Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

I have to say that I am nonplussed by the commentary on Tiger Woods that has been published and broadcast since Thanksgiving Day of 2009. A man cheated on his wife. Whoa, stop the presses. Hey - I think President's have done that! A man cheated on his wife again and again and again. Whoa - news at eleven! And six and five and seven and ten and repeat ad infinitum. And you know? I think a President has done that too.

So this story is not about a man cheating on his wife. And if Michael Bloomberg can be a divorced father of two kids and still be the three time mayor of NYC, then it's not a story about money either. What is this story about? Why is a golfer - for God's sake, a golfer! - being spoken about in such a manner that leads well meaning idiots like Bret Hume to utter - on air, two nights in a row - that this young Buddhist needs to convert to Christianity; that the very act of saying the blessed name Jesus Christ - out loud - will rectify all of the past misdeeds of a golfer (??!!!!) and wash his sins away.

And no, its not a story about religion, because this is an American story and all American stories are about race - that most fictitious of all elements and yet imbued with such artifice that it has been allowed to enslave father, mother and child for centuries and ensnares their progeny even down to this day; such that some of us - and now, TIger knows he is one of us - pretend they can think of themselves as, "Cablinasian". At times, we allow ourselves to wander through a looking-glass and begin to adopt the rationalizations of the Master; that but for our nature as full-blooded Congo, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or whatever the hell a one-sixteenth black is called (besides, nigg- (hey-o! This is a family show), we would be accepted as the full brother of humanity that we are.

Hog.

Wash.

Horse.

Feathers.

I am too old to buy that particular line of cock-and-bull today. You gotta dress that stuff up in evening wear if you think I am going to take that out on the town.

This story - the unfolding drama that is the rise, then fall (and rise again?) of Tiger Woods, is one big, old-fashioned, American party of:"I knew we couldn't trust that negro!" Tiger has been tarred and feathered and run out of town by almost every single one of the corporate sponsors who used to wait on him hand and foot (and some of them probably introduced Tiger to one or two of their female friends, you know - just how the recruiters at USC still do.) So, yes: I'm angry. I'm angry that yet one more Charlie Brown stepped up and tried to kick that football. But I'm even more upset at myself for allowing myself to ever buy into a portion of the hype that was Tiger Woods. He's a man. Men do as we have always done - and if evolution is to be believed, then we are the men women have selected us to be. Do I feel bad for Elin and the children she and Tiger had together? Sure, but this story is not about one man and one woman; it's about one more black man who had to be taught the hard way that he cannot make the same mistakes as other men - other white men.

Not in this country.

Not today.

Sphere: Related Content

Great American Myths, Debunked

I was in Los Angeles on Election Night - 3000 miles from my home in Miami. I did early voting in Florida and then headed out west to spend some time with family, filled with anticipation of what was to come. You see, unlike some, I had fully and completely tossed my hand in with the fates (as documented here for the record). Sure, I felt Obama had a chance to cross over the 400 EV mark, but I was immanently satisfied with the 365-received (I covered my bet with that minimum of 331 EV). So at 8 PM PST, when they declared California for Obama and put him over the demarcation line of 270 EV into the winner's circle as the 44th President of the United States of America; the room, the house and the neighborhood around me erupted into joyous celebration. All around me - and in all communities across the country - Americans were triumphantly passing the torch from the old to the new.

And yet, what began as a whisper on that night ("did you hear? Prop 8 passed. I think it was the black vote that did it"), has since turned into a tsunami of recriminations and remonstrations all with the common theme of - "sigh, well we should have anticipated that black people would bring their prejudices with them to the polls."

Poppycock.

Just what made anyone believe that this particular exit poll was any more accurate than all of the previous pre- and post-election polls across this campaign season? From New Hampshire in January through California in November, polls had consistently misunderestimated how to properly model both the overall wave of voters who were heading to the polls as well as the demographic breakdowns of those voters. But when you live in a country with a media as dedicated to removing daily reports from any historical context, each and every story is reported as though each day begins anew, with no context of what happened yesterday or - God forbid - six months ago.

