Its the stupid economy

You couldn't see this coming? 

Companies ship jobs overseas for cheaper labor
Here in the US people lose good paying jobs
Desperate,  they start taking lower paying jobs

But they keep getting ecouraged to Buy Buy Buy
They charge things
They pull money out of their homes, often by shady or even fradulent mortgages

Somebody points out that the king has no clothes, that is,  many mortgages are bad

Housing prices fall
A recession sweeps the planet
Now the companies want consumers to spend money to improve the economy and create jobs

Oh, crap, we've spent all our money, borrowed all we could, maxed our credit

If only we had good paying jobs ...

Wasn't it Henry Ford that raised his workers' wages so they could buy his cars? 

Smother's Brothers Sketch

I' ve searched thru various video's on the Internet but can't find this sketch - so I'll describe it from my memory - which means it is probably distorted.  Somehow I find it comforting to figure out what to do in ambiguous situations.

The sketch opens with a soldier claiming his side will win because God is on their side.  Switch to the opposing side where another soldier claims God is on his side.  I think it then cuts to the brothers who look confused and maybe even discuss how God can't be on both sides.

Then fast cut to some rock-looking thing that is struck by lightning and split in two.  Tommy Smothers goes over to it and finds a piece of paper in the split.  He reads the paper and looks up, amazed at what he's read.  Dick Smothers comes over and looks up too.  Tommy pokes Dick, laughs at him and says, "Made you look!"

W

You ever think that getting George W. Bush elected was a plot by lazy comedians?  Me neither.

Telephone tips

I used to call one of our large customers and I got his voicemail all the time.  The thing was that his message said he was on vacation but every time I left a message he would call back in a couple of hours.  I just got it one day - he was really at work but could return my call or not.  either that or he just forgot to update his message when he came back from vacation. 

I adopted that technique but now I'm going to claim that I'm on a 'special assignment' of unspecified duty and length (probably forever) so I might not be able to return your call in a timely manner. 

Back in the days when the long distance carriers were fighting over customers like hyenas over carrion, I was working in a very small company.  We would get inundated by people urging us to switch to their long distance plan.  We invented Brian.  Brian was our telephone guy that would make that decision to switch but -wouldn't you know it? - Brian is on vacation for two weeks.  That seemed to satisfy them and we always had a great laugh.  It turned the annoying phonecalls into fun.  One time we actually got a call back for Brian after two weeks!  Those guys were persistent.  I told him Brian wasn't back yet or something.  Then I thought I should have told the guy that Brian got fired because he drove the boss nuts when he was always switching long distance carriers.

The latest blessing in the fone wars is caller ID.  Our phone tries to say the name of the caller and sometimes it is hilarious.  Caller ID is a great way to avoid calls you hate - use it, be merciless.  I've even programmed the phone to drop specific phone numbers so they barely ring - that is cool and I wish the phone had more memory so I could ignore more numbers.  Still, for having a land line this makes it tolerable.

Actual Journalism by Progressives

If someone tells you cable news is all fluff and biased tell them this story.

Rachel Maddow interviewed Rand Paul about his primary victory in Kentucky and ended up pressing him about his stand on civil rights.  This turned into a big deal andThe New Yoirk Times published a story under the headline Tea Party Pick Cause Uproar on Civil Rights about it and said that Rand was asked if he thought businesses should have the right to refuse to serve black people.  The paper said Rand Paul said 'yes'.  This could be a huge point for Paul's Democratic opponent in the Kentucky general election and you might think the Rachel Maddow Show would be all over reporting what the Times had said.  But no, last Friday Chris Hayes was the guest host and went to great lengths to correct the paper's article going so far as to play the part of the interview where it was obvious Rand Paul did not say yes to that question even though Rachel kept asking.

Here's my point, The Rachel Maddow Show went out of its way to correct something that played to the liberal audience but was wrong.  They corrected something that could have been a great talking point but they chose accuracy over spin and  corrected a misreading of the interview.  I call that Real Journalism.

Challenge your friends to find an example from the conservative side of the news. 

Here is the link but there's no guarantee it will last, if it doesn't work search msnbc.com for Rachel Maddow and Rand Paul or New York Times

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#37285934

Obama and the presidency - so far

With the nomination of Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court justice I had a revelation. I was hoping for a progressive nominee that would somehow balance out the c-c-c-conservative justices appointed under W.  I thought Obama's first nomination was too conservative but I think she will be a great justice, just not as liberal as I might like..

What hit me today was that President Obama is running his administration the way he thinks the Constitution envisions it.  He is not running it to win the next election or to help his friends or to be popular, he is being The President.  In short, he is an honorable guy trying to ignore the political wrangling and actually improve things for everyone.

You may not agree but try looking from that perspective at what Barack doe.

A tip for Amazon.com

With the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people too ("Soylent Corp.  it's people, it's PEOPLE!!!!"), it is just a matter of time before our senators and representatives are bought and sold to the highest bidder.  Will they be traded on Wall Street?  Will they be treated like commodities and tracked along with pig bellies?  [You can do your own jokes here and send them along as comments].

I think eBay might be another place, an auction seems natural to sell yourself to the highest bidder.  They have consistently disallowed sales like this though.

But I think Amazon might dominate the trade.  I can just see their helpful comment, "Corporations that bought this Senator, also bought these Representatives: ..."

I think this makes it official, we have the best government money can buy. 

