Today, Brenden realized that all matter is merely energy reduced to a slow vibration. And that we are all one conciousness appearing to itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death and life is just a dream in the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.

Welcome to casual Friday, please leave your wallet in your pants on the way in. If you catch cold, you needn’t worry friend, universal healthcare will be available soon, pending you are only ill during the first five to eight months of the fiscal budget.  In the unlikely event you drown in said forthcoming “sea of change,” you and your family will receive proper documentation thoroughly explaining how it was in fact George Bush who is not only responsible for your own demise, but also for the ozone the sea level the global economic melt down the fall of the big three corruption on wall street corruption on capital hill non-binding resolutions dead baby seals faulted middle east relations Iranian nuclear empowerment foreign energy dependence social security bankruptcy savings depletions retirement depletion unemployment unstable infrastructure college tuition increases trans-fats and of course rosie o’donnell. Should you, in the course of supposed catastrophe become un-employed or even mildly uncomfortable its important to know that help is on the way in the form of “tax credits,” which is a clever yet useless and fiscally disastrous distraction term that usually ends up in gross miscalculation, overpayment, budget molestation and yes, even more confusion over the tax code. If there are any questions regarding policy, administrative position, cabinet member selection or any other general inquiry into what the next four years will look like, google Clintons’ reign in the White House and then look sharply to the left. It is also advisable to forget everything you have learned about The Constitution as well The Bill of Rights, as these documents have been deemed outdated, out of touch with reality, tools of the nutty religious right, and I quote (in regards to The Constitution), “a charter of negative liberties.” And since the very first line of the presidential oath reads “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” we must now request that during said pledge of oath you ignore your president elect crossing his fingers behind his back and focus only on his other hand on the bible. AND…since the entire family stopped attending church as soon as the election ended…AND since the last church they belonged too was run by a racist anti-American extremist who coached your president elect for twenty years…AND since he has gone on record accusing most mid-westerners of “clinging to guns and religion” we ask that you also ignore the hand on The Bible, as it is merely a formality, much like the election itself.

Don't do it George!

“We have don’t have any good faith in him.  Any thing he does anything good it will be for himself.”

Interesting article in the Cleveland PD yesterday regarding the new changes to mortgage lending. One point that screamed for more was the reference that if these controls were put in place previously in 2002 when they were proposed, the mortgage meltdown wouldn’t have happened, unfortunately due to political pressure they were shot down.
I know many newspapers have gone the route of just posting AP or Reuters articles in their paper and call that “reporting”, but wouldn’t it be nice to know which politicians brought political pressure to bear to shoot these controls down?
Ken Lay made an off hand comment in an investor conference call stating that ENRON was fine. He was prosecuted and sentenced to years in jail, but died before serving time. Barney Frank told everyone that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in great shape and essentially, anyone that wanted to question him or Fannie or Freddie’s free spending ways was a racist. ENRON’s collapse was a pimple on the rear-end of Fannie and Freddie. Hey Barney, anymore great advice for us?

Today is the day that solidifies my once swaying thoughts on this farce of an election.  I watched some very close friends lose their jobs, witnessed more take pay cuts that sound better than they look on paper.  I listened to once prosperous car dealers explain why they are liquidating their manufacturer cap funds because they are scared shitless that cash flow is so tight it may not be there in a week and srategized with them on how to refrain from laying off more employees and debated whether investing their personal money back into payroll would be realistically beneficial to anyone.  More amazing than any of this, I listened to them explain why they didn’t support the government bailout of the failed automotive industry and heard them when their preference leans towards consolidations and personal sacrifice of monetary compensation from manufacturers they typically realize through ownership of their perspective stores. 

This is bullshit.  These guys are dying slow deaths and their employees are being buried alive in the grave.  I could go on for hours about the numerous reasons that caused the collapse of this once prosperous industry but in summary they have, and in turn myself, joined the hundreds of thousands of victims raped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I understand that there are so many things that Obama hasn’t accomplished and this is simply another line item on his ever growing list of things he didn’t do…I don’t blame him individually.  I’ll disclaim this rant by saying I am far from a financial expert of any kind and in fact had to take that fucking gateway exam at least 4 times my freshmen year in college.  All I know is that the democratic party’s misguided attempt to mutate the privilege of owning a home into a right has demolished this country and while it started getting personal when my retirement account sent me a bill stating I owe them…now it has crawled so far up my ass I’ll probably have to begin supporting universal health care because I can no longer afford the surgery required to have it removed.

