The Weekly Notes 2008

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Weekly Notes:

May 5, 2008

 

Breakthrough:

This is really big, especially for me. I learned, from the Foundation Fighting Blindness, that three young people who were virtually blind can now see. They suffered from an eye disease called leber congenital amaurosis or LCA. The secret was some kind of gene therapy. The good news for me is this therapy can probably be applicable to my problem, which is macular degeneration. I will have more on this as I learn more. It will probably become an essay in “Ongoing Thoughts.”

 

Global Food Shortage:

It is real. King George wants 770 million to send to other countries to head of starvation. I ask, what about the starvation happening in Flint, Michigan or Detroit? Don’t they need help? We are getting all kinds of theories about the cause of this shortage. Farm lobbyists from the ethanol industry say it has nothing to do with their destruction of food. I say bull! That used to be the prime cause. Now we have the fuel shortage, which ethanol was supposed to alleviate, added to the problem. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the ethanol fraud deserves a large share.

 

Finally:

Obama showed some anger and he finally disowned that idiot racist preacher. He said he is outraged, Wright is offensive, and his behavior is a spectacle. My own opinion is, if Wright is a man of God, I must be Jesus Christ. The truth is I am not and he ain’t! He is a frothing racist as bad as or worse than George Wallace.

 

California:

Part or the state is on fire again. The San Gabriel Mountains are in flame. Homes are being evacuated. Brush grows fast out the, dies fast, and dries out fast. Then it is fuel for a forest fire. It only takes one person to be careless or malicious and it starts again. It happens every year. I wonder if that area is really that special to cause fools to live there in spite of the knowledge that they will probably be burned out. Could it be because they believe or know the government will bail them out?

 

Afghanistan:

Someone tried to assassinate the president of that place. The attempt failed. They say it was the Taliban. I think it was rival politicians. If it was the Taliban they are fools. If they killed that guy, they might cause the ascendancy of a real leader. A real leader could make the position of the Taliban untenable.

 

Our Marines are beginning a big offensive into the Taliban country there. I hope the kids are successful. I don’t see how they can be, but I hope for it. There are not enough of them. They are spread too thin. The troops that should be there are in Iraq getting ambushed. Stupid! Just stupid!

 

Phony Words:

We now officially call a depression a recession. We cannot call it a depression because FDR ended depressions forever. The government said we would never have another one. Now that we have one anyway, we don’t know what to call it so we call it a recession. That is silly enough. What’s worse is a president who denies we have an economic problem at all. Duh!

 

Heparin:

It was imported from China. It was used in dialysis machines where it killed several people. Where was the FDA? Why do we import drugs from foreign countries, especially from China with its history of deadly products? The company that did the importing is Baxter. The officers of Baxter should be charged as accessories before and after the fact of murder. We need a real DA somewhere in this country to prosecute those cases. We need one like the guy in New York who went after the investment firms before congress ever knew there was a problem. We don’t have any DAs in America who are doing their jobs.

 

GM:

We saw that man Wagener on the news. He knows GM is in trouble, but he was not talking about innovations and solving problems. He was talking about marketing and how they can make the old product line viable. He is hoping the economy will get better. How? If these big outfits do not do anything new, how will it get better? The only thing that will improve America’s economy will be innovative breakthrough technology. It won’t come from marketing as usual GM.

 

That Woman in Lansing:

I figured she was full of something. Now we know.

That’s bad, even for me.

Seriously, a bowel obstruction is not a trivial problem. It was caught in time, but it could have been fatal if it was not. She came through, but the stupid media was not satisfied. Those idiots wanted the power of state transferred to the Lieutenant Governor because she was under anesthesia for a few minutes. Let’s get real! Shouldn’t we also have a transfer of power when she is vacationing in Japan or Europe, pretending to bring business to Michigan? How about when she is sleeping? Don’t we have a right to have an awake government? Wait a minute! I’ve gone too far. That would disqualify almost everyone in Lansing and Washington. Let’s just let it be.

 

CEO’s:

We learned from the media that some CEO’s now make 433 times the pay of the average worker in their enterprise. That would be sick even if they we doing their jobs. For the incompetent fools like Wagoner who are letting their corporations slide into ruin, it is obscene. In these outfits, there is no punishment for failure. In fact, there are rewards for failure. I think it began at Bendix with Bill Agee. He destroyed the firm and got out with a golden parachute when it went down the tubes.

 

The Cistern Chapel:

The only cistern I knew about was the one under Grandpa’s house when I was a kid. It was filled with a kind of stinky green scummy water. Grandma used it to wash clothes. Now, the other night, they had a show on TV about a Cistern Chapel. They showed us parts of the lid from inside and it was right pretty, but they did not show it much. Instead, they had a bunch of fools arguing about a guy named Michelangelo who is the one painted that pretty lid. They thought he had made dirty pictures. They looked right pretty to me. I just wish they had shown more of them. It sure was prettier than Grandma’s cistern. I bet it smelled better too. I never did get a good look at where the water was, so I could not tell if it was a useful cistern or not.

 

Bottom Line:

Don’t use credit cards. The credit card companies have gotten overtly dishonest. The government claims to be making new rules. I won’t hold my breath. Even if they do, using that card has become just too dangerous. The government and the card companies have done little to nothing about identity theft. My advice is go back to cash and checks. Most merchants will take checks now. They finally figured out, even with the occasional bad check, it is les expensive than accepting cards and paying the gouging card companies.

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