Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Best Charity to Give To In These Times

                    (Image from static.howstuffworks.com)

In these hard times, the poorest suffer most of all.  This year, more than most, giving to the poor is more urgent than ever.  What charity out there does the best job? 

As one who spent 18 years starting and running 3 charities that helped the poor, I have to say that the single best charity I ever saw or heard of is the Salvation Army, hands down.  No other charity even comes close.  And that's just in the U.S.  They may also be the best international charity in the world, though you don't hear much about it.  Over all, the Salvation Army does the very best job of helping our brothers and sisters who are down or hurting.

My old friend Ben Blankenship, who also has a long history with charities, couldn't agree more.  He notes that not only is the Salvation Army tops in helping the poor, but they also are perhaps the best-run organization. of any kind. in the country.  Ben writes:

'Indeed, as business guru Peter Drucker clamed several years ago, “[Salvation Army is] by far the most effective organization in the U.S. No one even comes close...in respect to clarity of mission, dedication, ability to innovate...and putting money to maximum use”' *

In simpler words, more of what you give gets to the poor than anywhere else.

So when you see that bell-ringer, drop in more than a token amount.  And do go to their website at www.salvationarmy.org and do the best you can for them.  Your gift will bless more than you know.

________________

*http://shouldsee.blogspot.com/2008/11/hard-times-hurt-neediest-most.html

Russian Analyst - U.S. Breaks Up & We Claim Alaska

                     (Image from paradoxoff.com)

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.

At http://www.drudgereport.com/flashrur.htm

Revenge of Left Across World

                        (Image from graphics.boston.com)

"Whatever the result of the US election tomorrow, we must assume that the whole governing machinery of Washington and the state capitols will be hostile to laissez-faire thinking."

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, November 3, 2008, in the UK Telegraph.*

It is not just that the Democrats will win a crushing victory in both houses of Congress, perhaps reaching the 60-seat Senate threshold that lets them steam-roll legislation. It is also that the incoming class of 2008 is of a new creed. Many no longer believe – or actively reject – the free trade and free market catechisms.

As commentator Markos Moulitsas put it in Newsweek: "The big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply 'win' the night–or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a 'center-right' country?" he said.

No matter that statist policies were responsible for this global crisis in the first place. It was Western governments that set interest rates too low for too long, encouraging us all to abuse credit.

It was Eastern governments that held down their currencies to pursue mercantilist trade advantage, thereby accumulating vast foreign reserves that had to be recycled. Hence the bond bubble. This is the deformed creature known as Bretton Woods II. Protectionist Democrats are right to complain that the game is rigged. Free trade? Laugh on.

But at this point I have given up hoping that we will draw the right conclusions from this crisis. The universal verdict is that capitalism has run amok.

In any case the damage caused as credit retrenchment squeezes real industry is likely to be so great that Barack Obama may have to pursue unthinkable policies, just as Franklin Roosevelt had to ditch campaign orthodoxies and go truly radical after his landslide victory in 1932. Indeed, Mr Obama – if he wins – may have to start by nationalizing the US car industry.

For those who missed it, I recommend Edward Stourton's BBC interview with Eric Hobsbawm, the doyen of Marxist history.

"This is the dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union: we now know that an era has ended," said Mr Hobsbawm, still lucid at 91.

"It is certainly the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. As Marx and Schumpeter foresaw, globalization not only destroys heritage, but is incredibly unstable. It operates through a series of crises.

"There'll be a much greater role for the state, one way or another. We've already got the state as lender of last resort, we might well return to idea of the state as employer of last resort, which is what it was under FDR. It'll be something which orients, and even directs the private economy," he said.

Dismiss this as the wishful thinking of an old Marxist if you want, but I suspect his views may be closer to the truth than the complacent assumptions so prevalent in the City.

To those who still think that business can go on as normal now that EU taxpayers have had to rescue the financial system, I can only say: what will happen to London if EU exchange controls are imposed, or if leverage is restricted by draconian laws – as demanded by the German, Dutch, and Nordic Left?

Does the UK still have a blocking minority under EU voting rules to stop a blitz of directives that could shut down half the activities of the City – or the 'Casino' as they say in Brussels? I doubt it.

Who thinks that the three key Commission posts – single market, competition, and trade – will still be held by free marketeers when the new team comes in next year?

