The $700 BILLION DOLLAR ROBBERY( er, "Bailout")

This day will go down in infamy. I can't let it pass without registering my outrage at how 300 million americans are being forced to stand by and watch a handful of men open the doors to the vault and hand over the treasury to the thieves.

What this has come down to reminds me of when I'd come home with a new purchase and "slyly" (I thought) tell my husband what a great deal it was, how it WAS going to cost me (and name some highly exaggerated figure) BUT I got it for ONLY (some greatly diminished figure), and how much money I had in effect just saved him. HE never fell for it, but this Congress HAS.

Take a second or two... and think about how much $700 billion really is. It's seven hundred thousand million dollars! $700,000,000,000.00. And what will U.S. taxpayers like you and I get in return? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Increasing of taxes is a contentious, major, voting issue in this election, yet exactly how do americans think our soon to be 11.3 TRiLLION DOLLAR DEBT is to be paid! Be afraid, be very afraid.

The current, proposed bill, from what little we have learned, has no plans for new regulations or oversights to help avoid this kind of crisis in the future, no public interest givebacks to help the people whose homes are in the hands of the banks, and perhaps most shockingly of all, we will get absolutely no share in the profits if these fallen-from-grace financial giants bounce back... even though we are now assuming a great deal of the risk. In quoting Greg McCoach of Energy and Capitol, this is worse than a bad deal for us. In fact, it isn't even a deal!

The NYTimes reports "Under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which is expected to come to a vote in the House today, the Treasury Department gets $250 billion immediately to start buying up banks’ and other financial institutions’ least valuable mortgages and complex financial instruments backed by those mortgages. If needed, an additional $100 billion is available at the discretion of the president, and a final $350 billion is on the table, unless Congress resolves to take it back. The president has the authority to veto such a resolution (!!!).

Well on that note, I must get in my morning constitutional walk or go positively crazy!

From vine to table...its ready at last!

We watched this little melon (who had ventured over to our side of the fence from our neighbors yard) much like a parent watches a child grow...carefully nurturing it (spraying extra water thru the fence when Paula had neglected to water), protecting it from bugs, turning it as it grew, until today, when, with mixed emotions, I twisted it from the vines and brought to the table. Who knew a honeydew could get so BIG. My neighbor was in awe, it had reached the proportions of a basketball!































This little fella is doing its best to reach maturity as summer slowly fades...if Paula doesn't tire of the wilted, drying vines on her side of the fence it may make it. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides. ~W.E. Johns, The Passing Show

Labor Day 2008

We spent the day kayaking out on Morro Bay Harbor with our son Derek. Though overcast it was warm and very pleasant, not hot as it would have been had the sun broken through. "Click" each pic to enlarge and get the best "viewing"...see the pellicans dive bombing around us? Wow!


















This catamaran we came across was straight out of Water World (remember the movie with Kevin Costner?)




Ahoy Matey! This Pirate ship was pretty cool. Didn't get too close for fear of waking the pirates inside and ending our day walking the plank!






















How the Seal Lions and local Seals love to play "chicken"...they'd race up to our boats and then just at the moment of collision dive below! Took a bit of getting used to!






As I paddled by the "ghostly like sign "City Limits" I half expected to see a hand reach up to pull me under...brrrrr...a chilling thought in the morning mist...

Anyhoo....we had such an amazing day and cannot wait to do it again soon!

Wow, its CRAZY out there, the sky really IS falling! An over 500 point drop on Wall Street on Monday (nothing like it since 9/11) and now, with only a small recovery yesterday, another big hit today of minus 450! Everyone is panicking and scrambling. We read, after Bear Stearns collapsed, there would be more to follow, but Bush and McCain stuck to policy - "Our economy is fundamentally strong!" The experts felt otherwise and in these past weeks we've seen the giants collapse - Fanny May, Freddie Mack (Govt bought out), Lehman Bros, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the bail out of AIG...then there's UBS, and Morgan Stanley considering a merger with Wachovia, and Goldman Sacks taking big hits, and experts predicting over a 1000 more banks will fail yet...leaving all of us wondering if we should be pulling all our money out of our banks right now (!) and hide it in a hole in the ground! Nothing appears safe, "guaranteed" investments seem empty words.

I WANT to be optomistic, I still am hanging onto thoughts of bright shiny days ahead. But reality is staring us in the face. And then to top this off we have to decide who to trust for our next President??? McCain has shown us how well he can lie. We believed Bush in 2000, but fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. We didn't vote Bush in 04 but he stole the election nonetheless. Obama they say is the new kid on the block with no experience. Well I'm betting on "NO" experience as opposed to the kind of "experience" we've been dealing with for 8 years now. It's good JUDGEMENT I'm looking for. I'm incredulous that McCain's poll numbers have been rising at a time when the economy is collapsing, when he's admitted to knowing nothing about the economy, yet it "appears" so many americans are willing to trust this man to turn this economy around when he spent the last decade helping get us into this mess. I suspect despite all his pounding of fists on the podium and promises of reforming Washington, America will get it right on election day.

This week I've overheard conversations in the lines at the local grocery store of this dusty little California town, some are convinced its the "end of times", yep, nothing like religion and dogma to make one feel better!

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923