And so we were treated to a parade of talking heads, each with their own rationale for why black folks behaved so trenchantly, truculently and - okay, I am out of appropriate adjectives that start with the letter "t" - and just what could be done to rectify this terrible, horrible very bad deed? Now, we have two university professors who have conducted a precinct-level statistical analysis of voting data; their results show that - oh, the horror! - black voters were pretty much like everyone else who entered the voting booth.

Here is a little tip, for those of you new to the country: America is a homophobic society. I know, I know, it doesn't say that in the vacation travel logs or the real estate brochures, but its true.

As a country, we put sexual orientation above national security!

So no, black voters don't need special outreach programs, black churches don't need special envoys from the gay community (as if they are not already represented) and we don't need guest spots on "black radio" (as if the commercialized community exploitation devices have any relationship with black radio that was once organically part of the community) offering to tell listeners the way, the truth and the light.

As a country, we need to wake up and let people be people. It is our society - along with many others around the world, to be fair - that has an issue with homosexual behavior. To say it plainly: this is the last area in which discrimination is accepted publicly. One can be the lead pastor of a megachurch, as well as the author of best-selling books and feel free to go on television and say something beyond nonsensical, merely because the object of the sentence is gay people.

Although the press fails to consider history as a component of their responsibilities, we are all swimming together in the same tide. Dr. King used to say that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. I would hope, that in the same year in which we all witnessed the election of the first black president of the United States of America, we could all have just a little faith in the words of Dr. King.

Sphere: Related Content

America, the literate!

I cannot disagree with the thesis of this essay more strongly than the preceding double negative implies.

The author - although he indirectly tosses in an attack on our most literate President of the past 100-years, Barack Obama - overlooks the explicit use by Obama of words to define himself as a candidate. True, for this he was derided by his opponents as "just offering words" or "just making speeches", but Obama showed that by being literate he could still communicate effectively with those who have the deepest and strongest ties to language - the literate class as defined by the author - as well as those who are less well read, even all the way across the spectrum to those defined as illiterate.

We know this is true by simple analysis of the almost 70 million votes received by Obama: he won over 95% of the voting eligible population (VEP) of African Americans; this is the same group that has an almost 50% drop-out rate from high school, a defining factor for illiteracy. Similarly, he won over two-thirds of the Latino VEP; again - another highly illiterate population. And Obama carried the white vote under the age of 45 - regardless of education levels; this includes a significant percentage of the white illiterate vote as well. I defy the author of this post to assess the reading level of Obama's A More Perfect Union speech, given this past March on perhaps the most dangerous of topics in America: race. Had the author chosen to step up to the plate and analyze this data point - as opposed to the sneer he included of "yes we can" reference - he might have realized just how transformative a candidate Obama is to our nation.

Sphere: Related Content

Let Freedom Ring!

Awesome post - but don't kid yourself. The strain of incredulity that can be found in the modern GOP has roots older than the Republic itself. Remember, we were the first nation founded on the belief of a sub-human species. Pardon me, but I tend to rant and toss things about my home when I watch people - especially Americans - point a finger at the Germans and say silly things like, "we don't want to make their mistakes."

What?

Have you seen our Constitution? Have you heard about this little thing called "the 3/5ths Compromise?" Have you heard of this innocuous Supreme Court decision called "the Dred Scott Case?"

Wake Up! It was not the Germans who made it a capital crime to teach Africans to read!

The very concept of a superior human race was codified in this country, through the creation of a "white race" and a whole host and amalgamations of "lesser races" - embodied most explicitly (and most evilly?) in the "black race." Upon arrival upon these shores (and usually upon making a religious transformation from the Catholic to a Protestant faith), a Frenchman, an Irishman, an Italian and a German suddenly became a Whiteman and entitled to any and all benefits therein. The great thing about going through this transformation - and why so many volunteered to make this crossing, generation after generation - is that at the exact moment of arising from baptism in the stream of Belief in the Eternal Purity of White, one ascended the social ladder to be forever atop the lesser races. You might not have had any more money (although you might!) and you certainly did not have a nicer house (but it could happen!), but the one fact of which you could be certain is that you were forever superior to that darky down the street, you know - the one on the other side of the tracks?

Leave the German people alone. Look to your own history - our own history. Until you - we - wipe away the stain present at the founding of our own Republic, we will never know the fruits of freedom.

