Thursday, May 29, 2008

human nature

In every movie I have every seen and in fact every book too when the shit hits everyone rushes to their cars. Why?
Where are all these people going? Do they all have secluded cabins in the woods far away from whatever disaster is playing out? The awful thing is I truly believe if someone yelled disaster loud enough we would all do what the Disney lemmings did and throw ourselves off of massive traffic jam cliffs, though Disney actually used a machine to propel the lemmings off the cliff...I guess we can call the media the machine.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to( if possible) wait for everyone else to leave? Like waiting for everyone to get off the airplane so you wont feel rushed and anxious. Of course this wont apply to large onrushing waves of water. Personally I will skip the traffic jams and run if I have too.
But if it was something else I don't think I would mind too much being left behind by the panic filled masses.
But I do wonder where the hell all these people are driving to.
I think on the whole you would be safer staying in your house for as long as possible because I just cannot believe that wandering all over the countryside is going to give you a survival edge.
Stick with what you know and the area you know it in.


My other question is why are the Democrats in the US voting for Obama? It's as if they have a failure only mindset.
They know that very few, if any middle/lower class white people are going to vote for Obama and they also know this is the group that actually goes out and votes but they are so enamored with the idea of having a black President and what that represents they are ignoring the man himself.
If Obama had more of a history of activism in the poor community, if he had a history of being involved with policy decisions anywhere at any time maybe he would have a shot against McCain but Obama is a blank slate. He has done the bare minimum despite the fact that he talks and talks and talks.
The Republicans have already started chewing away at Obama and he has nothing to defend himself with. I think McCain has become a nasty little man in this campaign and he will only get meaner as time goes on and this doesn't bode well for a guy like Obama.
Hilary on the other hand can take a beating and get back up. In fact no one really cares about the dirt on her, we have heard about it so many times we have become deaf to it. That would make it very difficult for the Republicans to beat her up.
So, the Democrats choose the guy the Republicans can beat and then they will moan, bitch and howl when they lose the election. Maybe they really don't want the presidency at all.
I can see why they wouldn't. It's a godawful fucking mess that no one is going to be able to fix for years and years.
Maybe it's better to lose and let the Republicans carry on destroying the country, better than being blamed for not being able to stem the tide .

So maybe the Democrats aren't being stupid after all. I mean how can they be blamed for anything that goes wrong if they nominate a candidate that speaks only of positive change and a world full of peace and prosperity and the voters fail to elect him?

If in fact McCain does win the election he will have his war in Iran and Iraq,Afghanistan, and North Korea. McCain is a man looking for a win somewhere and because he has no experience with economics or diplomacy he can only triumph in one arena...war. McCain has been running for President for sixteen years . I cannot see him losing to a senator with no experience and no support within the white underclasses. Hell, the Republican campaign to convince the poor and uneducated that Obama is Muslim has been incredibly successful and they don't even need to mention he is black. I heard the comments from some of the West Virginians, it would make any member of the KKK proud. It also scares the crap out of us Canadians that the US continues to breed these slow witted racist inbreds in large numbers.
It makes the Texas court of appeals decision to return the children of a cult back to their cult leaders seem completely sensible. I mean if it's ok for those inbreds in the Virgina's to breed and retain custody of course it's fine for polygamists to rape and then marry thirteen year olds.

I guess this is what scares me the most about a global disaster. That the racist inbreds will survive like cockroaches and they will come scuttling across my border dragging their disgusting habits alongside them.They may call themselves refugees but unless we interrogate them how will we know if they are carrying something even worse than plague? What if they are carrying the belief that some black guy with a strange middle name can't be trusted because he is black and has a strange middle name? Worse these people believe everything they read in the National Enquirer, they get all their news from the The Star, Glenn Beck and Fox News. They believe Rush Limbaugh is the voice of moderation.
What then?
Do we round them up and hold them in camps? Or do we send them back from where they came to face whatever disaster they ran from?
Fifty percent of the US citizenry believes in things I find abhorrent,evil , racist, misogynistic and downright terrifying.
How come I just know if the shit hits the fan that will be the fifty percent that survives even if they have to resort to cannibalism to do it?

Maybe Canada was a little too hasty agreeing to the land mine accord. It wouldn't hurt to have the longest undefended border in the world defended a little bit would it?
Just in case?

