ECONOMY: Auto Industry Ultimatum - about time!

Well, I hate to say I told you so about GM and Chrysler but I think everyone knew it was bankruptcy or nothing.

Today, Obama basically said just that. Chrysler has 30 days to merge with Fiat (which may not save it) or go bankrupt. GM has a little more time, but the message is the same.

I did learn a new term today when reading about Obama’s instructions to the auto companies, it is a “bankruptcy rinse”. I have stated before that bankruptcy does not have to mean the end of the auto companies in question. It could be a structured bankruptcy that would allow the companies to “clean or rinse” themselves off debilitating legacy costs and contracts, and allow a new, lean manufacturer to emerge.

Obama actually said that the U.S. government would “guarantee” all existing auto warranties thus eliminating the biggest negative to going into bankruptcy (people would not buy cars from a company in bankruptcy) even though in actuality, that may be somewhat of a factor.

Obama, to my pleasant surprise, called the auto dilemma just like a sensible, fiscally responsible and business savvy person would have; no socialist crap included. His plan will be good for the industry, good for the nation and good for the taxpayers.

I know many will cry and protest but the message must be strong and consistent, as far as the auto industry is concerned THE OLD DAYS ARE DEAD AND GONE BECAUSE THEY ARE NO LONGER SUSTAINABLE IN TODAY’S ECONOMY.

The auto workers that had a great ride (my family) should be thankful and enjoy what they got and enjoy the lifestyle that their labors bought for them and remember that they are the last of the highly paid, non schooled, basic laborers.

A new age is dawning!

RELIGION & SOCIETY: Don't let the assholes in Texas get away with it!

The forces of darkness are always at work trying to keep people in darkness and in Texas, they seem to have the upper hand.

TEXAS OPENS CLASSROOM DOOR FOR EVOLUTION DOUBT

The Texas Board of Education has always had an inordinate amount of influence as far as school textbooks are concerned. Texas picks textbooks for the entire state school system as opposed to other states at are divided into school districts that pick their own textbooks.

Since Texas ordered such a vast amount of books, publishers made those books the norm for the rest of the country so whatever Texas wanted the books to say, the publishers made sure the books said it – truth and facts be damned.

Because book printing is now digital and not type-set, publishers can easily print the same book with the changes demanded by various school districts. Even so, the Texas board has a huge influence over the education of every child in Texas; a big state.

The board majority is obviously composed of religious kooks that want evolution challenged, the age of the earth challenged, the Bog Bang theory challenged and the age of the universe to be brought more in line with the Bible; 10,000 years instead of 14 billion years.

All this in a state with supposedly, intelligent adult people who one hopes, grasp at least some reality around them. And yet, the morons on that board of education will influence the education of millions of kids. How can we allow such a travesty?

As a nation, can we stand by and watch the purposeful dumbing of America by religious nuts?

People, we have to make a difference somehow. Come on’ Baby Boomers, we fought against darkness in the 60s (remember rock & roll was devil music). Can we leave this nation worst off than we found it – I hope not!

RELIGION: Criticism of Religion, Against the Law!

There is something that recently read that made my blood boil. It appears that the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee, that is anything but, has approved and passed a proposal that urges the passage of laws around the world protecting religion from criticism.

Put another way, if you criticize religion, you will be punished.

Predictably, a Muslim nation (Pakistan) wrote the proposal on behalf of other Islamic nations. Twenty three (23) nations out of 47, voted yes. More significantly, only 11 nations voted against the proposal and the rest abstained – were they scared?

Obviously, this proposal carries no legal weight and the United States is not even a member of this committee which it considers bogus and dominated by Muslim and African countries that protect member countries from a variety of human-rights violations.

You notice that we are exclusively talking about Islam and the proposal mentions how Islam must be shielded from criticism in the media and other areas of public life; the Danish Muhammad cartoons were an obvious example. The proposal cited attacks or just depictions of the prophet Muhammad as UNACCEPTABLE EXAMPLES OF FREE SPEECH.

The immediate response should be, what the hell do you think free speech means, free only if it does not contain criticism of Islam? You have a lot to learn about the definition of free speech and since you never have experienced it, I can understand why you don’t understand the concept.

