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The Sarah Palin Chronicles

Out of Alaska comes an avenging angel, Sarah Palin, to save the Republican Party from annihilation.  Can she save the day?  The election?  The party?  The country’s first reaction to her was one of amazement at her choice.  Then came the huge post primary bump.  When the media finally got face to face with the candidate the gaffs began.  After the first several gaffs the country turned dubious.  A few more and fellow Republicans up for re-election begin putting some distance between themselves and Sarah Palin’s pronouncements.  It started beginning to look like choosing her could backfire on the Maverick.  Lately she has decided to ride sidesaddle in her own direction to the consternation of the McCain campaign.

When this election is over and Barack Obama is President-elect will Governor Palin fade to white in a flurry of flakes, er snowflakes, back in Alaska?  Or is the public in store for more countrified contributions from this most unlikely of places?

P.S. This blog is not meant to criticize the vice presidential candidate in any way.  She was thrown into the national spotlight with, let’s face it, practically no notice or time to prepare.  Under the circumstances, she has risen to the occasion in spectacular fashion.  I would expect the next two years to knock the rough edges off candidate Palin and to see a butterfly (floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee) born from this most interesting pupa. 

 In old world banking circles personal conduct was regulated by a moral code whereby honor and self-interest were joined at the hip.  To put client capital at risk was a cardinal sin punishable by dishonor and disgrace and therefore unthinkable.  That was way back when.  Where Greenspan erred was when Wall Street hired physicists and mathematicians to construct financial instruments. The financial instruments they designed were so complicated analysts were unable to evaluate them properly or assess their risk.  But when people are making money, and bankers are no exception, they don’t ask why.  They just smile and bank the checks.  Effectively the morals clause implicit in traditional banking constructs no longer applied to these side bets.  Since the banks, their shareholders, traders and brokerage houses were all making “bank” everybody was winning and the future was blindingly bright. 

So we have all learned a valuable lesson again (for the third time).  The notion anything to do with money, actually gigantic money, could be self-regulating and the people involved trusted to do the “right thing” is a concept which has outlived its usefulness.  Money corrupts — big Money corrupts completely.

       Sad.

Corrupt politicians or corrupt billionaires?

Four decades ago we experienced a huge run up in the price of precious metals, and in particular, the price of silver.  Silver futures reached into an unheard of and totally unwarranted 80 dollar price range from a normal 4 dollar price.  Based upon normal market factors, like supply and demand, the value of the dollar, and world stability, this run up made no sense.  What turned out to be behind the extraordinary run up was a pair of oil billionaires, the Hunt brothers.  They determined that the float in silver futures was small enough for them to gain a monopoly.  They gave it the old “college try”, and nearly succeeded.  But the US government stepped in at the last minute to save the day.  The treasury released enough stockpiled silver bullion to pop the Hunt’s balloon.  Since the Hunts were borrowing money to finance their diabolical plot they nearly caused a major bank failure in the process.

Next we saw a real estate boom financed by greedy bankers and real estate speculators.  This has also required a government bail out.  Could these scenarios possibly be precursors to today’s commodities manipulations?  According to the Saudis they are producing enough oil to satisfy current world demand.  Russia has moved into second place among the world’s oil producers and is providing for the large increase in demand in Southeast Asia, by way of a pipeline project similar to the Alaskan pipeline.  The decline in the dollar is miniscule, when related to the increase in oil prices.  All is quiet on the world stage with the exception of our unwanted intrusion into the Middle East.  So absent any fundamental factors which could be responsible for the current price of oil, we are left with market manipulation by commodities billionaires.  (The names may change but the irresponsible nature of the greedy remains the same.)  It appears that without our government stepping in and dumping huge reserves of oil on the market from its strategic stockpiles, manipulators will enrich themselves yet again at the expense of people who can least afford it.

As to corrupt politicians, consider this. Do you suppose this unprecedented run-up in oil prices could have occurred if we didn’t have an “oil ticket” benefiting directly from and facilitating the manipulators?  First they stirred up the world’s major oil suppliers like Venezuela and the Middle East.  Secondly, they have done nothing from a legislative point of view such as eliminating tax breaks to profiteers and spreading that wealth around, or dumping oil on the markets to depress prices.

