Guest Post: Bunner's 2 cents

The following doesn't vary much from the way I feel about our slide into national insolvency. So rather than write a post myself, here y'go, y'all:

Money started out as a convenient form of exchange. It's become an adversarial construct, a tin deity and the scoreboard for our existence. We can pretend it's still working for us, but it's become a lever that - as the length and stiffness of that lever expands for the haves - is used to pry us from what little hard wealth we have. 14,000,000,000,000.00 in debt notes is a stupid thing to trade anything for.

You can harrumph and wave your made in China flag and wait for Michelle Bachmann to lead you to the promised land of loonies and pray to Bill O'Reilly and keep crushing those aluminum cans but the pooch has been hosed and we're holding the bag for these junk notes.

We need a concise game plan that includes a lot of hard and fast changes to how we allow businesses to function, who gets to do what and to whom and for how long or the hard and fast change will come via a molotov cocktail when there's no more malarkey to sell and the curtain is pulled back from the man in the booth. This - shit - isn't - working - anymore. Pretending it is has put us in this sack.

This is cut point for America, y'all. With or without me or you and recess is over. So if anybody has some useful ideas that don't include guillotines or mathematically gymnastic bar graphs that add up to "shut up and don't pester the wealthy", I'm all ears. Cause I don't want to see riots in the streets, either. But this shit is way past band aids and if we don't waylay the getaway car, we're gonna be left with ashes and whatever we can grow in that corner lot where those small shops used to be. I got nothing against wealth. How you got it and what you do with it matters, not the wealth itself. I got a huge problem with pirates and thugs. Don't you? .02 USD.

- by that Internet entity known as "Bunner."

ANY Business?

Is there any substantive business before the U.S. Congress from which they cannot find a meaningless diversion, usually lasting a week or more? Now we have the seemingly chronic disease of the "Age of Apology" rearing its sordid, mendacious head once again. There's no need for a reference, the actors and the script don't matter. Someone is always demanding an apology of someone, for the sole purpose of being able to use the word "unforgivable," then running it into the ground, for the sole purpose of distracting attention from the fact that there's nobody at the helm.

I contend that there is increasingly little public business in this country, only a meaningless carnival sideshow. The average person doesn't really think a whole lot about what goes on in the halls of government, and is cautious and reluctant to say anything unless it directly bears on their interests or situation. Therefore a broad general fault running through the life of their society generally remains invisible until it can no longer be ignored. Then, the result can be an upheaval, sometimes with irreparable results- and in the aftermath, no one will understand where it came from, let alone take any responsibility for it.

A severe fault once lay beneath our society, stemming from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution with slavery still intact. It was ignored until there was division, and one that could easily, given slightly different parameters, have meant the end. However, society was reassembled, however imperfectly, and reformed since.

I am no longer certain that there is a social climate in this country that will accept currently needed reforms (this involves NOTHING that any contemporary politician will discuss), and that perhaps only another crisis is possible. If this should occur, how we will survive it with the current class of professional politicians in office is something I cannot begin to imagine.

Speaking Ill of the Ted

The last of the Kennedy dynasty / disease has passed from view, except for the endless retrospectives on various news shows and cable "history" channels. I told myself that I would refrain from comment, but given the outpouring of pure hyperbole, hysteria, and nonsense on this most dear of topics to Americans, how can I?

First, there is the irony, dear to my heart, in the death not only of the last of Joe & Rose's sons, but of his ambitions for them. The lust for power at any price has ended in dust, more graphically than in any case since the end of World War II. This is as it should be; such a family always represents danger to a republic, and I like to imagine that I still live in one.

Then there is the sordid exemplar of the myth that any boy can succeed to high office in the United States- despite the most egregious bad character imaginable, in a career fueled (and kept alive) by the application of periodic applications of the family fortune and political influence.
If we need to look to Ted Kennedy in his passing as any sort of accomplished politician, then it is indeed a measure of how far we've sunk, and how crowded our national life is with politicians- and how void of statesmanship.

Still- Requiescat in pace, if only so the whole sorry business his life and times may be forgotten as quickly as possible. I intend to try.

{Note: After reviewing the above post, it may well be that my original motivation -that I needed to do another post before August passed from view- was the only worthy one. Nevertheless, I'll let it stand.}

Just Like Magic

We abruptly have commercials on national TV for "NORML," an organization seeking the instant high ground portraying marijuana use as "norml." It's really obvious we've entered a time when all sorts of people, having had all manner of extravagant promises made to them, are now in "collect mode." No questions about the ramifications of all this......it's going to save our economy, clear out the prisons, rectify yet another of the thousand thousand historical injustices that translate into "keeping us from doing whatever we bloody well want."

Bertolt Brecht wrote that the motto of The City of Mahagonny was "Do it."

The Chump Factor

The outgoing Governor of Illinois, "Little Rod," and his appointee to the Senate, former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, have succeeded in making chumps of a considerable fraction of the top national Democratic, uh, "leadership," and this before the games truly begin in 2009.