In Germany, Oskar Lafontaine's Linke party now has 23pc support in Saarland on a Marxist pledge to nationalize banks and utilities. Needless to say, the Social Democrats (SPD) are shifting hard Left to protect their flank.

"The rule of the radical market ideology that began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has ended with a loud bang," said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister and SPD candidate for chancellor next year.

"We need a comprehensive new start, so we can reestablish our society on fresh foundations. People create value, not locusts," he said.

France has its own Gaullist version on this, seizing on the crisis to launch the most far-reaching strategy of state intervention since the 1970s.

"Laissez-faire, c'est fini," said President Nicolas Sarkozy. "We will intervene massively whenever a strategic enterprise needs our money."

Such language can now be heard daily across Europe. It can only intensify as the fall-out from the EU's €1.8bn trillion (£1.4 trillion) bank rescue becomes clearer, and as Europe's elites discover that their own banks are the most leveraged in the world and have played their own Wagnerian part in Gotterdammerung.

European and UK banks are five times more exposed to emerging markets than US banks. They alone hold the collective time-bomb of $1.6 trillion (£990bn) in hard currency loans to Eastern Europe – now starting to detonate in Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, and even Russia.

At some point, Europe's political class will face the awful truth that their own credit bubbles are just as bad – and perhaps worse – than the excesses of US sub-prime property. As that occurs, the shock will move by degrees from revulsion to political rage.

Professor Hobsbawm, who spent his youth watching Hitler's rise in Berlin, has a warning for those who think this will help the Left in any recognizable form. "In the 1930s, the net political effect of the Depression was to enormously strengthen the Right," he said.

America was the great exception, as it may prove to be again. I for one will take the enlightened "socialism" of Barack Obama any day over the Hegelian broth nearing the boil in Europe.

___________________

* At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3366575/Revenge-of-the-Left-across-the-world.html

Quick Explanation of Meltdown

                         (Image from i.dailymail.co.uk)

Shocked by an ill-understood financial crisis, panicky American voters are poised to elect a staunch leftist on Tuesday to serve as their 44th president *

Congress required that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac direct 52% of their backing to the homes of low-income, higher-risk, mortgagees. It did the same, though not to the same extent, with the commercial banking system. Alan Greenspan co-operated with Congress by holding the prime rate at 1% for almost a year, facilitating the issuance of trillions of dollars of low-yield, high-risk mortgages. 

The financial industry bundled these together in consolidated debt obligations (CDOs), whereby investors could buy in at different rates and risk levels. The CDOs were in turn backed by default swaps, insurance policies that gave the securities a (false as it turned out) semblance of reliability. Meanwhile, investment banks were permitted to borrow up to 30 times their asset bases, three times the leverage permitted to lending banks. It was a house of cards on an open terrace on a summer day.

Early signs of a slight business downturn shook loose some of the most vulnerable mortgages, and the effects rolled through to the insurance companies. Banks marked down their asset values, and to avoid being afoul of Federal Reserve-imposed ratios (which are based on market prices), had to seek more capital at declining issue prices, diluting existing shareholders. Market shapers and astute analysts short-sold the CDOs and bank shares, (i.e., sold them without first buying them, forcing down the market price, and then covering their sales by buying at a lower price).

The process broadened and accelerated, as this kind of crash always does. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, scrambled around like one-armed paper-hangers, saving some companies (Bear Stearns) and not others (Lehman).

Very late, they improvised an impractical plan for buying up to $700-billion of the defaulted real estate-related debt, but the CDOs are not easily divided and the federal government had no capability for negotiating such transactions. And so it was agreed that the government would, as it did in the 1930’s, buy preferred shares in the encumbered institutions at discounted prices, and let the banks work it out with their clients and debtors.

The foregoing analysis makes no pretense to economic sophistication, but I saw no evidence that either candidate is capable of giving even this minimalist description of what has panicked the country, discomfited the whole financial world and caused foreigners to resume the habit that began with the U.S. rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, and blame everything bad on America. The collapse of the United States was jubilantly announced by the international left, probably at least two centuries prematurely.

______________

* Written just before the November 4 Presidential election, at tp://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/11/01/conrad-black-ignorance-and-upheaval.aspx. by  Conrad Black in Canada's National Post, November 1, 2008. 

Panic of '08 - Fed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion

                                   (Image from necn.com)

Biggest risk comes from rescuing companies perceived as "too big to fail" says official.