But the concept of free speech and its practice should never be allowed to be compromised – ever. I say that emphatically because I have detected signs where certain authorities (even in the U.S.) have expressed a willingness to abrogate free speech if it in someway insults, embarrasses or is offensive to certain people (in many cases, religious people). Some U.S. newspapers refused to publish pictures of the Danish cartoons even though the cartoons were legitimate news.

The only free speech I would legally prohibit is the yelling of “fire” in a crowded theater or any other speech that would willingly endanger human life, everything else is a go!

I have pocked fun at these outraged Muslims by asking why their god needed protection from his rag-tag followers; can’t he defend himself or maybe he does not object to people making fun of him.

All that logic is lost on people who do not use logic in their lives but follow what they are told to do by their religious leaders who have a stake in keeping their flock as stupid as possible; the better to control them!

RELIGION: Notre Dame Revisited!

Well I was wrong about Notre Dame not inviting Bush to address their graduating class; they did in 2001. It appears they invite a new sitting president routinely.

Which makes me think why didn't the Catholics object to “life-snuffing-out-war monger” Bush but do object to progressive, life-saving Obama.

It is the Catholic idiocy of cheering for the death of thousands of soldiers but getting all worked up against a couple of stem cells that were heading for the garbage heap anyway. This is ignorance at its highest level propagated by idiots at the highest level of the Vatican.

RELIGION: Notre Dame Invites Obama?

OK, here is my next Catholic issue.

Notre Dame, the great Catholic University with a so-so football team but a great history, has invited President Barack Obama to deliver the commencement speech at this year’s graduation. By the uproar the invitation caused, you would have though they invited Adolf Hitler.

Notre Dame has always been known to have an independent side as far as Catholicism is concerned so I was not surprised by the invitation BUT I guess the right wing Catholics are all up in arms cause Obama allows stem cell research and is pro-choice – the devil himself.

I don’t think Notre Dame ever invited George Bush to their campus. He blocked stem cell research and was definitely anti-choice and even wanted to repeal Roe v. Wade, so why was he not invited?; could have been because he was a war monger and an insult to the basest intelligence of the country.

One Catholic I spoke to, defended the choice of Obama, saying Obama’s concern for the poor and downtrodden of the world makes him more Jesus like than let’s say, Bush was. I find that to be a very intelligent and insightful answer.

Pope Benedict, as I have reported, is taking the Church backwards and is asking for the support of his mindless followers. The American Catholic Church can take a stand for enlightenment (Vatican II) and support Notre Dame in their choice of a graduation speaker that represents enlightenment and progress and does not advocate a return to the Dark Ages.

I will be following this issue as it develops. I just hope Notre Dame does not chicken out.

RELIGION & SOCIETY: Opening Day on Good Friday

Catholic issues just keep rolling in; this one right here in Detroit.

A number of local priests have complained loudly (on TV & radio) that the Detroit Tigers baseball organization has scheduled the opening day baseball game at 1:00 PM on GOOD FRIDAY.

Thirty other baseball teams around the country have games on Good Friday BUT they all start AFTER 3:00 PM; the official time Jesus died.

Well, I guess I can look at this in a number of ways. There is no law saying baseball cannot be played on Good Friday or at least between 12:00 – 3:00 PM. If we make an exception for the Catholics, wouldn’t we have to do the same for all other religions and their “sacred” moments?

Are the priests ticked off that people will go to the game and not the church and the priests will miss out on donations or are they genuinely concerned about the lack of respect for Catholicism’s traditions?

When I was growing up my mother would not allow music to be played on Good Friday, no meat could be eaten and we could not act happy or play happy games. If it was a rainy, cloudy day, my mother would always say, see, earth is crying. And if there was a thunder & lightening storm between 12:00 & 3:00 PM, she would be ecstatic; just like in the movie The Robe.

We are a secular society and baseball is a secular sport that also happens to be a business and a well regulated business at that; schedules are schedules.

If Catholics would rather go to opening day and not church, that is their choice since it is, after all, their faith and traditions we are talking about. In the past, we had “blue laws” and in some areas, still have them, which prohibited stores from opening on Sundays or bars from serving liquor on Sundays, all designed to eliminate any and all distractions that would keep people from going to church and putting money in the collection box.

