Don’t Forget to Vote

You have been ripped off

By those who have sworn to protect you

Vote the bastards out

There should be not one

Incumbent

Left

12:21 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Listen

Someone is weeping

She lifts her empty lamp

Beside the brazen door

Tears run down her cheeks

While behind her

Drums beat

A rising staccato roll

Drowning out her sobs

With the rhythmic thud

Of marching boots

12:12 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

It’s Just Life (A Nursery Rhyme)

Ride the wild hobby horse

Rock him with a will

Rock him in the living room

Rock him on the hill

Rock him in your cowboy hat

Shooting off your gun

Make that bucking bronco dance

Rock him 'til it's fun

Just ignore the hour hand

Spinning on the clock

Hanging on with all your might

Shout "Yahoo!" and rock

Never mind the furniture

The wainscot or the door

Rock him 'til he bucks you off

Laughing on the floor

11:41 AM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Great Debate

Last night I built a fire

The wind outside was chilly

Summer disappeared behind a hill

Stars disappeared behind sodden clouds

Far beyond these sheltering hills

On a stage under hot lights

Candidates debated

Flimflammed

"Vote for me"

"I care about you"

"I care about what you care about"

Leaves rustled in the wind

I built a fire

Grabbed a sweater

Closed doors and windows

Tried to keep the wind outside

Sure I have a furnace

It could make my house toasty warm

But the propane tank is empty

And I can't afford to fill it

While the candidates babbled on

I gazed out the window

At my stack of winter wood

God I hope there's enough

10:44 AM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

I Wish I Could Bail Out

If a crime is outlandish

Audacious enough

If it seems preposterous enough

Something that

"Nobody could get away with"

You can

Rockefeller and Morgan

(Citigroup and Chase)

Have been doing it for years

Now they're coercing government

To take over lesser companies

And sell them off

(To Rockefeller and Morgan)

At fire sale prices

Hundreds of billions in assets

Bought up for a couple billion

While congress

And a well-duped public

Cheer

12:17 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Safer Near the Bottom?

World in turmoil

Roman holiday

Seven deadly sins

Invoice due

Red moon rising

Blue world turning

Dark side sliding

To the fore

Babel tower

Swaying needle

Scariest near the top

Brace yourself

Run for cover

Can they save it?

Change is coming

That's for sure

Quantum changes

Weak foundation

Ground fault shaking

Crumbling?

Maybe rearranging

Power failing

Light a candle

Close the door

10:54 AM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

This Mess

This is a response I wrote to some recent blog comments about the economy.  It's the way I see the finincial crisis.  I'm obviously no expert, so it may all be hogwash, but opnions are like ***holes.  Everybody has one.  Here's mine.  (forgive the metaphor). 

This is my (very limited) understanding of what happened:

            Several factors combined to create this mess.  In order to prosecute the war(s) our government borrowed billions from foreign investors.  They also borrowed billions from the Federal Reserve (a private corporation which prints our money) which printed those billions, devaluing the dollar (the more dollars that exist, the lower the value of each dollar becomes).  Nearly worthless dollar bills fell like rain.

            Exacerbating this dollar glut, the Federal Reserve, in the persons of Greenspan and Bernanke, kept cutting interest rates, trying to induce people to spend (borrowed) money, which made it look as if everything was fine with the economy.  Everything was not fine.

            People are being taxed to death.  It takes the average wage earner until some time in June of each year to pay all of his federal, state and local taxes.  Just think want a difference it would make to this fellow if he could keep what he earned.  Think what it would do for the economy.

            On a local level, realtors and mortgage brokers were having a heyday.  Interest rates were (artificially) low, so people were borrowing money left and right.  Housing prices were increasing at a rate of about ten percent per year, so everyone got sucked in by ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) thinking that, if their payments got too high, they could always flip the house at a profit and move on.

            The money supply was increasing too fast and reached a tipping point.  Housing prices stagnated.  People found themselves drowning in debt.  The ARMs matured, to the point where people could no longer afford to make minimum payments on their loans.  Credit card debt was increasing.  Suddenly the whole house of cards started coming apart.

