Our long national nightmare is over

OK just like the zillion other blogs with that title, I'm amazed. Once again the brilliance of the Constitution shines forth. No, it's not just the vote, certainly not the Electoral College, that makes democracy work, it is succession. This is what beats all other types of governments - strong men die and leave countries to chaos, kings die and leave countries to relatives; often those times of change result in instability and the breakdown of civil society. In the United States (and lots of other countries too) Presidents live on but pass power on to others.

This Bush administration has pushed the limits of succession. Maybe it was just me but I have been worried that some October Surprise would 'force' the Bushies to suspend the election. Maybe a November, December, even January Surprise could delay the turnover but I think not. We the People expect a new President and we will get that.

Commodity Futures Modernization Act

Last night, Sixty Minutes ran a story about the CFMA and how it essentially allowed gambling on stocks, commodities, real estate loans, etc. This is one of the prime reasons the economy failed.

If you look up Commodity Futures Modernization Act on Wikipedia, you'll find one of John McCain's financial advisors is former senator Phil Graham.

The House and Senate bills were included in an omnibus spending bill without any debate and I suspect many members didn't realize it had happened.

My question is: Can McCain fix the economy with advisors like that?

60 minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

Social Security

Looking at the financial mess happening around us now, aren't you glad President W wasn't able to fool us into putting our Social Security retirement funds in the stock market?

College Financial Homework

The idea is to figure out the links among Boards of Directors in corporate America. Executive pay is clearly out of control and the people who should reign it in are the boards of directors. Problem is, many board members are executives in other companies whose board members run other companies. This leads to an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" scenario where boards approve high exec salaries and perks because those well paid execs sit on their companies boards.

So, class, your assignment is to write a web spider to crawl through corporate America's websites and collect the names of execs and board members and build a multi-node graph that, er, connects the dots. Seeing how interbred the companies are should shed some interesting light on this problem.

Conservative Economics Failings

We are living through the largest economic meltdown since the great depression. Conservative, anti-regulation people thought the markets were wonderful and they made tons of money. Now they are looking for us taxpayers to foot the downside risk they took.

It strikes me as hypocritical that the conservatives now want a big government bailout. They were the ones who always talked about the invisible hand of the market correcting everything. Well I think we have caught a glimpse of that hand and it is giving us the finger.

For secret agents

Remember printing a secret message only to turn around and manually write it out by hand using invisible ink? What a pain! Not to mention that you then had to eat the paper the printer used. Now you can let the printer do all the work ---

Introducing a true labor saving device- the inkjet printer cartridge filled with invisible ink.

Available inks include AR-15, Yamma, and lemon juice. Order now and we'll throw in a butane lighter you can use to heat the page and reveal the invisible words.

Livin the Republican Dream

In the last 8 years we have seen many many changes to our country and the world. These changes were forced by a Republican President and House and Senate. At every turn, middle class Americans took the hit while corporations and the super rich got tax breaks. Whenever corporate interests clashed with citizens' interests, the corporations won.

The prescription drug bill to help seniors actually helped the big drug companies because the US government was forbidden to negotiate on prices.

Bush reassured the public that the government had to get a search warrant before tapping someone's phone. Soon after it was revealed the government was wiretapping without warrants. I became convinced that whatever the Executive branch said they were not doing was exactly what they were doing.

Warrantless wiretaps put some phone companies at risk for lawsuits so congress passes an immunity bill to protect them. Meanwhile, every citizen has lost a little bit more privacy. Wasn't there something in the Constitution restricting this?

I could go on and on but the point is that we are living in a country designed by Republicans for an elite class at the expense of the middle class. We're all living the Republican dream.

It is time to wake up from that dream and fix our country.