December 19, 2007

YIKES! I've Been Assimilated

Remember StarTrek, The Next Generation, when Captain Jean-Luc Picard was captured by the Borg Collective?

Well, now it's happened to me. I'm being assimilated. I fought it as long as could, but they're right when they warn that "resistance is futile." It really is. And yes, you'll be next. (Oh yes you will.)

While my new overlords are busy recharging, let me explain how this came to pass.

All the way back to my earliest years I've been an out-layer. I never joined groups, unless forced to, like when I ended up in the military in the late 60's. And when I was forced to join a group it was nothing but irritation for everyone involved, me, them and anyone close enough to hear my complaints.

The bigger the group, the more I distrust and dislike it. Beginning right with kindergarden I instinctively knew that group size and efficiency were inversely proportional. The larger the group the less real stuff gets done, and what does get done costs more and misses the original goals by a mile.

Large working groups are especially vulnerable to a form of social affirmative action. At least a third of the people who make up a large working group are always useless as tits on a boar. Still everyone has to treat them as valuable members of "the team." They never do anything useful, say anything useful and, when given a task that requires them to actually produce something, they scurry from cubicle to cubicle bothering the other two-thirds:  "Hey, Steve, can I pick your brain for minute." Then they turn in their (your) report. If these people were not allowed to be part of a group they would most surely die of starvation.

That's been my experience, anyway. So I have spent my entire adult life avoiding large groups, be they in they workplace, political, religious, clubs, fads... you name it. And, up until last month, it worked pretty well -- except for that military business... but trust me, when my term of service was over, they were as glad to see me gone as I was to be gone. (Corporal Clinger couldn't hold a candle to Lance Corporal Pizzo.)

But I digress. A few months ago my wife, Sue, who works in private practice as a family nurse practitioner, decided to cut back to just two days a week. That meant we lost our health insurance which had been provided by her office.

So out onto the health insurance marketplace I ventured, for the first time.

I've written many times that nearly 50 million Americans were without health insurance, but in the abstract. Suddenly there I was about to be one of them if I did not pick a plan. So we applied to all kinds of companies to see what we could get that was affordable. That meant a high deductible, but I was alright with that.

The first place we applied rejected me. This was the first time the shoe was on my other foot. Suddenly a group had rejected ME. Bastards, I thought. Then I noticed the reason.

 A couple of years earlier my doctor had noticed my recent blood test showed my liver enzymes were up a bit. Nothing serious, but he wanted to see if that was just the way my liver worked or if there was something else going on.

Doctor Paul asked me how much alcohol I consumed each day. Not very much, I told him, a glass of wine with dinner and shot of brandy before bedtime.

He suggested I try dropping one or the other for a while and retest later to see if that was what causing it. (It wasn't) What I didn't know was the doc had written on my chart: "Try reducing alcohol consumption." I know it now because it was the reason the insurnace company cited for  rejecting me -- that one sentence. I could just see the image the insurance company screener had in her head of wino Steve, laying in a puddle of his own urine,  drinking Ripple out of a brown paper bag behind the local Stop-n-Shop.

Lesson: Don't tell your doctor anything. "Do you consume alcohol?"  Nope. "Do you now or have you ever smoked?" Nope. "Do you use recreational drugs?" Nope. "Do you eat a lot of red meat?" Nope. That's all that's ever going to appear on my future medical files, page after page of "nope."

Well, to make a long story shorter, we ended up at  Kaiser Permanente -- the Borg of American health care.  Now I don't want to diss Kaiser because they do a fine job. They are completely modern, wired to extreme, Web-friendly and remarkably efficient. Even so, they ain't cheap. With a high deductible we still have to cough up $760 a month. (It's like having to make two car payments every month, but you don't get the cars.)

Even with that hefty outlay every month, if I want to talk to a doctor I have to cough up another seventy bucks. Consequently the only time I'll be seeing a Kaiser doc is if I can't staunch the bleeding by fashioning a tourniquet out of my own belt.

Of course what you really are paying for under these high-deductible plans is coverage for the day when the big "C" or something like it, gets it's teeth into you. Without catastrophic coverage you end up in the hospital with doctors pumping you full of stuff that costs so much it chews through a lifetime of savings in three days then goes to work on your house, cars and jewelry. (All that platinum plated healthcare is still only likely to keep you alive long enough to drag your now hairless, emaciated and totally broke self to the nearest bankruptcy court.)

Then came the prescription meds shock. When I found out how much the two meds I take cost I almost fell off the butcher-paper covered exam table. But then I was advised that there was an alternative -- Wal-Mart, the Borg of American retailing. Wal-Mart would provide my generic prescription drugs for just four bucks for a 30-day supply!

And so here I am, after a lifetime of skipping around the edges of society, all at once -- assimilated. Just like that. Now I can "look forward" to being promoted in three years to the Borg of American Social Programs, MediCare/Social Security and  AARP, which  has been on my tail since I turned 50, and is gaining on me.

Let me tell ya, its all come as quite a shock to this old Haight-Ashbury hippie. It's like totally un-groovy. Nevertheless, here I am, assigned my very own recharging station at the local Kaiser cube, and schlepping around Wal-Mart in search of cheap drugs that don't even make me "happy," when they're taken as directed.

And what are you smiling about? They're gonna get you too, eventually. It's all a matter of scale. As more and more people occupy finite earth-space, and consume more and more finite resources, the only way all of them can get a piece of the action is through maximization of efficiencies of scale. Eventually the US will go with a single Borg-ish insurance system, because nothing else works, as we are already seeing.

We are about to all be living in a world that bears a striking similarity to the old science fiction movies we used to watch as kids, you know where everyone dresses alike and says things like, "It's another beautiful day in the village."

It's not as much Big Brother as it is  Big Borg. Big Brother just controlled what people said, saw, heard, and knew. The Borg cuts out the middle man and simply assimilates.

It's not the kind of world I chose on my own. Instead it's like climate change. It's too late to avoid it. Now we have to learn to adjust to conditions beyond our control. Most of what's about to happen is already baked into the cake. I wish it were otherwise, but it is what is.

Sometimes we can change events and sometimes events change us.

And so it has come to pass - my assimilation has begun. Resistance is futile. My goal now has become to be the most annoying, under-achieving, obnoxious, passive-aggressive little shit the Borg ever assimilated. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and they'll spit me back out.

In the meantime here's where I draw a red line in the sand:  they'll have to pry my nightly snort of brandy out of my cold, dead fingers.

December 7, 2007

Mitt & Me

 

If Mitt Romney hoped to quell concerns about his religious beliefs yesterday he failed miserably. In fact, I believe he revealed himself in ways that should cause every American to worry more, not less, about what's rattling around in this guy's well-groomed head.

During his speech Romney made several pronouncements as though they were accepted facts.

Here are those statements, in his own words, followed by my reaction as I listened to his speech: (Which I emailed to the Romney campaign headquarters as well.)

MITT:  "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."

ME: You're only half right, Mitt. The free and open practice of religion depends entirely on the freedom -- freedom to worship as one pleases, or not to worship at all.  But freedom itself is not so constrained. Freedom, unlike religion, is the natural state of being. It's how humans would live unless one of two outside, artificial forces step in and restrict freedom. Those two forces are government and religion. Each of those two forces have, in more ways than can be counted over the eons, done more to restrict human freedom than any other forces in the universe.

MITT: "Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God."