            The middle class was also shrinking at an alarming rate.  The U S middle class came about as a result of our strong manufacturing base.  These were the workers of the world, creating cars, appliances, new technologies, etc.  They created wealth out of raw materials.  Suddenly they were no longer creating wealth.  A service oriented economy creates nothing.  Existing wealth simply circulates, passing from hand to hand.  Every hand that passes it on takes a percentage.  Without manufacturing (actual wealth creation) an economy is doomed.  Corporate heads and lobbyists still make money through outsourcing, but the middle class disappears, leaving a workforce of minimum wage aservice workers in its place.  This is where we are today.

            That's the way I see it, for whatever it's worth (but not in U S dollars please).

1:17 PM - 12 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Good Ol’ Uncle Sam

Your government wants to help you

This is for your own good

And we take no pleasure in it

But desperate times

Require desperation

The status quo must be preserved

The wealthy and the powerful

Cannot fall

Who would protect you then?

There might be people out there

Who are even more greedy and sociopathic

Than your government

Be afraid

The planet might be warming

Be afraid

Enemies are lurking within and without

Enemies of your benign, grandfatherly government

Stop crying

This will only hurt

A little

12:04 PM - 12 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Passing The Buck

Seven hundred billion dollars

Taken from we the people

"for our own good"

Taken by whom?

To be given to whom?

And for what?

The Federal Reserve

Is a private corporation

That answers to no one

Even the provisions introduced

Under the misnomer of "oversight"

Only require the Fed to notify Congress

After the fact

Giving that august body

No input up front

The money extorted from us

Will be loaned out to banks and corporations

At reduced rates

(So many cents per dollar

Of UNRECOVERABLE debt)

Meaning what?

Those banks and institutions

Will be guaranteed a PROFIT

Without risk!

The average American citizen

Struggling to make ends meet

Will be shouldered with thousands of dollars

Of corporate debt

Bringing increased profit

To wealthy corporations and fat cat business types

Who mismanaged said corporations

Through greed and avarice

And short sighted profit taking

In the first place!

These people shouldn't be bailed out

Of the situation they caused

They shouldn't even be bailed out

Of jail

11:15 AM - 4 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

An Ode to the River

The Mississippi keeps flowing

Slow beneath the belly of America

A muddy silver belt

Echoes of steamboat whistles

Sound at twilight

Chunks of rudely crafted rafts

Lie rotting in backwater pools

Built by boys with sass and pluck

Tom and Huck

American dreamers

Bully busters

Stargazing innocents

Idealists

Philosophers chewin' on a strand of hay

Figgerin'

I miss those boys

I miss America

10:53 AM - 5 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Not Necessarily a Complement

'Lo the hunter/gatherer

He lurks among the trees

Munching on a mushroom cap

While deftly scratching fleas

No furry little friend is safe

No deer or porcupine

Each creature is a menu choice

A feast on which to dine

He builds and sets elaborate traps

To catch them unawares

Be careful as you walk these woods

Watch out for pits and snares

He eats no pie, he eats no cake

No pasta, rye nor wheat

Believe him when he tells you

You look good enough to eat

12:46 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

At the End of Days

The eyes remember

Sunsets and stars

Moonlight on the lake

Beauty so bright

It hurts

Fireworks on the fourth

A glint of sunlight off the windshield of a red sports car

The eyes remember

All that that heart has known

Everything that matters

12:11 AM - 7 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

A Simple Adjustment

He spent his lifetime hoping

That he wouldn't screw up

Worrying that he would

And so he did

If only he'd invested by believing

In possibilities

In himself and his potential

It could've been so different

12:16 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Ol’ George Had it Right (Orwell)

The pigs are in the farmhouse

Listen to them squeal

Cooking up a way to sell

A newer, bigger deal

The printing press is printing

Worthless paper dollars

Bailing out a brother pig

Every time he hollers

Trillions in the living room

Billions in the den

Subsidizing greedy crooks

Who'll rip us off again

Piggy friends from Wall Street

Pounding on the door

Squealing, "Screw these barnyard hicks

And print us up some more!"

Me?  I'm just a harness horse

Working every day

And wishing all those filthy pigs

Would simply move away

11:06 AM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

And I Thought Science Was Dull

Have you heard what's going on over in Europe?

They have this big HARDON

Collider

Isn't that sick?

They say it might create a black hole that will

Suck all of us

Into another dimension

Or deep space

I just thi…  What?

It's called the HADRON collider?

Never mind.

11:35 AM - 12 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment