Come On, Give The Guy A Break

Such strange times we live in.  Several days ago the Iraq War ended and apparently hardly anyone noticed.  I suppose the lack of shock and awe meant most Americans couldn't be bothered.  There was just one last oh-so solemn flag folding ceremony and then Secretary of Defense Panetta spewed a few words and that was that.  Here's the final scoreboard:  4,486 dead; 32,226 wounded, many so seriously wounded that they would have died in earlier wars; somewhere north of 800 billion spent, all of it borrowed and flushed down the toilet; 9 billion lost and unaccounted for; 550 million in spare parts vanished; 1 billion in trucks, tractors, and other assorted vehicles missing and approximately 190,000 weapons misplaced.  And all for what - to replace Saddam Hussein with fucking Nouri al-Maliki?  Can anyone point out to me what the fuck else we accomplished?  Excuse me while I go vomit.

OK, that was not pleasant.  For those of us who lived through the Vietnam years, guess what?  We got fooled again.  Suckered like the suckers we are.  However, there was one fellow who warned the nation of this potential disaster, who as a member of the U.S. Senate opposed attacking Iraq.  Oh yeah, Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama, that chump of a president that not even half the country say they would vote for again at this point in time.  Really?  I have to wonder if any of these American citizens have paid any attention to what the other side is offering.  Or is it just "I ain't voting for that chump because the economy sucks and it's all Obama's fault.  So there!"  Then who, pray tell, are you planning to vote for people?  Jesus, it's a scary bunch of Republicans - Gingrich the narcissistic, money grubbing cheat; Romney the private sector hack that has yet to meet a social issue that he can't embrace if it means a vote; Rick Perry the, the, the, oh fuck it this guy's too stupid, fake and creepy to categorize with any fifty- dollar words.  Ditto for Bachman.  Then there's Ron Paul.  What an unbelievably awesome election it would be with Obama running against this crazy Libertarian.  Whoah!!  And of course there's my man Huntsman, who I picked to win the primary because I actually thought the Repubes would figure out that he's the only one that makes any sense and who could possibly beat Obama.  What a shithead I am.

So, what's the downside of re-electing Obama?  Now, readers of this blog know I have my problems with this dude, and many of them he hasn't done much of anything to change (piss-poor communicator, totally fucking up the issue of states rights to implement medical marijuana and others).  However, it's really quite surprising when one stops and considers what this guy has done in three years.  Let's see:
     -ended the Iraq War
     -cleared up the dumbass "don't ask, don't tell" policy of gays in the military
     -extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees
     -appointed first Latina to the Supreme Court
     -signed the START treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons
     -repealed the moron Bush's ban on embryonic stem cell research
     -established the credit card bill of rights
     -passed health care reform bill
     -shored up the Veterans Administration medical service, which was an absolute disgrace under Bush
     -extended Pell Grants
     -saved General Motors and Chrysler, almost singlehandedly
     -got Bin Laden
     -ARRA

Not bad!  Now, the ARRA (economic stimulator bill) isn't without controversy.  But when it comes to the economy, this much must be said - it's NOT Obama's economy.  I am so sick and fucking tired of hearing how Obama's failed policies haven't made the economy magically better, or that Obama's stimulus didn't work, or that Obama hates big business and the greedy rats that run them.  This last one is a real laugher.  His Justice Department has yet to press criminal charges against one motherfucker with obvious responsibility in nearly toppling the world economy.  There have been civil charges.  Ha, big deal.  But here's the bottom line - the 2008 collapse of the economy was decades in the making.  The amount of debt created in this world over the last 30 years is beyond comprehension - European countries with 80-120% of debt to their GDP; the commercial and residential mortgage debacle; the huge unfunded pension liabilities of cities and states; and tens of TRILLIONS of dollars in credit default swaps, those nasty side bets on anything and everything that no institution accepting the bet had to actually have the goddamn money on hand to pay out in case of , you know, an actual default!  WTF?  And, of course, the unbelievable amount of credit card and student loan debt taken on by people as well as corporate debt created by the likes of Mitt Romney and other raiders to finance takeovers of companies that would then be torn apart and the pieces sold to the highest bidders while the investment bankers and the deal makers pocketed boatloads of borrowed money for making the deal.  And people, lots of people, laid off.  All of this done to buy today what could be saved for and bought tomorrow.  But why the fuck would anyone do that?  So here we are, and guess who inherited this train wreck from the most inept administration in US history.  That's right, poor old Obama.  The greatest deleveraging in modern times and Obama doesn't have a magic wand to wave to make it all better.  Boohoo. We are talking massive, massive deleveraging, which robs everyone of the ability to spend money right now, even borrowed money since banks are shoring up their depleted capital reserves and aren't lending.  No buying means no selling, and that folks is why we have a snail's pace recovery.  Everyone, and I mean everyone who could have done something to prevent this catastrophe either ignored it or kicked the turd down the road for the next sucker to deal with.  The turd ended up sticking to Obama's shoes.

As with some past second term presidents (not Bush - too dumb), I believe Obama, if re-elected, will be what many centrist and liberals were hoping for - a tough, my way or the highway guy who isn't faced with having to run for office again and will then tackle the thornier stuff.  We'll see. 

Yes, the times are strange - but not hopeless.  In fact, I sense a shift, a slight change in the greater psyche of this beaten down country.  2012 will be better.  I honestly believe that.  So this New Years Eve, raise that glass of champagne at the stroke of midnight and toast yourself and the ones you love and the ones that love you and even the ones that just kind of like you.  You know who they are.  And for God's sake, remember to watch out for the stumps!

Mind Meanderings II

Things have been kinda nuts the last few months at every level - personally, locally, nationally and around this big, bad world of ours.  The sheer volume of topics to write about has left me paralyzed and thus a complete blog slacker for which I am attempting to emerge.  It's not easy my dear followers. 

Personally.  Just wrapped up 5 years of cancer freedom following a diagnosis and radical prostectectomy in November 2006.  PSA - undetectable!   And speaking of PSA, a recent announcement from some branch of the medical community stating PSA is causing more harm than good is bullshit.  I have never, ever read about PSA velocity, or the rate of change of this protein marker.  This is how I caught the cancer early, and it requires getting annual readings.  My PSA at the time of surgery was 2.7, well within the "normal" range of 0-4, yet I had cancer.  It had changed from 0.7 to 2.7 over 3 years.   So, more than a .75/year increase and it's biopsy time.  Now isn't that simple?  Yet this information is not being shared with men by the medical community.  A fucking travesty.

Locally.  This amphibious ranter is taking action!  Rather than sit at a computer and bitch, I'm taking it to the streets with the goal to obtain at least 100 signatures by the end of January to get the Arizona Open Government initiative on the November 2012 ballot.  So look out cause I'm coming for your signature, err Mr. and/or Ms. Registered Voter.  There will be nowhere that's safe to hide, so forget about it!  As previously discussed, this initiative will blow open the primary elections for all voters, not just registered Repubes voting for their candidate and Mocrats theirs.  Registered Independents, who outnumber Democrats in this state, will all be voting the primary and the top two vote getters move on to the general election.  This will force candidates to move to the center instead of sucking up to the radical fringe of their party.  Holy shit I can't wait!

And speaking of initiatives, how about Mesa Legislative District 19 voting to recall nativist Russell Pearce?  After what had to be the dumbest, most disastrous campaign every waged, even the Mo's in Mesa showed they were done with this guy and elected funny man Jerry Lewis.  And according to the instigator of this recall, they're now gunning for Arpaio.  Oh dear God please, please let the most corrupt and inept lawman to ever disgrace the office be defeated.  I promise I will not leave Arizona FOR GOOD is he's defeated.  Otherwise.......

And speaking of gunning, this has to be about the sickest thing I've read in a l-o-n-g time.  The Pima County GOP recently had an auction to raise campaign dough where the prize was, of all things, a Glock handgun.  Yes, that's right, the same gun that was used to shoot Gabby Giffords last January is being offered by the local Repubes (in the same fucking voter district!) as a prize.  WTF is wrong with these people?  Have they NO sense of decency?

Nationally.   These occupiers have me absolutely perplexed.  You see, just living in shit conditions where ever you are doesn't really get anything done people.  Now, as I waxed on about in a recent blog, this movement needs ideas and they need them now.  In fact, I e-mailed the website address of my blog to the local Phoenix Occupy branch with no reply to date.  Also, it would help if they would occupy somewhere meaningful like, ahhh I don't know, how about Washington fucking DC!!!   Call for a march down the mall and get in the faces of the legions of do-nothing politicians milling about.  This all seems so obvious to me - am I missing something?

And speaking of missing something, the labor unions seem to have lost their minds.  Several months ago the Wisconsin Education Association Council, having spent liberally defending public-sector union privileges, announced it was laying off 40 percent of its staff as a result of these legal costs.  It was then denounced by the National Staff Organization, a union for employees of education unions.  Huh??  A very fine way to prove to the masses of union hating Americans that they are dead-on.

Can't leave the national scene without at least a quick word on the GOP presidential candidates.  Newt, the cheating (2 ex-wives, the first he left when she was sick), greedy (1.6 million to be an "Historian" for Freddie Mac, one of the most egregious enablers of the housing meltdown), unbelievably narcissistic (countless books written about his favorite subject - Newt) Gingrich is in front of this pathetic pack.  'Nuff said!

