Joseph Stiglitz is actually being an optimist!!! Yet despite such auspicious warnings those who want to continue the charade of the current economic constructs within western society are in deep denial.

This current 'recessionary slump' is but a presage to the unspeakable horrors of financial disaster yet to come and even the most upbeat of the senior financial analysts projections that attempt to auspicate on our current tragedy will not turn the corner on the markets and the dreadful precipice that all economies are fast approaching.

Reality is not a mental construct, it is a physical condition and tangible state of the entire environment ... be it economic, social, political, industrial, agricultural and human. Those who disregard the physical evidence and the lack of tangible means for recovery do themselves and others a greater disservice than might ever be mitigated by their descendants or dependants supposed 'improved' future prospects.

This is not a game we are all caught up in ... nor is it an exercise in semantics … it is the harshest of results sprung forth from ignorance, greed … and by any other words ‘criminal practices by consensus’ carried out amongst the cabal of those holding the positions of control in the world of business and politics.

Few can accept these truths when they are in contravention to their long held convictions .... convictions that have been shaped by avoidance of ethics, morality and decency.

Looking back over nearly forty (40) years of marriage I can barely discern what the lines were that I put forth for my beloved .... I recall that my words were a pandering posy limited by a less than cerebral vocabulary ... indeed if truth be told it was an assemblage of pretentious plain stitch .... but she married this aspirant of earnest and eager poetic expression despite her misgivings (and her families) .... and the rest was/is our history/herstory ... the two young theology students and the foreign student who sought her favours at that same time lost out to a loquacious versifier in that long ago moment of longing & lust .... So it goes!

We will be taking in the upcoming Cohen performance in Saskatoon Saskatchewan (A Geography that befits his lyric demeanour) … and as a couple in our 60's my spouse and I have always had a special regard for the gifts of the chanteuse who well may be the master poet of our generation. Leonard is held in highest regard by those of us who could not accept things as they are/were .... and who could/would not slip to the wasteland of nihilism.

Leonard Cohen speaks to the emotive soul of those who are attuned to the larger questions of our existence .... So it goes ....

Hmmmmmmm .... Would it be best to let these things go by?

In a word NO

We have it on close authority that Barbara B. really does like Goergie boy more than John Ellis ... There is no accounting for a mothers preferences .... let it go!

We have it on close authority that Barbara B. really does like Georgie boy more than John Ellis ... There is no accounting for a mothers preferences .... let it go!

I understand Cranky .... I own Cranky ... it is the 'earned' right of those of us over 60 in a world going madder by the moment ....

Then I too think about Proust and that line "We are what we are." .... Maybe everyone should just whistle 'Dixie' in the Dark Mr. K .... Surely it would be a perfect accompaniment to this the start of the great slide into economic oblivion and heartrending ravages that a world so wrought with avarice and anger will hear and feel in the narrow marrow of the bones ...

Bravo Mr. Keillor ... I'll sign aboard as first mate if you'd have me. Billowed sail, Wind swept prairie and "let the towns drift slowly by" ... a shining moment of maleness run rampant through rock and ruin ... we observe and seldom come up with the gumption ... You do - and that is a good thing ...

Fathers day a petulant marketing pimp in a world of 'fatherless sons' & the unsung 'desolated daughters' .... a salute to an inane nostalgic precept adopted to cover glaring realities of a less than fully functional social ideal that never was ... as from Vonnegut ... "So it Goes" ...

Mr. K has touched upon the most critical issue facing the average American of these times ...

I am old ... and I am weary ... but I am ever so thankful that I am a Canadian. We Canadians watch the contortions and obfuscation on the south side of 49 with great empathy for the ill and we have a collective abhorence of the ignorant and evil bought and sold 'professionals' & politicians who would kill the average American citizen by way of denying proper health care to all ... inevitably in the name of pocketing a dollar -- or a few trillion of them.

That the forces of darkness did not die with the ouster of the previous administration is so terribly and sadly apparent. America needs the contemporary likes of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Hancock to smack the AMA and the pharmaceutical companies up alongside their 'robber baron' heads that seem to permanently rustle with million dollar bills ... America we pray for you for we see no champions rising to the task in the manner of your founding fathers (or mothers) ... and no one seems to be speaking with gravitas and truth for your uninsured masses who so desperately need a medical plan like the ones that those of us in the first world have benefited from for decades.

PS: Fact check the BS artists who are trying to 'belittle' the Canadian system with lies and distortions of single one off situations ... there are over thirty million of us who can tell you why we would never give up our Government run "Socialist" health system ... believe it!