A Sonnet for Paulson

I thought I'd branch out from haiku and attempt a more challenging format: the sonnet. Of course, it will not be the best example of a sonnet. For that you have to go read Shakespeare. But I did follow the required abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyming theme and the 14 line requirement.

I was watching Rachel Maddow and she pointed out that the amount of money the Fed has already committed to the bailouts of the various financial giants in this crisis is greater than the money spent on the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the race to the Moon, the Savings & Loan Crisis, the Korean War, the entire New Deal, the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War, and NASA's entire budget to date - COMBINED. Oh, and yes - that is in inflation-adjusted dollars.

In the meantime, the CEOs of Detroit's carmakers came to Congress asking for a mere pittance in comparison to the rest of this. Admittedly, the car companies have been shortsighted in their planning and were caught in a bind when the gas prices suddenly skyrocketed. But they are not alone when it comes to blame. The government aided and abetted their dependence on trucks and SUVs through their favorable regulatory policies; and consumers bought them. So why don't the Detroit automakers, who employ so many hardworking Americans, who actually MAKE things (unlike the financial wizards who got into such a big mess) get a bailout from Washington?

I'll address this with my sonnet:

When in a panic Citigroup came calling
The Feds ponied up and gave them some cash
When the stock market kept on a-falling
Paulson decreed, "We must do something rash!"
But when it’s the car companies
Who are in dire straits,
Paulson's not in the mood to please;
Instead of doling out the dough, he waits...and waits.
Surely even he doesn’t believe
That the car companies are full of shirkers.
Could it be that it’s his pet peeve
That Detroit cars are built by union workers?
To white collar workers he gives much esteem
While blue collar workers lose the American Dream.

-508 Points...Need I say more?

What a mess. Even states, such as California, are looking for bailouts. And it's not just over here. Whole countries are going bankrupt.

I really am wondering where it will end. If McCain comes out tonight and tries to talk about Obama's ties to Bill Ayers when the world is crumbling around him, I think it will backfire and the people at that town hall will not let him get away with it.

Turning the page? I don't think so...

This week McCain's adviser, Greg Strimple, publicly announced that the McCain campaign would try to distract the voters from the financial crisis by attacking Obama. In his own words:

"'We are very well-funded, and we are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,'' said senior adviser Greg Strimple. 'We're looking to turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's liberal, aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for the Americans.'"

Sticking to this script, Sarah Palin has been trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers, a former member of the radical Weather Underground group, which carried out a series of bombings during the early 1970s. From the same article linked above Palin has been saying:

"Obama 'is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,' Palin, 44, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told donors at a fundraiser last night in Costa Mesa, California. 'This, ladies and gentleman, is not the kind of change that I think we should be believing in.'"

Palin and her backers are ignoring the fact that the man in question is now a respected professor, the bombings took place 40 years ago when Obama was only 8 years old, and Palin herself was hardly out of diapers at the time.

In the meantime, Obama has finally come out with ads pointing out that McCain was one of the "Keating Five" from the 1980s, a much more recent and pertinent connection to the current crisis facing our nation. Although McCain was ultimately cleared of illegal actions in the scandal, he was reprimanded for "poor judgment."

If McCain wants to try to "turn the page" away from our economic crisis and attack Obama to keep the American public's mind off the mess he helped get us in, it isn't a wise strategy. How many other skeletons does a 72-year-old man have in his closet compared to a 47-year-old man? I'd wager a lot more. Two can play this game.

In the meantime, Wall Street is continuing to tank, with stocks down nearly 500 points to below 10,000this morning after the markets in Europe went into free-fall overnight. This isn't the kind of financial problem you can just wave $700 billion at and it will make it go away. This is a serious, long-term financial debacle and it will take more than Congress passing a bailout package to fix it.

McCain will try to turn the page, but I think the American public won't let him do it, as long as their 401ks are going down the tubes and their mortgage payments are in arrears and there is so little confidence in the entire banking system. They'll just keep going back to the first chapter and seeing that the hero of this story is not going to be John "Keating Five" McCain. There is a reason Obama's poll numbers keep going up no matter how many attacks McCain and his henchwoman make on Obama.

As President Dubya famously said, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...you can't get fooled again."

Fiddling While Rome Burns

While McCain whines that Obama was referring to Palin when he used the phrase "lipstick on a pig," and the federal government refuses to step in, Lehman Brothers is going down the tubes, possibly pulling AIG with it, while Merrill Lynch will apparently be acquired by Bank of America.

According to Bloomberg.com,

"Reports this month point to a heightened risk of a recession. Unemployment rose to a five-year high of 6.1 percent last month, and retail sales fell 0.7 percent, excluding autos, the biggest decline this year....

'Financial conditions are extremely fragile,' said former Fed governor Lyle Gramley, now a senior economic adviser for the Stanford Group Company in Washington. 'With the Lehman situation deteriorating, this tends to have knock-on effects.'

In a sign that creditors don't expect Paulson to blink, the cost to protect against defaults by AIG, Merrill, WaMu and Wachovia Corp. reached records. Credit-default swaps on Seattle- based WaMu are trading at levels that imply a 75 percent chance the company will default in the next five years, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. valuation model shows."

This may only be the beginning. According to the New York Times, there is concern that the wave of failures will inspire certain fund managers to look for other weakened financial institutions and try to make a fortune by selling them short.

So where do we go from here? Is this the start of a new Depression, or will the wizards of Wall Street manage to stop the dominoes from falling? Only time will tell. But I do know it is a sign that something is very seriously wrong with our economy, and despite all of these important issues, the only thing the media can talk about is the "lipstick on a pig" controversy.

