April 2016 Poem A Day #28 Let the memos begin

Let the memos begin:

trivial outcomes * noticeable chaos * important resolutions

riotous beginnings * interesting research * calm procedures

mournful happenstance * breathable equilibrium * celebratory fireworks

calamitous collapse * undetermined consequences * fortunate coordination

ambitious manipulation * opportunistic flaw * low energy

virtuous approach * flexible consideration * spiteful divergence

love *  hate
indifference 

When does enabling start?

The answer to this question for me is: I don't know really.

Apparently it's something about the drinker having to bear their own choices. And for people who care to detach and not bear the drinkers choices for them,  because in the long run it hurts the drinker and enables them to go on making bad choices and drags the helper down too.

I was told not to help because helping might not be helping. And I didn't after saying I would. I don't know if I made the right decision or not. It seems harsh to detach but people tell me it will never end. and some you are staring down the deep well where their problem is your problem too and is now destroying both of you.

 This article at Psych Central tells about enabling.

 I don't want to resent this person. I want to step away before I do. I don't know if meetings are being attended. I don't know what steps are being taken to turn the life around. And really I don't need to know. because it's not my life to manage and fret over. And that is what I did this whole day. Fret about it.  I am still freaking fretting about it. Which is why I really have to detach.

Question the glib backslapper

If anyone claims me as a friend, expresses a vague acquaintance with my story (or even details as they are right here on this blog) don't assume it's true, ask me.

Con men use other people's name's like skeleton keys to unlock the door of opportunity. They climb them like stairs, and from each step leverage access to the next, maneuvering cleverly, to get close to key people who can vet them to others, to get assess to opportunity and funding. We more readily believe a big lie widely told, with ready grins and easy conversation.

If someone comes out of nowhere consider how they appeared and from where...

Books: A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemmingway

Seared carp with butter and brandy

If Earnest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast is about surface, then the surface in question would surely be a well-appointed dinner table. While obsessing in detail over the delights of Parisian food and liquor, Hemingway casually carves up both friends and acquaintances. They are just another course, really, in this buffet view of life in Paris.  However, like the smooth surface of soup in a tureen, this work's pleasant reflectivity conceals a few lumps. Hemingway uses careful manipulation to make readers think well of Hemingway even while he is poking at other writers. He skillfully brags about his own character in the manner of a good novelist, by showing rather than telling. He shows us, by his own example that what writers say is not to be trusted, nor taken at face value, that surface does not equal truth.

Hemingway spends some 16 pages openly skewering Gertrude Stein. He says her companion was frightening, that Stein was badly dressed, that she craved public recognition for her work but couldn't be bothered revising it, that she was repetitious and lazy, that she prattled endlessly, that she badmouthed any writer who had not already spoken well of her work, that she was so competitive she should couldn't bear to hear about acclaimed writers, that she was an egoist, that she resorted to “dirty easy labels” for others.  After thus dispatching “Miss Stein” handily, Hemingway tries to leave the reader with a good impression of himself. The chapter ends as he spends a part of a very long sentence recalling a speech she had made defending one of the painters. After trashing her for 16 pages, he vows to “serve her and see she gets justice for the good work she has done." Then Hemingway quotes himself in a conversation with his wife: “You know, Gertude is nice, anyway,” he says.  Gee, what a magnanimous, forgiving, always-fair kinda guy.

In the chapter “Shakespeare and Company” Hemingway presents himself as someone who craves books, yet who has enough integrity that he would worry about getting right back that afternoon to pay. In the chapter “Hunger was Good Discipline” he shows us Hemingway, a  man who never complains and who would rather learn the benefits of hunger than borrow money, even to eat. Of course  later on, we see  that in truth he is a betting man, one who would take money he'd collected for charity purposes to help a fellow writer, and lose it betting on crooked races.

He uses the same strategy with regard to marital fidelity. He presents himself as Hemingway the loving husband in several stories. In one, the painter Pacin offers him one of his beautiful models. “Do you want to bang her?” he asks, “She needs it” but dear good Hemingway goes home to his “legitime." Yet, towards the end of the book he offhandedly talks for a page about how complicated it is to have a mistress and a wife.

