...that someday I'll have a threesome with Sculder and Mully. There it is I said it....that the Fannie Mae bailout will help stabilize the markets. Though that won't happen until they either publicize or privatize those guys. The current fence-straddling is breaking our balls. I felt a little like a Republican the other day when I read a heartwarming story about people getting loan assistance. "This is great," one woman said. "Now I can go to grad school and really save some money." Hey, wait a minute--I want to go to grad school, too! Except when people tried to get me to use my condo as an ATM, I just said no! And got me a fixed-rate with a solvent institution! So where's my assistance?
...that the people helped out won't just cycle right back to the same old shit, because the real problem isn't solved. I guess I must be a compassionate conservative, because when I read the NYT Sunday piece about the woman who racked up the credit card bills on the home shopping network while in bed after a hysterectomy, my heart hurt for her. Especially seeing the photo--she's way overweight and smoking. We're so terribly, sickeningly, tragically addicted to so much; we must be in such terrible pain to go to such lengths, destroying our health, our lives, our relationships, just to feel a little bit better. Even Republicans do it--look at poor Bob Novak with his penis-extender Corvette convertible. Ooops, forgot, that wasn't purchased out of an addictive urge to shore up identity--it's an investment. You can use it to run down old men and decrease the surplus population.
Words of wisdom from my August horoscope, by astrologer Eric Francis:
"...the whole notion of "difference" as it is projected onto social (so-called) reality is a farce, the job of which is to perpetuate alienation (mainly to sell things). You don't need that, and neither do the rest of us."
Priceless.
Photo: The Last Judgment altarpiece from St. Cecilia cathedral, Albi, from Sacred Destinations Travel Guide. The horrifyingly huge cathedral and its horrifying and also huge last judgment were made over the course of about 200 years to smack down the Cathar heresy. Just a couple of highlights: 400 "heretics" burned; the Pope's bagman memorably coined the phrase "Kill Em All, Let God Sort Em Out." ("Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.") The Last Judgment and the cathedral were the medieval version of "this is what will happen to you if you don't buy what we're selling." Nearly every artist involved in its creation is anonymous. Hope they got paid, at least!
3 comments:
I'm with you right down to Scully and Mulder. "Mulder, you can't possibly believe that a giant flukeman living in the sewers has arranged for us to have a menage a trois with the Capital Cougar." "Scully, sometimes the only sane answer to an insane world is a threesome."
Love to see the Bush Administration resort to a socialist bailout of Fannie and Freddie. Hypocritical bullshit (that just happens to mean we must be really fucked). I'm sorry, my progressive views are pretty well entrenched and I will not vote for that sorry excuse for a bad Elton John album title ("The Maverick and the Hockey Mom") but I can't stomach this bailout. Just like you said, you took out a fixed interest loan and refused to use your home as an ATM. We're supposed to believe it was all these nefarious lenders preying on the populace. In my book, it's the stupid populace that allowed themselves to be preyed upon. I remember house hunting during the big run-up. I told the realtor at the filled open house I had $xx,000 for a down payment. She said money down doesn't really matter, and right then I knew I wasn't going to win in this game on my freelance journalist's salary. But all those people who didn't have any money, and spent waaay above their means, and took out risky loans, are all hurting now, and I'll be goddamned if I'm ok with my tax dollar bailing them out. The great corrective is to let things fail. That way, people will think twice about playing the games again because there are actual penalties for acting so irresponsibly. Ruin, for example. Like someone said to me recently, recession in this country is nothing like recession in other countries. We just print money so no one gets hurt. We pretend we're not in a war, and instead focus on pop tarts with baby bumps. Half the country denies global warming, calls it a hoax, only because it means admitting Al Gore is right. Nevermind that a green works program (Kucinich is always in front of the line on the coolest concepts ... while everyone gleefully paints him as a crackpot) galvanizes the country with a growth engine not seen since WWII. Pew says just 20 percent of young people in this country read newspapers. I think we've turned into a bunch of obese, self-centered dummies that don't know jack about the world and fall hook, line and sinker for a hot broad with a smart mouth who clearly has the ego the size of the polar bears she hopes to drown. I'm sorry, I don't sympathize with those looking for a bailout because they get themselves into trouble by living beyond their means, shopping when their president tells them to after the planes slam into the towers, re-upping on him when he's clearly leading us closer to Kurtz every day and refusing to do the one thing the Internet, television and other forms of saturating advertising and brainwashing seductively whisper for them never to do -- wake up.
oops. Forgot to sign!
-- John S.
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