Palin Quits Job - Earns 11 Maverick Points

Sarah Palin decided to quit her job as governor of Alaska "to effect change from outside" two years before her term expired! Her explanation was that someone, when she bounced the idea off of them said, "HELL YEAH"! By totally blowing off the kinda-important job of being an elected official, indeed the governor of a state, to focus on her self serving run for president that is a mere four years away Palin has once again proved herself "an everyman", "a commoner" "a pleeb" and "total moronic dunce" garnering major maverick points in the process. What could be more American than a provider for a large family suddenly a quitting a secure, high paying job during the height of the worst recession in 3 generations because someone told her "HELL YEAH", I mean if that isn't apple pie what is! It is rumored that the dude who said hell yeah was a snow-mobiling friend of Todd's named Ricky, but Republican insiders speculate that it could also have been Darrel, their next door neighbor who comes to oogle their daughters or even Joe Sixpack who was photographed drunk and passed out on the Palin lawn the day before, his legs covered by empty bud cans.


In quitting she has gained 11 Maverick points putting her at 64 just 19 maverick points away from ultra-maverick and estranged father figure John McCain. McCain got a lot of Maverick points back in the Vietnam War. Most notably he scored a PR 23 Maverick Points for escaping from a high security torture facility naked with nothing more than a smooth wooden spoon and killed fourteen guards and held back a major offensive with no reincforcement. McCain's response was "Damnit, of course! Nervously quit your job to which you were elected by thousands of voters who believed in you during the height of a recession- Those 11 points would've been mine were it not for the dry heat of Arizona which preserves my bones." Arnold Swarzenegger's comment was "If she thinks she can get near my maverick score of 119 she better think again. That ***** will never touch my maverick score until she makes a movie wearing less cloths than I did in Pumping Iron."

Capital Hill Republicans were shocked. Former senator Trent Lott commented, "Well Land ****ing sakes what a ***-**** Mavericky move!" Other Republicans was astounded by her mavricality. Former President George W. Bush commented, "That lady definitely deeserves the 11 Maverick points today. I totally wish I just walked after 2 years in office, I would've been a hero." Palin's maverocity has the right stunned, everybody thought that Palin wouldn't try to touch McCain's Maverick score, or that she's do it by challening old men to walk-a-thons. Insiders debate whether the small prop plane in the background of Palin's announcement was indeed full of cocaine as Joe Sixpack was heard stuttering or if it was merely Palin's get-away vehicle.

Automate All Trains

Today a DC train crash killed 6 people...There is absolutely no excuse for this in the information age. We have bionic limbs, satellites orbiting the Earth, supercomputers capable of beating the best chess champions and calculating billions of possibilities per second yet our trains are all still "driven" by humans who can actually crash them. Is this a union problem? A political problem? Even in the industrial era, before GPS, auto-pilot, and radar I don't see much excuse for crashing two trains that are on fixed rails and cannot turn. I must humbly submit that the software required to guide modern trains on tracks without crashing into each other must be somewhat less technologically demanding than writing an iphone app yet we continue to pay people to sit in the "driver's" seat of a machine that would clearly be better off without a human conductor whose momentary inattention can lead to fatal errors. Locomotives are not new, in fact they're approaching their 200th annevarsary and the idea of programming them not to hit things has somehow not caught on in our enlightened society.

The basic parameters of this genius software would be as follows: Smoothly accelerate and decelerrate from station to station along a fixed and unchanging track without crashing into anything. Tricky, I know, especially the not-crashing part. I mean, you'd need some kind of crazy technological device that allowed you to magically know where other trains or obstructions on the tracks were and stop before hitting them...Like some kind of sensor linked to some kind of computing machine linked to the brakes and- by jove I've got it! I suggest GPS (provide relays to function in tunnels) backed up by radar, backed up by an optical sensor, back up by pre-planned time schedule program, and finally backed up by a human attendant who is trained in the use of manual controls should all electrical systems fail. Each train could simply have an independently powered radio emittor in its front and rear than when it sensed another approaching signal would force a slow down and avoid a collision. I stubbornly refuse to believe that the math required to program trains to run by themselves is even remotely difficult compared to what is regularly being done in the tech field today. The danger would be in avoiding hackers, viruses and human errors in the software and hardware of this system itself, but all of these are possible to solve with a very closed circuit, secure system with enough fail-safe redundancies built into it that a distracted train conductor doesn't have the option of slaughtering their passengers. The high tech jobs created by automation would balance out losing many of the mind-numbing jobs associated with "driving" a train on a fixed route day after day after day over and over and over...