Worldly.   We're basically fucked.  The debt crisis in Europe grows uglier by the day.  Now Italy is paying over 7% to anyone that will buy their debt (bonds) and they cannot continue running the country without borrowing (sound familiar my fellow Americans?).  Greece and Italy have thrown out their worthless socialist leaders after arriving to the conclusion that it's not possible to have a country where you work 35 hours a week, get all of August off and retire at 50.  The people are rioting in the streets for a cause that cannot be maintained - namely the benefits just listed.  Repeat after me people - "there is no more give-away money".  Sorry.  It's almost comical to watch the debt dance being played out on the world economic stage.  And backstage, German Chancellor Angela and French Prez "Nicky" Sarkozy are looking at each other and saying "those dumb-ass guineas, and micks, and wogs, they've run their countries into the ground and we let them do it!!  Now they want us to bail them out"!  Well, you can always disband the EU and let those countries go bankrupt.  Ugly, but the bondholders will get something (not just a haircut) and these countries can then start over.  The EU central bank can back the banks holding the now worthless bonds for enough time to re-build their balance sheets.  I mean, it's all just perception anyway.  The other choice is to keep kicking the stinking debt turd down the road by refinancing this or rebundling that and then, maybe, enough time will have gone by for the world economy to recover and all will be well - except for the one country that will have to take the fall for the rest of the EU and be an example of what must never be allowed to happen again.  Greece, I'm sorry but you're just going to have to take it up the ass.

How About We Occupy Wall Street With Ideas!

My oh my, where to begin, where to begin?  Oh yeah, the REVOLUTION has arrived, and just in time for my return to doing this "weekly" blog!  Well, it's not been quite a weekly thing, but I believe it's fair to acknowledge to my loyal followers that you don't give a rat's ass and neither do I.  Okay, back to the REVOLUTION.

As I've often wondered aloud in many previous blogs, how much shit will the masses of this country eat before rising up?  Apparently less than many thought, like the douchebag Eric Cantor who called the Wall Street Occupiers a mob of anarchist youth set out to destroy the country, or something like that.  That's exactly the response we want from the majority leader of the party that is owned by the top 1%.  Please sir, may we have some more.

Yep, there's a revolution underway, and it seems to be picking up momentum as the message grows with the exponential power of the Internet.  There's even a rally this coming weekend in largely apathetic Phoenix for hell's sake.   It's exciting, it's growing and it has, with apologies to some Canadians who actually came up with it, the lamest name and an agenda that's, well, muddled.  Come on people, this is the revolution I've been wondering and writing about forever and the plan is apparently to just hang out in the lower west side of Manhattan until corporate greed evaporates - or everyone gets a job and goes home.  Now, I applaud this spunk and actually doing something is a hell of a lot more than I'm doing, but it's borderline sad to hear and read about the total lack of message so far.  Sure, great political movements of the past have started with a rag-tag collection of people pissed about something/everything, but truthfully I really can't think of a single one.   Looking back, there's been the Vietnam War protests, civil rights protests, labor protests and the birth of unions, etc. - all more or less singular causes that people could understand and get behind.  But corporate greed???  It's been around since the first caveman fucked another out of his stash of dino meat in some kind of mesozoic Ponzi scheme.

These occupiers know things aren't right in the world - chronic unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, bailed out banks and no one going to jail for their part in fleecing millions.  At the heart of this is the greatest income/wealth gap in this country's history.  But from the interviews with many of the occupiers that I've read lately, it's not hard to reach this conclusion - many of these people are struggling to define a cause and affect that would actually address the "corporate greed" they're rallying against and do so with something that make sense.
Interviewer:  "What do you want"?
Occupier:  "To enforce the corporate tax code.....corporations do everything they can to find loopholes in the tax codes to avoid paying their fair share".
Huh??  The loopholes are in the fucking tax laws already man!  Is anyone at GE going to jail for tax fraud when they paid zero 2010 taxes?  No.  The tax laws must be changed, not enforced as they are to obtain a "fair share" situation.

Unfortunately, as I have read and listened to many of the occupiers, these types of responses seemed to be the rule, not the exception, and the comments posted from those reading these interviews highlight perfectly the sophistication of those in opposition to the occupiers.  Example:  "How much you want to bet this group of young dupes was raised in the era of getting a trophy even if they failed".  Ummm, if they're young there's nothing to bet on Einstein as they were raised in the easy trophy era.  Others then comment on what this jackass said with shit like "you're right on man, they're just lazy slackers and just want to live off the government".  Yeah, that's what it is.

So, at this stage of the revolt, it seems clear the occupiers have a problem defining the movement.  To that end, I humbly offer the following ideas that are actually real solutions to the economic mess I believe these protesters are protesting about.

1.  MOST IMPORTANT.  Pass an amendment to the Constitution that states, simply, corporations are NOT people.  This idiotic relic of an idea came out of the late 1800's when railroads ruled the roost and wanted more clout with Washington.  With this amendment, the recent disgusting ruling by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court that states corporations enjoy free speech and can donate unlimited money to political campaigns could be overturned - would be overturned!  This would be the beginning of campaign reform and weaning politicians from corporate money.  Attention occupiers:  an amendment to the U.S. constitution requires 2/3's of both houses of congress to ratify it or 2/3's of state legislatures to call for a vote, which has never happened before.  You need to know this going forward.
2.  SECOND MOST IMPORTANT.  Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act (you're welcome Ron Paul).  The repeal of this law in 1999 was the beginning of the end for banks that were allowed to become casinos.  Fucking Bill Clinton signed the change, proposed by Phil Gramm and a bunch of other scum-sucking Republicans who convinced even Democrats like Kennedy, Dodd and Reid to sign on in a pathetic suck-up to the banking industry by both parties.
3.  Uphold anti-trust laws that are already in place.  As has been demonstrated to a most painful degree the last 3 years, bigger is NOT better.  Bigger is bad, bad, bad.  Example:  ATT is currently trying to swallow T-Mobile and the FCC has some concerns it may lower competition.  I have a message for you FCC - it will lower competition you bought-and-sold piece of shit bureaucrats.  These mergers always do, and they also eliminate thousands of jobs which is not a real smart thing to do right now.  This merger idea should have been DOA.
4.  Re-regulate industries.  Airlines, ALL utilities and the gas and oil exploratory divisions of oil companies.  This concept requires it's own blog to adequately explain, but I'll just make this one point.  Remember the names Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, Braniff, etc.  All gone - flew away into the sunset with deregulation.  And of the remaining airlines guess which one is both the most profitable AND the most heavily unionized.  That's right, Southwest Airlines.  'nuff said.
5.  Make the case, loud and clear, that trickle down economics does not work!  Again, a point I've hammered to death already on these pages and will continue to do so.  The money goes sideways people.  The nobility on top don't trickle down shit to the peasants folks, they just buy another house or two, another airplane, a bigger ranch or take a more costly vacation.  These people are not job creators, they're job destroyers.  Example:  Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard fame rammed through the acquisition of Compaq Computer about 10 years ago.  Tens of thousands of jobs were lost.  She eventually left with millions in her greedy little hands and last month H-P announces they are getting completely out of the PC market.  Huh???   Such vision!!  Such a fine example of trickle down!!  Old man Reagan would be so proud.
6.  Kind of related, but certainly not on the radar screen.  Two term limitation for Senators.  The merits of this are so vast and intuitive I won't say anything more.
7.  Abolish free trade agreements with every country that has not lived up to their end of the deal, starting with China.  Then slap tariffs on everything and anything they try to import here that is not on equal footing with what we are trying to export to them (like solar panels).  "Oh, but that will create a trade war and prices will go up at Wal-Mart".  Yes they will, but it will force China to right their currency with the rest of the world as their biggest customer (us) will stop automatically buying all their government subsidized shit.  Consumers are in a trench anyway trying to pay down debt, which is good, so let's put the squeeze on now.  This would also be the beginning of stemming the flow of manufacturing jobs overseas.   We have to start somewhere.

If I can figure out the fucking way to do it (see Blog #1), this blog will be e-mailed to someone (with some slight editing first) who claims they have a say in this movement.  I will preface it with this:  people, we need a new name for the movement and I'll get back to you on that.  Also, you're not scaring anyone, especially the Wall Street bunch, with the current mixed bag of generalities.  Besides, that's the tea baggers approach (I'm for Liberty and Justice!) and god knows we don't want to emulate them.  Right?

The Lost Decade

I don't know anyone who lost a family member, friend, enemy, pet, etc. on 9/11.  According to the media, most of the 300+ million people in this country lost someone.  Umm sorry, but that's just not the case.  A very tiny fraction of people were directly affected by this event, and for them the mantra "we will never forget" may actually be a curse compliments of our bullshit media and it's inability to EVER say there's a 2-ton elephant in the room and it's sitting squarely on our country.  Time is a healer, but what if every time you picked up a paper, turned on the news, or scanned the bookshelves at the local retailer and were reminded over, and over, and over again that this nation is on a unbridled quest to avenge your loss, how would you feel years later?  What if you had forgiven and moved on with your life, yet the war on terror precipitated by that day continued at a tremendous cost to the vast majority of U.S. citizens that lost nothing.  Would this bother you?

