The sky is falling, right? Wrong, that is old news. This time the bottom is dropping out. Everywhere we turn someone has a new bailout request to help sustain our ailing economy. The squeakiest wheels are getting the grease. The taxpayers are getting squeaky about the greasing. We all know  we cannot borrow our way out of debt. What no mainstream media outlet is talking about here is the real problem at hand. Over the last fifty years we have went from a manufacturing and product exporting economy to a service based and product importing economy. Has anyone noticed that America does not really produce and export anything other than money, grain, and a few products here and there.

When I was growing up, there were several factories in my town. We made air conditioners, gloves, and bicycles. We even had a butcher block factory. We had three large printing companies.  Trucks pulled into town empty and left full. Trains brought in huge rolls of paper and hauled finished print products like books and magazines to distribution centers across the country. Today, we are a town full of fast food restaurants and chain stores. Trucks and trains do not load here anymore they just stop for fuel and snacks. Our large printing shops have now become warehouses. Our air conditioner factory moved to China and its building sits vacant. The bicycle factory has been converted into a storage facility. It is full of imported electronic gadgets and bottled tap water.   As a country, how can we come out ahead if we continue to let our manufacturing jobs leave? We can not really expect to lead the world economy by providing service and selling each other foreign made goods. We make money, but it is not new. It is only the same money traded back and forth among us.  A simple example of what I am talking about is found in a bottle of water at a convinience store. We bottle and sell tap water to eachother, drink the water and throw the bottle in a landfil. Money is exchanged, taxes are paid, but nothing new is brought into the country.   We have to manufacture products and sell them to the rest of the world. The only way to help our economy (for real) is to re establish our manufacturing base.

I am sure my town is not alone.  Millions of former factory and assembly workers from all across the country have had to find new ways to earn a living. 

How did this happen? Who is to blame? Some say government bureaucracy and a foolish tax code. Some will say big unions drove up labor costs, so the factories went where labor was cheaper. Still others will blame Wal Mart for driving out the mom and pop shops.  Politicians and trade agreements are easy targets for part of the blame also. If you asked many of our grandparents they would tell you that our generation is not willing to work hard as they had to.

 
The real question should not be who is to blame but how can we get it back. That is what really matters. To play on the analogy of spokes in a wheel, how many of our jobs are really producing something new for our country and how many are simply riding the wheel? I understand that every  job is a spoke that is part of  the wheel turning, but our turning wheel is growing while the axl that spins it is shrinking. All of these bailouts we keep reading about are simply grease easing tension on the squeaky axle. I am afraid that if we do not increase the strength and size of the axle very soon, it will snap.   Manufacturing has traditionally been the axle that turns America’s economic wheels. If we do not make and export more products than we import,  we will soon run out of a means to pay for it all.

We are coming upon one of the most interesting and scary elections (based on outcome – either way) in the history of the United States, in my opinion.

I believe this is going to divide our country like few things have since the Civil War. I know this sounds extreme, and I’m not implying that any state is going to secede, but people will surely leave the country over it and I can see it is going to be trouble. The trouble is going to come primarily in the form of distention and anger from the people. There will be areas of this country where Americans will not feel welcome by fellow Americans in ways that haven’t been for decades.

At the core this election is not about a black man vs. a white man, or an old decrepit man vs. younger better educated man. It’s not about a man who will need a genie in a bottle for vice president to accomplish all that he has promised vs. a man who changes his stance on issues so often we don’t know where he stands. And for most its not about loyalty to one party who realizes little about economics (even though they claim to) in how unrealistic they are about paying for the great ideas vs. one party who realizes nothing of the environment and humanity.

So here are my thoughts. If Obama loses this election, there are going to be many groups of people (white, black, and many countries across the world) claiming that the election was fixed and that America is racist.