(From "Bloomberg Report," 11-24-08, by Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry.) *

The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $2.8 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the only plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.

“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”

Too Big to Fail

The bailout includes a Fed program to buy as much as $2.4 trillion in short-term notes, called commercial paper, that companies use to pay bills, begun Oct. 27, and $1.4 trillion from the FDIC to guarantee bank-to-bank loans, started Oct. 14.

William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said the two programs are unlikely to lose money. The bigger risk comes from rescuing companies perceived as “too big to fail,” he said.  (Emphasis added)

Snip (...)

The government committed $29 billion to help engineer the takeover in March of Bear Stearns Cos. by New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co.and $122.8 billion in addition to TARP allocations to bail out New York-based American International Group Inc., once the world’s largest insurer. Yesterday, Citigroup Inc. received $306 billion of government guarantees for troubled mortgages and toxic assets. The Treasury Department also will inject $20 billion into the bank after its stock fell 60 percent last week.

“No question there is some credit risk there,” Poole said.

Exposure

Congressman Darrell Issa, a California Republican on the Financial Services Committee, said risk is lurking in the programs that Poole thinks are safe.

“The thing that people don’t understand is it’s not how likely that the exposure becomes a reality, but what if it does?” Issa said. “There’s no transparency to it so who’s to say they’re right?”

________________

* Read the whole article at http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=arEE1iClqDrk&refer=home ,

America's Burden: Next Prez Shapes World

                            (Image from freerepublic.com)

We're condemned to lead.  (Written before the election)  By Ralph Peters, NY Post, 11-3-08*

No matter which presidential candidate we choose tomorrow, his decisions to act or not to act will determine not only the safety of our country but the future of the world.

Allies and non-aligned states kick and complain, but expect us to make their boo-boos go away. Ignore the nonsense about America's (oft-predicted and yet to be witnessed) decline: We remain the indispensable power.

When we act, we'll be called a bully. When we fail to act, we'll be mocked as weak. No president can enduringly please foreign powers and populations. Our might - which remains unparalleled - was resented, is resented and will be resented. That's human nature.

Nor will we ever have the luxury of withdrawing from the world. If we tried, the world would simply come to us - as it did on 9/11. It's always better to act abroad than to wait to be acted upon at home. And we'll always be stuck with the dirty jobs - our international coworkers just want to collect their disability checks.

Consider the failures of the "world community" in cases when a strained Bush administration shrugged off a leadership role: As an endless civil war in Congo killed millions, the United Nations sent a few thousand military welfare recipients with pea-shooters. Rape and slaughter drag on as you read.

Ditto for Darfur. Zimbabwe starves as a tyrant fakes negotiations (the opium of the chattering classes). Russia invades its neighbors, murders dissidents and sells its newest weapons to rogue regimes. China commits ecogenocide against its own people. (Our allies prefer to criticize the United States.) Iran yearns for a nuclear Armageddon. Peace in Lebanon? Baloney.

The greatest danger to the United States and the world isn't from a president who does too much, but from one who does too little - or one who believes that words substitute for deeds. There are times when we must act, and damn the torpedoes.

For our part, we, the people, must accept that we'll never be loved by each last Syrian secret policeman. Jealousy is far too powerful an emotion. If we expect thanks, we'll always be disappointed. We must back our presidents when they do what is right, even if the world does not applaud.

For all that, we're not nearly as "hated" as our Left would have you believe. Anti-Americanism was far worse in the 1950s and '60s than over the past eight years. The 1970s seethed with Yankee-go-home sentiments (as I saw first-hand). And American power was supposed to be finished at the end of the Vietnam War. It's just that today's irresponsible media amplify every negative event.

Convincing themselves that President Bush spoiled a fairy tale, American leftists forget how gruesome fairy tales really are. When no one takes on the wicked witch, she wins. Sometimes, she wins anyway.

The recent efforts of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to galvanize the European Union to fill the current leadership vacuum only underscore Washington's indispensability. The boldest leader the old world has produced since Margaret Thatcher could not unite Europeans to buttress their economies in this crisis - nor could he convince the European Union to muster a few thousand troops to save a few million lives in Congo.

To whom should the world then turn? To the Russians? The Chinese? The Taliban?