ME: Freedom also opens the windows of the mind which for many leads humans to discover that religions -- all of them -- are remnants of primitive mankind's fear of the unknown and unknowable. Religious ceremonies were -- and remain -- mankind's feeble attempts to reassure itself they could have some control over the gigantic natural forces that surrounded them and which nurtured them one day and tried to kill them the next. So they turned to magic and prayers. (How prayers are really treated)

MITT: "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

ME: You got that sound bite exactly backwards, Mitt. Throughout human history it's been the first goal of any religion to trim freedom's wings. The first thing a new religion does is to start making a list of things it wants people to stop doing. And, as time goes on, those list grow. They can never seem to stop with common sense rules like  "don't kill and steal from each other." Sooner or later the list of "sins" grow to include sexual behavior, what people can and can't eat and drink, what they can and can't say -- or even think, where they can and can't go, even what they can and can't  wear.  So Mitt, you were dead wrong here. Religion has always been at odds with freedom. And the more freedom given to the religious, the less freedom the religious were willing to grant the (once) free.

MITT:
"Given our grand tradition of religious tolerance and liberty, some wonder whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate's religion that are appropriate. I believe there are."

ME: Absolutely right, but not for the reasons you would cite, Mitt. Two decades ago America's Christian right decided their religious opposition to certain entirely secular behaviors needed to be outlawed or otherwise restricted, not by changing people's minds, but by law. That religious blacklist included abortion, condoms use by teens, birth control, foreign aid for family planning, same-sex marriages, gays, prayer in schools.. on and on.  Fundamentalist Christians pushed to elect leaders who promised to codify their shared religious beliefs into civil law. And so it came to pass that millions of Americans who did not share those beliefs saw their freedoms eroded. Choice, and choices, narrowed. Freedoms narrowed. Had that not occurred I would have no reason to care what religious dogma a candidate holds dear. We secularists didn't start this fight, they did. The so-called "war on religion in the public square" is a self-inflicted wound. Because once one side breaches the barrier between church and state the other side will try to fill that breach.

MITT: "Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world."

ME: Oh, man, what chutzpah. Do you mean like you did when you were pro-choice to win the governorship of Mass. and then switched to anti-choice to appeal to the religious right in the presidential primaries? So you mean someone just like you, Mitt.

MITT: "
It's important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions."

ME: Well, excuuuuuuuse me for even existing, Mitt. As a non-theist I, and tens of millions of Americans like me, do not share a common creed with theists. We do not share your belief in the spirit-world. Rather than sharing those beliefs we rejectas a nonsensical belief in the supernatural. 

MITT: 

"We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion."

ME: Is that why the Christian right been insisting that its theologically-based moral codes be imposed on our entire population? Is that why the current "born-again" President has been stacking government agencies, such as the Federal Drug Administration to the courts, Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, even the Supreme Court, with those who share the narrow beliefs of fundamentalist Christian sects? What does the term "separation" mean to you Mitt -- separating us from the freedom to live as we each wish?

MITT: "But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God... They wish to remove all mention of religion from the public square."

ME: Whew! Where do I begin? First of all, in a free country, the public square is a debating society, not a lecture hall. If you come to the public square espousing your beliefs expect an argument. When you say people like me want to chase religion from the public square what you are really saying is you don't want us to challenge religious beliefs. Well, forget about it. Besides, people like you are yourself highly selective when it comes to just which metaphysical beliefs that are acceptable in the public squares. Just let some believers in astrology erect a monument to astrology on a courthouse steps and see how fast mainstream religious folk scream foul.

MITT: "Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life."

ME: Yes, and that's the right way to view it too. There's all kinds of things about other's lives I have no interest in knowing about; what they did in bed last night and with whom, who they voted for, how much money they earn and, right on the top of that list, their religious/metaphysical beliefs. All that kind of stuff falls smack dab into the "don't ask, don't tell" category as far as I'm concerned. The only time I get concerned is when some group starts insisting that I believe and/or live as they do. That's when your religious beliefs stop being a private affair and becomes extremely personal -- to me.

MITT: "It is as if they're (secularists) intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They're wrong."

(APPLAUSE)

ME: Ah, now, isn't THAT a telling comment. You believe that people like me are trying to sneak a new religion into the mix -- "secularism." Don't you see the irony in that remarkable remark? Wasn't it your "prophet," Joseph Smith, who himself "snuck" a new religion into the established Christian pack as recently as the 1830s? If I recall from my reading of history Smith was not viewed much differently than you now view we secularists.  But hey, maybe he's given me an idea. If the religious right is successful in finishing the job of breaking down the wall between church and state, the only way we secularists may be able to get what we want is to call ourselves a religion. Then we could demand our rights too. We could demand that our "religious beliefs" be codified into law too. And, whenever we are opposed by anyone we can accuse them of "religious persecution." Then we too could take advantage of all those juicy tax breaks religions get.  (The Church of Secularism ... services every weekend starting at 9 pm at Filmore East -- Hymns by the Greatful Dead. )

MITT:

"The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.

"We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, Nativity scenes and Menorahs should be welcome in our public places.

(APPLAUSE)

ME: I know you have trouble seeing it from your vantage, but Islam is one the fastest growing religions in the US. What happens if the day arrives when Muslims  outnumber Christians in the US? Would you be for changing the pledge and currency to, "In Allah We Trust?" I Didn't think so. Seems your religious tolerance has its limits. Well, mine too.

MITT: "Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

(APPLAUSE)

ME: I thought George Washington gave us liberty. I thought it was the courage and valor of George and all the men and women who died over the past couple of centuries to defeat those who would take or freedoms away, who we honor for our liberties. That's where our liberty came from, and that's where it's defended. And you dishonor those heroes whey you ascribe those victories to the intercession of a supernatural spirit. Every time you do that you reduce those heroes to little more godly canon fodder.

MITT:

"We (Americans) believe that every single human being is a child of God –"

ME: There you go again. No Mitt, not every American believes "every single human being" is "a child of God." Many of us believe we are extraordinarily fortunate accidents of universal forces -- forces we are just beginning to unravel, but may be destined to never fully understand. We believe we are creatures of the universe, maybe the only such creatures. Maybe not the only such creatures. Maybe we're the smartest creatures in the universe, maybe not. But rather than children of some supernatural being, we believe we are, as the song in Hair put it,  "stardust." And that's where our beliefs coincide: "From dust, to dust."

 MITT:

"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government.

(APPLAUSE)

ME: What planet are you living on, Mitt? It sure can't be this one. Freedom is a gift of good government. Bad governments take freedom away.  It's all about who's in charge. Look no further than our current (self-described God-fearing, Christian) administration. It turned out to be the first American government to sanction torture of other human beings. Under these "good Christian" leaders we've lost, rather than gained, freedom. They rolled back freedoms, like Habeus Corpus, privacy, detention without court review and spies on it's own citizens. In all fairness, "God" had nothing to do with any of that. Men did it. Men who were elected in part touting their Christian credentials. Men who promised that their faith would "inform" their time in office. And now you tell me that your Mormon faith will "inform" your administration, if you are elected. Thanks for the heads up.

 MITT: "I've visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired, so grand, and so empty."

ME: True. But did you take the time to ask why? There are several reasons those grand cathedrals are now empty. Europeans got tired of being shaken down by the church to build giant edifices to itself while so many lived in squalor. They got tired of priestly meddling in civil affairs. They got educated -- better educated than today's Americans -- and education leads to enlightenment.  Yes Mitt, they've stopped going to church, and look what happened. Europe prospers. Their social safety net makes the lives of families and the elderly far more secure than in families in church-going America. While nearly 50 million Americans can't afford health care, nearly everyone is covered in "church empty" Europe. Meanwhile Americans can only pray they don't get sick. Even the Euro is now worth one and half times more than the "In God We Trust" US dollar. That's why those cathedrals have taken their rightful place alongside Europe's other monuments to the past, like the Colosseum.  And those missing worshipers will not be returning to fill those empty pews any more than gladiators and lions will be returning to the Colosseum.