I think the priests that are crying foul today are the same type of cleric that pushed for blue laws in the old days; they want society to help get people into their church and that is just plain nonsense and should be treated as such.

I also consider the priests’ complaints as pure arrogance and they need to be made aware of the fact that their sacred day and time may be someone else’s opening day and carry the same reverence and importance.

ECONOMY: Bring back regulations now!

Tim Geithner just called for sweeping regulatory powers over non-bank institutions “Geithner Seeks New Powers over Financial Companies”.

I mentioned previously that Congress (both Democrats and Republicans) slowly overturned all Depression Era laws that were designed in the 1930s to help keep a Great Depression from ever happening again. We are now paying the price for Congress’s folly.

I described before how the FDIC has a large group of financial experts that descend, in the middle of the night, on a failing bank and just take over. The bank operates as usual just under the FDIC.

Geithner apparently wants the same type of group to be able to descend on, let’s say, an AIG in the middle of the night and just take over.

Once they take over and see what is going on, they would have broad discretionary powers to sell off good assets and discount bad assets. I like the idea and have recently suggested it myself but guaranteeing people’s savings is one thing, what about life insurance, etc.

Congress has also allowed banks to spread into many other areas it was not allowed to in the past. On the other hand, financial institutions were allowed to become like banks which was also something they could not do in the past. I feel that this overlapping has created financial monsters with a lot of room to goof around in so I would want things BACK to the old days where banks were banks and investment houses were just that.

I want to see how the Republicans react to this latest volley from Obama. They want NO regulations but even they can see what the hell happens when you let the financial boys, and I mean boys, play without rules.

ECONOMY: No Going Back to the Good Ole' Days

People have been asking me what will turn the economy around and are we or at least our government, going in the right direction.

Tonight, you will hear Obama make a case for his plan. He wants the credit markets to unfreeze or put another way, banks to start lending again.

Yes, we want businesses to be able to borrow money because businesses cannot operate without some credit. My business has just received a renewal of its line of credit (for a $6,000 fee – that’s something I have not seen before) and so I think banks are actively lending to businesses, they are just making super sure that the businesses they are lending to are viable or at least will be viable in the near term.

But businesses rely on customers and the demand customers generate for a product or service that a business provides and I have a feeling that the Fed wants to stimulate a consumer “demand” by making money easy to borrow again and here is where I have a problem.

To my mind, easy credit is what helped us get in this mess in the first place. Without a steady income stream (job) no one in his right mind, would spend money on anything but the direst necessities no matter how easy the credit.

So it is jobs; keeping existing jobs and creating new jobs that appear to be the answer to our problem. But jobs are only created or sustained if whatever product or service the job provides, is in demand and people are willing to pay for that product or service. So we are in that cycle thing where a spark needs to create a demand that will eventually create the jobs that will keep the demand supplied and thus start and keep the wheels spinning.

Obama’s stimulus spending will create jobs which will create money for spending (demand) but because those jobs will be of limited duration (construction done and so is the job), those holding the temporary jobs will not feel safe enough to enter into any long term debt arrangements and so demand created by these temporary jobs will be limited in scope.

Obama will maintain that he is also helping to sustain existing jobs which are of a permanent nature and afford the workers holding those jobs, a little more of a secure feeling which may or may not, induce them to enter longer term debt obligations (buy something big and new) which will create the demand that creates the jobs, etc.

I feel that the intense, irresponsible demand of years past is dead, should be dead and should not reappear. The demand of the past needs to be scaled severely back to a responsible demand or one that can be paid for within a reasonable period of time just like on-lay-away, in the old days.

This in itself will scale down substantially our entire economic system which our government is probably not happy with. To them, they would rather go back to the red hot days of loose credit and consumer purchasing insanity. Well, that scenario is no longer sustainable or even attainable, in my mind.

Let’s tone it down and get back on the straight and narrow with regulatory oversight strong enough to prevent this nonsense from ever happening again and don’t forget I am a capitalist but I also need structure and not mayhem to do well in our capitalist system.

ECONOMY: Toxic means shit!

So our government has a plan to buy up the toxic securities in banks and financial institutions, to the tune of trillions of dollars worth, so those banks and financial institutions can lend more money out to the public?

