Hello readers. This blog site was something I started to express a few opinions and make a few observations. I did so initially to share some things with people who might want to learn something. If you read down to my first articles you will see what has come before.
But things are happening so fast and it is hard to just keep current so I have decided to rant a bit.
I wasn’t going to get political, but I can’t seem to avoid it. So I had better set the stage a bit.
I am no expert. I am not an economist, which I freely admit. Actually considering what they have been shoveling lately I might be in a better position to comment.
I am not a youngster and I have the perspective of a full life to draw from. You might not agree with my views but all I can say is that I have tried to be educated and knowledgeable about all that is happening around me. I have managed to survive in this life working as an artist. But in the last few years I have had quite a few epiphanies and lots of things make more sense to me than ever before.
So I share this with you for what it is worth. If you find anything of value here in then I am happy to have put a few things out there. I have no axes to grind.
Regarding my personal politics, I was a Democrat when I was younger and went through a Republican phase as well. There is an old saying that if you are not a Democrat when you are young you have no heart, and if you are not a Republican when you are older, you have no brain.
The simple truth is that both parties have valid philosophies and are in conflict. There have been in the past a number of great leaders on either side. But I refuse to blindly follow a doctrine of one side for the sake of being a member of the club. I think that government is far too invasive to our freedoms and I like a conservative viewpoint of smaller government. The Bush administration has been anything but conservative. I think that liberalism is sometimes dangerous but they seem to be compassionate and have some good ideas.
This is a close Presidential race and I am not surprised. I am currently supporting Obama as a lesser of two evils. It is too bad we don’t have better leadership anywhere on the horizon.
I was considering McCain for a time but the Palin choice was a blunder which pretty much knocked me toward Obama. The truth is that I don’t trust politicians today at all.
I currently reside in Fiji and this helps with a perspective of distance.
What follows is some recent correspondence and it certainly personal in nature but I thought it was worth posting. Here goes with no punches pulled.
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Things are getting very interesting. It was fun (horrifically) to watch Bush, Paulson and Bernanke stand up and say that they all had been lying, and asking the “little” people to bail them out. They are not getting the support they want. Partly because they are full of shit and everyone knows it. They are using scare tactics (again) to try and panic people into doing the stupidest thing.
Especially when they have proposed that whatever they do cannot be questioned legally. I didn’t have a chance to watch Bush’s speech, but I can bet that he just was lying once again.
What can you expect from a pig, but a grunt. In this case it is more of a squeal. And the three little piggies are just lying. I don’t care what color their lipstick is!
Now McCain is in trouble. He has the choice of backing Bush, which is political suicide, or not backing him and running the chance of being blamed for the fears that are being used against us. The economy is in real trouble and the piggies are scrambling to save their asses. As painful as it may be, the best thing that could happen would be the total collapse of the U.S. flawed economy and the world economy. After that we can rebuild it into something which works. I feel so sorry for all the rich people who will lose everything, NOT. Let them eat the debt which they created and promoted, and let them choke on it. Don’t let them cram it down our throats.
McCain is now ducking the debate. He doesn’t want to face Obama. Not now. He wants to wait until everyone is sucked into an agreement to this bailout plan. It is nice to be near the bottom of this wealth distribution. I won’t have too far to fall. But the piggies at the top are frightened to death. The fall will be a huge drop for them. They are scrambling because they want to hide from the consequences of their action. They are desperately trying to find a way out. They are looking for an escape clause. There are none.
It is about time that we acknowledge the truth. No one wants to say we are in a depression, opting for saying it is a recession. But people are out of their homes, living in tents, without jobs, and prices are going up. If that isn’t a depression, what is? Times are going to be tough.
We are all going to pay a price for allowing a lying war monger and profiteer to spend like a drunken sailor for the last 8 years. There is no way out for any of us. But we can hope that the whole thing will collapse and end the elite’s control of the world’s wealth. It may be the only way to rid us of the cancer.
We can then start bartering and build up honest banks on the local level. The BIS and the FED and all the central banks have been created out of lies and deceit. It is about time that they reap what they have sown. Maybe we can all wise up and face reality.
I guess I just felt like a rant.
Response from DJ
Rant, indeed! That belongs on your blog.
I have some republican friends who are smart people but following the party line SO blindly. They are delighted by Sarah Palin (a real person, they beam) and are mystified that Obama could be anything but a Muslim with a middle name of Hussein. Holy smokes. Blind!!
You seem to believe now is the hour for it all to come crashing down as messily and tragically as the World Trade Center imploding in a cloud of dust. I guess it’s inevitable. I would like to think a good master plan would get us back on track (if we ever were) but I can just hear people yelling that we’ve fallen into the hands of evil (instead of out of them). I don’t know much about that “skull & crossbones” that Bush & others are/were in at Yale, but maybe that’s a bit of the secret elite line of communication.