MITT: "In such a world, we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day."

(APPLAUSE)

ME: Wrong, again. Reason and religion are like oil and water.. you have to shake the hell out of the bottle, and keep shaking, or they quickly separate. Because the two are diametrically opposite forces. Religion is based on blind faith and the suspension of critical thinking. Reason is eyes-wide open, question everything, show me the proof, critical thinking. For example, science and reason instruct us that the earth is billions of years old. Fundamentalist Christians believe the earth is just 6000-years old. Only one of those two views can be right. Deciding which one is right, and taught to budding scientists in our schools, will decide if we continue as a nation of innovation and progress or slouch into an intellectually crippled, backward, Taliban-like, society.

MITT:

"And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me."

ME: And those of us who don't kneel in prayer to a supernatural being, are we not your "friends?" Are we then your enemies, or are you simply indifferent to our very existence?  Since you repeatedly equate belief and prayer as core attributes of America and Americans, does that make us un-American. See where such statements lead? Do secularists have to worry that, should you win, we might be getting visits from avenging angels of a Danite-like Romney administration? Probably not. But I am offended by the statement nonetheless, and I worry what kind public policies would grow out such exclusionary feelings.

 MITT:

"And, in that spirit, let us give thanks to the divine 'author of liberty.' And together, let us pray that this land may always be blessed, 'with freedom's holy light.' Thank you."

ME: No. Let me tell you what I hope (rather than pray) for. I hope we have enough sense as a nation to tell the Christian right to get back into their churches and keep it there. If they want to believe that the universe is ruled by an invisible 6-foot white rabbit, I don't care. Just leave the rest of us alone about it. I don't want a bunch of temperance-types running around demanding the rest of us be "saved" and toe their line.

The constitution gave religious folk all they need and all they deserve -- the right to believe whatever they want, worship however they wish without government sticking its nose into their religions. But that seems not to have been enough for them. They continue to demand a voice in government as well. Ironically conservatives are forever complaining about  intrusive "nanny government," but seem eager to accommodate the hype-nanny-ish "values" demands of Bible thumpers.

On the other hand we secularists don't ask for much. We aren't looking for special tax breaks, nor are we trying to force anyone to do anything they believe is wrong. If we have a creed it can pretty much be summed up as, "live and let live" and "do onto others as you would have others do onto you." Beyond that we secularists are mostly Greta Garbo's at heart... we only "want to be left alone."

We only ask of the religious among us to stay out of secular matters. If you are against abortion, then walk your talk -- don't have one. If you're against booze, then don't drink the stuff. If you're against sex -- good. There's already too many pushy religious busy bodies on the planet.

Finally let me thank Mitt Romney for his speech. Ben Johnson once wrote, "Speak, that I may see thee."

Mr. Deity

A content-appropriate video for your secular viewing pleasure.

Mitt & Me

December 7, 2007

Mitt & Me

 

If Mitt Romney hoped to quell concerns about his religious beliefs yesterday he failed miserably. In fact, I believe he revealed himself in ways that should cause every American to worry more, not less, about what's rattling around in this guy's well-groomed head.

During his speech Romney made several pronouncements as though they were accepted facts.

Here are those statements, in his own words, followed by my reaction as I listened to his speech: (Which I emailed to the Romney campaign headquarters as well.)

MITT:  "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."

ME: You're only half right, Mitt. The free and open practice of religion depends entirely on the freedom -- freedom to worship as one pleases, or not to worship at all.  But freedom itself is not so constrained. Freedom, unlike religion, is the natural state of being. It's how humans would live unless one of two outside, artificial forces step in and restrict freedom. Those two forces are government and religion. Each of those two forces have, in more ways than can be counted over the eons, done more to restrict human freedom than any other forces in the universe.

MITT: "Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God."

ME: Freedom also opens the windows of the mind which for many leads humans to discover that religions -- all of them -- are remnants of primitive mankind's fear of the unknown and unknowable. Religious ceremonies were -- and remain -- mankind's feeble attempts to reassure itself they could have some control over the gigantic natural forces that surrounded them and which nurtured them one day and tried to kill them the next. So they turned to magic and prayers. (How prayers are really treated)

MITT: "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

ME: You got that sound bite exactly backwards, Mitt. Throughout human history it's been the first goal of any religion to trim freedom's wings. The first thing a new religion does is to start making a list of things it wants people to stop doing. And, as time goes on, those list grow. They can never seem to stop with common sense rules like  "don't kill and steal from each other." Sooner or later the list of "sins" grow to include sexual behavior, what people can and can't eat and drink, what they can and can't say -- or even think, where they can and can't go, even what they can and can't  wear.  So Mitt, you were dead wrong here. Religion has always been at odds with freedom. And the more freedom given to the religious, the less freedom the religious were willing to grant the (once) free.

MITT:
"Given our grand tradition of religious tolerance and liberty, some wonder whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate's religion that are appropriate. I believe there are."

ME: Absolutely right, but not for the reasons you would cite, Mitt. Two decades ago America's Christian right decided their religious opposition to certain entirely secular behaviors needed to be outlawed or otherwise restricted, not by changing people's minds, but by law. That religious blacklist included abortion, condoms use by teens, birth control, foreign aid for family planning, same-sex marriages, gays, prayer in schools.. on and on.  Fundamentalist Christians pushed to elect leaders who promised to codify their shared religious beliefs into civil law. And so it came to pass that millions of Americans who did not share those beliefs saw their freedoms eroded. Choice, and choices, narrowed. Freedoms narrowed. Had that not occurred I would have no reason to care what religious dogma a candidate holds dear. We secularists didn't start this fight, they did. The so-called "war on religion in the public square" is a self-inflicted wound. Because once one side breaches the barrier between church and state the other side will try to fill that breach.

MITT: "Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world."

ME: Oh, man, what chutzpah. Do you mean like you did when you were pro-choice to win the governorship of Mass. and then switched to anti-choice to appeal to the religious right in the presidential primaries? So you mean someone just like you, Mitt.

MITT: "
It's important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions."

ME: Well, excuuuuuuuse me for even existing, Mitt. As a non-theist I, and tens of millions of Americans like me, do not share a common creed with theists. We do not share your belief in the spirit-world. Rather than sharing those beliefs we rejectas a nonsensical belief in the supernatural. 

MITT: 

"We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion."

ME: Is that why the Christian right been insisting that its theologically-based moral codes be imposed on our entire population? Is that why the current "born-again" President has been stacking government agencies, such as the Federal Drug Administration to the courts, Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, even the Supreme Court, with those who share the narrow beliefs of fundamentalist Christian sects? What does the term "separation" mean to you Mitt -- separating us from the freedom to live as we each wish?

MITT: "But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God... They wish to remove all mention of religion from the public square."

ME: Whew! Where do I begin? First of all, in a free country, the public square is a debating society, not a lecture hall. If you come to the public square espousing your beliefs expect an argument. When you say people like me want to chase religion from the public square what you are really saying is you don't want us to challenge religious beliefs. Well, forget about it. Besides, people like you are yourself highly selective when it comes to just which metaphysical beliefs that are acceptable in the public squares. Just let some believers in astrology erect a monument to astrology on a courthouse steps and see how fast mainstream religious folk scream foul.

MITT: "Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life."

