The Stockton CA and North Korean Bankruptcies Wednesday, Feb 29 2012

Well, there’s a lot of bankruptcy in the twin sagas of Stockton California and North Korea. Oh sure, two different places, but yet, well, not all that dissimilar in the results of their operations. North Korea might be a fourth world dictatorship building nuclear weapons, and Stockton a regular California, USA city with extraordinary high crime, foreclosure and unemployment rates – but still, they are the same in this: they spent themselves into bankruptcy. It’s easy to do, and it doesn’t make a difference whether you spend it on nuclear weapons or on pension plans and benefit packages for union employees, or even if you are a person who likes tomorrow’s gadgets but you make yesterday’s salary. Just like Greece spent itself into bankruptcy with the public employee sector consuming the national wealth, and the USA is spending itself into bankruptcy with $1.5 trillion dollar annual deficits.

For bankruptcy is simply owing more money than one earns, has saved, or can borrow on top of the distended credit one already has. It makes no difference on what the money is spent, or whether for good or bad things. And it makes no difference the size of the entity which bankrupts itself. One person earning $15,000 a year can bankrupt himself as well as one country earning $15,000,000,000,000 a year. For bankruptcy is one of those things that is exceedingly clear in definition and observance: if you earn 15 whatevers, but spend 30, year in and year out, you will go bankrupt. That’s rather simple, no?

Ah, apparently one can fool many people with the “full faith and credit” of the borrower to make believe it can’t happen. “Oh, don’t worry, he’ll earn the money next year, when things get good.” Yah, sure, right, ask Greece, and the Germans who are bailing them out before we must bailout the Germans. I have to love this bizarre notion of stupidity and uneconomic thought from our own government. For contrary to the assertion of one Valerie Jarred (or Jarret? Oh, who cares, the idiot,) adviser to the president, unemployment does not help the economy. For one person winds up supporting two: himself and the unemployed guy next door. And that’s just going to bankrupt the one earning the money. Well, it’s the same for nations. Even good guys like Greece, or pariahs like North Korea. And certainly for cities like Stockton which can’t print their own money or counterfeit another country’s, like Greece and North Korea love to do, respectively.

Here are the stories.

http://news.yahoo.com/stockton-could-become-biggest-city-bankrupt-024108696.html

And I read this drivel:

“However, thanks to a new California law, the City Council’s move also could be the first step toward avoiding such a dramatic move. Under the state law, municipalities considering bankruptcy must first seek mediation with creditors, with the goal of settling debts without filing for Chapter 9 protection.”

Yes, well, one does not need a new law to do that. That should go without saying. What, you’d declare bankruptcy before begging and pleading for a little debt settling? Hell, I thought everyone would plead to reschedule, reduce, waive, cancel, extend, hold off, renegotiate, etc etc, a debt before just walking away from it and going to a bankruptcy court. What cities in California could not do a little, um “Debt Counseling” as it’s called? Indeed, it’s probably a service provided or paid for by the debt inducing policies and programs of the good government of Stockton which seeks to help its people, no doubt, deal with their foreclosures and their unemployment.

But suppose the banks and bond holders agree to “settle the debt”? – that means, somehow, they are either going to be giving up repayment, thus earning a loss, thus cutting their income, thus making paying their own debts a bit rougher, or they are going to lower the interest rates or extend the payments, perhaps even wait a year to get the paying back up again. Well, it makes no difference. The outcome is that the debt holder is out some money now, and possibly forever, which negatively impacts on their own debt situation.

And this mush: “Dozens of residents attended Tuesday’s six-hour council meeting to oppose the vote to enter mediation, saying they feared it would push Stockton further into trouble. The river port city of 290,000 already has the second-highest foreclosure rate in the nation and one of the highest crime and unemployment rates.”

The problems of the city are not from home foreclosures, those are individual people problems. Indeed, the city even still gets the taxes on the houses, for the banks which foreclose must still keep paying those.

Instead, the reporter breathlessly goes on with still more mush:

“In recent years, thousands of new homes mushroomed in Stockton, part of a housing boom in suburban development that attracted buyers from the San Francisco Bay area and beyond. But when the economy crashed and the construction bubble burst, Stockton was battered by foreclosures and lost income from property taxes and other fees. Multi-year labor contracts with escalating costs added to the burden, forcing officials to make deep emergency cuts to the city payroll, including its police department.”

So, in recent years, the city took in much more money from ample fees and taxes no doubt, for new construction, but either neglected to charge enough for the services rendered in return (doubtful,) or they gave “Multi-year labor contracts with escalating costs.” Yes, that’s it. For again, whomever foreclosed is still paying the taxes. Or the city itself will seize the property, which is doubtful, for they’d rather the tax money on empty houses with no kids in the public school system to pay for. Still, the fees from the construction was collected up front, and the fees for garbage not picked up anymore from the lack of people, well, of what use are those fees, except to pay for the bloated labor budgets of non-working garbage men on the public payroll?

Then mush from the politician, at direct contradiction to the reporter’s claim that the magical new law for mediation will prevent the bankruptcy by passing along the loss to other people outside of the city who may then face their own financial troubles and even bankruptcy. Imagine the poor schnook who has his life savings in City of Stockton bonds? Well, go greet at Walmart till he’s 75, oh well, while city employees earn some big bucks for doing less since there’s less people. More than a few are quoted in the article “I’m outta’ here.”

“If they vote for mediation, it is the first step towards bankruptcy,” former City Manager Dwane Milnes told KCRA-TV. “That means 1,000 people could lose retirement benefits.”

Aw, a 1,000 people could lose their retirement benefits. Well, someone will lose them. Either the schnooks who bought city bonds, the businessman owed money by the city, the banks kissing off a loan. The money isn’t there. So who along the famous multiplier chain of dollars will be out the dollars? If the city retirees keep their benefits, someone else will lose a like amount of cash to cover the new found resources to keep the retirement benefits. Which is why cities shouldn’t be in the retirement business. In fact, if city employees were given their money to put into their own accounts, they’d have the money, and more importantly, the city wouldn’t have had that cash pile to borrow from and replace with good faith and credit bonds of the city. Egad, what a mush pit, eh?

“Stockton will be the first city to test the state law, Assembly Bill 506, which is less than two months old. It requires local government agencies to undergo mediation or hold a public hearing and declare a fiscal emergency before filing for bankruptcy”

Well, yes, nice of the new law to require the city to tell the people, “We screwed up, you lose.” And formally with an “emergency”! Wonderful! The people are duly informed. And the former city manager (which is a pretty powerful position for California cities; you know, the person who actually runs the place while the mayor is out cutting ribbons and kissing babies,) is so sure that the mediation will push the city into bankruptcy. Well, sure, it must, for the city is, um, bankrupt. Perhaps the debt holders won’t agree to any terms and demand their money. Hell, perhaps they’ll go seize and claim some of the assets of the city so they can sell them for real cash to the highest bidder. Hell, put the city employment office building on the auction block and sell it. There’s just too many high paid employees anyway, ones the city clearly can’t afford. Or they’ll just kiss off the debt, and add it to their loss column. Shuffling debts, what a concept, eh?

And then there’s the international bankruptcy mush: North Korea is so broke that they must trade some lying about their nuclear ambitions for hundreds of thousands of tons of food. It’s not their first time, no. Oh, going back to Clinton, hell, maybe Reagan, maybe Eisenhower for all I know. But it seems every few years for “astounding breakthroughs” of “agreements” with North Korea’s despotic lunatic leaders the USA gives them food in return for “ending” their current programs for nuclear weapons. Yes, well, at least the ones we know about which are included in the agreements.

Oh, this is no new story; this is but the latest charade given by the clever Kim family, kings of North Korea, (and when you hand power from father to son to son’s son, well, very Louis-lou-ah, if you ask me, and with three Kims in a row, just put Roman numerals already, and spare us the confusion; current man at bat? Kim III.) Now let’s watch the muttering mushrooms pop up at the State Department with a piece of paper in their hands for “peace in our times.” And then the next president is faced with the same dilemma. Oh, there’s a “humanitarian” crisis – whimper! North Korean’s starving, let’s help those who create the starvation, for sovereignty’s sake, I’m sure. So, let’s feed the bankrupt nation’s people in return for the King Kim III’s promises, not a one of which has ever been kept. Here, the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/u-announces-diplomatic-breakthrough-north-korea-152331635.html

Under an agreement reached in direct talks in Beijing last week, North Korea has agreed to allow the return of nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile tests, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities, the State Department said. In return, the United States will provide North Korea with a large food aid package.

Yes, well, now that the North Koreans know the price of a “large food aid package” is some lies and fake moratoriums, why, there’s no incentive to tell the truth or make a real end to the nuclear ambitions. Why use up the currency you pay for your food with? After all, if they were truly to end their nuclear programs, why, they’d have nothing to buy food with when this food runs out. We wouldn’t take the Won or whatever it is, for it’s worth less than the packaging on the food stuffs. And we surely can’t take their dollars, for they print them up, counterfeiting with wild and public abandon, and quite good, if truth be told.

“To improve the atmosphere for dialogue and demonstrate its commitment to de-nuclearization, the DPRK has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a press statement Wednesday. “The DPRK has also agreed to the return of IAEA inspectors to verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment activities at Yongbyon and confirm the disablement of the 5-MW reactor and associated facilities.”

Yes, well, I’m sure when the DPRK (oh, please, must we really go by the fictitious “democratic people’s republic of Korea”? Just call it the Kingdom of Kim and be done with it,) are done doing all they wish at Yongbyon they’ll move to more charming place. But I bet we shall soon discover at oh, “Dum Nuts” or perhaps “Screw you” some other nuclear efforts running apace. And then, oh the horrors, we shall have to have a new round of negotiations. Perhaps the current King Kim can say that the previous two King Kims had not told him of Dum Nuts or Screw You, and thus, well, for a few hundred thousand tons of food he’d be glad to forgo the efforts there too. Why, since the need for food is never ending for the 17 million in the world’s biggest prison camp, I’m sure the Kim family has facilities and moratoriums and fancy hotel rooms for international inspectors galore to pay for the food.

Then the self-delusional, let’s help Obama and the Nobel Prize committee, doggerel mush:

“Despite the stunning breakthrough, “the United States still has profound concerns regarding North Korean behavior across a wide range of areas,” Nuland’s statement cautioned, but added that “today’s announcement reflects important, if limited, progress in addressing some of these.” In return, the United States will “move forward with our proposed package of 240,000 metric tons of nutritional assistance along with the intensive monitoring required for the delivery of such assistance,” she said.

Ah, yes, “important, but limited” – yes, well, so does an alcohol make important, but limited progress by buying two fifths instead of a half gallon. Surely it’s a stunning breakthrough in blind stupidity on the part of our erstwhile Foggy Bottom representatives for peace in our times. Sure. And just how many times does it take for the North Koreans to fool us into a few hundred thousand pounds of food stuffs, to be diligently monitored in being given out to the prison population, before we recognize it all for what it is?: Mush and Lies. Egad, and this umpteenth time of being paid for food with empty promises and lie is “stunning” alright, in a most depressing way. Ah, but I suppose we can claim jobs here in America! Why, it’s helps the immigrant farm laborers here in the US get paid by growing free food for the North Koreans, while the citizen taxpayer is taxed to pay for the military stationed ever on alert just across the border in Non-Kim Korea. Egad, what a tangled web, no?

It’s stunning alright, right up there with the new California law which will prevent civic bankruptcy by calling it mediation. Let’s just define things out of existence, that’s the bankrupt model.

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For gays is the economy or marriage more important? Tuesday, Feb 28 2012

There is a great debate within the nation over gay marriage. Well, it’s more of a slug fest, with some quite against the thing uttering the most astounding balderdash, and others not caring or rather for it showing that it just doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, the economy is in the doldrums. Oh don’t let some 13,000+ of the Dow fool anyone. So which is more important to the gay voter? The Democrats seem to be claiming, and only very lately and recently and still “evolving” as they say, that gay marriage is more important. And since they are, in a few places, finally allowing the recognition – not allowing the marriages per se, for they have always existed, no, merely the governmental recognition that reality exists – of gay marriages to go forward, well, of a sudden gays are “Democrats love us!” Yah. Sure. Right.

Though the Republicans are so inept on this issue, and so dead set against the reality, that it shows they are not reality based conservatives, but faith based theocrats. Ergo, they will lose the hearts and minds of the American public, and slowly wither away to nothing. Oh well, we gays keep telling them: it’s the economy not the sissy smooching. Still, with both parties not really being that much different, despite pretenses to the contrary, the economy is heading for a tanking, despite the rise of the Dow.

The Dow fluctuates, and at the slightest pretense, or series of negatives, it will plunge. The Dow is not a barometer of the economy, but often a counter-indicator to it. That is, often bad economic news drives the Dow higher since there are fewer other good money making opportunities. And people have to put their extra cash somewhere. And lots of people have extra cash. Pension plans newly infused with government money must put the infusion somewhere, and banks don’t cut it. So they put it into stocks and mutual funds.

Nor does the Dow point to any trend. Indeed, the Dow was booming until just weeks before the Great Depression hit. For the government could wipe out the gains in a flash. Perhaps war will break out in the Middle East, cutting off supplies of oil to Europe, (we don’t really get any from there,) and thus Europe and us are bidding for the same oil somewhere else? Poof, gone go the Dow gains. Suppose Greece bankrupts, and refuses to pay its bills to many a bank? Well, then, those banks will take a loss, which will impinge on their financial situation, which will cause the Dow to plummet.