He implies that he is a trusting man and a gentleman in the chapter on “Ford Madox Ford and the Devil's Disciple.”  Hemingway shows himself inwardly irritated and disgusted with Ford, yet outwardly polite through Ford's “cutting” of Hilaire Belloc, and the long discussion of who is a gentleman. Though Ford insists Hemingway would only possibly be considered a gentleman in Italy, in the end we see he is a propagator of falsities, and has passed off the devil's disciple as a poet.  Hemingway humbly apologizes for passing on this misinformation to someone else. Maybe he is a gentleman after, all a reader might conclude.

Hemingway's Paris memoir was his lush answer to Stein's oddly stark and chatty book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which tells everything and shows little.  While his work is ostensibly a memoir, it is interesting to note that the following disclaimer appears on the copyright page of the Touchstone edition of A Moveable Feast “This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.”  Both works skip across the surface of life in Paris like stones across the Seine.  Both feature multiple episodes of dining, of leaving and returning to Paris, of things not said.

However, any writer almost always has a reason for including a vignette about the main character. Hemingway is a clever man and a skilled storyteller who is essentially telling his story his way. He knows very well that things stated plainly are not nearly as memorable things deduced from stories and dialog. This is the pattern in A Moveable Feast. He openly makes unfriendly judgments about other writers, but stays the likable protagonist by imbuing himself with noble qualities implied through action and dialog. When joining Hemingway's moveable feast, - let “Tatie” pick the restaurant; you can trust him to order something delicious, but be sure - with Tatie and every writer - to examine the subtext with a skeptical eye.

- Mar Walker

written 12 October 2003

Subtle - I didn't notice at first

How a calculating MANIPULATOR works methodically
to cut out the opposition while looking innocent

Some of us, including me are slow to see the undercurrents.  And if you are the patient sort, you just shrug and walk away, without putting the pieces together. But consider:

Suppose every time you had a good conversation with someone in a certain public social setting, a third party literally inserted herself directly between you and the person you were speaking with cooing at them about how much she's missed them, beaming at them, hugging them, petting their hair, giving them her undivided attention . How sweet everyone thinks - but whoever you were speaking with instantly forgets about their previous ongoing conversation with you and begins speaking with the interrupter. Or she sits down on the other side of them while they are speaking to you and begins touching and speaking to them so they turn away and net result is the same - you are shut out.

Once, twice, three times, you shrug it off and walk away, chalk it up to the enthusiasm of the moment. But suppose this happened repeatedly literally dozens of times over the course of a year's time. And in your observations - she only did this to you.... Yet you remain patient and polite - and no one, not even your best friends notice or care or even believe you when you finally mention it, because she is kissing up to each of them in various ways cultivating their favor. Once only, you object in the moment as it is happening - such a mean person you are interrupting this tender moment between the interrupter and the person who only a second ago was talking to you. You begin to avoid speaking to others, lest you draw her attention to them. So now you are self-censoring yourself to avoid her behavior.

Congratulations. You are in box. What was formerly a happy place of connection is now a place of sadness and loss. What would be the point in continuing to go to that place? You step out of the box and go somewhere else. You don't say where.

Tom Flynn of Free Inquiry Magazine spoke on statistics of unbelief

When someone rattles off statistics 
ask about source and method

Information - on the demography of unbelief -was exactly what Tom Flynn (shown in my rather blurry picture) was sharing at a meeting of The Humanist Association of Connecticut this past Monday evening. Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry magazine, and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. Flynn is a lively speaker and gave a very interesting talk with lots of laugh lines as well as some terrific insights into the meaning of statistics. He looked at multiple sources, and also looked into their methods.

I came away with two things: 1) the number of unbelievers is indeed growing and 2) comparative statistics don't mean anything unless the methodology by which they were created is objective and consistant. This brings to mind a story I've heard from a administrative assistant for a statewide organization whose representatives were sometimes called on to speak before local civic groups. After typing up a speech for one - this admin asked where his statistics came from. "Oh I just make them up - people don't question...."  he said adding he'd never been challenged. The lesson is when someone, even someone who should know, rattles off statistics:  ask about their source and its method.  People are free to say whatever they like - that does't make it true.