Well, during the Depression my mom’s dad turned their entire yard into a garden. I guess it was a lot of work. But they didn’t starve. Should I go buy a wood stove while I’ve still “got some money” do you think? I get paid for being a writer (when I can get work). Wonder how long that’ll last. When I start thinking of this in personal terms, it boggles the mind. A daughter at an expenisve college & a son hoping to be soon. A husband on a pension with insurance that pays for the many medications he uses to regulate blood pressure & gout (I’m not on anything, thank goodness but a lot of people would be dead years ago without some of this modern medicine) and my mom in a nursing home, counting on Dad’s investments to be taken care of – a 24/7 job (I know cause I brought her to my house for 3 weeks last Christmas). And countless families like ours, and MORE families with so much less.
Now every time I see a photo of Paulson, Bernanke & Bush I see 3 little pigs going to market. Great visual, indeed.
Hang in & keep ranting…
DJ
Thanks
I may post it. I get kind of worked up about these things and ranting is one of the things that let me blow off a little steam. I have known about the skull and bones society for quite some time. It has even had a movie made about it. I am not much for secret societies, but my dad was a free mason which goes back to Egyptian days I think. But the skull and bones are supposed to be pretty bad.
I think they will push something through. At least the dems are insisting on oversight and control, instead of the blank check that the piggies wanted. I also read somewhere that when the idea of not paying off the CEOs was brought up, that Bush and company were quaking in their boots. This bailout is not to help us, it is to help them. I wish I could get some read on the proposed limits they are talking about for the CEO parting bonuses. I read some who were saying they should get nothing at taxpayer’s expense, but I doubt it will be that way. Maybe they will only get a million dollars each instead of the 16 million they were expecting. It is pretty sorry all around. While people are actually living in tents, these guys are crying because they won’t get as many millions of dollars as they were expecting. What is wrong with this system?
The bail out will buy everyone a little time, but not all that much I think. It will save the rich and screw everyone else initially, but I think the whole thing will crash and burn. I think it is an inevitability, no matter what we do. The bailout will happen and it will be a compromise, but it is not going to change the outcome. Things are just way too out of balance.
Don’t forget that everything which exists will still exist after the crash. We will make it work. There just won’t be any of this debt based “wealth” which has been the game for a hundred years. We will have to learn new games and new ways of dealing with things. Obama is being very cool headed about it. At least he has a working brain as opposed to the madness of the others. I don’t think it will make much difference. Not in the long run. If this delaying tactic works, I don’t think the next president will finish his first term before it starts to fall apart.
McCain is really a sad figure in all this. I don’t think that everything he has said is bullshit, but the problem is that he is saying whatever he has to, not what he believes. He is afraid to death to face Obama in a debate while this is going down. He would rather wait until the crisis has been “averted” so he won’t have to talk about it. But the crisis is not going away. He just wants to delay it enough so he can get into the white house. I don’t think he will make it, but it is a close race. I think he will next want to delay the election itself.
I am no economist. I just look at the broad truth and see what I see. It is hard not to stress out about it, but live the best life you can. That is all any of us can do on a personal level. Try and learn and speak the truth. But it wouldn’t hurt to adjust our thinking to a survivalist direction. These are interesting times for sure.
From DJ
Yeah, how about it when the biggest criticism of Obama is that “he comes off as too sophisticated and professorial.” ?? That’s what we need instead of those who say what they need to keep fooling us peons!
Of course you’re right about crashing and burning during the next administration. So if he does get in, he will be blamed right & left for it. Unless EVERYONE pays attention to what’s happening now (and remembers in a year – though it seems like it will be pretty unforgettable). And if Obama makes it, I’m sure his staff will cry loud & long that it was the republicans who caused it.
The CEO payoffs are truly unreal. There’s one guy that, according to Time last week, got himself $400,000,000 out of this. Just the taxes on that would theoretically help, but it’s my bet that he doesn’t pay any more taxes than you do! My husband’s dad was undereducated & poor, though hardworking and not at all stupid (his best idea was stressing education and integrity to his sons – and they both went to college & graduate school/law school). Anyway, Buffy’s dad said he would be happy to have to pay a million dollars in taxes…because it would mean that he was making a lot of money.
I did read recently that the 16th amendment never got ratified correctly, but to me that’s kind of a moot point. It’s there. And of course we pay taxes – almost everyone in the world does, if they have any money at all. But I can tell you when the whole Clinton impeachment farce was going on I was screaming at the radio saying STOP WASTING MY TAX DOLLARS!!