Suppose that of a sudden in the next few months China breaks out into open revolution? After all, there are some 80,000 to 90,000 violent demonstrations against the government annually already. There’s no reason why it therefore can’t happen that the momentum swings to the protestors, and poof, there goes the Chinese willingness to lend to us, for the communists are strangely in love with investing in US treasury notes. Perhaps the capitalists who take over will not be so willing, eh? And poof, there goes the US credit rating, and poof there goes the Dow a-plunging like never before.

Oh, there’s lot of scenarios for disaster looming on our horizons. That is, the nation’s horizons. Suppose Mexico collapses? Or breaks out into very violent revolution? Suppose the Euro currency is zapped from history? Well, those are shocks that the Dow will fall on. There’s more, many more, but well, who can list them all without some major compendium of the looming disasters of the worldwide economy? I can, but I won’t.

Meanwhile, every time the Dow has crossed a threshold it has fallen back; and often with big loses. Profit taking, it’s called. Or a “correction.” Oh, the wily boys of Wall Street reporting have many a phrase to show that the fall is some normal thing. As JP Morgan famously said, when asked about the markets, “The markets will fluctuate.” Yes, well, I’m sure they will.

The markets, being human, have momentarily lapses into nirvana land. Sometimes they have major floosies of stupidity. They are often driven by other economic news, often at odds to good times, or to bad, or to anything other than some dumb bunny saying something that “spooks” investors. Yes, well, there’s lots of those. To read the headlines about the Dow shows that the Dow will rise because oil prices are rebounding showing profits for the oil companies and drilling sectors. Though the Dow might well fall because of a rise in oil prices negatively impacting the bottom line of many another business. The headline writers are quite silky in their ability to provide a snappy reason for the Dow’s up or down for the day.

Many people are, of course, economic illiterates, and therefore believe the mush of today, for having forgotten the mush of yesterday, which was the exact opposite. But hey, that’s what happens with short attention spans and lousy education, and plenty of political posturing. Indeed, just three years ago President Bush was the sole source of the high gas prices, which didn’t hit $2 bucks. While today, President Obama is wholly powerless to do a thing about gas prices. Apparently Republican presidents are more powerful than Democratic presidents when it comes to the price of gasoline. The media sure thinks so. So do many Democrats in office or seeking same.

Meanwhile, there is this great discussion about whether recognizing that gay couples exist and that gay taxpayers are equal to hetero taxpayers (and on the basis of taxes paid, well, yes, we are,) and what effect this will have on heterosexuals. The effect being non-existent, except a few hearty “Congrats!” and perhaps a little more business in the wedding industry, the progress towards the gay agenda’s forever goal of total equality and gay marriages (we’ve asked for nothing more in the past 60 or 70 years, our requests have not changed, it’s heterosexuals who have changed,) will continue. There is no fluctuation in the move towards the acceptance of the reality of a few percentage points of gay folks. Nope.

Oh sure, there’s more vehement mush uttered, but it’s not new mush. It’s the same mush of old. The mush hasn’t changed since Anita Bryant and her “for family values” divorced ex-husband Bob Green, newly gone to join the less than worthy at God’s feet for his vehemence and lies against gay folks lo those many years ago, before he was forced to divorce his wife because a gay couple was given a blessing my someone somewhere. Yah. Indeed, the less people who hold the mush to be certain, the more the certain mush holders seem to scream, louder, more slowly, with more vehemence. Sort of like the American tourist in a foreign land seeks to be understood by the uncomprehending natives if he speaks louder and more slowly.

And so the gay folks have a sort of voting dilemma. There’s the sure to bankrupt us and make big socialist government Democrats our leaders, or to make the more rational economic brains of the Republicans the leaders by engaging that part of the party, or to just sit back and let the virulently anti-gay obsessed religious freaks take over the party and bankrupt the nation and make a big theocratic government for them to lead. Well, in either case, the two fringes, socialist and theocratic, have seized the party machinery, and now the gays can either go for the rational conservatives on economics, or the radical socialists who merely want the votes now and could give a damn later. There is this idea that the Democrats, after just one or two more elections, will all of a sudden flock to the altar of gay marriage and say “till death do us part.” Frankly, I doubt it. Socialists are known liars; their announced strategy is to lie to get the votes to instill the socialist paradise, and then, like every other socialist government on earth, stomp all over gay folks.

Weirdly, almost unobserved, Socialists and Die-hard Religious Freaks of whatever denomination are not that far apart in their goals for government: the government knows best, and it shall enter the home to make decisions, and it shall prohibit this or that activity by the people for the good of the people. They will tell us what to do, either one, based on an old book, with vague precepts, written by someone’s whose meaning and intent cannot be truly divined, and whose words are filled with contradictions, and whose guiding light is a faith in some leaders self-selected by a brutal political game, and cronies and backslapping and backstabbing, and a disdain for all disagreement. Any disagreements are, by both, declared to be heresy and apostate.

So gay folks, my gay brethren, give up on Democrats and Republicans alike, lest we fall to ruin as a nation with our hetero friends, family and neighbors. We should get far more demanding of both parties to be far more rational on both the economy and the gay marriage thing. And what political party is better at this than either of the current two biggies? The Libertarians. It’s the only political party which hasn’t had to evolve to be pro-gay, but was from the get go, on the principle of liberty for all. And the likely candidate for that party is Gary Johnson, and well, he’s about the only guy in the nation who has a handle on what to be done on economics, and what to be done on gay marriage, and the relative importance to both to everyone. But both big parties promise national ruination. And on this we have something to teach everyone. But if the economy tanks, marriage certificates for gays aren’t going to be worth very much. Though, marriage certificates for heterosexuals won’t be worth much either, so I’d urge them all to vote Libertarian too. But on this I am, of course, a long time radical. Ahem.

 

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All taxes are on income; they’re too high, too. Friday, Feb 24 2012

I see often many comments from Tea Party folks, conservatives, Republicans, etc, that the “poor” don’t pay taxes. And of course, from the Liberals and the Left, and the Democrats, etc, there is the cry that the “rich” don’t pay taxes. From the sound of it, there’s no one paying taxes whatsoever, and certainly not enough to cover government expenses as determined by the very math challenged Congress and President of these United States. Surely someone in government must be noticing that all the taxes no one seems to pay amounts to quite a pile of bucks. For to hear either side say it, the poor and the rich pay no taxes, and certainly not their fair share, and they use every loophole and murky provision of the confounded IRS code to do their nefarious bit to get more money out of Washington then they put in, For sure, the IRS manages to round up $2.3 Trillion bucks or so, by sweeping the economy far and wide, and by jot and tittle, too, for every dime it can manage to squeeze out of the populace. It is our legal right to use the law as written, the IRS code as confounded, and cut off the spigot. It’s the great tax game, of course.

Still, Congress and the President will not accede to the reality of the $2.3 Trillion vacuumed up from hither and yon, Miami to Seattle and on to Honolulu, too, and all you’re going to get at current law and economic levels, simply does not cover the cost of the $3.9 Trillion they wish to spend. Or is, oddly, “Mandated spending,” from some unseen and unknown power well outside the hands of the law making powers of the Congress of the United States. Wusses, apparently, in getting back their power to tell the president and the cabinets and the agencies by the score that, well, time to cut the spending, there is no money. Meanwhile, deficits of $1.4 Trillion every year cannot be helpful. It can’t work in the long run. And we’re not going to grow the economy out of this. Liberals and Democrats were absolutely positive that $500 billion dollar deficits under Bush would bankrupt the nation, so what do they think of their own $1.5 Trillion dollar deficits? All of a sudden it seems OK. Hmm, talk about your political flimflam, eh?

There is this truth, of course, that some 40+% of the American population that does not pay income taxes. That is, these people file no 1040. (Why a form should be numbered “1040,” and not say, “Form 1” is beyond me; are there really 1039 forms in line before the dreaded 1040? hmm.) Still, the “poor” do pay taxes on their income, but at different collection points. And these taxes that the “poor” pay are levied on “income” but just given different names. And in this confusion there is the misnomer that the Right, by whatever name, wants the “poor” to pay more taxes, and somehow, ergo, the Rich to pay less. That many a rich Democrat or Democratic Party supporting corporation paid no taxes is sort of skipped over. That every Democrat in office seems hellbent on raising every tax it can find to be raised, and levy new ones on whatever has not been taxed yet seems not to be of important to the media. Not a word about that, only that more taxes will miraculously fall only on the rich. Well, yes, tax a corporation another 5% and watch all the prices go up 5% to cover the new cost of doing business. Who does anyone think is paying corporate taxes? Why, it’s consumers, of course. Much as renters pay property taxes, but it’s just not mentioned in the apartment lease.

That any Right leaning person seeks to legally lower his tax burden, or those of anyone else too, well, then he’s a heartless cad using “Loopholes” to somehow avoid his “fair share.” Yes, well, if the tax code is so bollixed and filled with strange little provisions that no one knows about except for nefarious Righties, while those on the left are pure and innocent of all tax shenanigans because while they’d like to pay more, and their hearts are in the right place, wherever that may be, and just so happen to avoid paying taxes as legally and with all the fine if murky provisions of the tax code just so happen to be found by their crafty tax accountants, well, then, we can see that the meme, the story, the media mush, is well, nonsense.

Yes, the poor pay taxes. Let’s take a romp through the taxes the poor pay. Even those on welfare of any kind, even those on unemployment, they pay taxes. They pay sales taxes, yes? And phone and gas, electric and water, sewer taxes galore. They pay the taxes that are inherent in the price of any item they buy, too. If a food company pays 10% in taxes, well, then, that tax is embedded inside the price of the food. The corporation can have no other source of the money. It doesn’t have some non-tax, non-business, non-product selling source of income. It’s sole source of the tax money is from the price it charges for an item. Raise the taxes, and almost invariably the price of the thing will go up to cover the tax. And oddly, given that taxes are on “profits” of course, after all the expenses have been deducted and accounted for, certainly, then if the tax is not passed along to the consumer, in effect the profits to tax fall. If a company earns 10% in profits, and you tax 10% of that, and now raise it to 15%, well, then somehow either the profits will fall to 5%, or to maintain the profits, the prices will be raised 5%. Oh, perhaps they’ll do it in 1% or 2% intervals, to make sure things don’t go too kerflooey. Of course, most consumers blame the company for the rise in prices. But, no, it’s the government.

The poor pay taxes at about the same rate as the rich, in terms of their income. That is, a rich guy might pay 35% of his income in taxes, but levied on salary and earnings directly, while the poor are nickle’d and dime’d to death in tiny levies here and there, and wind up paying, oh, 35% of their income in taxes. The collection points are different. But to the Federal Behemoth it’s irrelevant whether the tax comes from income directly or from the Federal phone line transfer tax or whatever they want to call it – the money all goes to the same pot. The phone tax is not dedicated to the phone lines, no. It’s dedicated to the general fund, which might be spent any which way. The tax collected on gasoline also seems to disappear into the big pot of cash collected. Indeed, the so-called transportation fund of money set aside from gas taxes for silly things like roads is filled with IOUs from the government which says, well, those IOUs can be redeemed at a moment’s notice from tax revenues to come. Soon. They hope. Eventually all the funds will be filled with IOUs and eventually those IOU holders will ask for real cash, to give to the people, to help them. And the government will either borrow more money, which will be paid back by future tax revenues of course, or it will print more money, which is inflation.

Inflation is the deadliest tax, for it is insidiously hid. And the government decries all knowledge of how it comes to be. For it’s said that inflation is “rising prices” and it is no such thing, or “rising prices causes inflation,” which is even more incorrect. Rising prices is merely the outwardly seen symptoms of the inflation. Sort of like the little bumps and pustules on the skin are the outward sign of the measles virus. Inflation is a ratio between how much money is in an economy and how many goods and services there are to sell and buy. Oh, sure, one can increase the money supply one or two percentage points a year, for that would meet the actual growth of goods and services, and the growth in population. But when the money supply is added by 10% or more, well, then, presto: inflation. And well, the Federal Reserve Board seems to have pushed 10% or more of extra cash into the economy, some say even 25% or 30%. To prime the pumps, it’s said. Though the Fed is demur in acknowledging exactly how much it pumped into the economy to help us. To follow the dictates of Keynes, a warmed over socialist with a clueless grasp of math and a power lust, who said when the economy contracts, inflate the currency. Yes, well, the inflation of today always leads to the contractions of tomorrow, so perhaps inflating today is not a good idea after all.

Still, there’s the taxes. Some could argue that it hovers at the 50% level already. What with city, county, state and federal taxes all fighting for their fair share, and the inflation factored in – yes, you see, if your actual tax combined by every tax levied is 40% of your income, and the inflation rate is pushed to 10%, well, that’s a 50% tax indeed. And all this to help us! All these taxes are given back to us, supposedly in the exact dollar amount we pay into the system. Isn’t that the goal? Every state and city says that their people pay more in taxes to the federal government than they get out of the feds. That’s why they clamor for more federal funding. Yes, well, there is that overhead charge for all the tax monitors and government money monitors, and expense monitors – it all must be kept track of, and directed to the right sources too. Why, it’s said that companies that can’t make a living off selling what they make should be amply helped by government to make sure those jobs are kept. Yes, and industries important to our future are to be well stocked with cash from the government.

Alas, the government gets the cash from someone else. And so we take a measly $500 million and give it to a solar company which can’t make a dime otherwise, which means $500 million is missing from the pockets of people who might have bought what they want, which is rarely solar anything. And so the economy loses $500 million in real spending, so it is given to some politically connected flunky with more a lobby plan than a business plan, and presto, supposedly we’ve helped the economy with jobs! Hell, the jobs are unproductive, and at most merely replace the real productive jobs of people employed making and doing what the people out the $500 million would have spent it on.

