I will try a and tell you what it was like growing up with and old school father, I was the second oldest of 4 kids which to me meant that I had it a lot tougher then any of the rest of them, of course this is purely from my own perspective, I cant talk for any of the others except to say none of them got ass whoop ins like I did, or nearly as frequent for that matter either.

My dad was from a good Catholic family that had 11 kids so his up bringing was a very strict and stern one, as I called all my Aunts and Uncles on the day of October 18^th to let them all know that dad had died everyone of them to a fault was very sympathetic and thank Katie and myself for taking him in for the last 11 months and looking after him.

One of my dad’s younger sisters ok, his only younger sister told me that told me that when he came back from W.W.2 he gave her a locket that he wore while he was in the Navy with her picture in it, she said when they were young kids he had always watched out for her as they were growing up, then she asked if I would like to have it? Of course I told her yes, and then I told her like I told the rest of his siblings that he had been one tough son of a bitch right up until the end.

She then told me do you remember me coming to visit you where you were born? I said no I sure didn’t and then she said well you were maybe 2 so I’m not surprised, but you Joe were always a little hellion even at that age, your mom was trying to potty train you when I got there and you wouldn’t say my name out of spite, I thought you called me “Marny” not Marlene well the first day I was there you stood up from the toilet and hollered Marny come wipe my butt! I remember fondly that your mom always had a pot of homemade soup going on the stove and that day at lunch as she put the bowl of soup down at the table for you, you grabbed the bowl tipped it upside down over your head and started laughing, so I knew then you were going to be a little shit, that’s why your father was always so tough on you because you were always a little shit, to which I told I still am! She told me that didn’t surprise her one little bit.

Often as I have looked back over my childhood I always knew as far as us kids went I probably deserved all of the spankings I received I didn’t like  them but I did get more then the rest of us kids by at least 10 fold. Growing up for part of my life in eastern Canada you were required to take French class’s then we moved down to the U.S. and I decided too take French again because this would be a breeze, well the first day I got in trouble because I told the teacher Ms. Crowe that she was pronouncing the words all wrong, I then told her that our French books were made in Quebec not in France like the books in Canada were thus I spent a good portion of that class out in the hall because I would always tell her she wasn’t doing it right. When the parent – teacher conferences came along my dad came home from them beat my ass and told me I would never again get a poor work slip because I was now an embarrassment to the family!  

This my friends was a tough old man, of course at that time he wasn’t old…

More tomorrow

I awoke yesterday morning at 4:24, if you know me that’s not all that unusual as I am a frequent early riser. I looked at the clock rolled over on my left side and thought “well I’ll just lay here for a few minutes longer”, 3 minutes later my phone rang and I knew before I answered it that it was the hospital calling. I guess I had been expecting this call for awhile now, In July after him having to be taken to the hospital by ambulance more then a few times, Katie and I finally realized we couldn’t look after him anymore. The previous few days I had been discussing with him that very thing and he understood the situation, it certainly wasn’t what any of us wanted but after having a stroke in May and then spending about a month and a half in a physical rehabilitation facility and not getting much better we brought him home to see if we could deal with it. Two days later it became abundantly clear we could not. I have to tell you it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. The stories you here about those places is true once you’re there they just don’t give a shit, and at the same time I don’t think my dad did either. He had been telling me for months that he didn’t want to be kept alive if it ever came to it just for the sake of being alive.

The nursing home would call me at times during the middle of the night and tell me my father was being difficult or your father just hit another patient with his cane, like I might be able to help out this situation. Well of course they were wrong, no one other then my mother could ever get my dad to do anything he didn’t want to! I am pretty sure that eventually they might have figured that out but they still called. They called me about 2 weeks ago at about 3 in the morning and told me that he was having trouble breathing and they were going to have him taken to the hospital, an hour or two later I received a call from the hospital doctor who explained that he had looked at my dad and believed he had pneumonia and would be admitting him for treatment, later that day while I was at the store a nurse called to tell me that they were indeed treating him for that and he was in intensive care. I explained to her we couldn’t come to see him as both Katie and myself had extremely bad colds that had started 2 days earlier and I certainly wouldn’t want him or anyone else to catch what was almost knocking both of us on our respective ass’es . She asked me a number of questions about my fathers wishes etc. and had me repeat it to another nurse, and that in the next day or so a doctor would call.

