [4].

The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory [5] to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site [6]. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.
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About author

David Sirota is a political strategist and NY Times bestselling author whose work appears in major newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and The Colbert Report. He has appeared in TV debates with right-wing icons like Ann Coulter, John Stossel and John Fund. Email: david [at] davidsirota.com.