History's Villains or Blunderers?

The headline is surreal? "Bush and Bernanke see no recession." What, are they blind, idiotic, or is this simply prevarication of a particularly heinous sort? None of the answers to that question flatters the aforementioned, after all, which would you rather be seen as, an imbecile, a bungler, or merely deceitful? Bush has managed, in his off the charts catastrophic Presidency, to play the role of all three. Bernanke we don't know quite as well as the Shrub, but I suspect, from my admittedly limited viewing of him, that he is more bungler than liar, but that remains to be seen.

Truly, it's one thing to not be able to recognize that the light coming towards one from the end of the tunnel belongs to a freight train, but it's quite another to not recognize that what is barreling down on one is a locomotive even after it blares its thunderous horn. The latter epic mistake is akin to Bernanke and Bush's assessment of the U.S. economy. Gentleman, if I can use that appelation with one or both of you, WE ALREADY ARE IN RECESSION! The official numbers, massaged as they are to reveal as little of the ugly trend as possible, say as much. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once observed that, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." When one has a bead on things as they are, and the means to address them, even when matters are bleak, that pearl of wisdom is true. However, when one does not have the measure of things as they are, or refuses to acknowledge what is plain, then one has much to fear beyond fear itself. Today's headline at the link below informs us that mind numbing fear, as Roosevelt referred to it, is anything but our only worry going forward.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080228/bush_bernanke.html

Addendum to snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat.

In short, Hillary is a liar and hypocrite, quel surprise!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080220/ap_ca/on_deadline_wisconsin_6

Dumb Headline of the Day!

Perhaps of the week or even the month. Here's the link to it:

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/02/19/oil_prices_spike_on_opec_speculation/

Kudos to you if you can tell my why it's stupid, and I won't think you're dumb if you don't know.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?

MILWAUKEE -- So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,” she told a Milwaukee crowd today, “and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

Oh dear, if wretched sentiments such as these continue to flow from the Obama camp they could easily start to stick to his campaign in a very vote sapping sort of manner. Likewise, if Obama keeps borrowing the words of others without giving credit to their source, well, he just may blow his big mo and let the ghastly HRC back into the race. And speaking of the unspeakable Billary, having come up on the butt end of the vote count in eight straight primaries, she is now about as desperate as Dick Cheney at a vegan buffet, and so we are being treated to the full monty of the vaunted Clinton gutter tactics. Personally, I don't care much if Obama lifts a few bits from someone else's (in this case then candidate for governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick) arsenal of speeches, but it never looks good to engage in plagiarism, however mild, and perception, as we know, means so much in political campaigns.

If I had to bet, and thankfully, I don't, I'd say Hillary is going down, and perhaps even faster than before, because her shit slinging gambit is clearly an obvious act of desperation by a candidate who doesn't have a whole lot to offer that hasn't already been soundly rejected of late by Carl and Carla voter. Yes, I'm going to venture that Michelle Obama's stupefying comment-Good God, how does someone who has had every advantage have the gall, and frankly, given the circumstances, stupidity, to utter such rancid pish-and husband Barack's minor verbal pilfering will be cancelled out by Hillary's obvious and crapulous attempt to salvage her sinking political dinghy.

In the meantime, the economy continues to find new ways in which to look ghastly, so whoever makes it out of the Democratic cage match better really be thinking very hard how to not just beat old man McCain-which shouldn't be too hard provided no one gets cocky- but how to deal with an economy that is fast on its way to flatlining.

Glass Half Full!

Well, I've decided to take a break for a spell from discussing that which gives me major indigestion to focusing on those things that give me pleasure, and sometimes even joy. Perhaps I should open a new blog for this purpose, but I'm only taking a respite, not a permanent vacation from the jolly disaster review. What do you like to do, I mean, love to do? It is very easy to lose sight of the many splendors of life as the bleak news piles up about all manner of very important things.

Here's a list of some activities that I love in no particular order.

1.) Composing, playing piano-specifically old jazz standards- you know Great American Songbook tunes.
2.) Reading a well written piece of fiction or non-fiction.
3.) Preparing and eating, (especially eating) a delicious meal.
4.) Skydiving and hang gliding- No, I don't actually love them as I've never done either. The closest I've ever come to that sort of madness was doing barrel rolls in a Sopwith Camel, or whatever it was. Never again!
5.) Traveling-except for the voyage.
6.) Stuff related to the theatre.
7.) Board games.
8.) Commenting on the world, duh!
9.) Playing with my puppy, who isn't really a puppy anymore, but I still pretend that he is.

And you?

Choosing Our President. Part 2.

It's Super Tuesday and we are being led to believe by a booming chorus of media dupes that the outcome of today's whopper primary has big, big, big implications. Truthfully, the dreadful economic numbers that came out this morning, and the market's reaction to those numbers will likely have more to say about the fate of the nation than the outcome of today's big dog and pony political show. For the record, if we get Senators McCain and Clinton, you can rightly feel that you have a choice that reaches new lows in the tweedledum tweedledee sweepstakes.

Now back to last week's theme, which distilled, may have seemed to be on the hollowness of our political culture, but was, in fact, about the hollowness that pervades all aspects of our culture. Of course you couldn't know that because all I discussed were politics and political figures. However, the analogue to the emptiness of our political scene, is mirrored by conditions in the financial realm, where the landscape is riddled with empty/bankrupt investment vehicles of the sort that have been described by the legendary investor, Warren Buffet, as financial instruments of mass destruction.

I, for one, find it alternately fascinating and appalling to see how politics and finance function so similarly here in the U.S. That is to say, they both operate with an endemic level of venality such that items, whether they be investment products or political agendas, that ought never see the light of day, are routinely foisted on the American public, inevitably at astronomical cost. Let me name but a few. The on going idiocy known as the "War on Terror", a sacred cow amongst both political parties, comes to mind as a particularly indefensible bit of balderdash, and sub prime mortgages, and the subsequent bundling of such high risk loans into something one could actually refer to to as a... "security" ought to suffice as compelling evidence of perhaps even greater heinousness from the financial complex. But to name these two epic blemishes of our time only scratches the surface as there are legions of stupefying examples one could easily point to. Of course, the aforementioned abominations to (not so) common sense would not have been possible except for the inordinately poor effort by, for example, the Main stream media, in attacking the thin facades of legitimacy erected to shield such wonders of bad judgement (or worse, ill will) from instant nullification. Well, that's all for now. Please stay tuned as this discussion will be developed further.