Sphere: Related Content

A More Perfect Approach

Why do we act as though we are not sure what a President Obama will do with the ongoing conflict that is the Israel / Palestine issue?

He has said many times that he does not believe in doing the same thing and expecting different results; he will not merely pick up the template laid out by GWB or past Presidents.
He has said many times that people can disagree without being disagreeable; he will find those on both sides who trust in that principle and he will introduce them to the dialogue.
He has said many times that change happens from the ground up; he will seek to win over the hearts and minds of Israelites and Palestinians and mobilize them into a ground force for change.

It is almost as though - since we are still in the era of GWB - that people have forgotten the campaign we all witnessed. More than that, we participated in the election more passionately than many of us ever had before. We expressed that passion as Obama tapped into a groundswell flow of change that was roiling beneath the surface of American politics.

Now, I know what Obama will do less than almost anyone else, but I do recall the speech he gave at Constitution Hall - "A More Perfect Union". As I watched him deliver that speech from my perch at C-SPAN, I saw a man dance across the tightrope that is race in America. I sat in stunned amazement while he recognized the concerns of the descendants of slavery, while at the same time he acknowledged the fears of imminent violence that he has even heard within his own family.

I am not Barack Obama - this should hardly need stating - so please do not accept my short summary of the speech. Watch it for yourselves here - http://www.barackobama.com/tv/ - and then report on how these words affected you.

Can you not already picture Obama weaving together a speech that speaks to the aspirations of the people of both Israel and Palestine? Can you not imagine that just as Pastor Wright cast aside the olive branch created and offered by his own constituent, that there will be those on both sides - Israel and Palestine - who will reject the call to hew towards a spirit of common decency?

And just as it did not matter then, it will not matter for the people of Israel / Palestine.

For it was never about Wright, just as it was never about Obama. It was about us and our dreams.

So to will it be for the people of Israel and Palestine. Just as we were moved by his words to change our dialogue and expand our horizons, so too will the people of Israel / Palestine be changed.

Sphere: Related Content

Here it is . . . BAM!

Back once again here is the rhyme animal, the un-can-able . . .

(un-cannibal?)

Have I mentioned lately that I love me some Chuck D? It is entirely possible that we would never have elected a Black President, without the presence of one Public Enemy. Oh sure, Bill Clinton may have thought he put an end to consciousness with his dis directed toward Sistah Souljah (who has had quite a career as an author), but the reality is that it was the cross-pollination (poly-nation?) accomplished by the vanguards of hip-hop that introduced white folks to black folks in ways that 400-years of living and working side-by-side had never before accomplished.

There are many ways to analyze the events of 4 November 2008 and surely one of those lenses is through the eyes of Gen X, those 45 and under denizens of the "we want no part in your foolishness" crowd. I choose to believe that this generation is going to leave our mark on this society in ways too numerous to count. While Boomers looked back at their parents and proclaimed them, "The Greatest Generation", we have been tasked with cleaning up from the excesses of the Boomers and recreating America once again.

Obama talked about, A New Dawn of American Leadership: as we march into 2009, lets get to work making that dawn one of the brightest ever.

Sphere: Related Content

Letters to a young Republican

Or - "Why the Arizona Republic is the world's most asinine newspaper".

They endorsed John S. McCain III yesterday, with the most duplicitous commentary I have ever read published by a major paper. Oh sure, blogs can be silly to a degree of ridiculousness that would astound the average bear, but newspapers generally like to put their best face before the public. I would recommend against reading the drivel they published and to protect your from their mendacious meanderings, I have presented below - for your reading pleasure - a brief but deadly assault on their methodology.

Your "revived form of welfare" comment is as misleading as your professed confusion over those votes of "Present" Obama made as a state legislator. Since I have no hope of teaching you Robert's Rules of Order in the width and breath of this post, I will leave that to your further study.

To claim that Obama wants to give a tax credit to people who pay no federal income tax is accurate - albeit inauthentic. Since you are making this endorsement at the end of an almost two-year long campaign season, you have had ever opportunity to learn to be authentic, but I will endeavor once more in the hopes that you might still be encouraged to sip from the stream of knowledge.

This tax credit is going to go to 95% of working families; your attempt to tie it to welfare implies a subsidy to people who are home, sitting on couches, watching televisions and adding to the population more dependents as opposed to being productive citizens.