The better mousetrap is not built. No one is buying the goods, and so the warehouses full of stuff no one wants are sold for scrap, and the people can’t buy what they really want, which would have led to the same number of jobs – just different ones. Ones the government didn’t “create” by helping a failing company stay afloat a few more months, until requiring the next cash infusion, of course. And what people want to buy is their business, not the government’s. Still, the government is compelling us to keep General Motors alive, and not give business to say, KIA. It is compelling us to fund sports stadiums, rather than new air conditioners. And to give all manner of incentives, as they are called, for some company to move from where it is to somewhere else. One state’s job gains is another state’s job loss if all the company did is move from Kentucky to Tennessee. Hell, a company on the border can move back and forth for years getting “incentives” from both states to keep up the game. And the government is compelling us to support farmers high on the hog with high prices, so that we can tax other people to give some other people money for food stamps since they can’t afford the high prices promoted by the government.

Truly, farm supports boggle my mind. We are paying large companies and big farmers billions of dollars a year to either not grow food, or to warehouse bazillions of pounds of food, or to at least get a “fair” price as determined by the Department of Agriculture’s “fair price” committee of bureaucrats who haven’t been to the farm, ranch or stockyards in decades, except to fine farmers who produce too much, or in the wrong place, or somehow otherwise run afoul of the many DoA (dead on arrival, hmm, why do so many gov’t acronyms have spooky connotations?) mandates, programs, provisions, rules, regulations, and reporting and accounting requirements, for the good of the people, of course. And so for our good we get higher food prices and rich farmers and a dash of food stamps to pay for the peanut butter that is by law limited by supply to keep the price high.

Charming work if one can get it; and it must be, since government is the fastest growing employment sector right now. And there’s plenty of talent to be hired, since companies making stuff are taxed and inflated into insolvency directly or by destroying their consumer base. After all, if you tax people more, they’ll have less to spend, and ergo, some company’s sales, profits and taxes will fall. Ah, but let’s keep the price of peanuts high, to help a few over the many. So, alas, no new peanut farmers allowed, don’t even apply. There’s apparently a very well scientifically determined number of peanuts to be grown by just the right amount of peanut farmers in just the right counties in the Peanut Growing Allocation Area, so that both the consumer and the peanut farmer are well within governmental guidelines for the prosperity of the nation. Yah, sure, right.

Still, yes, taxes, paid by everyone, on their income, however they make it. And there’s not enough income to give the government what it says it needs to help us. And so the government borrows money it can only pay back through more taxes tomorrow. Taxes on income, taxes collected at the salary or the national sales tax envisioned by some, (and don’t think it will replace anything, it will be added to the burden, and the burden not rearranged,) now at near 50% for everyone, and it’s still not enough for the good spenders of the government who aim to help us with our own money. And of course, nearly 100% of the people almost convinced that everyone else does not pay their fair share of taxes and so are at loggerheads on which taxes should be raised on who and who shall be declared the evil meanie not paying their fair share – for the government has set citizen against citizen by taking all these taxes and spending them as government wishes, and not at all as any particular person would have spent his $20 not taken by the government in taxes. So, instead of all cooperating by telling the government “Enough with the taxes. Enough with the spending. Cut the spending, cut the taxes. Cut the trying to help us nonsense and pave the roads already” we are all sort of arguing with each other as to who pays taxes. Well, we all do, on income, even. Only it’s collected at different points, coagulated in the glutinous hands of government and given by Congresscritters to their favorite people for the good of us all. Yah.

And this growing disconnect between the people and the government has always led to big changes. And the first change that might come about in this nation, besides the bankruptcy and the lack of new lenders for the endless borrowing, and the inability to double the tax rates to rid us of the borrowed money deficits, is the destruction of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties. Both have proven themselves bereft of any “hope and change” whatsoever. They are both for more of the same. They are merely arguing over who gets their name on the plaque in front of the new government office building to house more bureaucrats to hinder the prosperity of the people. It probably won’t lead to violent revolution like in Syria or Libya, or even as in France or Greece whenever the government runs out of money. No, just the two parties gone. We are watching their last hurrahs. The Democrats have proven they can’t even pass a budget, and they have no ideas other than to not change a thing, and the Republicans proved they were the same, and now want to get into office and not change a blessed thing.

Let’s hope we all survive the coming tax and income and bankruptcy dilemma.

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Can an anti-gay person redeem himself? Yes, but Updated Thursday, Feb 23 2012

Months ago, back on June 20^th 2011 I did a post about a certain Mr. ……… He posted some comments hither and yon on the internet – they became a gay blogging sensation; well, someone’s got to monitor this stuff. And every gay man in the nation was just astonished and admonished Mr. …….. that he was way out of line. And well, he began to work hard to redeem himself almost immediately. We wound up, he and I, having a pleasant email exchange since then, in which he tried to explain himself somewhat. I did what I could back then to note that we gays can “trust, but verify” while letting people redeem themselves and join the “gay-perplexed” portion of the nation, at least. Not “for” gays, but just not Against us. Mr. ……. keeps trying to further redeem himself. I’m willing to give him the chance. In fact, I had written back then, these words:

>>But having said all that – no, gays don’t quite owe Mr. ……….. an apology, so much as we owe him a listen, and a bit of understanding. As we owe every hetero a listen as we seek to have them come around to a friendly position on us. And yet, still, and perhaps Mr. ……… might not agree totally with this – we gays still need to “trust, but verify” such mitigation, amelioration and explanation of our oft misunderstood English language as directed at us, or perceived to be directed at us. How misunderstood? Well, some people still get confused that gay means both “happy” – as in “Now we don our gay apparel” and well, “gay” as in “sissy smooching.”

So I’m content that Mr. …….. did no intentional harm, and simply stepped on a rhetorical landmine– but words are powerful things, and we should all be careful about what we say.

And so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I urge all gays to give the man the benefit of the doubt. But, still, “trust, but verify.”

So I’m satisfied that Mr. ……… is not the mean man that he was made out to be. And I have the feeling he’ll be far more careful in the future, which can’t hurt us. And I will be sending this post to the gay sites that brought it to my attention in the first place and ask them to also give him the benefit of the doubt – Which I can’t make them do, but that is not my burden.

Still, perhaps, just perhaps, we have found a new ally. I’d like to think so. Yet, yes, trust, but verify. But a big thanks to Mr. ……….. for having taken the time to try to correct the problem – for somehow I think the man was a bit worried to be perceived the ogre and the potential legal ramifications of such misunderstood words. And even if he comes late to the pride party, that’s fine by me. END

Well, I’m still ready to help the man towards his redemption. To go as boldly as he dares to go, as fast as he can get there. This I have no problem with. Indeed, I welcome it. Though I told him I had to think about the Stalinesque moment of removing actual history to make a rosier past. Don’t worry, his comments and all I preserve in the dossier I keep on him; they can be called forth at a moment’s notice. Still, every man needs a second chance. Every person needs the opportunity to come to there senses on the on one of the most hotly debated non-issues of our times: gay folks. To paraphrase some political operatives: It’s the economy, not the sissies.

But, in fact, this is the very process on which we gay folks have relied on for so long. For back then, in the dark days of the pre-1969 hissy fit at the Stonewall, we were excoriated by all. Now we are excoriated only by a few. The majority has not been slowly been moving our way under duress, no. But by no actions on our part except just proving all what they ever said or believed to be flat out wrong. Yes, too, they have been moving our way because they have had to come to reckon within themselves a new way of looking at gay folks.

The nation has been, to use the presidential word, “evolving.” Some have come further and faster than others, and some pander about their evolution, eh, Mr. Obama? Yes, you do, you cad. Some are still quite sure they are right and we are just so wrong that we deserve not to exist. Or if we exist, to exist in some never-never land of pure abstinence with nary a lusty thought nor ever mentioning the thing, and even to go so far as to deny our reality and pursue some girl of those people’s dreams that they have yet to produce for my viewing pleasure.

And so Mr. …… asked me to remove the post whereby we first had met, and his name itself. He did so a week ago; said he asked others, including Wayne Besen of http://www.truthwinsout.org to do the same, said that some others have done so, and some have not, and Mr. Besen is one who removed. Well, I wrote to Mr. Besen, but have not heard back. [yes, I did, after I originally wrote this, he agreed, remove the man's name, there's still creeps out there.] No big deal. Frankly, the man is busy, and he’s taking on some creep named PFOX and it’s ober-fuhrer Greg Quinlan (more like American Quisling [look it up, cultural know-nothings,] for being treasonous against American values and our Declaration of Independence, but I’m cranky about these fabricators of horrid distortions of my life and being.) Mr. Quinlan is uttering just outright tort actionable slander and libel & lies and misstatements with but one object in mind: the destruction of gay men and women and our very lives, liberties and fortunes in this nation. Oh, Quinlan is sure he’s got the word, from on high; yes, well, what has he been smoking?

This PFOX is allegedly the “Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays.” It’s a bizarre name for a multitude of reasons. Let’s look. One, there’s no such thing as an “Ex-gay.” What there is is a few million gay folks saying that anyone like PFOX is out of their minds. And a handful of gay men who go around claiming they fight daily against their gayness by being married to a woman who can handle their gayness. Well, talk about your open marriages eh? What do the wives of these few people think their hubbies are thinking of, imagining, running through their minds, when a moment of marital bliss might be engaged? Surely the women don’t truly think that these “ex-gay” men who claim to still be “struggling” with the gayness within think that their husbands are thinking of them, do they? Say it ain’t so! How could any women possibly believe that their gay husbands are thinking hetero when the men themselves claim openly and constantly that they themselves are still thinking like the gay men they are? Truly, it’s mind boggling. Oh, well, I’m not married to one of these creeps. It’s why I don’t date hetero men, too – who wants a partner having to fake it all the time? Not me.

This PFOX is handing out fliers in grade schools to reach the gay kids before they are, um, gay, I guess. I mean, really, here we have a ridiculously tiny bunch of gay kids, oh, 5% or less of the total, and PFOX is handing out fliers to every kid to stop the menace? Egad, what a waste of money. And this PFOX, as well as Exodus, JONAH, NARTH, AFTAH, oh, hell, there’s slews more, they are selling a service – and no one is buying it. They survive on donations from people who think like them. And they have staff aplenty, no doubt, awaiting the miraculous parade of gays who they hope will come to through their doors. They have built a better mousetrap, these PFOX’s have (and I can’t but giggle at the Price Pfister plumbing fixtures company’s ads from long ago about that silent P before the F in Pfister, and well, the {p}FOX ain’t getting this hen, that’s for sure.) And no one is beating a path to their door. Except, well, Mr. Besen, who is doing so to alert them to the lawsuit aimed at their jugular.

Frankly, I think gay groups would do better to haul all these fabricators and slanderers and libelers into court, rather than give one penny to some politician to pay for a vote in our favor. Those votes would be for free if the opposition wasn’t paying more money to the same politicians for their bit of lobbying. Indeed, the politicians are cravenly taking money from both sides of the game; what a racket, eh?

Can Mr. Quinlan come round one day? Perhaps. We’d all welcome it. Why, I think gay folks would be so darn happier and gayer if Rick Santorum came to his senses and said something like “Doh, was I dumb on that one!” Yes, it takes a tough man to make an apology for being so wrong for so long. We need a tough man as president. Perhaps the two gentlemen, Quinlan and Santorum, will take a page from the redemption book, and come to their senses, or at least shush about their tomfoolery. And perhaps they can them come to ask me to remove what I said about them, as Mr. …….. asked me, and which I now agree (not comply, agree,) with the one continuing admonition: Trust, but verify.

I somehow think that Mr. ……… has seem some light, but if he goes astray again, well, so much for my trust eh? Can I be blunt like this with a new-found friend? I sure am with friends of mine I’ve known for decades. And it will be verified, for the internet hides nothing. As a certain Arizona sheriff as newly discovered. And as Mr. Quinlan will find regurgitated to him line by line in whatever lawsuit Mr. Besen is engineering. Through the whole kit and kaboodle at the man, see what sticks. See what he still stands by. See what he won’t renounce or admit he’s wrong. See what he still intends to lie about, and cause grief. Redemption is possible, but heteros have to do it; we gay folks have done nothing wrong but wake up in the morning with the most startling revelation – we are men who like men. Oh well, we’re a small bunch, and hardly worth the bother of the nation, but some seek to make an issue of us.

I’d much rather speak about the economy and foreign policy and the proper costs of roads, but alas, there are political forces in this nation which seek to confine me to prison for the rest of my natural life, or at least so harass me with impunity that I’m just fed up with being their punching bag. And to paraphrase Dr. Samuel Johnson (loved his house in London!) “Nothing so concentrates the mind as being told you’ll be imprisoned forever.”

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Proposition 8 and Children by Opposite-sex parents, the reality. Wednesday, Feb 22 2012

So I read tonight at http://news.yahoo.com/prop-8-backers-seek-review-gay-marriage-case-230944033.html this:

“The lone dissenting judge insisted that the ban could have served a legitimate purpose in the minds of its supporters: namely, helping to ensure that children are raised by married, opposite-sex parents.”

Well, then, let’s look at some biological realities. Not some pie-in-the-sky fabricated mush. But reality. Yes, let us admit it, we gays and you heteros, that it takes two biologically unrelated opposite-sex parents to make a child. This is the big complaint about us gays after all, that we are not making any babies. So, let us stipulate at the beginning, without qualification, without qualms, without hesitation, with no holds barred, with not a scintilla of contradiction whatsoever, that no gay couple, gay men or Lesbians, will ever have “biological” children. We are incapable of this glorious act, for sure, without any doubt whatsoever. So, let us agree now to reality: there’s no way on earth that gay couples of any stripe will ever have “biological children.” There, is that clear? To our opponents? Does any thing more be said on the reality? Yes, gay couples, with or without bananas, will have no “biological children.”

