Well here's a year I'd like to forget. I'll be kicking back and listening to all the monkeys out there getting stupid and crashing into each other.
Resolutions? Oh I've kept the one I made several decades ago and that was never to make new years' resolutions. Now let's see what banks collapsed just before the year end deadline. So far nothing but I'll check later. They don't seem to get recorded until later this evening. Until then be safe. Don't do anything I wouldn't do and if you do don't name it after me.
Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell calls us a nation of Wusses after the NFL canceled the football game in Philadelphia after a blizzard was predicted. A couple of things here: First the governor isn't the one who does the driving he gets driven anywhere he wants to go. Second the gov I guess didn't bother to read the advice from his own department of transportation: "Anyone with travel plans should be aware that there is the potential for a major winter storm that could have a significant impact on all or parts of Pennsylvania this weekend," said PennDOT Secretary Allen D. Biehler, P.E. "It's essential for motorists to carefully monitor weather forecasts and check conditions along their entire route before traveling this weekend.
"If a winter storm does strike, our advice is to avoid traveling unless absolutely necessary – for your own safety. If you must travel, use common sense, pack an emergency kit, have realistic expectations of road conditions and remember that if winter precipitation is falling, roads will not be completely free of ice and snow."
Lastly this was, as it always seems to be, about money. By moving the game to Tuesday the NFL was able to have four games in five days thereby increasing their coffers. And would Eddy expect the folks from Swarthmore to trudge a couple dozen miles in knee deep snow to the stadium because you know most people from Chester can't afford tickets these days not after most of their jobs were shipped to China? And most of those Chinese would be walking because they can't afford the high speed rail tickets in their country. So yes I think not. The Swarthys wouldn't consider warming up the Mercedes even if it had all wheel drive.
Wondering what the end is like. No, not the end of life. That's something left for another post. We start out with a bit of education thinking we can conquer the world only to be told that our lack of experience precludes us from the job. Somehow we manage to get that experience and then some along life's journey. But low somewhere along the way the years catch up and we become over experienced. Our usefulness has somehow been erased by a birthdate. Why hire a 50+ worker with 30 years experience when we could hire two 20 somethings at less than half the price or even better outsource the whole operation to China or India? Like Charlie Brown we fell for it. Lucy held the football (hope) up there and didn't crack a smile. Hope for whom I must ask? Was this for our grandkids if our kids can even afford to get to that point?
Four and a half million people are quietly eating through their life's savings. They can't spend money of frivolous things like Chia pets and Clappers. It makes me wonder if it's better to have been born poor with no hope from the beginning or have to endure the slow loss of the current economy. It also makes me wonder if all of that Christmas spending by those who were working wasn't just some ruse. Come and get it because today it's 50, 60, 75% off our regular store price. It sure was great. All wrapped in a red bow under the tree and it was all mine to do with whatever I wanted. And it will usually land up somewhere in the back of the closet gathering dust until the summer garage sale. And yes the Charlie Browns fell for it one more time. They translated joy into pretty wrapped things. After all the retailers had to make room for the Presidents' Day Sales. And the process continues but will the consummate consumers have the funds to keep the game going? There's the 64.99 dollar question. They're not quite as dumb as they were the last time around. They kept the credit cards tucked into their wallets and used cash. You think maybe they're starting to catch on to the master and slave game going on here? Or should I say indentured servant?
Never before in this nations' history have we witnessed such greed as we see now. In the past we've had to spend to get out of hard economic times. There was the New Deal and WWII. That money was borrowed but it was also paid back by those at the top who had more than enough money to spare. So I just have to ask those at the top of this heap what are you going to do with all your loot? Seems you won this great game of Monopoly and came out with all the hotels and the railroads and the utilities. What are you going to do when nobody can afford these services? What are you going to do when profits keep shrinking? Oh that's right just sell the whole operation to some overseas investment company and walk away. But may I remind them that they are never satisfied with the bounty. Like a drug it's never enough. But may I also remind them that every bubble breaks. What will happen when they have nobody left to sell to? We saw that in the housing market and with the dot com bust.
As I've said once before it's all a matter of balance. Too much power or money or rain or snow makes the whole system out of balance. Maybe what this country needs is a corporate enema. It sure looks bloated to me.
So as you rush around buying those last minute gifts thinking that the holiday will be a bust if you can't get scarf for aunt June or that book uncle Harry wanted, stop for just a sec and remember what this was all supposed to be about. It was all supposed to be about hope. Hope that somehow with the execution of one man that by some strange magic those who have been beaten down by life's ills will have hope of a better life. That somehow cruelty and greed would be washed aside if only for just one day. That people would stop focusing on themselves long enough to see the suffering around them and do something about it.