Let's see what that cost looks like over the last 10 years.  More servicemen and women killed than the total number of people who died in the twin towers, the pentagon and Flight 193.  Tens of thousands more horribly injured by powerful explosives, people that would have died decades ago but are now permanently disabled and disfigured, and a long-term financial drain on this country.  A trillion dollars evaporated - all deficit spending.  Laws of compassion ignored to torture people, often times innocent people. And, in my mind, the biggest cost of all - the cost of a decade of war on people's psyche.  Do you remember what it was like when this country wasn't shipping young people off to die?  When we thought our country, despite some warts, was basically a good country with noble laws and a decent level of respect in the world order.  That's gone now, dredged through the muck of these stupid, useless wars that continue to suck us deeper into the black hole of vengeance at any cost.   It's sickening, and you know who is paying the highest price?  Minorities.  A dis-proportionate number of those killed and maimed in these wars are minorities, and a large number of those minorities are Hispanic.  Yeah, those brown-skinned people conservative nativists are trying like hell to clean out of our cities and states cause, you know, they smell funny or look different and don't always use English to communicate.  These minorities can't get good paying jobs in this country so they join the military and have room and board, medical, dental, retirement and some free schooling.  I wonder how many members of congress over the last 10 years had children in either Iraq or Afghanistan?  I can tell you it's close to ZERO.  Joe Biden had a son or two, but he's not a war hawk and I've never heard him boasting about it.

So, our cowardly media reports on all those feel good stories about 9/11.  On television, commentators are asking sports stars where they were that fateful morning, like anyone actually gives a fuck what some jock was doing 10 years ago.  And the newspapers, with one story after another of how patriotic we all were back then, how this country came together to hear it's commander and chief tell every red-blooded American to go out and buy shit to make things better.  Yeah, that's right, Bush the idiot told everyone to go shopping. Instead of a call to sacrifice, to REALLY do something to fuck with the terrorists like weaning ourselves from too much imported oil, we were told to spend dough.  Leave this terrorists fighting thing up to us, we know how to handle them evil doers.  Well, we know how that turned out.  I believe history will record that response as the worst display of leadership in the history of this country - no close second.

So here we are, 10 years later, stuck in two never-ending, unwinnable wars; suffering intractable unemployment from an economy that may be once again on the brink of collapse; buried in debt beyond belief; witnessing first hand the affects of climate change and the resulting deadly weather; experiencing a wealth-gap that erodes away at our disappearing middle-class and stuck with some of the dumbest, bat-shit crazy politicians in recent history to fix it all.  And, of course, our wounded psyche.  Again, this part scares me more than any other.  Hope is in critically short supply, yet how can we hope for a better tomorrow when nothing ever fucking changes.   Obama's message of hope is a pathetic failure because nothing changed.  Same old tired, bullshit politics.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.   We need to be out of the middle east now.  Cut our losses and scram.  We need tariff protections put in place to save jobs.  We need to legalize marijuana then tax it to bring the drug cartels to their knees.  We need a tax overhaul, especially for business, that is simple and we need it now to end the uncertainty over the future so companies will start spending the trillion plus they have stashed away and hire workers again.  And we need a leader who communicates with us.  I've written about it before on this blog and I'll say it again.  Communicate Obama!!!!  Fuck speeches to Congress.  Speak to us, with visual aids like a power-point, or charts and graphs, or anything - and be truthful.  We can take the truth.  We need our collective psyche healed, and it's not going to happen with a media that will never call out lying politicians but instead wants to feed us a steady diet of reality television to somehow make our own reality less pitiful.  We need a leader to guide us out of the last, lost decade and into a tomorrow where we sacrifice, all of us, for the greater good.  We will never survive another decade like the last one - never.

So That's What The NRA Stands For

A recent front page story in the local Arizona paper described how Gabrielle Giffords had finally been told of the other people that were murdered that awful Saturday morning last January.  She certainly had to already know the fate of the people that accompanied her to the event.  But to learn of the little girl, the judge and others had to be very, very tough information to process.

Around the same time, a good friend had received a solicitation from the NRA and thought I would be interested in having a look at it.  OMFG.  The 2-1/2 page letter starts out with this sentence:  "Today, I'm sending out this "Final Notice" to gun owners and freedom-loving Americans across the country to let you know that time is running out - unless you act now, your Second Amendment rights are certain to be dismantled and destroyed".   Gulp!  I had no idea things were so precarious for a freedom loving American like myself, that my gun rights were about to be destroyed, and on top of that it's the "final notice" to the recipient before being drug from their homes in the middle of the night and locked away forever in some gulag unidentified by this letter.  How else to lose one's freedom?    Evidently, powerful gun ban politicians like Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer (oh, he's a scary guy) and Michael Bloomberg stand ready to fight for an agenda that will ban hundreds of popular rifles, pistols, shotguns (really, shotguns?); limit what guns you can own; bankrupt gun manufacturers and close gun shops and shows.  Hellfire, the infamous "THEY" is coming to get your guns boy, and if you don't send 25.00 to this "non-partisan" organization of greedy, bat-shit paranoids it's all over dude.  Interestingly, the word "fight" is used many times, and usually precedes the word freedom.  I guess the NRA believes that the word "fight" is key to getting gun owners wound up.

Now, maybe I'm the one that's bat-shit crazy here, but I do believe the state of Arizona just passed a number of freedom-enhancing gun-laws in the last Legislative session.  For instance, anyone 21 years or older can carry a concealed weapon without a permit, even into a frickin bar.  Yeah, alcohol and guns, now that's freedom.  Of course, an unconcealed gun can be carried on a person anywhere in the state, including while riding your horse to the round-up.  This little known fact was on full display by some glory seeking schmuck at an anti-Obama rally in Phoenix a while back.  Another new state law stripped cities and counties of the ability to limit firearms from being discharged within their boundries, the only limitation being if the gun is within 1/4 mile of an occupied structure.  Huh?  Can't bullets easily travel up to a mile?  Well that's certainly sensible. Oh, and people previously diagnosed as mentally ill who then become "cured" can buy guns again.  Yippee!  Now in the spirit of full disclosure, the Gov did veto the right of people to carry guns on state university campuses, and the gun lobby was shocked. Yet I did not see Jan Brewer's name in the NRA letter next to Hillary's - uhm, perhaps it was just an honest oversight.   

So, what's the big deal about over-selling a membership in a "grass-roots" organization like the NRA?  I mean, the people being targeted have the liberty, the freedom to send in their 25.00 and save this country from this apparent oppression.   I am, in fact, a gun owner - several rifles, a shotgun and a hand gun.  Last time I checked, this allows me to hunt just about any type of wild beast around these parts and protect my home.  But this kind of talk is too rational, too sensible, and distracts from the bullshit message that this country is in a "fight" to keep the citizens armed when in fact it's just the opposite.  The U.S. already has the most unbelievably laxed gun laws on the planet.  In Arizona, they just keep getting more gun friendly - and dangerous.  Who wants some whack-job firing off a high-powered rifle 1/4 mile away from their home?  And what is the purpose of having an assault, fully-automatic gun available for purchase by the average hunter?  This is a weapon to kill people, nothing else.  Yet the ban on these guns was not reenacted when that provision of the Brady bill came up for a new vote years ago.  No other country in the world has such liberal and stupid gun laws, and no other country comes remotely close to the number of violent deaths of it's citizens from guns.  But in the twisted logic of the NRA, that's the reason for easier access to guns so we can "fight" the perps using guns to kill and maim with even more guns to kill and maim and so on and so on.

Gabrielle Giffords' shooting was framed this way.  Instead of a coherent, logical discussion of some type of changes to our laws to help keep guns out of the hands of violent, unbalanced people, we just need more guns to shoot them first.  Yeah, that's what's going to happen.  This message of fear continues it's ugly march forward, reminding us that we must elect politicians that deficit spend on wars and defense budgets to protect us from terrorists that several generations ago used sling-shots to fight each other (until we armed them), and also reminding us we must contribute cash to bully organizations that feed this frenzy of fear because THEY are coming to get your guns!  And THEY are absolutely not the least bit concerned about the fact that they're coming to get a device that is completely lethal.   THEY better show up in a tank.

I'm Voting "None Of The Above"

OMG - I just rushed up the stairs to the computer and can hardly contain my glee.  Glee does not usually result in a rant, but there's a-move-a-foot, something positive and hopeful and meaningful and it's in politics, and this thing, this idea could, possibly, be the beginning of the end of our completely fucked up political system.  No, I'm not talking about the recall of Russell Pearce, which is an obvious glimmer of light.  What I am talking about is a ballot initiative being penned as I type by a former Phoenix mayor named Paul Johnson, a Democrat turned Independent, and his committee.  This ballot measure, called The Open Government Initiative, would change the Arizona constitution to allow a single election primary open to ALL candidates and ALL registered voters with the top vote getter's moving on to the general election.  It would effectively kill the god-awful 2-party system we have all had to endure for way too long.  Like I said, OMG!!  Parties could still run their primaries at their own expense (not taxpayers) and candidates are free to put their party affiliation on the ballot.  But an Independent could now run in the primary as an Independent, not a "moderate Democrat" or "centrist Republican" or some other slightly right/left of Atilla The Hun label or whatever crap label the opposing party wants to stamp a candidate with.  Think about it - this forces politicians to appeal to all voters in the primary, not just their own whacked out party loyalists.

