Okay, America, admit it: 90% of you who “disapprove” of Obama’s Presidency are racists.
RACISTS.
You’ve all been hiding ever since George Wallace and Richard Nixon gave you a corner to hide in. But watch out, pigs: white people won’t be a majority in just a few short years. (I’m a white guy and I don’t give a shit about it: we’ve run the country long enough.)
What the hey. The world can’t live on pellet stoves and solar batteries. Sooner or later, the value of natural gas will become apparent. And if you have a couple of thousand dollars hanging around in a bank account, you’re getting less than 1% interest. If you put it in a CD, you’re lucky to get 2.5%. But if you invest in a natural gas stock, especially one that is a Master Limited Partnership, you can get — tax free – upwards of 11%.
Figure: natural gas is abundant in North America, and does not require a huge new investment. Vehicles already run on natural gas in several cities. That alone should qualify it as a good bet for the future.
According to this article in Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine, more than half of all commercial properties in the U.S. that carry mortgages are “under water”. Given that the typical commercial mortgage is 10 years, and that the interest costs are paid up front (quite different from home mortgages), most commercial buyers get a second loan to pay off the heavy interest costs of the first. These secondary mortgages are bundled and sold as derivatives — remember that nasty word from a short while back?
Let’s take a very large housing development in New York City, for example. In 2006, Tishman Speyer bought Stuyvesant Town for a whopping $5.6 billion dollars, almost all of it borrowed. Well, one man’s borrowed money is another man’s investment. And this deal has some pretty big investors, like the State of California, the Church of England, and the Federal Republic of Germany. If Tishman Speyer seeks protection from its creditors, as seems likely, all those entities are going to be like former GM workers who watched their retirements vanish with their GM stock portfolios.
Now imagine if the Stuyvesant Town deal is the tip of the iceberg. Some of the other $5 trillion in commercial loans go bad. And you thought a couple hundred thousand private homes going under was bad? The sub-prime mortgage crash led directly to the current recession. If the commercial mortgage crash comes, and I sincerely hope it does NOT, the world will be in for a depression the likes of which we’ve never seen. And yes, it would be worse than the Great Depression, because the social safety nets that used to exist, such as the extended family and fraternal organizations, don’t exist any more. The government safety nets will be unsustainable burdens on the federal budget that won’t survive a crash.
Okay, now I’m scaring myself. I mean, I have money in the stock market and in my credit union. But if this scenario comes to pass, I’m pulling it all out and putting it under my pillow.
CNN has evidently discovered that there’s something fishy about Republican opposition to the public option in the health care bill. Indeed there is. Take a look.
I got this in my inbox this morning (Sunday Nov. 8 2009) and it caused me to get all righteous and riled, so I did what any normal person would do and put it on my blog. With comments, of course.
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
I love things like this…this kind of thing is one of the arsenals in my gallery of teaching tools. Every time there’s a kid who can’t read well, a teacher will tell me, “He (she) isn’t sounding out the words!”, to which I say, “Thank God, ’cause I’d hate to hear him / her sound out psyche!” It’s all such a load of crap, this phonics stuff. I concentrate on the beginning and ending sound of each word, then on the shapes of the middle letters. That way, they get a picture of the word in their minds. And it works: my success rate in getting kids to read at or above grade level is over 95% every year, averaged over the past 10 years. (I’ve left three kids back and was forced to let one go on who couldn’t read at grade level.) So don’t let anyone tell you that the problem with kids is that they don’t know their phonics: the problem IS PHONICS. It was not taught before the late 1950’s — and guess when reading scores began to decline? Phonics got a big boost from federal Title 1 programs in the ’60s, and we all know what happened to literacy then.
The point is, if 55% of people can make perfect sense out of this email, then 55% do not need phonics at all. The other 45% need to be brought to a level of awareness about beginning and ending sounds.
Scene: A classroom at Brooklyn College
Time: 4:00 p.m., May 24, 1989
Characters: An old man. Myself.
Note: This is fiction.