Thanks to Tom Flynn and to HAC for the opportunity to hear him speak.   Flynn is author of a number of books, among them a debunking of modern Christmas traditions called The Trouble with Christmas and two science fiction sagas: Nothing Sacred and Galatic Rapture. He is also editor of the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.

BOOKS: The Road To Wellville by T.C. Boyle

don't rock the boat, fish quietly while it sinks

fanatics, followers & blind  belief

Pompous quacks, big business chicanery, na'r-do-well sons, accidental electrocution, nudist picnics, infidelity, arson and the unrepentant human willingness to believe, no matter what - The Road To Wellville T.C. Boyle's hysterical historical fiction work has it all.

On The Road To Wellville, it is not only the characters but also the reader who must sustain a “suspension of disbelief,”  in order to continue page to page, enjoying this wild and crazy saga - all the more unbelievable because it is based in a true story.  Major characters and a number of minor ones are all being duped by someone. And they are complicit in the deception. Ask any con man, the mark wants to believe. And when someone offers us a path to good health - we want to believe that too - to hell with the evidence. (Otherwise no one would be selling homeopathic remedies these days.)

In fact, -- the road to human well-being is most certainly not found on the road to “The San”  the Sanatorium in Battle Creek.  – it's the Kalamazoo  Road that the emergent and unlikely hero Will Lightbody impatiently traverses to finally take action, to stand up for himself, his wants and his wife - that is the road to heath and sanity.

As his name would suggest Mr. Will Lightbody, Eleanor's “gawk” of a husband, is a lightweight in the will department, choosing repeatedly to ignore things that would send most sane folks running for safety or at least for to the phone to call a good litigator.  Mr. Lightbody allows himself to be ignored and put off by his wife, literally starved and cowed by Dr. Kellog and his variously persuasive nurses, despite the mounting list of mishaps.  After a truely bizarre electrocution scene in the sinusoidal baths, Lightbody immediately forgets his own courageous action in saving Alfred Woodbine the attendant.  His own quick thinking and courage are set aside, and the whole event  frightens him enough to inspire a drinking bout and a meat-eating rebellion.  Yet, even after pointedly rubbing Dr. Kellogg's nose in the messy fact of Praetz's death, Lightbody still, unbelievably, allows this self-righteous socialite quack to send him for an indefinite punitive mechanical enema:

"A blister, swelling and swelling till it bursts – that was Dr. Kellogg. He was blind, he was deaf, he was a god on a cloud: the name of Homer Praetz had never been uttered. Such impudence didn't merit  responses.[...] “put him [Will Lightbody] on the enema machine until further notice.” 

A little later Lightbody lets Kellogg send him under the knife - intestinal surgery to remove an imaginary “Kellogg's Kink” !

Yet no one, including the great doctor Kellogg is immune to the need to believe the improbable. He never once suspects that his son George burned the  first Sanatorium building years earlier, and he immediately has faith in glowing scientific reports of radium, (never mind if a patient or two keels over), and he believes his own overblown public reputation. He is also duped by fellow vegetarian fanatic Badger and The Manipulative Therapy doctor as are quite a number of satisfied women, including Eleanor Lightbody.

Besides The Manipulative Therapy nudist picnic, one of the most interesting sideshows is George Kellogg, the filthy, drunken adopted son, the “err”' apparent. He is the salient inconvenient consequence of “Dr. Vegetable's” actions and philosophy. George, the ugly underside of the “Dr. Anus” is the potential terminus of some rather lucrative illusions.  Supposedly the bad seed, his need for, and to torment the Doctor is acute; the essential quality of their relation is blame rather than deception.

George's opposite is the aspiring Charlie Ossining, son of the gatekeeper, taken in by the wealthy Mrs. Hookstratten.  He wants so desperately to be an entrepreneur that he is duped endlessly by Bender despite  an incredible array of evidence that the man is a shark. Bender dupes Ossining into duping Mrs. Hookstratten and Will Lightbody.

