I am not what one would consider an educated man. I think I have picked up a fair amount of wisdom during my short stint on this planet, but I do acknowledge that I don't have the "paper" to lay claim to a well-rounded education. That being said, I hereby declare, without reservation, that most of the bad news we are hearing on the nightly news, especially concerning the economy, is due to nothing more that utter STUPIDITY. "Educated" stupidity, but stupidity nonetheless.

Now, really, all the double-talk aside, can you really tell me that a barrel of oil is REALLY worth more than four times what it was a little over a year ago? You mean it really got THAT expensive, relatively suddenly, to pull this stuff out of the ground and bring to the gas pump, the electric utility, and all these other destinations this product is destined for? BULLSHIT! You assholes are ramping up the ransom for this stuff simply because you discovered you CAN, without any consequence other than having to listen to the outrage at your avarice. The worlds governments have an interest in this rape of the wallet of the common man, thus it continues, and will continue to do so, until one day you start seeing the bodies of wall street executives hanging from street lamps.

The mortgage meltdown; now, if ever there was a manufactured disaster, that was one. You would think a government would recognize a train wreck in the making, or if nothing else, would know an outlandish predation was happening in the real estate market, but did the regulators step in and put a stop to what was FUCKING OBVIOUSLY an economic FUBAR if ever there was one? Look who's in the White House......of course not.

A house was built (most probably with the aid of illegal alien labor) at a cost of, say, $80,000. Lets tack on some profit here, say about $50,000. Fine, now sell the house to someone and let it sit there for about a year. Guess what, real estate is a gold mine, and that house, for some reason known only to some secret society which controls these values, is now "worth" $250,000! Really, and that's USED! OK, so now we are sitting on something we don't really own (the bank owns it, you idiots) that's worth alot more than we mortgaged it for, so let's run out to some lender and get a loan based on this magic equity the market claims we have. Yea, let's barrow tons and tons of money and spend it like crazy on things our income could never HOPE to be able to afford, such as big-ass Expeditions and Caribbean vacations and backyard pools, and on and on and on. I mean, after all, this is capitalism, which requires consumption; the more the merrier, and being good, all American, God fearing capitalists that we are, aren't we obligated to keep the economy running at Mach five? Screw the unlucky poor, the ecology, the very planet itself; Jesus is coming back to tear it all up and rearrange things anyway!

Now we want to turn corn into ethanol to make some kind of symbolic dent in our dependency on foreign oil, and suddenly a commodity the poor farmers couldn't GIVE away is costing more and more every day, and guess what? Damn near EVERYTHING we eat has a corn-based ingredient in it and now the price of groceries is going through the roof! And, that's on top of the ever increasing price of hauling all that food around the country so that we- who- do- not- grow-anything- ourselves- anymore can get to it.

Did ANY of this have to happen?

OF COURSE NOT!

There are educated "captains of industry", talented (according to their pay scale) CEO's all over the country, as well as Congressmen and Senators who are (here we go) "educated" in the way things work who CERTAINLY could have managed all these "problems" so that they never became "problems" to begin with. They didn't. Surprised? I sure as hell am not!

Most of us are just sitting here helplessly, thinking there is nothing we can do to keep ourselves from getting bent over and screwed like willing masochists. And to perpetuate this sorry state of affairs, we are all going to go to the poles and vote for the best-looking, fastest-talking politician who can promise us the same old song and dance as they always have, because they know we as a people no longer have the guts to pick someone who knows how to solve these problems, just because solving problems like this simply means holding people responsible for hurting us. All of these assholes running this show are HURTING us, because they don't give a shit about us or anybody except themselves and we LET THEM.

So laugh all you want when Ralph Nader says he wants to be president. Get angry at him for "stealing votes" from another democrat. Then go vote for more promises. That's all you are going to get, and that's all you deserve.



P.S. To my readers; if this shoe doesn't fit you, then don't wear it. It is obvious I am not talking to you. However, if it does, you can either consider what I just said or you can get all pissed off about it. If what I just said DOES piss you off at ME for having said it, then I have one more thing to say to you.

I don't care.