I’ve spent hours reading varying opinions on why lending money to people that have a history of chronic unemployment and defaulted payments is a good idea, and of course I believe in second chances. This issue was studied by very prominate senate committees, sub-committees, sub-sub-sooo sub they don’t have clearance to enter airports in Washington let alone the white house  And of course your token economist, strategist and analyst here and there.  Bottom line people…. may have well as been you and I over beers.  Anyway, as much as I try to analyze this mess with an open mind and fact gathering I simply cannot grasp how decisions were made and policy set forth in this manner.  I equate it to leaving my children in the care of a rehabilitated child molester with the word of his mother as my only guarantee.  I agree now Todd…yes, we should be afraid.

So, while I have been enslaved to my job because I’m forced to do the work of three people for less pay and robbed of ticking time with my children I will not give in accept that this is just the way it is.  I’ll work to find ways to assist in the relief of this relentless disaster.  Further I’ll consider it my servitude to this country and will not accept that anybody but myself can improve my life.  So, to the Section 8 mother hen and her brood, and the people who take from gods to feed the demons…. consider the vacation you’ve taken since birth coming to an end. 

Of course the year I decide to get my life together, get married and do other adult things like get health insurance and start a 401k, a lovely little modern era depression sweeps our nation. Now living in Ohio, you come to expect these things. The Midwest has had the crapped kicked out of it for quite some time, Ohio especially. There was rubber, there was steel, there were jobs, and there was also a river that actually caught on fire. These things of course are all gone. Many adapted, many fled. Ohio leads the country in loss of college graduates and it seems like a weekly occurrence to have some major shut down that terminates thousands of jobs.

Our recession, as the folks like to call it, will be a new kind of economic event not easily comparable to The Great Depression in the late 20’s and on into the 30’s. I am not waiting in bread lines yet, and I still consider myself fairly fortunate to live the modest life style that I do, but I think our generation is getting a mighty hefty tab from the jackasses who have let the country crumble like it has. And although there really hasn’t been a time in our history where we haven’t been challenged, there are a lot of heads that should be on the chopping block for our ghastly deficit, the recent meltdowns of financial staples, and the looming uncertainty that now engulfs us. Lets face it, we are a relatively young country by comparison, but what really upsets me is how right we almost got it, and how, as of late we are drifting back to the ideals that caused so many to rebel and create this nation in the first place. Was that a run-on sentence? I think it was a run-on sentence. They didn’t teach grammar at my school so I apologize, I’m kinda winging all this.

But anyways… I really wish people on all sides, Dems Repubs and Indi’s alike would take a few seconds to shut the hell up and really think about how we started, how we got here and where to go in the future. This country was founded on the idea that the government would not be an iron fist to rule the people, rather it would be a back bone and means of protection and a foundation so individuals could pursue their own dreams, hence the whole life liberty and pursuit of happiness thing. I know this is more a less a blanket statement of pro-patriotism and its been said a million times before by a million people who are much smarter than myself. But then again history isn’t taught like it should be in this country and I fault myself for not taking the time and effort to fill in the blanks, learn a few more dates and connect all the dots of democracy that helped shape our great nation…man that sounded gay “dots of democracy”?? good lord I should be a politician.

This election, among other things, should serve as a wakeup call to those in this country who still consider conservative ideals as important as freedom itself. I think the republican and the right in general got lazy. I think we thought that although greatly challenged and nearly defeated, that the basic principles of the constitution, The Bill of Rights and the core ideological structures of our nation would go unchallenged. Well, we clearly thought wrong. Our president elect has gone record, as Todd has mentioned, that the constitution harbors negative liberties, and doesn’t really say what the government can do to you rather than for you. It was never intended to be a threatening or punishing document. Our government was not designed to be a parental and supervisory system. Economically, we were intended to rely on the fundamentals of capitalism, which is defined as an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. So the government stays out of commerce, and the strongest survive and the failures are allowed to fail. When we look at the big picture of what is currently happening, mainly the mass infiltration of government into the private sector, and especially what Obama plans to do with your tax dollars one word comes to mind. That word being socialism, which of course is defined as a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. Doesn’t sound all that frightening does it, until you consider where it has been implemented and what happened to those countries as a result. Here’s a sampling of socialist nations, see if there are any that you would like to see The United States of America model…Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Syria and of course pre-modern Germany and the former Soviet Union. Political scientist Friedrich August von Hayek once said, “To make and enforce decisions, the government must be run by the most amoral and ruthless.” Well that certainly sounds appealing doesn’t it? 

