FINANCIAL CRISIS SOLUTION

Unlike prior responses to crises, the Bush administration has been making a valiant effort to solve massive financial meltdown we are facing. Although the remedies make some sense, the stock market has continued to plunge and the economy is suffering.

This weekend, the G-7 foreign ministers are meeting in Washington to address this world wide problem with a world wide solution. Based on prior experiences, prospects are not good.

The solution? Get Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg, and T. Boone Pickins together and do whatever they say.

homer  www.altara.blogspot.com

I'm listening to Palin's newest rally teleprompter speech.  The longest part BY FAR is abortion.

Since abortion hasn't come up yet nor has immigration I'm certain they will in the final debate.

I'm tired of hearing Democrats stumble on abortion.

the response should be simply - "the government should stay out of peoples' bedrooms and doctors offices as much as possible. Further, I trust women to have their own control over their own bodies.  The best way to reduce abortion is by having a strong economy, with healthcare for all Women and children"

John McCain is losing, and he knows he has to win some states away from Obama's column. Iowa is one state that McCain has to change from blue to red if he wants any chance to win. So today he is visiting Davenport, Iowa. My father was born in Davenport. His family (the Kunkels) have lived there since around the Civil War and used to have a sporting good store there. So I always pay attention to the local politics in Davenport. And I want to personally invite everyone to respond to McCain's visit to Davenport by supporting Democrats in Iowa.

Miscegenation:

The term "miscegenation" has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to interracial marriage and interracial sex, and more generally to the global process of racial admixture that has taken place since the Age of Discoveries, particularly through the European colonization of the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade.

Historically the term has been used in the context of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws.

It is therefore a loaded word and is considered offensive by many.

I have earned just as much money in my "life" as the $480 million that Lehman Brothers paid their former CEO Richard Fuld, but it took me a little longer to earn it.

When I was born in 8000 BC, before the invention of agriculture, I immediately began receiving a typical salary for an assistant professor at a small southern college, $48,000 per year.

I earned this princely salary without a break for 70 years, and as soon as I died at the extraordinarily old age (for a caveman) of 70, I was immediately reincarnated in the obstetrics ward of our cave, and began earning exactly the same salary as before.

At the time of my first "death," 70 years of non-stop professoring had earned me about $3.5 million, significantly more than the average assistant professor will earn in an ordinary career of about 40 years, but some of us are just luckier than others.

After 70 more years of academic toil, I expired again and was immediately reborn and re-hired, and likewise again and again through 143 generations, until my accumulated earnings added up to $480 million!

I hope this little story will inspire the youth of today to get out and fight for the few remaining tenure-track postitions at small southern colleges.

In only 10,000 years, you can earn just as much money as former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld, or any of the other bankers who destroyed the global economy.

Deception and tricks are nothing new coming from the Republicans. However, it's perfectly clear, at least to me, that we've all been duped, again, by John McCain and the Republicans. Alaskans have been fooled as well. After reading all 263 pages of the publicly released, Sarah/Todd Palin abuse-of-power report, and taking into account all that we now know of Sarah and Todd since McCain put her front and center in his presidential campaign, I've come to some frightening conclusions. The real Governor of Alaska is not Sara Palin. Furthermore, Sarah Palin is not McCain's real candidate for vice-president.

The real Governor of Alaska and John McCain's candidate for vice-president is Todd Palin.

I know it's far fetched. But, I believe Sarah is little more than the cute public face with hair extensions, facial ticks, and over-priced eyewear. According to comments made by Sarah's debate coaches, the woman's attention span is only good for about 30 minutes. Maybe her inability to concentrate explains the 5 or 6 universities she attended before earning a degree.

After she took office in 2006, Todd Palin attended 4 out of 13 cabinet meetings (maybe more). This is the same man who spent half of his time in the Governor's office. That's highly unusual given the fact that previous Alaskan First Ladies never spent that much time in their husbands' office. Instead, they put their energies into more traditional work like charities and such. From the report, it seems the First Gentleman of Alaska had almost as much interaction with the Governor's staff as did the Governor. I guess since Sarah's attention span is so poor, and it takes a lot of her time to be cute, somebody had to pick up the slack and it looks like it's been Todd Palin.