I first read about this several months ago and checked out the website address.  Not much of a site at the time but I sent in an e-mail asking for more information.  Weeks went by and no reply, so I figured this was just another flash-in-the-pan idea that had already been stomped to death by the 2-party behemoth.  But then, last week, an e-mail popped up from Mr. Johnson himself, apologizing for the slow reply as the response to the article had completely overwhelmed the website and staff.  I almost cried.  Could this be the beginning, the revolutionary idea that finally empowers the masses to actually change our dysfunctional, hypocritical, paralyzed form of government by giving people a THIRD CHOICE????  In Arizona, there are now more voters registered with no-party affiliation (read:  Independents) than there are registered Democrats.  And the numbers keep growing, and growing quickly.  From April 1st of this year to July 1st, there were 13,149 people who registered to vote with no party preference, yet the total voter registration only increased by 1,986.  So over 11,000 dumped one of the 2 parties to change to no party!  That's huge, and a story no one is talking about.  Registered Repubes still out-number Independents in Arizona, but just barely.

When this measure sees the light of day, Demos and Repubes will, at last, have something they can agree on.  But how uncomfortably delicious it will be watching them squirm as they try and mealy-mouth their concerns about changing the way, you know, things have always been and how the electorate, you know, doesn't know what they're doing here and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah............ Oh sweet Jesus, let it happen!

This could be a game-changer.  Paul Johnson was, in my humble opinion, the best damn mayor Phoenix has had since I've been living here.  He's smart and he knows how to get shit done.  Then it will be up to the nearly one million registered Arizona Independents to act and get this initiative on the ballot.  It seems impossible to fathom that this measure would not be approved, but we are talking about Arizona.  The level of bi-polar conscientiousness in this State is beyond belief - passing medical marijuana in the same election where Russel Pearce and Jan Brewer were elected is just one fine example.  But I believe this time it's different.  The Great Recession has accelerated the once slow, insidious decline of the middle class in this country, a decline perpetuated by government polarization from a 2-party system where the easiest thing to do is just kick the stinking turd down the road for the next group of suckers who will then do everything they can to keep from stepping on it.  People have fucking had it!!  With more choice will come more action from elected individuals not beholding to a party dogma and free to actually do what the people elected then to do. 

I know, I know, this whole idea is fanciful, and idealistic, and perhaps not even the big thing that finally makes a difference.  But how wonderful it is to contemplate the possibility of figuratively checking the ballot box in a future election:  "none of the above"!

In The Spring There Could Be Growth

Late last year a prominent economist, who's name I can't seem to recall, made a bold prediction - by this summer of 2011 the housing crisis would be history, employment would be growing robustly and all would be well.  He based this rosy scenario on two basic ideas:  1)  housing had bottomed out and the country's private companies would be growing and hiring.  Whoops, missed 'er by just that much.  Now I'm not going to sit here and disparage this highly educated and occasionally correct economist, as I'm sure his crystal ball was not working well that day.  But I am going to offer up, as promised, the following observations along with two ideas for getting this country's economic train wreck cleared off the tracks so we can start rolling again. 

Let's face it, the housing market still sucks and will likely continue this way for at least another 12-18 months.  Interest rates remain low and the FHA is backing practically any mortgage thrown its way, so why the continuing doldrums?  Mainly it's a lack of jobs of course, as well as the always tenuous deflation scenario where everyone keeps waiting to buy "at the bottom".  However, without buyers, there is no bottom.  Like many economic cycles, we just keep circling the drain.  So how do we break this cycle?  I believe the first step is to get the myriad of companies in this country that are reporting OK balance sheets and net income gains every quarter, including our beloved banks, to start spending and hiring again.  Without question, one of the main reasons the stock market has been gangbusters for several years and is currently not far from historic highs is that companies are profitable and they have a ton of dough laying around.  In fact, according to Reuters, US companies are holding a combined 1 trillion in cash.  Or should I say hoarding the cash.  This amount is much more than Obama's stimulus package, which finished up somewhere around 700 billion.  WTF? 

I'll tell you WTF.  The economic world remains way too uncertain, and uncertainty is the killer of private investment, and private investment creates jobs.  Sorry you dumb-ass Republicans, but rich CEO's don't create jobs, they just siphon off obscene amounts of money that could go towards hiring workers.  Don't need a PHD in Economics to figure that out.  CEO's do make decisions about how company profits are divided up, but large companies haven't been the main source of job creation for some time.  It's medium and small businesses, start-ups and the like, capitalized by hedge funds and individual investors who are more sensitive to the potential for loss than some CEO who knows he'll collect millions even if he's a complete buffoon and drives his company over a cliff.  It's in his contract bro.

So we need stability and certainty, and this starts at the top.  Mr. Obama, no more financial rules-changing bills for now.  Give in to the House morons, raise the debt ceiling and put off the big decisions about reducing the deficit until later.  I can't believe I'm saying that but certainty must be restored to the economy now so all that stored money can start flowing.  Also, allow interest rates to creep up a bit.  Yeah the stock market will get runny shit for a spell, but a sense of doing something today, before it gets more expensive, is desperately needed.  We need some goddamn inflation Bernanke, and it's time to end the free ride for the banks.  If they're still needing to be propped up, fuck 'em as they're too far gone.  This morass of waiting for zombie banks to get healthy is what killed the Japanese economy for 2 decades.  Every dollar entering the economy is borrowed in from the Fed, so if the bank is a credit risk, let them fail.  End it now!!  We must move on!

In addition of certainty, we need to crack the endless cycle of unemployment, and to do this we need a jobs idea that actually fucking works.  So, as I have done before, I turn to Germany, the leader of the Eurozone and the land of many smart motherfuckers.  Germany's economy is growing at 3.5% and unemployment is below 6%.  Not stupendous but a whole better than the U.S.  So how did the Deutschlanders pull this off?  An idea called Hartz IV Labor Reforms has helped a bunch.  When introduced, rioting broke out as the main reform was cutting unemployment benefits.   But there was a method to this madness - a work sharing arrangement between the federal government and private industry where companies were encouraged to cut hours rather than workers.   Then lost wages from working less were made up by a type of unemployment benefit from government, up to 67% of lost income.  People kept their jobs while companies enjoyed a more flexible and trained workforce.  Laying people off and then hiring new ones is inefficient and expensive.  This reform also prodded the chronically unemployed to take a job, any job, in order to continue receiving benefits.  This reform helped fix many problems with unemployment.  Workers kept their skills honed and union contracts remained intact, helping to eliminate the open warfare on unions that is occurring in this country.  Germany has enjoyed a continuing decrease in unemployment despite the fact that they experienced a deeper recession (according to the numbers) that the U.S.  Brilliant!!

It's like the residential solar panel requirement the German government has in place that I've reported on before.  It's smart, efficient and one other thing - oh yeah, it works!!   When-o-when will the leaders of this country grow a brain?  Why doesn't Obama call a fire-side chat and explain to this ignorant population ideas like this, ideas that are proven to work?  Use some Ross Perot graphs and shit, act enthusiastic about it, build a consensus and then DO IT.  Communicate intelligence.  It might catch on by spring so we can start growing our way out of this fucking mess!

Mind Meanderings

Sunday afternoon, listening to I.H., drinking a beer and Jesus H. Christ (pronounced "Hay-zeus" "H" "Krist") it's HOT outside.  Everybody sing:  "I'm living in Purgatory, I know what Purgatory is, this ain't no sanctuary, this ain't no way to live.  You gotta have a sense of humor, you gotta know how to laugh to live.  I'm living in Purgatory, and anything's better than this!"  Frickin' furnace that Phoenix is in July; my brain's too hot to think too deeply, not that I'm some kind of deep thinker, but ranting just doesn't seem to be on today's to-do list.  Please note that I have not forgotten last weeks promise to offer the necessary fixes for our economic woes, and this will be revealed soon, but today I offer some milder observations and, perhaps, a little something more.

Divorces are down.  Only in the '70's did 1 out of every 2 marriages end in divorce even though that dreadful statistic keeps getting repeated even today.  In fact, the divorce rate peaked in 1980 and has been dropping ever since.  Many reasons are intuitive - the freeing of souls in the 1960's, the "me" decade of the 1970's and the waiting until later pattern of the 1980's and beyond.  Still, an excellent trend.

In Arizona, it turns out that the majority of political donations are not from corporations, lobbyist or their like.  It's from individuals, with retirees leading the pack.  Surprising.  Democracy lives!

America continues to fatten up as the percentage of obese people keeps getting, ummm, bigger.  Two fixes I've mentioned before - charge people higher health care premiums for increased BMI and outlaw high fructose corn syrup - seem to be in order.  The corn farmers will then have a bunch more to sell the Chinese who have shown a willingness to pay big bucks for it.  This, in turn, will reduce our trade deficit and eventually turn all the billions of skinny, hard-working Chinese into fatter, lazier and sicker workers so we can get all of those jobs back that have been shipped over there.  Win-lose!

Bill Maher must be an unidentified follower of this blog, as his last New Rule the other night was exactly the same theme of as the parting paragraph of my last blog - out of work, downtrodden, middle-class Republicans voting for the people who are screwing them over. Come on Bill, identify yourself!

Another sad documentary of our times:  the price of a grave at a municipal cemetery is quadrupling in some cities.  Yikes, best to keep living for a while.  On the up-side, funeral costs for pets are dropping due to good old American capitalistic competition.