For me the answer seems obvious.  Big government, together with big business, is acting without a conscience to conspire to hold the world hostage to their will and egos.  Corrupt politicians, together with corrupt billionaires, are the root of all evil.  And the world’s poor and starving can’t afford to put rice in their bowls or purchase a loaf of bread for their table.  For shame, for shame.

Imagine walking through the forest one day and discovering an apparently unguarded or abandoned bee’s nest hanging within easy reach. Thinking a snack of rich honey can be had for little or no effort, you approach the nest. Suddenly your plan is interrupted by an angry buzzing.  You look around you and discover a hornet buzzing about your feet.  Following your first instinct you attempt to stomp on the hornet, and after several misses you successfully squash the pesky bugger.  However, without you noticing, your stomping has shaken the ground and you now have several angry hornets buzzing about your feet.  You immediately launch into an Indian war dance, hooting and stomping around, until you feel the sharp pain of a sting.  This angers you further so you increase your efforts to exact revenge upon the culprit and his cohorts by flailing madly in all directions.  You attempt to obliterate the source of these angry hornets by closing the hole from which they came.  However, by now you are not fighting just one or several angry hornets, but the entire nest has erupted around you and you are getting stung repeatedly. Too late you realize that although you easily stomped the first soldier who attempted to defend his nest, and the several that followed, they are striking back.  Further, you realize they are coming from more than one hole in the ground, and they appear to be everywhere.

The moral of the story is simple.  Although our daydreamer was infinitely superior in size and weaponry, and although he was able to inflict serious damage to the pesky tribe, er nest, his victory was never accomplished, and in the meantime, he incurred some serious damage. The longer he stays the more damage he suffers until he leaves with his tail between his legs.

Mission accomplished.

Jesus Christ or Genghis Kahn….Who’s footsteps are we really following?

Collateral damage.

Sounds reasonable, acceptable, and even unavoidable to the military minded among us.  But what is it exactly?  It is the cost in nonmilitary casualties to innocently involved people during military confrontations.  It is the cost in lives of unsuspecting women and children blown to bits in shopping malls or on subway trains and in markets when extremists seek to make a political statement.  It is the cost in families dislocated to relief centers because their homes have been commandeered by military personnel in war zones, or to those whose homes have disappeared altogether from bomb strikes.  It is the economic cost to countries whose infrastructure has been destroyed; manufacturing centers, roads and bridges, power facilities and grids, and commerce centers all disabled or destroyed by combatants during military campaigns.  This destruction is a result of goals which are completely irrelevant to the people whose lives are being destroyed by the “ruling” elite who supposedly speak for the people they govern.

Does this still sound reasonable?  Millions of people dislocated, hundreds of thousands of people dead, trillions of dollars of money wasted on the megalomaniac dreams and ambitions of a few deranged individuals?  And I do mean a few.  Less than a hundred powerful sheiks (similar to Mafia families) in Iraq are being propped up by a few hundreds of legislators in this country, in support of a few thousand businessmen.  These “elite” are costing the rest of the world hundreds of thousands of lives, trillions of current and future dollars, and generations of grief.

And for what?  I personally have nothing against a single Iraqi or Muslim.  In fact, I don’t even know one.  I feel certain that the poor civilian, who has lost a family member to this war (every family in Iraq has lost, on average, at least one) has nothing against me.  Where is the sanity?

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to turn a biblical eye to the damage caused to us during the 9/11 disaster?  Instead of recovering from the disaster, haven’t we, in fact, more than doubled it — just in lives lost?  If we add the cost of the physically maimed and mentally diminished, and the cost in taxpayer dollars of a devastated economy, haven’t we caused ourselves infinitely more damage than the “enemy” could have ever managed?  With no end to the damage in sight!  Where is the sanity in a policy like this?

And to think my fellow Americans are considering voting for more of the same, for shame. And to think this is being done in the name of one of the foremost pacifists to ever place his saintly foot upon this planet…none other than Jesus Christ himself. It seems to me we do Genghis Kahn honor in the name of our savior.