“As soon as a person becomes aware of the objects around him, he considers them in relation to himself, and rightly so, because his whole fate depends on whether they please or displease him, attract or repel, help or harm him. This quite natural way of looking at or judging things appears to be as easy as it is necessary. A person is, nevertheless, exposed through it to a thousand errors that often make him ashamed and embitter his life,” said the old man.
“That sounds fa-goddamn-miliar to me,” I said. “Wasn’t that written by…Hume? In his “On Personal Identity?”
“No,” said the man. He turned slightly from me; he lowered his gaze. “That was Goethe.”
“What was that you said?”
“I said Goethe. He wrote that.”
“Thought it was Hume. I’ve only read Goethe’s poetry and plays, not his pronouncements about philosophy. Anyway, it sounds okay. I mean, how can we deny the element of the subjective in all things sentient? And yet, where is the delineation between subjectivity and self-indulgence, selfishness? Surely the latter have clear moral implications, where subjectivity does not. So when Goethe says, “a thousand errors that often make him ashamed and embitter his life,” is he not also implying that, since shame is a form of moral self-judgement, subjectivity embraces morality also? If, then, morality is purely subjective, it is independent of judgement. This, you will agree, is —”
“A reductio ad absurdum,” the man interrupted. “You are making light of Goethe’s words.”
“Quite the contrary, old man,” I said, rising as I spoke. “I intend to be serious. If there is only a subjective base, if that base is both ‘easy and necessary,’ as Goethe says, then all moral judgements are founded on nothing. Nothing! Does that not disturb you?” I was standing now, not at all in a menacing manner and yet the man sank down lower in his chair.
“Of course,” he began. “I have had those thoughts. They are inevitable.”
“Then I am not reducing Goethe to absurdity,” I said, dryly.
“But what can we put in place of morality?” he asked, still sunken. “Where is the authority, where is the soul’s policeman? How can I write with conviction about the squalid immorality of Klein’s Nursing Home for Adults on Coney Island Avenue, where the warehoused aged sit, tired from fear, behind dulled Plexiglas panes, suspiciously, nervously eyeing every ambulance that pauses outside? Suppose I end up there, without morality as a bayonet to support the white flag of truth?”
“So you compare truth to surrender,” I said, staring at the wall.
“Well, damn it, it is an equation that has caused me much pain,” the old man said.
Without speaking, he got up from his chair and shook my hand. He stood there for a long while. At last he stepped back, put on his hat and coat and, turning to go, said to me, “You know, I really do detest you.” He quickly left.
Whee! This isn’t just a win for the Democrats. But let’s crow just a little bit. Democrats haven’t had anyone representing this area of New York since Lincoln was President. So, in that sense, Fox News and its acolytes should be pissing in their pants rather than passing the pizza and Pepsi. All they can say is that Virginia and New Jersey prove that Obama is politically toast because those two states elected Republican governors. Well, I ask you: which do you think would get the attention of historians? A typical see-saw of local politics as exemplified by those gubernatorial races, or a sea-change like we saw in the 23rd Congressional District of New York?
Just in case some folks are deaf, here’s what we said, among other things:
We don’t like Sarah Palin.
What makes you think we listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh? You think we have time for this crap? (And, uhh, you think we get radio reception?)
We are not Party Republicans. We became Republicans back when being a Republican meant opposing slavery and seeing America as a strong federation of free states.
We really don’t like being told what to do. And you call us parochial at your peril.
We’re not against government spending. Our biggest employers are Fort Drum, two major prisons, and a psychiatric center. That’s how we pay for things.
Ah, ’tis a wonderful morning to be in New York State. Suck it up, Beck!
Okay, I don’t live in the 23rd Congressional District of New York, but I do live just a few streets outside of it. That puts me closer to it than the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, who lives in Lake Placid, 8 miles away. Oh, but his campaign headquarters are 400 feet inside the 23rd, so hey.
Hoffman has said nothing about local issues, and appears to have no idea what a Representative does. Then again, he has no idea what he has done for the past, oh, 30 years or so. Ah, here, Chris Kelly from Huffington Post puts it better than I can:
I was a man who had many friends,
And many friends had me.
