American Autumn

A single snow flake can start an avalanche.

A single drop of rain can precede a flood.

One person can change the entire world.

I know what you're thinking. The first two are true and the third is bullshit. But it's not. Think about it for a minute. I'm sure you can come up with a handful of people who, if they had never lived, the world would not be the same place. Maybe more than a handful. They may have had help, they may not have done it alone, but without them, things would not be the way they are now.

The corporate media is determined to undermine the Occupy protests. They're dismissing it as a bunch of hipsters who don't want to work. Corporate shills Trolls online are calling them communists, as if they even comprehend the meaning of that word. Communist, liberal, socialist, fascist, conservative etc. have all lost their meaning because of the misapplying of these terms to things/people/movements that do not fit into their definition. The mainstream media are owned by powers that wish to see us made into serfs. If you think this is also bullshit, I suggest you turn off Faux News and take a look around. Corporate profits are up 22% since 2007. Why are so many people out of work? Because they're pocketing the money on the backs of their workers. But that's just the tip of the iceberg and only one of the many problems that are facing us today.

Why are CEOs making more than ever when the average American's salary has fallen? More importantly, why are so many Americans hoodwinked into thinking that if there is regulation of a system it won't benefit them? Why do these same people think that regulation equals communism? Or that providing for the poor equals communism? (Jesus was apparently a communist in that case.) Public education in this country is the first thing cut, and when you think about it, from an almost conspiracy-theory-esque sense, that's been a boon to the Corporatocracy. What better way to control the masses, to make them believe your propaganda newscasts than to give them a lackluster education and discourage critical thinking skills. I'd like to believe that it's a serendipitous by-product of unintended consequences, but after a while discounting the multiple "coincidences" tends to make one question their sanity anyway.

You may also think that everyone is just too lazy or too comfortable to do anything about it. After all when we can sit around and poke at facebook or lose ourselves in online games, why would we want to put ourselves in danger of being arrested, pepper-sprayed by police or worse? But always, always throughout history, there comes a tipping point. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that, "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." What happens when everyone has had enough? What happens when a military you have equipped and trained (and that qualifies for food stamps with what they are paid) have themselves had enough?

The congressmen and women in Washington are no longer working for We the People. They have been bought by the Corporations. They have turned their backs on the Constitution of the United States in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Except the thirty pieces of silver wasn't enough for them, and the billions weren't enough for their Corporate masters. It's never enough; they must have more. And that "more" comes at the expense of the middle class. At the expense of US. And that is why things have gone they way they have. People may have been willing to forget about it if it hadn't gone so far, if they were able to have a decent life, send their kids to college and have a nest egg for retirement. Instead they have seen their wealth vanish and the price of their home plummet. They give up 40% of their income in taxes, and their children graduate from college tens of thousands of dollars in debt and are not able to find a job. They have seen their hopes and dreams evaporate. And meanwhile, the super rich are getting richer and pay no or few taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code.

Every single politician in Washington ought to be recalled and sent home. And every single lobbyist should be standing in the unemployment line. Free elections should be called with NO CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP AND NO CORPORATE MONEY. We the People want our country back. We want our Constitutional rights restored to Individuals and stripped from Corporations. We want our jobs back. Those are our demands. We may not be able to Occupy Wall Street because of distance, but we can Occupy our towns. And when we can't do that, we can Occupy the Internet. We are here and we aren't going away. We aren't shutting up. We aren't going to accept serfdom so that 1% can accumulate more and more. We're fed up and we've had it.


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

PS. As an aside, if you had asked me in 1995 what the greatest threat to this country was, I'd have told you it was religious fundamentalists. And maybe it still is to some degree because they are the ones who have been hoodwinked by these Corporate bastards. They are the teabaggers and their hangers-on, funded by Corporations. I however would never have thought that business would become so corrupt, and our politicians so enamored by their money, that our very democracy could hang in the balance over money. Ideology yes. But money? It seems so ridiculous. As they say, truth is stranger than any fiction.