ME: Yes, and that's the right way to view it too. There's all kinds of things about other's lives I have no interest in knowing about; what they did in bed last night and with whom, who they voted for, how much money they earn and, right on the top of that list, their religious/metaphysical beliefs. All that kind of stuff falls smack dab into the "don't ask, don't tell" category as far as I'm concerned. The only time I get concerned is when some group starts insisting that I believe and/or live as they do. That's when your religious beliefs stop being a private affair and becomes extremely personal -- to me.

MITT: "It is as if they're (secularists) intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They're wrong."

(APPLAUSE)

ME: Ah, now, isn't THAT a telling comment. You believe that people like me are trying to sneak a new religion into the mix -- "secularism." Don't you see the irony in that remarkable remark? Wasn't it your "prophet," Joseph Smith, who himself "snuck" a new religion into the established Christian pack as recently as the 1830s? If I recall from my reading of history Smith was not viewed much differently than you now view we secularists.  But hey, maybe he's given me an idea. If the religious right is successful in finishing the job of breaking down the wall between church and state, the only way we secularists may be able to get what we want is to call ourselves a religion. Then we could demand our rights too. We could demand that our "religious beliefs" be codified into law too. And, whenever we are opposed by anyone we can accuse them of "religious persecution." Then we too could take advantage of all those juicy tax breaks religions get.  (The Church of Secularism ... services every weekend starting at 9 pm at Filmore East -- Hymns by the Greatful Dead. )

MITT:

"The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.

"We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, Nativity scenes and Menorahs should be welcome in our public places.

(APPLAUSE)

ME: I know you have trouble seeing it from your vantage, but Islam is one the fastest growing religions in the US. What happens if the day arrives when Muslims  outnumber Christians in the US? Would you be for changing the pledge and currency to, "In Allah We Trust?" I Didn't think so. Seems your religious tolerance has its limits. Well, mine too.

MITT: "Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

(APPLAUSE)

ME: I thought George Washington gave us liberty. I thought it was the courage and valor of George and all the men and women who died over the past couple of centuries to defeat those who would take or freedoms away, who we honor for our liberties. That's where our liberty came from, and that's where it's defended. And you dishonor those heroes whey you ascribe those victories to the intercession of a supernatural spirit. Every time you do that you reduce those heroes to little more godly canon fodder.

MITT:

"We (Americans) believe that every single human being is a child of God –"

ME: There you go again. No Mitt, not every American believes "every single human being" is "a child of God." Many of us believe we are extraordinarily fortunate accidents of universal forces -- forces we are just beginning to unravel, but may be destined to never fully understand. We believe we are creatures of the universe, maybe the only such creatures. Maybe not the only such creatures. Maybe we're the smartest creatures in the universe, maybe not. But rather than children of some supernatural being, we believe we are, as the song in Hair put it,  "stardust." And that's where our beliefs coincide: "From dust, to dust."

 MITT:

"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government.

(APPLAUSE)

ME: What planet are you living on, Mitt? It sure can't be this one. Freedom is a gift of good government. Bad governments take freedom away.  It's all about who's in charge. Look no further than our current (self-described God-fearing, Christian) administration. It turned out to be the first American government to sanction torture of other human beings. Under these "good Christian" leaders we've lost, rather than gained, freedom. They rolled back freedoms, like Habeus Corpus, privacy, detention without court review and spies on it's own citizens. In all fairness, "God" had nothing to do with any of that. Men did it. Men who were elected in part touting their Christian credentials. Men who promised that their faith would "inform" their time in office. And now you tell me that your Mormon faith will "inform" your administration, if you are elected. Thanks for the heads up.

 MITT: "I've visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired, so grand, and so empty."

ME: True. But did you take the time to ask why? There are several reasons those grand cathedrals are now empty. Europeans got tired of being shaken down by the church to build giant edifices to itself while so many lived in squalor. They got tired of priestly meddling in civil affairs. They got educated -- better educated than today's Americans -- and education leads to enlightenment.  Yes Mitt, they've stopped going to church, and look what happened. Europe prospers. Their social safety net makes the lives of families and the elderly far more secure than in families in church-going America. While nearly 50 million Americans can't afford health care, nearly everyone is covered in "church empty" Europe. Meanwhile Americans can only pray they don't get sick. Even the Euro is now worth one and half times more than the "In God We Trust" US dollar. That's why those cathedrals have taken their rightful place alongside Europe's other monuments to the past, like the Colosseum.  And those missing worshipers will not be returning to fill those empty pews any more than gladiators and lions will be returning to the Colosseum.

MITT: "In such a world, we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day."

(APPLAUSE)

ME: Wrong, again. Reason and religion are like oil and water.. you have to shake the hell out of the bottle, and keep shaking, or they quickly separate. Because the two are diametrically opposite forces. Religion is based on blind faith and the suspension of critical thinking. Reason is eyes-wide open, question everything, show me the proof, critical thinking. For example, science and reason instruct us that the earth is billions of years old. Fundamentalist Christians believe the earth is just 6000-years old. Only one of those two views can be right. Deciding which one is right, and taught to budding scientists in our schools, will decide if we continue as a nation of innovation and progress or slouch into an intellectually crippled, backward, Taliban-like, society.

MITT:

"And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me."

ME: And those of us who don't kneel in prayer to a supernatural being, are we not your "friends?" Are we then your enemies, or are you simply indifferent to our very existence?  Since you repeatedly equate belief and prayer as core attributes of America and Americans, does that make us un-American. See where such statements lead? Do secularists have to worry that, should you win, we might be getting visits from avenging angels of a Danite-like Romney administration? Probably not. But I am offended by the statement nonetheless, and I worry what kind public policies would grow out such exclusionary feelings.

 MITT:

"And, in that spirit, let us give thanks to the divine 'author of liberty.' And together, let us pray that this land may always be blessed, 'with freedom's holy light.' Thank you."

ME: No. Let me tell you what I hope (rather than pray) for. I hope we have enough sense as a nation to tell the Christian right to get back into their churches and keep it there. If they want to believe that the universe is ruled by an invisible 6-foot white rabbit, I don't care. Just leave the rest of us alone about it. I don't want a bunch of temperance-types running around demanding the rest of us be "saved" and toe their line.

The constitution gave religious folk all they need and all they deserve -- the right to believe whatever they want, worship however they wish without government sticking its nose into their religions. But that seems not to have been enough for them. They continue to demand a voice in government as well. Ironically conservatives are forever complaining about  intrusive "nanny government," but seem eager to accommodate the hype-nanny-ish "values" demands of Bible thumpers.

On the other hand we secularists don't ask for much. We aren't looking for special tax breaks, nor are we trying to force anyone to do anything they believe is wrong. If we have a creed it can pretty much be summed up as, "live and let live" and "do onto others as you would have others do onto you." Beyond that we secularists are mostly Greta Garbo's at heart... we only "want to be left alone."

We only ask of the religious among us to stay out of secular matters. If you are against abortion, then walk your talk -- don't have one. If you're against booze, then don't drink the stuff. If you're against sex -- good. There's already too many pushy religious busy bodies on the planet.

Finally let me thank Mitt Romney for his speech. Ben Johnson once wrote, "Speak, that I may see thee."

Mr. Deity

A content-appropriate video for your secular viewing pleasure.

December 6, 2007

People of The Book(s)

(A gratuitously offensive look at religion and religion in politics.)

On Thursday Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, will give a speech addressing his religion, Mormonism. Romney hopes to repeat John F. Kennedy's success when he dampened concerns about his Catholic faith.

