Somewhere in a cave...

.... in the mountains of Afghanistan there's a tall, bearded man smiling at the destruction he has wrought.

Watching MSNBC yesterday morning, sick as dog from a head cold and stomach virus, I listened as Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Christopher Cox, and Jim Lockhart squirmed to explain to the Senate Banking Committee why the credit markets need a $700 billion dollar blank check, courtesy of the American taxpayer. I could not help but imagine the bogey-man of our worst nightmares point at his huge flat-screen television and laugh to his cohorts, "Dude, look what we did!"

I know I'm being a bit too simplistic about the Bin Laden connection. What's happening now to our financial markets has it roots in events and circumstances that go back much further than the moment America became aware of Osama Bin Laden. As I was researching information for this post, I came across this article that appeared in The Washington Post back in June:

Anatomy of a Meltdown: The Credit Crisis

Do you think Messers. P., B., C., and L. read the story? How about Bin Laden?

I can't help but wonder: Is he smiling? I'll bet a king's ransom he is. As our country hemorrhages money out every orifice like some poor soul suffering from E-bola, he is smiling because he probably pushed the first domino that set us on this ruinous path.

The cost of fighting terrorism now stands at $581 billion and counting:

###
Iraq War Cost


But that doesn't count. That's the cost of taking the fight over there, so that Americans can be safe here.

Ha! Safe. I feel it. Don't you?

In meantime, while the country's attention was transfixed on the war, the Bush Administration purposely turned a blind eye, as men like Paulson, who was the head of Goldman Sachs before his government gig, gutted the banking industry.

And now they want us to pay for their fuck up.

Listen to Paulsen, Bernake, Cox, and Lockhart as the beg.... BEG!... the Senate Banking Committee for the $700 million dollars.




They look like a bunch of junkies begging a dealer for another fix. Even after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) suggested that the money be paid off in installments, they we're adamant in stating that they needed the money now, much in the same way, that Bush was adamant about need for cash to fight the war.

Let's do the math folks:

$581 (Iraq war cost)
+
$1,100 (A.I.G., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns)
+
$700 (All the rest)

= 2,381*

* - figures in billions

That's alot of cheddar for a fix.

Now that the shaft has been inserted into our collective asses with the war, the Bush Administration now wants to give it a nice shove for good measure with this bailout.

What angers me about our present predicaments is the fact that the warning signs were there.

The warnings leading up to 9/11/01 were obvious. Bin Laden had been trying to goad us into a fight for the longest time, blowing up embassies and ramming a bomb-laden boat into the USS Cole. You can blame President Clinton all you want for his administration's tepid reaction to those events, but I quite admire his reserve. Why commit military resources to what is essentially a job for Interpol and the FBI? As we know now, it would have cost us billions to use the military to catch him, and with no guarantee of success. Instead Clinton chose to focus on the economy, on building relationships with foreign nations, and making government run more efficiently. Is it any wonder we had a budget surplus on January 20, 2001?

Listen to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) take the motley crew of financial gurus to task over the warning signs of this financial crisis:



But it's too late now, I'm afraid. As Congress figures out what to do about Wall Street, people are losing jobs and homes left and right; our infrastructure is crumbling as we speak, and our military is stretched to the point of breaking.

I hate to say this folks, but the wolves are circling the carcass and shooting them from a helicopter won't help.

Russian navy ships head to Venezuela

Our once great nation has fallen to its knees and is holding the ropes taking an eight count.

And somewhere, in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden is smiling.

Remembering 9/11/01

I've grown weary of all the 9/11 remembrances, especially the big ones.

Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives that day seven years ago, most here in New York. So, it's right to remember them and recall how their lives enriched our world in ways large and small. I lost no one that day. I had two close calls with a brother who was supposed to be in Tower One that morning and a sister who witnessed the second plane crash into Tower One as she was merging onto West Street from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I lost no one, still, I felt the loss that day, as every American did.