And now a little something more.  Please indulge this old web-footed, bug-eyed amphibian for a minute whilst I get a bit philosophical.   You see, sometimes I just can't help but wonder why so many good things have happened to me and what I did to deserve them.  I know there are many, many people hurting these days - good, honest people who are just trying to hang on and likely wondering what the hell they did to deserve their situation.  This only amplifies my wonderment and appreciation, and I can tell you that this goes way beyond economic circumstance and even good health.  It's family and love (see profile!).  And at the heart of this good fortune are the ladies in my life.  And so I would like to say, to my wife of 30 years, thank you and I love you.  To my daughter of 26 years, thank you and I love you.  To my mother of 58 years, thank you and I love you.  To my daughter-in-law of 3 years, thank you and I love you (love you too son, you lucky bloke).  Each of these women are the best - loving, caring, intelligent, beautiful, witty and just absolutely delightful in every way.  Oh, and to one more lady I almost forgot.  To lady luck, my sincere thanks for making me the luckiest frog in the pond!

 

The Other Vietnam

To my army of 3 followers, it must seem like an eternity since I posted.  My deepest apologies.

Obama sucks.  I know, not long ago I was laying the yellow bricks for his walkway to a second term.  He just can't LEAD!  The country needs him to:  1)  Declare a fucking medical marijuana policy for the States to follow so we don't get the stupid shit presently bogging down Arizona's progress; 2)  Don't send good time Joe in with the Reubes to negotiate deficit reduction and then act surprised when it didn't work out; 3)  Get us the hell out of Afghanistan!! 
Now this last item has so many merits even Repubes are starting to grouse about it.  Obama's tepid idea to march a few troops out here and a few out there is beyond my comprehension.  It's been 10 years, we've killed and maimed enough young people, and we can't afford it!!!!!   Oh, and that other small thing that no one dares mention - it's fucking un-winable.  Even Russia couldn't defeat them (whoever "them" is) after 8 years, and they live right next door.  I remember in the 1980's a political cartoon showing a turbine-topped fellow with a machine gun on his shoulder sitting in front of a sign that says "Welcome To Afghanistan".  Only he's crossed through Afghanistan and written Vietnam.  Yeah, it was the USSR's Vietnam.  And because this country was once lead by the dumbest mother-fucker to ever hold office greater than a garbage-truck operator (my apologies to all garbage truck operators), we have yet another Vietnam.  Let's see here, how did that turn out?   Oh yeah, I remember - we lost.  The paper tiger ran, as the communist knew we would eventually. 

And so, the paper tiger needs to leave again - now.  The Taliban will never, ever, just go away, and they didn't attack us.  Install a UN peace force in Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-I-Sharif and maybe a few other large cities to try and provide a safe haven for people and let the Taliban have the rest.  From what I hear and read, the majority of people not living in the biggest cities would rather live under the Taliban rule again.  They've fucking had it with war, and who can blame them.  Al-Qaeda is on it's back, leaderless, out of money and hated by most in the region for killing too many Muslims, and they don't need Afghanistan to congregate and plot sinister things- they have Pakistan!  On top of all that, the Afghan government is totally corrupt and we know this will never change.  Leaving provides more benefits than the CEO of Exxon gets:  we save tens of billions a year, no more killing of our kids, one less reason for the Muslim world to hate us as we are not occupying one of their countries, and one more roadblock eliminated in the argument for reducing the defense budget.  A recent poll showed 60-something percent of people want the war to end, now.  Sounds to me like a majority Mr. Obama.

We need to save money and cut the defense budget big time.  The idiot politicians on both sides of isle are playing Russian roulette with the economy over increasing the national debt ceiling, and they have no idea how dangerous this could be.  Next week, Economics 101 and Frog's secret recipe for getting the country back on solid financial footing.  The ingredients are available, sensible and non-poisonous. 

I can't wrap this week up without an honorable mention to the Republican Legislature of Arizona for refusing to change one word of a bill that would allow federal money to keep flowing for unemployment benefits.  Everyone knows the unemployed are just sitting around smoking pot and watching re-runs of god knows what while getting free money.  It's like Dan Quayle said during the last recession when he saw a help wanted sign at McDonalds.  Shit man, they're jobs out there.  Well, obviously he and the other employed Republican Americans just don't understand what the problem is.  What I don't understand is how these slimy, heartless, soulless and obviously clueless politicians get elected.  Aren't Republican voters out of work too?  Don't they finally understand that their party would rather put people hanging by a thread into foreclosure, bankruptcy and let them starve rather than accept money from the feds that costs the state nothing in order to make some twisted symbolic gesture of fiscal discipline?  That's your party Republicans!!  Praise Jesus, light the pipe and pass the remote!

 

  

This Is Hard Work

Back in March I penned (errr, typed) a blog with a blaring title proclaiming the recession to be over.  Yes, the statistics keep pouring in - exports are up, stock market up-a-plenty, unemployment down and corporate CEO earnings back in the ionosphere.  Thank God!  CEO pay was flat in 2009, and the poor bastards had to actually work - at keeping stock and bond holders convinced not to sell.  Well the good times are back for these favored souls, and we can thank in order of importance:  Bernanke the Fed chief, China, the federal government, the working slugs of America and the CEO's themselves.
The Fed?  How about I give you all the billions you want, charge 0.0000001% interest and you can take the money and:  bid up commodity prices, buy treasuries at 2.5%, loan it out at 5% or even buy steeply discounted mortgage backed securities for all Bernanke cares.  Fucking hard NOT to make money in that game.  In Arizona, CEO pay jumped 48% in 2010.  The two old white fucks that run the local copper conglomerate Freeport-McMoRan made 43.8 and 47.5 million each - in just one year!  Yeah, it was a tough slog too as copper prices quadrupled due to China needing (hoarding) metals and the rest of the commodities world jumping aboard for the ride.  Thanks China.  These money grubbers did nothing more than sit back and let the frenzied market drive the price of what they're selling thru the roof creating an artificial windfall for all those at the top.  Oh yeah, I'm sure there were a lot of meetings and big decisions to be made and people to lay off.  As Bush the Bonehead would say - "It's hard work"!
In a story on the adjacent page of the paper, thousands of people are wondering how they will manage to eat and find a place to live due to the cutbacks in state and local spending.  Many are laid off, ex-middle class white people, not whiny black welfare exploiters.
Then there's the federal government.  Reagan's trickle sideways idea, Senior Bush's continuing deregulation of everything, Clinton's signing off on the demise of the Glass-Stegall Act, Junior Bush's complete abandonment of the SEC enforcement efforts (Madoff loved it!) and now Obama's continuing ambivalence toward business and his failure to push tax-reform that would:  1) limit corporate welfare tax breaks, and 2) make hedge-fund billionaires pay the same fucking tax rates working people do.  As Warren Buffett famously said - "My secretary pays a higher tax rate than I do".  And the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding the 1880's idea that a business is somehow a person and allowing limitless corporate campaign contributions to politicians.  This shit isn't partisan, it's unbelievably unjust.
And the working slugs of American?  Yes, we all had a hand in this.  By voting against our own economic self-interest time and time again, we have reaped what we sowed.  Let's see, I'm religious and Democrats are not, so I'm voting Republican.  Let's see, I'm an atheist and Republicans are not, so I'm voting Democrat.
Which leaves the CEO's.  Unconscionable pay and stock options granted to them by their buddies on the board and aided by the majority stockholders, who are almost always institutional outfits like pension plans, that say nothing as their board members hope to one day be on the board of the company who's stock they own. 
Nobody is worth 47 million a year, unless they invent a cure for cancer.  When that day comes, I will personally make every effort to find out which lab scientist making 75K a year actually made the discovery and make sure his name is included in a future blog.  That's right, money can't buy everything!
 

"Love And Marriage Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage"

Francis Sinatra sang that song with such conviction.  I always wondered though what the horse was - love pulling the marriage along or marriage being drug along behind love.  Speaking of drug, how about that love drug ecstasy?  Wait, can't go there right now.  Suffice to say a future rant may involve a discussion of this marvelous chemical that is showing great promise in relationship counseling as well as the rehabilitation of PTSD patients and other neurological disorders. 
But back to marriage.  Today's paper proclaimed that a minority of households in the USA are headed up by married people.  That's right, the latest census shows 48% of households with married folk, down from 52% in the last census.  Of course, this trend has been in place since us Boomers started turning on, dropping out and shacking up.  Still, most people I know are now or have been married.  Many are divorced and on a second or third go at it, with the resulting hodge-podge of step-this and half-that siblings, uncles, aunts, etc.   But ultimately, I would have to say that the happiest people I know are married, and here's why.
Statistically speaking, married people live longer, and who doesn't want to live longer?  It's also more financially prudent to be and stay married, and who doesn't want to be richer?  It's also statistically better to have children when the mother is younger.  Just look at the huge increase in cesarean sections, premature births and birth disorders from 40+ year old women having their first child.   And the costs to our broken healthcare system are enormous.  All of these things point to an inescapable fact - if you're going to get married, find Mr/Miss Right, get 'er done and don't wait too long for the kids, if that's in the offing.  Unfortunately, our modern day social/economic model is not too marriage friendly.  While us Boomers thumped our noses at marriage out of contempt for the institution our parents embraced, today's youth seem to see it as one of many lifestyle options available to them, and a scary one at that.  Gay and lesbian couples are somehow not "holy" enough, and the shitty economy and the awful example set by so many of their parents (yeah, us Boomers) scares the bejesus out of them, and rightly so.  
I say, allow couples of any stripe - man/woman, man/man, woman/woman to marry and enjoy the benefits mentioned above.  Society has no right to take away this choice of people to live longer and more financially secure.  And financial security, I believe, would allow women who want children to do it earlier in their lives.  Marriage isn't for everyone, but a declining percentage is ultimately not the right direction for a society like ours.  The numbers don't lie!
So, I've concluded the horse is neither love nor marriage, but just a horse pulling a carriage carrying a happily married couple down the road of life who will hopefully be able to avoid the horseshit that's bound to be there.