Good luck. Kennedy had a much easier task than Romney faces, for several reasons.

First, the Catholic Church had been around for at least a millennium and a half. Hell, once upon a time it was about the only (legal) Christian faith around. It was be Catholic or meet Mr. Stretching Machine. Back then the Catholic Church virtually ran Europe for hundreds of years. (Run little altar boys, run. )

Catholics eventually become something of burr under the saddle of Western civilization, resulting in fracture of Christianity into the Mulligan stew of Christian sects we have today. Still,  JFK didn't have to convince other Christians that his faith was basically under the same tent with theirs.

On the other hand Romney's Mormon faith is viewed by many Christians as not under their tent at all. They tend to lump Mormonism in with the likes of  Rev. Moon's church, the Branch Dividians and Scientology. Mormons went off and formed their own gang, they use different gang signs, wear secret colors (under their cloths) and generally roll with their own on on their own turf.

But Romney's biggest hurdle will be explaining why two volumes of revelation weren't enough for Mormons. Why the Old and New Testaments were insufficient. Why Mormons felt a third book was required, one that neither Moses or Jesus seemed to need, never mentioned and --  to many of us who've actually read it -- is, well, kinda nutty. (I understand that when it comes to religious tracts the term "nutty" is relative. But if there were a machine able to measure the nuttiness content of three books in question, the BOM would most surely be required to carry a warning label.)

How did we end up with Three Bibles?

The appearance of the New Testament nearly two millennia ago is easy to explain. The first book, the Old Testament, imposed on unruly desert tribes a wrathful God, one for whom smiting anything that moved verged on being a nervous tick. He turned people in pillars of salt for sight-seeing without permission. He was forever knocking down city walls, turning rivers red, deploying swarms of bugs, visiting plagues and contagious diseases upon those who displeased Him. In short, the God of the Old Testament was a real SOB.

The God of the Old Testament had to be an SOB, of course.  A touchy-feelie God back then would not have done at all. The God of the Old Testament was tasked with lording over a hundred million loose canons. Leaders at the time were having a devil of a time trying to organize their unruly, footloose tribes into some semblance of an orderly society. So they had to come up with a terrifying celestial vestige just to get them to stop killing, raping, coveting and otherwise running amok.  ("Just wait until your father gets home!") So Moses went up the mountain and came back with the new rules. It all got boiled down to a simple message : mess with the God of the Old Testament and you're toast.

And it worked, at least for about three thousand years. (Not a bad shelf-life by modern marketing standards!)

But around 2,100 years ago marketing a "just-bomb-em" Cheney-like God of the Old Testament began wearing thin with the flock. Followers of the Old Testament had gotten the whole social order thing down, and they were sick and tired of being treated like a bunch of hen-pecked husbands by their God. Some in the flock began yearning for, and predicting the arrival of, a kinder, gentler Supreme Being ... one they could worship because they wanted to rather than because they were afraid not to.

Which is why once Jesus started preaching his message of love and forgiveness, it was as though Mr. Rogers had replaced Darth Vader. Jesus was the Bill Clinton of his time. He "felt their pain," got down with the common folk and even women of ill repute were welcomed with open arms. 

In short, Jesus was a breath of fresh air. He didn't threaten them with plagues or infestations. Instead Jesus did stuff for them, like turning water into wine. (Wine was the big deal 2000 years ago. Imagine if some guy came into your dorm and turned a tub of bath water into delicious beer! That's how popular Jesus was back then. Brilliant!) 

Jewish by birth, Jesus also liked to show off his natural delicatessen skills to those who showed up to his rallies by serving them up apparently bottomless picnick baskets of fish and bread. And Jesus not only didn't go around smiting folks but actually un-smited one guy and gave eyesight back to those the old God had visually smited.

It was a tour de force, and a game-changer. In a matter of a few short years the mean-God of the Old Testament was plummeting in the polls and the Jesus campaign was on a roll. Of course that greatly displeased supporters  (the Jewish version of our modern-day neo-cons) of the old mean God. They'd had a long run and built up a sure thing with scared people, money changers and all. They were not about to let this Jesus guy get a piece of that action.  (The job of getting rid of this nuisance would eventually be given to Jerusalem-based Paulie Walnutstein and his crew.)

The whole Jesus thing really caught fire though when the twelves-member PR firm of Simon, James, John, Mathew, et al, threw it's weight behind Jesus and began touring with him. In what must go down as history's most successful turning of a lemon into lemonade the twelve men leveraged Jesus' execution into a 2000-year worldwide run of success. Talk about viral marketing! (Eat your hearts out Nike, Microsoft & Apple.)

So there's my version of how we ended up with two Bibles. After 3000 years of slinking around expecting to get their pathetic butts smited at the drop of a hat,. the people were primed for a kinder, gentler, less smite-crazy God. And that was Jesus, at least as the 12 apostle PR men went on to memorialize him in what became The New Testament. Jesus was their client, their only client, and even in death they figured out how to keep their thing going. Which explains how the New Testament came into being, sparking the Energizer Bunny of religions. 

Now Mitt Romney has to explain that third book, the one they claim completes the Biblical set - The Book of Mormon (BOM).  I've read it..or at least tried to read it. How is it? Well let's see. Take any one of the Harry Potter novels, drain any semblance of personality from the characters, remove the plot but leave in the fantasy, magic and imaginary people and places -- and you get a rough idea. (Mark Twain described the BOM as, "Chloroform in print." Actually it's more along the lines of chloroform/LSD in print.)

Which is why I figure Mitt has job cut out for him Thursday.  I suspect he won't go anywhere near the BOM during that little televised chat.  Because he sure as hell doesn't want to try explaining to Mildred and Willard Smith of Dog Flats Iowa just how some American Indians became one of the lost tribes of Israel. (Jewish Indians? Oy Vey!) Or how Mormon founder, Joseph Smith used a magic stone (a "seer stone") to translate long dead (and even never existed) languages in English. Or how living the letter of the law, as outline in the BOM, gets rewarded with your own planet to rule over after you die.

 ("Yo, Houston, we've got a problem -- Deep Space One here. We've discovered a really weird planet ruled by some guy claiming his name is Jack Monroe, formerly of Salt Lake City, Utah. He says he wants to transport a couple of neatly-dressed young men to our ship for a little chat. Please advise Houston.")

No, Mitt will have to steer clear of the details of his Mormon faith. Because if voters knew the kinds things he believes are true they'd never let him within a hundred miles of the Oval Office.

The bottom line is that most (sane & well-adjusted) modern humans have a built-in credulity fuse.  They can only internalize a certain level of metaphysical nonsense before that fuse blows.  

And Mitt Romney's Bible - Vol. No. 3 -- the Book of Mormon -- is a real fuse blower.

 

December 3, 2007

December 3, 2007

Boo Hoo

Deja Vu

Every time I post an article warning that the US economy is about to go bust I get emails from right-wingers telling me I'm an idiot, un-American, a closet-commie, and worse. They point out that everything is fine, never been better and, "just look at the stock market," it's up.

I take such criticism seriously -- even personally. So I hit the history books to see what people of that ilk were saying and doing just before the US stock market cratered in October 1929. (Hint: They were doing and saying exactly the same thing.)

That's when I came across a remarkably well-written detailed history of pre-depression American by historian (and former Harper Magazine Editor,) Fredrick Lewis Allen. It was long and you can – and should – read the whole thing yourself. It's free and it's online. (Here)

When I read it I kept having to check the dates he quoted be sure he was talking about the two-termed Calvin Coolidge administration and not the two-term George W. Bush administration. 