Yet in the end, Ossining persists and eventually succeeds in business. His wealthy Auntie Amaelia Hookstratten was after all, a reality “hook” for straitening out the young Ossining. Her prodigy, though estranged, finally succeeds and makes the perfect tonic. George, (Kellog Jr.) the perfect ingrown hair does not.

The last meeting between Dr. Kellogg and G. Kellogg Jr - with fire, white wolf, chimp, torn clothing, insults and  bottled excrement unleashed - is pure slapstick melodrama. No wonder they made a movie out of it. George's death is also the perfect METAPHOR for what the Dr. is doing to his patients: drowning them in stinking, slippery fanatic unfounded so-called-truth. They, like George could have escaped, but they prefer  blind belief  to figuring it all out for themselves.

--- M.M. (Mar) Walker
author of Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding,
editor and writer at The Metaphor.atorium
and former editor of Bent Pin Quarterly.
originally written in November of 2003

U.S. has class system: Bankers are sacred. Soldiers are ignored.

You can tell there is an unspoken caste system in the United States. Here is how you can tell: When the economy took a dive and the feds had to bail out so many giant financial corporations, the lobbies and lawyers screamed that contracts including big bonuses had to be honored. Start breaking contracts and Western civilization would crumble, according to the bankers and their lackies in government.  When the fed finally got busy and put some restrictions on bonuses - the banks couldn't pay the TARP back fast enough.

WHAT ABOUT OUR SOLDIERS WHO SIGN A ONE YEAR CONTRACT for military service - but then the U.S. engages its "STOP LOSS" program and they aren't allowed to leave, sometimes having to serve a second or third term against their will. Their contracts are broken, and they have no legal recourse. So a contract with a banker is sacred. A contract between the Federal Government and a soldier isn't worth the paper its written on..... Of course the Indians could have told us this.....

So according to U.S. practice -- If you are a well-connected banker the government will go broke to protect you and your contracts are sacred.(Unless of course there is a populist outcry of VOTE THE BUMS OUT!) If you are just a foot soldier, or an Indian Tribe, historically the government says, screw you. Obama may have fixed the first part - but he hasn't gotten around to the second part yet....

Check out this NPR story about a  soldier the army wouldn't let go --  who is going to get a court marshal because he wrote and sang a song protesting the Stoploss program. The military actions against this soldier are unAmerican.

Of Annual parties and dumpster relations

Today I am asking questions about friendship.  This is the season where a certain sort of party-giving person might give a party and invite their friends.

I have never been much of a party person. I have days when I can work a party room like an insurance salesman- charming even strangers, cajoling and connecting. Other days I sit in the corner nursing coffee or alcohol without saying anything unless directly spoken to....  I think this is a fairly common failing.

In advance of a party where I don't know anyone but the host,  or where I haven't seen or spoken with anyone there since last year's party - I work up a great deal of dread. Over the years in a changing life, one can accumulate annual parties where your only existing connection with the other party-goers  is a memory of a past connect that may be decades old. You don't know them anymore and they don't know you - but someone keeps inviting you for old times sake, or for the sake of a memory of friendship past.

But you can't recreate a friendship that has died with party small talk. There isn't time in a half a minute of conversation to catch someone up on the nuances of a year of your life or to understand their life in return  and when those un-communicated nuances pile up over decades between people - what you have is no longer a friend. What you have is an acquaintance.

Then there is the question of what is a friend. That's not as simple a question as the teenagers think it is. I am  not talking about having 2000 "friends" on YouTube or Facebook. That's a study in volume not nuance.

Then there are folks who use you as an emotional dumpster. For instance, if someone calls you up over 18 years only when they need to vent about their boyfriend, spouse or children misbehaving - is this a friendship?  If you call me up and invite me to watch you clean your house, (yes I actually have had two different women do this repeatedly), and a part of the conversation is the various fun things you have done with  other folks you know,  (usually couples you and your husband know) and you wonder why I don't call you - well enough said about that.  If you call me up indignant that I have not stopped by in ages - and you don't even know where I live, despite the fact I have invited you over....   well, I have philosophical enemies who know me much better than that and who are a lot more fun.