            And so hopefully people will wake up a bit and realize that there is no longer a pro-American capitalist comfort zone to hide in. There are too many forces working in the opposite direction who think that we should be like those countries who are either failing under socialism, or have failed and collapsed under its strength.

***No Harry Reid’s were harmed in the making of this blog***

For now, I’m just gonna say I enjoy reading the stuff on here. I will refrain from commenting on some of the current events for fear my head would explode (and it’s contents redistributed to the 1/3 of the country that “Needs it the Most”)

Jason the Drummer

I’ve decided that I deserve a bailout. You see I am just too important to fail, I know this because my mom told me so and she has thus far never been wrong. The handouts are flying and I think its my turn. I’ve got bills and plenty of bad debt, and that’s the big ticket item right now for the US government so why not buy a piece? Im thinking a very arbitrary number, like $1.71 million. I could pay down the wife’s credit cards, maybe let her grab a few new coach purses and perhaps take a fancy vacation to the dentists office for a good old fashion grind & shine.   I got this idea when I heard about the latest in multi-billion dollar give away, this time to the domestic big three auto manufactures. For decades they have lagged behind in innovation and performance. Their resale and depreciation numbers are astonishing next to the imports, and they bet everything they have on size versus efficiency, not ever taking into account that the middle east oil supply is about as stable as a drunken clown at birthday party. The first numbers thrown around were placed around twenty-five-large (that’s govt mobster slang for $25 billion), however it should be noted that as with any bailout, similar to the one that saved Chryslers aging ass 20 years prior come with some heavy handed regulations. The low interest deferrable loans are slated for retooling and technological upgrades to make the US auto industry more competitive in the new Gorinian fuel efficient era of pussy powered green machines. Why this wont work? Well where should we start…

The cost of developing and producing hybrids and other alternate fuel vehicles are no where close to lying in the realm of being economically pleasing or even feasible in the immediate market. At this point, if you purchase a hybrid vehicle it could take years to break even versus fuel prices, not to mention the cost of replacing batteries, which can run in the thousands. Ethanol or E-85, General Motor’s supposed eco-breadwinner is quickly turning out to be a global food killer, wasting an expected 3.2 B bushels in 2007/2008. Its expensive to produce, difficult to transport and corrodes seals and other components in most of our existing combustion engines.

Retooling also doesn’t address the issue of one of the primary causes of the collapse in the first place. The US auto industry, under the strangle hold of unions has failed to adapt to modern times, paying workers astronomical wages with unrealistic benefit and retirement packages. Foreign manufactures on the other hand, have kept their wages in check and made it clear that a high paying salary is useless if the profit margin of the company is in the gutter. They chose stability and sustainability over paying a line worker $70 an hour just because he has seniority and an army of union backing. Already the big three have hinted that in order to cut costs it will have to phase out its higher paid employees to make room for newer lower paid ones. The unions will not allow this, so it’s back to the drawing board Henry. 

Another frightening aspect of the bailout is that the money could just end up over seas anyways. If the government mandates retooling, and the technology and resources for retooling lie in the hands of China, Japan and Korea, your tax dollars, meant to save millions of jobs here could just end up benefiting eastern machine and robotics companies. Do you really think Ford is going to pay a premium for US designed and built machinery when it could save a bundle by going to Korea for the same equipment? And say the retooling is a success and The Big Three buy themselves some time. Suppose by some improbable miracle of market realignment the US catch up and compete with foreign manufactures in the race for fuel efficiency, will that change the way they operate as a business?

