Class Warfare? Yes, and We're Losing...

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50T11420090130

This makes my blood boil. $14 B in bonuses paid while receiving taxpayer money to bail them out of gigantic losses? How is this possible?!

The last eight years have represented a major redistribution of wealth from the bottom and middle to the top. Millionaires have turned to billionaires and billionaires have become even more filthy rich. All the while the middle class has shrunk, poverty grown, wages stagnated, and expenses skyrocketed.

Maybe when they empty Gitmo of terrorism suspects they should fill it with robber baron CEOs. Fucking thieves!! They run their companies into the ground and still get billions in bonuses?! How the hell can any bonus be justified when they are laying employees off and losing money? My head is spinning... how can we tolerate this?

Thieves! Thieves! Oh, Christ! I'm infuriated. The only thing these guys are good at is stealing! They are incapable of running a company with competence, but man can they steal! Please explain to me how this is anything but out and out thievery. They get our money and put it in their pockets.

All the while the average American is losing their job, their home, their dignity, their healthcare... We are losing EVERYTHING, and these guys are getting even more rich!

How much damned money do they need? And to top it off they are utterly shameless about it. CitiGroup just was caught buying another corporate jet for $50 million. They didn't even have the decency to buy and American made jet (it was French) !! This after receiving $45B in taxpayer bailout money!

Shameless thievery!! Please, someone tell me why these guys shouldn't be strung up in the public square by their tender parts! I'm almost serious about this. In my mind this is nearly treasonous.

The nation is in dire financial straits and these guys are conducting business as usual - heaping money stolen from the public coffers on themselves, buying more jets and sacrificing nothing themsleves whilst laying off employees. The later of which has the effect of removing that much more money from the hands of consumers which further undercuts the segment of the economy (consumer spending) which accounts for 2/3 of all economic activity in our nation.

On top of it all, they get to keep their jobs!!! This blows my mind. If it weren't for these "economic geniuses" repackaging shaky mortgages into securities and selling them at 20-30 time their capitalization, we wouldn't be in this mess! They perpetrated fraud and then when the house of cards collapsed they got your money, my money, our money and proceeded to use it not to save jobs, not to keep credit flowing, but to put in their pockets!

Thank God I don't live anywhere near Wall Street. I'm so mad right now I just might do something stupid...

Camping Trip!

My brother and I went camping Monday night. We woke up to season's the first wintry precipitation at around 4 am Tuesday morning!

We built a stick wall and then draped an emergency thermal blanket over it. Once we lit the fire, standing where I am in this pic you could feel almost no heat from the fire!

I brought my small tent since it was supposed to be cold. We used an extra rainflap to create a little sheltered spot to the side of the tent for our gear and for a little extra insulation.

The beginnings of my brother's bean cassole.

Preheating the iron pan.

As the evening wore on, we broke into our homebrew IPA.

My brother huddling by the tent. My little propane camp stove is heating my brother's antique iron coffee percolator. It was the perfect size for two cups of coffee and it was the first cup of camp coffee I'd ever had without any grounds in it!

My Banner?

My old banner vanished all of a sudden. Wonder if Google found it offensive, somehow? Anyways, I hope you enjoy the new banner!

Brick Controversy

Here in Charlottesville we have something called the Downtown Mall. This was once East Main Street, a two-lane street lined with shops and restaraunts. Very classic Americana Main Street.

I think it was 1979 (I could be wrong) when business was slumping on East Main Street and doing better in the new mall built on the Rt. 29 side of town. This new mall was a typical urban sprawl type development centered around the automobile.

So the city was faced with a problem: Main Street was obviously failing and many of the businesses on East Main were very close to closing down. So what to do?

Answer? Brick the street in, add some fountains, and turn the entire length of East Main into a pedestrian mall. Roll the clock forward thirty years and it is a model for urban renewal that has been emulated by Portland, Raleigh, and others. It's especially beautiful in the spring and early summer when the trees are in bloom, shading the patio dining areas for the various restaraunts. People fill the Mall most of these idyllic days and the vibe is very relaxed.

Also add thirty years of wear on the bricks. Toss in there obnoxiously drunk college girls snapping off the heels on their $200 ho-heels in between bricks and you have a call to action. Rebrick the Downtown Mall! Price tag? Nine million dollars.

At first I was pretty outraged. Nine million dollars!? Are you freakin' kidding me? In these hard financial times you're going to spend nine million tax payer dollars on rebricking a mall that doesn't really need it? I mean, there were some cracks and some bricks did need to be replaced, yes, but the whole mall didn't need to be rebricked.