I lifted some of the most startling similarities from Allen's tome and linked them to their 2007 corollaries. Sorry for the length of this, but it was unavoidable -- a LOT shorter than the whole book.

(Portions by Fredrick Lewis Allen in black text. My additions in red text.)

Auto-craze drives economy during 1920s

"In 1919 there had been 6, 771,000 passenger cars in service in the United States; by 1929 there were no less than 23 million There you have possibly the most potent statistic of Coolidge Prosperity.... As early as the end of 1923 there were two cars for every three families in "Middletown," a typical American City...Investigators interviewed 123 working-class families of "Middletown" and found that 60 of them had cars. Of these 60, 26 lived in such shabby-looking houses that the investigators thought to ask whether they had bathtubs, and discovered that as many as 21 of the 26 had none. The automobile came even before the tub!

Today:

There are about 300 million Americans, and if you suppose that everyone over 18 drives, that is 285 million people. Subtract 10% for the blind and disabled and elderly, and just for error correction. There are actually more cars than there are people to drive them, so... There are more than 276 million cars in the US.

and

Study: Auto Loans For American-Made Cars More Likely To Default

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (August 7, 2007) – New research co-authored by a professor at Penn State's Smeal College of Business could change the way banks assign interest rates to auto loans based on the make of the car being financed. (Full)

Radio technology pushes market in 1920s.

"The radio manufacturer occupied a less important seat than the automobile manufacturer on the prosperity bandwagon, but he had the distinction of being the youngest rider. You will remember that there was no such thing as radio broadcasting to the public until the autumn of 1920, but that by the spring of 1922 radio had become a craze-as much talked about as Mah Jong was to be the following year or cross-word puzzles the year after. In 1922 the sales of radio sets, parts, and accessories amounted to $60,000,000. In 1922 radio sales amounted to just $60 million. By early 1929 it had exploded 1400 percent to nearly $850 million.)

Today: Back then it was the nacient tele-communications and automobile industry booms that drove the market up. Over the last decade it was a housing boom.

Large Retailers squeeze out community shops.

“While the independent storekeeper struggled to hold his own, the amount of retail business done in chain stores and department stores jumped by leaps and bounds. For every $100 worth of business done in 1919, by 1927 the five-and-ten-cent chains were doing $260 worth, the cigar chains $153 worth, the drug chains $224 worth, and the grocery chains $387 worth. Mrs. Smith no longer patronized her "neighborhood" store; she climbed into her two-thousand-dollar car to drive to the red-fronted chain grocery and save twenty-seven cents on her daily purchases.”

Today: WalMart, Target and other Big Box stores have been doing the same thing to small merchants.

Utah activists parade against big chain stores

11/18/2007Activists dress up to boost support for locally owned businesses, saying they invest in the community  "The Four Horsemen of the Shopocalypse" - greed, waste, vanity...

Dressed up as a giant green elf, University of Utah student Robbie Rich pushed his shopping cart through the streets of downtown Salt Lake City. (Full)

 The entertainment industry prospered in the 1920s

“The movies prospered, sending their celluloid reels all over the world and making Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow familiar figures to the Eskimo, the Malay, and the heathen Chinese; while at home the attendance at the motion-picture houses of "Middletown" during a single month (December, 1923) amounted to four and a half times the entire population of the city. Men, women, and children, rich and poor, the Middletowners went to the movies at an average rate of better than once a week!”

Today:

JPMorgan To Invest $200 Mln In Entertainment Sector

12/3/2007 -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) confirmed its plans of investing in entertainment sector. The New York-based investment bank said it would invest $200 million of its own capital in the entertainment industry. (Full)

Corporate profits soared in 1920s

"Was this Coolidge Prosperity real? Farmers did not think so. Perhaps the textile manufacturers did not think so. But soaring corporation profits and wages and incomes left little room for doubt. “

Today:

Profits surge to 40-year high

When will corporations spend some of their hoard?

March 30, 2006 -- WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. corporate profits have increased 21.3% in the past year and now account for the largest share of national income in 40 years, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Easy Credit in 1920 fuels the market

“Prosperity was assisted...by two new stimulants to purchasing, each of which mortgaged the future but kept the factories roaring while it was being injected....The first was the increase in the installment buying. People were getting to consider it old-fashioned to limit their purchases to the amount of their cash balance; the thing to do was to "exercise their credit." By the latter part of the decade, economists figured that 15 per cent of all retail sales were on an installment basis, and that there were some six billions of "easy payment" paper outstanding.

Today:

According to CNNMoney, consumer spending accounts for some 70 percent of the US gross domestic product. “So the world economy is leveraged to the US consumer. And the US consumer is leveraged to the hilt,” states the web site.

and

Next Fear: Corporate Debt

Wall Street Journal - Nov. 7, 2007 -- Financial markets have been hit by a wave of defaults on mortgage loans. Now it might be time to start worrying about a more-remote threat: shaky corporate debt. (Full)

Wall Street players prospered in the 1920s

“The other stimulant was stock-market speculation. When stocks were skyrocketing in 1928 and 1929 it is probable that hundreds of thousands of people were buying goods with money which represented, essentially, a gamble on the business profits of the nineteen-thirties. It was fun while it lasted.”

“In every American city and town, service clubs gathered the flower of the middle-class citizenry together for weekly luncheons noisy with good fellowship. They were growing fast, these service clubs. Rotary, the most famous of them, had been founded in 1905; by 1930 it had 150,000 members and boasted of--as a sign of its international influence--as many as 3,000 clubs in 44 countries....these clubs (did not) content themselves with singing songs and conducting social-service campaigns; they expressed the national faith in what one of their founders called "the redemptive and regenerative influence of business." The speakers before them pictured the businessman as a builder, a doer of great things, yes, and a dreamer whose imagination was ever seeking out new ways of serving humanity. ..The service clubs specialized in this sort of mysticism: a speaker of before the Rotarians of Waterloo, Iowa, quoted by the American Mercury declaring that "Rotary is a manifestation of the divine"?

Today:

It's a Wall Street bonus bonanza

 NEW YORK--2006:  — Executives at Wall Street's top financial firms will probably remember this holiday season with particular fondness, as soaring profits cascade down to traders and bankers in the form of multimillion-dollar bonuses...Big Business Lauded in the 1920s, and today.-- All told, this year's bonus pool for Wall Street executives hit $23.9 billion, the New York State Comptroller's office estimates. That's a 17% jump from last year's bonus pool of $20.5 billion, and it works out to an average bonus of $137,580 for every person employed in the financial services industry. (Full)

Business as a manifestation of Godliness

“Indeed, the association of business with religion was one of the most significant phenomena of the day. When the National Association of Credit Men held their annual convention at New York, there were provided for the three thousand delegates a special devotional service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and five sessions of prayer conducted by Protestant clergymen, a Roman Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi; and the credit men were uplifted by a sermon by Dr. S. Parkes Cadman on "Religion in Business."

Today:

(From Small Business Admin. Web site:)

Mission

SBA’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives seeks to empower faith-based and other community organizations to apply for federal social service grants. It supplies information and training, but does not make the actual funding decisions. Those decisions are made through procedures established by each grant program, generally involving a competitive process. There are no grant funding set-asides for faith-based organizations. Instead, the Faith-Based and Community Initiative creates a level playing field for faith-based as well as other community organizations to work with the government to meet the needs of America’s communities.