May God Have Mercy On Your Souls

I've got news for my Republican friends. Every single person who is going to recieve unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job, and that's why they need this money. Now I know what the Republicans are thinking, they're thinking, why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straights maybe they could take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe the unemployed can sell one of their yachts. That's what the Republicans are thinking right now. But that's not the life of ordinary people. The 99% of America who actually have to work for a living, that doesn't just clip coupons and live off of interest and dividends like my Republican friends do. That's why we need this bill to pass, because of the 99% of America that deals with reality every day. The people who will lose their homes if this bill doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass. And I will say this to Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children, I will say to them now, may God have mercy on your souls.

And here is the root of the problem. These rich bastards that run everything haven't got a clue what it's like to wonder where your next meal is coming from, or whether you might get laid off when you live paycheck to paycheck. They haven't got one iota of an idea of what it's like for the rest of us.

"Rudy and the Big Lie"

Sounds like it could be the title of a blockbuster movie huh?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*Sigh* It really makes Goebbels look like an amateur.

Oh, and Rudy here is a frickin' mathematician, 6 days is less than 10. Really? I would have never known that.





Just keep saying it.* The chattel will love you for it.

*"it" being 9/11

Conservatism Fails the United States

As in EPIC FAIL. For eight years we had a conservative Republican administration. The conservatives controlled the House and the Senate for most of that time. Their ideology says that they want less taxes and less government. I'm sure that there are some rather thick people out there who think that this sounds like a good thing, until they think, if they have the capacity to reason that is, about all of the things that we have that are provided by our government. You know, the schools, the roads, the public services like trash pick up and water.

In fact if you listened to the Republicans enough you would think that what they really want is to go back to some sort of medieval style serfdom, where the poor have no chance of an education and are held in servitude to a lord, or in this case, a corporation. The mark of a free and democratic society is how educated it's people are. Without public education, nay, without good public education, you wind up with a society that is only fit to serve it's masters. I believe that the founders would be appalled at this.

And California is a microcosm of the bigger problem we have here in this country. There is an article in Time, that I read this morning, that really sums the entire problem up for us.

California's Fiscal Crisis:
The Legacy of Proposition 13

The financial crisis in California grew worse this week as State Controller John Chiang warned that if legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fail to come up with a budget-balancing package, he would begin paying California's bills with IOUs on July 2. The last time the state did this was during the Great Depression...

And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era...

Before Prop 13, in the 1950s and '60s, California was a liberal showcase. Governors Earl Warren and Pat Brown responded to the population growth of the postwar boom with a massive program of public infrastructure — the nation's finest public college system, the freeway system and the state aqueduct that carries water from the well-watered north to the parched south...

The conservative mindset has, yet again, thrust us into what I'm sure historians will decide some decades from now, is another Great Depression. They got us into the first one as well, as I wrote about some months ago. You cannot provide the things that are the mark of a free and democratic society in a modern country, things such as water and public education without taxing people. You have to pay taxes if you want these things that make our lives comfortable and free. It's really quite simple. Sure, the government, at both the federal and local level, could stand to trim fat, you know, like the two wars we're fighting for no reason, politicians who use public money to go and see mistresses in Argentina, allowing no-bid contracts to certain corporations in quid-pro-quo deals, but that's not what the Republicans want cut. That's what they want to spend money on! Meanwhile they seek to destroy public education, government assisted funding for college and anything else that serves the public good. And the Democrats are no better. They need to grow some cojones and put a stop to this shit.

When we stop funneling money and resources into killing people and into corruption, we should have all the money we need for our crumbling schools and decaying roadways.

Or we can just be stupid and let the government continue to cut funding to important things so they'll have all the money they need for the military, so that they can run off and fight unnecessary wars with our tax dollars. We can submit to this and be little more than serfs, we can throw away all of the sacrifices that our ancestors gave so that we could be free and educated, and instead live in servitude to corporations.

Rep. Michele Bachmann Needs A History of The United States for Dummies

First of all, let me say once more for the record that I hate liars. Now, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) might be misinformed. Perhaps she doesn't realize that she's wrong, but I somehow doubt that. You see, these people believe, and rightly so, that if they repeat a lie enough, it will be believed to be truth. If you are going to be in congress, and represent the people, you should at the very least make sure that what you are saying is true. Maybe you're busy and don't have time to research all the facts for yourself, but that's what unpaid interns are for.

