Stuff

Of course, I mangled my Latin in the title of the previous post. Casus Belli, I meant to write. One of my own pet peeves as a language curmudgeon did not stop me from fracking that one up. When I was a young lawyer and still had secretaries to type for me, they would always change "cause of action" to "course of action" whenever it appeared in a document. It drove me crazy, but I could never get them to stop "helping" me in that way.

I heard O'Bama speak on the radio about "carnival barkers" today as he addressed the birther nonsense. What an apt expression for Donald Trump, although the man's name was not specifically mentioned. Them as subscribe to this birther hooey are either deluded dunderheads or racists for whom birtherism is an expression of their irrational hatred of O'Bama's partial blackness.

Why does the GOP want to keep the economy in the s****er? Lots of reasons. High unemployment weakens unions and worker solidarity. It puts workers more under the thumbs of the corporate interests behind the GOP. It makes people afraid, which in turn makes them stupid enough to vote for Republicans in 2012. The GOP is counting on the stupidity of the electorate and their forgetting who caused this economic mess and fiscal trouble in the first place. Also, for the evangelical Christofascist wing of the coalition, it strengthens families because people who are poor or insecure have to depend on their families simply to survive.

A part of this GOP strategy seems to me to revolve around keeping the housing market depressed. The GOP aims to get rid of federal entities that buy mortgages and replace them with private banks which will require bigger fees and downpayments and higher rates of interest. Also, they'll make it easier to get a kidney than to get a mortgage. This will really hurt an already moribund housing market and, worst of all, have an impact on me personally because I'm trying to sell my house. Frack the GOP! Frack the stupid, stupid mortgage bankers.

I'm sorry, was I raving? Forgive me. In better news, the hummingbirds are back as of Good Friday, and it's really, really spring at long last.