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. . . . .Well then, that's it. October is over and the official night of traipsing around getting the yearly dose of high fructose corn syrup and adults all reeaallly wishing their partner dresses like they're attending a pajama party at the Playboy Mansion is upon us.
. . . .. By the way, if you've never done it, try for Halloween in New Orleans some year, between that cities history steeped in voodoo, vampire and Creole lore; and the night itself, which down on Bourbon Street is a warm-up for Mardi Gras, it's a night not to be missed and has to be experienced at least noce in a lifetime.
. . . .But that also means it's Saturday, time for taking a tad easier, and rounding up some of the week. I always make sure to keep the last 10 posts up below this one, so you can cruise down the column and check my list of 15 albums of music that you should be listening to, but probably aren't and it makes a great shopping list.
. . . .There's also instructions there down below this post for how to watch the embedded videos, catch the embedded videos, and switch out to the external site if you're reading this on the Facebooks notes page.
. . . .Couple of more book recommendations:
- The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals and The Truth About Corporate Corruption by John Perkins. Far from being a MIB, conspiracy theorist, Perkins worked for the World Bank as an economic hit man, (there is such a thing) and as such has an insider's view of what we all fear, and some of us know, that there's no difference between the two parties, there hasn't been a difference between any President at all going back to Reagan, and that the country, and world, really is run by global corporations, who use money as a weapon.
. . . .Is it sinking in yet? Why my mantra is, was, and always will be "follow the money"?
- Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Out Politics and Haunts Our Future by Will Bunch is current and timely. If you go back in these columns to the June-July timeframe (use the archives at left), there really is a comprehensive pattern that started with Reagan and led to the current economic, social and political meltdown. Bunch is a good historian and can back his thesis up with fact and data, and can easily help connect the dots from one to the other.
. . . .I was asked the other day why I'm so hard on Beck, Limbaugh and Palin. Two different reasons. Beck and Limbaugh, I believe, are smart enough, intelligent enough and savvy enough to do something entirely different than what they're doing presently. I cannot forgive them for backing the current version of the Republican Party. Neither party is working for the good of the Republic, neither party is working for a better America, and they're smart enough to put their gifts to use to try and offer solutions and build something better, but instead they choose to walk down that road of diviseness, racism, hatred and exclusion, but have a large enough audience to instead work on a broader framework of what we need to do, but instead spend their time haranguing about what the current President, Administration and Congress are doing and inventing mythical conspiracies that don't exist. Nothing more than dancing monkeys for their corporate advertising masters, they are nothing but servants for those who would keep the American people in the dark and keep them from focusing on what's really going on. Palin is an entirely different matter, that woman is evil personified, and is the epitome of everything that's wrong with American politics today. Ignorant of policy, anti-intellectual, anti-knowledge and someone who wants only to have her hands on the nuclear launch codes so she can help hasten along the Armageddon that she and her Left Behind crowd so desperately want. Media savvy and a whore for whomever will pay her speaking engagement fee, she is vanity and cult of personality personified.
. . . . On the cinema front, I'm also geeking out over the fact that Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day opened last night, with the same cast, director and screenwriter from the original and the fact that the remake of Red Dawn is filming in Michigan right now, using Detroit and the lakes and woods up North as it's locales.
. . . . .So, onto the Saturday morning round-up:
. . . .Thomas Jefferson said it back in the day, when he was looking forward, and he was a very, very prescient man.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.". . . .That serves as the basis, as long as I'm talking about it, for why I spend so much time talking about the current financial crisis, it's history and it's roots from over 30 years ago. It's the most important thing on the plate right now, without a sound financial basis and institutions, we are summarily and thoroughly screwed.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution - taking from the federal government their power of borrowing."
. . . .Les Leopold:
. . . .And right here is where my sharpest division with, and sharpest disgagreement with this current Administration comes in. It's also why I laughed so hard I wet myself whenever I heard the words "socialist", "communist" or "fascist" leveled at this current White House all summer long. That really is the proof of the dumbing down of America, since the following is just more evidence for two things (a) this guy is the ulimate corporate-capitalist tool and (b) we really are the United States of Goldman-Sachs.Everyone realizes that we have to do something about "too big to fail." But there are two fundamentally different paths: one threatens the very existence of the billionaire bailout society and the other makes it permanent.