Sunday, May 25, 2008

when the shit hits the fan

So I am back to obsessing over the impending apocalypse. Not the I am a crazy religious nut end of the world apocalypse. Just the tired old oops we really shouldn't have kept playing with that 100% contagious 95% fatal virus in the lab cause George's wife left him for his sons best friends father and he has been drinking around the clock for the last three days and he forgot to replace the vent hood and never noticed when he caught his clean suit on that hook and well, hell, shit happens right?
It's too bad the first place infected George went was Walmart and then the liquor store.

I wonder about what would be the smartest thing to do after it all starts going to hell.

I still think raiding every pharmacy you can find is the best first move. Then raiding the hospital library for every surgical instruction manual, internal medicine manuals and labour/delivery and pediatrics manuals. I read The Stand and what complete bullshit it would be if you survived the plague and died of a burst appendix or you couldn't find any insulin.
A well stocked pharmacy full of every damn drug left in the world would be helpful.
You would have to brave the hospital to steal the real supplies. You would need surgical instruments , some kind of anesthesia, a ventilator...oh, hell how would you be able to steal an entire working OR in the middle of a disaster?
I don't know but I do know it has to be done. Maybe a midnight raid on that private plastic surgery clinic?
I think if you have thought ahead and had a proper home ready to hide in having a mini hospital in it could be a boon. It could be something that can be bartered and something that keeps you alive when everyone decides to get primal.
I know it wont take any time at all for survivors to become violent aggressors intent on wiping out any competition.
I guess that has to be prepared for. It makes me a little sick to think about it. But we have seen it at disaster sites all over the world. The first response has always been to inflict more pain on those already left helpless. Price gouging, racism,segregation, governmental foot dragging, insurance companies denying claims. No one tries to make things easy.
So we know that there will be little or no help coming our way and anyone who already has guns and the training to use them is going to be the biggest threat. The moment the armed forces are mobilized we are all going to be in a lot of trouble. They will become a very scary snake with it's head chopped off and they will have the overwhelming force to inflict whatever "laws" they deem advantageous to themselves.
It's been common throughout history that soldiers without direction or discipline are prone to rape and murder, pillaging the enemy we could say. The issue is will we become the enemy?
Will we be sheep to be herded by those that have the guns?
Does it make sense to have a cache of weapons only to be considered an enemy and taken prisoner by a military that has no government to lead it?
And where will our leaders be?
Will they be hiding in a bunker somewhere? Helpless and powerless to do anything but watch and hope the military is controlling and containing the citizenry so they can emerge as heroes?
We can only hope the military is taking it's orders from the infectious disease doctors but what happens when the doctors are struck down? What if the front line medical community, the first people exposed to whatever our dear friend George was playing with all succumb?
Isn't it plausible they would be the first to go?
Even after SARS we still have no consistent, enforceable infectious disease protocol. I mean we do have a sign in the ER that says to tell the nurse if you have a fever or a cough but what happens if everyone has a fever and cough? And isn't it too late when you are coughing into the face of the maskless triage nurse and her colleagues?
How many isolation beds do you think your local hospital has? I know mine has fifteen...in a pinch we could probably make a hundred sort of isolation rooms by converting private rooms but none will have the negative air system essential to containing a virus.
If you are lucky you live somewhere that has a lot of hospitals. It will increase your chances of survival if you get there first. What happens when all the beds are full?
I guess that's why I think having a mini hospital at home is the best plan. Cuts down on the competition but of course you are giving up access to someone who actually knows what they are doing but hell, that's what the medical books are for right?

