No Gold or Silver Bullets for Anyone's Gun

Rock, Fiat Paper, Scissors, Gold

It's September and the first day of fall just happened, at least here in Arizona, and I assume that our seasons work normally in relationship to the rest of the country, unlike our clocks which neither spring forward or fall back. Arizona is heat, then no heat, and unlike other places, Arizonan's move life outdoors right about now, doing their book sales and block parties and fairs when the rest of the country has begun shopping for scarves and mittens and breathing a chilled air filled with fragrance: wood burning, sweets, precipitation, roasted nuts, hot fowl drifting from homes and restaurants.

There is little good news anywhere. 30 year home loans can be got for 4%, or rather, the pricing has fallen (thanks Fed Chair Bernanke with your magic twists), but there is no market for the product. The Fed is still imagining it can do something, but with rates as low as they are, and with our do-nothing Congress, there is nothing that the Federal Reserve can do from a money manipulation standpoint that could help our economy.

I would argue that what we now need is a major bailout for homeowners. Not that I think they deserve it, but it's the housing drag that will sink us, with people worried about having a place to lay their heads each night. You will not spend an extra unnecessary dime if you are struggling just to hit your mortgage payment. That fear, that burden, has to be reduced. Otherwise, the whole country, the irresponsible and responsible alike, will get dragged knee deep into the quicksand.

There are no silver bullets anymore. Even the run-up in gold prices seems suspect, with gold ETF GLD falling about 20 points in two weeks, and hitting it's first Thursday to Friday period in a long time with a move that was statistically major. If you can't earn money via interest from your bank, or protect your stash via gold or silver, then what? Where is the safety zone? Swiss currency perhaps? And where will the actual wealthy park their cash in order to preserve it, all things looking shaky? Hard cheap assets like real estate perhaps? (And didn't billionaire hedge funder John Paulson shift into buy cheap real assets mode, only to get burned when we didn't bounce right back to our feet?)

I am starting to see more "safety zone" type questioning, and that's bad. We've seen the almost comical protests down around Wall Street in New York, largely by people who don't really know what Wall Street firms do day to day, and while this is not a true uprising, I can envision a point when people morph from recreational protests to more focused and angry displays of disaffection.

The Fed has no power, having done all it can. President Obama has little power, boxed in or flummoxed by his political opponents. Congress has no power, even this weekend failing to agree on short term spending agreements to keep the government rolling through November.

We are very nearly at a point where people HAVE to work together to fix things, or we will roll over into a period of extended stagnation. Not disaster, but like Japan's long period of asset deflation and malaise. Except, without the savings and general stoic sensibleness of the Japanese people.

Shamefully, our economy would be on the verge of chugging along if Republicans had not taken such a genial delight in sabotaging people's respect and trust in federal institutions. They preach that government cannot be trusted, that it is the beast, the great inhibitor of freedom. This, when a unified and aggressive government confidence is necessary.

Ineffectual Black People: Dick Cheney Edition

Dick Hardens Toward Condi

Dick Cheney, who we used to respect for his competent toughness, has been out pushing his new book In My Time, and trashing Colin Powell and Condozleeza Rice along the way. Among other roles, they served as the 65th and 66th Secretaries of State under George Bush. The were often the voices of moderation in the (Bush) administration, pushing for broader, non-military engagement in places like Iraq. That set them at odds from people like Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who were relatively sure that all the correct answers to world difficulties were inside their own noggins. Today both Powell and Rice would be considered "RINO's", or Republican In Name Only, by the activists in Republican and conservative circles.

It is no surprise that they have come under attack at the precise moment when conservatives are attempting to lay blame for everything wrong at the feet of Obama. Republicans are scrambling for the control of the American mental narrative at a point in time where they don't have the power to force their own policy initiatives. The process is in part a retroactive one, where you calibrate history according to your own best light. Dick Cheney is doing this, with Powell and Rice being collateral damage.

Cheney has unkind words for both, as well as for President Obama, and we can only wonder what the defining thread between all three individuals is that makes each worthy of being undermined. In a Fox News interview he suggests that Obama's Secretary of State, the once hated-by-conservatives Hillary Clinton, would be able to work with Republicans and should consider a run in 2012.  But much of the attention has focused on his characterizations of Powell and Rice.

Meanwhile, Cheney defended his account of the Bush administration from his new memoir, "In My Time." Cheney criticized several Bush administration officials in his book, including former secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice -- both of whom have taken umbrage at Cheney's account.  

Cheney, responding specifically to Powell's recent comment that Cheney just fired "cheap shots" at his former colleagues, said he takes nothing back. 