If you have never read my blog - if you don't even know I have a blog -- are you my friend? Since I am a writer, can you really know me?  I am a a charming performer, but when I am no longer on, I am really rather a recluse.

Then what kind of friend am I? I rarely call anyone. I am a recluse. I am, at this late age, no longer interested in talking about how I FEEL. I have learned its what you do that really counts. And what do I do? I forget people's birthdays, often fail to appear at parties, abruptly stop returning phone calls. Often I have my reasons. If you want to know why, ask.

I suspect I will spend my elder years in a tiny eldercare apartment, playing bingo in badly decorated dayroom with people who can't remember my name and I won't be able to remember theirs either.  And then friendship will be like skating - moving smoothly through a bingo game with a wry nod and a smile, living in the present moment, until tea or the next meal or bedtime.

I am not sure what I mean by any of this....

distance hills and snow

Cold is on my mind right now. The inside temperature here has been hovering around 66 degrees for more than a day.  Maybe it's because the radiators haven't been bled in a decade. Or maybe the furnace isn't what it used to be. I imagine the effect will get worse when temperatures outside grind lower. Gotta check it out.


WOOL-PULLERS: The first year I spent in Maine, I lived in an apartment over and antique store. The landlord said it had "some" insulation. What that really meant was, I spent as much on heat each week as I spent on the monthly rent -  despite keeping the thermostat at 55 and wearing thermal underwear all the time.  Wording can be so tricky. We hear what we hope for, not what is actually said.....

What art can reveal

Writing prompt: If you joined the circus, what act would you most want to perform?

If I joined the circus I would certainly not want  to be the fire-eater. I already have enough heart-burn for two or three people.  The trapeze is too far off the ground, the fat-lady and the bearded lady are both unjustly reviled by many. The face painters have to listen to bratty kids , the knife thrower can never get enough insurance and the bareback riders wear little tutus that ride up their behinds.  Putting your head inside the lion's mouth is fool-hardy at any age.

If I could join the circus today, I would be the snake charmer. So many things are hidden, uncoiling their motives only when poised to strike. Like a skillful snake charmer, I would use a little music, a metaphor or two, a little color maybe, to coax a smooth, indifferent reptile out into the light so  its true nature can be examined.

-- Mar Walker

Disingenuous insurance industry threatens consumers to keep status quo

OOOOH if you regulate us --- ooh we will just have to charge more and it will be your fault. You SEE HOW WE HELD THE LINE ON COST IN THE LAST TEN YEARS! HAHAHAHA. NOT.

No surprise here. Insurers don't want reform - they are making enormous ENRORMOUS profits!!! At the last minute before a vote - they have released this report that THEY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.... hmmm, nothing slanted here oh no.. no ulterior motive....

Why should they want to change?  Their anti-reform ads talk about a mysterious THEY who will choose what we can have or pay after reform.  BUT WHAT THEY DON'T SAY IS THAT --- right now it's profit-seeking executives making huge salaries who choose! And they choose to terminate people with diseases or risk factors. After a lifetime of payments they can shuttle you off into NO COVERAGE LAND.

And the countries where universal insurance works are the same countries where the GOVERNMENT tells them what they can charge.....    So either we need a public option or we need to tightly regulate glutenous insuranse companies who pay cadres of examiners to find ways to CUT your coverage any way they can.....

They have shown they can raise prices to astronomical levels all on their own - so lets try a little government intervention!

Mail Snoopers, Identity Theft, A Locking Mail Box

Monday, I answered the doorbell to discover a visitor with my family’s U.S. Mail cradled in one hand while the other hand flipped slowly through the first class envelopes. This is the second time I have found this nosy individual going through the mail. Getting caught garnered neither an apology or an explanation, not a blush or a fumble on either occasion.