An American president too anxious to please the world is bound to do it great harm. Should the American electorate choose Sen. Barack Obama tomorrow, his first challenge will be deciding which groups of his supporters he'll disappoint first. The struggle against Islamist fanaticism will continue to demand costly, long-term commitments - it isn't a problem we can solve by sending in the San Francisco Police Department.

Without our military leadership, our allies would restrict themselves to defense in the global terror emergency. And you can't win on defense. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but terrorists love one. The demand for disciplined, capable men and women in American uniforms is only going to increase (while economic problems and campaign promises will threaten defense budgets). In this horribly troubled world, our troops remain the ultimate foreign aid. Only they protect us from global darkness.

All the conflict-resolution theories in the world aren't worth a single rifleman with an American flag on his sleeve. Aggressors won't be stopped with earnest petitions, and terrorists don't cower at repartee. As Jimmy Carter learned so very painfully, good will is no substitute for strength.

The political campaigns are ending. Even Sen. Joe "Backfire" Biden recently admitted that our new president soon would need to do the right thing as he faces his first crisis. And the right thing may not be popular at home or abroad.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

_____________

* At http://www.nypost.com/seven/11032008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/americas_burden_136577.htm?page=0, Ralph Peters, NY Post, 11-3-08.

Freedom and Jeff

 

                                     "Freedom" and Jeff

(Image from http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=486539)

At http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/freedom.asp.  and http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art56137.asp.

Jeff Guidry writes, "Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery, it was broken in 4 places. She's my baby.

When Freedom came in to Sarvey Wildlife Center in Everett, Washington she could not stand.The Center is run by volunteers who like animals.

Both wings on the eagle were broken: her left wing in 4 places. She was emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the veternatians office.From then on, I was always around her. We placed her in a huge dog carrier with the top off that was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in.

I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes. We had to tube feed her for weeks.

This went on for 4-6 weeks, but she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize her if she couldnt stand by herself in a week.

You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning. She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon. I didnt want to go to the Center that day, because I couldnt bear the thought of her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I went immediately back to her dog cage; and there she was, standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle.

She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good day.We knew she could never fly, so the director asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove,and then to jesses,(these are thin leather strips) and we started doing education programs for schools in Western Washington. We wound up in the newspapers, radio(believe it or not) and Miracle Pets did a TV show about us.

In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. I had stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of chemo. Lost the hair -the whole bit. I missed a lot of work. When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight the cancer. I swear this happened time and time again.

Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant. They did the tests; and I was to come back Monday for the results. I went in Monday, and I was told that all the cancer was gone. Yahoo!

The first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and take the "big girl" out for a walk. It was misty and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I hadnt said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back (I was engulfed in eagle wings), She touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I dont know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever since she came in. This is a very special bird.

On a side note: I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. I once had a guy who was terminal come up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power course through his body. I have so many stories like that.

I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom's.

Hope you enjoy this.

Jeff

Freedom is 3½ years old in the second photograph below.




Remarkably, she molted when Jeff was going through his ordeal,



then, after 8 months of chemo, Freedom sprouted her new feathers at the same time Jeff regrew his hair.

Freedom & Jeff share a bond that’s incredibly strong and undeniable. For Jeff to fall so deeply in love with Freedom from the moment she arrived; broken, riddled with lice and literally on death’s door - willing her to live, loving her, sitting with her, talking with her, giving her the courage to stand and live is nothing short of the kind of commitment most people will never know. But for Freedom to reciprocate in kind – even coming to Jeff in his dreams during what had to be the most challenging time of his life - is a premiere example of the kind of heart-tugging love that builds an indestructible bridge between our species and gives us a glimpse of what can be.

And if you can believe Freedom and Jeff’s story, showcasing their respective commitment and unyielding love, then it isn’t a giant leap to believing that all animals are capable of love, joy, bonding, disappointment, hope, grief, depression, happiness and yes, crossing that indestructible bridge to communicate with us.

CREDITS: Story reprinted with permission from Jeff Guidry.
PHOTOS: Freedom & Jeff (top photo) by Anne Chase Photography, Woodinville, WA
Freedom & Jeff 2000 & 2001 by Ceal Kight

Murdoch to Aussies: Embrace Technology

            (Image from farm2.static.flikr.com)

Murdoch to Aussies: Embrace Technology*

In his second of five Boyer Lectures, The Challenge of Technology, which will be aired on ABC Radio National at 5pm tomorrow, Mr Murdoch says people should stop whingeing about the challenge of new technology and "get out in front of it".

