Pence for President!

Fasten your seatbelts.

My fellow Americans! We are in for a rough ride.

It seems much more likely now that the President is going down.

Listen to what Adam Schiff told the Senators at 1 pm today.

I had no favorable impressions about Schiff until this afternoon when I heard his message delivered to the Senate and to the America people.

What a difference one eloquent presentation makes, with appropriate references to our founders and our noble heritage.

The "manager" from California issued a timely reminder that integrity and honesty ought to be the chief calling card of our Chief Executive—not devious, self-serving political manipulation.

We now have an opportunity to rectify the ill-advised decision that we made in November three years ago.

Now is the time for all honest men and women to come to the aid of our country.

Our President ought to represent the (MAGA) United States of America—not his own selfish interests.

MAGA! Make America genuine again.

Mike Pence will be make a nobler President; he will better fulfill the greatness of our great country.

And btw . . . he will better represent the treasured values of the grand ole party of Abraham Lincoln.

The best thing that we Republicans can do now is make a new way: an opportune Constitutional path for our honorable Vice President to get a handle on the awesome responsibility of the Presidency, before November!

Furthermore, getting down to a grittier level . . . let’s do ourselves and the American people a favor, while at the same time reinforcing our conservative principles, by adopting a fortuitous change of strategy, and an honorable candidate!

If you Republicans want to see a Republican in the White House this time next year—allow a new path— a new campaign roadway— by which a dignified candidate will be enabled to take hold of the Presidential reins now, in the next few weeks, instead of waiting for a political mudfest in November.

Glass half-Full

An Appeal to Mr. Moussa and Mr. ElBaradei

Amr Moussa and Muhammed ElBaradei may become the principal candidates for the Presidency of Egypt. I hope they will remember the precedent of peace and integrity that had been established by their former great leader. And I'm not talking about Hosni Mubarak.

Anwar el-Sadat, President of Egypt from 1971 to 1981, was a military man who had arisen from humble origins. His steadfast leadership was tempered by a rare humility that is not found commonly in the annals of human history and diplomacy. Mr. Sadat's evenly-tempered command of the Egyptian military led ultimately to an effective peace with Israel, and an appreciation for freedom that now contributes mightily to a budding legacy of responsible government.

Anwar Sadat was the man whose cautious fortitude took the Sinai back from the Israelis.

Hosni Mubarak was his air force commander and later vice-president. History seems to indicate that Mr. Mubarak's service to the Egyptian people was more favorably contributed in those two roles than as President after Sadat was assassinated.
In the 1973 war with Israel, Anwar Sadat's army and air force secured that swathe of dry Sinai land and put it back in the hands of the Egyptian people where it belongs. And yet Mr. Sadat's integrity and his deep desire for reconciliation among men ultimately produced a peace arrangement with Israel that is worth maintaining.

His autobiography, In Search of Identity, was published by Harper & Row in 1977. I'm hoping that Mr. Moussa, Mr. ElBaradei, and any other Egyptians whose heart is to lead that ancient nation will cherish these words of wisdom from their martyred President. Anwar Sadat wrote:

"In conclusion I must put on record that the Egyptian people differ from many other peoples, even within the Arab world. We have recovered our pride and self-confidence after the October 1973 battle, just as our armed forces did. We are no longer motivated by "complexes"--whether defeatist "inferiority" ones or those born out of suspicion and hate. And this is why the opposing sides met soon after the battle dust had settled to talk matters over. We did so when the first and second forces disengagement agreements were concluded, and again when I met Mrs. Meir in Israel. With the fighting over, we harbored nothing but respect for one another. Our civilized people know this; it is what induced 5 million citizens to come out to greet me on my return, and the armed forces to salute me in an impressive and quite unprecedented manner.

"Our cultural depths are there; our cultural roots are alive, as vigourous as ever after more than 7000 years. Those who are surprised by what we do cannot simply understand this fact. They cannot grasp the real nature of a people who are working for a modern civilization comparable to the one they erected thousands of years ago in freedom and peace."

During the most productive part of his lifetime, the President who had come from the village of Mit Abul-Kum lived near Cairo on Pyramid Road. I hope the people of Egypt will cherish the legacy of peace, integrity and strength that Anwar Sadat excavated from that memorialized base of operations.

Don't hold it against me that I, an American, suggest this from a distant perspective in a land far away from you. But there's nothing I can do about that. I am a citizen of the world, just as you are, and we need to coexist here on earth so that all hell does not break loose again, if that is possible.

Glass half-Full

Toxic shock syndrome

I had heard that the Federal Reserve has been buying mortgage-backed securities, many of them the so-called "toxic assets" that poisoned our financial system during the great recession. Now I hear that next week the Fed will quit buying these sketchy securities, and many of us are wondering what effect that will have on the money supply and economic conditions.
I had spent most of my adult life working as a free-lance, uninsured carpenter--although a relatively educated one, since I had earlier been a wandering English major. I had watched the housing industry inflate fairly steadily over twenty-five years or so. Like many other folks in America, I and my family were direct beneficiaries of that housing bubble, and the "securitized" financial bubble of false prosperity that exponentially inflated it until the whole damned thing burst in 2008. The construction industry was my source of wages during all those years, as well as being the source of economic fodder that fueled our steadily-growing home equity.
When the crash happened in fall of 2008, I was hearing from the free-market gripers that the socialist dems were responsible for the whole mess with their force-fed federal attempts to get unqualified buyers into houses. And I was hearing from the controlled-economy crowd that the unregulated greed of wallstreeters was the main cause of our downfall.
However, it's obvious to me that the culpability for our financial woes is widely dispersed. In a perfect storm of economic destruction, everybody did their part one way or another--including me, who earned, as a hapless carpenter, steadily-increasing wages during the 25-year filling of that hot-air balloon. When the shit hit the fan, the air was thick with theoretical accusations flying from both directions. The free-market crowd blamed the bleeding heart dems for having laid a sandy foundation of unqualified consumer mortgage debt with their overactive pie-in-the-sky housing policies. The liberals blamed the gaming wallstreeters for having built their derivitized, credit-default-swapped house of cards on that shakily-mortgaged foundation until the weight of it brought the entire structure down.
Everybody's right and everybody's wrong. Last time I checked, we were all still members of the human race, and that explains a lot about this whole damn situation. Deal with it.
And realize we still have the same problem that our grandparents had back in the '30s: their ain't no free lunch.
Anyway, now I'm hearing again about these infamous mortgage-backed securities--the ones that nobody knows how to assign value to. They didn't just, you know, go away. The tooth fairy didn't just remove them from beneath our dreamy, media-puffed pillows while we slept. Turns out, ole gentle Ben was quietly buying them, to remove them and their destructive effects from the system, although their toxicity seems now to have hopelessly polluted our political civility and even, perhaps, the integrity of our republic itself.
It's nice to know, Ben, that you were out there attempting to clean up our mess. But now what happens? I suppose we'll find out after next week.
Fasten your seat belts, folks; we could be in for a rough ride, and our national vehicle is in need of some pretty serious repair. It reminds me--not that I've ever seen one, mind ye--of a runaway train.
Or the situation described by C.J. McCall in his old country song hit from back in the day: "...Wolf Creek pass, way up on the great divide, trucking on down...the other side,"
with worn-out brakes.