Hump Day thinking

Herbert Agar

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."

Dick Cavett

"It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear."

Tallulah Bankhead

"It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time."

Sophocles

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."

Barry LePatner

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

The housing market, in which I participate as my primary business, has fallen apart. In the space of seven days, Wells Fargo (subprime,) ABC and Fieldstone have all gone out of business. We've had loans caught up in the ABC failure.

AS AMERICAN HOME FALLS, TOP BANKS MAY TAKE A HIT

By David Weidner 4:22 PM ET Jul 31, 2007

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Investors in American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. may not be the only casualties as that lender teeters on the brink of liquidation.

Wall Street banks may also be on the hook for billions of dollars in bad loans.

Barclays, UBS, Bear Stearns Cos. and Bank of America Corp. are among the banks that provided a combined $9.7 billion in loans to back American Home's mortgage underwriting, according to the company's quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

American home said Tuesday it has missed margin calls from its lenders and has hired advisers to consider strategic options including the liquidation of its assets. Its shares plunged $9.43 to close at $1.04. See full story.

Among the loans American Home disclosed: a $2 billion pre-purchase facility with the Real Estate Securities unit of UBS , a $2.0 billion credit facility from Bear Stearns , a $1.3 billion syndicated loan led by Bank of America , a $1 billion loan from Barclays , a $1.5 billion syndicated loan led by Calyon Securities and a $124 million loan from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. .

It also has a $250 million credit facility with ABN Amro .

American Home said there are committed credit lines for the loans from Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Calyon Securities.

The company also said it has sale gestation facilities with UBS, Greenwich Capital Financial Products, Inc., Societe Generale, and Deutsche Bank .

Representatives from UBS, Bank of America and Barclays did not immediately return calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Bear Stearns declined comment. A spokesman for J.P. Morgan declined comment.

Officials from ABN Amro and Calyon Securities could not be reached.

Click here for a more socialist or progressive view of what's happening in the housing market.

After days like the last few, I begin to think that the world's coming to an end much sooner than anyone could have predicted, and that it's going to get ugly.

James Cramer of thestreet.com created a buzz by telling people who purchased homes in 2006, people who are facing price declines of 20% to 30%, to walk away from them and default on their loans. According to Cramer, better to default, and preserve your credit cards and your car so that you can still function in this society. Not surprisingly, along with giving such unsolicited advice, he expects a 100% default rate on adjustible rate mortgages financed from February 2006 to January 2007.
Cramer, a former hedge fund manager (before they became ubiquitous) who has recast himself as a media personality, is highly visible on television (MSNBC), radio (a weekend syndicated program) and the 'Net (thestreet.com), so a lot of people heard what he said. At first, I was shocked by his blunt candor, and the alarming consequences for home prices and home mortgage lenders, but there may an explanation that provides some insight into the severity of the current situation.

Note Cramer's emphasis upon preserving access to credit card debt and car financing. As I have noted in the more sinister context of neoliberalism in the lesser developed world, if you are unable to access credit to consume, you run the risk of becoming superfluous, because economic efficiencies created by technological advances have sharply reduced the need to employ people to participate in the production of commodities, as I have observed here (click on the comments to this post over at Democracy in America) and here.

Accordingly, one can interpret Cramer's advice as an indication of the urgency of preserving the ability of people to consume with the use of credit. Or, to put it slightly differently, if people attempt the impossible, and stay in their homes, paying sharply increased mortgage payments after their initial adjustible teaser rates expire, they will destroy their access to any form of credit, and lose the ability to purchase things like cars, designer clothes, personal computers and flat panel televisions. They will have been, in effect, forcibly separated from most of the markets of commodity consumption in a capitalist system, reduced to purchasing goods required for their basic needs and some simple (measured in terms of low cost and ready availability) entertainment items, such as DVDs and video games.

Cramer is implicitly sensitive to the peril, recall his specific remark that people should keep their cars. He is expressly concerned about the undeniable fact that it is hard to live in the US without a vehicle, but he is also worried that people will be unable to purchase cars in the future if they allow their credit to be completely eradicated. He is willing to sacrifice financial institutions, brokerage houses and investment funds involved in the speculative and fraudulent excesses of the housing bubble, so that the other sectors of the economy can survive.

Cramer's willingness to openly do so reveals the severity of the economic crisis before us, but it remains to be seen whether it is possible to surgically abandon the malefactors of the housing bubble successfully as he seems to believe. It all sounds like another manifestation of containment, a term recently used by government figures and financial experts to depreciate the significance of the threat, a term that has now been seized upon by critics as a universal short-hand form of ridicule.

Monday, Monday ver. 983.01

Seems that Comcast's efforts last Friday paid off in some ways.



My download speed is faster than T3. My signal continuity is crap, though, which is why I've got them coming out again. Tomorrow. At 1700. Yuck.

It's late, and I'm whipped. Time to take Jackie out and crawl into bed.

Thursday with the girls

I have dinner and a show tonight with Nancy and Nicole and that's going to be a lot of fun.

So, today I've been working on commercial deals. They take longer, but they're more reliable. And, they're completely within my own control for producing them as packages, which is a good thing.

The other day, while waiting for sanity to return..

The events of last week to me were so shocking - up until now, we've not been faced with direct affront to the Constitution. Everything in my lawyer trained brain has been chipping away at edges. Last week, we had direct affront and direct assertion that "those rules don't apply to us."

I've changed how I respond to Neoconic conversation. Most of the time, I'd try to counter their assertions with gentle facts and my own logic. Now, I'm directly questioning their sources and logic (especially after some kind assistance from Guy in focusing my dissatisfaction.) "Where did you hear THAT? Who said it? Where did they get their facts?"

Why does this work? Because it's a valid form of argument and debate.

BROOKS: But, so you think "OK, get out." On the other hand, if we leave....we could see 250,000 Iraqis die -- you had the John Burns quotation earlier in the program. So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans?

WOODWARD: And the problem, though, is we don't know. People can say, "Oh, it's going to be a disaster." I mean, you've -- you cite numbers which are pulled out of the air -- "10,000 dying" -- I mean that's -- where does that come from?

BROOKS: Well, A, it comes from John Burns. Second, it comes from the national intelligence...

WOODWARD: Well, no, he doesn’t say 10,000.

BROOKS: Well, no, no, but it talks about genocide.

WOODWARD: Yeah.

BROOKS: So I just picked that 10,000 out of the air.

They just make this shit up. We're going to see how long these ideas hold up when scrutinized. It ought to last about as long as "welfare mothers driving Cadillacs" and "illegal immigrants swamping the emergency rooms for free health care" bullshit.

We were talking about the movie "Sicko" the other day, and how it was portraying our health care "system" as fundamentally broken. That group's resident neocon was carrying on about how the doctors would leave, how there weren't enough good doctors now because of malpractice lawsuits, how the Big Pharma wouldn't research new drugs if they couldn't make a profit blah, blah, blah.

If there's even a lingering question in your mind about those points, or if you're still convinced that medical treatment in another country is a danger to your health (as did the lawyer who recently violated a "no travel" order from the CDC and traveled on commercial air carriers with a particularly nasty strain of TB) then you should read this.

Someone was telling me the other day that a hospice worker in a large medical facility associated with the US Government was alarmed that they were treating ten patients terminal with Mad Cow disease, for which there is no cure. This worker asserted that the US Government was intent on that humans were catching Mad Cow in the US out of the awareness of the population, so that the dead cow industry (including steak houses, McDonald's, and the monolithic food production corporations) could continue to abuse illegal migrant workers and pump cheap beef into our food supply. I'm going to do some searching of media articles on Mad Cow infections in humans to see if there is anything going on about this.

Okay, so you can concede that the Neoconic social arguments may have flaws, but after all they're just SO GOOD for the economy. Are ya sure, bunky?

The huge deficits that were created by the government's choices and the tax cuts are bearing down upon us, and it was the CLINTON administration's financial goodness that provided them with the cushion to transfer all of this wealth to the wealthy. And, the policies of this government disincentivize the next governments to change anything.

Just so you're clear - YOU reading this are NOT one of the wealthy persons who received a penny's benefit from all of this "robust economy."

And, and just so you're REALLY clear, the "fix" for social security isn't to have privatization, it's to index the benefits age to life expectancy and to raise the SS tax. A smidge.

If you're thinking that the Bush tax cuts "trickled down" into the economy as did Reagan's, you're smoking that voodoo weed (with credit to G.H.W. Bush, who called Reagan's "trickle down" plan "voodoo economics during the 1980 Republican primaries. Or did you not remember that?) there is now data, numbers, proof that it's not that way.