So, it may be far fetched, but it looks to me like Todd Palin is the real Governor of Alaska and Republican candidate for vice-president. Sarah's just the public face. This concept is nothing new. After all, we already have a figure head President, George W. Bush. Everybody knows the real President is Dick Cheney.

For many months, her house escaped my notice by fading into the background of my daily commute to work.  It was typical for our neighborhood: 20+ year old construction, well-manicured lawn, beautiful landscaping and a decorative, personalized mailbox.

But, one day in late January, her house finally caught my eye with a Hillary sign in the yard. Until that day, my house was one of two homes in the neighborhood that enjoyed a monopoly on election signs (both for Obama). But now a Clintonite had brazenly joined the fray.

"What's with the Hillary sign?," I thought to myself. The sign blended in nicely with her landscaping but was strategically placed for maximum exposure. It revealed the homeowner's thoughtful attention to detail and a commendable seriousness about the primaries. But it clashed with the Volvo in the driveway.

Before I could muster angst that she wasn't supporting my candidate, I reminded myself that this was a good year to be a Democrat. My neighbor and I shared the enviable task of choosing between several eminently qualified candidates.

My drives past the Hillary lady's yard sign remained fairly innocuous until the damning-with-faint-praise-heard-around-t he-world:

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign.  And Obama ran a good campaign here."

That completely changed the dynamics of my drive-bys. Those few words by a former president I hold in the highest regard sparked an angst I hadn't felt since late 2000--back when I realized that I, along with several hundred other principled but pretentious and impetuous Florida Nadarites, had propelled the idiot from Texas to the White House. My tours past the Hillary sign quickly escalated into cowardly drive-by acts of race-carding.

In the run-up to the Ohio/Texas primaries in late February, the primary became scorching hot, and the Hillary sign down the street gained a sense of grave urgency. One day, as my wife and I yelled "Shame on you, Hillary Clinton!" at the inanimate yard sign, we heard a "booo Hillary" chime in from the rear car seat. "Oh geez," my wife exclaimed,"we need to tone down our rhetoric; we've entered the netherworld inhabited by GOP scum." But tone it down we did not.

By the time Tuzla-gate broke, my wife and I were reduced to rambling, incoherent and malfunctioning Obamabots:

TUZLA! TUZLA! Your Hillary yard sign does not compute! TUZLA! TUZLA!

We had become partisan caricatures by that point. Any Hillary paraphernalia we spotted, especially the Hillary lady's sign, evoked a vitriol-laden display would make a Palin supporter blush.

As the primary came to a close, my wife and I become increasingly sadder representations of the proverbial bitter enders:

Why is your sign still up!? She lost! Get over it! {INSERT DEAN SCREAM HERE}

When she finally did take down the Hillary sign, we weren't appeased. Although by then the Clintons had had us at "convention speech," and we had returned to full love-those-Clintons ahead, we continued our pointless taunts. It was almost as if we were the ones who couldn't "get over it."

Since I found a shortcut to work, I don't drive past her house much anymore. Last week, though, my wife urged me to take the old route. "You have to take the neighborhood tour of newly sprouted Obama signs," she said.

"I've already seen them, honey," I replied.

Being the dutiful husband I was, though, I took her tour. When I arrived at the Hillary lady's house, I couldn't believe my eyes: she had placed two massive Obama/Biden signs in her yard (that's one more than I had!). And her signs were placed with the same strategic love and care that she had used to place her Hillary sign. I had been out-Obamad by the Hillary lady!

For the first time in many months, I was really proud of my political party.

Those here know I obviously disagree with the Conneticut court ruling forcing their personal opinion on the citizens.

I find it unbelievable that the governor (a republican) said that she believes that the public disagrees with the ruling, but nothing can/should be done about it.

"The Supreme Court has spoken," Rell said. "I do not believe their voice reflects the majority of the people of Connecticut. However, I am also firmly convinced that attempts to reverse this decision -- either legislatively or by amending the state constitution -- will not meet with success. I will therefore abide by the ruling."

The question for democrats, and so-called progressives is:
Do you want to live in a country where 1 vote by an unelected government official can over-ride the will of the people?

Do you want to make it normal as in Bush v Gore where judicial decisions can be predicted based on political leanings?

If you disagreed with Bush v Gore why not try to be consistent?