Silent night # Two explosions at embassies in Rome injure 2 Holy night # North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war if attacked All is calm # U.S. press should fear being targeted, WikiLeaks founder says All is bright # Romanian survives jump from balcony in Parliamentnly Round yon virgin # Nude Aphrodite on Cyprus passport causes controversy Mother and child # High-tech Christmas: How to track, contact Santa online Holy infant so tender and mild # Bainbridge Island police killing found…- Seattle Times Sleep in heavenly peace # Man suspected of stealing elderly woman's…- seattlepi.com Sleep in heavenly peace # Lakewood, University Place firefighters…- Tacoma News …
Hat tip to Simon and Garfunkel and Yahoo News 12/23/10
New S.T.A.R.T. deal nearly done. The treaty would limit each country's strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from the current ceiling of 2,200. It also would establish a system for monitoring and verification. U.S. weapons inspections ended last year with the expiration of a 1991 treaty. Scientist back in the late 80s calculated that it would take just 24 of the current warheads to eliminate life on this planet. So I have to ask why do we need thousands of these things when a couple of dozen would do the trick? This program is considered the black hole of a military career. It's where military officers go to be forgotten.
Oil over $90 a barrel Merry Christmas everyone now fork over the cash. And what happened to the $12 a barrel Bush promised? Remember he was going to go over to Saudi Arabia and give those guys a good talking to. Ah such short memories we have. Any wagers as to how high prices at the pump will go?
Don't ask don't tell signed into law I think the military wasn't actually expecting this to become a reality. Now they need to figure out living arrangements and a code of conduct. And nobody thought about what to do with bisexuals. Gad this could get real complicated. Also a certain Monty Python bit comes to mind. I'll see if I can pull that one up later. Hope this works. Tres funny.
Senators press EPA on carcinogens in tap water. There's 31 cities with high levels of the cancer causing chemical hexavalent chromium. If you remember the movie Erin Brockovich this was the chemical we're talking about here. And if republicans had their way the standards would be all but eliminated because after all that'd be getting in the way of corporate profits and we can't have that now can we? I'd love to hold a republican banquet and use their safety standards for the meal. Dirty water contaminated food and plenty of chemicals would make for an interesting evening especially when I told them at the end what they'd just consumed. And when they asked exactly what that was I'd tell them "sorry boys that's proprietary information I can't tell you".
You ever get the feeling we're just moving deeper and deeper into Orwell's 1984? I can't off hand remember all of the details of the movie and never got around to reading the book but it's looking like we're there when it comes to Orwell's basic premise. We have cameras nearly everywhere. Our phone calls and electronic communications are being monitored. All for our safety they say. It all started long before 911. You remember guys trying to fly to Cuba don't you? That was the beginning of the end of our freedoms. With that became the advent of searches a violation of our 4th amendment by the way (no probable cause). But hey it's for your own safety they said. And now you can't even get a job in this country without someone knowing when you ran a red light 30 years ago. You can only hope that the report once locked in a file and now occupying hard disk space is accurate. They tell us to be on the look out for suspicious activity. Just what am I supposed to be looking for? I know when a group of teens are about to pull a prank, but some radical group? A single bag sits on the carousel at the airport going round and round long after the flight has landed. Eventually an employee will come and pick it up and drag it to lost luggage. Should I be concerned? Nope because I know the odds of any ill happening are higher than being hit by lightning.
Ah but to the lies. Draped in the U.S. flag the powers that be would have you believe that these wars we're fighting are the most important thing since the founding of this country. They'd have you believe that this is about spreading democracy in far off lands. Those people are just primitives who need to be shown how to live. (Do the American Indians come to mind here?) Nope what you're watching here is part of the largest theft in world history. Billions and billions of unfunded tax dollars are being thrown at a problem. And billions more are being siphoned off by corrupt officials on every side. I saw this at the start of the Iraq war when pallets of hard cash disappeared in short order. Only one of our guys was caught dipping his hand in the cookie jar. We're told that the Afghan war is going swimmingly well. Yeah swimmingly well for those lining their pockets with our money. There really is no incentive for this to end. We give no bid contracts to Haliburton. The locals get some scraps to play policeman while the elders and even the Taliban are paid off. There's enough money flowing into Afghanistan at present we could have rebuilt the place twice over, but you see they don't want the gravy train to end and they don't have to because they've been fighting so long that it's become a way of life. This very type of behavior has been going on for centuries if you bothered to read your history. There's the massive wealth of minerals in that country but I don't see them benefiting from it any time soon. The Taliban and local warlords think too small. At my graduation a high ranking official from our federal government spoke. He said something to the effect that with a high school education you might be able to break into a train car and steal some of its' contents, with a college degree you could steal the whole car and with a higher degree you could steal the entire railroad. How prophetic of him as this was about the time of Watergate. Little did he know that near 30 years later our nation would be going on a robbery spree on global scale.