If you get away with being the pharmacy bandit you need to turn your attention to food. Canned goods and lots of them. Sometimes I think it would just be easier to take over a mall complex that has a grocery store, Walmart, Canadian tire and a home depot. I guess you could build a giant razorwire fence and put guards everywhere but it seems way to obvious and will likely attract the attention of the military pretty damn quickly. No one wants that. Who in their right mind wants to go to war over a Walmart?
I guess looting is the way to go but this would have to be carefully thought out,well planned looting. You can forget about the televisions and the new Ipods, you need food,clothes and more than a few good pair of shoes. You may have to do an incredible amount of walking and the last thing you want is having to choose between three inch heels or a pair of flip flops.
If you think logically, methodically you will know you will need batteries. Thousands of batteries, And butane lighters. This is not the time to try your hand at fire starting with a rock or a stick.
Time to loot every dollar store in your neighborhood..heh.
I also think you need to create a gang of your own. Your friends, your family, your neighbours...only people you can stand to be in the same room with of course. Don't invite your psycho, religious nut neighbour for example. They will be sacrificing animals in the basement before you can blink.
You may need to create a quick and dirty entrance quiz before letting anyone in. Top of the list of questions should be "are you now or have you ever been a religious freak that believes in the book of revelations?" You really have to exclude them because if you are stuck in the basement shelter for days at a time they will drive you insane and force you to commit violent acts and that's just not the way to start the end of the world as you know it. It will depress you and you really don't need to be more depressed than you already are right?
You should try to make your group diverse and interesting. You are going to have long periods of incredible boredom and at least you will be surrounded by interesting people. Maybe you'll learn something new!
That brings me to another important issue. Your new gang should have some skills. You need farmers, carpenters,plumbers and electricians. Having a few trained medics would come in handy too. You also need some children in the mix. Everyone needs motivation and there is nothing more motivating than a large group of ten year old boys ripped from their Xbox. Maybe eleven year old girls torn from instant messenger and their FaceBook pages?
What you do not need in your group are people with no discernible skills. Having a professor of philosophy is not going to make anyone happy.
You need people to help build and maintain a home, people that can grow food and people that can provide medical care when someone electrocutes someone else.You could probably use a good english teacher with a history of directing high school plays just to keep the children from beating each other to death like the savages they are.
You also need a computer expert, someone who can maintain communication through the web because the web contains all the instructions needed to build a self sustaining community. Where else will you find the plans on how to build your own solar cells, your own wind turbines?
You need someone to find the information, interpret the information and help create the plans so our other experts can build them.
So you need at least one creative, maybe slightly strange , hell probably strange as hell thinker.Two would be better so they have someone to talk to.

An important tip to remember is to limit the issues of weird romantic relationships. Or ex relationships. Make sure you haven't invited a group of people who unbeknownst to you have all slept together in multiple configurations and all have bitter feelings about it.
You are trying to survive here, it's no time for couples therapy.

So I guess you have to create a group of people that like each other and want to work together to survive. You are going to have to be very,very lucky to find these people. It may take some time.
You are going to have to be logical in the face of chaos, confident in the face of disaster...wow. I don't think I am going to be cut out for this survival thing.

To have to become a thief in the night stealing constantly seems exhausting and terrifying.

Maybe becoming a sheep wouldn't be such a bad thing?
The problem is don't people eat sheep?

I really, really hope our intrepid lab rat George gets himself together, puts the bottle down and finds a new girlfriend quickly...he could save the world.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