Mainstream Media in 1920's

“Newspaper owners and editors found that whenever a Dayton trial or a Vestris disaster took place, they sold more papers if they gave it all they had-their star reporters, their front-page display, and the bulk of their space. They took full advantage of this discovery: according to Mr. Bent's compilations, the insignificant Gray-Snyder murder trial got a bigger "play" in the press than the sinking of the Titanic; Lindbergh's flight, than the Armistice and the overthrow of the German Empire. Syndicate managers and writers, advertisers, press agents, radio broadcasters, all were aware that mention of the leading event of the day, whatever it might be, was the key to public interest. The result was that when something happened which promised to appeal to the popular mind, one had it hurled at one in huge headlines, waded through page after page of syndicated discussion of it, heard about it on the radio, was reminded of it again and again in the outpourings of publicity-seeking orators and preachers, saw pictures of it in the Sunday papers and in the movies, and (unless one was a perverse individualist) enjoyed the sensation of vibrating to the same chord which thrilled a vast populace.

"The country had bread, but it wanted circuses-and now it could go to them a hundred million strong....For the system of easy nation-wide communication which had long since made the literate and prosperous American people a nation of faddists was rapidly becoming more widely extended, more centralized, and more effective than ever before.

Today: Police car chases preempt regular programming. Britney, Paris... et al, Like, duh.

And that brings us to where they were then and where we are today.

Market uncertainy grows

“One Day in February, 1928, an investor asked an astute banker about the wisdom of buying common stocks. The banker shook his head. "Stocks look dangerously high to me," he said. "This bull market has been going on for a long time, and although prices have slipped a bit recently, they might easily slip a good deal more. Business is none too good. Of course if you buy the right stock you'll probably be all right in the long run and you may even make a profit. But if I were you I'd wait awhile and see what happens."

The Federal Reserve steps in

“The speculative fever had been intensified by the action of the Federal Reserve System in lowering the discount rate from 4 per cent to 3'/2 per cent in August, 1927, and purchasing Government securities in the open market. This action had been taken from the most laudable motives: several of the European nations were having difficulty in stabilizing their currencies, European exchanges were weak, and it seemed to the Reserve authorities that the easing of American money rates might prevent the further accumulation of gold in the United States and thus aid in the recovery of Europe and benefit foreign trade.”

Today:

Is the dollar leading us into a depression?

A fallen greenback could mean economic turmoil, or it could trigger an economic crisis. Economists are having trouble predicting the outcome because investors are not behaving rationally (Taipei Times)

U.S. Fed Reserve Could Slash 25 Points More In Discount Rate Before Dec 11 Meeting:

The Feds has already cut the funds rate two times in the last three months, brining the short-term interest rates to 4.50 percent...This time, the Feds are likely to reduce its discount rate by 25 basis points down to 4.75 percent. (Full)

Denial from above

"American business was beginning to lose headway; the lowering of money rates might stimulate it. But the lowering of money rates also stimulated the stock market. The bull party in Wall Street had been still further encouraged by the remarkable solicitude of President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon, who whenever confidence showed signs of waning came out with opportunely reassuring statements which at once sent prices upward again. In January 1928, the President had actually taken the altogether unprecedented step of publicly stating that he did not consider (stock) brokers' loans too high, thus apparently giving White House sponsorship to the very inflation which was worrying the sober minds of the financial community.

Today:

U.S. Treasury's Paulson says economy healthy

Nov 16, 2007 -- (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Friday Washington was following a strong dollar policy and indicated he expected it to rebound, emphasizing the U.S. economy's long-term strength should help the currency. (Full)

Sucker rallies of 1929

"While stock prices had been climbing, business activity had been undeniably subsiding. The tone of the business analysts and forecasters-a fraternity whose numbers had hugely increased in recent years and whose lightest words carried weight-was anything but exuberant. The National City Bank looked for gradual improvement in business and the Standard Statistics Company suggested that a turn for the better had already arrived; but the latter agency also sagely predicted that the course of stocks during the coming months would depend "almost entirely upon the money situation." The financial editor of the New York Times described the picture of current conditions presented by the mercantile agencies as one of "hesitation." The newspaper advertisements of investment services testified to the uncomfortable temper of Wall Street with headlines like "Will You `Overstay' This Bull Market?" and "Is the Process of Deflation Under Way?" The air was fogged with uncertainty.

Today:

Bernanke and the Last Legs of the Stock Market Sucker's Rally

Nouriel Roubini | Nov 29, 2007: How sharply will the US stock market fall if the US experiences a  recession? Given the recent flow of very negative macro news, the likelihood of a US hard landing has sharply increased; thus, it is important to assess the implication of such growth slowdown, hard landing or outright recession on the stock market...It is true that in the last two days the US stock market has recovered sharply after a significant 10% downward correction in the period from early October until Monday. But the most sensible interpretation of the upward move on Tuesday and Wednesday this week (in spite of an onslaught of lousy macro news: consumer confidence, existing home sales, Beige Book, fall in durable goods orders, regional Fed manufacturing reports, initial claims for unemployment benefits, expectations that Q4 growth will be closer to 0% after the revised 4.9% in Q3, sharply rising credit losses, falling home prices and a worsening housing recession, etc.) is that this is the last leg of a sucker's rally (or dead cat's bounce) driven by wishful hopes that the Fed easing will prevent a recession. (Full)

Whistling past the graveyard in Fall of 1929

"Anybody who had chosen this moment to predict that the bull market was on the verge of a wild advance which would make all that had gone before seem trifling would have been quite mad-or else inspired with a genius for mass psychology. The banker who advised caution was quite right about financial conditions, and so were the forecasters. But they had not taken account of the boundless commercial romanticism of the American people, inflamed by year after plentiful year of Coolidge Prosperity. For on March 3, 1928-the very day when the Harvard prophets were talking about intermediate declines and the Times was talking about hesitation--the stock market entered upon its sensational phase.

(In the weeks that followed the stock market actually rose.) "What on earth was happening? Wasn't business bad, and credit inflated, and the stock-price level dangerously high? Was the market going crazy? Suppose all these madmen who insisted on buying stocks at advancing prices tried to sell at the same moment! Canny investors, reading of the wild advance in Radio, felt much as did the forecasters of Moody's Investors Service a few days later: the practical question, they said, was "how long the opportunity to sell at the top will remain."

Today: Pump it and dump it.

Insider/Government market-fixers

“What was actually happening was that a group of powerful speculators with fortunes made in the automobile business and in the grain markets and in the earlier days of the bull market in stocks-men like W. C. Durant and Arthur Cutten and the Fisher Brothers and John J. Raskobwere buying in unparalleled volume.... The big bull operators knew, too, that thousands of speculators had been selling stocks short in the expectation of a collapse in the market, would continue to sell short, and could be forced to repurchase if prices were driven relentlessly up. And finally, they knew their American public. It could not resist the appeal of a surging market. It had an altogether normal desire to get rich quick, and it was ready to believe anything about the golden future of American business. If stocks started upward the public would buy, no matter what the forecasters said, no matter how obscure was the business prospect. They were right. The public bought.

Today:

Stock Market Manipulation!

"When God throws ... The dice are loaded!"
Greek Proverb

I have been around the markets for more time that I do care to remember and I have seen some really "incredible games" played by market makers, brokers, traders and many other individuals and or various groups! http://www.greekshares.com/manipulat.php

On June 12th 1928 a new decline began.  The ticker slipped almost two hours behind in recording prices on the floor....But had the bull market collapsed? On June 13th it appeared to have regained its balance. On June 14th, the day of Hoover's nomination, it extended its recovery. The promised reckoning had been only partial. Prices still stood well above their February levels. A few thousand traders had been shaken out, a few big fortunes had been lost, a great many pretty paper profits had vanished; but the Big Bull Market was still young. (Full)

Volume  and Volatility

"During that "Hoover bull market" of November, 1928, the records made earlier in the year were smashed. Had brokers once spoken with awe of the possibility of five-million-share days? By the summer of 1929, prices had soared far above the stormy levels of the preceding winter into the blue and cloudless empyrean. All the old markers by which the price of a promising common stock could be measured had long since been passed; if a stock once valued at 100 went to 300, what on earth was to prevent it from sailing on to 400? And why not ride with it for 50 or 100 points, with Easy Street at the end of the journey?”