I am starting to lose hope for this country. The latest polls show that McCain continues to gain on Obama and now the electoral vote is no longer in Obama's favor.

If the American public doesn't wake up and start realizing that the McCain campaign is playing them for fools - just as George W. Bush has done for 8 years - we may get McCain and Palin in the White House. And here we thought maybe, this time, they wouldn't be so stupid.

But as H.L. Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

He also said:

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

Unfortunately, Mencken was apparently a very wise man.

Market Woes

According to the New York Times, the Stock Market has plunged 300 points this afternoon, "triggered by weak earnings from oil giant Exxon Mobil and concern that Citigroup’s woes may not be over."

The article goes on to say that the worst may be yet to come:

"Investors may also be unnerved by a disappointing batch of economic data released today. Consumer spending began to slow in September, growing 0.3 percent after a 0.5 percent gain in August. Analysts are predicting a weak fourth quarter, and the Commerce Department report may have confirmed fears of a sharp slowdown in spending as energy costs rise and the housing recession continues to worsen.

Meanwhile, manufacturing activity in October recorded its worst month since March, with American companies hurt by a decline in production coupled with a rise in costs. A closely watched manufacturing index dropped to 50.9 from 52 in September..."

This cheery news does nothing to cement my hope of retiring early. And it just goes to show that Bush's policies have not been beneficial to our economy; on the contrary.

So with that, here is my Haiku of the Day:

Stock market falling
Consumer spending slowing
Retirement's a dream.

Bits and Pieces

At this rate, that's all that will be left of my dog...

After Diva had her little bump taken off right before I went to Australia and it turned out to be a mast cell tumor, we were really relieved to know it had been taken off so early and was a low grade type, meaning it was not aggressive.

Well, wouldn't you know the week after we returned, we found another bump on her - this time on her "arm." (Is that what you would call a dog's front leg?)

And, we found a little thing on her tummy too. So it was off to the vet again on Friday. Our regular vet said both bumps had to be taken off, so we made arrangements for the same surgeon to do the surgery as before. So today Diva had two more chunks of her skin taken off and is doing fine, but is spending the night at the vet's. Now comes the waiting to find out what the biopsies show.

Since the place she has the surgeries done, The Animal Emergency and Referral Associates, also has an excellent oncologist on staff, we made an appointment with her for a week from Monday to consult with her and find out whether she recommends further treatment to prevent a recurrence. We aren't taking any chances with our girl.

Of course, Baxter is thrilled with the situation. He loves it when the Evil Dog is not here to annoy him. He is happily curled up on the bed in between DH and me, in the spot usually occupied by Diva, purring loudly.

Moving on...

to a totally different subject. While watching a clip of Al Gore testifying before Congress about global warming, I was struck by something that could not be ignored...Al Gore has REALLY porked up! What has happened to the man? I hardly recognized him! Seems as if he's been doing a little too much speaking on the rubber chicken circuit and eating out too much or something! (photo courtesy of CNN). (Not that I should talk, but I couldn't help but notice.)










On yet another subject, spring has finally returned to New Jersey. Today much of the snow on the lawn of the Big Corporation melted and the robins must be ecstatically happy, much more than the other day when I saw about 30 of them huddling together on one lone strip of grass surrounded by snow, trying to find worms.

Tonight DH and I spent the evening at my mother's eating Indian food. My mother has always enjoyed a good curry, and we often take her out to a local Indian restaurant for Indian cuisine. But recently, wonder of wonders, a new Whole Foods opened in West Orange that actually has a whole section of hot, ready to take out, Indian food (as well as Italian and other ethnic specialities).

For those unfamiliar with it, Whole Foods is an all-natural, organic grocery store that caters to gourmets and those with deep pockets. It used to be a lot more true to its "crunchy granola" roots but more recently has expanded into being a top notch gourmet grocery store as well as providing politically correct, grass-fed, organically grown, recyclable packaged produce and other viandes to the local purists. This new store is truly over the top - it has a gourmet organic chocolatier, the aforementioned hot food area, and tonight I even saw they have added politically correct clothing! Organically grown cotton pajamas of some kind; flannel shirts made from hemp and costing $64.

But I digress. I must tell you about my frugality. I'm so proud. I actually returned something because I thought it was too expensive. Let me explain.

I was wending my way up and down the aisles, as is my wont in Whole Foods (looking at stuff is part of the experience). As I went down the juice aisle, I happened upon a section that included juices - all kinds of exotic types. I spied a bottle of Mangosteen juice and was intrigued. I'd read about mangosteens in the NY Times in this article, and had read elsewhere how healthy they are supposed to be, high in antioxidants and all that. So I grabbed the bottle and stuck it in my cart.

After paying for the bounty I had loaded up on, I thought the bill seemed a little high so I glanced at the receipt - and lo and behold, my mangosteen juice was $18.99. $18.99!!! For a small bottle of juice! And it was juice I hadn't even ever tried before. What if I hated it?

Now, I tend to be extravagant, even profligate. But even for me, $18.99 was crossing the line. Maybe it was thinking about that $2000 bill for Diva that was going to be on my credit card this month that did it.

I marched over to the Courtesy Desk and asked them to take it back and refund the amount to my credit card.

As I walked away I heard the girl at the Courtesy Desk say to her associate, "Guess how much this juice is?" "I don't know, $10.99?" "No, $18.99!" "You're kidding!"

If even the Whole Foods employees are shocked by the price, it must be bad!