When Bush took office, the Dow was at 13,851. Most of the increase has been because of the corporate tax rate cuts that, conservatively, have added 20% to ALL stock prices. If you deflate the Dow (which is not an indicator that the economy is generally healthy for normal people - it's an indicator that the economy for fund managers, stock brokers and the investor class is healthy) by that amount, the Dow WOULD be at 11,081 - or a mere 381 points higher than nearly seven years ago.

Now factor in inflation and you have ... ? Not a Goddamned thing. They have not advanced the economy by the SOLE MEASURE THAT THEY CAN POINT TO by squat.

Good job on that voting booth choice there. You keep that sort of thing up, and we're going to be an amusement park for foreign tourists. ALL TERROR, ALL THE TIME! WHOOT! Vote for the Fright wing! They'll protect us!

Bram had a dream about me the other night that I was killed in a car jacking. The next night, Brian had a dream about me that I was living in Cuba - because Cuba was such a great place to live. In his dream, Cuba's current environment hadn't changed an iota, but the rest of the world had fallen apart, so it was now a paradise.

If any single point in this blog made you sit up and think "oh my, well .. " and you're wondering why we're here politically, it's because THIS is all anyone is willing to talk about.



If you're more concerned about John Edward's haircut than you are about what they're doing with your tax money and your Constitution, then you deserve to live in a shithole that makes Cuba look like paradise. I'll send you a postcard.

No politics. Not a shred. Nope. It's safe to read.

Where to start?

First of all, I love my new teakettle. It's pepper red, it's awesome, and it's slower than Vermont syrup in winter. The box had instructions (who knew?) that advise one shouldn't ever use high heat, only medium at most.

You have any idea how long it takes to heat water on medium heat?

However, the teakettle heats the water VERY hot. I made coffee this morning with the cool drip thing I got at the House of Coffee beans and a pot of water which had just been whistling on the stove. The coffee drips down through the paper filter (containing the coffee) and straight into the carafe. It (the coffee) was HOT. Like, tongue burning lava hot.

It was awesome!

Then, I took off the red bed stuff ('cause I was bored with it after three or four years) and replaced it with the beige. I like it. Now, I REALLY hate the sky blue paint in there.

I also swept, and dusted, and tidied. And as you know, railed about politics a while.

Picked up the dry cleaning. $29 for five pair of trousers and five shirts. Talked to the TV repair guy whose shop is next to the dry cleaner. He thinks that the TV can be easily repaired - I'll have to get Bram to help take it over there. He has a gorgeous Samsung LCD television that I'm really in love with.

This evening, Guy came over to hang out a little - he had a programmable thermostat that is vertically oriented and cooler than the one I already had, which tomorrow is going to the church. Vertically oriented, it covers the wallpaper that was behind the old Honeywell thermostat that we replaced back in March. Then, he went into the attic and balanced the air flow through the air handler - so now there is less air going into the front to bedrooms and a lot more coming out downstairs and into my room. YAY!

Larry and I were emailing today back and forth. He always has something going with his friends; tomorrow, people coming over to his place to hang out and have burgers on the grill. It's just crazy - I sit here most days alone (save and except for my computer) because there's no one to play with or hang out with.

Makes me think about moving to Dallas. Again.

Was talking to David, my best friend from college the other day. I was joking with him that someone in one of my yahoo groups was asking why we hadn't seen any new work from the porn star who is the reason for the group - I knew that said porno person lived in South Africa and was hard to get out of there to DO the work. I suggested to David that porn stars have expiry dates, and his was long past - he replied that he was actually going to use said pornpers in a movie next month, and was just then working on his airline ticket.

So, I pitched in and helped. He was quite stunned that I should know the rough airline connections between Johannesburg and the US; but, I do. I just can't help myself.

Saved him about $600.

It's almost time to head up to bed to get some sleep before church in the morning.

How does Bush feel about Roe vs. Wade?

He really doesn't care how the poor leave New Orleans.

So, a few days ago (if you clicked through and read the article about neocons and their unadulterated thoughts) we learned that the entitled, white, wealthy neocons believe that everyone other than themselves should be .. um .. killed, shunned or working in indentured servitude for them. And that Europe and England were overrun by Muslims and were basically lost to us. Well, not us - to them.

Now it's time for you to do some work. And for those who don't LIKE to have to think, ponder, consider, weigh, or evaluate, I'll give you the bullet points:

* The Bush administration has arguably (well, not really, but people will say it's not so) made it illegal to speak out again their policies at all
* The US Justice Department has been completely politicized to the extent that only the intentions of the Executive will be pursued
* The most important courts in the land have been completely politicized to the extent that only the intentions of the Executive will be enforced
* It is no longer possible to bring suit against the Federal Government to invalidate laws or policies on constitutional basis unless you can prove actual damage
* The Executive has declared itself above and beyond Congressional oversight, and declared itself exemption from subpoena, hearing, or testimony on issues that the Executive wishes not to speak about
* The mainstream media with very little exception is promoting the mission and message of the Executive
* The Executive is telling us that another significant terror attack is about to happen
* When it does, you can expect that these items set forth above will be used to suspend the national elections, prevent court challenges to the Executive's actions, take firm control of the media - including the internet, suspend the Bill of Rights (those parts of it not already suspended - just wait until they make private ownership of guns illegal) and likely suspend the Congress.

The actions taken without resistance by the People, the Congress and the media are nearly identical to those taken in Nazi Germany that allowed Hitler to declare the opposing political party members to be traitors and criminals, to dissolve their party, arrest and detain those political leaders and end any opposition to their policies. You should remember that the Nazi regime was the most financially corrupt of any organized government EVER in modern history - something that we here in the US are encroaching on as a record.

But, go ahead and think about what movie you're going to to watch this weekend - it's not like it's really going to change or anything.

A little click through here to listen to Reagan's assistant Secretary of the Treasury telling us that these folks are about to suspend the constitution and make USAmerica a police state. Unless we act RIGHT NOW.

Which is about as likely to happen as me getting out on a ladder today and painting the front of the house - us acting right now.

Of course, what if we all changed course against all predictable outcomes and began to actually scream, holler and pitch fits?

The government could seize all of your property, that's what. This woman's writing about this new tack is succinct and direct, and brings in historical elements that you should be aware of.

Bush Outlaws All War Protest In United States
By Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers 7-19-7


In one of his most chilling moves to date against his own citizens,
the American War Leader has issued a sweeping order this week outlawing
all forms of protest against the Iraq war.

President Bush enacted into US law an 'Executive Order' on July 17th
titled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization
Efforts in Iraq", and which says:

"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States of America, including the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the
National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section
301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find
that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and
foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the
peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic
reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian
assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States
to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in
Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315
of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive
Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004."

According to Russian legal experts, the greatest concern to the American people are the underlying provisions of this new law, and which, they state, are written 'so broadly' as to outlaw all forms of protest against the war.

These provisions state:

"(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of
this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury
in a timely manner of the measures taken."

To the subsection of this new US law, according to these legal experts, that
says "...the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit...", the insertion of the word 'services' has broad, and catastrophic, consequences for the American people in that any act deemed by their government to be against the Iraqi war is, in fact, supporting the 'enemy' and therefore threatens the 'stabilization of Iraq'.

In an even greater affront to the American people are the provisions of a law called The Patriot Act, and that should they run afoul of this new law they are forbidden to allow anyone to know about it, and as we can read as reported by the Seattle Times News Service:


"The [Patriot] act also expands the use of National Security Letters, which are a kind of warrant that the Justice Department writes for itself, authorizing its agents to seize such things as records of money movements, telephone calls and Internet visits. Recipients of a National Security Letter are not allowed to tell anyone about them, and so cannot contest them."

It is interesting to note, too, that this is not the first time that the United States has unleashed the brutal power of their government against its citizens to further their war aims and stifle domestic dissent, as during the European conflict of World War I they enacted a law called The Sedition Act of 1918 and which ...forbade Americans to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, flag, or armed forces during war."

It is curious to note that after the enactment of this new law there has been no protest by any of the other political leaders in the United States, with the exception of the only Muslim member of the United States Congress, Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, and who compared President Bush to the Nazi War Leader Adolph Hitler by stating the attacks upon the World Trade Center could be likened to the burning of the Reichstag.

Today, as the United States faces an imminent economic collapse, while at the same time its war bill has reached the staggering amount of $648 billion, one of the last freedoms the American people have had to protest their leaders actions against them, and other peoples in the World, has now been taken away from them, the freedom to speak and write in opposition to what is being done to them.

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.", said the great British writer George Orwell, but, and sadly, liberty has been lost to the once free people of the United States who are no longer allowed to tell their leaders, or each other, what they don't want to hear.

With this being so, the American people should, likewise, contemplate their 'new' future, and as, also, stated best by George Orwell, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

C July 19, 2007 EU and US all rights reserved.

Neocon jokes

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, by way of Harper's magazine...



Q: What do you get when you cross a neocon with a lemming?

A: Peace.