Harry Reid qualifies as Top Chump for announcing a priori that Burris would not be seated if he was appointed because Blagojevich is "tainted." Funny how that word doesn't appear in the Constitution.

President-Elect Obama qualifies as Fellow Traveler Chump for his knee-jerk endorsement of Reid's pronunciamento.

Rules Committee Chair Feinstein is nominated Craven Folding Chump for whining to Reid that he had to back down the moment some obscure Illinois politician flipped over the race card in the matter.

Dick Durbin, Illinois' other Senator, simply played Follow-Along Chump, but he was a chump already.

Ten minutes' reflection at the start of this whole episode would have shown anyone with a grain of common sense that Burris' appointment needed to be considered on its merits- but noooooo. These are the people heading the majority party running this country. But I'm not worried........

A Sentiment for Election Eve

Since I already have something in mind to post tomorrow, today I thought it would be appropriate to juxtapose a comment to the frantic exhortations of the last days prior to the election. "There is no party that is suited to govern except- US." "There are all the incipient disasters you can think of in voting for anybody except- US." "Grass will grow in the streets of thousands of cities and towns in the United States* unless you vote for- US." And so forth.

The truth, for my money:

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

-Lord Acton, Letter to Mary Gladstone, 1881

The Constitution of the United States was designed -and by very intelligent men- to accomplish several goals, among them that of denying to any party, group, sect or interest the ability to seize power in this country. So far, it works......so what's the concern? Why not just stay home?

Perhaps it lies simply in the decision to vote, to assume that particular responsibility. Self-government means just that. It means to take responsibility for one's own affairs, to do one's own business.

Perhaps it lies in the fact that constitutions are not the last word. Ultimately, people have the last word. No one destroyed the Roman Empire. As far as anyone can tell, basically people just got tired of it and.....walked away. In our own time, perhaps the most trenchant comment on this view was made by Judge Learned Hand:

“I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”

*Warning of what would happen if FDR was elected in 1932.

Who's Faking Now?

The Chinese have been accused of "faking" the Olympics. I saw this reported on Fox News this morning by very earnest news-readers, all couched in the context of exploiting two poor little 7-year-old girls.
Leaving to one side the fact that the little girls will be completely unable to even understand why the producers involved performed the lip-sync, I find it one of the most richly ironic issues to make the news this year that the televised media is accusing the Chinese -or anyone- of televised fakery, since ALL televised news deals in fakery 24/7.

Are significant numbers of stories on national news relating to such persons as Miley Cyrus, Madonna, Michael Jackson, et. al., ad infinitum, anything but the most abject fakery?

Is employing grinning fools like Steve Ducey on Fox News, solemnly telling me that stories like the man who taught his pet rabbit to swim in his pool is "news" anything but fakery?

Is the array of meaty, loudmouth suits employed as TV "attack dogs" like Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Neal Cavuto, and Keith Olbermann anything but distasteful and low-rent fakery?

Are all the pairs of expensively waxed legs dressed in short skirts, displayed daily with crotch pointed at camera, topped by an elegant coiffure and a mouth in between that can barely read a teleprompter anything but fakery?

To paraphrase Oliver Cromwell, You are all useless, go away...... or at least shut up.

Su Casa es Nuestra Casa

This speaks for itself, not merely about The 545, but, more painfully, about us....as in Walt Kelly's line from Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

The Last Gunfighter

This is sad, in a way....sadder than if Dan Rather had just faded away in thinly-disguised disgrace. Now Dan's suing CBS, trying to blame the sordid fabrication of anti-Bush documents on some sort of management conspiracy. No one's going to believe this, Dan, any more than those bogus documents were believable. Are you doing it because even the slightest chance of winning that lawsuit would enable you to escape the label of poster child for a mainstream media that's as obsolete as the Brontosaurus? A hint, Dan: it doesn't matter any more. The vast majority of those who take anything in the media seriously are over 50, and most will be in the ground about the time you go. That's your real legacy, Rather. Bye-bye.

Is this complicated, really?

I've been reading about as much as I can stand about the mortgage crisis, and its effect on stocks, etc. and blah (all of which I find excessively tedious) and all the complexity and terminology seems to boil down to one very old-fashioned word: greed.
Now the unthinkable (or what greedy people just don't WANT to think about) has happened, and lots of people are running for cover. Shades of 1987, back to 1929, whenever.....all it actually proves is that there really IS nothing new under the sun.

Coming Home To Roost Dept.

"I feel we are being railroaded, and the market generally forced (us) into a corner or even a cul-de-sac. In a free market, we have made Microsoft dominant, and now we have the collective responsibility to reverse this situation to re-establish balance and competition. If I am being driven down the Vista route, then an Apple Mac is smarter money and cheaper."

- Richard Snooks, Capital & Regional CIO, see complete article.

Once More, Justice

Nifong gets his; it's been a while coming, but it's been worth the wait. What is still irritating to me is that the linked NYT story uses the word "fiasco" to apply to Nifong's charges against three Duke lacrosse players. I don't see how the definition of "fiasco" applies to knowingly and falsely accusing the three young men to further his own political career. In a world of complete justice, now that he has been disbarred, he would serve a prison term.