Today:

Just two months ago the DOW Industrial average passed the 14,300 mark.. a new record high.

Rationalizations

"By every rule of logic the situation had now become more perilous than ever. If inflation had been serious in 1927, it was far more serious in 1929, as the total of brokers' loans climbed toward six billion (it had been only three and a half billion at the end of 1927). If the price level had been extravagant in 1927 it was preposterous now; and in economics, as in physics, there is no gainsaying the ancient principle that the higher they go, the harder they fall. But the speculative memory is short. As people in the summer of 1929 looked back for precedents, they were comforted by the recollection that every crash of the past few years had been followed by a recovery, and that every recovery had ultimately brought prices to a new high point. Two steps up, one step down, two steps up again-that was how the market went. If you sold, you had only to wait for the next crash (they came every few months back then) and buy in again. And there was really no reason to sell at all: you were bound to win in the end if your stock was sound. The really wise man, it appeared, was he who "bought and held on."

Today:

No Sign of `Sell' on Wall Street as Analysts Say: `Buy,' `Hold'

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Anybody who followed the advice of Wall Street's top-ranked analysts, none of whom would say ``sell'' for a single company in the securities industry this year, is reckoning with subprime-like losses...Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Guy Moszkowski, UBS AG's Glenn Schorr and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.'s Brad Hintz maintained either buy or hold recommendations on Bear Stearns Cos. as it fell 39 percent in 2007, the most since the firm went public in 1985. Moszkowski and Hintz had buy ratings on Morgan Stanley while the stock shed 22 percent in New York trading. Moszkowski and Schorr advised holding on to Citigroup Inc. as it dropped 40 percent. (Full)

Warnings met by happy talk

"Time and again the economists and forecasters had cried, "Wolf, wolf," and the wolf had made only the most fleeting of visits. Time and again the Reserve Board had expressed fear of inflation, and inflation had failed to bring hard times. Business in danger? Why, nonsense!...On every side one heard the new wisdom sagely expressed: "Prosperity due for a decline? Why, man, we've scarcely started!" "Be a bull on America." "Never sell the United States short." "I tell you, some of these prices will look ridiculously low in another year or two." "Just watch that stock-it's going to five hundred." "The possibilities of that company are unlimited." "Never give up your position in a good stock."

Today:

US News: Nov. 3, 2007 --About the only people who still see the glass half full are Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve Board. They propped the market up on Halloween with a treat of a quarter-point drop in the overnight bank lending rate to 4.5 percent and also pumped in $41 billion to help steady the credit markets. The Fed explained the rate cut in a statement that said the following in a nutshell: "Credit markets stable. Economy and inflation stable. We're done. Mission accomplished." But the happy talk was interrupted by panic on Wall Street, as traders digested news of more trouble at the world's big banks resulting from the ongoing credit crisis.  (Full)

1929 "patriots" encouraged to shop

“Meanwhile, one heard, the future of American industry was to be assured by the application of a distinctly modern principle. Increased consumption, as Waddill Catchings and William T. Foster had pointed out, was the road to plenty. If we all would only spend more and more freely, the smoke would belch from every factory chimney, and dividends would mount.”

Today:

"The unemployment rate has remained low, at 4.5 percent. A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country -- and I encourage you all to go shopping more." George W. Bush -- December 2006

Milking consumers

“Gradually the huge pyramid of capital rose. While super-salesmen of automobiles and radios and a hundred other gadgets were loading the ultimate consumer with new and shining wares, super-salesmen of securities were selling him shares of investment trusts which held stock in holding companies owned the stock of banks which had affiliates which in turn controlled holding companies--and so on ad infinitum. Though the shelves of manufacturing companies and jobbers and retailers were not overloaded, the shelves of the ultimate consumer and the shelves of the distributors of securities were groaning. Trouble was brewing-not the same sort of trouble which had visited the country in 1921, but trouble none the less. Still, however, the cloud in the summer sky looked no bigger than a man's hand.

Today:

Are you a patriot? Are you pulling your weight? Got your iPod, your X-Box, your Hummer, your iPhone? Why not? Why do you hate America?

Obscuring the “oh shit,”moment

“Early in September 1929 the stock market broke. It quickly recovered however, indeed, on September 19th the averages as compiled by the New York Times reached an even higher level than that of September 3rd. Once more it slipped, farther and faster, until by October 4th the prices of a good many stocks had coasted to what seemed first-class bargain levels.... there was little real alarm until the week of October 21st. The consensus of opinion, in the meantime, was merely that the equinoctial storm of September had not quite blown over. The market was readjusting itself into a "more secure technical position."

Today:

Stocks Rally Sharply; What Bad News?

Barrons Dec. 3, 2007 -- AMNESIA HAS LONG BEEN A convenient plot device in daytime soap operas, but lately it's also showing up in stock-market dramas...We recount the saga of the market's epic run at a pivotal point: The Dow Jones Industrial Average had just careened to its first 10% correction of this bull market, and the U.S. economy was fighting the unknowable spread of mortgage-related cancer at its core when through the door burst the beloved Dr. Bernanke...So smooth was the good doctor (such soothing words! that authoritative beard!), and so effective his promise of relief (a likely interest-rate cut!) Full

"In view of what was about to happen, it is enlightening to recall how things looked at this juncture to the financial prophets, those gentlemen whose wizardly reputations were based upon their supposed ability to examine a set of graphs brought to them by a statistician and discover, from the relation of curve to curve and index to index, whether things were going to get better or worse...Professor Irving Fisher, however, was more optimistic. In the newspapers of October 17, 1929  he was reported as telling the Purchasing Agents Association that stock prices had reached "what looks like a permanently high plateau." He expected to see the stock market, within a few months, "a good deal higher than it is today."

"The disaster which was impending was destined to be as bewildering and frightening to the rich and the powerful and the customarily sagacious as to the foolish and unwary holder of fifty shares of margin stock. On October 29, 1929 the market crashed.

"Prosperity is more than an economic condition; it is a state of mind. The Big Bull Market had been more than the climax of a business cycle; it had been the climax of a cycle in American mass thinking and mass emotion. There was hardly a man or woman in the country whose attitude toward life had not been affected by it in some degree and was not now affected by the sudden and brutal shattering of hope.

"With the Big Bull Market zone and prosperity going, Americans were soon to find themselves living in an altered world which called for new adjustments. new ideas, new habits of thought, and a new order of values. The psychological climate was changing; the ever-shifting currents of American life were turning into new channels.

My parents, now in the 80's, remember making those "adjustments," and were both painful and ugly. Eventually an unlikely savior -- a member of the very monied class that had pumped and dumped the entire American economy -- appeared on the scene and put America's engine back on the tracks. Franklin Roosevelt may have lived a privileged life but he understood the key ingredient that keeps any free market economy perking right along -- a vibrant working middle class. And that's where he began his rescue efforts with the WPA.

Roosevelt understood something that any good stone fence builder knows instinctually -- that when building a loose stone fence or wall the big rocks are impressive, but it's the little rocks that hold them in place.