He says new technology, such as the internet, is destroying business models that have been used for decades, particularly those with a "one size fits all" approach to their customers.

The US television networks are finding their audiences shrinking every day, he says. "People suddenly have a growing multitude of choices -- and they are rightly exercising those choices," Mr Murdoch says.

The near monopoly of classified advertisements that newspapers once enjoyed is being threatened by websites retailing cars and jobs and consumer sites, such as Craigslist in the US.

The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, owner of The Weekend Australian, says new technology is "ushering in a new golden age for human kind". It is becoming easier and cheaper for people to buy and sell.

People can do more of what they want at a cheaper cost and the disadvantaged now have greater access to information than at any time in history, Mr Murdoch says.

Technology is also "allowing the little guy to do what once required a huge corporation".

Mr Murdoch cites the Drudge Report website run by US columnist Matt Drudge, which mainly alerts readers to content on other websites and articles he finds interesting.

"Even those who don't like him click on to his website every day," Mr Murdoch says.

"Drudge has succeeded in challenging all the leading media companies of our day -- including mine. And he has done it with minimal start-up costs: a computer, a modem and some space on a server."

Mr Murdoch says that as technology levels playing fields, the "human factor" is more important.

"If you run a business, you need good people more than ever," he says.

______________

*At http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24619205-7582,00.html 

Media - "Giddy Boosterism" for Obama

                          (Image from upload.wikimedia.org)

"A Giddy Sense of Boosterism," Washington Post, by Howard Kurtz, 11-17-08.*

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue -- "Obama's American Dream" -- filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

"The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- combined!" for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"?

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM -- It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT."

"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"

But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."

So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today's front page. "Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration," the headline said, with 65 percent saying "the USA will be better off 4 years from now."

But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?

"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."

One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. "With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations," its lead editorial says.

Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate's election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.

I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.

It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election -- "trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president," Beschloss says -- but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.

"The Kennedy buildup goes on," James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. "The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent."

Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.

The media would be remiss if they didn't reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama's election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as "Pop Champagne for Barack." Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up "Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints."

A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek's quadrennial election volume is titled "A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama." Publishers obviously see a bull market.

MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: "Barack Obama, America's 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America's promise." What are viewers to make of that?

There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town -- new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?

Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

______________

*At http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/16/AR2008111602374_pf.html

Media - "Giddy Boosterism" for Obama

                          (Image from upload.wikimedia.org)

"A Giddy Sense of Boosterism," Washington Post, by Howard Kurtz, 11-17-08.*

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue -- "Obama's American Dream" -- filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

"The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- combined!" for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"?

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM -- It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT."

"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"

But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."

So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today's front page. "Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration," the headline said, with 65 percent saying "the USA will be better off 4 years from now."

But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?

"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."

One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. "With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations," its lead editorial says.

Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate's election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.

I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.

It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election -- "trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president," Beschloss says -- but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.

"The Kennedy buildup goes on," James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. "The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent."

Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.

The media would be remiss if they didn't reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama's election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as "Pop Champagne for Barack." Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up "Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints."

A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek's quadrennial election volume is titled "A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama." Publishers obviously see a bull market.

MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: "Barack Obama, America's 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America's promise." What are viewers to make of that?

There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town -- new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?

Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

______________

*At http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/16/AR2008111602374_pf.html

Murdoch - Media Dug Itself A Huge Hole

                           Rupert Murdoch

        (Image from images.businessweek.com)

In his second of the five Boyer lectures, Rupert Murdoch said:*

With newspapers cutting back and predictions of even worse times ahead, Rupert Murdoch said the profession may still have a bright future if it can shake free of reporters and editors who he said have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers.

"My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers," said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp. He made his remarks as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation.

Murdoch, whose company's holdings also include MySpace and the Wall Street Journal, criticized what he described as a culture of "complacency and condescension" in some newsrooms.

"The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly--and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception."

The 77-year-old Murdoch, recalling a long career in newspapers that began when his father's death forced him to take over the Adelaide News in 1952, said the profession has failed to creatively respond to changes wrought by technology.

"It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news-and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren't satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven't always responded well when the public calls them to account."

To make his point, Murdoch criticized the media reaction after bloggers debunked a "60 Minutes" report by former CBS anchor, Dan Rather, that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.

"Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. '60 Minutes,' he said, was a professional organization with 'multiple layers of checks and balances.' By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as 'a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.' But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.

"Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone," he continued. "A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves."

Murdoch's comments come at a time when the media landscape looks increasingly bleak both for print-based and online news organizations. A recent report by Goldman Sachs predicted that advertising pressure will continue because of the declines in the auto and financial industries. Online outlets are also feeling the impact. On Friday, TheStreet.com shut its San Francisco office

Despite the blemishes, however, Murdoch said newspapers can still count on circulation gains "if papers provide readers with news they can trust." He added they will also need to embrace technology advances like RSS feeds and targeted e-mails. The challenge, according to Murdoch, will be to "use a newspaper's brand while allowing readers to personalize the news for themselves-and then deliver it in the ways that they want."

"The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world," he said.

____________

* At http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10098194-60.html, at CNET News by Charles Cooper, 11-16-08. 

Mini-Nuclear Plants to Power 40,000 Homes

                                          (Image from hyperionpowergeneration.com)

$25 million shed-size reactors will be delivered by truck.  John Vidal and Nick Rosen, UK Guardian, 11-9-08.*

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'

Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said.

The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. 'We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.'

The first confirmed order came from TES, a Czech infrastructure company specialising in water plants and power plants. 'They ordered six units and optioned a further 12. We are very sure of their capability to purchase,' said Deal. The first one, he said, would be installed in Romania. 'We now have a six-year waiting list. We are in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama and the Bahamas.'

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.

'You could never have a Chernobyl-type event - there are no moving parts,' said Deal. 'You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it's too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.'

Other companies are known to be designing micro-reactors. Toshiba has been testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building for up to 40 years.

______________

* At http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos

Senator - "Freeze Bailout!"

                     (Image from gristmill.grist.org)

Senator James Inhofe criticises Bail-Out bill, asks Senate to freeze it.* 

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Saturday that Congress was not told the truth about the bailout of the nation's financial system and should take back what is left of the $700 billion "blank check'' it gave the Bush administration.

"It is just outrageous that the American people don't know that Congress doesn't know how much money he (Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson) has given away to anyone.'' 

"It could be to his friends. It could be to anybody else. We don't know. There is no way of knowing.''

Imhofe's blunt coments came on the heels of Paulson's shift in how he thinks the bailout funds should be spent.  Paulson announced last week... he was abandoning his plan to free up the nation's credit system by buying up toxic assets from troubled financial institutions. Instead, Paulson wants to take a more direct action on the consumer credit front.

"He was able to get this authority from Congress predicated on what he was going to do, and then he didn't do it,'' Inhofe said.

Inhofe challenged Paulson's plan earlier because there were no answers for many questions.  He also questioned the rush to get the bailout passed.

"When they come up and say this has to be done and has to be done immediately, there is no other way of doing it, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of 10 they are not telling the truth,'' he said.

"And this is one of those nine times.''  In the interview, the senator said his plans can provide "redemption'' for those senators who supported Paulson. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid...wants to use the upcoming lame duck session to push economic issues such as...aid to the nation's ailing auto industry.

Inhofe opposes that. "You don't stimulate the economy by giving away more money,'' he said..."reality must be accepted.  If we keep on nursing a broken system, then we can't expect to have a different result come later on."

"I just think we have to draw the line someplace, and the time is here.''

____________

* Read the rest in the Tulsa World,  at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20081116_16_A1_hHecri880405 , 11-16-08, by Jim Meyers.

World Has Never Seen Such "Freezing Heat"

                            (Image from z.hubpages.com)

ByChristopher Booker, November 16, 2008, in the UK Telegraph.*

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

__________

*At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml  

Into The Light

                                (Image from inmagine.com)

After paroling from prison in Texas in 1976, I drove across America to California where I had paroled to my aunt and uncle.  This is the final part of that story.  (Parts 1-5 can be read below.)

The wide deserts I drove through stretched my eyes. Seeing a hundred miles or more into the distance, instead of a few hundred yards out of a window, did that.

Soon I was in the fruit orchards and vegetable fields of California. I was like a glutton, a visual gourmet, devouring one wonderful vista after another. But instead of becoming satiated, I was still ravenous. I was like a desert that had gone without rain for years, so that not even a cloudburst could leave it well-soaked.