I’m still trying to wrap my head around your news (it was news to me) that our taxes don’t go to public services. Geez. I guess those budgets are just phantoms made up to throw us off base. I heard some European leaders talking last week about how the US is a country run on debt and they aren’t like that. (right). But it is kind of conspicuous isn’t it? When the papers explain this current situation as needing to get the country back to normal, which is based on “corporations and consumers getting the loans they need…” it’s pretty nuts.
Well, I have a tent. But it gets pretty cold up here in the winter! Of course, Global Warming will help that, no doubt.
At least people are finally talking green and some examples are being made in the press and online of those who live green. That’s something a lot more in our control than the economy and something positive to think about, rather than the incredible negativity surrounding this collapse. It’s good to see the dems making noise. There are supposed to be countless grass roots protests all around the country today.
Love
DJ
Hi DJ,
I have more to say on the subject, but will refrain from a long letter right now. We are paying a big price for complacency about government. We, of course, have been brainwashed and manipulated to do so. The media is a propaganda machine and has been manipulated by the villains to keep us confused and ignorant. The lies are everywhere.
Once in a while some truth comes out in some form or another, but it gets buried by the mountain of BS or ignored by a dumbed and numbed down populace. One example was Oliver Stone’s JFK which was a film maker’s attempt to argue the truth, and yet we are more comfortable believing the Warren commission report which was bought and paid for with our tax dollars by the perps.
Speaking of “tax dollars”, we are not talking about the money which the government collects at gun point illegally every April 15th. We are talking about the money which is borrowed from the banks to put each of us into debt. The average amount of that debt being proposed by this bailout BS is something like $2400 per person. But that figure is deceptive. Think of the average family debt cost, which is more in the neighborhood of $10 grand. And realize that this is on top of the rest of it which goes to fight illegal wars for the profiteers. And also keep in mind that the rich will not be paying anything.
Yes, aside from the fact that the IRS cannot account for about a third of the money they actually collects, all of it goes to pay nothing but part of the interest on the existing debt. This is all fact, not opinion. I don’t like to participate in a scam. We should all stop paying taxes.
The hardest thing to accept is that this is a systemic problem and all of the day to day happenings are within the system itself, so none of this bail out stuff will fix anything.
By the way, it is now called a “rescue plan” instead of a “bailout.” Apparently the spin masters think we will be fooled by a name change. It is the same shit wearing a different label.
And it gets complicated and shrouded in complications. I try to rise above the complications and look at it from a perspective outside of the system. That is why I can offer my perspective on the reality of it all. I read once that civilizations collapse when their problems become too complicated for them to solve. It happened in Rome. It happened to the Mayans. It is happening to us. I think that is obviously what is happening now. And we are just watching a slow motion train wreck of the inevitable consequences of our folly as a civilization. This will be a very bad one. The world is overpopulated. The biosphere is in jeopardy. The resources are being used up, and we spend time worrying about how to shift paper around and make a flawed monetary system work so that the CEOs can keep their millions. Madness is an understatement.
I wish that I could just ignore it and try and live a life of ignorant bliss. But as the boys at lifeaftertheoilcrash.com say, “Deal with reality or reality will deal with you.” The system will want to brand me a doomsayer or a fanatic. It is another of their evil games to do that. I am glad you don’t see me that way. The Europeans might like to think that the U.S. is running a system based on debt, but it is all part of a global system under the BIS. They are just as much a party to it as everyone else.
They guys who started us on this path are all dead. They grabbed what they could and lived out their lives without facing the consequences of their actions. Now after a hundred years of this, the rich guys are hoping to do the same. Don’t get me wrong. I would love to be rich. I would love to be rewarded for creating things of value and making the world a better place. But the rich I am talking about are the lying cheating bastards to have given nothing and taken everything. And as their folly continues they are still doing it.
I am 62. I sometimes feel that I might die very soon. I feel worse about my daughter and all our children, and their children. The geezers who have grabbed everything will die leaving the rest of the world in a mess. The current geezers are caught in the initial consequences of their actions and are scrambling like the selfish bugs they are.
Some final observations. I have been encouraged to see people starting to smell the Bullshit. Perhaps revulsion will lead to revolution.
We have evolved into this mess. Evolution will not work. We will see a revolution in the near future. It is the smart thing to do, soon it will be the only thing to do. I think things can be rebuilt in a much shorter time period than the time and futile effort of trying to repair a broken system from within itself. It won’t work. Sooner or later you will see the truth of it.
I will end this installment with something passed on to me:
Perhaps some of you have received the original Nigerian business offer. This one isn’t original, but it is right on target.
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Subject: Not Spam — Important Business Offer!!!
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars U.S. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson
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