I used to pump gas about an hour north of where Doug Hoffman used to pump gas. I don’t know if that makes us kindred spirits or ancient enemies. I know it makes us both old. (“What do you mean, you used to pump gas? For who? The Romans?”) Now Doug Hoffman is the Conservative Party nominee for Congress in New York’s 23rd District.
And I hate to say this about a fellow former pump jockey, but he’s hooked up with some really loathsome people.
Doug Hoffman didn’t want to be in the Conservative Party. He’s not crazy. He wanted to be the Republican nominee. He applied, but the party chose someone else; a woman named Dede Scozzafava. Doug Hoffman was shocked by this decision, since he had that gas station experience going for him, and all Scozzafava had was six terms in the Assembly and four years as Mayor of Gouverneur. So he did what any modest, principled, grass-roots-centered, we-the-people-type citizen legislator would do: He got in touch with a fringe party and told them he was wiling to spend $250,000 of his own money to run.
Because that’s what it means to have a servant’s heart.
And a midlife crisis.
Barack Obama got 52% of the votes in the 23rd in 2008. Dede Scozzafava had the Republicans. Where could Doug Hoffman turn?
To a traveling freak show of evil creeps who want to use a misguided mediocrity to jerk around the people of upstate New York for shits and giggles.
To Glenn Beck, Gary Bauer, Sean Hannity, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, Dick Armey and, yesterday, like the churning of milk bringing forth butter and the wringing of the nose bringing forth blood, to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page.
It’s like Commissioner Gordon lit up the batshit signal.
He also has the support of the Club for Growth, the National Review, the Weekly Standard and Human Events. Or, as Sarah Palin puts it:
And best of all, Doug Hoffman has not been anointed by any political machine.
She’s still got it.
He hasn’t just been anointed by a political machine. He’s been kidnapped by drifters.
Of course they’re a machine. They’re also rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers and horse thieves. And worst of all, they’re not even from around here.
They’re all from out of state.
According to the Watertown Daily Times:
Aside from his own personal wealth, Mr. Hoffman has paid for his congressional campaign almost entirely with money from outside New York…
The Club for Growth PAC, based in Washington, has contributed more than $95,000 to Mr. Hoffman’s campaign through bundled funds, out of $307,888 he has raised, according to the FEC report. The Citizens United Political Action Fund, a conservative group, gave $10,000.
He also accepted $1,000 from the God is Not Government PAC, based in Washington, which describes itself as a “real religious right Political Action Committee” that can “run radio and TV ads favoring conservative Christian candidates” and requires its recipients to affirm in writing that they “are pro-life, pro-family and stand firmly against the unbiblical welfare state that is destroying the spiritual and economic greatness of our nation.”
Sure, if you believe the liberal elite drive-by media, like the Watertown Daily Times. And not the feisty local little guys, like Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times, where the editorial page has called for Scozzafava to step aside for Hoffman or risk turning America into “Dede’s Police State.”
Don’t say you weren’t warned, Oswego.
Listen, I’m in no position to say the people of upstate New York shouldn’t vote for Sarah Palin’s candidate. What do I know? My grandfather left Watertown in the 1930s, so we’ve never lived under Dede Scozzafava’s iron heel. My step-grandfather, stepfather, mother and sisters all settled in the chilly Diaspora of Cortland, miles over the county line. If messages are smuggled to my cousins in Malone, I’m not endangering them by telling you.
And Doug Hoffman can do what he wants, including go into business with unspeakably sleazy characters.
But no one in New York should get the wrong impression, like that he’s doing it for Watertown.
I was a man who had many friends, And many friends had me. I used to pump gas about an hour north of where Doug Hoffman used to pump gas. I don’t know if that makes us kindred spirits or ancient ene…
I was a man who had many friends, And many friends had me. I used to pump gas about an hour north of where Doug Hoffman used to pump gas. I don’t know if that makes us kindred spirits or ancient ene…
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/sarah-palin-friends-doug_b_331675.html