* * *

Q. How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb.

A. None. God won’t let their light bulbs go out. And it’s an impertinent question.

or

A. None. George Bush predicts the light bulb will be fully capable of changing itself within 3 months.

* * *

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Joe Lieberman are all flying over New Orleans in a Blackhawk, surveying the progress that has been made in rebuilding the city and the levees. As they fly over the Ninth Ward, Cheney looks out the window, grins, and says, “You know, I could throw a thousand-dollar bill out the window right now and make one of those poor bastards very happy.”

Bush says, “Well, I could throw ten hundred-dollar bills out the window right now and make TEN people very happy.”

Not to be outdone, Lieberman chimes in, “Oh yeah? Well, I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a HUNDRED Americans very happy.”

Hearing this, the copter pilot rolls his eyes and says, “Man, I could throw all three of you out the window and make 300 million Americans very happy.”

What if this has been a long-range plan coming to fruition?

Turns out that these neocons who have our country by the throat were going to try it in 1934:

1934: The Plot Against America

I’m back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC alerted me to this, a not-to-miss program on the BBC this morning, accessible over the next several days by internet. It’s the story of the Plot Against America. I don’t mean the Philip Roth novel, nor even the Sinclair Lewis book, It Can’t Happen Here, but rather the historical events upon which these two works of fiction were based.

In November 1934, federal investigators uncovered an amazing plot involving some two dozen senior businessmen, a good many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship. Roth’s novel is developed from several strands of this factual account; he assumed the plot is actually carried out, whereas in fact an alert FDR shut it down but stopped short of retaliatory measures against the plotters. A key element of the plot involved a retired prominent general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 men from unemployed veterans and who blew the whistle when he learned more of what the plot entailed. The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A story in the New York Times and several other newspapers reported on it, and a special Congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they have only recently been made available.

The Congressional committee kept the names of many of the participants under wraps and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out. And one is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent president. Prescott Bush was of course deep into the business of the Hamburg-America Lines, and had tight relations throughout this period with the new Government that had come to power in Germany a year earlier under Chancellor Aldoph Hitler. It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the group with the new German government.

Prescott Bush, of course, went on to service as a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, and his son, George H.W. Bush emerged from World War II as a hero.

The Plot Against America portrayed in this episode of the BBC series “Document” gives fascinating insight into a dark and little known piece of American history in which the nation stood on the brink of betrayal. The role of the most powerful political dynastic family in the nation’s history in this whole affair is shocking.

Then, there's this ...

The Birchers from Digby, July 27, 2007

by tristero

The blogosphere seems astounded that Glenn Beck fluffed a John Bircher. In fact, it really should surpise no one. There is no ideological difference of any importance between modern conservatives and the John Birch Society, something I noted in my very first post, dated February 14, 2003:

In October of '02, I made a speech to a parent's gathering at my daughter's school about the Cuban Missile Crisis. In that speech I asserted that the Bush administration had been mistakenly classified by the press as "conservative." Instead, they are right-wing extremists with "intellectual" ties to the nuts of the Kennedy era, like Curtis Lemay or the John Birch Society members.

What follows is adopted from a post I wrote in September of '04.

The John Birch Society arose in the late 50's and rapidly grew to considerable prominence. It is worth noting that the Birchers were thought to be so extreme that William F. Buckley himself denounced them in the pages of National Review. Among their goals were:

1. The abolition of the graduated income tax.

2. The repeal of social security legislation.

3. The impeachment of various high government officials,

4..The end to busing for the purpose of school integration.

5. The end to U.S. membership in the United Nations.

As you can see, these goals, which were, 40 years ago, the platform of an extremist group on the fringes of American politics, are the all but spoken platform of the Bush administration and the modern Republican party. We have seen numerous attempts to eliminate the income tax; Bush has proposed changes to Social Security that will send it down the road to extinction; Bill Clinton was impeached and Governor Gray Davis of California removed from office; the busing issue has morphed into an intense focus of the easier-to-frame affirmative action; and the Bush administration, on the issue of Iraq and in many other ways, great and small, has worked assiduously to bypass the United Nations and make the actions of the UN worthless (see this notorious article by Perle for a neo-Bircher perspective.).

It is useful to read Bircher literature because, if for no other reason, it will give you insight into what underlies some -perhaps a lot - of the secular components of Bush's worldview.

Birch Society Founder Robert Welch believed that "an elite international cabal...is seeking to establish a world tyranny." In the U.S., that cabal was centered in the Council on Foreign Relations. Of course, Welch and his followers were convinced that Franklin Roosevelt was a communist and that the New Deal was pure socialism. But the Birchers went further. Some of the abettors of the vast communist conspiracy Welch saw as an imminent danger to freedom were President Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles.

But there is more, much more, to the Birchers than just this. At one point, the Birchers had "a minimum of 6,600 corporate-financed anticommunist broadcasts, carried by more than 1,300 radio and television stations at a total annual budget of about $20 million," which was an enormous sum in the early 60's.

Important Birch Society members were close to the Bush family and the close relationship between the families has continued to the present. The Birchers had major sponsors among Texas oilmen, of course, men like H.L.Hunt and J. Howard Pew. President George H. W. Bush was close enough to the Hunt family to say that H.L. Hunt's wife was "one of the loveliest human beings I have ever encountered." In the fall of 2004, the ambassador to Saudi Arabia is James C. Oberwetter; he was appointed by Bush II, and he was a high ranking member of the oil company founded by H.L. Hunt.

In short, the intellectual tradition, if you can call it that, that underlies Bushism is a branch of the conservative movement that's grown directly from the trunk of a crackpot tree. Since the 60's, the heirs to the Birchers dropped the more bizarre claims (no one's talking too much anymore about Eisenhower being a communist), and learned ways to disguise what they say (Dave Neiwert has written brilliantly on this; for a start, download his "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism"). But they haven't lost sight of their end goal: to create an America fully in sync with Robert Welch's core vision.

Take, for example, the UN. Naturally, the role that an international organization might have in world affairs is a complex and subtle topic. However, the criticism and contempt Bush heaps on the UN does not address any of the real issues involved, nor can it, because it descends not from a serious intellectual engagement with the concepts, but from paranoid rumination.

The Bush administration's view of the UN and and the views of their apologists are directly analogous to the creationist assault on evolution. In both cases, there are serious issues and differences to be hashed out (how to respond to genocide/whether the punctuated equilibrium model fits the evidence for evolution). And in both cases, the people who are heaping the most scorn and garnering the most attention are completely unqualified for a serious, useful discussion.

So this says to me that all we're seeing is the success of these bastards (I want to call them cocksuckers, but that would make Fern's point to me when I visited Wendy in 1988, and I won't do it) in accomplishing their aims.

I've also read today that ALL of the military planning has been from the American Enterprise Institute on Iraq. NONE of it's coming from the Pentagon or from the Generals on the spot. All of it through Cheney.

Further to what I posted earlier

Here is a five page article in which Neocons, unedited and observed in their natural habitat, tell it the way they see it.

Compare this long tome to what I cross posted this morning, and tell me whether you understand the writer's viewpoint from this morning more clearly.

The serendipity of the two coming hot on each other's heels is nearly too much to bear.

Ah, Bill in Portland Maine

This guy is someone who's regular posts on Kos make me smile. I'm just going to show you the whole thing:

Iraq will become a Shiite theocracy.

General Patraeus will eventually be thrown on the scrapheap with all the other generals who displeased President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Vengeance Lieberman. A few months after he resigns he'll tell a congressional subcommittee that the Commander-in-Chief is insane.

The next "general" to be put in charge of Iraq will be a private contractor from Blackwater. Within 30 seconds of his appointment Senator Lindsay Graham will praise the amazing progress that "Skullcrusher Tim" is making.

"Atrios" is really Walter Cronkite. Duncan Black is his doorman.

Homes will soon be so cheap that they'll be offered as a free gift with the purchase of a flat-screen TV.

Free gift is redundant.

The first blogger to win a Pulitzer Prize will be either Digby or Glenn Greenwald.

The Catholic church isn’t sorry for its behavior during its decades-long, hierarchy-wide orgy with children. It is sorry, however, for getting caught. This is also true for whorehouse-frequenting "fidelity hawk" David Vitter, a sitting United States Senator whom children used to look up to but no longer do.

America's government is in a constitutional crisis but it's no big deal.

President Bush is to Congress as Cat is to Cat Box.

Democratic candidates who advocate for the poor must be poor themselves or else they're hypocrites. Democrats who promote environmental responsibility must stop using electricity and gas altogether or they're hypocrites. Republicans may flaunt their wealth and have sex with whores without penalty.

It's currently the middle of July. If you blink it'll be December.

Some clips from an article that I found speaks for me

This is from Daily Kos' poster AndyS in Colorado:

The first thing you should know about me is, I have Republican and right wing friends and family.