FDR saved this country. And for her to act like he caused the depression and then made it worse, makes me very angry. There are already enough stupid people in this country that know nothing of history, and for her to spread lies like this, that unthinking chattel will go about spouting as truth, makes me even angrier.

I'll start with her first point, that the recession that Coolidge faced was worse than that faced by FDR. First of all, the recession caused at the end of the 1910's and beginning of the 1920's was caused by the end of World War I. Factories that had been pumping out items for war, all of a sudden had no market. It took them time to retool so they could start making domestic products again. There was also high unemployment because of returning troops who needed jobs. Second of all, Coolidge didn't deal with it! He didn't become President until 1923, after the recession was over, when Harding died in office. Indeed, it can be argued that all the lax regulation of the 20's that Coolidge and the other Republicans were responsible for led directly to the Great Depression. Another example of a Democrat cleaning up the Republican mess. Mass de-regulation (see the last two decades and the 1920's) leads to a massive crash (like now, like 1929).

Next, I'd like to address her Hoot-Smalley Act [sic] which is really the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. That was enacted by Republicans Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley and passed by the house, the Senate which were both controlled by the Republicans, and signed into law by Herbert Hoover, the Republican President. It has been argued by economists that it was responsible for exacerbating the Great Depression. It caused the taxes on many goods to go up by 60%. What was that about not raising taxes?

FDR created the Works Project Administration, a "Socialist" idea, which saved this fucking country from absolute poverty and possibly anarchy and annihilation. It put people who were out of work, to work on the government's dime. You ever notice the stone work on many bridges here dating to that era? That was done by stone masons put to work by the WPA. Ever noticed murals on post office walls, or in other government buildings? Artists were paid by the government to paint murals. People were put to work building things and improving our infrastructure. In fact, most of our modern infrastructure has been neglected since.

In fact, FDR didn't take office until 1933, four years after the Great Depression had begun. Michele Bachmann is either stupid, or a liar, or perhaps both.

"...as a matter of fact the recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession Coolidge had to deal with in the early 20's, yet the prescription that Coolidge put on that, from history, is lower taxes, lower regulatory burden, and we saw the roaring 20s where we saw markets and growth in the economy like we'd never seen before in the history of the country. FDR applied just the opposite forumula, the Hoot-Smalley Act [sic], which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions and of course trade barriers and the regulatory burden and tax barriers. That's what we saw happen under FDR that took a recession and blew it into a full scale depression. The American people suffered for almost ten years under that kind of thinking."

If Civilization Collapses, I'm Going Deer Hunting

I haven't written in a couple weeks. I don't know whether it's because I've had nothing to write about, or if I've been busy, or I've just not felt like writing.

I was trying to concentrate enough to focus on working on some side projects but I can never seem to concentrate enough to finish them. It's not helped either by the fact that I've found a really cool online game to play. XD

The Hunter is as close to real hunting that you can get! It's beautiful too. Even if you don't hunt, you should try it if only to wander around the environment and marvel at how real it looks at times. It's fairly accurate and gives a good feeling of how hunting really is, as much as a video game can. So, if I don't write much for the next few weeks you can bet I'm probably playing :D

Ah, and now for the rant. If I read one more time that it's all Obama's fault that the stock market is in the toilet because "...the market has fallen X amount..." since he was elected, I think I might scream. As if the previous two decades of mismanagement, deregulation, lax lending policies and a corrupt previous administration (who I'd like to remind you were in power from election day to January 20th), had absolutely nothing to do with the current predicament we find ourselves in. Yes, that had nothing to do with it, it's all Obama's fault [/sarcasm]. People are idiots.

They continue to vote the same jokers back into office because they believe the rhetoric. Republicans, Democrats, they're all the same. They want us to fight over petty crap like gay marriage so that they can continue to dismantle this democracy and strip us of our Constitutional rights so they can make a buck and extend their power. If you doubt this, you are part of the problem, and I'd like it if you'd get your head out of your ass, as the very survival of this country relies on it's citizens to be thinkers, and critical and suspicious of anything the government wants to do.