In a nut shell, banks, etc. have to have a certain amount of capital on hand to cover loans they make; if they don’t have the prescribed amount of capital on hand, they cannot make loans and making loans is their business and without loans, economies do not work.

Capital is made up of assets (+) that the bank holds. If these assets are toxic securities, then the banks cannot sell them so they become zombie assets or unusable assets and they clog the bank’s capital position so they cannot make loans.

I have explained how these toxic securities were created in previous blogs. I can rant and rave all I want to about how these toxic securities were created but they still will be assets on banks’ financial statements.

Tim Geithner wants to remove them from banks’ books by allowing banks to sell them for real money; money that they can use as capital to make loans with.

Nobody wants to buy these toxic securities because they are “toxic” – no established value or guarantee of value in the future. So Geithner will pay people to buy them?

The people we are talking about are not Joe Blow and his buddies, no these are hedge funds and other big financial powers that created this mess in the first place. Our government will loan these so called financial giants, money at nearly no interest, to buy these, lets call them “shit securities”. It will also guarantee any risk these giants may take in buying them when it turns out these securities are really worth shit.

So lets see if we all have the big picture; the taxpayer pays for shit while the big boys again, make some serious money for themselves but at least the banks are in the clear?

I am not just a pissed off taxpayer; I actually have a suggestion for our government.

Let the banks write off the shit securities they hold unless someone wants to buy them for pennies on the dollar.

Our government should use TALF (Term-Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility) money to buy or make loans to people to buy, current securities backed by auto, student, small business & credit card loans.

You don’t see any past or present mortgage loans; you see current loans, hopefully made the normal secure way like they were in the past, and rated, correctly and accurately, according to their “real” risk potential.

Let me explain it another way. Have our government create a market for loan securities created in the “real”, financially responsible manner. Banks will make those loans and sell them into the after-market which will free up more money for more loans – get it?

I realize that “toxic” securities now held by institutions may be in the multiple TRILLION dollar range. Many of them insured by companies like AIG and that this would be an economic atom bomb but I don’t see any other way out.

I am also having trouble with the emphasis on “loans” as a way out of our economic dilemma; isn’t that how we got into this one?

Obama may need to get a few more economists to join his team; Geithner just doesn’t seem to get it sometimes and probably could use some advice – what about Sumner?

RELIGION: Catholic Priestly Celibacy just Silly!

I can’t help write about Catholic issues because they are in the paper every day; it’s just not me picking on them.

This time it was a radio interview which included the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward M. Eagan (76) who will be retiring soon and who is considered a conservative.

The topic was priestly celibacy and he was heard to say that the issue is a “perfectly legitimate discussion”. He said that sooner or later, the Catholic Church will have to consider whether to allow priests to marry.

We know that Pope Benedict is taking the Church backwards as fast as he can so we know where he stands on priestly celibacy but for a conservative, senior prince of the Church to allow the issue of celibacy to be even raised in discussion is big, really big.

I have written about this issue many times, debunking each argument proffered by the Church in defense of celibacy and I have concluded time and time again that the Church does not have a legitimate leg to stand on except that it wants it that way.

The good Cardinal stated that there are no “dogmatic” issues here. He also mentioned other “Catholic” faiths (Ukrainian Orthodox) that have always allowed their priests to marry without suffering any obvious “practical” difficulties like not having enough time to tend the flock.

Historically, and this is what really matters, priestly celibacy did not come into vogue until the 11th century when too many priestly offspring were demanding a potion of Church property as part of their inheritance. A simple solution was just to ban priestly marriage and therefore legitimate offspring.

Celibacy is not Church dogma; it is a habit or a tradition and can be changed immediately by the Vatican.

The shortage of priests is quite visible and will only get worst. The shortage of non-perverted priests is obvious and getting worst; celibacy was what drew the perverts to the Church in the first place – too long to explain.

Make priests into human beings and you will get a bunch of them signing up. Don’t want to pay for their families; other religions manage, sell some masterpieces!

MUSIC: Eagles brought some memories back!

I went to see THE EAGLES last night at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The last time I saw the Eagles was at Olympia Stadium in Detroit in the early 1970s.