 A lot of people, the Japanese especially, knew for years the making realistic fuel-efficient cars, although not trendy or universally appealing, is the smart way to go in the long term. Honda released the Civic in 1972 and it is now sold in over 160 nations worldwide. For 36 years this car has succeeded and there are many similar success stories from Nissan and Toyota. Can you really tell me that for the past 36 years no one from the US auto industry took some notes on this? We were the first to put a man on the moon but refused to use our ingenuity and our industrial prowess into play. Truth be told, we could have built our own fleet of Civic competing automobiles but it just wasn’t what we wanted to do. Thirty years ago gas was dirt cheap and the open road was ours for the taking. Back then we could afford to take a simple auto-man and wage his way into a nice house, maybe a boat and plenty of vacation time. Times change, the markets change, Obama is change, but the US refused to pay attention and now its come back to bite them in the ass…again.

That brings us to present day. Unions wont budge, plants are being closed in droves, the Japs are making killer cars that hold their value and are actually affordable to own, and The Big Three want a check for it? Too big to fail? Are you kidding me? Why is mismanagement and inefficiency rewarded on such a grandiose scale in this country and hometown middle class success susceptible to punishment? Trust me, my heart goes out to these people, the vast majority of them had nothing to do with this cyclic devolution of industry and commerce, but is there really no middle ground between the complete collapse of our industrial giants and punishing the common tax payer? I think Rush said it best when he asked his listeners to name one thing the government has actually ever fixed. Poverty, education, welfare, social security and now housing, automotive, and banking; all areas where the government knew best right? Our economy and the principles behind capitalism can inherently work assuming they aren’t constantly being manipulated by a bunch of detached policy makers with little to no experience in the areas they are attempting to regulate. Rewrite history and allow failures to fail and the smart and studious succeed. Let an entire airline go under and watch the others take a lesson in the values of smart business. If these people know they are “too big to fail” what’s the incentive to actually do things the right way? If you know there are parachutes, safety nets and no risk of accountability, what’s the incentive in long-term stability? These bailouts reward risk, risk creates instability, instability ultimately defeats profit and growth, the resulting downfall will be paid for with our tax dollars. 

That being said, I want my $1.71 million and I want you to pay for it. I need to cover operating expenses, re-establish my credit standing and bolster spousal confidence in my ability to be a good husband and buy her an expensive dog and buy myself an 09’ Porsche Cayenne Turbo-S which MSRP’s at $123,600 but has a top track speed of 174 mph and pumps out a steamy 550 hp at 6000 rpm. Ok so the last thing is a little excessive, but no more ridiculous than top executives for insurance dunce AIG running up a tab of $440,000 at the luxurious St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach California less than a week after the federal government offered them a $85 billion bailout. Porsche Cayenne doesn’t sound so crazy now does it…

***no nancy palosi’s were harmed in the making of this blog***

she aint no chevy tahoe, but itll do

Most of us have heard the rhetoric of the select few conservative journalists who speak of Obama’s “Marxist” or “Leninist” similarities, but why have the other streams of media decided not to broach this subject? Perhaps they assume the majority of the public do not understand what that means. Or maybe they assume they are relating it to a local grocery store, or the Beatles..? Is it really that crazy to think? While most of the American Public are so concerned with “change”, it would seem that they have forgotten to look at how this change will come. A classic Obama theme was that we need “Fundamental” change. right. Aren’t the “Fundamentals” of the great U. S. of A. what make it exactly that? A lot of people will say that Barack was extremely deceptive in his campaign, and while I don’t feel that he was the spitting image of truth, he was not afraid to say how he felt about certain issues. Issues that I assumed would throw a few rad flags in the public’s eye. “generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties” -- Barack Obama, 2001. Negative liberties? He says this of course as he was describing the victories and failures of the civil rights movement. People, people, people… let’s wake up please. Hopefully this first term will help us remove the sleep from our eyes, and the guns from our pockets…

we’ll soon see

or perhaps this first term will take us back to the “leave it to beaver” days? depending on who you ask, either Kennedy almost started a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, or he gracefully avoided it. What will we say about our Obamenon?

