and another thing (Libertarians)...

Your boy Grover Norquist is about to look as nebbish and stupid to you as he is to the rest of us, the majority of the human race. Now that Saxby Chambliss (a girl's name?), the Foghorn Leghorn from Geor-gia,  has kicked your boy's dumbo "no-tax pledge," your time in the sun is over. Anyone with more than two brain cells knows that American Libertarianism is a white boy fixation, and not many of them at that, in reality. That same demographic wave that's going to consume and destroy the GOP is going to take you down, because you're really extremist Republicans. Maybe that's too fair. I think what you really all are is a textbook example of emotional and intellectual retardation having a political expression. Over, done. Enough with the delusions of adequacy.

AP: Bush administration eased lending regulations under lobbying "pressure"

Washington D.C.--No kidding? Really? I wasn't aware of this, and neither were all the firms that pushed for it...then crashed, went bankrupt, and are either asking for a hand-out from the government or no longer exist anymore (the latter being the best).

It seems that no matter what this administration does, nobody has any will or desire to hold them accountable. That's because it isn't all about them.

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of a philosophy that trusted market forces and discounted the need for government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

"We're going to be feeling the effects of the regulators' failure to address these mortgages for the next several years," said Kevin Stein of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who warned regulators to tighten lending rules before it was too late. ("AP IMPACT: Under pressure, US eased lending rules," AP, 12.01.2008)

Yes, it's a good thing we have AP and the rest of the soon-to-be former scions of this order to tell us this. Notably, it was Allen Greenspan who advocated much of this deregulation--you remember him, the man everyone listened raptly to just a year ago, genuflecting to every utterance he made. They love you when you're making them rich, but they'll think less of you when yours and their ideas don't work anymore.

These are the rewards of getting your way almost every time. The temporal universe has a way of correcting any organism (or institution) when it's running amok, and we're seeing this writ large now in the developed world. Like emotions, stupidity and delusion are highly-contagious in human society.

When people are riding high and making so much money, they falsely presume what they're doing is correct because it benefits them. Academic join-in on this game, playing along and keeping the horrible truths from us as much as they humanly can. We didn't need them to tell us what they're telling us today: "The NBER says its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began in December 2007." ("Panel says US has been in recession since December 2007," AP, 12.01.2008)

Who could have told them that a pre-1929 approach to the American economy would result in a collapse? Besides the few ten-year-olds I know as neighbors, nearly anyone with a clue. But most Americans don't know their history, and the general attitude is that it's irrelevant, unimportant, and--most importantly--a lot of work and boring to explore. Additionally, there is the contention that it's "worthless knowledge." How worthless is it today, and how much would it have saved the public had we all been more informed and vigilant? More than $1 trillion USD.

Is understanding the last Depression so "worthless" today? It took us almost eighty years to forget what led to the last collapse. How long will it take next time? Probably not very long, since we're bound to keep doing the same things that led to this problem, which works for me.

At that point, history isn't going to let us repeat the same mistakes any longer and this order will be permanently dead. Market rule will be over for good. There are forces stronger than the human race, and we should be glad for it. In sum, whether we learn from it this time is irrelevant: the world trumps the powerful and the groundswell is coming, the general strikes are coming, and modest reforms aren't going to cut it.

In that sense, we have little to worry about with President-elect Barack Obama (at least he's qualified and actually won the election legally), because he's not going to have any choice but to create change with substance in America. That doesn't mean we won't be pushing him--we will--but events have a way of pushing everyone out of the narcotized inaction we've all been in for far too long. Now things affect those who always said, "If it doesn't affect me, I don't care." The fun is over, even for the comfortable these days.

Now things affect those who always said, "If it doesn't affect me, I don't care." The fun is over, even for the comfortable these days. Of course the Bush II administration went well beyond deregulation. They told the business and financial sectors that they could do whatever they wanted to, that nobody was watching.