The place was packed with baby Boomers, some like me fresh out of the military and newly married. It seemed that everyone there was smokin’ dope so even if you weren’t, you were stoned just like the rest of them.

We were all in our 20s with our lives ahead of us. Eagle’s music was all the rage and with us, has remained that till this day.

Last night, many of us are now in our 60s. Younger people said their parents played the eagles so much when they were growing up, they feel the Eagles belong to their generation also.

The people haven’t changed much. They still smoked dope but more drank like fish. The place was packed so the depression could not stop people from celebrating with their music, their band.

The eagles sounded as good as they ever did but I never considered Joe Walsh really a part of the band even though he is a great guitar player; they played way too many of his so called “songs”.

To me, Hotel California brings the time back. The ending guitar duo makes me get goose bumps. They ended with my all time favorite, Desperado, which for whatever reason makes me shed a tear.

They had some newer music, some music critical of our war on Iraq. Some booed, my wife cheered as loud as she could. My generation is not united. Too bad especially after all we have been through and are going through.

My closest, life friends are gathering this year at my house for a reunion. We will have a lot of eagles music playing along with the Beatles, of course.

RELIGION: Pope plying his voodoo in Africa

I just cannot let Pope Benedict get away with his nonsense; I need to say something.

In a New York Times article entitled “Pope Tells Clergy in Angola to Work Against belief in Witchcraft” the Pope makes light of Angolan’s belief in occult powers and demons while promoting Catholicism with its own mumbo jumbo beliefs; this on top of telling them condoms do not help prevent AIDS; how can Angolans take anything this man says with any modicum of seriousness.

The Pope condemned the fact that Angolans are so fearful of evil spirits that they wrongly condemn innocent children and the elderly for being possessed by demons. Excuse me dude, but did not the Church do the very same things throughout its history. Don’t you still have an “exorcism” ceremony in your bag of religious tricks?

The Pope took on the issue of “sorcery” in sub-Saharan Africa and it is an issue that needs to be dealt with but not by converting them to a religion that uses some of the same beliefs and practices as sorcery does.

All the Pope is saying is that my “joojoo” is stronger than your “joojoo” – whooptidoo!

He is not teaching them reality and how to deal with reality and explaining how bad things sometimes happen and how they are dealt with in the civilized world. No, the Pope is telling them that their evil demons do not exist, they are figments of their imaginations, Catholics on the other hand know that it is the “devil” that is behind all those bad happenings and they need to spray holy water and blow holy incense around to make things better.

Benedict is visiting places like Africa because that is where the new Catholics are coming from. As in my previous blogs, I explained how Benedict needs his Church populated by people that believe in his brand of superstition and what better than people already steeped in superstition just getting a more organized form of it.

RELIGION: Catholic Indulgences are back!

Another interesting Catholic matter, at least to me, that concerns Pope Benedict’s “road back to the Middle Ages” or “roll back Vatican II” campaign, is the “restoration” or bringing back of INDULGENCES.

Many of today’s Catholics have no idea what indulgences are. I can’t remember being taught about indulgences in my Catholic classes but I may have. I do know about them through my study of history, in this case Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution.

Historically, Catholics were required to confess their sins to a priest; repent, get absolution and a penalty (penance) to perform. Once this process was complete you could get “extra” points in the form of indulgences if you performed certain specified “good” deeds.

Why would you want these extra points (indulgences)? Well, these indulgences would lessen the time all of us would spend in “purgatory” being made ready (cleaned) before being allowed to enter heaven; I though the Church disavowed the existence of Purgatory but I may be wrong.

OK, the fact that I am even addressing such absurdities must give you pause but I am just discussing the way Pope Benedict has undertaken to move the Catholic Church backwards in time and indulgences were part of that time.

Martin Luther objected to the sale of indulgences by the Vatican. They were not actually selling the indulgences but they would grant you or whomever you specified (your recently deceased relative) an indulgence (get out of purgatory fast pass) if you contributed a certain sum of money say to the building of a new Vatican church.

Luther took exception to the practice he felt was unconscionable. A jingle from those days used when selling indulgences was “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs” – catchy, no?

Well that practice was banned soon after Luther objected but the deed was done and so it remains in our history books as a cause of the Protestant Reformation.