feelings ..oooh oooh oooh

As a compulsive reader of anything and I mean anything I occasionally get a little attached to some writers. In the blogging world it seems easier to get attached than is really healthy. I have really enjoyed Crystal over at boobsinjuriesanddrpepper.
I loved her humour and how strong, happy and confident she seemed.
But I got a little over attached when she began to write about her past. I saw instantly that the internet jackals would converge on her wearing their right to judge like a t-shirt and she seemed to have little understanding of what they could do if she let them.
So she let them.
She broke the most important rule when writing about your own personal disasters, she allowed comments. Lessons that Dooce et al have learned painfully?... she ignored.
She was warned repeatedly not only by other bloggers but by her own family.
I stopped reading when she broke my own little rule about writing about your kids on the internet.
And no it's not really about mothers exploiting their kids for money. I don't like it because I have this thing about informed consent. A child cannot consent to anything so they cannot give permission to anyone to have any aspect of their personal life revealed to others . It's about having respect for another persons right to privacy. I know that is a weird concept when you may be talking about a three year old but a three year old still should have a reasonable expectation to privacy especially considering there is no way to delete anything on the internet and what was hilarious when a toddler is three is humiliating to a fifteen year old when her high school discovers she ate dog poo (with video attached) a week before she starts ninth grade and she gets a brand new nickname.
What I find upsetting is how Crystal is reacting right now after the jackals have had a good meal at her expense. To complain that the jackals exist and that the jackals are bad seems ridiculous to me. To complain that somewhere in the deep,dark past of the internet everyone treated each other with kindness and respect seems almost delusional. From the first few weeks that the web was forming flame wars were breaking out all over.
I want to believe that Crystal is an innocent, deeply naive and inexperienced in the history of the internet but I know better and it's all just sour grapes.
Before I began my own personal boycott Crystal was telling an important and pretty powerful story about how we all fuck up when life kicks our teeth in but that recovery is possible. She spoke with a confident voice and when I was emailed her latest post by a friend I realized she had lost that confidence. She was speaking with the voice of apology and shame mixed with anger at this betrayal by the jackals.
All I can think is if you know the jackals are there and you are repeatedly warned that they only exist to attack do you have a right to a feeling of betrayal? Can you howl no fair when they told you they were planning on playing without rules?
And isn't it a display of almost fatal weakness to acknowledge that the jackals are feeding?
The other question that begs an answer is why do some bloggers need ,crave the hundreds of comments from complete strangers that say almost the same thing over and over? They always say something blandly supportive that usually involves prayers of some kind or another, just enough to keep the storyteller writing but not never enough to make the storyteller think or question.
Why do they self destruct into self pitying whining when a few comments pop up that are less than congratulatory and in fact ask hard questions about motives and purpose?
Look I think anyone who uses the comments section to act like a dick, full of judgment and assholery needs a slap and a kick to the curb but I think in the zeal to rid themselves of anything even remotely negative some bloggers delete any and all dissent which makes me suspicious about why they allow comments at all.
I think Crystal may in fact be too fragile a person to be telling her story. She may not have the self confidence to tell it without sinking into shame and recriminations. When a blogger responds to the jackals they are attempting some kind of dysfunctional appeasement. They are looking for love in all the wrong damn places but because they are so desperate for acceptance they can't see that the jackals can never be appeased. They do not care if you want them to stop being mean, their only function is meanness and you are a fool to not see this.
Crystal wants to bask in the bland support of nameless strangers in her comment section dammit! No fair that the jackals are ruining her ego massage. But really, should we have any compassion for this thinking? Shouldn't we all just turn away from this because it has devolved into something sad and demeaning?
Over and over I have seen this happen on the internet and I don't think any one of us has the right to call foul anymore. To choose to expose every part of your life to complete strangers is to demand their judgment , to then follow this up with a post full of how the jackals are making her cry all day, how the jackals are making her be mean to her husband, her kids is exposing more than any one should ever expose to the world. You are now exposing the fact that you are weak, that you haven't got enough self esteem to fill a thimble..........you have let the jackals smell blood and they are all rushing in for the kill and I don't have an ounce of sympathy for this kind of symbolic, incredibly public suicide.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
You can't have warm fuzzy hugs without a few fangs and if you aren't tough enough, if you don't have enough faith in yourself then you have no business publicly dissecting every goddamn tragedy in your life , the lives of your children and your family on the internet.
If you feel the overwhelming need to publish your tragedies remember that there are people out there that don't think your tragedies mean anything at all. In fact they believe your tragedies are fair game for the opportunity to pronounce their judgments about your beliefs.
Don't write a post asking them to stop because you are a nice person that wouldn't hurt a fly and would give them the shirt off your back if only they asked. It makes you look insane.


My list of blogs is getting shorter and shorter.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

oops

I hereby promise to no longer write scathing comments about the leaders of dictatorships. It seems they can retaliate in some truly novel ways. But that quote about building houses on sand does apply here.
I do it find it interesting that no one is clamoring for access to China to get in and "help" though.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

