What Goes Around...

"What goes around comes around," is an aphorism off of the River River of Oklahoma. Since 1968 , ninety eight percent of Americans have lost spendable income to the top two percent.
Our spouses had to go to work to keep up and we have had to submit ourselves to the probing indignities, explotations, and whims of credit card company Banks. Forty years, and now the worm turns. Enjoy:

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Whatever Happen to "Self Contained"?

Cox Cable wants me to store my PC back up and photos and stuff outside my computer on a "memory" somewhere in India or Sri Lanka. Dell Computer is trying to send my PC back-up to Hong Kong. Kodak/Sony/etc want me to save my photos with them somewhere off shore. "Off Shore" sounds like a greasy rusted old oil tanker somewhere anchored on a reef full of old computer tape machines with my data on them.

Now comes "On Star". On Star was given to me "Free" for one year with my basic super cheap Chevy Pickup Truck. The locks on my truck push down to lock and pull up to unlock. My windows crank down with a handle. My heater or air condition have a nob that turns to get more or less. I have cloth seats, vinyl floor mats, and no thing that is extra. Except ON STAR!. (and XM/Sirius but that's another rant).

So I get this email from On Star on my PC that tells me that I have 400 miles on my three month old truck, my oil life is 87%, and my tire pressure on all of my four tires is low.

Holy Mother OF God and Madre Mater of Man! Mind you I can't tell if my basic ole truck has low tire pressure while I am in the truck (basic trucks don't have that display). I would have to get the air gauge left over from my 83 truck and get out and stick in on the tire pressure valve. OR go in to my PC and access the On Star Computer (located in Thailand?).

What ever happened to autonomy? Why are we(my truck) not self contained? Why is my data, photographs, emails, personal credit history, bank accounts, and truck tire pressure spread all over the damn world?

I have a in-law that speaks as though he could survive if all of the modern systems failed. Not quite a survivalist he does think of himself as self contained and self sufficient. I think we have passed a tipping point on that score. If you want to see what happens to "Self Made Men" when all those off shore/on shore etcetera systems stumble, just watch an hour of the Angst and Fear and Madness on CNBC any week day while the stock market s are open.

OK, I surrender. I'm going to drive down to the local 7-11 and air up all four of my tires and then drive back home to my PC and see if they now have the right amount of air in them. Of course if I had a Blackberry I could just look it up on that. Say if I push that little On Star button on the mirror would some little gal in Singapore tell me if I got my tire pressure right? Maybe I could get her on the "mirror" while I'm airing up my tires and turn the radio up real loud and when the pressure was just right she could holler at me from Bangladesh, "STOP".

Tire Pressure! We are screwed.

http://www.onstar.com/us_english/jsp/ovd/index.jsp

Governor Palin Slept Well Last Night!

Last night in the Republican response to the President's first speech to the joint Senate and House, Governor Bobby Jindal got his chance to crawl forward to the national level of leadership in the Republican Party. Rest assured Gov. Palin you have not been successfully challenged.

Let us take just one paragraph from the Jindal diatribe of ignorance. Just one paragraph annotated with facts.

"But Democratic leaders in Congress -- they rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history, with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

The bad things:

1."...includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government,..."

So why is it bad to stimulate the failing auto makers by buying their cars rather than giving them money? And these are touted to be "GREEN" cars, probably to run on Natural Gas that Boone Pickens recommends, thus they would help the cost of the auto makers to retool to sell such cars.

This is "LARD"?

See: http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-05-08-natural-gas-usat_N.htm

2."$8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, "

Wow, talk about bullshit by the bucket. First there is no maglev (magnetic levitation) money in the bill. It is money for high speed railroads. Not only does maglev not run on rails it is not a viable technology for the 500 mile test railroad that they want to build. Secondly there are 12 high speed rail corridors developed and under consideration for the project. Los Angeles to Las Vegas is only one of them. Oh yes and Disneyland in not in Los Angeles it is down in Orange County at Anaheim. My bet would be on the Boston to Washington corridor to be selected.