That is inauthentic on your part.

While it has been many years since my last trip to Arizona, I am sure you still have people who fall into the category commonly known as "the working poor". Furthermore, with the rise in food and energy prices, consumers of all economic categories are feeling the pinch at the pump - where they pay a federal gasoline tax - and at the store - where they pay state and local sales taxes. Additionally, with the economy slowing down, salaries are stagnate to in decline, so even the working middle class - and all of the money they pay in payroll taxes - are seeing their incomes squeezed.

So, you are wise enough to know that not every working family pays income tax, but that also means you are wise enough to know that every working family pays a multitude of other taxes - federal, state and local - all of which prevents them from having money at the end (or even the middle) of the month to use towards the other necessities of life. Presumably, you are also wise enough to know that 75% of our economic growth is based on the activities of consumers. Stop me if I am giving you too much credit for being wise.

Obama - unlike John McCain and George Bush before him - sees these hardworking families for whom they are. He knows they are in just as much - if not more - need for tax relief than the fat cat CEOs of the banks and the oil companies - who have availed themselves of billions of dollars of tax relief over the past eight years (and billions more taxpayer dollars for bailouts), while hardworking Americans "too poor to pay income tax" have received no relief at all.

Tell me, how well did those tax cuts for the people earning the most money go for the economy? Did the tax breaks they received trickle down to those of us below and raise us all up on a tide of prosperity?

No?

No - instead it led to an increase in income inequality in our nation, such that more and more wealth was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Tell me, how did that work for the investment banks, who grew fat serving their wealthy clientele? What's that? You say there are no more investment banks? You say they either plunged into bankruptcy or into the waiting arms of commercial banks or begged the Feds to come under the warm bosom of regulation that is a commercial bank directly?

The tax policies of George Bush - which John McCain proposes extending ad infinitium - have failed miserably, for themselves, their supporters and our nation. For you to endorse their continuation - and in such a snide manner - only reveals the piracy that lurks within your own heart.

Sphere: Related Content

Smiles, everyone! Big Smiles!

I grind my teeth and clamp shut my jaws as Republicans and fawning members of the press exhort the mythical memory of Prince Valiant - in his modern-day guise as John McCain.

I squelch the urge to rail against the stories of McCain as the triumphant war hero and I douse the flames of rage which rise every time I hear the tale of how our hero was so callously attacked by racists in South Carolina (why is it white people can only see white victims of racism?).

I do all of that in the hope that the larger goal - electing Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America - will be more likely realized if I conceal the depths of my disregard for John McCain and his ilk: Republicans.

No, I try to hold fast to the spirit of positive energy that Obama has released upon the land and I know my bitter feelings are not the end to which he has called me. But they are there. They are real. I am looking for a 12-step program to help me move past them, as I know the challenges before us are so great that I will not make it over on my own or merely in the company of those with a higher degree of correlation of agreement with me. I know that they times they call for all shoulders to be pressed against the wheel; for all arms to be rowing in unison: I am thankful that there are election officials watching the process with the unblinking eyes of a hawk to ensure that no laws are broken and no voters are left with recourse in the safe and secure execution of their right to vote.  

If I can but just focus on all for which I am grateful, perhaps my bitter feelings will but fade away into nothingness.

Sphere: Related Content

Mad as H-E-L-L

We need to be informed of the dirty-tricks the Republicans have in motion already to steal this election from us and we need to be prepared to act to prevent their tactics from stealing yet another election from the people. Read this article. Forward it onto your friends and neighbors. Contact your local election officials to ensure that they have not and will not countenance similar tactics in your district.

Sphere: Related Content

What's In A Name, indeed?

Hmmmm . . . You mean to tell me that 72-year old John McCain, was totally flummoxed by the racism behind the question from an apparently equally old woman? It is almost as though McCain came of age in an era before black people were afforded many (much less all) of the same civil rights as white citizens of this country.  

Can we all not see the innate disdain - if not outright contempt - that McCain has for Obama, written all over his face whenever the two share the stage? It goes without saying - or at least, it should - that McCain has no respect for Obama at all. We could pretend it has to do with Obama's relative youth, but to do that we would have to overlook the fact that McCain is more than smitten with his even younger VP-selection.  