You should not take this in any way as approving of you, your philosophy, or the way those prominent people among you have destroyed and ruined not only the country, but the ability of some of us to even view you as fellow countrymen.

Nevertheless, I recognize the ability (unlike many of you) the need to "go along to get along".

To me, you "all" have destroyed civility, dialog, and compatriotship. Not me. To me, we are not fellow Americans, but only because you have made being fellow Americans impossible. We are Americans, you are something else. And I will not get into that here.

See, I don't want to destroy you, at least, not as human beings (I may very well want to destroy your political party). Instead, I want you to hit bottom.

So the first, Republican friends: These are business colleagues. I had no choice in their political affiliations. One of them told me, "All liberals should be lined up against a wall and shot", without provocation of any sort. He was smiling when he said it, but his eyes were cold. He meant it. Nevertheless, he and I are quite friendly and that relationship continues to this day. But, you should not confuse a necessary relationship with an optional one. And you should realize, even from these people, my attitude towards you all is informed by those people.

The second: Republican family: I barely talk to them anymore, in some sense, to my sorrow, in another sense, thanks to my final inability to take any more nonsense.

Other than those two categories, I have no Republican friends, nor do I wish for any.

Bill O'Reilly may state that liberals "hate" you. This is a distortion, but there is an element of juvenile truth in that observation, and I will explain the how and the why:

First of all, I despise the Republican predeliction for demonizing everything and everyone who (and that) does not conform to your ideology. It's not just that "you" started it, it's that the leaders of your movement, which you evidently approve of, continue it, with no evidence of contrition, remorse, or even will to desist.

What you may think you are seeing as "hate", I ask you to consider, as a somewhat dimmer reflection of your own hate, reflected back at you. And, like a reflection, it is a projection, the reflection of which will stop as soon as y'all stop emitting the radiation.

For me, as a gay man, it is very similar to a homophobe telling me I'm "intolerant" of them. Well, yes, that may be true, in terms of being intolerant of the intolerant, but only because homophobes tell me things like I should be put into a gas chamber, or a concentration camp. And, yes, I have been told those things directly.

In fact, I take it back -- it's exactly the same.

It's a point of human nature that those you hate will tend to hate you back, or at the very least, dislike you. I know of very few people (even so-called "Christians") who can rise above this basic human instinct to dislike those who dislike you. Yes, the Christian tradition tells its adherents to "love their enemies", though apparently very few of their followers actually seem to observe it.

And here is the rub, and a big part of the reason I consider Bill O'Reilly and all those like him, at best juvenile. What I would ask him: Just what the hell do you expect?

I will confess, unless you fit into the two categories listed above as people I have to deal with, I don't want anything to do with you.

You are not welcome in my home. I will not offer to sit down with you over a cup of coffee. I do not wish to speak with you or hear anything you have to say.

That is not because I am a hateful person -- exactly the opposite. It is because I have, finally, had enough of your (or at least, your political movement's) hate.


We are back, and we're done taking crap from you. So the best thing for your movement to do would be to dump your Ann Coulters, your Rush Limbaughs, your Newt Gingrich's and your Bill O'Reillys, your Michael Savages, your Michelle Malkins, your Jonah Goldbergs .. see? the list is endless. If you think you are better than them, then dump them in the garbage where they belong. And stop demonizing "liberals" as an entire group.

And maybe, just maybe, you should avoid slurs such as "Democrat" when "Democratic" is the appropriate word.

We will do the same, but we need good faith from you first, since your movement, by and large, started the hatemongering as a political tool. Nothing less will do than good faith first from you, for me.

If you genuinely are bewildered at so-called "liberal hate" you have only to read Daily Kos for a while, and witness the daily body dump of right wing hatred and contempt for us, to realize why.

If you want a real dialog, a productive dialog, it is possible, but not under the conditions your movement has fostered, and the conditions it has maintained.

If you want to fix it, and have a dialog, the proper time for a dialog is when you have communicated with your movement's leaders, and reformed yourselves. Until then, I believe, you are simply pissing in the wind. Some, well, ok, many of us are done with you.
If you want to have a dialog with me, you cannot have it under conditions of either direct or proxy contempt.

And, I'm sorry, but that's not unreasonable, or in any way, even remotely, "hateful".

Goodbye, and good luck.

My first dream with MOT and with guns!

So, in this dream, you and I and my parents were driving along in my red car on the I-45 feeder road near Lone Star Ford, and there was a white SUV in front of us that was parked with one driver side door open, and a very well dressed black man standing there.

He glared at me - I hadn't pulled up very close, but there was no way to go around him and I was just waiting.

He pulled out a VERY large handgun and I put the car in reverse and hit the gas. He fired a single shot as I flew backwards, trying to avoid the traffic that was behind me.

Then, we were driving around, trying to avoid the minions he had sent out to find us. A white guy in a blue van pulled up alongside and before I saw his gun, I stamped on the brake, changed direction and hit the gas hard.

We finally pulled into what looked like a rural and nearly abandoned group of lake front cottages and I pulled all the way into the back. The people who occupied one of these ramshackle places came out to see why were were pulling in behind their house, and we all went inside. They were very welcoming.

After a while, my dad suggested that we should go back out and try to go home. We drove home without incident, but when I opened my door - an intuition that something dangerous was inside.

And then - I woke up.

Only able to act in a manner consistent with the training

Yesterday, I drove to work (because it's Tom day - Tom the massage guy.) So, I drove into town (19 miles - at least a gallon and a half of gas plus 1.75 in tolls,) and parked. The car didn't move ALL day until 5:30 when I got into it to drive to the UPS store and to Tom's place behind the 611.

Then, I drove home - it was 7:00, so I thought I'd take the Katy Fwy, since it was SEVEN O'CLOCK and all - it took a fucking hour to get home. Two accidents. And another probably three gallons of gas (all the sitting and idling.)

Today, I'll ride the bus. It picks up on the corner by the door, costs a dollar and drops me off a block up the street from the office. Takes 45 minutes. The car will sit in the garage all day. I will read one of many of my spiritual or self-growth books that are unread on the way in. At any 10 minute interval after 4:00 that I want to go home, I walk two blocks to the stop and in 55 minutes, I'm homo.

For another dollar. And I'll read ANOTHER of my unread list on the way home.

Yet, I'd rather have my car. Amazing how we're conditioned.

Guy is telling me that emotion and other matters are far more involved here than is logic. Well, news flash - I have to FORCE the logic choice. This is why the work with the pattern and other than conscious beliefs are so important - otherwise, your conscious brain doesn't stand a chance.

Many years ago (well, four or five) Jenny Hunter used to tell me to break habits on a lower level - put the other sock on first. Tear apart your morning routine and do it all differently. Clean the kitchen differently. Do your laundry on a different day.

Lord, that woman knew what she was talking about.

What and where can I interrupt the patterned behavior by consciously forcing a different choice, and how will that show up in providing me with other, lesser visible but still controlling behavior patterns that I could force/choose to have be different?

The search re-continues.

Sunday - is it raining or sunny?

Or both? How many videos can one watch in one weekend?

We're wondering when or if the Comcastic technician is going to show up. Ah, he has just called. So, I advise Bram and .. Bram ensures that we get internetic. Or not.

There was a neighbor's non-secure wireless network that has been available from time to time - with about a single signal bar. Fun stuff. Hopefully, I'll be frustrating the neighborhood soon with big bad signal, totally locked down.

Just was amused a minute ago, responding to a potential client on guru.com. He's been pestering me since February. He wants 25 articles, 750 words in length, on various gay oriented subjects he has defined. He wants to pay $125 for the articles in toto. $.00666 per word. Back in March, when I found out that it was a for-profit web based naughty lingerie website he wanted these articles for. I said no. He has asked over and over - most times as if he didn't remember that we had talked. This morning, there was another message from him asking me why I kept sending him back messages saying that I wasn't interested.

Uh - which part of this is unequivocal?

Today, I replied by quoting him $75 per article, or $.10 per word. Hopefully, that will shut him down.

Reading, reading, reading about the various shenanigans in Washington and elsewhere. I'm feeling increasingly that there's a probability that the conservatives, especially those with fundamentalist religious ties, will be swept out of office come 2008. People (not here in Houston, except for the 16 of us that are "liberals") are fully aware that the Republicans are lock step with the President, and they don't like anything that they're seeing. The tax cuts - not working. People are increasingly frightened and insecure financially. The war? Don't get me started. Health care? That issue belongs in the ER.

I think that people are going to reflect on the promises of those who have governed us since 1994 (and don't be handing me that Bill Clinton hooey. He was no more liberal than was Dwight Eisenhower) and realize that it was all bunk.

"Politics is just like driving - you put it in "R" for reverse and "D" for forward.