Today is just a corroboration of what we all knew. Regardless of how many exposes, breaking stories, and general revelations of misconduct, nobody's going to seriously go after the members of the lame duck Bush II administration when they're just as guilty, the problems are systemic. Watch--with glee--as the whores run for cover, even when there ultimately won't be anywhere to run.

We're a strange species, but at least we're beginning to confront power again. Welcome to the end of Reaganism.

"Panel says US has been in recession since December 2007," AP, 12.01.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20081201/49336f50_3ca6_15526200812011563214544

"AP IMPACT: Under pressure, US eased lending rules," AP, 12.01.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/bus?guid=20081201/49336f50_3ca6_1552620081201459265956

English Accents and American Advertising

"Well, you speak better English than I do."--Byron de la Beckwith, deceased convicted murderer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, from the HBO/BBC documentary 'Southern Justice: The Murder of Medgar Evers,' 1994 . Beckwith was convicted the same year of the broadcast of the documentary of Evers' murder. He mercifully croaked in 2001.

USAHHHHHHH, Fuck It...--Say what you will, but for a developed nation, we're the red-headed stepchild of the Western world. We've always been a dowdy, poorly-dressed lot of malcontents, but it's getting embarrassing. Compared to the average slob in most other 'modern' nations, we're incredibly fucking stupid and boorish.

Thanks to our lousy miseducational system and corporate owned mainstream media, many Americans have an pathetically low vocabulary and are not very well-spoken. Nonetheless, it's the fault of the individual, and it takes two to tango.

You have to have someone willing to be a poverty beforehand. But just look at interviews with average individuals in the U.K.--the differences are stunning, we sound like the cavemen that many around the world (rightly) think we are. Ignorance is hip, sounding 'smart' is out, and it's well known we're a decidedly anti-intellectual anti-culture. Enter the usage of voice-talent from the U.K. .

If you even watch television casually in the United States, it's inescapable that you'll see and/or hear an actor or actress from Great Britain doing the voice-over for any number of ads. Why? Because of the aforementioned: their voices sound 'authoritative,' while ours...like apes. Watch a young American woman speak: it's like seeing a baboon's ass pulsating from being in heat, which is pretty nauseating, I can tell you. Cockney flower girls in Victorian England were more well-spoken, while most of us are simply ignorant bores (well, not me...).

It's not just the American South either, it's everywhere in this country. This is about rednecks entirely, or even about machismo--it's about willful ignorance and mental laziness. There's no excuse for it in the modern world, none whatsoever. But it's not just about inherent intelligence--it's an attitude that being and sounding smart is somehow threatening. Well, yes, if one is stupid and lazy, and materialistic. Some of us never needed to be corrupted by the outlying society, we already were that way.

As a result of how incredibly stupid we are as a culture, we get the vocal-talents from another English-speaking country because they sound smarter than most of us, so therefore, they must know better (my targets cannot read this article--isn't this thrilling?!!). The most glaring example are these retarded ads on gold investments with the British woman (who could be an Aussie or a New Zealander, but I detect a British accent here).

The ad is definitely aimed at the perpetually frightened elderly reactionary who has some money to be deprived-of by the company paying for the advertisements. Or there's the one with the silly poof in the pond with the laptop, showing us how wireless works. Great. Recently, a LOCAL ad attacking a Republican mayor in Michiana had an English woman's voice-over. Bully for you. Face it: an English schoolgirl sounds more authoritative than the voice of most American politicians.

When will it end? When we (mainly you) aren't so fucking stupid. Probably when all of us are dead and buried. The very little kids will wisely grow-up and reject our ways...at least, that's my hope. As the "greatest generation that ever lived" croaks-off, we're going to see some very rapid change. We already are. It will become even more rapid with the baby boomers--particularly the male demographic in America--since they were a larger generation.

Whoever said mortality was a bad thing was assuredly wrong, it's natural and (thankfully) inevitable. I'm looking forward to my well earned rest, you can take immortality and shove it. Would you want George W. Bush to live forever? Would you want to be around all these pseudo-Christians forever? Right, you're nuts, but I'll welcome oblivion when I'm at its door (Never Mind the Bollocks).