Now I'm actually in favor of the idea. I was running an errand on the Mall the other day and I saw some construction workers on break. They were sitting around eating food from one of the restaraunts. One walked out of the CVS packing a pack of cigarettes against his palm.
Then it hit me: this is exactly the wrong time to can such a project. It has already been paid for. Who knows if this construction company has another gig lined up? These are guys who are gainfully employed on a project that reinvests in a community asset.

And they're doing it smarter this time. I'm no bricklayer or mason, but supposedly the method of bricking the Mall this time will be different. It is supposed to last much longer than the original method used.

But, in typical Charlottesville fashion, people have their panties all in a bunch. They fought the original idea of transforming East Main Street back in 1979. Now the Downtown Mall is credited with saving Charlottesville's downtown area and is the major social and commercial venue in the city proper. People mocked the city councilman who championed the 250 Bypass. Anyone who knows Charlottesville can imagine what a nightmare crosstown traffic would be if it weren't for the 250 Bypass.

Calm down people. It's an upgrade to a vital city resource and it's providing jobs in tough times.

Capitalists and Socialists

Where my free market capitalists at? What! What!

Where my socialists at? What! What!

Screw all you guys and your weak knees! Both of these groups are being wishy-washy and failing to have the courage of their own "convictions."

If you're a free market advocate then you have to be against any intervention by the government to save capitalism from itself. Let the chips fall where they may. Destruction is but the dawn of creation, right? Out of the ashes new enterprises will rise... stronger, leaner, more competitive. Innovation will save the day!

I don't see anyone espousing these ideas.

Stop snickering, you socialists! You don't even have the balls to openly call yourselves socialists! Ha! A real socialist would be standing in front of every mic and every camera screaming at America to wake up! Unbridled capitalism has failed you! Again! Nationalize the banks! Nationalize the automotive industry! And I don't mean these half-assed "bridge loans" or "bailouts", either. A socialist would advocate for open and total government control of these failed institutions. And don't kid yourselves - these are most definitely failed institutions. The writing has been on the wall for years and either through paralysis or willful blindness they failed to act in advance to save themselves.

Again - no one is openly advocating the government takeover of the means of production and capital.

Free market capitalists say "Ho!!"

<crickets>

Socialists say "Ho!!"

<crickets>

Hmmm... Maybe there are no real socialists or free market capitalists after all? Or not many, at least. In my humble opinion, we should go "all in" one way or the other. I'm tired of these half-measures that keep this crap limping along as-is.

In all honesty, our economy is a mixture of socialism and free market capitalism with a bit of a lean towards the free-market side of the equation.

So what do you want? The slow growth and predictable hum-drum of socialism or the roller coaster ride of boom and bust that is free market capitalism? There's no perfect economic formula, people. It just doesn't exist.

I just wish we'd be done with this - either we commit to an ideology and let that go where it may or we can drag this global economic collapse out for years and years and years. If we truly committed to an ideology, we could at least know once and for all which works and which doesn't...

Me, personally, I'd like to see it all go down the toilet. I have a feeling that's what's going to happen no matter what government does.

Life and existence in general resemble both systems, in some ways. Life is all about death and rebirth: the boom and bust of free market capitalism. Life also carries on - the more things change the more they stay the same: the safety net and static nature of socialism.

So what the hell? Let's try one of them out for once!

Is it just me?

Here is my primary beef with Bush: The guy directly and obscenely contradicts himself, often in the same breath. He is intellectually dishonest and a hypocrite of the greatest magnitude.

Before I get any knee-jerk reactions to that last comment:

• No, I am not a major lefty Democrat. I voted Democrat this last election because the Republicans have screwed the pooch so badly these last 8 years and I felt I had to "vote the bums out."
• I have voted for Republicans in the past.
• I know many politicians will contradict themselves, but rarely do they do it so blatantly and in the same breath.
• Yes, I have specific examples to provide...

Just last night in Bush's Farewell Address he said the following (a verbatim quote):

And with strong allies at our side, we have taken the fight to the terrorists and those who support them. Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school. Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.

This was done by means of invasion and war. In both nations there have been innocent civilian casualties. No one knows for certain, but the lowest, most conservative estimates I can find on the Iraqi civilian death toll are in the 60,000-90,000 range (and those estimates are months old).

Now I understand that the enemy over there often fires RPGs and mortars from within homes of terrified civilians. I understand almost all of the combat is taking place in urban, close-quarter conditions. I do not in any way condemn our soldiers for doing a very hard job with exceptional professionalism and bravery. I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on the shoulders of the country's political leadership of which Bush is the Commander in Chief.

Not five minutes later in the very same speech Bush goes on to say (another direct quote from the transcripts):

As we address these challenges - and others we cannot foresee tonight - America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.

So what exactly did we do by invading a nation like Iraq to advance the ideology of freedom? Was the cause of peace advanced through a war of choice? Did we not kill innocent civilians by the thousands? Is that not the inevitable and utterly predictable outcome of any war?