That is not the debate. And you wish to avoid this reality. You ignore it, because you seek to argue for what does not exist, and is irrelevant to gay folks. For to argue that “Marriage” or “marriage-like rights and privileges” is dependent upon having “biological children” is just false. And to argue that “biological children” don’t come into this world without “marriage between a man and a woman” is absurdly nuts. And to argue that gay couples will have “biological children” not raised by moms and dads is even more absurd. For that is the chief complaint about us, as I said, that we can make no babies. Wasted sperm and all that. Pointless copulation for pure pleasure, as sex is often done by heteros, with rather great praise and nary a thought or dash of opprobrium, but roundly condemned in gay folks. Yes, we gays are condemned for having “pointless” sex while heteros with wild and socially sanctioned abandon may have sex without children, and even use divers devices to prevent “biological children” and all of which is legal, court protected, socially acceptable and even within commercial activity.

In short, artificial birth control is completely legal, and abortion too, and sanctioned within marriage, and after divorce, and before marriage, but natural birth control, aka = gayness, is prohibited. The very rhythm method of Catholic lore is firmly established as a “natural” children prevention option, but natural gayness is somehow this evil, for children will not be born. What a bunch of mush. You are comparing apples with rocks. At least apples and oranges are both edible fruits. But to be an, um, edible fruit, well, then, that’s out of the question.

What gayness has to do with anything no one can answer, other than “we don’t want everyone to be gay!” Well, frankly, we gay folks don’t want anyone else to be gay either. Certainly hetero men make lousy gay men, I assure you. We few are gay, and good at it, that’s it. We are insistent on this; you will have to shoot us at the most, at the least hound us back into the closet. Hahahahaha! Not going to happen. We are we, ye are thee, and still you are fearful. We don’t know why. We really don’t. If there’s one unanswered question on all gay political and social sites still up on the internet it is this: “Why are heteros so afraid they will turn gay?” We don’t know. We truly don’t. It is a mystery to us perhaps as big a mystery to you as to why we should be gay.

Except we have a better answer to the mystery: God wanted us, and only us, to be gay, for His reason. I suspect, but I can’t be sure, that it is a test of “Treat others as you wish to be treated” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and you heteros have failed, abysmally. We gays can’t help that. We don’t even know what to do with this failure of yours. But there you have it. You can’t handle us, and we can handle you.

And when the more of you handle us, as we have begged you to do, for decades, all over the world, then the better off we and ye shall be. But we have treated you all as we wish to be treated. And you have not. We have been more Godly and follow the words of Jesus, and you have disdained from doing this. It is not our fault, but yours. We still shall continue to outright beg for inclusion as we are; and we can only hope and pray and plead that you come to your senses and realize, we are gay, you are not. You shall have biological children, some of whom will be gay, and we shall have no biological children, hetero or gay. And, yet, we shall both have sex. Us “pointless” sex no matter what, if that’s what you believe, as “infertile” couples. And you shall have “pointless” sex no matter what, unless the miracle of life comes about quite by accident. Don’t give me this garbage about “Intention” – unless you purposefully put sperm to egg in science – other than that it’s all an “oops.”

A glorious oops without doubt. We gays don’t decry the birth of Oops, no matter how desired, we just ask to be left alone by law, and to be included by law, regardless of whether our “oops” ever leads to “biological children.” Outlawing or prohibiting or decrying our “oops” won’t make a shred of difference to either your “biological children” oops, or the lack of such, or the artificial prevention of such. We, at least, are natural in our birth control, and it doesn’t cost the state a dime. Nor force a religion or citizen to pay for it. Indeed, the exact opposite is true – you are now being required to pay for oops or prevention of oops through artificial means, and we gays now have to pay for the prevention of more gay folks. We are few in number; frankly, gays don’t like abortion or prevention – it limits our ultimate numbers, and frankly, we could use every gay person we can find.

And if you get your druthers you shall pay for the prevention of our inability by natural means of any oops whatsoever. Well, no. You shall merely move it from our homes to the prisons you shall pay for. It’s nuts, but so many of you seem to insistent. And amazingly, given the numbers of unwanted oops available for adoption, we take up the slack, and we are very pro-adoption, and very anti-abortion, exactly as you anti-gay folks are, for we would rather mollycoddle every unwanted by hetero oops than see you kill them or abandon them. Not to recruit more of us – but to create more decent humans of any kind. That hetero couples make gay folks, while gay couples tend to produce hetero folks is irrelevant to you, so great is your baseless fear. That’s another thing we are puzzled with. We have no answer, only questions – what is your answer, you heteros? Tell us, perhaps we can agree or come to a compromise.

Egad, at times it’s easier to show that gay marriage and adoptions by gays are more pro-family, more pro-children, more pro-couples until death do they part, more conservative, more beneficial to the economy and more helping solve the oops of this world, than gay couples can be shown to be anything else. Except, except that so many of you heteros are so fearful that you will all turn gay right away – and we can’t fathom that. Our insistence that we alone are gay, and our insistence that none of you will ever turn gay, would, to us, somehow, mitigate your fears, and then you will Let Our People Go. And you will conclude we gays are nothing more than the only ones who are gay, who will ever be gay, and that we are standing ready, willing and able to take up the slack in any oops you all might have, and if not, be productive members of society anyway. We have proven this, over and over, you demur in the recognition of this. However: Just let us alone. We are tired of it. It is pointless. We will not change. You are screaming at the wrong people for the problems you perceive. Your attitudes, in fact, are a far bigger “oops” than any unwanted child which we cannot produce no matter what we do could ever be.

Thanks, but get a grip and a dash of rational though, you oops producing heteros. Get a grip. And then we shall join with you to solve real problems. But there is no resolution or solving to the hetero problem of the reality of the existence of gay folks, other than to accept that we are we, and you are not. Calm down, get a grip, deal with reality, and we shall all be better off, and then we can both address the bigger issues of our nation, all the other oops, other than the oops of why the same tiny percentage is gay all over the world, with a tenacity and insistence that you heteros still can’t grasp, understand or appreciate. Oops. OK, that’s what we are, we are Oops. But once Oops is here, that’s it. Deal with it. Try. Please, try.

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The Mardi Gras tautology of the collapsing Greek economy Tuesday, Feb 21 2012

So I read this mush today at http://news.yahoo.com/two-second-bailout-save-greece-083000813.html

by some guy named MICHAEL SCHUMAN from Time magazine. Boy, what a bunch of worthless beads he’s thrown on Mardi Gras day.

“The reason Greece’s debt load is so difficult to shrink is because the economy is tanking. The austerity measures and other reforms demanded by the euro zone in return for its rescue money are causing the Greek economy to contract sharply — by an estimated 7% in 2011. Further budget cuts imposed for this second bailout — another $4.4 billion of austerity measures were approved by Greece’s parliament last week — will only inflict more pain and cause the economy to continue to contract. The new reforms include a reduction in the minimum wage and major public-sector job losses, which will slice into local demand and undercut the prospects for growth. So Greece ends up like a dog chasing its tail. Meeting deficit targets and reducing debt becomes much more difficult when the economy is shrinking. The austerity at the heart of the euro zone bailout program, therefore, is killing off the chances the bailout program can resolve the debt crisis.”

Which is preceded by this: “The big question remaining, though, is: For how long? The first bailout, inked in May 2010, was considered by many to be dead on arrival, an unrealistic attempt to solve Greece’s debt crisis without tackling the serious, underlying problems.”

So, the underlying problem is too much debt, and too much borrowing, which led to an economic crisis of not being able to pay back the debt, and not being able to borrow any more, and cutting the debt will not fix the underlying problem of too much debt, so don’t cut the debt but in fact hopefully borrow more. Uh huh. Until, as Margaret Thatcher so famously said of such places, “Until you run out of other people’s money.” And if the Germans lend the money, they’ll have bigger debts and so enter the Greece cycle. Perhaps the Germans will borrow from us. Perhaps we’ll lend. Perhaps China will increase its debt to lend to the Germans to lend to the Greeks who will increase their debt to solve their too much debt problem. Yep. Brilliant!

But don’t cut the debt! That’ll lead to austerity and a sound economy with real money and real wealth. Borrow more debt! So that we can pay people who don’t work to go shopping with borrowed money, and tax from those who sell anything or earn a real living, to pay for the borrowing to keep the economy humming along until no one will lend another dime or drachma. And what will be the end result of all this new borrowing? No fixing of the underlying problem, which is, um, too much borrowing anew. No, but keep people who do nothing, aka bureaucrats, in their above minimum wages jobs, and screw reality and mathematics. Brilliant!

Well, if Time Magazine didn’t have the “spend till you drop” mentality that is apparently required for these times in America, and if they weren’t all for the Democratic Party’s “who cares about budgets and debts?” Keynesianism, well, then, perhaps a little more sanity would have prevailed in their article and a little less political mumbo-jumbo written to perhaps push for continued patterns of American spending of borrowed money, so we don’t solve our debt problem by getting rid of debt, but solve it by not solving it like they urge Greece to do. So the economy doesn’t contract now, or ever, if we keep borrowing money to keep it expanding.

For that’s the prescription offered – too much debt should not be answered with cutting the debt, but keeping the current debt and adding more, so perhaps one can borrow and spend oneself out of debt.

What the minimum wage has to do with anything I don’t know, except where government employees are covered by it, or are required to earn twice that amount, for they are good civil servants serving the people by borrowing money to pay their salaries to keep the economy from contracting. And of course, all those government employees are being paid with borrowed money, and the way to keep them spending is to apparently keep borrowing the money and paying them to do not much, in the vain hope that these government employees will spend enough to push the minimum wager earners higher in the earnings scale to pay the more taxes required to pay the more debt that’s been piled on in the second round of this charade.

Especially since the first round was merely to keep all systems going exactly as they were leading up to the first round of bailouts. Yes, well, let’s keep the 2^nd round of borrowing propping up what can’t be paid back in the first place, and thus a 3^rd, and 4^th, and even a 5^th round of borrowing will be needed for the Greeks to keep up their pace of spending which should not be altered lest it “contracts the economy” by getting rid of government employees and debt financing which can’t be paid for now.

Well, Greece is a wreck, and under this plan it won’t get any better. But to me, the point of the Time article is to tell the American public, or such as read Time, that “hey, don’t worry about the debt or paying it off, that will contract the economy, and the only way to fix our broke status is to remain broke and get broker.” Yah, sure, Time will say this quickly enough, for that’s how to prevent the economy from contracting to the rational normal size, and it keep it pumped up on the speed of borrowed money to keep that economy humming enough to borrow some more money. Yah, sure.

That our current president Mr. Obama is of this “borrow and spend us out of debt” school, I’m sure he’ll be pleased that Time is taking up the cudgel against those who preach “austerity.” Which word is now becoming a bad word if it means that a government must live within its means, and let the people keep more of their own money. One wonders why the Time article didn’t call for more taxes on the government salaries that money was borrowed to pay so that the money borrowed could be repaid? No, thou shall not tax bureaucrats more, they are good people. Or perhaps, more taxes on those who might sell anything to the hordes of bureaucrats living on borrowed money, for people who earn money are, to debt-lovers like Time and the Greeks, not good people, for not paying their fair share of taxes to keep paying back the ever growing need to borrow.

Why ever growing? Well, first to keep up the current fiction, and to pay back the last installment on the credit line. So if one spends 10 dollars today by borrowing $10, then tomorrow you must spend another $10 lest the economy contracts, and pay back the $10 you borrowed to cover your spending. So you borrow $20. And when the next day comes round, you spend the $10 on the bureaucrat, $10 on yesterday’s borrowing, and now $20 more on the current borrowing. Which will require you to borrow some more next week, lest the economy contract, of course. Onward and upward into a tornado of debt.

There is a woman named Elizabeth Warren, running for Senate in Massachusetts, who is quite clearly of this mentality too. She recently said that anyone earning money must pay most of it as taxes to all the people who paid other taxes for it’s really their money, and the earners have no real right to it for if they earned it they earned it from other people. Much as Greek bureaucrats deserve their money for without them spending at companies that sell stuff than the companies that sell stuff wouldn’t earn all that money, so tax it from them and give it to the bureaucrats so that they can spend it back at the companies. And we’ll call this “economic growth” and “economic stability.” Sure, sure. It’s a pipe dream, even some pipe smoking, for then the money is funny, it’s all borrowed, more must be borrowed, and the debt increased, and the taxes increased to pay the debt, or the lenders told to go jump in the Aegean Sea.

Well, like I said, it’s a mess, but Time magazine and this meshuganah writer, Mr. Schuman, is not helping anyone do anything but ignore reality and go with the current US governmental program of borrowing to pay current expenses and pay off old debt, until someone comes to us with a bailout program to lend us more money when we can no longer tax or seize enough wealth out of the economy to pay for our current expenses and the debt we borrowed yesterday to cover yesterday’s current expenses, and today’s debt to cover today’s spending.

There seems not to be a politician alive today anywhere who understands this. So I’m not sanguine about our prospects in the next presidential term or two. We are merely going down the Greek path, but with far bigger numbers. And every other country on earth is doing the same thing. And perhaps, just perhaps, when there’s no more money to borrow from anyone, and all the lenders need to borrow too, then we the people will realize that our current political leaders are actually a bigger drain on the economy and a bigger debt we have to worry about than any monetary debt we might hold and any austerity to get back to living within our means that might be required. But, if we all go the Greek way, soon enough, oh, less than a decade, there will be no more money to borrow or lend anywhere. And then, well, then we can get back to the underlying problems of too much debt.