Doesn't it make sense to have everyone pay equally for elections rather than rich people and corporations?  Work for government funded elections.

There's something wrong ...

There's something wrong with  our financial system:

There's something wrong when investment banks are sued for fraud one day and the next announce that they are giving over 4 billion dollars in bonuses. 

There is something wrong when a bank can take your money, pay modest interest to use it, then gamble with it, and when they lose, you have to pay for their losses with more of your money.

There's something wrong when corporations can act like people to give political gifts but to be not-people when liability claims arise.

There is something wrong when corporate executives make huge salaries and bonuses running corporations but when systemic criminal activity is revealed they claim to have no knowledge of what the corporation was doing. 

There is something wrong when people (corporations) can give so much money to politicians that  they can influence the very laws and regulations that affect them. There is something very very wrong when they can write their own laws.  This warps and damages our very democracy.

There is something wrong when laws can be changed by corporate influence to reduce or eliminate oversight or regulation of those same companies.

There's something wrong when the Daily Show is one of the best sources to explain the causes of the financial crisis we are now in. 

There is something wrong when bankers can market products they know are faulty - and not only that, there is something terribly wrong when they can then bet against the products they sell and make money when they do fail. 

There is something wrong when those bankers get bonuses instead of prison time.

There is something wrong when financial leaders take government jobs to regulate (or de-regulate) the very companies they had worked for.  Especially when they then return to those same companies to reap the rewards of the laws and regulations they have created or changed.

There is something wrong if we don't all work to fix this.

There is something wrong when - well, what do you think?

Living in Hipocrisy, USA

So here are my question -

Why do some people decry governmernt overreaching (think healthcare) but think business is ok when it overreaches (think home loan fail)?

Why do people protest against abortion and also oppose healthcare for pregnant women?

Why is abortion bad but capital punishment good?

Why is it ok to send death threats to congress people who vote to provide  healthcare? 

Why is it that a Christian militia group can plan to kill police and do other terrorist acts and nobody freaks out that they use the word Christian?

3/5 of a person in 10 seconds

Now that the Supreme Court has allowed corporations another right of personhood - free speech in the form of campaign donations - it got me thinking about similarities and differences of live persons and corporations.

It seems to me that corporations sometimes like being persons: "Senator, here's $50,000 since I can't tell you I favor dismantling the EPA." And sometimes they don't: corporations don't seem to die . Think of corporate law as healthcare for corporations - now there's a government run healthcare program even the right-wingers can get behind. But I digress.

Corporations can now do what people cannot now do. But in the past, people could do it but corporations couldn't. Guess what it is? Well, persons used to be able to own other persons (or 3/5 of a person for census purposes) but corporations couldn't buy other corporations. We came to our senses about slavery for real people but if a corporation is a person, isn't it slavery to buy another corporate person? I say, stop corporate slavery!

We have now stretched the 'person' part of a corportation to absurd lengths and it is time to end the crap. Corporations are not people and they should not be treated as such. There is no reason for it. There are plenty of good reasons for corporations but they don't need the person idea to work.

I'm sure there are many more problems with corporate law - the biggest is that corporations can grow beyond countries and individual country law. Maybe I'll rant more about that sometime.

p.s. Ten bonus points if you got the song reference in the title. And double them if you read this far.

Lightspeed - it s a history lesson

OK I figured out the deal with the speed of light. That is, why the speed of light is so slowwwww.

It is slow so we can look back in time and see how the cosmos has evolved. That's it - the reason for the slow lightspeed is that it is a history lesson. Without light being the limit, we couldn't figure out cosmology.

It is a great, yet subtle, design - yes I said design. That sez to me that going forward, the speed of light doesn't have to be the barrier to travel arouund the universe that it would seem. Whoever designed the history lesson would also design a way to move around this great wonderful place - we just need to figure it out.

Personal government choice

How would you like to live your dream right here in the good ol USA? You say you can't live your dream because those tax wasting, big government liberals are taking all your money or that the arrogant uber-rich conservatives are killing the middle class. Now you can have it the way you like.

That's right, I'm introducing the cafeteria plan for governmennts. You get to choose how you live here and how much government you want to pay for. Other people make their choice the way they like and live like that. Let's see some examples:

Joe is a Libertarian, he hates government meddling and just wants to do what he wants. He pays low taxes, gets no services, and pays for everything himself. If he drives to work, he pays for the road he drives on, the sidewalk he walks on and if there is a legal suit he pays part of the judge's and bailiff's salaries. If Joe gets sick, he pays directly for the services he needs and not for anyone else. He knows how much stuff will cost and can act in his own best interest. If Joe can't pay for something like a cancer removal, he keeps the cancer until he can pay.

Jake on the other hand is a Progressive. He wants government to give him services and he pays for them. His taxes are high but he doesn't have to deal with constantly paying for little things like fees for driving, using the parks etc. If jake gets sick, his taxes have paid for his treatment and he doesn't have to worry.

If Joe and Jake are mugged, there is quite a difference -

Joe has to pay for the police to handle his case, Jake is covered by the taxes he pays.
Joe has to pay his medical expenses, if the perp is caught, Joe can pay to have him tried and might be able to collect damages; Jake's medical expenses are covered and the courts take care of the criminal.

So pick where you are on the scale from extreme right to extreme left, then pick your plan. Sign up for 3 years to see how it works for you. At the end of the 3 years you can stay where you were or pick some other plan.