I have done my share of house and pet sitting, and done numerous stints taking in mail. I have retrieved mail for friends and neighbors. I just don’t look at it letter by letter – it’s not my business even when I have been asked to retrieve the mail – unless i have been asked to watch for something in particular.

But this person has not been asked to bring in the mail and it is none of her business. I am very offended by it. And TAMPERING WITH THE MAIL IS ILLEGAL!

And I thought, if this woman is reading the envelopes, what is she looking for? Is she planning on Identity theft? I didn’t think so BUT it did raise the question – who else might be pawing through the mail without ringing the bell?

So I went to Lowes the same day and spent $27 on a locking mail box. You can’t tell it locks until after you lift the lid. Would love to see her face when she realizes….

So-called medium reveals her intentions

“I’d love to go to a Red Hat meeting with you,” a so called "psychic" & "medium" declared to my 80-year-old Mom who had not invited her to go. She inquired about details, while Mom remained vague, and pointedly did not mention any. ”I LOVE hats! I have a whole collection of hats! We’ll go, just you and I,” she continued with considerable enthusiasm .

Poor Mom didn’t invite her, barely knows her, has been something of a captive audience until this point. This person failed to notice her silence,  or the grimly bemused smile on her face. After several more comments along this line, she announced “It’s a date then,” as she heads toward the door without once noticing the older woman’s reaction. So much for her claim to be psychic…. or even sensitive to others….

After the woman left, my mother turns to me and I know I am in trouble… “If she shows up there I am going to stop going to meetings,” she said glaring at me. (And, in fact, she did stop going!)  This woman was not listening to her, and Mom hates that. She didn't care what Mom wanted, she wanted what SHE wanted - which was to invite herself along to her group meeting.

It was me who brought this person, who is a self-declared psychic, self-declared spiritual “guide” into the house. The so-called psychic and I serve in a volunteer organization I am fond of, and I have been trying to figure out how to handle our philosophical differences for over a year now. (I am a secular humanist, a non-theist, a naturalist. etc) She has aggressively befriended me, calling repeatedly with invitations - which makes me a bit nervous - and we always avoid talking about our core beliefs.

Now my Mom has been a realist all her life, worked for 25 years for a police group, has seen all manner of hucksters, deceit and fraud. Because of her police background, Mom thinks such people are purposefully manipulative con-artists looking for bereaved emotional marks to swindle. And she might be right..  Mom  noted many of the red hats are widows, vulnerable to someone who might "guide" them to dead loved ones for a fee, or to curry favor, or find a place to live for a while...

And, though I worry about the sanity of this tale-spinner who says she talks to the dead, guides people to recall their past lives and has “remembered” over 100 of her own (story telling of a different magnitude indeed….) –  Mom might have the clearer view. And I am sure this so called "psychic" woman is “telling stories” – but to us or to herself? I wonder if her "stories" have become such an integral part of her persona, that she can no longer separate her self from her inventions.

The other alternative is the possibility that she is a charming manipulator. She is a careful listener, an astute observer of body language, a clever story-teller, seemingly a very caring sort. Surely she is self-deceived, not inwardly cold and calculating. Maybe. But this bid to get Mom alone has given me doubts. What could make it easier for a faker to channel the dead to the living - then talking to them when they are still ALIVE, and asking just the right questions about their relations to younger relatives and friends? She has confided about other elderly folks who she'd "befriended, who had "passed over," mentioning furniture and even a car "gifted" to her by grateful relatives." Once she asked a grieving relative if she could live in the departed's home until it was sold. That request was not granted. Who know's what "psychic" revealations might have resulted from unfettered access to the deceased's belongings.....

This culture wants to believe so badly it tosses science and logic aside, gives credence to folk who need to feel "special" by inventing supernatural powers for themselves, and who are accepted because of their very real and often quite subtle,  talents of listening carefully, observing carefully, recalling details, having a good sympathetic "graveside" manner.  Yet often these same folks blatantly manipulate others for emotional or financial gain, for services, support, living quarters,  or items tossed out when the estate is dissolved, stored and later sold on ebay or the like. (This particular woman did maintain a storage locker crammed with stuff and an active ebay account.)  Today we have psychics featured on tv shows, we have fraudulent ghost hunters – ( and these folks really ought to be ashamed because deception is involved in each filming….