Enjoy the collapse of the Euro and the tanking of many an economy with it, including China’s, which are dependent on the Euro, and watch how the riots and forces for “hope and change” take to the streets to decry living within one’s means and the need to borrow endless amounts of more money, from someone, anyone, they know not anymore who. And there are precious fewer who? left every day.

Which all reminds me, somehow, of drunken frat boys at Mardi Gras with Daddy’s credit card – spend till you’re broke, and borrow more to continue the party. Happy Mardi Gras day! Which is, in fact, this very day, so how every apropos. Maybe the Greeks and the rest of Europe can catch some worry beads. They’re going to need ‘em.

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Democrats are just as gay-perplexed as Republicans Monday, Feb 20 2012

For 60 years the nation has been evolving on gay folks. Both Democrats and Republicans; some have been faster than others. Ever since the first fledgling gay rights groups, the Mattachine Society and others, and Frank Kameny, and others, all back in the 1950s, began to get serious about rights for gays, the nation has been evolving. Yes, there’s no such thing as “gay rights.” Though this is the stock phrase. Many of our erstwhile opponents like to use this turn of phrase to conclude we are getting something “special,” you know, just for us. Such is not the case now, nor ever was. What there was was a wholesale denial of rights for gays.

Simple rights, like free speech, were denied. After all, until 1976 the US Post Office would not allow gay political information to be sent through the mails. Our newspapers, pamphlets, brochures, fliers, etc, etc, were seized and destroyed. The um, perpetrators could be fined or sent to jail. It was not until 1986 that the New York Times agreed to use the word “gay” as an adjective. I dare say even today virtually no mainstream media outlet will carry gay themed political ads or pleas for decency. And indeed, if there’s any gay story in the media at all, it is always “balanced” with someone who is virulently anti-gay. As if the Klan were invited to discuss marriages for African-Americans, or the Nazis brought in when the new Jewish Deli is opened, to discuss the dangers of the Jews to Christian society, of course. Such was our free speech limited, that gay folks were routinely chased out of our own homes until even more recently, I’d say the mid-1990s, for telling our own families we were gay (I was fortunate, this did not happen to me.)

We were denied the right to assembly. We could not even gather in a bar for a beer without the police state coming down upon us. Made no difference if the city, county or state was run by Republicans or Democrats or a mix, there were bar raids. Gay festivals, parades, political rallies, were simply not allowed. A mere small gathering of us could elicit a swift and sure police reaction against our right to freedom of assembly. We could be denied housing, jobs, positions of authority, we could be chased from anywhere, and told to lump it. We could be incarcerated in mental institutions against our will. We were denied the right to law licenses, and other professional licenses. We could not even be plumbers or electricians if some licensing board decided we were unfit merely because we were gay.

Indeed, gay folks were not considered of sound mind and body, so that our assets could be seized, our papers, our very persons, and we were subject to any manner of tortures and be deprived of any sort of liberty to act and be, as of right, free and independent individuals within society. There was no limit to the police state, albeit rarely exercised, that could be hurled against us. Nor was there any limit to the medical industry that could not be hurled against us. They were determined we would be “cured”; indeed, they demand we “cure” ourselves to this very day. Cure what, they’re not sure. What is the cause of their perceived malady, they know not. Why such a thing exists they cannot fathom. They are merely insistent that we change, they don’t care by what method, but it often seems to be more pure than Mother Theresa herself, apparently.

But none of these rights are “gay.” They are American. Our government penalized us throughout our lives; we paid taxes for the privilege. We were considered felons, not that anyone did much about it. The laws were there almost just to condemn, not to follow. Even Justice Antonin Scalia found it very hard to believe that the City of Houston and the entire State of Texas could not find one gay couple to prosecute for “sodomy” or “crimes against nature” for 25 years before Mr. Lawrence engineered his dust up so that the Supreme Court could finally rule that gay folks had a right to some privacy in the bedroom, or elsewhere within our castles. Indeed, barely 2 decades before, they ruled that the police state could be created and directed at gay folks any old which way the politicians would want. And few politicians did anything whatsoever to correct the situation. Not Democrats or Republicans. And when it came time to DOMA and DADT the Democrats joined the Republicans in record numbers in bipartisan denial of rights for gays.

We were denied the right to free exercise of religion, too. Indeed, we still are. For our religion, if I could call it that, since nearly every other religion says we could not possibly be a part of theirs, does say that our marriages are valid and that we are good and decent folks. But we are still denied the recognition of our religious beliefs. If we say our Bible does give grace and succor to us, we are still told by other religions that they have the power of the law against us in the prohibiting of our free exercise. If we say our God has ordained that we be, and that we too live by the test of Jesus, “treat others as you wish to be treated,” then we are denied the free exercise of that belief through the laws pushed by other religions. And these other religions make it clear that all their protests against gay folks, against gay existence, against marriage for us, against the very concept of gayness, are based on their faith and their understanding of their Bible and their God, whom, apparently, they make equally clear, specifically prohibits our existence or our celebration of our lives. And so the laws are based on religion, and not for any other purpose, and ergo, we are denied the very right to our own religious beliefs. Indeed, some certain religions go so far as to say that their coreligionists who give affirmation to us are apostates. Oh, it is entirely a religious matter, and nothing more.

But some of our opponents, on both sides, go even still further, and claim we are “sick” and “ill” and they are quite sure we are “stunted” and “sad” and perhaps melancholy in a psychological and psychiatric sense, they say, as does Maggie Gallagher, of the very ill-named but very sure “get rid of the gays” National Organization for Marriage that we are somehow “infertile” or some such. Well, then, I would think, if any of this is true, that if something is so awry as to require legal and medical sanction and intervention, then we are covered by the American With Disabilities Act. I dare say the ADA gives us ample protections, as does Section 504 of the Education Code, as do all the hazing laws, as do numerous other laws of this nation. I’m a big one for hoisting by petards, and theirs have logically backed them into a corner. If they say we are “not normal” then we’re covered by many laws, to receive some protections and mollycoddling, beyond what even we expect if they would just consider us a normal variant in human nature.

Still, there is, I see, in many places, a great divide among heteros, and among gay people more especially, that there is a belief that the Democratic Party is somehow this big Barney like gay lovin’ purple dinosaur, while the Republicans are this evil pit of vipers out to destroy gay folks. Such is not the case, not even close. For neither party is for us, and if so, only so Johnny-come-lately barely tolerating us and pandering to us that it’s not funny. Nancy Pelosi, congresswomen from San Francisco, just now, just this week, says the Democratic Party platform should approve of marriage for gays. Yes, well, where was she when she was Speaker of the House? She was mum. And she’s not the platform committee, and her idea will be vetted, and I’m sure thrown out and not included, for there are many within the Democratic Party who are quite against gay anything. All those African-American and Latino preachers and clergy and congregants are not in the least gay friendly. They’re not even gay perplexed.

And true, some Republicans have been more vociferous in their opposition to gay existence, and there are certainly many more public statements by those who claim to be Republican against gays, the Democrats are merely better at covering up their tracks. I can find no mainstream media stories about Democratic NY State senator Ruben Diaz and his virulently, violent, “death to gays” “NO GAYS!” rallies. I find that all the so-called lefty media, the ones the Right loves to decry, are all very willing to pay all sorts of anti-gay folks to come befoul their broadcasts. I find that this “balance” in this “debate” to be quite the worse than mere “I’m against you.” Frankly, it’s easier to argue against Rick Santorum who is just not ever going to get away with whatever he thinks he wants to do to gay folks, than it is against some deep in the hate closet African-American preacher who never graces the airwaves, but preaches still, his “death to the gays” and “NO GAYS!” rhetoric.

I find that many Catholic clergy and bigwigs are quite fond of Obama and the Democrats and Obamacare and sustainable this or that and fair social justice or some such, and are still quite anti-gay at the same moment. Only the media, gay or mainstream, don’t cover this. Gay blogs like to be one side or the other, gay commentators express this all the time: Democrats love us, Republicans hate us. Such is not the case, never has been. It’s been individual by individual, politician by politician. I find it interesting that the Republican mayoral candidates in San Diego were all gay. I find it hard to believe that Republican mayors are going to shut down gay bars and parades in their cities. I find that politicians of both parties are slowly, ever so slowly coming around to our side.

And I have found that we gay folks did this all without any laws for us, but only the removal of the laws and medical strictures against us. We did not do this by getting a law telling people to accept us, but we did it by getting people to accept us, and then remove the most egregious laws against us. We didn’t get the psychologists and the psychiatrists or the doctors or the medical community or anyone in science to say we’re good and normal and natural, what we got them to say is “Beats us, but what we thought we know is not true, now we know nothing.” I can’t find an evolutionary or creationist scientist anywhere who can conclude with certainty where we come from or why we’re here. I can’t locate a single person who studies the brain or nervous system who has come up with anything positive about gayness. I have found only the lessening of the negative.

And I haven’t seen any politician ever come out and say, “The gay folks are good,” but only that they either demur comment, wish the matter to go away, and that well, maybe no laws are needed against us, but that still doesn’t make it good. And it would be good if all gay folks would see this, and not go down the road of fantasy by saying “Democrats are for us, and Republicans are against us,” but recognize reality – the entire heterosexual portion of the nation has slowly come to the conclusion that they really don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to gay folks, and they are admitting, finally, that they have more to learn, and that perhaps, just perhaps, we really mean it when we say we just are and that only us are.

And in this coming presidential election, which is so important on being an economic and sound nation, it’s irrelevant to gay folks whether this or that politician is against or for gay marriage. It’s a sideshow. For if the nation is broke, and the money is no good, and the economy collapses, and we go the way of Greece and the rest of faltering Europe, then it’s not going to make a difference if our marriages are legally recognized or not. We’ll be starving, and wondering how to find a meal, and how to live a reasonable life, when the crisis hits. Married people will have no benefit or edge when it comes to a debased and shattered economy. Meanwhile, if the nation is better off than it was four years ago, then our quest for inclusion will continue faster. And if the nation collapses, then our quest for inclusion will continue faster too. Indeed, many an anti-gay person might all of a sudden find that the gay neighbor is indeed alright, since there’s going to be a lot more neighborly helping each other required to get through the coming crisis.

I have said it before, but the current Democrat, Mr. Obama, is clueless about economics, and he and his party are leading us to bankruptcy. And the current crop of Republicans are not really any better. And we are in for another presidential term or two of economic doldrums, near collapse, teetering on the brink, upheaval and whatnot all of which is no good for our pocketbooks. And when it finally gets sorted out, we gay folks will still have to be dealt with. I’m just not worried that any Republican like Santorum is going to have me arrested and incarcerated – the people of the nation, gay people’s families, the local politicians, the city police chief, none of these people is going to follow the dictates of some theocratic blowhard in the White House.

But I am worried about the government taking over everything in the nation and controlling the economy and the health care and the rising taxes and the unsustainable debt & deficits, as the Democrats are pushing. Basically, it’s the money, not the smooching, which concerns me, as it should every gay guy who’s faced with the same Hobson’s choice of two bad choices as all other Americans are faced with. Show me the money, I’ll deal with smooching without the government, thank you.

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Putin, Poland, Iran & Autism Sunday, Feb 19 2012

Well, sometimes, when the news is filled with interesting things, one must write about a few of them at once. And so I will tackle four mostly separate things: protests against Putin in Russia, protests in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe against internet meddling by governments and an international treaty, Iran stopping the flow of oil to England and France, and a new discovery about autism and genes.

First, ah, Putin, the power of Russia, and now the growing protests against the man and his regime. From http://news.yahoo.com/cars-circle-central-moscow-anti-putin-protest-110734745.html I find that Moscow’s people are getting rather fed up with the dictator for life that Putin has tried to become. Nothing like a little corruption and vote rigging to get the people riled up: The largest protests the country has seen in two decades began in December following a parliamentary election that was manipulated to boost the results for Putin’s party.

Poor Putin, he’s trying to lead a fading country. It’s losing people, and is expected to be 20 million people less in 20 or 30 years than it is today. The age to which people live is falling, instead of rising. People lead shorter unhealthier lives. The government is broke and corrupt. The economy is in the doldrums and rests on cronyism that our politicians can only dream of. The place is falling apart, without a doubt. And Putin can do nothing about it for he’s wedded to the old “government knows best” mentality, with a heavy dose of police presence to keep order. Yah, well, dictatorships always wind up in revolution, and Russia will get theirs soon enough.

Meanwhile, from http://news.yahoo.com/eastern-europeans-fuel-fight-internet-freedoms-083904407.html I read that some international treaty called ACTA is causing the Polish people to protest by the thousands, and for the Czechs and Slovaks and others in the former Soviet Russian orbit to rise up in the streets and hacking government websites to protest their government’s having anything to do with this treaty which is apparently so vague as to give governments powers to meddle with and start up surveillance of people and what they do on the internet that the governments, including the USA are led to proclaim that “we won’t do all this bad stuff, even if we’re allowed” sort of hemming and hawing which means, of course, that that is exactly what governments are intending to do. This Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is supposedly to stop pirating of Gucci bags and copyrighted movies and songs, etc. Yes, well, the only way to make sure that people are not doing these things is of course to monitor them, and closely, at that. And that’s what’s got people in the uproar.

The article says this activity “costs” companies money – but it doesn’t. Oh, sure, it doesn’t add to revenues, no. But the company is not out of money, it spent no money, it lost no money. It just didn’t earn it. And it probably wouldn’t have earned it anyway. For the real Gucci bags would cost too much, and the songs and movies are too expensive for some poor Polish peasant, and so they would not be sold anyway. The pirated versions are oh so much cheaper, and in the case of music, free on the internet. And thus there’s no revenues, but no costs either, to the companies.