The Most Exceptional USA, Except For.......

The definition of arrogance:  "offensive exhibition of assumed or real superiority".  Now the exhibition of assumed superiority is most definitely offensive.  However, is exhibiting real superiority offensive if done in a way that is not offensive?  A Texan once told me that is possible.  Sure, whatever you say partner.

The word superior means something else is inferior.  Humans are superior to monkeys, but the monkeys don't give a shit if they're inferior - that's why they're inferior.  Or are they?   The people of the USA, including it's members of the government, have always been told they live in the greatest country in the world by fellow members of the country.  Superiority of and by the people!  Sure, people from many other countries all over the world risk their lives every day to get here.  So, hot-damn we must be superior and they're not!  But what if we're the monkey, ignorant of our inferiority not because we are less intelligent, but because we MUST be superior and therefore don't give a shit if any one else thinks we're inferior to them.   Think about it.  Would you rather be ignorantly inferior, or offensively superior?  How about neither.  How about we shut the fuck up about our superiority, or exceptionalism.  How about we chew on these USA facts for a minute:

-third highest income inequality in the world (Hong Kong and Singapore are higher)
-highest prison population per-capita in the world
-highest "food insecurity" of developed countries.  That's right, starving people
-middle of the road life expectancy despite spending the highest amount of money on healthcare
-fourth lowest math scores of developed countries
-eight highest unemployment rate of developed countries (presently)

The list goes on.  We are exceptional for making a relative handful of people extraordinarily rich.  We are exceptional in the number of our citizens that go hungry.  We are truly exceptional in incarcerating people.   And what about our debt!  I believe that is exceptionally high.

All countries have their problems.  But most don't live with the arrogance of believing they're better than everyone else.  This monkey brain attitude actually limits our ability to consider ideas from others that would likely work for us.  In Germany, a law that's been in place for some time requires all new homes to install solar panels sized slightly larger than what the home needs so the excess can be sold back to the utility, which uses the money to pay back the loan for the system.  With a 10 year amortization, the equipment is paid off and then produces income for the homeowner, who also doesn't have a power bill!  It's fucking brilliant.  Oh, but that sounds like socialism - an inferior form of government.

We must lose this arrogance and realize we're no better or worse than others.  Any other approach to our world is just exceptionally inferior.

Welcome, Mr Prez, To A Second Term

Geeezzz Barack.  Roasted the Donald with class, nailed Bin Laden and actually showed some spine in your recent speech on immigration.  Well done!  Won over a single-wide load of gun-toting rednecks with the Navy seal raid and watched your approval rating soar to 60%.  Won over this amphibian as well by actually showing leadership, something that's been sorely missing in your never ending quest to seek compromise and not be too, you know, uppity.
Republicans have nothing but a bunch of classless, clueless, has-beens with no idea of how they can win over the tea-baggers while maintaining some sense of intelligence in addressing this country's multitude of problems.  Actually, this can't be done by anyone.  Their ONLY chance is Jon Huntsman, Obama's ex-Chinese Ambassador and the ex-Gov of Utah.  He has looks, smarts and money - lots of money.  He's also a moderate and has a letter floating around where he praises Obama.  Wow, the tea-baggers are in for a collective cardiac arrest if Huntsman runs as he will quickly rise above the other clowns by picking up right-leaning Independents and any other voter with a brain.  But, it sounds like he will likely wait for 2016.
Repubes have also showed how heartless they truly are with their current proposed budget.   A limited voucher for Medicare??   Slashed funding for school meal programs.  Zero funding for NPR??  Is Paul Ryan and the rest of the house leadership really that dumb??  It's not that complicated - cut defense in half, slowly raise the max income subject to FICA (only affects those making over 100K), change the tax laws so everyone pays income tax and not capital gains on their primary earnings (Warren Buffet's secretary pays a higher tax rate than her boss) and change the stupid-ass law that prevents decisions made by medicare paid doctors from being made public.  It's called accountability.   Medicare's MO is to pay first and ask questions later.  God it's so fucking obvious how to fix this shit!!
Back to Obama.  Mr. President, I have one word for you - plastics!  No, actually it's this word - decider.  You, sir, are the decider.  Quit pussy-footin' around and start deciding.  Bush was an idiot, but he pushed hard for what he believed in and basically said screw the rest of you.  It's not too late.  You sat out the healthcare debate ("that's the job of Congress") and ended up with the whole mess being called Obamacare.  If you're gonna own it, you might as well earn it.  You're rolling now, don't get all conciliatory again.  A whole lot of people are not going to agree with everything you say or do (including me), but fuck them and fuck me!  We'll get over it.

How Dumb Do You Have To Be?!!

A good question, and possibly rhetorical if you want it to be.  But I'm thinking more like a reality game show where there's a rush to the bottom to win it all!  Can an average American - white, middle age, overweight and educated thru the public school system become a winner?   Don't sell yourself short!
In this game, the contestant is pitted against his or herself.  The rules are easy - how many ways can you fuck yourself over before descending to the rocky bottom of the dumb pit?  Just total them up (it's called "using addition") and the one with the most ways wins - kind of like being declared the winner of wealth by dying with the most money!  To help get you started, here is Frog's very own on-line preparatory workshop - and it's tuition free!
Lesson 1.  As soon as you are old enough to "get it" (possibly mid to late teens), don't get it so you avoid being labeled a a brainiac, or nerd, or such thing.  Embrace America's dumb down to the most common denominator (oops, more math - sorry) philosophy of making sure each and every student can recognize their full potential by - passing a standardized test!  Show no interest in civics, personal finance, ethnic diversity or any other topics that may actually give you information you'll need to be a productive and responsible member of your community, state and nation.  Minimize time spent reading, especially non-fiction.  And for God's sake, get your first tattoo as soon as you possibly can!!
Lesson 2.  Go to work at a menial labor job or college.  If it's a job, Do Not subscribe to being the best at whatever you are doing!  That's a worn out old Marine Corp motto (or some similar shit).  Plus, this will only cause conflict later in life when you achieve "victim" status.  Take steps to ensure you will be diverted in life - get pregnant, a DUI or cut someone up for kicks.
Lesson 3.  In college, see Lesson 1, and party like you know you can.  It's very important to continue to avoid any financial responsibility.  Borrow away, the banks love you.  Buy more tattoos as they'll serve you well later in life and who needs to save that money for the day you have to buy food and shit.  Also, try to be an athlete and, if you can, be a real good athlete so grades get rubber-stamped and graduation doesn't friggin matter.  You're about the body man (golfers excluded).  Do not yet vote.  You know, it's a hassle to register and then you'll get stuck with jury duty.
Lesson 4.  Now, here's where it gets tricky.  Maybe you've graduated from college.  Big deal.  From what I've seen, this does not mean you've mastered grammar, spelling, speaking or other bothersome forms of communication.   How many times are you using the word "like" in a sentence?   If more than 3, it's all good.  If you didn't graduate, see Lesson 2.  Either way, it's very important to minimize gaining empathy for others.  You and your life is what it's ALL about.   Diversifying your belief system will only lead to curiosity of others and their belief systems.  If you feel religious, let it flourish and feed it with heaping helpings of intolerance. 
Lesson 5.  Now is not the time to take up reading.  Listen to learn as reading is almost as hard as writing.  Hang out only with your kind.  You know who they are.  Now may be the time to join the Republican Party and dumb it down some more by actually believing everything these slimy politicians tell you.  Register to vote, but only vote your party so you don't have learn anything about, you know, the other side.  Civics is boring, and it's way too complicated.  Also, you can still avoid jury duty by pretending you hate the defendant in some sick way (you may not have to pretend!).
Lesson 6.    Do NOT take personal responsibility for your lot in life.  Someone has fucked you along the way and has probably stolen your liberty/freedom/guns.  If you receive government money, deny it and join the tea-party - they'll keep you safe.
Lesson 6.  Always remember, you're right and they're not.

Sooo, ready to play "How Dumb Do You Have To Be"!!  Oh, you're not.  Well, keep practicing and eventually you will beat yourself.

Frog's Idea For Humanity Is A Bust

First off, two clarifications on last week's rant.  1)  I did not, in any way, mean to imply that people who had never known anything but poverty were somehow in better shape in their lives than those who had tasted the sweeter fruits of life.  For those born into poverty, life is a bitch - period.  For those who have fallen into poverty, life is also a bitch.  I just expect them to be more pissed off and vocal about it.  2)  The movie I referenced did NOT provide the idea I was hoping for.  What an idealistic, boneheaded Frog.  I was expecting the movie director, who fell on his head a few years back and awoke from near-death with a sense of duty to mankind, to initiate a humanitarian rally of his fellow Hollywood rich-wads.  From this, they would realize life is not about the biggest net worth, and all would start giving their money away to the have-nots.  This would set up a chain reaction of altruistic behavior of the haves and spawn other movies and TV reality shows and spur changes in grade school curriculum to teach youth that civility and giving is the true nature of humans and......  Instead, there was just a lot of scientific musings about the connectivity of all people everywhere and...... well, that was about it.
So, now I have let down my vast army of readers and must go wallow in self disgust.  Plus, it's late and things have been quite busy around the lillypad and I must spend one more week of half-ass blogging with the promise to step it a couple of notches next week.  And I will step it up.  There is SO much to dissect these days!