The obvious way to end "too big to fail" is to break up large financial institutions so that they are "small enough to fail." Paul Volker, not a radical by any means, argues for this. Even Alan Greenspan -- the very personification of the financial establishment -- agrees.
But to do so threatens the elite status of insiders at giant institutions like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. They make their billions from the combination of government welfare and their enormous, market-distorting size. Right this moment we are still bailing them out through a series of subsidies that go well beyond TARP.
Also, there are far fewer large financial institutions left in the marketplace which means that the remaining giants have near-monopoly pricing power. But most importantly everyone knows that we won't let them fail. That gives them access to cheaper capital -- they don't have to pay the risk premium other borrowers have to pay because you and I, through Uncle Sam, are implicit cosigners on the downside of the deal. And of course, they have excessive political muscle.
For those of you that believe financial institutions have the very best talent and therefore deserve the very best pay, take a look at Why Do Bankers Make So Much Money?"" by Rick Bookstaber. Here's one memorable passage:
"But I don't buy the notion that there are so many who have the level of talent that justifies tens and even hundreds of millions in compensation. I think this level of compensation, and the notion of talent behind it, is the result of the inherent uncertainty in the financial enterprise, one that makes it very difficult to assess talent. Indeed, I think the invocations of talent for money producers in finance are akin to those that, in times past, were set aside for the mystical powers of saints and witches."Treasury Secretary Geithner doesn't want a radical departure from that witches' brew. He argues that it's possible to prevent the next meltdown by setting up a new watchdog council of regulators and by increased regulations on the large institutions that are designated (in secret, mind you) as too big to fail. He hopes that the next meltdown can be avoided by monitoring them closely, requiring more capital reserves, and by prohibiting excessive leverage. And if they go under Geithner wants the large institutions to be assessed to pay for the bailouts, after the fact. (Why not before the fact? Geithner thinks they would view it as insurance and gamble even more.)Sadly, this would make bailouts a permanent feature of our financial system. It would guarantee the perpetuation of our billionaire bailout society for generations to come. (See "Breaking out of the Billionaire Bailout Society" on
Granted, it's not looking too good. But to quote Yogi Berra "It ain't over till it's over."
. David Sirota:
Many readers here likely remember September 29, 2008. For a brief moment, the U.S. House extended a big middle finger at Wall Street - and then, quite predictably, the entire political, media and corporate Establishment went apeshit. Though it only lasted a few days, the standoff helped further controversialize the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and thus ultimately forced the addition of some (albeit mild) restrictions on its power.
Most of us who opposed the TARP as written - and there were not many willing to take that position - were not against taking any action. We were against Congress trampling the Constitution and turning the Treasury Secretary into a king, and we were against simply handing away $700 billion with no strings attached. For this, we were attacked by the Punditburo, which preposterously likened a vote for the bill as a courageous - and necessary - vote for landmark civil rights legislation (I shit you not). And for the most part, the American public has remained opposed to writing blank checks to Wall Street, especially considering the news that these kinds of bailouts have put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.
And yet, as I show in my new newspaper column out today, the Obama administration, far from backing off or restricting TARP, is quietly moving forward a plan to create an even bigger, more permanent TARP.
In the column, I explain the details of this new bailout, which Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) calls "TARP on Steroids." You can find the relevant sections I refer to here in sections 1109 and 1604 of the bill, and you can see Sherman's full analysis of the proposal here. I also encourage you to watch the video clip at the bottom of this post in which Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner - the same Geithner who this week was nailed for secretly giving away billions via the AIG bailout - said the White House would oppose any Democratic amendments that would limit this new TARP on Steroids to $1 trillion. And, you can listen here to my Q&A about this issue with Sherman this week on my AM760 radio show.
I wish I could say I was surprised at this - but this is what you get when an administration packs its top-level economic positions with people connected to the same financial firms that destroyed the economy. Corruption, as we are learning, is not the exclusive domain of one party. The only question is whether or not Congress will stage another September 29th. I sure hope it does.
. . . .Taibbi, with more details on how the bastards at AIG, Goldman-Sachs and Fed screwed us all in those dark days of September-October of '08:
Forget Galleon: What about Goldman’s ex-boss?
The deal contributed to the more than $14 billion that over 18 months was handed to Goldman Sachs, whose former chairman, Stephen Friedman, was chairman of the board of directors of the New York Fed when the decision was made. Friedman, 71, resigned in May, days after it was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal that he had bought more than 50,000 shares of Goldman Sachs stock following the takeover of AIG. He declined to comment for this article.