olympic fever

I want to begin with saying up front that I have never had any interest in the Olympics,ever,not even as a little kid. My sister on the other hand loved the gymnastics competition part.
I didn't hate the Olympics. In fact I was pretty ambivalent about the whole thing.
Things change though and now any mention of the Olympics makes me grind my teeth audibly.
This is how I see the Olympics as an adult who by the age of twenty three had a college diploma, had a professional job, a husband and a baby: a complete waste of time.
All I can think is what an incredibly ridiculous way to spend your time.
The majority of these athletes have been in training since they were in the womb. They have spent every available moment of their life lifting weights, running on treadmills, practicing the perfect kick,tumble,cartwheel whatever for no other reason than getting a pretty medal and their picture taken. They have sucked resources from their parents, grandparents, brothers,sisters, the province, the country all so they can travel to a foreign country to go swimming or do a cartwheel on a beam.
There is nothing socially redeeming about this. It's a bunch of people who spend every moment obsessed about how they look, how much they weigh, who they have to beat, where can they find some more money, how to become famous and get endorsements and be on the cover of a magazine.
It's narcissism and it's bizarre and we have elevated these people to the level of heroes.
Heroes, people. We have decided that some guy who can swim or jump better than some other guy is a fucking hero.
It's grotesque.
We have then made this event into a substitute for war. We cheer when our athlete beats an athlete from a country we dislike don't we?
We keep a constant record of our successes and their losses, a scoreboard for all to see.
Does anyone really watch because they love and appreciate the art of an event or are we watching because the announcer has spent an hour telling us in adoring detail the life story of our surrogate soldier as he or she prepares for battle? Does the announcer then spend another hour telling us the life story of any of the other competitors? Does he describe in loving detail the sacrifices the athlete from Iran has made to reach the top?
No.

We have real wars going on right now. We have real soldiers who have made real sacrifices to cheer on. What is the purpose of a self aggrandizing sports competition when children are starving, the Burmese are counting their dead, the genocides of the Congo and the Sudan rage on?

Then we come to China. China, a country that thrives on abusing it's own people and when they get bored of that they poison the worlds pets,add poison to children's toothpaste and slap a little lead into the global toy market.
These are the people that still have firing squads for killing anyone who dissents and then removing their organs and selling them for transplant.
A country that is so obsessed with becoming a superpower it is spewing chemicals into the air so fast and so far the population has to say indoors some days to avoid dropping dead.
They refuse to obey any of the environmental laws any civilized country has already adopted.
These are people that happily murder Tigers so they can grind up their penises into a powder that supposedly might give them a bigger, harder dick. This country is filled with men so obsessed with getting a hard on they will happily decimate any species they think might help.
These are the people responsible for SARS because they cannot adhere to basic hygiene practices. They stack live animals on top of each other five or ten deep and allow them to defecate, urinate,sneeze and cough on each other. They have no understanding of basic animal husbandry because they are cruel and thoughtless about the suffering of animals. Because of their thoughtlessness at this very moment children are dying of foot and mouth disease. They regularly lie about the spread of disease putting the entire globe at risk from the diseases they promote.
These are the people who believe that it's just fine to invade another country and enslave them and when they try to fight back to murder them. Tibet was once a free country and we allowed China to attack, kill and conquer without so much as a peep from the rest of the world. Too bad Tibet wasn't full of oil, the whole world would have jumped right in to help right?
So China, this China is the country that was given the Olympics. These idiots thought that by giving them the Olympics China would finally see the light and become civilized, thoughtful maybe even less obsessive about their dicks.
China thinks we gave them the Olympics because we deeply admire them and think they are so wonderful only they should have the honour of this event.
I mean what else could China think? It's a country that has never had a moment of self reflection, it's leaders have never stopped and had a little think about the incredible amount of wanton damage it has done to the environment or it's people. The movers and shakers of China are to a person living only for the moment. They don't spare a seconds thought on what the future will hold . They want what they want and they want it right now and they will do everything and anything to get what they want.They are not unlike three year olds with too much money and power. Three year olds have great difficulty with empathy. It's something they begin to learn as they are exposed more and more to new people. China has no interest in meeting new people except for those who come bearing presents. This is a country that supplies machine guns to the Janjaweed to maintain it's oil supplies. These are people that have brigades dedicated to shooting clouds to make rain for fucks sake.

So the worlds athletes are going to China. A group so narcissistic they can think only about what they have sacrificed to learn how to jump, kick or paddle. They think about their heroic sacrifice when they missed that high school dance that one time, or that terrible pain they had when they sprained their elbow or how their parents had to re mortgage their home and their brother had to get a full time job because all the money was going to training little Cindy to be the very best cartwheeler ever. Wow, what heroes they are!!!
I mean they couldn't have made another choice, they had to be a competitive bike rider, it was in their blood.
They could never sacrifice their dreams just because the host is a murderous bastard.It wouldn't be fair. I mean what can be more important in this moment when the world is in turmoil, food prices are are skyrocketing, oil prices are out of control than having a competition over who can play basketball better?