To no great surprise folks across the nation are stocking up on firearms in preparation for what might amount to the 2^nd amendment being bent over like cheerleader on prom night. The AP, the once respected and purportedly unbiased news conglomerate reports that background checks for gun purchases in August were up a whopping 15%. These mighty gun wielding new age pioneers are concerned that Obama’s new ideas for gun control, which he coins as ““common sense,””will somehow jeopardize their god given right to bear arms, and im not talking about tank-tops or stuffed animals. (Common sense requires a few extra quotations here because im not sure its legal or logical to put the phrase in a sentence also containing Obama) Now before we get sidetracked one way or the other its important to note that although I am not a gun owner, I would like to be but it has nothing to do with this presidential event or some of the nasty nasty things our newly elected has said about gun owners. I would like one for protection not from our commander in chief, but for the maniacs, rapists, animals, morons, thieves, assholes, crazified depressive heathens who walk our lovely city streets on a daily basis. I have a wife now and thanks to the splendors of the castle doctrine (see below), I would like to think that nothing could make me feel more complete as a person than to fire off a few smokey .38’s in the pattern of an isosceles triangle into what would have been my wife’s attacker. Now trying to avoid such a situation altogether, I went with some mace and a 3^rd floor apartment to thwart the 1^st floor sliding glass window thief, the 2^nd floor semi-motivated black ski mask rubber glove duct wielding parolee, as well as the too lazy to walk up a few flights of steps 2 packs a day attacker.

But it is also of valid concern that once in the full throws of power el presidente might try and crack the whip on amendment numero two’o and make it harder to both obtain and carry our pistolas and our rifolas. This panic I believe is typical of this country as of late, a sort of pandemic of fear and hysteric preparation for all damnation at the whisper of conflict. Is Obama going to take your guns? Maybe, maybe not. Much of it will depend on who is his puppeteer is for the week. Should you rush out and buy an personal arsenal to beat the lock down? Well that’s for you to decide and you alone. I for one would like to think that there are enough sane and constitutionally oriented minds left to thwart such an action from happening. You know how the saying goes…”guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but it takes a inexperienced leftist pseudo socialist president to kill the constitution.” Ok I made the last part up but its true. If the dominos are gonna fall the way some people tend to think, then it might not be a bad idea to take a stroll down to your local gun shop and pick up a couple of fine pieces just so you sleep a bit better while your pension crumbles, your country resorts to pre world war two Russian economic policies, and the founding fathers masterpiece gets ripped apart like a free thanksgiving turkey at the YMCA, if it in fact still exists. Again I apologize for my own leanings. I will give this man a chance and I hope he does well for a great country in great need. He mobilized a great deal of the stagnant of the nation and he will be rewarded with four to eight years of harnessing this rapidly evolving archangel of democracy. He will be tested with one the most challenging international chess matches of all time while taking on an cataclysmic economy left for him by an overzealous President Clinton, an ignored and distracted President Bush and a couple of years of an idle and self defeating democratic congress. It will be fascinating to see how serious he is about “reaching across the isle” now that there is not much left to reach across to. Lock and load bitches…no no im kidding… but seriously go get a gun…maybe just one…a little one…and get like, I don’t know just like a dozen bullets…and for gods sake learn how to shoot the damn thing…get one of those laser sights so you know just where what you’re gonna hit…cuz there aint nothing harder than patching bullet holes in the vaulted ceiling of your 3^rd floor apartment…well except for maybe getting the blood stains off the Berber… ok ok ill stop.

***no barney frank’s were harmed in the making of this blog***

from the all knowing and publicly edited archives of the wiki…

A Castle Doctrine (also known as a Castle Law or a Defense of Habitation Law) is an American legal concept derived from English Common Law, which designates one’s place of residence (or, in some states, any place legally occupied, such as one’s car or place of work) as a place in which one enjoys protection from illegal trespassing and violent attack. It then goes on to give a person the legal right to use deadly force to defend that place (his/her “castle”), and/or any other innocent persons legally inside it, from violent attack or an intrusion which may lead to violent attack. In a legal context, therefore, use of deadly force which actually results in death may be defended as justifiable homicide under the Castle Doctrine.

Castle Doctrines are legislated by state, and not all states in the US have a Castle Doctrine. The term “Make My Day Law” comes from the landmark 1985 Colorado statute that protects people from any criminal charge or civil suit if they use force – including deadly force – against an invader of the home.[1] The law’s nickname is a reference to the famous line uttered by Clint Eastwood’s character Dirty Harry in the 1983 film Sudden Impact, “Go ahead, make my day.”

This legal doctrine is often linked to the rights of homeowners to bear arms, as defined in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.