(Fox)

In addition to seeing everyone on the right playing by the same script in using every moment and event to question Obama's worthiness and leadership, we also see a willingness to degrade black authority and independence across the political spectrum. That is, a Condi or Colin is worthy of respect to the extent they are useful, and to the extent they are not coming into conflict with the nearest true authority. The  minute any independence of thought is exercised, then the smack down begins. Which is why the most respected black authorities whose achievements are well defined happen to be pretty much dead.

Obama is getting the hard slam because there are are components of what he is doing that would in a short time reshape the political landscape. What you can't have is the benefits of health care reform kicking in  at the same time that more Hispanics come into political arena, and at the same time that the economy is finally ready to revive, and at the same time the wars and adventures have come to an end. Obama's success in policy will bear fruit, so expediency dictates that you chop the tree down now, lest the Democratic Party does the harvesting down the road.

Chaz Bono Changes the Nature of Dancing On TV

I went to school with Chaz Bono. That was in Manhattan, at LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts across from Lincoln Center. Back then she was Chastity. She she was chubby and schlubby, and not too far from my own chubby and shlubby appearance. She was also very unhappy looking. My fellow students whispered about her those first few days in the class we shared, commenting on the contrast between Chastity and her mom. They seemed disappointed. People would point in her general direction saying, "There, there she is" and the other person would be confused, saying, "Where? Where?", expecting a younger version of Cher. When someone has a flamboyant mom like Cher, you imagine the offspring to be well on their way to matching that spark in their own way. She was quiet, and looked miserable, friendless even. (But I never talked to her, so who knows what was really going on. In high school I liked to imagine that everyone was as socially inept as I was).

Now Chastity has retrofitted herself to a male personae in the form of Chaz. She will appear on "Dancing with the Stars," dancing with a female, and people have taken sides. If you are not in favor, and highly supportive, then you are invariably some variation of bigot. That's the going line. Even if you have religious reasons, and you are religious by virtue of really believing that God is alive and watches these things we do, you are still expected to chuck all aside and come to the conclusion that she is a he, and a brave he at that.

Kiri Blackeley in Forbes casually scolds the critics, asking them why they are critiquing Chaz's alterations of a supposed God's inspired natural order, when so many others have made basic changes to themselves without an outcry. She writes:

The typical argument is framed like this one, which was posted on the show’s board: “I choose not to endorse ABC’s decision to have Chaz Bono dancing on the show. We will no longer be watching ABC. For Chaz Bono to change her sex is her saying that God made a mistake by creating her female and God does NOT make mistakes.” Fair enough. 

But this reasoning leaves me wondering where the furor was when Pamela Anderson was on the show last year. Anderson, for instance, was not born blonde, nor was she born with size 38 double D breasts. The same could be said for former cast members and Playboy mansion habitués Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson.  

Jennifer Grey, who won the 2010 season, was by her own admission not born with the nose you see on her face. I do not recall any ruckus about her. In fact, she was an audience favorite.

(Forbes)

This is probably not the most convincing critique of the critics. Changing your body even in small ways is often frowned upon in Christian circles, the mass sheepish herd of people--religious or otherwise-getting tattoos notwithstanding. When Jesus talks of the body as a temple or house of God, we hardly imagine that it begins with knocking down the house, ripping up the moorings, and installing some marble counter tops and stainless steel appliances. The premise of Jesus, and Christianity, is not necessarily changing the physical, or governments, but changing hearts.

Then too, transgendering yourself goes way beyond merely getting some casual physical surgery, which is why doctors and psychologists prep you for your many transitions. Even after it's done, and you have your new better self, there is no assurance that you will function or feel better. It's an assumption backed by not a shred of deep, long term scientific study.

Kiri manages to frame the entire issue in the most idiotic manner, ignoring any number of important issues in an effort to be supportive. And while some liberals actively applaud these social changes, supporting them in film and the media, the other side actively dumps their energy and effort into the political process. The mechanics of how this works is that you end up with everything your liberal heart desires on the telly, while ruled from Washington by people much farther to the right of that little heart.

That's how you end up with the Palins and the Bachmanns garnering more support than reasonable people like Jon Huntsman.

The higher that the monkey can climb

The more he shows his tail

Call no man happy 'til he dies

There's no milk at the bottom of the pail

God builds a church

The devil builds a chapel

Like the thistles that are growing

'round the thrunk of a tree

All the good in the world

You can put inside a thimble

And still have room for you and me

If there's one thing you can say

About Mankind

There's nothing kind about man

You can drive out nature with a pitch fork

But it always comes roaring back again

(Tom Waits)