I think that a car programmed to paralell park itself is more technologically sophisticated that making a train that doesn't crash into anything in front of it, or switch onto a track with an incoming train. And we have those. In many airports the trams have no human pilots and I will venture a guess that they have never had a fatal crash with another tram. I do not advocate that machines entirely replace conductors in trains or other vehicles like ships or aircraft, simply that the job of driving a from one station to another in a train is so blindingly simple and mundane that we'd save lives by implementing technology to cut out human error. Each train could still have a conductor capable of manually driving the train but their main duty would now be ensuring passenger comfort, safety, checking tickets etc. For conductors this might be hard to swallow but I doubt a poll of the relatives of train crash victims would reveal much sympathy for their obsolete profession.

The job of flying an airplane or piloting a ship involves more variables but might also be rendered safer by automation in the future, again always backed by trained personnel with access to full manual (non-electric) controls. Creating self-driving cars is probably the furthest from reality because the variables involved in driving a car are absolutely staggering compared to the relatively simple routes and procedures of ships and planes (to say nothing of trains). Plus, when people board a plane, train or ship, they expect to have no control and do not want to be involved in the vehicle's route, speed etc in any way, yet when driving in a car most people want total control over speed, route etc. While I doubt we'll ever totally automate the experience of driving a personal vehicle, I could see a mandatory accident prevention system in the next 20 years.

Most people wouldn't mind cars that automatically don't allow you to drive the wrong way on the turn pike or automatically stop if you were about to rear-end someone by accident. I would feel a lot safer knowing that drunks, lunatics and simple human error were less likely to send me to the hospital or morgue on any given drive. Indeed the insurance industry rates would plummet by physically preventing cars from submitting to the most fatal of human errors. Some cars now come with a breathalizer unit that doesn't allow you to drive is your blood alcohol content is above a certain level. I'm not sure how many thousands of beautiful lives would be saved every month by implementing this as a standard in all new vehicles but I don't think it's "socialist" to physically require drivers not to be drunk. Heartrate or brainwave monitors might allow future cars to wake up a sleeping driver, or even pull them off into their nearest parking lot for a snooze. Call me a socialist but maybe we should follow the crazy Germans and physically prevent cars from achieving ludicris speeds (say anything over 130 MPH). All of these options are technologically feasible and are already starting to make their debut, yet our 200 year old locomotives continue to crash and kill people.

Peru President Must Resign

The recent confrontation between Peru's right wing government and Amazonian Indigenous people who live in Peru is a rare example of a clear moral and tactical victory for Amazonian indigenous groups. Today Peru's congress voted to overturn the 2 laws that indigenous protestors had taken to the streets to prevent, striking a sound defeat for discredited president Alan Garcia.

Garcia was President of Peru over a decade ago and was considered a total failure because his economic policies caused rampant hyper-inflation that ruined Peru's economy and failed to control the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorists. Investigations into his supervision with military extra-judicial killing squads have been suppressed. For a total lack of credible candidates, Peruvians re-elected him three years ago and he's back at his disasterous old game.

The recent confrontations occured because Garcia granted of oil and gas rights to indigenous lands that were not his or Peru's to give, and indigenous people initiated road blocks to protest the unfair laws. Hundreds of riot police were ordered to disperse the indigenous protestors and they used *live ammunition* to murder at least 30 of the protestors who fought back bitterly against the attacking police killing 23 policemen. No road is worth unblocking with bullets. It's incredible that Native Americans (or anyone for that matter) are still ordered to be shot by the police for peaceful protests, and Alan Garcia should resign as President of Peru. Garcia had it in his power to order the police not to use lethal force on the Indigenous protestors and he should be tried in an international court for mass murder. Interestingly, Garcia pushed for these 2 controversial laws in order to meet US demands and obtain a preferential free trade agreement with the US. If Obama or any other democratic world leader ordered the police to fire at will into protestors and over 30 deaths resulted, their political career would end and jailtime would begin.