So, we all know that racism exists in America. But that does not change the question: will it have an effect on this election? Thankfully - if one can be ironically thankful to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan - over the past 40-years, most of the racists have found a home in the Republican Party. Furthermore, while the country has been minting new voters daily - as they reach the age of 18 - the Republican Party finds itself stagnate to in decline, as more and more people tire of the outright and sub-rosa shout-outs to the racist hard-liners in the party. That is why both the Democratic Party and those registered as Independents are growing, along with increasing numbers of members for third-party groups. Ignoring for a moment the even more virulent racism of some third-party movements (Alaska Independence Party, are your ears burning?), we are without question in a period of American history over which racism has less sway than at any point in our short existence as a republic.

This election - if we work hard to turn out the vote of all those with any sympathies for liberals or progressives or merely simple thought - can produce the sort of political landslide not seen since the realignment Reagan created in 1980. Remember: that race was down to the wire and it was the final debate - days before the election - that sealed a shift across so many states from Carter to Reagan, so much so that Reagan eventually carried 44-states and received 489 EV. Those targets are within reach for Obama in this election, irrespective of the racists in our midst. There is a possibility that McCain will merely end up with UT, OK, ID and WY in his camp come Wednesday morn. It will take more work on our part to bring about a realignment this historic, but never before in our nation's history has the need for such a realignment been so great.

Ever - including the Civil War period and "the greatest generation" of WWII.

For we stand not just at the precipice of the end of the American Century, as we grow ever older and more indebted, but we stand on the edge of the end of the Carbon-Era and the end of all the energy we have extracted from the Earth as coal, oil and natural gas. Now we have legions of coal and we have natural gas reserves which are yet to be tapped, so perhaps only oil is becoming harder and more expensive to find. But what good is a resource if the very act of using it leads to our destruction? The miracle of economic growth - which is but a few minutes on the clock of human existence - stands mute before the progress of history and with but a few more years of burning carbon and expelling it into our atmosphere, our world could change irrevocably into one more hostile for our needs as a species.  

Could a small-mined racist like John McCain lead us out of the darkness and into the light?

Sphere: Related Content

Decoy Effect

Twain perhaps captured the "art" of statistics better than any critic before or since, but how many psychologists did he know? Okay, that was harsh - but hear me out.

CBS primetime last week introduced me to a psych concept known as "decoy effect", whereby introducing a third option to a decision matrix can favor one of the other two choices. A quick internet search and I was reading this article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040100973.html -
from last year in the Washington Post, that discussed ways for Obama and Clinton to parry the presence of Edwards to their benefit - individually - and it also included this throwaway line on Nader:

"Many people lavished hate on Ralph Nader for presumably taking votes away from the Democratic front-runner in the 2000 presidential election," said Scott Highhouse, who has studied the decoy effect at Bowling Green State University. "Research on the decoy effect suggests that Nader's presence, rather than taking votes away, probably increased the share of votes for the candidate he most resembled."

Intriguing concept. Ralph Nader actually increased voter support for Al Gore in the 2000 election. I certainly never looked at the world like that before, so I am going to spend some time mulling this one over.

Sphere: Related Content

The Sisyphus Journals, 2008, Part I

Parlez-vous francais? Non!

First, I have to place fair - albeit garbled - warning upfront, to our most kind hostess: Mme de lis.

Second, I too share - in fact I think it is clear the world shares - in the anxiety about what will happen next in our credit and financial markets. The incompetence of the Bush Administration is legendary after eight years and the idea that any act they could take would "restore confidence" would be laughable - were the stakes not so high. We all hope for an emergency act of Congress that moves Inauguration Day a pres Thanksgiving Day, so that we might shuffle this insane and incompetent administration off its remaining bearings.

Baring that, I turn almost daily to the Center for American Progress, as these are the representatives of the "administration in waiting". Think tanks have proliferated in recent years as home away from home for politicians and policy apparatchiks, who are in disfavor with one administration or the other. Here is part of what CAP has to say on the bailout: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/10/rescue_package.html

Assuredly, it is not enough and more detailed pronouncements are presumably under development, but I was reassured by their commitment to Green Recovery and what I hope they will rename the Zero-Carbon Economy.

Mon amis.