When I topped the last rise of the coastal mountains, saw a wall of deep blue in front of me and realized it was the Pacific, I said “Uh!” and doubled over. It was like being hit in the stomach. I stopped the car and just looked. And looked. Would I never get enough?

In the tiny town at the bottom of the mountain, I found the nearest beach, rolled up my jeans, took off my shoes and waded out into the water. It was icy compared to the warm waters off Galveston. How did those surfers out there manage?

Now I was getting close to my deadline, but still sticking to the longer, winding scenic road along the coast, driving up through San Luis Obispo. The grass was green, although it was winter. White clouds hung below the mountain tops, halfway down, instead of flying over them. It took my breath. By Monterrey it was getting late, so I turned inland, away from the coastal road, and came north on highway 101 through San Jose.

I called my Uncle Neal, and he came to meet me rather than risk my losing my way to their house in the dark. Pat came out to greet me. We walked into the light of the house. A new life was starting, a galaxy away from prison. What would it be like?

(For the rest of the story, see www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com.)

Europe Is Next

       German Leader Merkel and French Leader Sarkozy in Paris                        

                  (Image from nancarrow-webdesk.com)

Europe and all the world has followed the U.S. into a deep financial crisis.  But that is not to be all.  Now Stratfor* warns that Europe has its own housing bubble, which is about to burst.  It also is based on a mountain-sized pile of bad housing debt, somewhat like in the U.S.

With Europe's constant criticism of the U.S. and it's disdain for it, it is hard to believe how much they follow and imitate us.  How did it happen?

Here is the chain of events:  In the U.S. President Carter enacted the CRA, forcing banks to give mortages to bad loan risks.  That was in the 70s.  ACORN pushed many banks into doing it more, then pushed Congress to force Fannie/Freddie to accept these bad loans, up to 52%.of its total mortgages.  Janet Reno, Clinton's Attorney General, enforced that.  So the housing market was flooded with cheap money.  A huge, prosperous bubble resulted.  Housing and construction boomed.  But then the bill came due and the bubble burst.

Meanwhile, Europe wanted some of the same bubble.  So they also made very questionable loans to bad credit risks.  Their financial bubble burst when ours did.  But their housing bubble has not really burst yet, although it is beginning.  Stratfor wrote:

The global loiquidity crisis has had its most detrimental effects thus far in Europe, destabilizing the banking system and unearthing weak economic fundamentals across the continent.  This is particularly trus for Emerging Europe, Central Europe and the Balkans.  Beneath the impact of the credit crunch looms a potential housing crisis that has, for the moment, been overshadowed by the still-unfolding banking crisis but has the potential to unleash forces just as disastrous and even more long term. 

Now EU leaders are lining up to get various kinds of help from the U.S. - and to urge EU type restraints on the U.S. capitalist system, which has made it so much more prosperous and strong than Europe.

Bush is talking sense to them.  Everyone is watching to see what Obama will do.

Whatever anyone does, it's going to be a world-wide recession, until all the bad debt is out of the economes.   But if we are lucky, it could be shorter than it looks from here.

________

*Stratfor is the "civilian CIA," the premiun intelligence and forecasting outfit, whose analyses are read by most world and corporate leaders.

When Boys Will Be Girls

                                  (Image from worldofstock.com)

Jim Tonkowich writes:

You might expect to see this article in some other supermarket tabloid.  Instead “A Boy’s Life” by Hanna Rosin appears in the November Atlantic.  It focuses on the story of Brandon (not his real name).

Since he could speak, Brandon, now 8, has insisted that he was meant to be a girl. This summer, his parents decided to let him grow up as one. His case, and a rising number of others like it, illuminates a heated scientific debate about the nature of gender—and raises troubling questions about whether the limits of child indulgence have stretched too far.

Brandon and other “transgendered” children and adults are convinced in spite of physical and genetic evidence that they have been “born in the wrong body.” 

Rosen writes that at school Brandon draws pictures of himself as “a girl, often with big red lips, high heels, and a princess dress” or as “a mermaid with a sparkly purple tail, or a tail cut out from black velvet.”  From an early age he dressed up in his sister’s or mother’s clothes and at five insisted that if God made him a boy, “God made a mistake.”