Manual Labor and Podcasts

Nothing like manual labor with an ipod shuffle. The two were made for each other! I love working outside on earthy projects and designs but I get bored with manual labor where my mind is not really at work. I also love listening to the news, NPR, and assorted programs discussing everything from technology and finance to history and art. Thus I spend long hours picking apples at the local orchard, stacking wood or wrastling with my garden while learning about the inner workings of credit default swaps, when Robin Hood really may have lived, and how we can make cars using compressed air.
This combination of aural satisfaction with outdoor work may occasionally prevent me from appreciating the full, quiet, solitude and presence of nature around me, but I figure I soak up enough with my other 4 senses to allow one be blocked by technology. Yet that one sense blocked from bird twitterings (better I think than electronic twitters) allows me to open up to a whole world of information as I sink my fingers into dirt and pop seeds into the ground.

America Creates Universal Healthcare!

That's the headline I hope we'll be reading about a month from now.

Both Obama and Bush's bandaid bailouts will have virtually no lasting effect but all that may be forgiven if Obama is actually able to give America what is so blindingly obviously the right thing: a public health care plan.

The problem: Corporate health care fails us in two ways. First it fails the unisured. 50 million Americans are uninsured, or roughly 15% of the population. This means that these people effectively receive far less medical treatment than insured people. They have shorter lives on average. I'd be curious to see how many people die early each year from problems related to lack of insurance, I suspect it would rival auto accidents, yet we effectively say that poor people can't have seatbelts, airbags, or anti-lock breaks when it comes to healthcare.
Second, corporate health care fails the insured because they operate on the perverse incentive that the more care they can delay and deny, the more money they earn. This means that millions of man-hours are wasted both by insurance companies and by the sick bickering over the validity of their claims. The end result is the the insured in America has to fight for compensation while it is considered a human right in other developed nations.

Public health care would drastically reduce both of these problems and I suspect that it would enroll more than just the 50 million uninsured. Many people paying for overpriced private insurance would instantly jump ship if cheaper coverage were offered. That is why the sold-out Republicans don't like it, it hurts the massive for-profit insurance corporations who lobby (bribe) them day and night (many Democrats fit this category as well). The Republican critics whine about the march towards socialism but those very people voted overwhelmingly for the socialist bank bailouts, and approve of socialist things like unemployment coverage and social security.

People on an individual level in America care mightily for the sick, just look at communities outpouring support for those who suffer with cancer and other diseases, YET we as a political body have allowed ourselves to be cajolled into believing that doing the same thing in an organized way is socialism (and we know that's a bad thing because the Russians liked it). Caring for our sick should be a national priority just like it is for veterans and the eldery, nobody calls veterans hospitals socialist even though they are exactly that; an organized publically sponsored effort to care for our veterans.

If Obama accomplishes nothing else in his next 8 years (Palin-Romney will lose '12 handily) let him establish a good government sponsored, non-profit, healthcare plan for all Americans and he will have been a success. We are led to believe that doing so is like moving a mountain but in reality once it passes people will look back on our times as barbarous and almost unthinkable just like we do now imagining American without social security and unemployment.

Spain Claims Slave-Labor Treasure

A few of you may have heard that in 2007 a treasure hunting company called Odyssey Marine Exploration listed on NASDAQ founded the wreck of a (likely) Spanish treasure galleon in an undisclosed location off of Europe and made an incredible haul of gold and silver worth an estimated half a BILLION dollars. The company quickly flew the treasure back to Miami and both Britain and Spain were outraged, claiming that the treasure was theirs because it was (likely) a Spanish galleon called the Mercedes that the British sank in 1804. Spain recently won an important legal victory when a US court declared that it has no jurisdiction because Spain has a sovereign right to the treasure. The BBC News and others have reported on this as an interesting story but failed to examine where the treasure came from.

This Spanish claim is about as legitimate to me as if Germany would now claim all their art and gold stolen from the Jews during the Holocaust. These silver coins were made with forced slave labor most likely in Bolivia or Mexico and are the product of the Spanish genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas. They do not belong to Spain unless the modern world wants to legally uphold treasure gained from a Holocaust. Sadly, none of the countries whose murdered and enslaved ancestors produced this vast horde are entering the legal fray for the sunken riches. It saddens me that not a peep of complaint is heard from the governments of the nations from where this gold and silver were stolen, yet the British are claiming it based on the fact that they sunk the ship in a naval engagement.