The Recession Has Ended - Yeah!!!

"Poverty was a wonderful thing everyone enjoyed, we were eating grass - not smoking it, wasn't like this when I was a boy, wasn't like this when I was a boy"!  Ian Hunter's tongue -in-cheek poke at what it was like to be poor in an earlier time, when so many were just hanging on but oddly accepting of this fate.   The "this" is, of course, the economically advanced times of today where we are still eating the grass only it's been processed through a cow first.  So many things are different, as Ian points out in the rest of the song.  But the poverty difference, the poverty now versus then, is somehow dark and growing darker.  For many in poverty today were once the smokers, not the eaters, and they are less able to game the public assistance system as the White's of West Virginia have done for generations, living off social security disability for simply being certifiably crazy.
Consider......  In July 2008, the cost of living for Americans hit an all-time high.  It then receded a bit with the Great Recession and just repeated in February 2011.  This isn't a measure of inflation, which tracks the rise in wholesale costs of all kinds of shit many people never spend money on.  This is simply what it costs to live - food, shelter, gas, clothes, etc.  Millions of us are falling into poverty from what was once higher ground despite the fact we have jobs.  College tuition increased 63% in Arizona in the last 3 years.  Medical costs are through the roof and unsustainable.  For the unemployed, it's foreclosure and bankruptcy and then what the hell happens to these people?  Moving in with friends/family?  Homelessness?   Suicide?
This recession is far from over.  The middle class of America is on the endangered list.   The trickle down idea of Reaganomics is a miserable failure as the rich didn't allow it to trickle, but rather invested their windfall in real estate, boats, planes, you name it.   To keep the trickle moving sideways, companies swallowed each other up through leveraged (borrowed) money buy-outs, shedding millions of jobs in the process but concentrating borrowed wealth in the hands of the top dogs and their deal-makers.   Sometimes the new companies were run into the ground (Harry and Davids) due to the suffocating debt, then put into bankruptcy and everyone laid off.  The owners walked unscathed with all the loot.  Or the debt load was too much for shareholders who demand constant and ever increasing profitability, resulting in lay-offs to cut costs or sending production overseas where people will work for pennies.  
For a while, the middle-class soldiered on by borrowing.  The great debt binge of the last decade allowed people to maintain a lifestyle sold to them by mass-marketing consumption, even as their wages and buying power plummeted.   Now, for many, poverty looms only they've already smoked the grass, and quite enjoyed the experience.   What then will bring about a better, brighter and higher day for so many who have inhaled?  Next week, after viewing a movie that opens in a few days, I will offer an idea to consider.  Right now, however, I need to go smoke some grass.

Tectonic Shifting

As the disaster in Japan unfolds, I am constantly reminded of both the power of nature and the frailty of humans and our technological advances.  Sure, very few large buildings tumbled due to foundations designed to absorb earth's energy and sway with the shifting of the ground.  But these buildings were in Tokyo, a relatively long way from the epicenter.  Nearly all buildings close by were initially damaged and then swept away or, at the least, flooded by the 30' wall of tsunami water that followed.  The local nuclear reactors, a marvel of engineering in many ways, are trashed and resulted in unavoidable releases of radioactive gases.  There will be fall-out from this development (pun intended), but not even close to the carnage and death brought on by the tsunami.  I will delve into nuclear energy and the absurd hysteria gripping people and politicians alike in a future rant.  Suffice to say, I believe it's a colossal mistake to unilaterally declare all future reactors a menace and shelve the plans for these very clean and reliable sources of electrical power.   

But it was the earthquake.  Japan lies near the Pacific ring-o-fire, an area where the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates constantly shift, grind, and, occasionally, release destructive amounts of energy to add to the misery of mankind (CAUTION:  analogy ahead!).   Sounds a lot like Washington D.C.  Here, the destructive shift has been RIGHT, and man has it resulted in a lot of misery.  The examples are endless, but allow me to list just a few:  1)  "Obamacare" is much less socialist than the plan offered by the Nixon white house in the 70's; 2) Ronald Reagan, speaking about the Polish unions fighting the communists in an '80's speech stated "where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost"; 3) Eisenhower warning of the power of the military-industrial complex in the 50's and the US Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that private companies have the same rights as citizens and can provide unlimited campaign funds to candidates.  I offer as additional proof the continuing growth of registered independents who were once Republicans but can no longer take the far-right bullshit spewing from Repube politicians - guns on college campuses, investigation of representatives who's patriotism is suspect (Michelle Bachman, please take a bow), criminal laws for simply being in the country illegally, and on and on.  Current centrists views used to be Republican.  Obama is a far-left loon when viewed from the right fringes.  Anyone with a fucking brain can clearly see he's a centrist and just trying to get along.

And what about the Democrats and the far-left shift of their types in this country!  Well, did single-payer healthcare happen?  Did the Bush tax cuts get axed?   Is abortion still as accessible and hassle-free as it was in the 30 years ago?  Have ANY far-left policies been shoved down the collective throats of the citizens of this country in the last decade or two?   Oh, yes, there is one - the socialist take-over of a company that was once the largest in the world and instead of letting hundreds of thousands of working people lose their jobs, that commie Obama saved General Motors only to have it rise from the ashes, turn a profit and start paying back the taxpayers of America - with interest.  Damn left-wing loons!!



   

Needed: Responsible, Capitalistic And Concerned Citizens

Healthcare implies that your health will be cared for.  Who better than you to ensure this happens!  Not an employer, not the government, not an insurance company.  YOU.  Here's how it works:

1.  ALL federal deductions for health insurance premiums by employers and self-employed workers are eliminated, gone, kaput.
2.  Employers pay that equivalent amount to employees as earned income, which is taxed.
3.  Employees take that extra pay and buy health insurance on the OPEN MARKET.  Capitalism as it's shiny best.  Insurance can be purchased from any insurance company, in any state, thru private/public co-ops, thru work, thru any organization that sets up to provide more customers for a lower rate per customer.  Now, the user is the buyer, the customer is the consumer, no middle-man distortion.  You just want major medical, fine.  You want laser hair removal covered, fine.  Buy what you want or can afford.  Insurance companies will clamour for your business like they do for car or life or disability insurance, and they will provide simple, easy to understand policies or consumers will go buy from someone else who doesn't try to fuck them over.
3.  Lower premiums are offered for healthier people.  That's the way life insurance works.  A break for normal blood pressure, cholesterol and BMI are offered.  Provide FINANCIAL incentive for people to get off their fat asses and get healthier.
4.  Tort reform put in place that states, simply, LOSER PAYS - LOSER PAYS - LOSER PAYS.  You want to sue your doctor?  Make sure you have an iron-clad case.  The majority of doctors are good people who care about doing a good job, but they're not fucking perfect.
5.  That extra dough the feds now have with the elimination of the medical premium deduction?  This MUST be used to fund healthcare clinics for people unable to afford health insurance on the open market.  Clinics are located in areas by population and they are administered and operated by cities, so you get down to a civic level of people who actually give a shit about their neighbors.  Free annual exams, free birth control, free pre-natal, etc.  It's cheaper to prevent health problems that to treat them!!!   How to determine if someone is unable to afford private insurance?  Simple!  Every tax return with adjusted income below a certain dollar amount is eligible to receive a card with a fool-proof encryption like a fingerprint.  You don't file taxes?  You visit a clinic and register, but there is a standard waiting period to verify your past.  Eliminates illegals, scammers, tax-dodgers, whatever.  Also, these places are not the Mayo Clinic.  They would be staffed by medical residents, bored retired doctors, maybe even compulsory for a year for new doctors in order to get a license in that state.  They're adequate, clean, but not the first choice of someone with a job.

Now, I can't come up with every little damn detail, but that's the outline.  And maybe it's not all that simple, but it banks on 2 things that Americans profess to be - capitalists and concerned citizens.  Does it restrain soaring medical costs?  Beats me as I've never heard or read anyone's reasons for the out-of-control escalation that made sense.  Tort reform, taking more people out of hospital emergency rooms (they now go to clinics with runny noses), increasing preventative care - it seems to me all these changes would help.  And, charging people higher premiums who clog our medical facilities with their larded up bodies is the first step toward making health insurance a level playing field for everyone.  So get out there, get in the game and for Christ's sake take some responsibility for your health.  Like I said, YOU need to to ensure your care, and quit expecting my healthy lifestyle to subsidize your sedentary, fast-food fueled, prescription overdosed, diabetic existence.  I quit!!

Hypocrites & Healthcare

It turns out I wasn't through hammering the AZ state legislature in last weeks rant.  This time, the hypocrisy of these wackos is too, too much.  Out one corner of their collective mouths is proposed legislation to tell cities and counties how to run their finances.  This has Phoenix, in particular, up in arms and rightly so.  Then, out of the other corner it's talk of succeeding to show the Feds they can't tell these state lunatics what to do and how to to do it while they eagerly suck up every Fed stimulus, Medicaid, highway and whatever dollar possible to balance a budget they badly mangled.   And it's not just Arizona.  The same shit is going on in Utah.  That legislature is rallying against a recent wilderness designation for federally owned land while at the same time a scumbag Repube representative wants to pass a law that allows the State to force city and county planning committees to accept development of privately owned land and screw their zoning and planning laws.  The throat jammees become the throat jammers.  No hypocrisy there.