What has me so weary is not so much the many remembrance ceremonies, but this inescapable notion that some of these gatherings, particularly the televised ones, have become more important than the event it commemorates. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer family members of the victims of 9/11 even bother to attend them?

Why is that? Could it be that they're tired of bullshit politicians picking at the scabs of their wounds for the sake of political gain?

Rudy Giuliani is one such bullshitter.

I can't begin to describe the loathing many victim's families have for his "9/11" antics, particularly those of the 343 FDNY firefighters who died that day. Buried somewhere in his "I'm-the-hero-of-9/11" show, is the fact that Mayor Giulani's inaction in replacing the outdated FDNY radios probably cost those firefighters their lives. Many who went into the burning towers died in the collapse because they never heard the call to evacuate. Two years ago, Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins wrote a scathing critique of America's Mayor called Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani. If you haven't read it, you should.

George Bush is another one. Here's what he had to say today at the Pentagon ceremony:

Since 9/11, our troops have taken the fight to the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home... Thanks to the brave men and women, and all those who work to keep us safe, there has not been another attack on our soil in 2,557 days.

Indeed. But at what cost? Since 9/11, we've lost over 4,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and caused the deaths of a million Iraqi and Afghani civilians. And, we're now were on the verge of sacrificing more lives in an attack on Iran, when it all could have been prevented, had Bush acted on intelligence reports handed to him on the 6th of August 2001 indicating a 9/11 attack was imminent. Because of his failure to act, we now live in a nation so jacked up about the need for security, that few if any understand just how much our civil liberties have eroded since 9/11/01.

We had one such gathering in my town of Lindenhurst, NY. It was a rather subdued ceremony to honor the six residents we lost in that attack. But like many of the local town officials standing on the dais tonight, I did not know Susan Clyne all that well, just as I did not know either of the Joe Angelinis (father and son FDNY firefighters), or Geoffrey Guja, or Gary Lee, or Lawrence Nedell.

A color guard was on hand to present the flag, and someone gave a poorly-sung, but heartfelt, rendition of "God Bless America." Various town officials and religious leaders spoke to the crowd, none missing a beat in calling the attacks cowardly and lauding our dead as heroes.

But unlike Rudy Giuliani who milked the 9/11 tragedy dry for personal profit, and George Bush who used fear of another 9/11 to shred our Constitutional rights, what I witnessed and felt tonight in Lindenhurst was a genuine sense of unity.

What I heard them say to the victim's families is something you'll never hear from Giuliani or Bush or any other politician coat-tailing these events. What my neighbors say is "I'm sorry for you loss"?

Beyond The Ken

I love words. I'm good at the English ones. I'm getting better at the Spanish ones. I know a bit of Mandarin, as in "Nǐ hǎo ma" or "hello". I think. I have a friend of mine on the train who is trying to teach me Italian. Every morning when I catch the 6:17AM to Penn Station from Lindenhurst, there she is greeting all of her train friends --including me -- with a cheerful "Buon giorno!" I even know a bit of Thai -- that land where almost everyone's name has a "porn" suffix, as in Phanporn. (Man that always makes me snicker in humor.) But Thailand is one of the most beautiful lands I've ever laid eyes on, so it always gives me great pleasure when I can join my palms, bow, and greet a local with a sawat-dee-kaa (for female) or a sawat-dee-khrab (for males ...this one also makes me snicker because it sounds like "crap" when you hear it).

Lately, though, one word has been tripping me up time and again. It's the word ken. This also happens to be the name of someone for whom I reserve no cheer, which may explain why I keep lacerating my linguistic knees and elbows every time that word comes to mind. But he's not the topic of this post. Still there's the tripping.


So, I dusted myself off bandaged the wound, and went out to get myself a definition. Here's what I found from dictionary.com:


ken /kɛn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ken] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, kenned or kent, ken·ning. –noun

1.	knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one's ken.

2.	range of sight or vision.

–verb (used with object)

3.	Chiefly Scot. a. to know, have knowledge of or about, or be acquainted with (a person or thing). b. to understand or perceive (an idea or situation).