In an ideal world I think that the following solution would be most equitable. Spain and Britain get nothing but shame for master-minding the enslavement and genocide of indigenous (and African) people for 500 years in their American Colonies, and the enterprising company that recovered this lost treasure donates 30% of their haul to schools in the impoverished mining areas where the descendants of the Spanish slaves now continue to live in grinding poverty despite having died to produce treasure such as this.

Euros Are Up

I believe that one of the long-term effects of the current global economic spasm will be that the dollar and euro emerge in five to ten years roughly on par with each other no so much in terms of value but in global desirability as a personal and national savings currency.

In 2006 the first Bolivian banks began offering account in Euros, owning to the high rate of remittances sent by Bolivians working in Spain and other parts of Europe. Now almost all the major Bolivian banks (a contradiction in terms I know) do so, yet in 2007 I begged my Bank of America branch to help me start an account in Euros but it was a no-can-do, not unless I opened an actual account in Europe they told me. Bolivian friends would often ask me (as if I know) whether they should keep their savings in Dollars, Euros or the local currency Bolivianos. The two incredible things about my friends' question is that a country that fifty years ago had no real banking system is now ahead of the US in terms of available consumer currencies and that the Euro has entered into remote corners of the globe as a truly international consumer savings currency like the yen and yuan never have.

These are personal anecdotes that show the growing importance of the Euro in consumer savings in Bolivia, but that trend is growing quickly across Latin America, Africa and Asia, the dollar is no longer king. As international consumers diversify their savings currencies into Euros, so too their stodgey national banks will follow. The crisis teaches us the importance of the diversification adage in our investments and savings, and as the option to own physical Euros presents itself many consumers and governments will jump on it to provide extra stability against an unpredictable dollar. This presents the real danger for the dollar; the potential for foreign governmens to put their giant vaults of dollars on sale to buy euros. Will the Frankfurt T-Note soon rival it's long dominant Washington counterpart? I think so, and this will represent a catastrophic shift for the US, wrenching us from economic superpower to a multi-polar playing field. I'm afraid we've proven inept and corrupt as a the only global superpower and like our currency we will slip to semi-supremacy as other region blocks and industrializing nations ramp up their economies. However....

In some ways the coming catharsis of confidence in the US and its once-allmighty dollar will do us good. We are a nation that thrives in the hardest of times and our best only comes out under incredible adversity. As reality sinks in that we've exported almost all productive capacity and we face a growing brain and muscle drain we'll have the get creative and roll up our sleeves. Obama will abide by the catch-phrase: necessity is the mother of all invention.

The European economic zone may become more stable than the US by simple function of its relative dysfunctionality. The US, which its efficient central controls, was able to totally de-regulate its economy and essentially put all its eggs in one basket; buying Chinese goods with credit and hoping that the Chinese would keep investing their dollar-income in US T-bills. The European Union, now with 27 sovereign members surpasses the US in population, productive capacity, and social welfare capacity yet this beast with 27 heads cannot help but move slowly. And while they got off to a slow start, by virtue of their great diversity they also have more inherent stability than the US which was supposed to run on checks and balances until Cheney-Bush shot the balance and wrote bouncing checks. This stability and well established social welfare state aparatuses will help see them through the crisis with their international reputation less tarnished than that of the US. Yes, we emerge with Obama as a social and political figurehead, but international confidence in the US as a good place to invest will not recover to its former peaks.

I think that Obama will steer the US into a new era of green-energy and efficiency, but it's a game that the Europeans have a 20 year head-start in; much like the EurAsian advantage over our car companies. European vehicles, mass transit, buildings, renewable energy infrastructure, food systems are all at least a decade ahead of the US in development, thanks in no small part to Bush V Gore in 2000. I believe that we'll play the green neo-industrialization game harder, smarter and faster than anyone else once Obama unleashes the power of American ingenuity and hard work, however at a 20 year headstart Europe will be pulling ahead for a while.