Around the time of Archie Bunker's "the big one" (World War II), wages were frozen by the federal government as part of the war effort.   Employers were still competing for workers but could obviously not offer increased wages to get them.  So, the War Labor Board declared fringe benefits nontaxable and employer sponsored health insurance was born.  Like nearly every other dumb-ass idea that has come to roost in this country, the situation was temporary and the measures temporary.  But when the war ended and wages started to climb, it was too late.  Unions demanded that employers continue to provide tax-free health care and employers figured out a way to make it a profit center (for a while anyway).  The U.S. is the only country in the world to do this.  Why?  Because it doesn't make any sense!   The consumer of the product cannot be taken out of the fucking equation for obtaining the product.  If my employer is paying, and the federal government is subsidizing it, I don't give a shit what it costs - especially for something as personal as healthcare.  Duhhhh!!  This has been, in my humble estimation, the overriding reason for healthcare cost escalation over the decades.  It was the primary reason for the bankruptcy of General Motors, who had become one of the largest health insurance companies in the world.  The only problem was, oh yeah, they make fucking cars!  During the entire healthcare debate, not a single politician (that I'm aware of - could be wrong) brought this boondoggle up.  Well, in the next rant installment, this Frog will present the cure for this healthcare mess, and it's so simple it hurts - and it hurts right here doc.

We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

With apologies to Eric Burdon for borrowing his song title, it's never been more applicable than today for any Arizona resident with half a brain.  Let's see, after a brutal, senseless killing spree down Tucson way, the Repubes of the state legislature want to LOOSEN gun control laws.  Because, you know, everyone would jump at the chance to be carrying a loaded weapon to the supermarket on a Saturday morning and someone could have been in the parking lot at exactly the moment the shots started and ended it right on the spot.  Oh, Gabrielle was hit with the first bullet fired.  Well I guess no one can draw that quickly, except maybe Rooster Cogburn or some other fantasy hero that always arrives at the right moment in the movies.  And how many people would then get hit with errant lead fired by an insecure, big-buckled and little-dicked NRA member who has zero training and zero experience handling a firearm in such a situation where, for a few moments, you can't actually believe what your eyes are seeing.  Fucking idiots.

And there's talk of succession!!!  A proposed law would create a panel of state legislature folks (old, white guys) who would meet to determine if a federal law will actually be recognized by the state.  If the Feds try to enforce it, the armed citizens of this state will have something to say about it, by God!  Anarchy rules!!

And there's no money to save a small group of people's lives who need organ transplants.  But there's not one cent being cut from the prison budget.  If a dude on death row needs medical treatment, no problem.

And there's more:  squash the 14th amendment birth rights, make fireworks legal in the state while the City's still prohibit them and, of course, the breathing while brown bill HB1070.    Start packing.

But wait, there is a glimmer of hope!!!  Two separate recall movements to get rid of Russell Pearce are picking up steam.  One is spearheaded by a Repube no less.  That's how embarrassing this racist moron is.  Even the Mormon church has officially come out against his 14th amendment shit and bill 1070.  Good people of Mesa, I implore you to sign this petition and send this creature back under the rock from whence he came.  You elected him so stand up, admit your folly and get 'er done.  Your church is watching....



 

The Commie Pot

No, I'm not talking about marijuana grown on the steppes of Russia.  Actually it's a stolen line from Bill Maher's New Rules last Friday, the last rule actually, and it is fucking brilliant.  Bill's final rule was a comparison of the haves to the have-nots, using Major League Baseball (haves) and the NFL.  In MLB, each team sucks up all the money possible from TV contract, ticket sales, merchandising, etc.  In the NFL, this money is mostly put into a large "commie pot" and in a share-the-wealth, socialistic move the booty is divided up between ALL the teams.  Guess which sport is on the up slope and which is on the down slope?  Guess which sport has, for the most part, the same old tired teams in the playoffs each year?  The New York Yankees have a payroll of 200+ million.  The Pittsburgh Pirates, a payroll of 60 million.  They will NEVER be playing each other in the World Series.  However, the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers are in the Super Bowl - and playing a team from a mid-size Wisconsin town called Green Bay!  The New York Jets didn't make it. Parity exists in the NFL.  In MLB, it's every team for itself and fuck the rest of you.  Sound familiar have-nots?

There are, no doubt, millions of super pro-capitalistic, anti-socialistic men that would tell you thew NFL IS the best sport.  It's certainly the most watched.  What would they have to say about this sharing the wealth situation? 

The new Republican House majority will soon get a lesson in the haves versus the have-nots.  How interesting it will be to watch as they decide which federal programs, subsidies and agencies to cut to fix the government's spending problem.   Which senior assistance hand-outs will be slashed, thereby enraging the tea-party demographic of retired old white people driving around in their medicare purchased scooters?  Which farm subsidy cut will put a bunch more poor farmers out to pasture?  With the extension of the existing tax rates, the cuts MUST be enormous to get even close to taming the yearly deficit.  It's gonna get ugly, and when the masses of the ever shrinking middle-class wake up to the fact that the deficit is going to be tamed by cutting their programs/entitlements, not the defense contractors, big oil and bankers (hey, the House is under Republican control), ugly might not be an adequate description.  Of course, it's just as likely very little will be cut as the Repubes will find they don't have the spine to do it.  And down the road the deficit can will roll, again.

Tuscon - The New Mis-Spelled Word For Senseless Violence

Quite the title!  It was the Tucson Tragedy.  Now the nightly news anchors just say T-U-C-S-O-N and an ugly image is portrayed of gun-slingin' nut-jobs that somewhere along the way quit being human.  There is also the constant showing of throngs of good people doing their best to show Tucson is a great town, and, since I live about 2 hours from the un-safest Safeway in the country, I can say that Tucson is a great town.  Not Phoenix in scope and breadth, but a nice town.  What ain't nice, however, is the number of Tucsonians who are unemployed, under-employed, bankrupt, uneducated, dying from lack of insurance, homeless, or all of the above.  The cameras aren't showing that underbelly of this ravaged place where.......wait a minute, I could be talking about Phoenix, or Las Vegas, or Florida, or 4/5 of California or Michigan or Louisiana or ...... just about anywhere you look USA!

Was the shooter any of these situations?  A couple - couldn't stay in comm college, couldn't get a job, not homeless but still living with Ma and Pa.  Did this drive him insane?  Probably not.  But what about the millions, no literally tens of millions in this country that are in many of these situations.  How come they're not pissed?  How come they're not half deranged and gunning for somebody that took their job, their home, their life savings or their fucking liver transplant.  Are they just saying, "Schucks, that's alright, I'll survive somehow.  Thanks anyway!"  Somehow, I don't think so.

The gun law debate is interesting.  The right thinks we need every kind of gun made in case the "government" tries to take over the country.  The constitution framers said as much in the 2nd amendment.  Of course, they're experience had been pretty much with tyrannical kings and such.  But, how do we, the citizens, defeat the military when that day comes?  With a fucking Glock?  We need bazookas, tanks, cannon, shit - we need a nuke!  So how utterly stupid this gun-rights argument is.  The left would just like to nibble a little at the edge with bringing back the Brady Bill and playing nice.  Maybe limit each family to one Uzi.  But what happens as the economy continues the current trajectory of haves and have-nots?  Only a fool would think this isn't happening, and as we move that direction, only a fool would think the probability of fucked over people losing it will somehow not increase.  The jobs ain't coming back, and apathy will only go so far, even in this country.  Then the right, the traditional holders of the guns and the wealth, will find:  A) Sheez, I got nothing left (holders of the guns) or B) I got everything and it's MINE (holders of the wealth).

The wealthy ranchers will be fine, even in Tucson.

Boomers, Etc.

Yeah, My Generation has fucked things up good.  But let's consider why.  As the rant went last week, I was zeroing in on the apparent lack of discussion anywhere, by anyone, of this obvious fact.  Sure, you hear how our children will be the first generation to possibly have it less good than the previous, but again, why?   Three things, the first covered in today's rant.  Wasting Away Of Empathy.  We got to stretch norms to the limit (and often beyond) so all things considered proper (mutual respect, topics of discussion, clothes, hairstyles, sex, etc.) were targets for our fun.  Shit, now you can't outrage anyone on anything as it's already been done.  The race to the most outrageous was a great time for my generation.  I don't believe this has necessarily lead to less prosperous economic times, but it has contributed to a change in social attitudes that in turn has resulted in less honesty, shame, morality and, of course, empathy.  
No one gives a shit what someone else thinks of them, mostly because they can't begin to put themselves in their shoes.  Why bother?  Doing so could somehow curtail my pursuit of MY needs.  So, you lose empathy and you lose a cornerstone of humanity.  This affects our economic well-being in so many ways.  One consequence, I believe, is there are fewer top notch sales people.  My parents generation had traveling anvil salesmen for hell's sake.  Now sales is generally relegated to mass marketing and sending e-mails. Has this contributed to the decline of manufacturing in this country as we were getting out-sold by more empathatic and less self-centered outsiders?  I think so.  Remember the 70's terms - the ugly American!   Not even servers in restaurants understand fundamental sales techniques.  They rarely zero in on the individual at the table who will determining their tip.  That's just dumb, but it doesn't occurr to someone naturally if their feelings for their fellow humans has been numbed.
One final comment.  How awful to read this morning about the killings in Tucson.  More later.....