See:http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/203

3. "... $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

Dear God what a narrow minded ignorant dumb ass. That's like saying we waist or money on flood control studies. Not only have we had a volcano erupt in Alaska within this year and threaten international air traffic, does Bobby not remember Mt. Saint Helens? Does Bobby not know that 3 million Americans live under threat of a volcano eruption from Mt. Rainier in the Seattle/Tacoma area alone? Bobby want to be President of the U.S.A.. Does he want to be the President to let 200,000 tourist die because there was no warning that the Yellowstone volcanic cauldron was going to erupt?

See:http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/monitor/

Ignorant, just plain ignorant, just a talking point dumb ass. After this he will be lucky to be able to show his face even in Louisiana.

Sarah darling your leadership position is intact.

Why So Many Books

Went to the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library Book Sale this week end. Perhaps 350,000 books there maybe more. No shit, that many. I know guys from Blue Stem Books in Lincoln, Nebraska who come to buy books at the sale. Some years I have seen Larry McMurtry there hauling off boxes and boxes of books. Used book dealers come, bibliophiles come, entrepreneurs looking for dollar text books that can be sold to university books stores for much more come. People consulting their Blackberries, scanning ISBN codes with a hand held scanner that flashed either a red NO or a Green Buy. Some were looking at typed list. Some were calling others to see if they wanted a book they had found. Shoulder to shoulder thousands of people, sweat, dust, book musk, and other odors. They leave with 50, 100, 200 books. A madhouse, yes a mad house.


Every year I learn something new at the book sale. This year after I had my fill and killed my quota, I settled in near the eight long folding tables with sign RELIGION over them. I watched. This area was one of the most visited of subject tables. But where other subject were, those books were leaving the tables and from the boxes under the tables by the dozens at a time. In Religion though they picked over them and they left most untouched carrying off just a few per person if any.
I bought the best seller from 1923 "The Man No One Knows" and a weird paperback about the life of Mary written by an Italian Nun who received the details of Mary's life in ecstatic revelations. But like the others I passed up most of the titles there. So I just watched. Most of the books on Religion stayed on the table.

Three days later at the end of the sale, when the prices go way down and they bring the left over collectors books into the general area and sell them cheap, I went back. After making my finds, I went back to the Religion tables and watched. About half of the books were gone. That's not all that good, because 80% of all the other books were gone, even the Readers Digest Condensed books. I perused the titles. They were 99% Christian oriented books. Of the ten I picked up none had a bibliography or footnotes.

It got me to thinking. What are these books anyway? Who are they for. Who are they by? Who buys them? Why are there so many here, donated to this book sale. Many of the titles were recent books, and on the third day of the sale they were still on the table.

Tonight as I thought about this, I decide to see just how many books like this there are available today. So I went to amazon.com and check out the volume. Here is what I found.

I typed in Religion:
843,877 titles came up.
These subcategories came up.
Religion & Spirituality (382,182)
Nonfiction (238,176)
History (108,078)
Children's Books (31,873)
Science (47,625)
Reference (45,667)
Teens (9,833)
Health, Mind & Body (57,501)
Parenting & Families (16,816)
Home & Garden (7,473)
Biographies & Memoirs (45,184)
Entertainment (26,239)
Literature & Fiction (103,318)
Arts & Photography (20,988)
Law (14,451)
Professional & Technical (74,617)
Medicine (17,922)
Business & Investing (35,413)
Outdoors & Nature (8,027)
Gay & Lesbian (6,149)
Computers & Internet (5,948)
Travel (13,636)
Sports (5,984)
Mystery & Thrillers (11,317)
Science Fiction & Fantasy (7,959)
Cooking, Food & Wine (2,553)
Comics & Graphic Novels (1,028)
Romance (5,267)

So I typed in Christian:
356,326 titles came up in these categories.
Arts & Photography (9,151)
Religion & Spirituality (193,077)
Nonfiction (91,425)
History (58,316)
Children's Books (14,107)
Entertainment (10,235)
Teens (3,706)
Literature & Fiction (39,155)
Biographies & Memoirs (21,352)
Science (17,326)
Health, Mind & Body (21,710)
Reference (18,433)
Professional & Technical (23,131)
Law (4,522)
Business & Investing (10,045)
Gay & Lesbian (3,005)
Outdoors & Nature (3,169)
Parenting & Families (6,852)
Travel (7,282)
Home & Garden (2,723)
Medicine (4,866)
Sports (1,784)
Science Fiction & Fantasy (2,087)
Mystery & Thrillers (2,656)
Computers & Internet (1,143)
Cooking, Food & Wine (883)
Romance (1,275)
Comics & Graphic Novels (260)