My letter to Sirius Satellite Radio

From Daily Kos

The liberal channel is called "SIRIUS Left."

The conservative channel is called "SIRIUS Patriot."

SIRIUS Satellite Radio doesn't think you're patriotic. This is an obscenity.

SIRIUS's media relations representative for talk radio is Hillary Schupf. Her email is hschupf@siriusradio.com.

Hello Ms. Schupf -

I am an XM, not a Sirius subscriber. I've been an XM subscriber for about four years now, and have four radios on my account.

The choice of Sirius to define people who believe in any left of center politics and sociology as NOT patriotic is deeply disturbing and inconsistent with the founding principles of this country.

XM and Sirius are scheduled to merge.

If this remains the policy of Sirius, which appears to be the likely dominant entity in the proposed merger of XM and your firm, I can assure you that I can live without satellite radio as I did for the 43 years before I became an XM subscriber.

In the meantime, I intend to inform everyone with whom I have contact that XM does not so label persons who view life in a way that is not right of center as anti-American and that Sirius does. Perhaps that single market distinction can provide XM with sufficient advantage to avoid the need for the proposed merger.

Saturday quiet time

It looks like rain, but not raining. I'm just lap topping away and watching a DVD. Nothing else to do here, really at this point.

So, it seems that the Minnie Phaeton is gone. It will re-appear, probably, but the Phaeton popularity is on the mend. However, today I stumbled upon ANOTHER Phaeton, that's just gorgeous. GORGEOUS, do you hear me? Overpriced, though. Bleh. Black with black.

Bram seems to have found employment here in town, and he's very pleased with those prospects. Hopefully the Comcast people can fix the internet connection tomorrow ... bleh.

Phaeton Phantasm

Yeah, I'm all up for a Phaeton again.

I was reading today - some guy was saying he wanted a Phaeton badly, a twelve cylinder as I want to have. He wanted to know whether they were reliable, and whether it was true that an oil change cost $300.

The explanation that followed made me want the car even more. The bit about the engine compartment being completely sealed from the bottom?

Brian is going to spew his coffee when he reads this, but I am not dissuaded, I want it MORE.

Here are a few pictures of the exact one I've had dreams about driving or being driven in...









Blue leather interior! Rarer than hens teeth for the very few Phaeton W12s that were imported here. And, I think it's a custom blue color on the outside. Gorgeous.

Thursday that feels like Thursday

Last night was amusing. Erik, who I rarely talk to, hit me up on IM and was talking about Houston being nuked - had I ever heard of such a thing?

Why, yes, I have!

That led to a long conversation that brought Bram in, and everyone (but me) was freaking out for a while. I was nonchalant, as I already spent my nights awake worrying about that issue. Anyway, it was a hoot all around. This morning, I could barely drag myself out of bed and get to it. I finally did, and mid-posting the garage refrigerator on Craigslist, the cable modem went out. Knowing Bram couldn't survive without internet access, I fiddled with that for about an hour, and made myself very late to the office. Bleh.

That refrigerator is generating a lot of attention, and I only thought about dealing with selling it after talking to Guy about that when his grandparents disconnected their big freezer, their electric bill plummeted. I asked Bram last night whether we really needed that fridge, and the answer was clearly no.

I just fired another client who was telling me "another loan officer told me the rate would be 6.85%" Adios.

Monday, Monday ver. 911.01

So, it's an interesting day. I started working with a pipeline sheet, which I've never done - I've always tried to keep it in my head. It both motivates and rewards, as it shows what is actually true, and what needs to happen to keep things going. I've asked Tom to help me with that, making it more custom for my needs.

A few weeks ago, I sent an old friend a snail mail piece, nearly twelve years since we were last in touch. He wrote me back by email, and we've been having a lot of fun getting the communication re-established. It's so cool to learn about how someone else saw something and thought of something, and compare it to how it was for yourself.

Went to lunch today, had a great bowl of French Onion soup and picked up nearly $1.1 Million in new loans. Whoopie!

Tonight, Jackie goes into the tub for a soak and a bath. She'll not be happy going in, and will be VERY happy coming out.

And, we have lunch with an appraiser tomorrow .. oof. He's handsome. Okay, more workie must be done here.

Just a couple of late Sunday things...

First, two reviews of Michael Moore's "Sicko." A couple of quotes from the reviews to entice you to click the link and read:

There is one story in the film of a woman whose husband was denied a bone marrow transplant allegedly because it was an "experimental procedure," --- is one a thousand excuses health insurance companies use to keep from having to provide care for those whose premiums they eagerly cashed in the years before their customer got sick. But I think what got me about that particular story was the fact that this woman worked in the hospital where the board of directors of this managed care company also worked. She spoke to them personally. She wasn't just a piece of paper in an in-box. It was a real live person, a colleague and neighbor, literally begging for her husbands life ... and they said no. For profit. It makes me want to howl in pain and outrage.

(Apparently, the film is making the insurers howl too. Check out this post from Michael Moore today in which he posts an internal Blue cross memo. The rep they sent to see the movie and report back wrote: "You'd have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore's movie.")

Moore's movie is actually quite successful in showing that people in other first world countries with universal care live very well despite the fact that they pay higher taxes for medical care (and other things) because --- they don't have to pay for medical care and those other things. The people who live middle and upper middle class lives as professionals don't lose anything --- and the society as a whole gains tremendously because those crippling worries are removed from all, the poor and middle class alike.

Is my sister reading this?

Next, an article about how the Iran-Contra affair (you don't remember that, because you intentionally forgot. The whole thing was hard to understand, no one was really driving it as a news story, and the Iran-Contra investigation committee neatly whitewashed the whole thing.)

Tell me we're not paying for that now. Tell me we're not paying for tolerating a renegade theory of Executive power. Tell me we're not hearing how inconvenient and cumbersome and counterproductive the impeachment process of the Constitution is. Tell me the Democratic candidates aren't soft-pedaling the whole issue, preferring to micromanage the end of the kind of war that the renegade theory of Executive power makes not only likely, but inevitable. (Go back and read the minority report of the Iran-Contra committee. Go see who wrote the part about how the president has an inherent right to do stuff like this. Hint -- he has a lesbian daughter, a bad heart, and lousy aim.) Tell me the press isn't running away from the gravity of the whole business. Tell me you haven't heard some anchor-drone or another sigh about how hard it all is to understand. Tell me that Bush presidencies don't invariably come down to buying the silence of the people who can put you away. Tell me Alberto Gonzales isn't Edwin Meese, except less competent. Tell me that Elliott Abrams, John Negroponte, Michael Ledeen, and the rest of the Iran-Contra Legends Tour ever would have found their bloody hands back on the levers of government if we'd done what we should have done as a nation 20 years ago. Jesus, even Ghorbanifar's back in the news.

It's official - the NYT says 'Get out of Iraq now"

You should read it.

Later today, at 3:30 Pacific/5:30 Central, you can watch the roll out ceremonies for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner - webcast at http://www.newairplane.com. As part of the ceremonies, they're going to have a sequential landing of each of the Boeing "7" aircraft, starting with the 707, through the end - presumably the 777, since the 787 hasn't flown yet.

Finally, FINALLY someone pushes back

Washington on Tolerance

Okay, all of you fright wingers out there - you "strict constructionists" who would have us honor and obey the intentions of the "Founding Fathers" (even though we know that's a load of crap - you're just as willing to ditch the Founding Fathers when it serves your bigoted, self-serving interests.) Here's what the Father of Our Country would have said about the current immigration buzz:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support…

May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

–George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, Aug. 18, 1790 in: The Writings of George Washington, p. 766-67.

Thanks to the "Harper's Index" online for this quote today. Harper's seems to trust that anyone reading this piece should be able to understand the nuance. However, I don't believe that people can get a refined and elegant point such as this without having it slammed into their cranium, so I gave you a little more detail.

Because of course...

Nationalized health care will benefit the terrorists.

Not that the HMOs and big Pharma are terrorizing far more people far more effectively already...

Thursday that feels like Monday

Yesterday, I started the post "Thursday that feels like Monday," and I got nothing but the title entered. So, although this looks like Thursday, it's actually Friday that feels like Tuesday.

Well, here I am OTB, running into work. While sometimes it seems to be the right thing to do to sleep in, this morning, getting up before 0600 and being on the 730 bus was definitely the right thing. I just can't seem to get comfortable though.

It looks like there's sunshine today! Who would have thought?

So much business came in yesterday, it was like a blizzard all day. That was pretty cool, but now I'm feeling like I need to create some organizational structure to keep it all organized and make sure that I don't drop something out. Yikes. I need for Tom to come in tomorrow and help me (or Chuck, hmm) clean off the old desktop and transfer files to the laptop. First one who responds...

And, I need to get some more filing work done on my desk. That's going to have to happen this morning.