Still, people are so riled up that the Slovenian ambassador who signed the thing apologized to her people for signing it. Here, the money quote from the article: The Slovenian ambassador to Japan, who signed it in Tokyo last month on behalf of her nation, later apologized, saying she had not understood at the time how it could limit freedom “on the most significant network in human history.” “I signed ACTA out of civic carelessness,” Helena Drnovsek Zorko wrote on her blog.

And when that sort of apology is issued by a government, well, then, that’s a good start to the demise of this ill thought out treaty which gives way too much power to the governments of the world, who would mostly just love to control the information on the internet. So let’s up the protests spread worldwide. Though it doesn’t say if she ripped her signature off the page.

Meanwhile, Iran seems to have cut off oil to England and France, and perhaps to the rest of Europe, and I’m thinking, well, good. Here’s the story: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-stops-oil-sales-british-french-companies-oil-124556230.html

What on earth is Europe doing buying Iranian oil anyway? The country is a terrorist hotbed that foments troubles throughout the Mideast and is set on going nuclear bomb crazy and has threatened to nuke Israel off the map. Even avoiding the issue of anti-Semitism in Europe, do the Europeans think that the nuclear fallout from Tel Aviv will not drift all over Europe and the Mediterranean? And what does it say when our erstwhile allies in Europe are trading with a nation that we are sort of at war with? Yes, we’re in some sort of war-like posture with Iran, of course. We’ve been that way since, oh, 1979. Ask Jimmy Carter.

And Iran is threatening us and everyone in the Straits of Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf, and well, anywhere else they can, and they treat their people like crap and shoot into crowds, and prevent the Iranian people from living the good life like Europeans get to live. Why should English and French youth and the rest of the people have glorious freedoms while the Iranian youth and people do not? Where are the rights of man when needed? And so for this constant repression and trouble making Europe is buying Iranian oil to fund the fun? Egad, talk about dumb moves. Europe should be doing what it can to rid the Iranian people of their theocratic overlords, not giving them money through the purchase of oil to continue the shenanigans.

And so those are the three international stories of the moment that intrigue me.

And then there’s this new study on autism, a subject of endless fascination for me since I see such parallels between autism and gayness it’s not funny. (And some people have complained to me of this link, and have disparaged the very comparisons I have made in the past.) So from http://news.yahoo.com/motor-impairments-appear-characteristic-autism-170408278.html I get this:

 

The test results showed that 83 percent of the children with an autism spectrum disorder were below average in motor skills, while their siblings without the disorder generally scored in the normal range, according to the study released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the journal Autism.

Identical twins had similar scores. Non-twin siblings who each had autism had similar scores. But scores were markedly different in sibling pairs in which one child had autism and the other did not, the researchers found.

Yes, well, and from http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism.htm we get:

What role does inheritance play?

Twin and family studies strongly suggest that some people have a genetic predisposition to autism. Identical twin studies show that if one twin is affected, there is up to a 90 percent chance the other twin will be affected. There are a number of studies in progress to determine the specific genetic factors associated with the development of ASD. In families with one child with ASD, the risk of having a second child with the disorder is approximately 5 percent, or one in 20. This is greater than the risk for the general population. Researchers are looking for clues about which genes contribute to this increased susceptibility. In some cases, parents and other relatives of a child with ASD show mild impairments in social and communicative skills or engage in repetitive behaviors. Evidence also suggests that some emotional disorders, such as bipolar disorder, occur more frequently than average in the families of people with ASD.

And so, if one twin has autism, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the other twin will. Which is germane to my comparison, for supposedly twin studies in relationship to gayness if one twin is gay there’s a strong change the other is, but not necessarily. And gay twin studies always study only twins were both are not, and where one is and one is not, but almost always avoid the issue of where both are. And well, our opponents conclude this means there’s some “choice” thing, or “environment” (which is never clarified beyond the word, of course,) and one twin is thus good and the other “evil” or some such, for sure. And then there’s this tidbit in the government’s literature:

“Scientists aren’t certain about what causes ASD, but it’s likely that both genetics and environment play a role. Researchers have identified a number of genes associated with the disorder. Studies of people with ASD have found irregularities in several regions of the brain. Other studies suggest that people with ASD have abnormal levels of serotonin or other neurotransmitters in the brain. These abnormalities suggest that ASD could result from the disruption of normal brain development early in fetal development caused by defects in genes that control brain growth and that regulate how brain cells communicate with each other, possibly due to the influence of environmental factors on gene function. While these findings are intriguing, they are preliminary and require further study. The theory that parental practices are responsible for ASD has long been disproved.”

Yes, well, parental practices long disproved, indeed. But one could take out “ASD” and put in “GAY” and this would all hold true. Still, for autism there’s mollycoddling and for gayness there’s condemnation. And we’re called just as crazy and psychiatric nuts, psychologically nuts as Autistic kids, though of course, we “choose” this, so that we can listen endlessly to the nonsense. Autism is to be researched, and gayness is not, lest tax dollars be spent “promoting” gayness, as if the mere mention of the thing creates more of it. And that’s the primary difference at this point. And since no two identical twins ever have the identical birth weight, they are obviously not exactly “identical” but really, really close. But that difference is always ignored. I’d dare say it’s time for a bit more study, eh?

Meanwhile, the article points out that they studied ASD kids’ ability to throw a ball and jump and run, and well, we all know that most gay guys are pretty lousy at that. “You throw like a girl,” is a frequent taunt, after all. If this nation studied gayness like it studied autism, I dare say we’d come to a quicker conclusion to what some consider the problem of gay folks living in the nation. For some are so adamantly opposed to the very concept that they are sure we are the ruination of the place, and there are even politicians who are dead set against us ever getting a good word. But if gayness was on the ASD scale – and the parallels are there for those who are inclined to look with open minds, and not preconceived Bible-quotes in hand – then we wouldn’t be having this “debate” about whether gay folks can be considered as just decent folks, which we are, but our detractors are quite sure we are not.

I don’t know, it’s a chilly cloudy windy afternoon during Mardi Gras, and so I’m not into too much analysis or thinking, but merely contemplating things which intrigue me.

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On “Marry Bacon” and other SB XXX Ads Monday, Feb 6 2012

Oh, I know it’s like LXVI or something, the XXX is for the um, XXX of the ads and game. Here, let’s take a gander. So, yes, I watched the Super Bowl. I’m glad the Giants won; I’m from NYC originally, I can root for the hometown team even if it hasn’t been my hometown for 27 years. I got a Nu Yawk accent, that’s reality. And yet, did I care who won? No, it would have made no difference to me. As it probably made no difference to the vast majority of Americans, and even not to a significant majority of the Americans who watched the Super Bowl. The teams don’t matter; it’s the halftime show and the pageantry and the bigness of America’s biggest sport. And of course, it’s about the ads. Oh, the ads are the thing. They are a far bigger and wider target for public analysis or opinion making. I shall join the fray, of course.

 The game is for aficionados of football; you know, all that pass rushing, and running, and what the tight end or the wide receiver and the quarterback did all that they were supposed to do. One team always does of course, and that’s the winner. Winners always do the right thing, even if they don’t know that they did it until it’s analyzed later on. People asked me, “Who do you think will be in the Super Bowl?” And I answered: :The ones with the most points in the last game that counts.” And then they asked “Who do you think will win the Super Bowl?” And I answered: “The one with the most point.” For it could go either way, and it did this time, in the strange “always to be remembered” plays that are often not that well remembered a decade later.

 It’s only football; even if in $1 billion dollar publicly funded stadiums that are barely used and sit otherwise empty and unused for weeks on end, months, even, perhaps. For economic development no doubt. And so that multimillionaire spoiled sports stars can throw a ball and run around and touch each other in ways that are some was provocative, of either violence, or sexually. Oh, it’s homoerotic if you’re a homo. But it’s not really, if one is just the 95%. Meanwhile, the 1% of the Occupy Movement, which I hear is still bleating around, did not dare to argue “Occupy Sports Stadiums” or “Occupy Billionaire Sports Teams” – for they are fat cats on the public dime indeed. One does not get a One Billion Dollar club house without some perception of importance. Welfare of a sort, without doubt. Perhaps they should all be drug tested, from lowly towel boy to big time coach. You know, to keep the public money pure from the evils of drugs. Still, the Occupy Movement was nary to be seen, or reported, nor did they apparently make a peep about the public funds expended on a game that not all Americans benefit from. Probably would have been beaten up had they shown up at the stadium.

 Not unlike the 8 or 9 rather motley folks who walked incessantly through the ignoring throngs at the Staten Island Ferry terminal that I passed through several times last week. They walked around with their placards, and they chanted, well, mumbled something or other about the 1% and the throngs looked at the iPods and talked on their cellphones and chatted with the fellows and basically not only ignored the tiny rabble and gave scornful looks of “what are you doing interrupting my glorious life in the greatest city in the world, the very capital of all that you oppose, and the very font of my own well being?” The Occupiers did not seem to notice that they were not only ignored, but shunned to a degree. Oh well, better luck in the next revolution. The ads gave lie to all that you preach, you Occupiers.

 Ah, the ads, yes, well, they were the thing. And they sold products, as ads are wont to do. Sometimes it was hard to figure out the point of the ad. For instance, apparently FIAT thought that near 1 minute of buxom broads in bikinis and sexually alluring positions galore is what makes the FIAT the next great car in America. Probably it was thought up in Milan in Italian and translated by Google Translator to English. But what of the FIAT? Beats me, the ad was a parade of bimbos, with nary the car to be seen. Though I wonder if the “family values/NO GAYS!” groups will complain about the raw wanton display of sexuality and sex itself, that might even cause Madonna a blush or two, of that ad? You know, to protect the children?

 KIA too had a bikini, teddy, Victoria’s got no secrets whatsoever clad buxom blonds filled ad, that supposedly showed you could get almost 72 virgins with every KIA – and in this lifetime! Yee ha! (note to self, reference http://powip.com/2012/01/teh-gays-and-teh-fashion-of-starvation/ – where he pointed out something to wonder about – which I call “gay-perplexed” which is not at all “homophobia,” but a true, “I don’t get it. Can you explain?” – And that’s the gay-straight conversation we gays have been having with you straights since Frank Kameny stood outside the Johnson White House and shook his fist. And what he wondered was if emaciated woman models were chosen by gay fashion designers as some ideal woman? And the answer is well, no. As was proven by the plenty of fashion, or not so much when one looks at the amount of fabric that was missing from the not so demur ladies on screen for millions of eyeballs to ogle at with puerile thoughts required for adequate understanding of the ad –> KIA = bimbo babes. Buxom curvaceous was in, anorexia was out.

 And will Rick Santorum and his ilk, who must heartily appreciate such ads, for these gentlemen for the sanctity of marriage and the pedestal on which woman must stand to be the perfect mothers who never raise a gay son again (say, if it’s our parent’s fault why are we blamed? Well…) must be, they never mention the raw sexuality of these ads as demeaning to women and promoting teenage sex and sex before marriage at least, and adultery, and well, objectification of mere sexual lust, (there didn’t seem to be any married people in any of the ads, that’s for sure,) and even sex all the time with multiple babes, and even orgies of rambunctious cupids, or even, Polygamy! (At the least the raw sexuality of some Valentine’s Day special ad presented only one bimbo,) Oh, the heterosexual licentiousness of it all – the perfect sex partner, by the dozens, all in heated display! Will Rick & friends finally realize that this does absolutely nothing for us? And that perhaps, then, they should listen to us and ask questions, and wonder “why?” like Powip did, instead of bleating, “End of the world, end of the world,” like lost sheep on a cliff side meadow. I mean really, does Rick believe that all the babe oglers will all of a sudden run down to the gay bar because a way-too-tattooed Beckham displayed his abs and pecs and dorsals and even a dash of gludious maximus (I ain’t no doctor, the butt,) in a pair of skin tight whities? Hmm, ah, what a homoerotic ad if one is a homo, and what a ad, finally, one, for the women of America to ogle at in tern. The men in the rest of the ads were nerds, geeks, freaks, fatties and pointless appendages to the male of the species, and in start contrast to all the he-men of the football field.

 And GoDaddy (oh, go link yourself, you’re so wonderful, you claim) came right out with the PussyCat dolls, and website, and raw near naked buxom babes so as to convince us all that the daddy of this feral feline menagerie is the place to go to do whatever it is that daddy does. And frankly I’m not sure. Perhaps a search engine? Or a “I like this” coagulator? Or some sort of dating service and social network? Hard to tell, don’t care. One of the nice things about the “homosexual lifestyle” is that we have our own sites, and our own networks, and quite a separate thing it is, that I don’t need a daddy on the net, but can act quite the decent fellow all by my lonesome. “Go Daddy”? Is that the way they perceive their customers? To be all men, in search of childlike women, girls even, who are without their own devices and means so as to require a daddy?

 Hmm, that’s something for the Concerned Woman of America should concern themselves with. What with them being all important politicos. And the One Million Woman of America, or something, which is hardly a lot, considering there are 150,000,000 or more women to be concerned with America. But these two are freaked that Ellen Degeneres is going to walk around in her trademark not-so-tight jeans and vest over a loose shirt, and looking more the librarian that would run the Christian section of the place, be the spokesperson for JC Penney. Oh, geez, ladies, go talk to Go Daddy about licentiousness and the breakdown of the moral order. Egad. Meanwhile, I shall not join the boycott, for I don’t shop at Penney’s anyway. But my sister will certainly continue to shop there, I’m sure. She’s more concerned for me than any other concerned-about-any-man woman in the nation, I assure you.

