It's all about birds and beast. Sexy and alluring as you? Of course. Manners offend? No. No nasty meals of fescue greens for you to graze any longer! No snoop in the bushes for a 13th floor view. Ride up a elevator for a better view.

You skinny or obese? It no matter. Hurry!

No snipe like a coward. Go ask for a sweet kiss.

Darting Larks fly so high, and go for a sweet dive.

No Pelican are you. No sneaky land Plover are You.

Do we readers see in you a bah baa. hummer~bird?

You are a soothsayer? You a hawk. Wander on over.

Fly like a eagle. Never get caught in a lie. A heart gets sick.

No just hum a tune. GO Do what is clever and wise. Invite yourself.

Watch ~ Magpies have brough some good news. If 'um hover, YOW!

So, as fast as a Crow flies, wash up and start cawing. Call her up NOW!

McCain: "Assured of lifetime tenures, these judges show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people."

When I heard that statement this morning I could not help but reflect back to the Supreme Court decision in 2000 that effectively stopped the ballot recount in Florida. In my lifetime (50 yrs) I don't recall such an instance as this that "displayed even less interest in the will of the (states and the) people." For the Senator to complain about that kind of judicial activism now, the kind he appreciates, only puts in high definition his disdain for the Constitution and its framers.

hahaha: a good one. Thank you for making me smile. I do love those presocratics.

The hearts physician.

wise words my fine friend.

bah.

'...at last, the tree of his longing yielded the fruit of despair, and the fire of his hope fell to ashes.'!

It is called hyperinflation. It is very difficult to avoid at some point when the inflating done by the central government gets out of control. When it happens, this political system is finished.

Perhaps the next one will be better (it has happened), or perhaps worse which happened in Germany once upon a time. But, all empires end in economic failure and we are very close.

The consensus at lunch today (all very liberal Democrat Catholics) was that whoever takes the white house will be blamed for the coming economic collapse.

I shudder to think of the "brain trust" that gathers in your lunchroom. The other day another one of these loons with their bizarre economic conspiracy theories was going on about how the Iraqi occupation has wrecked the economy. The Iraqi debacle has nothing to do with the state of our economy and the wave of municipal bankruptcies that will be sweeping across California first and then probably the rest of the nation. The debt certainly isn't making it easier to dig ourselves out of the enormous hole these insane economic policies started in the late 60's and early 70's but they are not the root cause.

Vallejo Declares Bankruptcy

by: Robert in Monterey

Wed May 07, 2008 at 07:50:24 AM PDT

After months of wrangling and negotiating the city of Vallejo has voted to declare bankruptcy. And to hear the local media tell it, like the San Francisco Chronicle, it is the fault of public workers, not poor political leadership:

After about four hours of discussion and public comment from the standing-room-only crowd, the council voted 7-0 to approve Tanner's recommendation to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection as a means to reorganize its finances, which have been shattered by spiraling public employee salaries and the plummeting housing market....

The city and its public safety unions have been at the bargaining table for about two years. The city is asking for its police and firefighters to take salary, benefit and staff cuts, while the unions say any further cuts would endanger public safety as well as the safety of the police and firefighters.

Vallejo spends 74 percent of its $80 million general fund budget on public safety salaries, significantly higher than the state average. The generous contracts are the result of deals struck in the 1970s, following a police strike that left the city in turmoil.

What is not said here, or anywhere in the article, is the reason for that public safety spending. Vallejo's police and fire services are understaffed - as are many agencies in California, in a little-known but extremely important and widespread phenomenon. City leaders have been loath to hire new workers, but they have also needed the public safety services - so the workers that are on the payroll have been working overtime. And overtime pay is usually always higher than regular pay.

Vallejo, like many California cities, wanted to maintain a high services and low tax environment, and has found this is not possible, especially when an artificially-created bubble bursts. Instead of accepting responsibility and seeking new revenues to balance the city's books without endangering the public, city leaders chose to blame the public workers for the problems and declare bankruptcy instead of avoiding the underlying issues.

To be fair, Vallejo is not in complete control of its own destiny. Decades of state and federal budget cuts, made to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, have had a trickle-down effect of eviscerating services and leaving cities more and more financially exposed as state and federal aid has begun to dry up. It's not exactly as if Bush and Arnold have directly told Vallejo to drop dead but through their inaction in the face of widening government financial crisis, they have achieved the same result.

Vallejo IS the tip of the iceberg, as many cities face similar problems. Some have done the right thing and sought new revenues, like Salinas, and avoided destructive service cuts. Others are following Vallejo down the path of blaming public workers. Without state and federal solutions, this scene may well replay itself again and again across the state in the coming years.

http://calitics.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=71C188095E490D2F956E344FFBB297A6?diaryId=5802

Warren Buffett told Arnie he had to repeal Prop. 13. Arnie told him to shut up. You want your republic back? You had better reacquaint yourselves with what that means, or at least what it meant to the men who founded it.

The actuating principle of a republic was public virtue, virtue meaning manly devotion of one's self to the wellbeing of the public.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?Itemid=267&id=177&option=com_content&task=view