In his resignation letter, Friedman said his continued role as chairman had been mischaracterized as improper. Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally declined to comment.
AIG paid Societe General $16.5 billion, Deutsche Bank $8.5 billion and Merrill Lynch $6.2 billion.
via New York Fed’s Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers – Bloomberg.com.
Robert Khuzami, Director of Enforcement at the SEC, speaks at a press conference where charges where announced against hedge fund managers, Fortune 500 executives, and a management consulting director for participating in insider trading schemes that resulted in more than $20 million in illegal profits, at the US Attorney's office on October 16, 2009 in New York City. (Michael Nagle/Getty)
It’s kind of amazing that with all the uproar over the Galleon business, nobody is making much hay over the recent revelations about the AIG bailouts, which make former Goldman chief and former New York Fed chairman Stephen Friedman look every bit as guilty of insider machinations as Raj Rajaratnam of the Galleon fund.
It’s impossible to grasp the totality of Friedman/Goldman’s grossness with regard to the AIG story without a little context. Remember the basic timeline. In the middle of the mortgage bubble, Goldman Sachs found a patsy-buffoon named Joe Cassano at a little corner of AIG called AIG Financial Products, or AIGFP. Cassano was recklessly writing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of credit default swaps for banks like Goldman and Deutsche, essentially insuring certain investments for these banks, including extremely risky mortgage-backed deals.
Goldman took out billions of these CDS positions with Cassano, who had written upwards of $440 billion of these CDS without having even a fraction of the money he would have needed to cover that bet in the event of a disaster of the type that actually ended up taking place, specifically a downgrade of AIG’s credit rating that forced Cassano to pony up wads of cash to cover those positions.
The important thing to remember about all of this is that just because Goldman was buying “insurance” from Cassano, that doesn’t mean they were being responsible. On the contrary: Goldman was creating well over ten billion dollars worth of exposure to a guy that they must have known was an absolute idiot. Now, in a world where actual capitalism existed, Goldman should then have been highly invested in making sure that AIG did not go under. A dead and bankrupt AIG should not have been good news to a company like Goldman Sachs, which had billions of dollars riding on AIG’s financial health.
But if anything Goldman behaved throughout the runup to AIG’s collapse like it couldn’t care less if the company died. In fact Goldman accelerated AIG’s demise by making margin calls against AIG, for both the CDS deals and for deals it had done with Win Neuger, who was running AIG’s securities lending business. What really sank AIG was the fact that the downgrade of its credit rating permitted companies like Goldman to demand large sums of money from AIG in the form of these margin calls, and AIG could not get its hands on enough cash to meet its demands, resulting in the death spiral situation we all witnessed last September. Of all the firms making such demands against AIG, Goldman was the most aggressive (I have more on this coming out in a forthcoming book) and my sources who were involved in the AIG bailout bunker scene of a year ago almost to a man report that Goldman and its chief Lloyd Blankfein took an extremely hard line with AIG.
Why would it act like that? Well, in a normal capitalistic situation, it wouldn’t. But Goldman, it turned out, had an ace in the hole. It seems that when the state stepped in and decided to bail AIG out, its former director, Stephen Friedman, was among those making the decision that AIG’s counterparties should be paid 100 cents on the dollar for its CDS debts. It never made sense that AIG/AIGFP would decide on its own to pay its creditors 100 cents on the dollar for its debts, but now we know, thanks to reporting from Bloomberg, that it wasn’t AIGFP and its CFO Elias Habayeb who was making that decision.
It was, instead, a group of people from the New York Fed who gave that order a group that included Tim Geithner and Friedman. Goldman ended up getting almost $14 billion from AIG after the bailout. And Friedman, we later found out, bought 50,000 shares of Goldman stock after this deal was struck. He resigned in May from the Fed, a few days after the Wall Street Journal broke the story about Friedman’s stock purchases.
Friedman surely had information about key moves involving the bank — like Goldman getting paid off at par in the AIG bailout, or Goldman getting a federal bank charter overnight so that a mountain of cheap Fed money could save it from bankruptcy — before the market got it. That he bought 50,000 shares in Goldman after the AIG bailout and is not in jail right now is sort of amazing, until you consider that it will be a cold day in hell before a former head of Goldman Sachs is arrested for insider trading, even when he gets caught doing it red-handed.
