The G-20 plans; God laughs

The G-20 plans; God laughs. Let's face it folks, the previous ruler of the world (er, that's the US) is mired in the financial sector (20% of GDP, 40% of corporate profits). Paper flipping is what our best and brightest do--from Harvard to Wall Street they make the easy buck--powered by greed,fraud and the promise of vast riches. Our 1% of the population does very well, thank you;the rest languish and we only await the rising star in the East--China, a command economy, manufacturing rich is the the new world ruler. Hasta la Vista, Wall Street!

What's good for Goldman-Sachs is not good for America.

Want to save America fast? Repeat 100x: What's good for Goldman Sachs is not good for America.
The Citibank oil speculator who is getting a 100 million dollar bonus is not good for America.
The people who live large on Wall Street and make their money flipping papers are not good for America.
The money that bankers give to buy politicians is not good for America.
Obama's largest single contributor to his last campaign was Goldman Sachs. Not good for America.
The financial sector rules this land of ours. They are 20+% of GDP; over 40% of corporate profits. Our government backs them up when they fail--this allows them to gamble recklessly. This is not a sensible or even a sustainable policy.

Out of AF/Pak

The majority of Americans may well be for getting out of Afghanistan but as long as there are oil and gas routes in that bombed out place, we'll be there.

Who made this mess? Not you and I gentle reader. Energy companies, the Pentagon , Wall Street, Big Media--these, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are stuck in the AF/PAK rut and don't mind bringing the rest of us down with them.

Raises the question, doesn't it: Is what's good for Enron, good for America ?

Health Care reform scuttled

Hillary, Obama, Baucus, Joe the Heckler--are not the issue or the problem. The health care industry is the problem--they like their business model fine-- insure who they want--the healthy--and deny coverage to all others. They also pay top-dollar to make sure our politicians see things their way. Can the media be far behind?

The Obama "health reform" will deliver 30-50 million uninsured to the private health care industry. The government will subsidize these folks. The money to pay for all this will come out of the hide of Medicare patients--their services and payments will be reduced.

Result--insurers rake in more billions and the government foots the bill. Big, socialized government is OK as long as it takes from the poor and gives to rich.

Dominoes--Obama says, Kill them in Afghanistan or they'll come here and kill us.

Whenever I hear the word dominoes I look out my door to see if there are a bunch of Vietnamese set to come crashing through. I've be looking now for 50 years and haven't yet seen a Vietnamese invader.

(Ditto Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Cuba, ...)

Obama is a dominoes guy along with being a health-care industry guy, a rendition guy, a bail out Wall Street guy... These are not good ideas.

What a mess, neither of our political parties are up up any good. Time to move on!

Writing, teaching writing and reading

Do we need writing or even writers? Me, I think scribblers are going down the tubes. Students have always written atrociously--check years of bad writing scores on the NAEP.

If you must write, try the 5-paragraph all-American essay--the favorite of many high school English teachers. I liken it to a cheeseburger:

#1. Introduce what you are going to say. Example: The Boston Red Sox will never win a world series and list 3 sentences telling why: curse of the Babe, cheap management, inept players. (Akin to top bun of cheeseburger)

#2 Curse of the Babe paragraph—3-4 sentences what this means and so on. (The tomato part)

#3 Cheap management--spell this out in 3-4 sentences--the cheese part)

#4 Inept players--the ball-droppers, steroid-batters, sore-arm pitchers. 3-4 well honed sentences--the meat of the burger.

#5 Rehash, conclusion, summary and review- 5 sentences. "So, as you can see the Red Sox are a bunch of losers because of ....” The bottom bun of the burger.

There you have it! A winning essay, one that can be used in college and on the job. Keep the Red Sox as a topic or move on to the Chicago Cubs.