 Then there was the very strange bestiality of Career Builders – some website I’m sure that will pocket good money to do what only real people can do – build careers. What was the monkeys? What was with sleeping with the monkeys? What was with the monkey’s arm extended so that the hand was on the inner thy of the man laid prostrate in bed in his boxers and t-shirt – surrounded by monkeys in various states of slumber or conspiracy? Egad! It was gross. Well, I’ll continue to build my career without the assistance of this fine company. Why, I would join any boycott (or rather, continued never-used service, on my part, in which case how do I join a boycott of a company I don’t use?) that any of the NO GAYS! Movement would propose against this company on the basis of bestiality. I mean, really, to think that some female monkey is going to allow some hairless beach-creature to … oh, really, now, the bizarre idea. Or will, some freaked out Maggie Gallagher accuse gay marriage of now permitting this bit of monkey-business in the living rooms of America. To ask the question has Peter LaBarbera asked about a gay kiss, “How many boys will choose to date monkeys now?” Well, that’s their logic, and being logic, must apply everywhere, no? Yes.  And will the girl-named unmarried gay-boytoy-looking Mr. Stacey Campfield, demented and ill informed State Senator of Tennessee come out and say something about this demented ad alluding to man & girl-monkey sex and how it could lead to heaven knows what sort of diseases and he laid at the foot of us? Egad, some hetero Africans ate Simian AIDS infected money brains and chops, and the world has suffered for it apparently since the 1950s, even, perhaps, and the 1970s if more accurate tests are correct. Mr. Campfield, learn your facts prior to showing yourself the fool you be.

 Ah, but then, the clincher of the weird ads. The title of the post ad, even. But well, one should wait to the end for the best. It’s “Marry Bacon” time – yes, with their own website! Yes, a website I refrain from going to. For it’s to promote Jack-in-the-Box’s new bacon something other. The health authorities and the First Lady are no doubt lamenting the advent of this no doubt fattening froth of calories, fats, salts and lards of dubious merit to one’s waistline. Ah, but the thing is sold with the sanctified word “marriage” – till death do they part (which, if too many of these sandwiches will be sooner than the public purse might be able to pay for.) Ah, showing the groom before the preacher, holding the bride in hand, (not permitted before the magic words, right?) with a veil, yet. Yes, a burger with a veil, you saw it there first – the heathen practices of idol worship somehow invoked – mere pieces of beef and pork (itself a mixture of species many religions abjure, for God said “No”,) elevated to the status of holy matrimony. Not even a somewhat-thinking monkey even, but perhaps in the Jack-in-the-Box Thailand version, the monkey meat too, but mere chopped beef and smoked hog. My my, what a sacrilege!

 “You may eat the bride” says the beaming preacher. The congregants applaud, the man sinks his teeth into a slab of beef! Egad, bestiality and desecration of holy marriage inside a church with a preacher and the symbols of god all about, with a raw sexual innuendo, nay, a command even – for Oral Sex! Egad! The horrors, for my somewhat prudish public nature, and my rather well founded insistence that sex and sex talk is between like species and sentient beings of whatever sort. Oh, speak of the way Kangaroos hop to it, I don’t care. But don’t have the Koala jumping in to the fray. But eating meat, in a church, with a preacher – on and on the very symbols of decency and religious faith debased for mere unseemly corporate greed. And will I hear any group or person opposed to gays getting marriage speak up about the assault on marriage this ad shoves in our faces? (Oh, anyone can talk like outraged religious preachers of a fundamentalist sort, why, I can even quote the Bible with fire and brimstone.)

 I doubt it, they’ll either not mention it at all — or blame gay marriage proponents for opening the box lid to the slippery slope of monkeys in bed and eating brides and raw sexuality on the public airwaves to impressionable youth and demure damsels and no doubt un-frolicked teen boys, while preserving holy wedlock between two virgins for the very first time matrimony with not so much as a straying eye (Jimmy Carter, “I have lusted,” and Jimmy Swaggart, “I have sinned” come to mind) Well, maybe I’m wrong, as sometimes I am, and often like to be, but somehow, I think the ads will be merely “shocking” and even “tawdry” and some will say this or that opprobrium and the companies will re-run the ads for cheaper rates for a month or more, to let the message in. And what is the message? Sex, sex is everything. Go get some sex, and buy something we sell along the way.

 And who will be blamed for all this somewhat raw and unseemly by past standards sexuality on the public TV? Well, to hear Tony Perkins and Peter Sprigg, Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown, and the National Organization for Marriage, and the Family Research Council, and all the rest of the wackos who blame gay folks for everything from hangnails to earthquakes, babies out of wedlock to hurricanes, and Lord knows everything under the sun, “if only homosexuality is allowed to exist we wouldn’t have any of these problems – we’d all be pure and decent and live in sex-a-few-times unicorn land.” Yeah, it sounds good, well, no, it doesn’t. But the Super Bowl ads were a continuum of sex and sexuality. And barely a gay thing to be seen, unless one was well, gay (what, you don’t think we can either slip them in, or you heterosexuals don’t do something which we perceive a tad different? Yeesh,) – or if one is of the NO GAYS! Movement which spends endless millions of dollars and countless hours perusing the culture and conjuring up the menace of a few tiny percentage points in the population. They are obsessed with us. But don’t seem what heteros do. And well, what they say over the next week will be as funny, tawdry, absurd, fantastic, and unintentional as what the ads themselves presented. At least to gay folks. Most straights I find are clueless about the FRC, NOM and others who work diligently on their behalf to rid the nation of gay folks or at least any positive mention of gayness or any gay individual. And get as many laws passed against us as they can muster, lest the peril of our existence wreck the nation already besotted in debt, deficit, corruption, social problems galore, endless government and too many busy buddies — you know the stuff that matters. And not whether two sissies smooch with a piece of paper in their hand and their happy families surrounding the happy moment, to which thanks, Macy’s — which did just a tiny ad of two grooms on a cake, with nary a speedo in sight, nor navel presented, but tuxedoes! And the terrified puppies of the Theocratic Right went into a hissy fit. I shall await their histrionics over the Super Bowl XXX ads.

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Translating Otto to Joe; Czech to English Sunday, Feb 5 2012

People who look at this blog, or who might encounter it — perhaps they wonder, what happened to the “daily” mush — for I will acknowledge that it’s been the “weekly” mush of late. Well, that’s life. Here’s a major component of what I’m doing — which is translating letters from Czech to English so my family can enjoy and learn of our history. Other than that I am, of course, as is said by many a politician and religious figure, to be “anti-family.” Yeah, well, right, sure, they’re clueless, but what shall I do about it? And so, well, why not, let’s publish Otto’s letters to his brother Joseph. 

Both wound up escaping what is now the Czech Republic, which is, to us in my family, Bohemia, and to the larger world still, as “Czechoslovakia.” Oh, 99.9% of it will be unintelligible to most people – ay, but certain words jump out at you – see if you can find them. What was Uncle Otto complaining about and warning about, to his brother, my Grandfather? And so this family thing I’ve plunged into has kept me from the larger political world, and I’m sure no one will miss me, and yet, the warnings of so long ago about big government and politicians with promises; mostly lies — and political parties, and the similarities between Nazis and Communists, well things are still the same.

So here’s what Otto said to his brother Joe — and remember, after Joseph left for America in 1920, he never saw another of his relatives again. 

And I understand the most of it, and can figure out the rest — and that gives me an insight that not many other people have.

Two letters from Otto to Joe, the brothers Javurek

This is a letter from Otto Javurek in Nelson Bay, New South Wales,Australia to Joseph Javurek in New York City. There’s no envelope. It’s all in Czech and is two-sided on onion-skin paper, and it’s typed not handwritten. There’s three pages from Otto, and one from Paula on the four sides of the two sheets of paper. It must have been a Czech typewriter because all the hačky a čarky are typed too.

It’s datelined:

Nelson Bay 6.1.1953 (January 6th, 1953)

Mily Pepo z rodinou,

Tvůj dopis jsem obdrzel a hned Ti na něho odpovidám. Za gratulaci mnohu díku a i my vám všem přejem v novém roce to nejlepši, hlavné zdravy.

 Bude tě zajímat co zde dělam, tož celý měsič jsem bez práce neboť jsem byl zaměstnán zde v hostelu a proto že je nás tu nyní velmy málo a robotniku mnoho tak mně propustily a mohl jsem obdržati práce jako ná hrádem zde na silnici, ale proto že jsem onemocněl na silnou angínu tak jsem nemohl a pak bych to asi ani navzal neb to byla moc těžka práce.

 Pro moje ruce když chci dělat dále zubařinu je to velmy těžke a beře to cit který je mojím povolaní tak důležity.

 Jinak zde nyní máme velikou nazaměstnanost a to ve všech odvětvych a to jíž vice jak půl roku.

 Bude tě snad také zajimati jaké zde máme poměry? Kdo zde vede to jsou opět ty bestie německé.

 To jako by australani si nemohly nikoho jiného najiti jako bývala nacisty nebo SS furery with umlaut on the u ktery si zde dělaji co ohtěji a zavádějí zviky německých koncentračnich táboru a pani managery si je nemohu pochopitelné, že zde v radiu si tak potrpí na německe odrhovačky a vozejí sem do australie tolika němcu jako pátov kolunu

 To mimochodem jsem se zmíníl o zdejšich poměrech a nyní opět k věci chledám v Newcastlu byt jíž vice jak pět měsicu a marně i neb o byty je zde veliká nouze a na domek zatím nemám.

 Pojedu v pondělí chledat byt kde bych mohl provozovatí zubařinu.

 Bude to sice ze zdejšima ůrady nerovny zápes ale Ja to chci skusiti se osamostatnit.

 Jak mile by se my to podařile tak bych mněl vyhráno hned by se my trochu ulechčilo.

 Na těžkou práci jíti nemohu tak musím tohle podniknouti a snad se my to podaři.

 Pak za druhé kdybych mněl pracovati zak jako posud na yardu tak to bych si toho mnoho nemohl pořiditi.

 Hostel je veliká zludějna ja platím týdně 9 a půl Fundu a zakladní plat jsem mněl 12 a půl Fundu tak z toho bych mnoho so nemohl pořiditi.

 Co mně pomohlo bylo to že jsem dělal tu zubařinu a mohl si doplniti věci které jsem potřeboval do měho oboru.

 Nepracoval jsem ale dlouho neboť právé ty doroty německé a bastardské mně šly udat na ůnii.

 Tak jsem toho musel nechat a žiti jedine z meho platu.

 yní béru tu podporu ale hostli to mají tak zařizené že peníze z podpory jim posílají přimo tak že je do ruky ja nedostanu a oni hned si jé nechaji na krití hostlu, a já dostanu jen 1 a půl Fundu za hostel 5 Fundu a nějaký silink.

 Proto také chci z hostelu do privátu kde si budu moci snad i něco více přividělaty a udržeti nad vodou až do doby kdy se celá situace zlepši.

 Jídlo zde v hostelu je pro prasata a když tí napišu že někdy to nechce žrát ani pes. Je to hold austrálká zdravu na kterou si my těžko zvikáme, ale nyní si nato ani neařikáme, jen děti to nechtěji jisti a to jeto to nejhorši.

 Můj ůsudek ti mohu napsati. Ja osobně jsem rád že to je asponˇ takové neb zde asponˇ mohu klidně spáti a přemejšleti o nové bodoucnosti a vím že by semnou tisíce lidi doma mně nili se asponˇ v klidu mohl najisti.

 Z domova jinák nejsou žadné radostné zprávy a život tam mají stále těši.

 A co děla slavny exil???????? his eight question marks

 Hlavně tam u Vaš v Americe pese se budouci presidentský stolec a ministerské křesla. Je to mý někdy velika hamba jací darebaci nás representuji, znám jich několik z listiny svob. československa a hlavně znám je z jejích bývale činosti jak přes válkou tak i po ní kde řvaly z komoušemu my chceme Košický programa a otom mulém pivu E da ani nemluvě.

 Škoda že jen se toho nedočkal když byla ta veliké krize doma a to v ůnorovych dnech 1948 kdy Beneš řekl že si neumí predstaviti vladu bez Komunistu a Gottwalda. Mnoho těchte byvalých representantu Komošu sedi dnes v Americe a je aktivně činy v československú radě.

 A co dělaji tam ?????? his six question marks

 Jedině velikou ostudu a o emigrantí se nestarají a kradou jedině pro sebe.

 Viš pepiku viděl jsem některe jak byli ještě v německu jak celé aka které přišly z americky jak to. Rozkradly jak pro sebe tak také k tomu že to prodávalí jinam, čily okadly vlastní lidi a samy se obchacovaly, ale přitom byly zástupci těch drukych kumpám.

 Kteří již byli za velkou louži a hrály si kvůli hlasum do roky. Dnes vidím jaká banda to je neboť dle poslední listiny jsou již všihni v tak zvané národní radě a již si zajištuji pozice do bodoucna.

 Otom by se daly psát cele romany ale z těmy lumpy to vůbec nechne neboť mají kůži z hrocha nebo krododíla.

 Zapomněly však na jedino že to co se jím povedlo dvakrát, že po třetí se to již napovede, neb dvakrát zklamaly a potřeti se to již nepovede.

 Totiž abys my rozumněl aby vrtichvostí mněly opět někdy vedouci místo ve vládě a doufám že víž co to je vrtichvost???? his four question marks Ale raději ti to vysvětlím.