I was thinking as I looked out over our water soaked landscape through my bedroom windows today - you know, all of this rain has kept the temperatures in Houston down below 90 for most of June and so far in July; is that such a bad thing? My power bill will be loving this.

The New York Times today has an article about flight delays and how full the airlines are. The next time you hear a talking head blather on about how there's so much overcapacity in the US airline system, answer me this: if the network carrier (United, American, Continental) load factors are all above 85% (as they are, meaning of all of the seats they operated in the previous month, 85% of them were full) how many 150 seat airplanes have to go out with 150 passengers to bring the average up to 85% of the total number of seats sold?

Answer: Most of them.

Had a dream last night about all of this business - in the dream, I just got adjusted to all of this activity that was demonstrating yesterday, and a truckload of NEW business came in. Then, I was being driven around in the back seat of a black Phaeton 4-seat, yapping on the phone. With my sister. Asking her "what is the reason for your call? How my business is doing is no business of yours."

I think I need to engage in some active forgiveness work with her.

Jackie this morning would NOT go out, wouldn't pee or go into the grass when I hooked her up on the leash anyway and dragged her out. After I ate, had two cups of coffee, showered, dressed, and came downstairs to see about catching the 7:30 bus, THEN she was all bouncy and "let's go pee, Daddy!" Well, okay. She's such a sweet soul. She needs a bath, and I have scheduled myself for work all day tomorrow. Sunday, we have our board meeting after church, so I'll be home very late then as well.

She just needs to go back to the groomer. Bleh.

The other day, I got into the car and noticed that the fuel consumption seemed to have jumped up strongly. Then, as I was driving, I was thinking "whoa! When did the engine get so powerful?"

Seems that the can of fuel system cleaner that they dumped into the car a few weeks ago has finally taken hold. Or something.

I noticed last evening OTB coming home that the drivers have adopted a pattern of moving along just around 20 miles per hour. This greatly reduces the amount of time that they're on the brake, and that they have to stop for lights. The driver this morning is going the same way. We're right now about halfway through with the total route, and we only have about ten people on the bus. After 8:00, this bus would be packed to the gills.

More reading about high speed rail yesterday. Wired's article, which I think I cross posted - if not, I'm a-gonna, was discussing the same old thing that everyone is talking about - how the energy savings alone provide enough incentive for government to create the tax breaks and eminent domain to create dedicated high speed rail routes between cities up to 500 miles apart.

Considering that the Feds won't upgrade the air traffic control system, and that the airlines are already at capacity, wouldn't it make sense to append onto the existing Interstate system and add high speed rail?

If that was done, what would it do for traffic flow on the interstate system? Of course, some businesses would suffer - when you make an adjustment somewhere, it shows up somewhere else - the airlines would have some diminished traffic, the gas stations and fast food restaurants along the interstates would have less business.

But, if it reduces the infrastructure spending on freeways, reduces pollution and fuel burn, adds productivity through recaptured time spent on travel, wouldn't those things be good? Socially and generally speaking?

This bus' brakes are grinding like mad. Yikes.

Okay, time to publish this one and see where the internet takes us next.

How would that look, traveling to Dallas at 350 miles per hour?

It's not just me....

Cross posted from Wired...

Hey America, Make With the !@~$ High-Speed Rail Already

In April, a train built by the French engineering firm Alstom screamed along the Ligne à Grande Vitesse, the Paris-to-Strasbourg high-speed rail system, at a record- breaking 357 miles per hour. The whizzing run past Vendôme provided a glimpse of next-gen railway travel, and Alstom execs hope, set the company up for future contracts in emerging high-speed rail markets like China and India.

Conspicuously absent among those emerging markets: the US. Of course, news of the achievement sparked yet another round of well-worn rants, often delivered by globe-trotters who return home after rides on slick Japanese or French trains wondering, "Where the hell is my high-speed rail?" It's a question that betrays a certain naiveté about transit policy — but it's still a good one. If the country has a prayer of solving its traffic woes and creating a more efficient, environmentally sound infrastructure, we'll need some first-rate, wicked-fast trains.

That the US lacks them is due neither to conspiracy nor accident. Distances between major North American cities dwarf those in Europe. (France's north-south axis is barely longer than the trip from New York to Chicago.) According to transportation geeks, high-speed rail competes with air travel only for trips under 500 miles or that take less than three hours by plane. Chicago to St. Louis could work, but New York to Denver? Nope.

Gas is also cheaper here than in Europe and the Pacific Rim. That's an incentive to drive the short hops instead of taking the train. And an even greater incentive: Our roads are almost universally awesome. "We've chosen to sink our transportation investments into the automobile," says planning guru Robert Cervero of UC Berkeley. No news flash there.

But technology and economics may be shifting to a point where regional high-speed rail is plausible. Public transit in general is looking better and better to local governments. New York City approved a new subway line, San Francisco is considering an additional trolley route, and Los Angeles might extend its subway to the beach via parts of town people actually want to go. The same holds for intercity travel. Illinois and Wisconsin recently invested in improved rail service between Chicago and Milwaukee. Ridership spiked. "If you make this available, people will recognize how valuable it is for our urban environments," says Dennis Minichello, president of the Midwest High-Speed Rail Association. Put another way: If you build it, they will ride.

New technology also helps. Lighter materials, improved acceleration, and enhanced communications all translate to faster travel times and lower construction and operating costs. Until recently, the signaling systems that keep trains on course and prevent collisions were installed in the ground along the entire route. That equipment has now been replaced by cheaper satellite and wireless technologies. And there's the critical issue of tilting: Most high-speed trains ride the same rails as standard passenger and freight lines. These tracks tend to be curvy; high speed demands long straightaways. But if the trains are designed to lean inward against curves to counteract centrifugal force, they can travel faster on existing infrastructure — a major cost saver. It works in Spain, and on Amtrak's flawed but popular Acela line in the Northeast Corridor.

To really make a system work, the US needs to build dedicated high-speed tracks. "But then that costs more, and you're talking about expropriating land," one industry insider says. Eminent domain is an explosive topic in the property-rights-obsessed US. On the other hand, we did it for the Interstate Highway System. Back then, it was for the benefit of national security; Eisenhower argued that the roads might be needed to move troops. But today we know that pollution, global warming, and dependence on Middle East oil are issues of national security, too.

The big test for US high-speed rail is now under way in California, and the hurdle is political, not technical. "Lassitude is our enemy," says Quentin Kopp, chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. He's leading the campaign for a Sacramento-to-San Diego high-speed train (San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours!). A $10 billion bond measure is slated for the 2008 ballot, but it's hardly a sure bet. Despite his iridescent-green glow, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has not endorsed the bond. But even if he comes around, rail riders should keep the champagne corked. In the 1990s, Texas officials pushed for high-speed rail connecting Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, only to be squashed by a lobbying push from Southwest Airlines. This fast train thing could work, if enough people would just get on board.

Naw, we don't need health care.

Giving up on giving away

So, I'm totally giving up on finding something in my considerable and useless possessions that may be the surprise piece in "Treasure in the Attic" played out in my own little eBay drama.

I researched a few antiques that have come down to me through my great grandfather, and they're worth so little on eBay that it's not worth photographing them and putting them out there. So, I've been moving some things around, displaying a few more things, and getting the front room a little more organized than it is now.

It's time to just integrate them, or stow them away.

No one does righteous indignation better than this

No one does righteous indignation better than this

Tuesday before a day off

So, last night Matticia is telling me that he's all excited about the upcoming Sweeney Todd movie with Johnny Depp as Todd.

I think I passed a gallstone when I heard it. Johnny Depp, as wonderful as he is, just doesn't strike me as the barber whose voice derives from the bowels of Hell itself. He's just a little whisp of a thing. Can he even sing? Or is this going to be like Madonna singing Evita, which still has left my hearing damaged.

My BG this morning was 87. I've NEVER had it that low, EVER. Not on arising, anyway. Mid 90s, yes.

I've been reading these articles about diabetes; how it's all about the food intake and a little exercise - that the current therapy is driven by pharma and lazy doctors. How wild.

More movement on the commercial mortgage front.

Sunday evening Happyness

I'm watching the DVD "The Pursuit of Happyness." It's an awesome movie. Even if you hate Will Smith.

Where has this year gone? Where has this weekend gone?

Today in church things were again awesome. We only had 12 people. However, we asked for people to stay and help me get the book cases put out, the books moved out and organized and everyone - everyone - stayed and helped out. It's not everything I'd like to accomplish yet, but it's a strong start. Hopefully, next weekend I can get some more things cleared out, and set up an office in the back.

You know, I live on a busy corner. Every day, all day and until after midnight, cars pull up at the traffic light and wait for the light to change. Every few minutes, one of those cars has a high powered thrumming stereo system that literally rattles the glassware in the house. The curio on the front wall that has 20th Century glassware in it rattles like I'm in an earthquake. About once a week, I have to open up the case and move all of the glassware back to its original position.