If Obama wins, the groups of people who will be upset about this are the wealthy, those who gross a lot and take home little (something most who have never owned a business don’t realize possible – and no I do not gross a lot and I still take home little – I just know that many small businesses who have employees fall into this category – because of taxes) and people who are truly racist.

I want to leave you with a few thoughts. When will we acknowledge that the presidency has become a self and cohort serving position that has lost most anything that ever was meant to truly represent the people. The founders of our country left nations of kings and now in an obscure way we have allowed for and created new ones.

The next election will absolutely initiate some big ideas and changes from the people. It is going to leave our country with a lot of questions about our current system of government and what we really need to run this nation.

Finally, what if we didn’t have 2 or more people running against each other, so there is no winner and no 1 group of people who are winners – wouldn’t this be a step towards unification, if we all were in it together?

And for the record, I don’t care for either candidate. I have considered not voting in the next election. I also tend to be an idealist trapped inside a realist body.

“Holding Colleges accountable for Teaching America’s History and Institutions”

Would you believe that no college that was part of this test earned better than a “D+”.

WIth that in mind I bet you wouldn’t expect to find Harvard, Yale and Brown college on the list or the University of Minesota and University of California - Berkeley in the 50% correct range. see Rankings

TAKE QUIZ HERE!!

Thanks for sending this site to me J-MO!

So recently if you do a little Google search for “The Daily Skunk” this is what your search results will look like. I have linked to the actual resuts and have an image that I just took today.

So after doing some research, it seems TDS has been hacked into. No need to worry, it wasn’t someone sitting at a computer actually thinking I’m going to break into this little website and steal passwords of the 10 people that have accounts there. It was a hacker bot of sorts that automagically scours the web for vulnerable sites and hides a line of code inside the website.

(don’t worry - even with full access to the database - password are hashed so no one could get your password. I can’t even go in an get your password, and I have full access to everything here.)

So you can see that would be pretty intimidating to see in search results, would you click on that link? To make things even worse, if you do click on it, this is the next thing you see.

So I have removed this scum from the site and have a fully upgraded version of WordPress that has no known vulnerabilities. I have requested that Google do a review of the site and hopefully that warning will be removed by the time you even read this.

If you ever see such a thing - let me know and I’ll take care of that shit real quick.

I agree to some extent with you Odd. But, I do think we should have common goals and work towards them. I do believe all children at the least are created equal when it comes to: Health care, education, and simply put, the best life possible.
To answer the question about wages - even in socialism their is a hierarchy of pay based on education.
NEVER will I support the idea that everyone should be paid the same - that is the removal of incentive. When you remove incentive, expect at the best mediocrity and indifferent populations or much worse.
I;m not going to say I agree with this statement entirely “We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.”, but I do think there is some good justification on his part for this statement.
The part of the speech that is most meaningful to me starts here:
“too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”

I read this and think of our current illegal alien situation. Here are my conclusions:

In support of his statements(in my opinion) I offer 3 statements. #1 is basic economic principle and #2 is basic economic principle extrapolated.

1)Educate your countries population regardless of their citizenship.
2)Take care of the sick that are in your country regardless of their citizenship.

Now, an statement why it isn’t practical also using basic economic principle.
1) It isn’t possible to have more people using than contributing.

Basically,there will be a point when the number of people using the resources will exceed the amount of resources available (some states are at this point already).

Anyway, my “take away” here is that I do believe that the first 2 statements are not only the right thing to do morally, they are the only thing to do for OUR societal preservation.

william

I just finished the movie Bobby.  I recommend you watch it.  It was slow going for me in the beginning, but I was really glad that I watched it all the way through.

I feel he really was a pretty incredible person and found the movie showing some very realistic parallels.

I don’t know anything about him other than 2 speeches that I have read by him.   I feel that this one is well worth posting and it has really got my mind turning about some things.

___________________

On the Mindless Menace of Violence

City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
April 5, 1968

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

My sincere thanks to all those who have served and sacrificed by giving years of their life, or their actual life with the intent being to protect and preserve my Freedom and to help others in this world who are less fortunate.