So I typed in Christian Bible.
I got 28,361 hits.
Bibles
Formats (2,571)
Greek (71)
New Testament (12,010)
Other (1,431)
Specific Types (5,770)
Translations (7,100)

Jesus got 345,963 titles, Christ got 373,433, Allah got 45,702, Moses got 182,013.

Of course if you type in History or Math or English you will get a couple million hits, uh not Math it seems only about 300,000 there.

The Erudite Redneck once asked on his blog what religious books should he read to give him some seminary sense. Well it kind of looks like he needs to read about 844 thousand books to get it all in, and of course that doesn't take into account all those books that will be written while he is reading the others.

So how does a Christian know which books he/she should read? Divine guidance is about all I can come up with, or apply for the job of librarian in Heaven.

The Unforgivable Debt

As of 2008 the cumulative student loan debt for Americans was $85,000,000,000.


College Student Loan Debt :
"A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics (1) shows that about 50% of recent (undergraduate) college graduate have student loans, with an average student loan debt of $10,000. The average cost of college increases at twice the rate of inflation; the College Board (2) estimates that public school costs an average of about $13,000 a year and private schools costs $28,000. "


Graduate Students:
The average student loan debt of students attending:
– Public 4-year = $26,119
– Private 4-year = $29,000
Source: American Council on Education

"This debt-for-diploma system is strangling our young people right when they're starting out in life," says Tamara Draut, author of Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30- Somethings Can't Get Ahead. "It's creating a sense of futility that no matter what they do, they're not going to be able to get ahead. It's a sense of hopelessness."
source: USA Today

"The high level of student-loan debt is "on the brink of becoming an unacceptable social issue,"
"It's the single greatest problem facing this generation."

All of these statistics and statements were before the economic depression we are in.
Student loans can not be ignored, written off, or forgiven under bankruptcy.

Our higher education system has been greedy. I suspect that within the next five to ten years it will lose about 35% to 45% of its size and assets and almost all of its respect. Expect a back to basic degrees movement and a vast reduction in fees and tuition. We simply can't afford the luxury of a nonproductive American higher education system any longer.

God have mercy on the high school class of 2009.

America: A Nation Of Cowards or Just Ignorant?

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday, ""Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards....we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."

"If we're going to ever make progress, we're going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other. It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified," Holder told reporters after the speech.

The speech was to Justice Department employees which included the Office for Civil Rights the major arm of the Federal Government for the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.

To say the least the radical right went ballistic.
----Once again the Left was calling our brave men and women in uniforms cowards.....
----Holder is a racist for his tolerance speech.....
----by most Americans of course he meant whitey....
----Holder. A racially motivated politician and citizen...
----Not worth the salt you'd toss to ward off bad luck....
----Holder is bemoaning the lack of mixed-race marriages, I suppose...
----Holder should stick to being the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States. If it isn’t a crime, he shouldn't’t concern himself with it.


Exactly!
Did you notice the part about the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) being in his domain?
The Clinton administration emasculated OCR.
The Bush administration turned it into quadriplegic bureaucracy.
The OCR hasn't done its job since 1990. The laws are on the books, no not"Affirmative Action", and have not been enforced. Don't think this speech was about have an inter-racial beer bust over the weekend. It wasn't. Nor was it about everybody doing bad stuff to blacks. It wasn't about whites needing to feel bad either.

It was about enforcing the law and understanding why it will be enforced.

He was putting the old black power structure on notice as well. Notice their reluctance to comment much about it?
They got it.

In my work over the past three plus decades I've had the damnedest education on separatism, neo-apartheid, racial hubris, and plain damn race stupidity. Nobody has clean hands in any of this. Self Righteousness is the rule of the day.

Holder won't be a perfect AG, but he does intend to be the AG for the people, and that will be one really big change.

So how am I wrong?
Come on, tell me about Race.