 To jsou národni socialisti partaj Benešova. To jsi mněl také tak, když byla Mnicovská krize 1938 tak Beneš také si žvanil do kapsi že se nadá zmástí a že má plan a ani píd půdy že nikomu nadáme a vše že ma, dobře promyšlené, a nakonec, byl z to eroplan a nás tam všechny nechal těm německým psam na pospas. Co udělal za tu bodu dobrého ????? his five question marks

 Jel do Moskvy a tam nás prodal komunistum v k tomu mněl tolik drzusti že řikal že historíjé teprve ukáze bylo=li to zpravné, a tychle jeho nosuhladove to tvrději také a že se to nedá vůbec dnes posuzovati a kryitzovati jen aby všechnu vynu mohly od sebe odvrati=ti

 Jedným slovem L U M P O V E = his caps and separation = ve velkým a žongléři z celý národem. Rad bych z tebou si otom jednou pohovořil abys viděl jakou žlocineckou. Ůlohu hráty z celým národem a kolik tisícu lidi dostaly nyní do koncentračních tábora a na šibenice a zničily rodin.

 Někdy si myslím jak můžete být tak slepí tam zatou louži a že se nepředsvědčite a jakostí lidí nezly k něčemu postíte.

 Jsou mezinima někteří velmy dobři ale ti nemohu prorazit a zdolat ty vrtichovsty jakož i všechny ty nahonči jejích, ale věrim, že se tak před jednou stane. Nějakemu konci zatím něni mnoho náději a za těch pár let co to bude trvati se to na ních přeci pozná. Pak pujdu k čertu kam jidině patří.

Tak to jsem ti tak trochu objasnil jak se dívam naty representy tam u Vás. Ovšem to není všechno a má to jěště mnoho bolestí ale tohle je dosti již napsáno a škoda místa pro ně ale jednou si otom promluvíme osobně.

 Tak a nyní co se týka nás abychom přijely k Vam do státu. Podle mýho by to nebylo špatné a snad i o mnohem lépé nežly zde v austrálií ale uvaž jedno Pepiku co bych nepřijde nějaká nova krize.

 Ja zde odsud to nemohu posoudit neb ty poměry v detailu neznám a pak upřímně řečno nechci nikomu být na obtiž neb vim že každy má sám se sebou co dělati, pak máš rodinu a neohtěl bych aby někdo v nás podniknouti.

 Se sice prave že odsud většinou se stěhuji do U.S.A. A jen kdo tam ma nějakseho přibuzného nebo známeho ta mu pomahá aby se odsud dostal pryč do Americky.

 Znám mnoho takových připadu známých a již byly volání do Sydney na Americky konzulat a nyní čekaji kdy odcestuji.

 Tak mily Pepiku si to dobře všechno rozmysly. Ja bych velmy rad Vás všechny viděl a byl z Váma pohromdě ale předem si to musiš dobře rozmysleti aby tam pro mne byla pak také ta práce neboť zahálet neumím a bez práce jsem jak bez ruky.

 Jinak jsme zdráví až nato že před vánoci jsem mněl silnou agnínu a nyní ještě jako rekonvalescent a pujdu po neděli do toho boje z australií a lepši zítřek.

 Tak nyní ti napišu všechny data které budeš potřebovati

 Otto Javůrek narozen 15 řijna 1906 v Lublani povolani Dentista nebo jako mechanik Byl němec Folksgerich tem odsovzen ná 10 let káznice. 6 roku odseděl Paula Javůrek roz Miklošič narozéná 29 června 1921 v Lublani zaměstnaním uřednice.

 Byla v okupaci 2 roky v koncentračním táboře v německu.

 Vojtěch Javůrek narozen 22 dubna 1947 Lublani. Chodi již do anglické škola

 Eliška Javůrek narozena 14 ledna = 1949, he did not put the year = v Karlovych Varech žbrblá k dorozumnění již anglický.

 Odaci list odáni v Lublani 19 června 1947.

 Opustil ůzeny československa 14 listopado 1949. By zaměstnán v Mnichově na Medikal Office a pak přesidil do rakouska, zaměstnán v Klagenfurtu – gelovec – jako dentisto.

 Opustil německo 4 ledno 1952 přistal v austrálií 9 unora 1952. Tohoto času v Nelson Bay Hostel NSW Austrálií.

 Tak to myslím že ti bude stačiti a budešli ještě něco potřebovatí tak napiš a obratem to pošlem. Jo to bych zapomněl Paula tám má také přibuzný a odních jsem také již dostaly zprávu, jsou v Trimontan Michigan, ale jinak žadnou jinou zprávu nemohl neb její manžel zemřel tak až nyní bude snad i jiná zpráva.

 Tak milý Pepiku já bude končit a nechám druchý list pro svojí nulou polovičku která ti napiše ty mírý o který pišeš.

 Joz českoslovenka jsem od Milčiných přibuzných dostal psani.

 Tak Karel je na svo = unreadable word = ještě to nějak tam klepou, ale jak dlouho??? = his three question marks =

 Karel jinák již asi nebydly na staré adrese neb mu praxi z likvidovaly čekám odněho netrzchledanou a pozdrav od nás všech,

 Tvůj bratr

 Ottoj.

  On the fourth side is this second letter, from Paula

Milý švagře, švagrova a děti,

Vás dopis nas moc potěšil a radu bich věděla jak tak vůbec zijete a co dělaji děti. Už jsme a Vas všeh hodně dlouhonice neslišely tak si myslím, že museji být uz hodně velky. Doufám, že nam jednou přece trochu vic date vědět osobje a pošlate taký nějako fotočku.

Jak si žijeme mi tady už Vam Otta napsal ale doufám, že časem přece bude lepši.

 Co se tiče šatu pro děti a mně bých Vam byla moc vděčna protože se man od prani moc trha ale nemusi být to nove. Možna, že ma švagrova nějaki staré šati po sobje a dětěh které už ne nosi a nam to přide jako novy. Vím, že toho taký tolik nemate abých jste kupova=li ještě pro nas. Proto že také u Vas děti pořad něco potřebujou.

 Ale pro každy připad Vam posilam velikost děti.

Vojti – 6 let – australska velikost 22

Eliška – 4 – australska velikost 20

- the sizes – it is in English

Moji miru ne vím totiž australska miru ale je středná velikost.

 A jsem docela štihla. Jenom si prosim zadne starosti s tim děkuji švagrovi za jeji dobrou vuli.

 Pro dnesek končim, srdečně zdravím všechny a těsim se na přišti Vas dopis,

 Vaše Paola, z dětma.

 The second full letter from Otto to Joseph was typed too. It is in two sections, written months apart.

 Handwritten on top is =

 příloha 5 foto obrásku

 It is dated =

 Newcaslte dne 12.1.1954

January 12^th

 Mily Pepo a cela rodina,

 právě jsme obdrzely Tvůj mily dopis za který Ti mnoho krate dekujem za gratulaci Vam všem mnoho děkujem at z od nas Vam přejeme mnoho zdravy a štěsti v novém roce. Doufáme, že bude lepši jako ten mynuly.

 Píšeš, že jsi nam posla nějaký balik ze šactvem, ale moho Tě ujistit že do dnešneho dne napřisla od tebe sebe menši sprava tak še my jsme ner děly co se vlastně stalo z Váma.

 Psal jsem ti v posledním dopis se vrěkeré data o které jsi mně psam a od tebe doby napřisla od tebe žadna spravá.

 Tak a nyní trochu o nas, chvála bohů jsme vsichni zdravi až na mně nasledky německého šesti letého koncentraku zanechaly přeci nasledky ač posud to všechno snašim tím ze vše ignoruji ale jak dlouho to tak pujde je ve hvězdách, ale doufám, že to vydrži až do našeho navratu domu, který šsto navrat je ještě dal nežlz tz hvězdy na obzoru.

 Ja jinak jsem již přes rok bez zaměstnané oficialně neb jinak pracuji sam pro sebe zde v Newcastle kde jsem si zařidil velmy primitivna ordinaci a laboratoř a stále se pokoušim z tohoto srabu dostati trochu viš a tak stilni mám veliké starosti.

 Mám již přes rok zazadono a povoleni ale zdejši vřady pracuji jak hlemíždl ale přeci jsem jiz byl vyzvani abzch šel do Sydney na universitu studovat tři roku medicinu na z kladěných papiru které mam z domova.

 Tak si asi muze z představit co jsem si as myslel, skupové hlavy nalité čajem kdo by to financoval nato se neptaji.

 Nyní právě chci docílili abz mně povolily dental laboratorium a při tom bych také mohl prováděti prívatní praxi ale, nežly to všechno bude vyřice né tak nějako ta voda vtěče.

 Mam nyní právě moznost si najmouti v centru města tři místnosti, tak právě nyní pro mě jsou velike rozhodujici dny zdaly se mně.

 To pověde, ne technicky ale finančně, neb jen odstup za tři mistnosti požadujou 500 Ls = british pounds? = kde maš zařizení které převýšuje 1000 Ls a to je všechno bez bytu, slibuji si od toho ze se to rozejede a pak by bylo již hej.

 Vysednavám nyní z advokatem jak jsou pro mě vyhlidky ohledně povoleni a to rozhodne o dalšim co budu podnikat, totož pak si najdu financiera z plnou vervoude nove práce.

==

 Here he must have stopped and never sent the letter, for the next portion is dated

 = Newcastle 2.III.54 = or, March 2^nd, 1954.

 He just starts off like nothing happened.

 Tak nyní se opět dostávám ku psani a to proto že jsem mněl hodně jednani jak z advokátem tak i s ůunii a v sledek je právě tahorý jako na začatku.

Přitom se mně ještě otevřely ruce do živa tak ze jsem nemohl ani pracovati. Byl jsem u lěkaře který jsou pocuhany, ale aby se to neplatlo tak Paula také si vsponněla toiš také nasledek koncetraku marodit potřebovala by přisnou dietu a jak to můžes dokazat ty australské blyvaniny.

Schaním jak blazen pro ně zde v Newcastlu byt, ale stále marně, neb ja řekneš, že maš dvě děti tak, tak je konec ale kdybys mněl dva psy tak to ano.

Jedu ve čvtrtek do Sydney kde pujdu se zeptati zdaly by za mně sly jako ručitele tak pak bych si mohl snad vypujčit 1,000 Ls na tu novou ordinaci. Ovšsem to je zatím ve hvězdách.

Jinak v nas nic noveho, děti jsou zdraví a uči se velmy dobře, koukaly jsem naty tvoje ratolste jake jsou pěkně urostle tak že maš z nich radost. Rad bych vas jednou všechny viděl a to kdyby by bylo možně doma v evropa.

Co jsem teda z turého dopisu z jistil také tvoje děti již mateřsky jazyk neovladaji, což není od tebe zpravné. Ne zapoměn že timto vedením celeho zapadu který provádí, jak zde tak hlavně u Vás jakož myslím celé anglicke panstvé pracuje jediné pro komunizmus.

General čas pracuji pro Moskvu Viš co jsem si dovolit? Koupil jsem si hned pu přijezdu do Australií radio a to specialní abych mohl tu slavnou lži propaganda slyšet na vlastní uši a jaký je vzsledek, že domu na zakladě těch slibu zapadních plní krymynalý a popraviště a stále je navaději k sabotýži, a vysledek je nula, jednině ty sliby jím zustavají a moralní a destruktíum apatre.

Podivej se jen v Vás natu českoslovenko nár. =národní= radu. Kdo tam uni sedí, samy komunistiký kolaborant a bezcharatěrní lump.

 Nemysli, že zde to je o něco lepši takchle tu republiku nevybudujem, že by nam zapad pomohl tomu pomalu přestávám věřit, neboť sam je schnilý.

 To jsem mněl přiležitost poznat a veškeré jednaní na mezinarodiním polli to jedině potvrzuji.

  To byla jentak mala ůvaha a nevím. Jak no tebe to uděla dojem avšek byl bych Ti povděčen kdybys mně také napsal Tvůj nazor nebo dojem jaký Ty máš a nebo jak vy amerikaní se nato dívate a nebo na jaky fantastický zázrak čekute?

 Co by bylo moje přrani v kterě začinám pomalo věřit a to podle přirodního zákona, je, že u rusku dojde přes veškerě přani všech těch osvoboditelu kteři májí jedíné to přani aby se komnizmus pokud možna co nejdété udržel, že dojde k převratu a že se nastolí demokracie ale né lži demokracie jaká vládné na západě a pak si to ztěmy všemy tak zranýmí osvobotitely pomalu půl evropy a dnes sed sníma u jednoho stolu a stále se dohaduji otom jak to udělat aby jim mohlý dát ještě ten zbytek světu.

 Viš mám dojem, že tam u Vás můžu k tomu komunismu dojít dřív nežli si možžna mysliš.

 Máte tam těch zastanou až, až, a když se jeden postavil proti kromunismu. Tak by by ho ti největši potentati sežraly a velou proti propagandau, že to americe škodi ač po pravdě naopak to sesiluje simpatie, že již konečně tam.

 U Vás těm komoušu šlaphete radikalně na krk a date za mnřiše kam jedině patři.

  Tak a nyní již dost stou politikou která je prodejna jak děvka. Vše jak to řikaval doma otec.

 Napiš nám brzy a pošli také nějajé obrasky. Pozdrav na Vas všechnz a budem se těšit na milé spravý od Vás může žli přdplatmi, česky novyny americké a to politiku nebo některy jiny.

 Od Karla mam nyní stále zprávy a jsem aspon´ rád že je doma, ale stále nemocen hlavě srace. Milenka se bude v květnu vdavat a Daša čeka v dubmi rodinu.

 Tak ješte jednou všem pozdravy

Tvůj Ottoj z rodinou.

 And that is the end of the two letters from Otto Javurek in Australia to Joseph Javurek in New York City. Poor Otto, he got a raw deal, but still, did the best he could do with what he got.

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