People who still have a conscience will boycott this abomination. People of conscience will be happy to tell gymnasts and swimmers and all the rest that there are more important things in the world than their right to play a game with their friends on the television.
It's time to correct China's belief that they are a civilized country. It's time to take the three year olds toy away and tell them they need to spend some time in the naughty chair.
It will hurt China's feelings no doubt but sometimes learning to do the right thing is painful and hopefully this pain will reinforce the lesson that you can't treat the whole world like shit and expect to be rewarded for it.
And it's also time to get over your dick issues......it's why Viagra exists you idiots, leave the Tiger dicks where they belong, on the goddamn Tigers.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

why all the bullying?

I understand that Burma is in crisis and I understand that peoples lives are hanging in the balance but that is still no reason to bully another country.
Any idiot knows that Burma is controlled by a bunch of paranoid, power hungry nut jobs so it should be equally obvious that they are going to respond very badly to being called names followed up with irate demands.
The way to Burma's crazy heart is to tell them you love them and you support them and will do anything to make them love you back. Listen, these people are too stupid to know you are lying through your teeth so why not go for it?
Oh, you can't right? Because politically it might make you look like a sympathizer and let's be serious here. It's still all about the politics,
America wants to get into Burma for it's own reasons and delivering humanitarian aid is only one of them.
You may notice that Burma is allowing many other countries in to help but if you watch CNN you would be forced to believe no one is there. The BBC is no better, they are also a country banned from Burma for a host of issues going back a long, long way.

No matter what crisis we do not have the right to violate another country's sovereignty .
Obviously because we have been happily upholding Sudan's rights and the Congo and any other country in Africa drowning in strife.
Burma doesn't want certain country's anywhere near their borders. They have their reasons.
The reasons may be based in paranoid fantasy but it's their right.

If these countries truly wanted to deliver aid they would cheerfully contact the Thai authorities and drop off all the food, clothing, medical supplies and tents to the Thai airport.
But America and the rest want, no they need the accolades or they begin to sulk and then take their food and water home.

If you want to help the people of Burma help Thailand to help them. Drop the ego and the demands and just help ok?

Saturday, May 03, 2008

free health care

I am getting a little pissed with the Canadians that are forever wandering around announcing to various strangers that we have free health care. We do not.
Everyone in Canada is assessed at tax time for their ability to pay for health care. Some Canadians at the poverty level don't have to pay. the rest of us do. I paid six hundred dollars this year. I also have private insurance that covers long term care, dental and prescriptions. That costs me personally about twelve hundred a year. So I pay eighteen hundred a year for my health care. I am not in any way unique. At least seventy percent of us pay for health care.
Then our employers have to pay too. They are assessed on their taxes and they get their bill for all their employees. At least forty percent of all Canadian employers also offer private benefits. Our employers are required to pay their share of our premiums too.
Most of us get our taxes done professionally so we never see the health care tax. We are ignorant of it until of course we have to pay for it out of pocket.

Then we all have to pay provincial and federal taxes on everything we buy. That is a health care tax. So, once again health care isn't free.
Just because no one gave you a bill at the end of your office visit doesn't mean you didn't pay for it. That bill is hidden under a different name is all.
I think we should be demanding a better system but because we all somehow think we are getting something for nothing we don't want to speak up. Just in case we alert the authorities and they wake up and what? make us pay?

So the next time some idiot politician goes on about Universal Health Care tell him to shut it. We don't have it. We are taxed near to death for a system that is in tatters.
a system where you can be having a heart attack but get denied angioplasty because there is no bed available. A system where you get on a plane and fly to a foreign country for your chemo and have to pay for your plane ticket yourself.
A system that thinks having one nurse for ten patients is a great idea.

Yeah, it's better than the US but so what? A dollar store first aid kit is better than the US.That doesn't mean our system is good you know.