How is that even rational or reasonable behavior? Why aren't all of those bastards deaf already?

I can't wait until I can get those windows installed.

I had such weird dreams this weekend. Again with a dream of being at my grandparent's house in northern Michigan, in the basement, but this time, the sunlight was streaming in the windows. I haven't really read enough into it. I dreamed about my aunt, she was disappointed in me. It was just .. random and hard to understand.

I finally set up the church's merchandise store. I worked on the Fabulair merchandise today.

Bram was suggesting he wanted to get a black schnauzer. Uh ...

Chuck and George have a new roomie who's a landscaper; I think that this week, he's going to come out and design me a new front patch. That will be great.

So much to accomplish this week. I'm looking forward to having Wednesday off - I'm just going to sleep.

Just what if ....

Here's a video of the Shanghai Maglev train. It only travels from the airport to downtown. At 431 km/hour. 273 mph.



Just what if ..

Let's just say that the Texas high speed rail project was brought back to life. And, let's say for sake of argument that said rail triangle was constructed - and, to quell the Negative Nancies that bitch about this rail triangle slaughtering inattentive soccer moms in their Suburbans and kids with learner permits at grade crossings - let's just say that it was constructed on elevated tracks.

Notice in the video that it takes the train fewer than three minutes to get up to full speed. The whole trip is 22 miles - about that from downtown Houston to the Woodlands, and lasts about seven minutes.

Imagine for a minute that you got onboard the train in downtown Houston. If you don't live in downtown houston, you took a connector up from Friendswood, or Pearland, or Katy, or Sugar Land. You walked over to the train, and you hopped onboard.

And sat down.

The train pulls out from the station, and you're sitting there with your laptop, or your latte from Fivebucks. While the train picks up speed, you notice that traffic on I-45 north isn't jammed up like it always is .. well, not quite so badly.

And, seven minutes later, the train slows down and stops in the Woodlands. A few people get off, and a few more get on. The train pulls out.

Let's say that this is at 7:30 in the morning, and you have a meeting in Dallas at 9:30. You left the house at 6:30, and took the car from your home in Royal Oaks to the Hillcroft Transit Center, which took you about 20 minutes on the Westpark Tollroad, and about 17 minutes if you took the light rail from Kirkwood to the HTC. The light rail from HTC to the downtown station takes another 15 minutes. Plenty of time to grab a latte from Fivebucks, which has a concession in the terminal.

And, from the Woodlands, we have 211 miles to go to downtown Dallas.

Four minutes up to speed, and you've passed through about 15 miles - 71 minutes later, you're pulling into the Dallas downtown rail station.

The taxi stand is only some 400 steps from the train platform, so you hoof it out to the cab line, and grab a cab to the building on Central in which your meeting is being held. 25 minutes in the cab, and you're walking out on the dot to take your meeting.

After your meeting, you grab a bite, and cab it back to the station for the 2:10 train back home.

At 3:30 you're in downtown Houston. You walk to another platform, get on the rail back to your office in Greenway Plaza, and at 3:45, you're walking into the lobby at 11 Greenway, heading for the elevator.

Compare this to how we do it now.

Southwest, come the end of August, will have 30 flights a day between Houston and Dallas/Love. Everyone's convinced that Houston Hobby is the best airport in the city (except for those who fly a lot) and so, we'll start out leaving the house.

Your meeting is at 9:30, and from Dallas Love to Central and, say, Throckmorton, that's going to take twenty minutes by cab. So, you have to arrive before 9:10. You need to leave a little time on the arrival end to wait for all of the people in front of you who were in boarding group "A" to unload their bags, skis, laptop cases and baby seats and de-plane. So, you need to be in Dallas by 8:55ish.

Scheduled block to block times from Hobby to Love are 55 minutes, so you need to be on the 8:00 a.m. flight.

It's a weekday, so you'll need to be at the airport at least by 7:15 to clear security. You printed your boarding passes online, so you don't have to check in anywhere, just get there and stand on queue with everyone else in the "B" boarding group. This is really cutting it close though, 45 minutes, so you plan on being at Hobby at 7:00 a.m. for the 8:00 a.m. departure.

Now, from Royal Oaks, we're going to assume that the rail is available (apples to apples and all) so you can either take your car (Westpark tollroad to US 59 to I45 south to the airport exits - give it 45 minutes if you're REALLY confident) or take the rail into town (37 minutes) and then out to Hobby on the rail line - another 20.

So, you're leaving your house at 6:00.

This is assuming everything works as it should. If it's thunderstormy - you're late in Dallas. If there's ice - you're late in Dallas. If it's raining and you took the car - you're missing your flight and you're late in Dallas.

But, everything goes as it should. So, you're saving a good thirty minutes on trip time up to Dallas this way. Time at home. Sleeping in.

While you're on the train, you're laptopping it. The ride is as smooth as sitting at your desk. Thundershowers? It provides visual interest through the windows.

Now, let's look at the return. Remember, on the high speed rail, we're back at the office at 3:45.

So, we leave lunch at 1:30. Our meeting mate in Dallas gives us a ride over to Love. We get there at about 1:50, so we can catch the next flight out at .. probably 2:30, giving us a little time to clear security. We push back, wheels up and we're at Hobby at 3:30.

Are you seeing where we're going here?

3:30, you stand up with all the other lemmings, and wait to de-plane. You head out to the light rail, back downtown and it's now 4:10. Change trains, and you're at the office 4:30ish.

You've saved one hour and twenty-five minutes today. The frustration level is also much lower.

What could you do with an extra hour and twenty-five minutes, not to mention being able to work the entire ride up and back, because you don't have to stow your laptop for takeoff/landing?

How many cars would it take off the roads?

What stands in the way? Well, several things. Firstly, Texas is all about private enterprise, and private enterprise is all about getting the money for free from the government. Secondly, unless the real estate developers here can figure out a way to make money on it, it's unlikely to gain much lobbying support.

Then, there's Southwest Airlines, who will definitely lobby against having their Texas Triangle business taken away from them. Why?

Southwest has 30 flights a day each way between Houston and Dallas. That's 8160 seats a day, and they're usually full. Their financial gross from that one city pair operation is approximately $563,000 a DAY. $180,172,800 a year, if you only look at weekdays.

That's money that's worth fighting for.

Think of the major cities separated by a few hundred miles which could be successfully paired with high speed rail.

London car .. how to fight illegal parking?

Who knew Abba could explain Iraq?

I've reached that milestone

I guess it's the final nail in the notion that I'm young and indestructible. The doctor today put me on blood pressure medication.

Not that I'm hypertensive, exactly, just sort of. My BP usually runs about 130/90. My heart rate is also a little high at 85.

Hm.

My letter to NPR

A few days ago, we had a storm related power outage, and my trusty clock radio needed to be reset. I had failed to get all the settings down, and I forgot to reset the morning alarm to KUHF, my local Public Radio station.

The last three mornings, I've been waking up to a shrill, mechanical "beep, beep, beep."

This morning, I awoke and I realized I was in a better mood on arising than I have been in many months.

Of course, I had to reflect on this a moment.

I am now free of listening to endless, pointless "news" about Iraq. That's what has elevated my mood. I no longer have to listen to car bombings, the pointless deaths of our soldiers, the posturing of our administration and the "loyal opposition" who offer no opposition at all to this illegal, senseless, horrific nightmare.

And since I live in a state in which there is no point to calling one of my fright wing Congressmen, I am free of the frustration of being able to do nothing about it at all.

I also realized that I've chosen to ride public transit four days a week, and my afternoons no longer lend themselves to listening to "All Things Considered" as I sit in bumper to bumper traffic.

Ditto with the input restrictions on listening to the same pointless recitation about Iraq.

And my mood is greatly improved.

So, I have now officially given up my mornings with "Morning Edition," and my evening drive times with "All Things Considered." Until it's over.

Ignorance is indeed bliss.

Wasn't I just saying this?

From the thecarlounge.net, which is a great little news source - snarky and fun, and loaded with up to the minute information.

Brian's friend Wes is the author - he's awesome. In fact, I want all of you to go and start reading thecarlounge.net so that he keeps publishing it. I'll wait.

The 1970 booklet from China entitled China Tames Her Rivers is full of eye-poppingly extreme Communist propaganda, but every word of it was meant seriously, including these: "There were early attempts by traitors to hoodwink the people with such decadent Western notions as "put technique first" and "place specialists in charge of engineering." These traitors were swiftly dealt with."

