I Got the Blues

It might be because it's Monday. Maybe it's because the Bears lost on Sunday. It may even be due to continuing awareness of my own mortality. Whatever the reason . . . I'm down. I am overwhelmed with pessimism. Well it is the Doom and Gloom report and not the "Happy Days are Here Again" chronicles. It appears to me that we are headed for another great depression that may well be worse than the first one. Here's my reasoning: in the 1930's we were the largest manufacturer of goods in the world. Today we are the largest consumer with the greatest amount of debt in the world. China is now the greatest manufacturer and hold the notes on most of our debt.

NEW YORK -- The American financial system was shaken to its core on Sunday. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection, and Merrill Lynch & Co. agreed to be sold to Bank of America Corp.

Stocks Plunge amid Wall Street Turmoil
A stunning chain of events, including Lehman Brothers' announcement of a bankruptcy filing and BofA's deal to acquire Merrill Lynch, sparked a global sell-off Monday

Just last week Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are bailed out by the tax payers:

James Hagerty, Ruth Simon and Damian Paletta examine the takeover and how it enables the Treasury to acquire $1 billion of preferred shares in each company and has pledged to provide as much as $200 billion to help the two companies deal with heavy losses on their mortgage defaults. All of this action could mean a greater burden placed on American taxpayers.

Before that was the Bear Stearns failure:

The nation's weak housing sector sent another shudder through Wall Street, with insurers and lenders taking further hits and Bear Stearns Cos. shutting off withdrawals from a mortgage-investment fund.

These are economical reasons for my purple funk. The following are some political reasons:

I'm beginning to think that the fix is in. Those who came to power and saw fit to staff government agencies and departments with unqualified party loyalists, those who have deregulated and removed any governmental over sight from our largest corporations. Those same power brokers aren't going to risk their gains to chance, or some far fetched ideology called Democracy. For example: Are you aware that over one million voter registrations have been sent out by the McCain campaign to Democratic districts in the "purple" states? (that if ignored by the voter will be used to contest their vote in November. Making them in effect a provisional ballot. Counted only at the discretion of the local election authorities. )

The proliferation of the Diebold electronic voting machines, that are now in 80% of the polling places.
In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering.
(Remember how the machine totals were in direct contradiction to the exit polls and earlier phone polls.) Sept. 10, 7:40 am: USA - Diebold/Premier says too late to fix new voting machine time-out feature - 2-min. delay kicks voters to provisional ballots. Says 1,700 locations, 34 states affected.
Sept. 11, 7:52 am: WASHINGTON DC - Votes double-counted on Sequoia optical scan machine in DC. Alert writers for the Washington City Paper extracted more information from officials. See articles Here & Here - Then Wash. Post picked it up Here. Note that Sequoia optical scan system double-counted votes in Florida; you can read more about that Here. Black Box Voting is on it, working Freedom of Information documents. I'm still going to cast my vote but, it is so very disheartening when it is conceivable and highly likely that those in power don't want to give it up just because the American voter might want them to. The cynic in me says, their not going to leave it up to chance. In the event that Obama receives enough electoral votes to be named President, you can count on all these pre-emptive measures to come into play. If you thought the 2000 election was a cluster fuck . . .you just wait. If the Repubs lose this one, (Oh if only. ) they will contest every vote coming from a Democratic precinct. Both sides already have hundreds of lawyers on retainer for the after party. There will be protests, law suits, cease and desist orders, recounts, and court rulings that stop the recounts etc etc. I would say that it will end up with the Supreme court appointing a president like they did W but, maybe not because when they did that in 2000, they wrote what was in effect a "signing statement". The addendum specifically states that this is a one time decision. It was never to be used as a precedent. Something like Dean Werner's "double secret probation".

I'm going to try something in order to make myself feel better. For those of you who read my blogs you are familiar with my prognosticating abilities. I'm not very good. Whether it's predicting the winner of football games, a pre-emptive strike on Iran, or even the naming of the Republican VP in the 2008 election (Mitt Romney, what was I thinking?) So as my own attempt at a pre-emptive political maneuver I am going to predict that John McCain will be the next President of the United States. Contingent of course the prospect that we actually will get to hold elections. Remember I also predicted some state of emergency that would have W declare Martial law. Well?! Like I've said before . . . I ain't Nostradamus!


You can read more about the voting machines at these sites:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked/printh
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

DaG out