Friday, May 02, 2008

riddle me this

So here is what I know about the subprime mortgage crisis. It seems some oh hell let's say fifty million US citizens (yes I know that's a ludicrous number but go with me on this ok?) went to the bank and took out a mortgage on a horribly overpriced home. Let's say each one of them asked to borrow a million dollars. So, that is a million dollars each for fifty million people. It's possible they could end up paying a million you see because they ended up with a variable rate of interest...really? isn't the interest rate being cut regularly? Wouldn't that mean they would be paying less? Never mind.
This group of fifty million just happened to include that group, the group that shouldn't have a mortgage, the group that really shouldn't even have a cat. But the banks never noticed because I mean what bank would right? I mean it's not like any of the banks the rest of us go to who wouldn't give us a car loan for five grand even though we make eighty grand a year in a union job. These are those other secret banks, the ones we have never been able to find but somehow people with no credit, bad credit, bankruptcy , you get it, can find instantly.
So these banks did some creative accounting. They took each of these mortgages and split them into three groups. The first group was people who would pay their mortgage..the banks kept them for themselves. They then sold off the middle group to a bunch of foreign investors who obviously were non native english speakers. The last group, the group that would pay their mortgage just as soon as they got a job ha, ha, ha got sold into a third investment pool. This pool was bought by , hell I have no idea what kind of moron bought into this pool but they did!
So the expected happened. They never did find that job and they never did pay their mortgage and now that investment pool wasn't an investment anymore. It was now the investment pool of "holy shit, have we got some shitty houses we need to sell right now". But unfortunately these guys were stock brokers not real estate agents. The middle pool full of people that kind of pay but never on time started becoming the pool of "oh shit, they haven't made a payment for three months'. And soon this pool became the new "oh, shit we have some solidly middle class houses we have to sell right now".
We all know the first group is paying their mortgages on time because the bank may sometimes look stupid but it ain't.

So, they can't sell these houses unless they declare a fire sale and cut the prices and if they do that they will lose millions and millions. But they are stupid and in a panic so they do it. And the real estate market collapses because who would be willing to pay a million dollars for that other house when the bank is selling the same damn house for three hundred thousand?
All over the prices of homes begin to fall. The problem is of course people paid market price for their home before this crisis and their mortgage reflects that market. Now their home isn't worth what they mortgaged it for. It means despite paying their mortgage faithfully for years they have no equity in their home. Their home is no longer considered an asset, it's all liability...it's all just debt. So now they can't get any credit because when their debt is calculated their mortgage gets added in and that's the kiss of death.
Without access to credit no one can buy a new car, a washer/dryer combo,renovate the bathroom..any big ticket purchase.
Without any buyers the manufacturing sector slips and falls. That is where the good paying union jobs are and they begin to disappear. And here we go again to the mortgage crisis. Without a job you can't pay your mortgage so it gets foreclosed on, the investors panic and dump, market prices tank and round and round we go.
So what is the solution here?
Well I think the idiots that invested in the second and third pools should have to eat their losses. Investing is nothing more than going to Vegas and playing poker. Vegas never offers you a buyout ok? The banks that gave these mortgages should have to eat it too. And the idiots that went to the bank knowing full well they would never be able to afford their mortgage? Well they already got pretty severely punished didn't they? They are homeless with destroyed credit and a lifetime devoted to screening their calls for rabid collection agents. I honestly can't think of a worse punishment than that other than a two week stay at Guantanamo. At least at Gitmo you get food and housing.
What shouldn't be happening is the poor bastards that are paying their mortgages being penalized severely for doing it.
If everyone involved hadn't panicked and ran screaming into the daylight the crisis would never have happened. If they had kept themselves calm they could have gently corrected a real estate market gone wild without devastating everyone in the process.
But the moment you even threaten the possibility of a threat of losses the markets goes wild and what was once a possibility becomes fact. They do it to themselves and then in turn do it to the rest of us.

Panic.
The operating emotion of everything right now.
Because we all feel a low riding dread all the time, because we all feel that somehow the earth has jumped a cog and put us all off balance we are all on the edge of panic and it takes almost nothing to send us spiraling into the pit.

I think it's because at heart we are all drama queens. We are all so in love with the rush of potential disaster a real disaster makes us thrilled. We throw off responsibility for the chance to quiver and shiver, gasp and whimper always looking around for our audience.

We announce to the world we have just become victims. Becoming a victim is not unlike winning the lottery nowadays. Even when you are a victim of your own idiocy someone somewhere will be thrilled to listen to your story and the media can't wait to find you and let you tell it, for educational reasons of course.
I mean has any victim every missed the opportunity to quiveringly tell Oprah, Dr Phil, Inside Edition or Anderson Cooper that they are only telling their story so that others can be spared?