Sphere: Related Content

El Matador

So, I watched yet one more presidential debate last night. Not because I expected anything to happen that would change my mind on whom our next president should be, but because I do prefer to have my own base of knowledge - my own foundation - before the pundits and the press proceed to tell me what should be my takeaways from the event.

I can do my own takeaways, thank you very much.

So I will not pretend to proscribe for you - dear reader - what your takeaways should be either. What I will say is this: was it just me, or did McCain resemble a bull on stage last night? He paced restlessly around the arena - I keep seeing him appear and then disappear in the background of Obama's commentaries in response to questions - and even when he was answering questions, he paced relentlessly backwards and forwards, apparently in attempts to engage as many members of the hall as possible. And of course, he was constantly on the attack, always searching for an opening that could be used to gore Obama - like with that snarky and childish, "that One!" remark, which seemed to please him to no end.

But what I also saw, was a man so light of foot - so graceful - that these awkward advances were easily paried. I saw a man playfully - and without a hint of the anger that could clearly be seen in McCain - and professionally dance away from the charging bull, but always leaving the bull with a cut here, a stab there to remind him of the dangers of the charge.

Of course, the bull cannot help but to charge again, for that is what a bull does.

The matador, his job is to allow the bull to weaken himself, to expend his energy on foolish and costly charges back and forth across the arena, always being sure to bloody the bull for his efforts. Until - at last - the matador strikes the last blow, right to the heart of the bull.

Can't wait to see the third debate.

Sphere: Related Content

Where they stand?

McCain proposes to tax benefits for the first time in our nation's history!  

This is a great series, but it becomes misleading when it leaves out the fact that small businesses will be taxed on the benefit plans they offer their employees. As small businesses already struggle to pay for benefits, how many of them will just decide to cancel their benefit programs altogether?  

Furthermore, that tax credit McCain provides - $2500 for individuals, $5000 for families - is laughable. Not only is it less than the average cost for health care on the open market - which is $12,500 for a family of four - but it is not even indexed for inflation and we all know that health care costs have been increasing annually at more than the rate of inflation.  

McCain proposes to dump millions of Americans on the open market to purchase their own insurance, with a tax credit for less than it would cost to buy insurance and with no protections for those who have a pre-existing condition. So the effect of his plan is to encourage many small businesses to cancel their benefit plans, while leaving their employees who have an existing illness without insurance for the first time in their lives.  

All the while he maintains his taxpayer-funded health care.  

Just whom is serving whom in this relationship?

Sphere: Related Content

Bedtime Stories

That there used to be these things called, "investment banks" and that they lasted for hundreds of years in America, across all sorts of financial ups and downs - until the age of George Bush the Lesser.

Then, it was found that these banks lost their way, amidst a sea of unregulated acronyms like CDO and fierce beasts known as swaps - which were supposed to be financial instruments to manage risk. And these tools made the banks wealthy until they grew too unwieldy to maneuver with grace and dexterity and they were hoisted on their own petards.

And then, make sure you let your children know, that although the favorite American boogeyman - black people - were trotted out to be slaughtered upon the ritual alter of the scapegoat, a wise young politician led the people to stay their hand with these words:

"You chumps! The CRA is for commercial banks, not investment banks. Commercial banks road through the CDO storm just fine - barring a savings and loan or two (and you know they always catch hell). Nay, it was not the presence of CRA or any other regulation - but the lack of regulation that allowed the insurance companies and the investment banks to fly too close to the sun. Begone!"

Sphere: Related Content

Die Darkman, Die

(First of all; what the h was up with that movie and was that the only title they could use?)

My friend, you know that ol' Dutch was just making that crap up about "supply-side" economics and trickle-down and all of that hooey, right? It was the world's biggest con job, a means to transfer tax dollars to the folks at the top of the ladder, justified by fast talking peddlers like Steve Forbes. Eight years of Reaganomics ended in the S&L bailout; eight years of Bushonomics ended in the investment bank bailout (or bail under, since they were allowed to either collapse or merge with commercial banks) The only question now is: will we once and for all drive a stake through this supply-side monster, or will we once again fall prey to its siren song of money for nothing?

Sphere: Related Content

Bailout / Smailout

Nice analysis. It does lump commercial banks (e. g. - Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase) with investment banks (e. g. - Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch). Commercial banks are highly regulated; investment banks were not. I say "were not" as they no longer exist.  