Afghanistan is different - they actually attacked us whereas Iraq did not attack us nor did they have the WMD that the Administration said they did. They willfully bent intelligence to sell this war in order to advance the ideology of freedom in the Middle East and killed thousands of everyday Iraqi citizens in the process. So, by Bush's own logic: "Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere" is he not condemning the actions he himself ordered?

I fail to see how dropping a 500 lb bomb from miles in the air and killing civilians to promote the ideology of freedom is so different from a car bomb killing innocents to promote any other ideology. It is all murder by Bush's own logic. Meaning well doesn't make the families killed in either form of attack any less dead. It doesn't make the survivors mourn the loss of loved ones any less. It doesn't engender any less hate.

And this bit:

As we address these challenges - and others we cannot foresee tonight - America must maintain our moral clarity.

Moral clarity like Abu Ghraib? Moral clarity like Guantanamo? Moral clarity like secret prisons and renditions? Moral clarity like tapping the phones of your own citizens?

Regardless of where you come down on these issues you have to admit that they are morally murky at best. You have to admit that patriotic Americans of the best intentions and of all political stripes can have honest disagreements about the morality (and legality, for that matter) of the above actions undertaken by this Administration. That is the very antithesis of "moral clarity."

And if you are of the mindset that the "world is grey" (and I would tend to agree), and that moral clarity is at best elusive, then why would you make absolute statements like the ones Bush made in his speech? The contradictions and hypocrisy are built right in by his very own actions as President!

Homebrew, Homies, and Life

I'm going camping the evening of the 26th of January on my folks place in Barboursville. You can't beat having 55 acres of beautiful land in central Virginia at your disposal. My family's land has a source spring feeding a nice, but small, pond. It has forests, hills, fields, two creeks, and even a swampy little area.

There is an abundance of wild life that lives on the property or visits it. Deer are commonplace as are squirrels, rabbits, foxes, and a wide variety of other mammals (there's even a beaver dam just behind our northern property line). Black bears and bobcats have been spotted a handful of times on this land and mountain lions have been seen in the vicinity not too far from our farm.

Geese, on their migratory route, routinely grace our pond. Hawks have had nests in our trees at times and can still be seen on a regular basis hunting on the farm. They probably have a nest hidden somewhere in our forest.

Many people when asked to envision paradise think of some tropical beach somewhere, mixed drink complete with umbrella in hand. Unfortunately they also picture a luxury resort hotel staffed by third world workers as a part of that "paradise." In actuality most tropical locales are festering hell holes of malaria, insects, and a million and one varieties of poisonous or toxic spiders, snakes, etc. Most of these people would never dare visit this place without their precious air conditioned room and hotel staff to wait on their every whim.

I envision my parents' farm when someone asks me to picture paradise. I imagine central Virginia with its pastoral rolling hills, forests, mountains, and fields. The red clay of the soil says "home" to me, and I kind of pity those who have to fantasize about far-flung places to envision a peaceful and rejuvenating environment.

What more could you want than what is all around you? Almost any environment can provide for humans and most provide for our needs quite well. I watch some of the survival-themed shows like Survivor Man or Man vs Wild. Contrary to what you may think, these guys actually seem to have some of their easiest episodes when they choose the desert as the environment to challenge themselves. Some deserts are truly desolate, but most will provide you with water and plenty of food if you know where to look.

Now look at an environment like central Virginia and the abundance of life and sources of food is astonishing. I sometimes imagine what it must have been like to be a settler here back in the early days of colonialism. Sure there were dangers, but how amazing this land must have seemed to people coming out of crowded Europe. What opportunity!

I almost long for this decrepit, shallow society of ours to fail. I dream of the opportunity it would afford me to completely redefine my life. Sometimes I hate the grind I am in... I go to work, I come home, have too much to do and too little time to do it. I barely get to see my kids many nights. I go to sleep too late because I am constantly catching up with "things" and then I wake up tired the next day to face the same series of events all over again. Flip another page on the ole calendar.

"Shorter of breath and one day closer to death," to quote Pink Floyd.

Wow - quite a sidetrack I got on there. Sorry 'bout that.

Homebrews, homies, and the camping trip. My first batch of homebrew will be ready for this trip, so we'll be enjoying some fine IPA as well as whatever my brother is bringing from his homebrewing enterprise. A buddy of mine will be coming along, too. He was featured in some photos from past entries (here and here). The eyes are redacted to protect anonymity, of course.

We'll hang out, bag a rabbit for dinner (my bro is the top chef in town), and then drink many, many fine and fresh beers. An excellent evening, in all likelihood. I love camping in the winter. I sleep so soundly, wrapped up in my sleeping bag with the sound of the wind all about.

I can't wait, really.