Today, indulgences can be earned (after confession & penance) for services to the community or for visiting a certain church shrine, etc. I don’t know all the particulars but it appears that Benedict wants Catholics to get back to doing confessions which have all but disappeared from the Church scene and to encourage more confessing what better than an indulgence to shorten your stay in purgatory.

Why? Well I think Benedict feels we have gone too far in the direction of “self salvation”. He wants the priests and the Church back into active participation in flock salvation.

Many learned Catholics (even clerics) are against this “restorationist” movement of Benedict because it closes the window to the light that Vatican II let into the faith and encourages a return to darkness and superstition.

I am thinking that Benedict has a plan to move the Church backwards and he wants to do as much as possible to facilitate that movement before he dies. He also has probably picked his successor that will continue to move the Church in the same direction. This is getting quite interesting and the choosing of the next Pope will be historic for many reasons including possibly a dramatic shift in Church philosophy.

Benedict was so anxious to roll back Vatican II that he re-instated a Cardinal that denied the Holocaust. Embarrassingly, he had to take it all back but you can understand his haste; he is pretty old and much work is still to be done.

RELIGION: Latin Mass is back?

How about more Catholic stuff?

I am talking about Pope Benedict’s turn backward to the time before Vatican II, before all those liberal changes to hundred year old practices and traditions.

There was a big fight when those changes were first instituted but even my mother eventually gave in. But now Benedict is slowly allowing the old stuff to come back. He must feel that the old ways were better and that the Church needs to go back there and rid itself of all those free thinking, modern Catholics that don’t know how to shut up, listen and bow.

One big backward move is the re-introduction of the Latin Mass. This is the mass I was raised in and best remember. The few times I have been in the modern Catholic Church at the post Vatican II type of Mass, I felt like a twit among twits, constantly standing, sitting and kneeling as well as repeating inane sayings and singing the most god-awful songs I have ever heard. This was supposed to be a mass with popular participation but has evolved into a silly, meaningless exercise in dumb ritual with no substance, at least as far as I am concerned but whom in the hell am I?

I was intrigued by the reasons why so many people, even young, supposedly liberal, people prefer the old Latin Mass. I have always stated that the old Mass with it’s meaningless but oh so holy sounding, Latin language, its clouds of incense with the sounds of bells and oh, the raising of the “monstrance” as in “Adoration of the Eucharist” portion of the Mass – wow, made you feel like you were participating in something really sacred, really “other-worldly” or really spiritual; you believed that a holy “presence” was actually present at the event.

The priest has his back to the congregation as in “leading” the congregation in worshiping of the holy presence in the actual altar. He bows, kneels and kisses the altar turning to the people only to show the monstrance which hold the holy presence in the Eucharist host.

Remember the old Tarzan movies where wild looking people danced around some statue of some god. Usually you had some great bonfire going and they usually had some nubile female (Jane?) ready to sacrifice to the god to gain some favor for the people. I kind of think of the Latin Mass like that but maybe without the naked dancers and the bonfire; the premise was the same.

In my previous writings on the subject I have spoken of, what many believe is a pre-programmed predisposition on the part of humans to desire some form of religion or at least a belief in a higher power to make their lives more complete. In this way, they have no mysteries or unknowns to deal with; all can be attributed to a higher power.

Vatican II, was trying to bring the Church into the modern age by transforming the ages old superstitious and in some cases, backward traditions of the Church into a more liberal, individual and more participatory form of worship. It was clear to them that the Church could no longer remain in the Dark Ages and grow and prosper. Were they wrong?

Look at what faiths are growing and which ones are declining. Islam is growing like gangbusters and is based, for the most part, on Dark Age traditions that depend on their believers to obey and not think. Catholicism is also growing but mostly among the poor and uneducated. Liberal Protestantism is way down but fundamentalism is way up.



I feel Benedict in all his wisdom, has deduced the fact that religion and religious worship must cater to what the people really want. He recently stated that he would rather see the Church much smaller by getting rid of the doubters and questioners and just keep the true believers, those that do not question their religion or their religious leaders and just follow the path laid out in front of them; a path to heaven.

It also appears in the reports that I have read, that you don’t have to be an ignoramus to prefer the Catholicism of the past; young, supposedly intelligent people are being drawn to it also. Interesting…