All of this matters for two reasons. One, it’s yet another example of how Goldman’s success isn’t attributable to how “smart” the bank and its employees are.
Instead of working something out with a company it had stupidly become overexposed to, Goldman instead hastened AIG’s demise because it was, perhaps, the one way it could cash in fully on its reckless deals — by forcing it into the arms of the government and getting the taxpayer to pony up for Cassano’s dumb calls.
Had AIG proceeded to an ordinary bankruptcy, had the company’s downfall happened via normal market procedures, Goldman might have gotten 40, 50, maybe 60 cents on the dollar. If that! Instead it got completely paid off, among other things because its connections to the government actually incentivized it to cripple a company to which it was exposed to the tune of billions.
Second, the non-punishment of Friedman just stands out like a hairy, golf-ball-sized mole on the face of the American capital markets. No question about it, it’s interesting that Galleon and Raj Rajaratnam are getting perp-walked by the FBI (note that it’s the FBI, and not the castrated and seemingly completely captive SEC, that’s going to be pushing these enforcement actions). Galleon isn’t small potatoes and from what I understand there are other hedge funds with even higher profiles that may fall later on. These are surprising and meaningful moves and and it suggests that the enforcement community is not yet completely corrupted.
But Goldman’s continued impunity leaves a mighty stink-cloud over American business, no matter how many Raj Rajaratnams get dragged off to jail.
Thanks again to Eric Salzman over at MonkeyBusiness, by the way — and good luck with your new thing.
. . . .Oh yeah, and the whole thing I wrote about yesterday saying not to trust the GDP numbers, and how meaningless they were? Well, it definitely was on October surprise yesterday as the market tanked, based on some other numbers, those being consumer spending. (Hint: when no one has a job, and those that do are worried how long their's is going to last, people don't spend money).
. . . .Krugman with a follow-up to those numbers, and his initial analysis, which I agreed with:
What recovery should look like
A followup to my note on why 3.5% is not enough. There have only been two occasions since the 1930s when unemployment has been roughly as high as it is now: the 1981-2 recession and, before that, the 1974-5 recession. (I like to include both because otherwise the usual suspects will start chanting “Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!” and drown out any coherent discussion). Here’s what growth looked like in the 6 quarters following each trough:
BEA Again, 3.5 is a lot better than zero. But what we need is a string of numbers about twice that high. And bear in mind that, as Ryan Avent points out, even those V-shaped recoveries took a long time to get unemployment down to acceptable levels. Three years into the “Morning in America” recovery, the unemployment rate was still 7 percent.
Grab a baseball bat and crank up Disturbed's Prayer.. . . .Yglesias, with his wrap-up from late last night:
Meet the new face of American outrage: relatively intelligent, surprisingly informed and (therefore) extremely pissed off.
God how I'd love to see this motherfucker put in a room with Jim Cramer.
. . . . .The Political Carnival's round-up:He wears the same hat and sweater every day:
— TNR and guilt by association.
— On Saturday, October 31, at 3:30 p.m. EST, GESTURES will be meeting in Dupont Circle to perform ROUTINE EMERGENCY TRAINING. During this exercise, GESTURES will be testing and otherwise handling NO-JAZZ, NEW ORLEANS RHYTHMS, PUNK COMPOSITION and other hazardous materials.
— Tom Zarek was right.
— Ex-insurgent reintegration in Afghanistan.
— NBA salary cap projections.
Halloween weekend so it’s time for “Nightmare on My Street” — DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.
. . . .Ezra Klein's link dump:Saturday Linkage
I feel like I have sleeping sickness, just want to lay out right here and snooze.
Medical alert after series of passengers mysteriously faint mid-flight on their way to Britain
Study: Inheritance produces inequality
Bunny suicide calendar slammed
Sources: Abdullah to Pull out of Afghan Runoff
Creepy crawlies from the dawn of time: Newly-discovered prehistoric spider's web is world's oldest
Peninsula artist carves 319-pound pumpkin
Tab dump
1) The New Republic and guilt by association.
2) Marty Peretz apologizes to Matt Yglesias.
3) "Great beer and great wine are on the same team."
4) "We find no clear relation between income inequality and class-based voting."
Recipe of the day: The best way to do toasted pumpkin seeds.
I just met a pale girl dressed in anachronistic clothing who looks a lot like the child kidnapped on this very block, on this very day, a hundred years ago. She asked me to wish you a Happy Halloween!. . . .Andrew Sullivan's round-up last night:
Today was a big day for the Dish, as the HIV ban was finally struck down by the president's pen. Andrew shared his thoughts.