4.	Scots Law. to acknowledge as heir; recognize by a judicial act.

5.	Archaic. to see; descry; recognize.

6.	British Dialect Archaic. a. to declare, acknowledge, or confess (something). b. to teach, direct, or guide (someone).

–verb (used without object)

7.	British Dialect. a. to have knowledge of something. b. to understand.

Once I read this, it hit me. There is just so much shit I don't understand about this world. Language aside, there are some concepts that simply escape me. To use ken in a sentence, there are some things in this world, that are beyond my ken.

Religion is one of them. I was once a practicing Catholic, so I think I know a thing or two about faith and believing and living for an afterlife in heaven. Conceptually, I get what Catholicism is all about, but even as a Catholic it never failed to stump me, why so many Catholics get hot and bothered by people who don't believe the same way. Take for example this story in Long Island Newsday in which a local retired fireworks company executive living in Patchogue, NY has made it his business to fight the "secularization" of Christmas. To wit, "We are bringing Christmas back to Long Island," says M. Philip Butler. I ask, aren't there better things to do with one's time in retirement than worry about the fate of a holiday co-opted from the Druids? Like many "downtowns" across the U.S., Patchogue's is hurting, and all this wingnut can think of is how his dear holiday was stolen. Way above my ken.

Consumer debt is another. When I was a kid, my parents were quite "frugal" with household finances. As the parents of seven, hungry growing kids stuffed into three-bedroom Manhattan housing project apartment, I could see now why my mother would tell me, "Oh, it's just a small hole. Keep wearing them," when I showed her how worn the bottom of my Pro-Keds were. They managed quite nicely because they based their purchases on need. Moreover, they did what few people do these days, they prioritized those needs so that a pair of new sneakers didn't keep us from going hungry. Let's face it folks. We are not any richer than our parents were in the 1970s, 1960s or 1950s. In fact, we're probably poorer now when you consider how devalued the dollar has become. What I don't understand is that if we are sooo fucking poor, why do we accept being chastised and negatively "scored" by credit rating agencies for not carrying some kind of debt; as if paying cash for something were some form of scarlet letter. As more and more people default on jumbo mortgages they had no business taking in the first place, and with the holiday, "Christmas" season approaching, it perplexes me how these Visa commercials are still on the air. Is carrying mounds of unaffordable debt just to move quickly through a convenience store the apogee of out existence? I don't get it. I have no ken for this one.

Finally, there's this gem from the sands of Saudi Arabia, where the authorities there jailed and whipped a 19-year old woman for being a rape victim -- you can read about it here. When she and her lawyer complained about the injustice of the charge and sentence, the Saudi courts "upped" the sentence. This woman was gang-raped by seven men, and because she broke some Islamic law about hanging out with men not her brother or husband, she gets tossed into the klink, too. The worst part in all this is our own government's reaction in which they "expressed astonishment" though not directly to the Saudi government. And don't kid yourself into thinking that a Democratic President would react in the same way. Sure, Hillary Clinton talks a good game in debates and on the campaign trail, but if she's elected President, her administration will be sucking at the Saudi oil teat just like every other one has since the 1950s. What perplexes me is not so much the inhumanity and barbarity of the sentence, but the hubris of the Saudi government to defend the actions of their courts. I know it's a "cultural" thing in Saudi Arabia, but so is female genital circumcision in parts of Africa. Calling it a tenet of culture does not make it right. Yet, it persists. This is so beyond the ken for me.

There is so much more in this world that I simply do not understand. Someday, I'll write about them here. For now, I suppose I should just shut the fuck up and listen more to what people are trying to tell me -- at home, at work, or wherever I may find myself . But there's this nagging little thing inside me called a conscience and sometimes it needs to speak up before it gets kenned by subjective insights. Sometimes, I have this need to call it like I see it. Sometimes, I need to say, "Ken, you're full of khrab."

Wǎnshàng hǎo my friends. Buona sera!