It was the investment banks who created the collateralized derivative obligations - i. e., those investment vehicles that stripped the longstanding relationship between bank and mortgage holder. It was the severance of that relationship that encouraged banks to allow "liar's loans" to come into existence, loans where mortgage brokers created fictional stories to obtain the loans. Banks did not care about the fiction, as they were repackaging the loan and reselling them in those CDOs. So the investment banks who created these new securities - CDO - and were making billions of dollars with them are central to the rationale for this bailout. Bear Stearns was pushed into the loving arms of JPMorganChase; Merrill Lynch into the warm bosom of Bank of America and Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. Goldman Sachs (and Morgan Stanley) managed to ride above much of the fray and was allowed to convert from an investment bank to a commercial bank - and I think they plan to purchase another bank or perhaps an S&L.  

Regardless, the world of investment banking has come to an end. Banks that bestrode the corridors of power for decades or even centuries, have been tossed onto the ash bin of history. I am not saying that it is all George W. Bush's fault, but many bad things have happened on his watch.  

So the bailout? It needs to also revamp capitalism itself. We need stronger shareholder controls over the board of directors, so that people can raise questions - really ugly and perhaps insulting questions - at board meetings and in proxy statements. As Warren Buffett might say, we cannot wait for the tide to go out to discern just whom is swimming naked.

Sphere: Related Content

21st Century Man / 2045

The two defining musical influences of my life are Prince and Public Enemy; that perhaps gives you a framework - a lens - through which to view my thoughts. Most of APAB has drawn from the Chuck D side of my philosophy, but the more hopeful side - the side that sees the issues we face today but believes we can surpass them on the way to a brighter future, just sent the below series of thoughts to the Obama/Biden campaign. Herewith, my attempt to define the future.

I believe Energy & Transportation must be the core focus area for this upcoming Obama/Biden Administration. A focus here would yield benefits in to many other areas, that it announcing plans on a scale even greater than Eisenhower with his interstate highway program, should form the tent pole of your first 100 Days.

For more than 10,000 years coal has been a source for fuel and it was the motivating force behind the steam engines that powered the start of Industrial Revolution in the latter stages of the 18th Century. That revolution brought us into the era of economic growth and since that time we have been burning carbon - first from coal, then expanding with oil and natural gas - in ways to generate more and additional forms of power. We use carbon to heat our homes, heat our water, to fuel our cars and to generate electricity.

And that worked so well for us for so long, that most people did not even think to look elsewhere.

But we know what burning carbon - whether from coal or oil or natural gas - has done to our environment. Today, we have rivers - too polluted for us to drink; today we have air - that when we breathe gives us asthma; and that is not the half of it. The "easy" seams of coal to mine have already been brought to the surface; to get what is left, we now do "mountain top removal", which dynamites mountains and shoves the resulting rock down into valleys and the rivers below.

Try hunting near one of those.

The point is this: carbon, as a source of energy, has become to costly to our health, our businesses and our society. Oil at $140 a barrel showed us that.

But we know what we need to do. The shortest path to more energy is to more efficiently use the energy we do have. That means smarter appliances that turn themselves off when not in use and less usage of incandescent light bulbs that generate more heat than light, but even this will not be enough.

We need to ignite the wind and solar power era.

We have enough wind off our Atlantic coast, to power heat and electricity for our homes and businesses and even our transportation up and down the population centers of our Eastern Seaboard. We have enough wind across our great plains to power the megalopolises of the Midwest and we have so many sunny days across our Southwest that our entire Western flank can be powered for heat and electricity with capacity to spare. And we can store solar power now, as thermal energy that we use to run steam turbines. And we can do the same with wind, by using excess electricity over current demand to heat molten salts, that again is used to power turbines when the wind slows. We can connect up these "power generation factories" off the Eastern seaboard with underwater DC cabling so that power generated in one place can be shifted to where it is needed. We can use underground DC cabling to connect our wind farms to our Midwestern cities and our solar farms to our Western cities.