Levi continued to turn up the heat on Palin, who appeared less qualified than Quayle. Freddie, Rauch, and Andrew examined the pitfalls of empire in Afghanistan, Goldstone sat down with Bill Moyers, Hillary played the bad cop to Pakistan, and Andrew explained to John Cole the wariness of dealing with a Democratic president who supports gay rights. More details from the Nozette case emerged here and here.
In Halloween coverage, we judged the best costumes, saw the holiday as a pride parade for straight people, looked at fellating bats, really looked at fellating bats, and featured one of the best MHBs in a while. Meanwhile, young Iranians were still in the streets.
One of the most cherished items in my possession is a postcard that was sent from Mississippi to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in June 1964.. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.“Dear Mom and Dad,” it says, “I have arrived safely in Meridian, Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.”
That was the last word sent to his family by Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old college student who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, along with fellow civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, on his first full day in Mississippi — June 21, the same date as the postmark on the card. The goal of the three young men had been to help register blacks to vote.
The postcard was given to me by Andrew’s brother, David, who has become a good friend.
Andrew and that postcard came to mind over the weekend as I was thinking about the sense of helplessness so many ordinary Americans have been feeling as the nation is confronted with one enormous, seemingly intractable problem after another. The helplessness is beginning to border on paralysis. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly a decade long, are going badly, and there is no endgame in sight.
Monday morning’s coffee was accompanied by stories about suicide bombings in the heart of Baghdad that killed at least 150 people and wounded more than 500 and helicopter crashes in Afghanistan that killed 14 Americans.
Here at home, the terrible toll from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression continues, with no end to the joblessness in sight and no comprehensible plans for fashioning a healthy economy for the years ahead. The government’s finances resemble a Ponzi scheme. If you want to see the epidemic that is really clobbering American families, look past the H1N1 virus to the home foreclosure crisis.
The Times ran a Page A1 article on Monday that said layoffs, foreclosures and other problems associated with the recession had resulted in big increases in the number of runaway children, many of whom were living in dangerous conditions in the streets.
Americans have tended to watch with a remarkable (I think frightening) degree of passivity as crises of all sorts have gripped the country and sent millions of lives into tailspins. Where people once might have deluged their elected representatives with complaints, joined unions, resisted mass firings, confronted their employers with serious demands, marched for social justice and created brand new civic organizations to fight for the things they believed in, the tendency now is to assume that there is little or nothing ordinary individuals can do about the conditions that plague them.
This is so wrong. It is the kind of thinking that would have stopped the civil rights movement in its tracks, that would have kept women in the kitchen or the steno pool, that would have prevented labor unions from forcing open the doors that led to the creation of a vast middle class.
This passivity and sense of helplessness most likely stems from the refusal of so many Americans over the past few decades to acknowledge any sense of personal responsibility for the policies and choices that have led the country into such a dismal state of affairs, and to turn their backs on any real obligation to help others who were struggling.
Those chickens have come home to roost. Being an American has become a spectator sport. Most Americans watch the news the way you’d watch a ballgame, or a long-running television series, believing that they have no more control over important real-life events than a viewer would have over a coach’s strategy or a script for “Law & Order.”
With that kind of attitude, Andrew Goodman would never have left the comfort of his family home in Manhattan. Rosa Parks would have gotten up and given her seat to a white person, and the Montgomery bus boycott would never have happened. Betty Friedan would never have written “The Feminine Mystique.”
The nation’s political leaders and their corporate puppet masters have fouled this nation up to a fare-thee-well. We will not be pulled from the morass without a big effort from an active citizenry, and that means a citizenry fired with a sense of mission and the belief that their actions, in concert with others, can make a profound difference.
It can start with just a few small steps. Mrs. Parks helped transform a nation by refusing to budge from her seat. Maybe you want to speak up publicly about an important issue, or host a house party, or perhaps arrange a meeting of soon-to-be dismissed employees, or parents at a troubled school.
It’s a risk, sure. But the need is great, and that’s how you change the world.
. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:
. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.
. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.
. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.
. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.
. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.
. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.
. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.
. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.
. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.
. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.
. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.
. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.
. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.
. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.
. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.
. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.
. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night
. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.
The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell
You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .
[where: Gregory, MI 48137]