I’m sorry for those who have had to kill. I’m sorry for those who have had to experience things that should never be experienced.

I’m sorry for those who have had to be part of something they didn’t or don’t feel is right.

As defined in wikipedia:

Veterans Day is an American holiday honoring military veterans. Both a federal holiday and a state holiday in all states, it is celebrated on the same day as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other parts of the world, falling on November 11, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. (Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.)

The holiday is commonly misprinted as Veteran’s Day or Veterans’ Day in calendars and advertisements.

I took this quiz today http://www.newstarget.com/gullibility.html

There is only one that I got wrong that I don’t believe really is wrong. I’ll let you guess wich one.

Anyway, here’s an explaination about me according to the test:

score = 73

Learner

As a Learner, you’re smart enough to know better, yet you’re still not fully informed about reality. Around 15% of the population are Learners. You have the critical thinking skills to be a truly free individual, but you haven’t exercised them enough yet. From time to time, you’re still manipulated by the powers that be, although you frequently learn from those mistakes and refuse to be exploited again. You buy things because they are practical, not because they’re cool.

If you were in The Matrix, you would have taken the red pill, but you would still be in a state of mild disbelief about the nature of reality. You are essentially unplugged, but still untrained. With more knowledge, you could become a true free thinker.

Your architects: You have always been an independent thinker. You rebelled against your parents, schoolteachers and always chose to hang out with smart friends who weren’t necessarily that popular to the “in” crowd. Increasingly, you shape your own world by deciding what actions to take based on your own internal drive rather than what society tells you is right.

Action steps: Learn more. Educate yourself through alternative media and cutting-edge books.

Does anyone else feel like they are missing out on many things and you don’t exactly know what?

Often I think about big cities and well removed places.  I think about the excitement of places like Las Vegas, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Paris… just like the movies - people constantly going, people with so much culture, so contemporary, so many possibilities and endless interactions.  Restaurants, museums, taxi cabs, the noise, lights and sky scrapers. All of these living and non-living entities making up this gigantic organism.  I can only imagine who’s reality that really is anyway - could it be - or could it have been mine?

Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum I often catch myself thinking about wide open spaces like western North Dakota.  The mountains of Montana. Highways that take me past the desert mountains of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.  Sandy beaches sometimes on the gulf, sometimes in the Caribbean and even better yet of Oceania. 

The amazing thing to me is that this is reality for many people.  They are living it, by choice or by fate - possibly both. 

By now you should be wondering what the hell I’m getting at, quite honestly I don’t really know.  I’m just writing, putting some thoughts out that I hope others can relate to - or better yet inspire the realization of feelings felt that haven’t yet been recognized or confronted.

 I would hate to believe that I’m the only one with these thoughts!!  Although I sometimes wonder.

Has the world ever been so connected and at the same time been so disconnected?  There has never been a period of time when it has been easier to get in touch and have a converstion with a complete stranger - sometimes multiple strangers from different parts of the world at the same time?

The good and bad of this is like comparing a book to its movie.  On the other hand it is just like what I have described in the first two paragraphs - endless possibility - to destroy and create dreams.

 Well, that’s it.  Interesting what you can figure out by just sitting down and running with a thought - writing something out without having a point or a take away thought as the goal.

 I encourage you all to try it.

william

Getting rich. The American dream.

We see it in TV programs, commercials, magazines, the internet. We see it from the highway as we drive past a million dollar + mansion, the suit on the cell phone in the mercedes that passes us when we are already doing 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. We hear it on the radio - in the songs and on the news.

This isn’t even a realistic possibility for 95% of the population.

I’m interested to know if anyone reading the skunk thinks they will have over a million $ net worth in their lifetime or even wants it?

What impact has the illusion of getting rich had on our society in general?

One of these topics is going to generate some discussion… I know it.

That is if anyone is even reading them!