As I read, my heart went out to Brandon, his mom, and the other children and parents whose stories Rosen tells.  What would I do if my son wanted to be my daughter or my daughter wanted to be my son?  I do not know and so I do not want to minimize difficulties, confusion, or pain.  Nonetheless, it is clear to me that this is a story illustrates a deeply flawed view of what it means to be human.

One mother Rosen quotes said about her five-year-old son, “She could end up being a mommy if she wants, just like me.” The italics are Rosen’s and point to the heart of the issue.

These parents can let their boy dress and act as girls and their girls dress and act as boys.  They can change their names (Brandon is now called Bridget).  As they approach puberty they can and do give their children puberty blocking drugs that Rosen says, “prevent boys from growing facial and body hair and an Adam’s apple, or developing a deep voice or any of the other physical characteristics that a male-to-female transsexual would later spend tens of thousands of dollars to reverse… [and] allow girls to grow taller, and prevent them from getting breasts or a period.”  They can even pay for hormone treatments and sexual reassignment surgery later on.  But that will never change the fact that little boys cannot grow up to be mommies and little girls cannot grow up to be daddies.  Our bodies have made those decisions for us.

But people in our culture are no longer willing to own their bodies as themselves.  We think that “real me” is entirely spiritual.  The body is treated as an appendage that can be manipulated to satisfy the desires and whims of that “real me.” In this, we have taken a Gnostic turn, radically separating body from spirit. 

In his book The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James Herrick writes, “In its most elemental form, Gnosticism is the systematic spiritual effort to escape the confines of history and physical embodiment through secret knowledge (gnosis) and technique (magic).” 

Thus we have the wide-spread belief that each of us has a “true self” hidden deep inside and needing to be discovered (gnosis).  That true self is independent of the body which is, after all, nothing but a container—or even “prison”—that will be gleefully cast off at death.  Pharmaceuticals, medical science, and surgery (modern magic) are employed to create whatever sort of body a “true self” requires.  We have, as scholar and IRD board member Mary Ellen Bork has written, “accepted the cultural trend that our bodies are objects to be reconfigured and have lost the sense that the body expresses a person who is not self-created.” 

This is the problem not only for transgendered children and their families, but for the rest of us with our own whole host of personal problems and dissatisfactions.  The givenness of the body, male and female, is a great fact of life that we ignore at our peril—and considerable expense.

This is not to say along with Alexander Pope that “whatever is is right.”  In a fallen world we should expect homosexuality, transgender disorders, sexual addictions, and a thousand and one other shades of confusion about who and what we are. 

It does mean that central to a Christian understanding of humanness is the notion of a Creator.  None of us “asked to be born this way.”  None of us asked to be born at all.  Life as a human—body knit to soul, male and female—is the gift of God to be received with thanksgiving.

Hillary Would Have Beaten McCain By Wider Margin

              (Image from committedtoromney.com)

At http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/11/12/politics/horserace/entry4596620.shtml?source=search_story.

This CBS article examines exit polls and finds that if the election had been between Hillary Clinton and John McCain:

• 52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama’s 7-point margin over McCain. :
• 16 percent of McCain voters said they would have voted for Clinton
, the Democrat, if she had been her party’s nominee.
• These voters valued experience over change. 47% said experience was their top candidate quality and 32% said a candidate who shares their values. Just 10% picked change. But like voters overall, the economy was the top issue for these voters.  (All emphases added.)

While 85% of Obama voters said they would have voted for Clinton had she been the Democratic candidate, 13% would not have supported her including 6% who said they would have backed McCain and 7% who said they would not have voted.

But you should see the whole article.

Election Map Shows America Still Conservative

This NewsMax county-by-county election map shows that America is still a conservative country.  At http://images.newsmax.com/misc/2008_Election_Map.jpg.

Jealousy, Taxes and the Stock Market

          (Image from collegerecruiter.com)

What is "fairness" where taxes are concerned?  Equal tax rates for all?  Or a "progressive" tax rate, where the rich are taxed at a higher rate than the poor?  Americans have come to accept that progressive tax rates are "fairer."  But - how much more do the rich need to be taxed for "fairness?"  That may have become "how much more do the rich need to be punished for being rich?"  For many, "fairness" has come down to punishing the more successful.  To simple childish jealousy, in fact.  How is that?

Americans have always been ambivalent about their rich.  On one hand, they hate them.  On the other hand, they love them and imitate them.  On one hand, they need them to create jobs.