Good Morning.  Hope the time change hasn't left everyone groggy and disgruntled.  I have never adjusted well to it, fall back or spring forward.  Nor do my cats who, needless to say, cannot be as easily reset as the clocks.  I wish the powers that be would leave the clocks at either setting and LEAVE IT ALONE.  Oh, well.

I find that my interest is already shifting away from the campaigns, which have gone on WAY TOO LONG.  I do have my preference and will vote it on Tuesday.  No, I haven't gone out to do the early voting thing.  I have no pressing time commitments so it doesn't matter if I stand in line early or on the traditionally designated day.  I also don't have any exalted hopes for whichever candidate gets to become the next President.  For a good exposition of why I am not bubbling with enthusiasm go to this site.  For me, the choice has always been between a failed set of policies and assumptions we have been following for more than the eight years of Shrubya's reign and the possibility of constructive change.  Political and social systems build up a lot of inertia and overcoming that is always a challenge.

Unfortunately we have two and a half months of the Shrub's term left.  Given the past behavior of the Administration 'of the well heeled and for the well heeled,' I think we can expect a full steam ahead effort to do as much as possible to secure their ill gotten gains and extend them.  More efforts to redefine abortion as anything that acts at any time after fertilization (as noted in earlier posts.)  And more like this article in the Nation, found by way of PureLandMountain.  I think the term 'swindle' is a bit mild for the whole thing.  More rigorous capitalism with moral hazard for ordinary people coupled with socialism without moral hazard for our  financial and political demigods.  Even a British paper has taken notice. 

 "Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million."

By the way, notice that the partners they are talking about are at Goldman Sachs.  The same company Treasury Secretary Paulson used to work for.  Perhaps he still does because he certainly isn't working for us.

For another take on the bail-out swindle read Saul Friedman's new 'Gray Matters' post (by way of Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By.)  We are already at the point where both Presidential candidates acknowledge that the financial crisis will force them to trim their economic proposals.  I shudder to think what McCain's 'across the board' freeze will mean.  A worse scenario would be Palin's notion of cutting all programs she thinks are not absolutely necessary.  Necessary to whom?  An across the board freeze of Social Security and Medicare when the baby boom is just starting to retire?  Where is my Christmas bonus?  Why do I keep getting the feeling that the notions of trickle down economics still rule and what is trickling down to me has been passed through someone else's kidney or bowel?

For a nice overview of the roots of the financial crisis look at Kevin Phillips 'The New Hooverites' on the Huffington Post (also thanks to links provided by Ronni.)  Phillips has written very well on politics and economics for the last thirty years.  If you have time for longer expositions of how we got to where we are, pick up 'American Theocracy' and 'Bad Money.'  I can't think of better indictments of the philosophical underpinnings of modern American capitalism and politics.

Well, it looks like we have some sunshine on this Sunday.  I have to get cleaned up, dressed, eat breakfast so I can go out for our walk.  See you next time.