And we can use this network of power to build a national power grid, so that we would have fail-over protection we lack today. And we can also use this network of power to connect our nation with high-speed rail links - all powered by clean, renewable electricity. With high-speed rail links connecting our major cities, air travel can be reduced to transcontinental and intercontinental use. This will take a major source of pollution down to almost a background level of emissions. With a network of national, regional and local rail lines, we can move people from where they are to their destination in an environmentally friendly fashion. And we will have the renewable forms of generating electricity that we can use to power the electric and gas-electric hybrid vehicles produced in our revamped factories.

No Nukes.

No Natural Gas / Oil.

No Coal.

These were the solutions of earlier generations and they served a purpose at the time. Our purpose has changed. We need to use forms of energy that are locally sourced, so that the money circulates within our economy and is not sent offshore to countries that seem to love our money, but us - not so much. We have a chance to lead the world in the generation of clean, renewable energies. Students will once again flock to our colleges; our teachings and our technologies will bring light and power to the world. And with those ties will come the search for common dreams, dreams that lead toward brighter tomorrow's and away from the sorrows of the past.

Sphere: Related Content

A new day is dawning

The US needs to turn its attention to the South. It is the states of Brazil and India where some of the fastest economic growth is now occurring and even an African nation like South Africa too. Strengthening our alliances here - perhaps with a sister organization to NATO - would enable us to build the policy bridges we need to cross the challenges that lay before us. Furthermore, we should wipe away the debt of African nations and Caribbean nations like Haiti. It is unconscionable that the US finds itself as the collector of Haiti's international debt. This debt burden was applied by France initially, more than 200-years ago. Collecting this debt is akin to asking the sons and daughters of slaves to pay reparations to the sons and daughters of their former slave masters - for the loss of those slaves as a "business asset", no less! This is a crime. A crime that should no longer be tolerated. If we as a nation are going to stand forswear against paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, we must also stand forthwith against paying reparations to the descendants of former slave owners. Similarly, the debt of African nations was mostly incurred by dictators - empowered by our CIA - and party to our Cold War games against Russia. To ask the sons and daughters of people slain by dictators we installed to pay debt obligations on money stolen by those dictators, is unreasonable in the extreme. It is time for us to own up to our failures and not look for those whom we victimized to cover our tracks.

Sphere: Related Content

October Surprise?

Lets see what we know:

1. There is absolutely no reason to trust any statement made by any Bush Administration official.
2. Corollary to Statement 1 - no reason to trust any statement made by any Bush Administration supporter.
3. Any McCain campaign staffer must be considered as equivalent to a Bush Administration official, as well for indeed, some of them are former Bush Administration officials.
4. McCain has at least one lobbyist on his campaign team, who "formerly" worked for Georgia.
5. Former Nixon aide and current VP Dick Cheney, is traveling to Georgia, weeks before the election.
6. Nixon created perhaps the first "October Surprise", with his back channel negotiations in Vietnam, to prevent Johnson from winding that war down in 1968 before the election and turning the tide toward the Democrats in that year, which - apropos of nothing - was the same year MLK and RFK were assassinated.

We also know that Reagan used a similar back channel negotiation with the Iranians - to encourage them to not release the hostages - much of which laid the ground work for arms sales to the Iranians through Israel as a cutout, with profits used to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Many of those officials involved in the Contra program - Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter - saw their political fortunes rise with the return of the son of the former CIA Director (GHWB), George W. Bush to the White House.

Everybody all set on the players?

Good.

What does this mean?

Anyone - and I mean anyone - who does not think more stuff will hit more fans over the next seven weeks is beyond a delusional state and should not be consulted on the weather, much less the el ection. I expect to witness no less than the most amazing, death-defying, dazzling display of election theft and vote rigging ever attempted by man, woman or child.

I am predicting some turbulence, as we seek to re-establish government of the people, by the people and for the people - to this nation and perhaps to the world. Everyone, please buckle your seat belts and know that our captain has a plan to bring this baby home in one piece. Near as I can read my from my safety page from the seat-back pocket in front of me, we are instructed to:

Call.
Canvass.
Contribute.
and Communicate across every hill, dale and yonder with your neighbors, colleagues, coworkers and friends about the importance of this election and why it is requisite upon us all to cast our votes - by any means necessary.

Encourage every sentient being with whom you come into contact, to vote for Senator Barack Obama.

Sphere: Related Content