So can anyone tell me why it's my problem or your problem that some idiot let another idiot borrow what they can't afford to lend and can't afford to borrow, can't afford to invest and can't afford to lose?
Why can't all of you get together and clean up your own mess privately without involving the rest of us?
Why, it's because you all want to be the victim right? And you can't be a victim unless you have some one to acknowledge your victim hood and if you stayed private that couldn't happen right?

What the hell happened to not airing your dirty laundry to the world? Or does the hippie generation not believe they have any dirty laundry? That's it isn't it? baby boomer's are so damn self involved they think we give a shit if they take a loss in the stock market.
Here's a newsflash..we don't. So shut up already. You are the idiots that built the system, reap what you sow assholes and stop dragging us into your fuckups.


I am sick of all these manufactured crisis's. I am sick to death that there is always a group of people who spend all day every day devoted to looking for a way to throw a wrench into the works so they reap the benefits of panic.
Parasites of the system making millions manipulating the sheep into panic.


I think I may be tired of all of it. I look at the sheep and begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe it's time for a market correction on them. A thinning of that herd wouldn't really be amiss anyway.
I am beginning to wonder if it wouldn't do the entire globe a world of good to be rid of these sheep. That depresses the hell out of me. Sheep are generally kind, Obtuse yes, stupid yes but mostly good hearted but at what point do you have to demand they wake up and start fighting to preserve their right to keep their heads down pulling the grass out by it's roots and chewing thoughtfully? How long can the rest of us afford to carry them along?
Being generally cheerful and good hearted is fine but it's their skittish, thoughtless, blindingly stupid reactions to any mild disruptions to cud chewing that's killing the rest of us. It's the fact that they hate change, refuse to adapt and are always needing a minder to keep them from wandering off a cliff or getting eaten by a wolf that is dragging the rest of us down.

The sheep have abdicated personal responsibility and maybe it's time we reacquaint them with it, as painful as it's going to be I think it's their only route to survival. Honestly, I am just not going to be available to guard this herd anymore and I can't see anyone volunteering for the job. I guess they are all going to have to stop chewing for a moment and decide whether they are willing to start joining the problem solvers or stay in the field, defenseless, senselessly chewing away until someone cracks them over the head and makes them into a stew..

Thursday, May 01, 2008

forgive me for this

I think on the whole Glenn Beck is a freak. I dislike him on about fifteen different levels, one of them being he freaked out over an outpatient day surgery for a hemorrhoid so badly he needed to go back to rehab for the amount of pain medication he abused while drama queening all over the goddamn place about how he wasn't given enough love from the medical staff but I digress.
He actually said something kind of interesting the other day and after some research it turns out he wasn't full of shit as he usually is. He mentioned that some of the largest grain suppliers in the world have just posted profits so astronomical it's almost a joke.
A joke because how could it be true that we are in a global food crisis and these companies are raking in billions of profit............hmmmm.
Could it be we have one more manufactured crisis on our hands?
Could it be that someone is once again making money starving people?
And to reiterate what Beck said even if it makes me gag why aren't politicians howling about this along with all that moaning about oil prices? Shouldn't these companies be forced to give up their subsidies? Shouldn't these profits be taxed at the "windfall" rate?
Or would that piss off the farmers? Of course it wouldn't, the farmers aren't seeing any of this profit so really who are the politicians afraid of pissing off? Campaign contributors right before a Presidential election maybe?

I just have to take this opportunity to congratulate John McCain on how thrilled he is to support global market forces. There is nothing so wonderful as watching a capitalist clap their hands with glee when big companies are making big money while cheerfully ignoring the impact of those profits. It's as if he is willfully blind. I can bet Americans can hardly wait to experience his new health care plan...which to me seems suspiciously familiar. Oh wait..McCain believes in market forces!!! He thinks the prices will come down because there will be competition......will be? Isn't there already competition? And haven't the prices done nothing but gone up?
Oh what do I know, I have no economic experience just like McCain..whoops.

  • Google News
  • Edit-Me
  • Edit-Me
  • copyright harleynalice 2006