It's the same shit, just a different day. I don't think anything will ever change. This has all happened before now, and whatever lessons were learned from it, died with the people who learned them. They certainly didn't pass any of it on to a new generation. Well, as my dad used to say, sometimes you gotta learn the hard way. Well, this is the hard way. Depression v.2.0. It's gonna be some interesting times here. Perhaps the lessons we learn from it will carry on to those who come after us? Nah, that'd be too easy.

A Free Fall, of Sorts

If you've been keeping up with the news at all, you'll know that the stock market is for all intents and purposes, crashing. Some economists are starting to say that what we're witnessing could be the beginning of a financial crises that will make the Great Depression look like a picnic. Basically, it has never happened before that everything is falling so far, so fast.

Many people think that the stock market crash in 1929 was a singular event, something that happened overnight and left lasting repercussions. That isn't true at all. It was an overall gradual decline over a few years, punctuated by steep losses every few months.

Here are the charts from Yahoo! News:

The 1929 crash, and it's aftermath (Feb 1929 to Feb 1930).

The 2008 crash, and it's aftermath (Feb 2008 to Feb 2009).

If you notice, there's a great deal of similarity. However, the stock market now has lost more percentage-wise from the high of a year and half ago until today, than the stock market in 1929 did. The initial drop this time was lower, but the overall decline is what is frightening. The initial drop in 1929 was 40%, but by February the following year having recovered some, it was down 29% from it's high the year before.

Last October, the initial drop was "only" 21%, however the stock market is down as of today 48% from it's high a little under a year and a half ago. And it isn't going away anytime soon. If history is any indicator of anything, it's going to be one hell of a ride, in slow motion.

Anyone who has studied the Roman Empire knows that it didn't fall overnight. It was a gradual thing, something that happened so slowly that the people living through it might not have even noticed it until long after the fact. In many ways, Depressions are the same way. We know something is wrong, but we're not ready to call it a game yet.

On the bright side, all of this could have a very positive outcome. My grandmother used to tell me that "you can't take it with you." People are greedy and materialistic, and in all of this there is a lesson to be learned. Money is not everything. Oh, it's good to have for the purposes of having a roof over your head and food on the table, but do you really need another flat screen television for the kitchen/bathroom/garage/etc? Or the latest fashionable purse/shoes/etc? Or a car/house/boat/etc. that you can't really afford? Many people in this country are very spoiled, and in my humble opinion, they're going to have a very rude awakening before it's over with.

Malkin and Her Short Memory

Lay the blame anywhere but where it belongs.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/17/president-obamas-2000-point-tumble/

Ms. Malkin seems to think it's all Obama's fault that the stock market is in a free fall. She states that it's fallen 2k points since he was elected, never mind that he wasn't even in office for a majority of that time.

It couldn't possibly be the failed economic policies of the last decade. Nah, it couldn't possibly be the corruption, the deregulation, the lack of government oversight with the banks and mortgage lending. It couldn't possibly be the Republicans allowing all of the high paying factory work to be shipped to China or Mexico so that their crony CEO friends could make record profits and take home record bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars while using slave wage labor in third world countries. It couldn't possibly be a Republican's fault.

When G. Dubya took office we had a budget surplus, which he quickly squandered. He also squandered a lot of other things too. The friendship and trust of our allies and the wealth of this country are just the tip of the iceberg to what that man and his administration squandered.

Malkin must have a very short memory, because from May of 2008 until G.Dubya Bush exited office on January 20, 2009 the stock market fell over 5,000 points. It went from over 13k to under 8k. In fact, since January 20th when Obama took office, until today, the stock market had been up a little bit on average. Of course, today it fell a lot, and I suspect it's going to continue that trend, as reversing the mismanagement of the previous administration isn't going to happen overnight.

I have a good friend who told me right after the election that she figured that the Republicans would prop up the economy the best they could until Obama took office, then they would not cooperate, and would let everything collapse and blame it all on Obama and the Democrats. That makes for a nice excuse for all sorts of fascist aspirations. I'll leave your imagination to that one.

Perhaps Malkin and her ilk, if they want to know the reason for the state our economy is in, they can go and look in the mirror. They voted for it, and they continue to advocate for failed policies.

The blame lies at their own feet.