The 700 Billion Dollar Balloon

Some want to call it a 700 billion dollar bailout, some a rescue and others a "stimulus package." But here's what it really is, a 700 billion dollar balloon for our billionaire barons. This huge house of cards we have all unwittingly helped amass into all of its lofty, termite ridden glory, was created on our backs by the elite who benefited most from its teetering heights. To keep it that way so that high property values, exorbitant interest rates, and easy credit could float them all above the dross, they need this gargantuan balloon to tether it up with millions of strings and gallons of helium.

Without the helium lift, land prices will fall and with it the house of cards that our entire economic mirage has been built upon. In the short run, except for those who have been completely responsible and have not bought into this mess, there will be pain, maybe lots of it. But in the long run, if the lower and middle class survive the crush, with lower land values, the American dream will be more within their grasp. Perhaps that is what we need to finally discipline our selves as a nation because that pain is going to come sooner or later, why not take it now?

However, with the billion dollar balloon, the elite will be able to continue earning obscene salaries while enslaving the American public with mortgages it can't afford and credit that it cannot resist.

Therefore, if the status quo is going to be floated so we can enjoy our house of cards a while longer until the helium slowly leaks away, at the very least demand that our politicians secure limits on usury and consumer credit and force the wealthy, before they sail away on their golden parachutes, to disgorge their plunder.

Loren M. Lambert
September 29, 2008

The Hasty Hand of the Law and Brian Wood

After an argument with his wife, Brian Wood was sitting in his car, an obvious shell of a man, a gun held to his head.

All about him the ever impatient law enforcement officers were huddled behind barriers and shields. Acting brave and trying to provoke Brian into standing down, the officers, all decked out in their SWAT team outfits, volleyed back and forth at him using tear gas, stun grenades and intimidation.

However, they didn't look all that heroic. It was all there to watch on the 10 o'clock news. They looked like a bunch of grade schoolers poking their sticks at a wounded, wild and trapped animal. The outcome was apparent without any additional watching or ever reading the morning news the following day. Someone was going to die and of course someone did.

So, for the last time, please explain to me why oh why oh why can't law enforcement ever simply show a little Gandhian restraint and calmly, patiently and simply wait things out? It never ceases to amaze me the countless lives, including the innocent, law enforcement and the not-so-innocent that are lost--from Ruby Ridge to the Swapp Compound to Wacco--because law enforcement had to force things instead of waiting out the stand off.

Let's face it, Brian Wood had isolated himself in his car. The car was hemmed in. He wasn't going anywhere. He was surrounded. Instead of using their expensive toys, all law enforcement had to do was secure the area, rig up lights for the coming night, post a few officers in four hour shifts and wait it out. Although not nearly as sexy and cool, even if it would have taken a day or two before Mr. Wood succumbed to fatigue, hunger and thirst--that would have been a far better outcome and probably less expensive than the bravado that law enforcement is always so eager to display--often with unnecessarily deadly outcomes.

Loren M. Lambert
September 25, 2008 Copyright

What's The Test for Success In Iraq?

Senator John McCain and his adorable side kick Sarah declare that the surge has been a success and we are winning the war in Iraq. Really? How is that determined? By the absence of violence? Wasn't there a greater absence of violence when Saddam was alive and in control?

Using that as a litmus test for success, I guess we should install a dictatorship (dang, the best guy for the job was hung) or better yet we can surge the hell out of them and make sure our investment gets paid in oil--maybe Dick Cheney could stay on to see it through.

No, success is when the Iraqi people make a collective choice to do what is right. That will not be known until the American presence is no longer restoring security by brute force. Only then will we know that their hearts and minds have grasped the ideology of tolerance and democracy.

So what has the surge shown of their hearts and minds?

The other day an Iraqi high ranking officer was being recorded by western media as he berated a junior officer. His diatribe was that the junior officer was soft and had to work harder. The senior Officer screamed that if this junior Officer found a "terrorist," in a home--he was to destroy that home and its occupants, if in a community--he was to rip apart the entire neighborhood, and if in a village--he was to obliterate the entire village until not even a fly knew what had once been there.

Is this progress? Is this what we are proud that our surge has done in Iraq? I don't think so. Perhaps it has worked in other areas of Iraqi society. But that is something that neither Senator McCain nor Senator Obama can know as armed outsiders looking in. To say otherwise is like proclaiming your undying love when some woman is demanding you love her at the point of a gun. With the muzzle held to your temple, it's just a little difficult to be genuine about your sentiments for her. Iraq has that muzzle held to its temple and who knows what it is collectively thinking despite whatever platitudes are coming from its mouth. Only time will tell when we are long gone. So in the interest of discovery, let's give them the best shot we can and get the heck out of Dodge.

Loren M. Lambert
September 14, 2008 Copyright

George Bush With Lipstick and a Bigger Vocabulary

Sarah Palin is a scary thing. She does not represent the new Republican party. She's still more of the same, but she's pretty and has a bigger vocabulary than G.W. Nevertheless, if you listened closely to her acceptance speech, she made it clear that she has the same disdain for the law (". . . [Obama's] worried that someone won't read them their rights) and basic human rights, the same disregard for the environment (drill, drill, drill, drill until the sun don't shine--not a quote but a paraphrase--not that we shouldn't but that we should act with prudence), the same adherence to old school diplomacy (“Obama wants to meet them without preconditions) and the same lust for everything that unfettered corporate greed can give her and the American elite (yes, she did support the billion-dollar-boondoggle-bridge to a small island where it would have been less expensive buying a Lear Jet for each inhabitant).

[But on the other hand she is the governor of the biggest state in the union (population 685,000 about a fourth of Utah's population) just like Dick Cheney was the something or another from the State with the most jackrabbits per capitat (about six for every citizen of Alaska--I know I counted them).]

That's why she was selected--she is the stealth Bush in effeminate slick skin. And it is not Obama's alleged silver tongue that the American people need to be wary of, it is the wolf in the fashion model's clothing.

Bush talks like a babbling idiot because of the old adage, garbage in, garbage out. Obama is well spoken because his superior talent as a public speaker is backed up by a brilliant mind and a wise intellect. Palin, on the other hand, is well thought of because, as John Cougar Mellencamp has sung, "when those crazy nights come callin', she can dance on the table like all of the rest." And that's after having five kids, tramping the Alaskan outback, shooting a heavy caliber rifle, overhauling a snow mobile engine and mixing it up with all the high rolling oil barons of Prudhoe Bay. What G.W. loving old Republican can resist that? Not a one--especially with all that viagra Bod Dole has hocked.

Let's just hope that the American people can, because as my mother always warned me, while you can take her to bed with you after the big dance, will she be there for you when the hurricane hits and the gray hairs set in?

Well, just like G.W. wasn't, neither will she. No, you'll see their swiftly retreating behinds taking refuge in an Exxon hunting resort away from the prying eyes of the American public.

Loren M. Lamber (Copywrite September 12, 2008)