Mao had a deep-seated loathing for engineers and other intellectuals, and so did everything he could to minimise their contribution to Chinese society. In the so-called Great Leap Forward, intellectuals were rounded up and shot, and Mao (who didn't know a thing about metallurgy) ordered farmers to quit farming and instead build small coal smelters on their land, melt down their farming implements and turn them into raw steel. He thought this would act as a springboard for China to have a sudden industrial revolution. What actually happened was a sudden lack of food because nobody was farming, a sudden lack of farm implements because they'd all been melted down, and a sudden glut of utterly useless metal goo that couldn't even remotely be called steel. Vast numbers of people starved to death.

So, culturally, China not only has no history of valuing Western "quality" and design as we know them, but they actually have a strong history of violently devaluing them. They will emerge from this, but it's going to take a very long time. Unfortunately, Western MBAs don't want to wait, and the collateral damage includes mislabeled glycol being sold as glycerin, melamine being stuffed into dog food, and this: The Detroit News is reporting that federal safety officials have ordered over 450,000 tires made by Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. recalled because corner-cutting during assembly can lead to complete and catastrophic tread separation. The tires were sold for light trucks under the brand names Westlake, Compass, Telluride and YKS in a variety of 15 and 16-inch sizes. The recall affects all tires sold because the manufacturer "failed to provide information that would allow [the US distributor] to determine exactly how many tires, and which batches, have the problem."

Here's the news article from the Detroit News. The website (thecarlounge.net, remember?) has a cool picture of what this tread/corner separation looks like.

Monday, Monday .. donde esta la autobus?

Took the bus this morning. Apparently, white people don't ride the bus when it's raining. Personally, not having to get all jacked up about people doing stupid stuff when the road's wet is just dandy with me. I only waited outside for about four minutes before said bus rolled up, and so I'm just damp.

And, I'm just all read up and out. In a moment, I'm going to close most of the web browsers that I use all day long and focus on the tasks that I have on my pop-up task list.

After I pay some bills.

If you're wondering how we know that someone else is gay, read this.

Okay, so blah blah blah blah .. I hate sunty behavior. That's French, with the cedilla. Enough on that subject.

Bram was chasing asian boys until about 0500, and when he got up and out, it was nearly 11:00. He was freaked out to find my car in the garage. "Did you take the bus?"

Yepper.

So, things are happening here. Five new loan applications today alone, it seems.

More on the "to do" list.

What's up with all you that have blogs

and write in them about once every twenty days? Or every year?

If you started a blog and you aren't interested in maintaining it, just close the damned thing down. Find that link that says "delete this blog" and nuke the thing.

That will prevent me from having to go, hopefully, to see whether MAYBE you wrote in your blog.

Just uninstalled a whole bunch of software on the laptop that were duplicates, useless or cheesy - the lappy is now very zippy as compared to before. That's awesome!

Here's a great blog post on the state of the "liberal" media and people's general unconsciousness about what the government is up to:

Qui Tacet Consentit Hotlist
by Devilstower
Sun Jun 24, 2007 at 04:52:46 PM CDT

The Sunday paper arrived by my mailbox carrying its usual heft of ads, sports, and television schedules. Above the headlines on the front page was the story of a man who killed his wife and kids, and was foolish enough to not only do so on the basis of the plot from a popular TV crime show that aired the previous week, but to base his murder scheme on a plotline in which the murderer was caught. The rest of the front page was taken up with a story of religion in baseball, the difficulties of a local museum, and a study on mass transit. Nothing too unusual.

In the meantime, we have a Vice-President who has declared his independence from law and regulation, and a President who, far from reigning in in this ridiculous Constitutional overreach, has decided to play me too, even in reference to regulations that explicitly address the office of the president and vice president.

Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, "because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should."

In the ultimate evolution of Nixonian dogma, they are quite blatantly asserting that the rule of law may be ignored, and that the president and vice-president obey only at their own discretion.

Did you know that members of the St. Louis Cardinals often stay after the game to talk to fans about faith? Or that Paris has agreed to have an interview with Larry King? Or that Conservapedia states that the Pleistocene is a "theoretical" period of time? All those stories made the "A" section of my Sunday paper.

There have been some voices raised that the we are nearing a constitutional crisis. That's not true. We are in a constitutional crisis. And to lose this fight, we don't have to land in jail. We don't have to see troops on the street or get a midnight knock on the door.

People are still speculating over the meaning of the Soprano's finale. A rare monkey was born at the Tokyo Zoo. Colin Powell is coming to town to give a motivational speech.

We have only to worry about the events of everyday life. We have only to flip on the tube. We have only to be silent. Qui Tacet Consentit -- silence implies consent.

Toward the page of section A, there's a story on more soldiers losing their lives in Iraq. That's sad, but look there's a bit on how Peru has lowered the age of consent to 14, and a human interest piece on the struggles of Muslim detective in France.

Every paper that is not running this story on the front page, every day, is providing a blessing to the administration's actions. Every television station that wastes a minute on celebrity gossip, is complicit in the destruction of democracy. And every one of us not actively protesting these actions is passively supporting them.

There's a review of the newest model from Saturn in the auto section, the business section mentions that gas is below $3 nationally, and just look at those ads! Some department stores are already discounting summer merchandise

Meteor Blades has already given you a terrific insider's history of the protest movement during the Vietnam era, and told you about Iraq Moratorium Day, the series of protests that are planned to start in September. I plan to participate, and I hope you will, as well.

There's a long section in News Watch about how we may have no choices but New Yorkers in the election. The Midwesterners interviewed for the story don't seem too thrilled about it. And hey, the city museum had a two-headed hermaphroditic albino snake. How cool is that? Oh, but it died.

But don't wait for September. If you already belong to a local group, keep participating, if you don't, then join. And even if you're not out involved in a formal protest, conduct a constant, personal protest. It can be at your school, at your church, or at the copy machine, but whenever opportunity allows, make it clear that you do not consent. Make it clear that this is not okay with you. It's not ordinary. It's not something that "all politicians do." It's not business as usual. Do not be silent.

Where's that movie schedule? I think we could still catch a flick this afternoon.

This is something that's been bothering me lately

"Today's oral hygiene tip: Don’t brush your teeth---you never know what you're puttin' in there. The Colgate-Palmolive company is warning consumers about counterfeit Colgate toothpaste that may contain a toxin commonly found in antifreeze. On the bright side, you can make all your dental appointments at Jiffy Lube."
---Stephen Colbert

So, we know that Chinese manufactured protein stock was used in dog food, cattle food, and human food - and that this protein stock was contaminated with melamine to increase the protein values. Melamine is toxic to mammals ..

We also see that one of the most popular cars in Europe, one which my friend Brian tells me is the best that the Chinese auto industry has to offer, crumples up like a cheap tissue when run through a standard barrier crash test. Actually, it crumples up worse than a Pontiac Montana mini-van, which is pretty amazing..



Here's my concern - we're allowing nearly unrestricted Chinese imports. More importantly, Chinese and third-world manufactured components are entering into our supply chain, wholly uninspected and unregulated, and are being used by domestic manufacturers in products that we have been conditioned to trust over decades. These products can now turn out to be toxic, without our having any prior choice over our purchase decision - we won't KNOW who's using uninspected and unregulated Chinese feedstock in the supply chain.

What other toxic or dangerous products have we now allowed into our stream of commerce, replacing or comprising safe and healthy products we have long come to expect were monitored and secured by our own Government?

The cost of globalization seems to be to bring down the regulated standard, bring down the wage base, bring down the health and safety, and bring down the quality of life to the lowest common denominator dictated upon us by countries such as China which are wholly unregulated.

Monday, Monday ver 892.01

Why do I bother? That was Brian's question just now.

Because I'm a fracking idiot, I guess - that's the only decent answer.

I'm down to just seven pieces of paper on my desk; I need to go swap out a light bulb at Lowe's, pick up my prescriptions and go home. And maybe drink a bunch of vodka.

A dressed up and no where to go

So, I did my usual Saturday thing yesterday; laundry, cleaned up some, did this and that. My phone's been acting up again, and it seems that I have a bunch of voice mail messages, but the silly thing hasn't rung, nor has it got any calls in the call log from about half of these voice mails.

Today, I did the church thing again; I was RED hot on the podium. Afterward, a few of us hung out and we hung up some artwork, the mirrors in the bathrooms, two whiteboards, and cleaned out several cabinets and moved some book cases. It felt good; more needs to be done.

I still can't find my tuxedo pumps. I'm thinking of going up into the attic and seeing if they somehow got lumped into some of the christmas boxes or something. I only have another day or so to find them. Assuming.

The formal dinner thing is Friday night; I don't really have a tux, and I don't have a date, since Tom won't wear a tux and doesn't want to go and I can't think of anyone else to ask (that would say yes.) Bleh. I'll get talked into going and who the heck knows what's going to happen.

I also have a thing on Thursday night, Tuesday night, and .. YAGH!

I will survive. It's pride next weekend, and I think I'm going to retreat into my space since it's my usual Sunday off. I think.