But what can be expected in culture where a large segment of the populace can no longer make a cogent argument, separate opinion from fact, tell fakery from science, where warm fuzzy but false feelings are valued over what is real….

Sentator McConnell implies Ford (F) is DEAD

Unbelievable - this morning on Face the Nation Senator Mitch McConnell very casually implied that Ford Motor Company would cease to exist. (Should we check to see if he is shorting the stock?)

Senator McConnell was discussing health care options when he addressed this matter. He stated that everyone knows that when the government gets involved in private enterprise that it is so big it crowds out all the competition and that soon the competition will cease to exist. As an example of this he gave the auto industry citing the government involvement in GM and Chrysler as creating a big problem for Ford. He cited in particular the government backing for financing of GM and Chrysler cars. He said Ford couldn't complete against the government

If you back track on the reasoning: everyone knows that when the government gets involved in private enterprise that it is so big it crowds out all the competition and that soon the competition will cease to exist. He is saying that Ford will soon cease to exist.

So I guess people will be dumping their Ford stock because according to Senator McConnell, Ford is not going to exist for long...... I happen to think he is wrong in a big way. If I could afford a car, I would consider buying a Ford. It would NOT be advisable to buy stock in Senator McConnell. You could do better.

Simple math -> NO JOB = NO NEW CAR

What drug is clouding the alleged vision of Washington and the Big Three car makers?

Throwing money at the carmakers will not work. PERIOD. Do the math - it's simple math:

NO JOB = NO NEW CAR 

Americans have stopped buying new cars not because of a lack of credit - but because of actual or impending unemployment.....

REMEMBER WMDs? This gambit seems strangely familiar....

My letter to  the White House,  one letter of millions that no one will ever read:

Sent to: comments@whitehouse.gov, vice_president@whitehouse.gov, president@whitehouse.gov

Dear Executives:

Well,well, when you said IRAQ had weapons of mass destruction, I thought oh surely you must know and now we have spent 500 billion making war on the wrong country. Fooled me once. That's enough. Now you say, OH WE HAVE TO SIMPLY HAVE TO SPEND a trillion dollars, immediately,  without oversight, bypassing all the established protocols on spending and contracting.  Big surprise.  Could the end of the financial system you are declaring be a lot like those weapons of mass destruction we never found only the fraud is even more expensive and would enrich your pals for years and leave main street drained dry...  You have cried wolf fraudulently once too often and I for one will urge my representatives and senators to vote down paying your pals trillions.

MM Walker

-- 

That is the letter. However.  Big trouble may arrive even if  they buy up a trillion dollars worth of bad paper. Across the globe everything economic is grinding to a stall or might in the next week or month.  Untenable derivatives/credit swaps, and deals so complex and flagarently under "collateralized" if you will,  are so utterly unregulated and opaque, that the treads of causality can not be untangled.   A simple solution will not be found for this one.  Maybe Uncle Hal was right.  (YIKES)  

Comcast: the right hand doesn't agree with the left hand

I don't mean to complain. But I will.

After losing a few channels in the Comcast lineup which have gone "digital" we thought we'd check out what the digital package entailed. I registered online, to mange the account. Then I searched for what packages you can sign up for. Then I couldn't figure out if the $29.99 price for digital starter was in addition to our current 60 dollar bill. so i entered a "chat" - and I had to wait nearly an hour to get into it -- I think maybe I was connecting to India or somewhere very remote from Comcast. Who knows. After extensive questioning as to whether it would cost MORE than our current bill - and requestioning to make sure (I really grilled her) I concluded that as I was told, it would just cost us $29.99 for six months and $52 dollars plus change thereafter.

Then I tired to sign up and with a few clicks I was in another chat. But that person told me I wasn't eligible for the 29.99 basic digital starter, because I was already a customer....

Comcast. We are bidding our time. But you will be disconnected from this house....

I have both transcripts.