Knowing that my dad had been getting progressively weaker over the last few months had allowed me the time to start the process of understanding that he wouldn’t be with us much longer. Mentally I was now trying to wrap my at times small brain around the idea of this once large and powerful man not being around the, intricate balance  of knowing he was leaving me with so many things instilled in me as I got older have made it much easier to now deal with. Yesterday I thought leave it too my dad to buy me the extra time to try and deal with the inevitability of his death.

In the next few days I will try and explain what it was like for me to grow up in the foot steps of my father….

Oil has just gone over 75.00 barrel gold is at a record high of approx. 1079.00 an ounce and now I read that Wall Street is hoping for the dollar to collapse because of the way they buy and leverage Commodities!

The dollars value keeps sinking and the government thinks this is a good thing as more countries will buy or goods because they’ll be cheaper which in turn should put people back to work as factory orders go up the companies will have to hire more employees to fill those orders. Of course wages for those new workers will go down because with the dollar being worth less the profit margins will be less, what we get paid won’t go anywhere as far as it used to because just getting to work will cost us more. The dollar has to be worth less as we just seem too keep printing more and more, oh wait Fed chairman  Bernanke said we won’t keep printing money for ever, I’m bad sorry.

It soon will be just like the German Depression and we’ll all have to fill the trunks of our cars with cash just to buy gas to get to work with, in their old depression people would fill wheel barrels with money to buy soup and bread.

I wonder where the line starts? If people aren’t working as I’ve said many, many times there will be no economic recovery, unemployed people do not buy big ticket items like homes and cars, appliances, or do much remodeling to existing homes.

Supposedly the banks are now all making big killer profits from the money that the government loaned them to stay afloat and help loan money to businesses but I’ve seen little evidence that they are loaning anything, because they are sitting on the money and collecting interest! They might need that money as more home loans are defaulted on and trust me there will be a lot more, before this is all over.

Here is the next thing I see coming as the 8,000.00 tax credit for new home buyers expires at the end of November, I believe sometime early next year as it becomes clear that people can’t afford to buy homes that the government will give new home buyers the required down payments instead of a tax credit, you will of course have to pay it back at probably about 3% over a 10 to 15 year period, because right now no one has the down payment. I think that there is still no recovery and if you believe there is let’s look at it this way, we are being told there are 15 million people with out jobs, yet in the same breath they are claiming that unemployment nationally is right at 10%. I say this is bull shit there are a little over 300 million people in our great country, just simple math tells me it’s more like 30 million people out of work!!! Every one of us knows people that are out of work and I’m betting it’s more then just one out of every 10 people you know, that’s either people you know or neighbors etc.

So who doe’s this leave to start buying things to turn our economy around?                               

Ever since they started telling us back in the Vietnam War days partial truths they’ve used it against us to make things not so bleak and dreary. Back then we would hear that American forces killed 270 Viet Cong while we only suffered losses of 3, even then I used to think if that’s the case the war will be over soon because the North won’t have any people left to fight with!

There is no easy fix to the shit storm that George Bush left us with, but I know we can’t keep printing more money like nothing is happening and not have dire consequences to go with it.

When I was reading on the internet that the 2010 model Cadillac CTS was being revamped, as I have since its inception thought that as smaller luxury cars go it was extremely cute. I knew that they were going to redesign it but seeing as it was one of GM’s better selling cars, my thought had been so you’re going to mess with a good thing when you seemingly can’t sell much in the way of cars. But having grown up around the big three auto makers my whole life I also thought yeah this is not a surprise.

Always wondering where the conspiracy is once I read the article things started to bother me even more. In a time when gas mileage has gotten to be a very, very prevalent thing there going to be producing some with a 550 horse power rating, and the they’ve also changed the interior so that the back seat has considerable more leg room as the seat will sit farther back then the current model. This is where I started wondering as too the why’s. It seems that the bigger faster motor and the new backseat arrangement are being done for a specific reason. GM did this revamp for the Chinese car buyer, more to the point for the newly rich Chinese that now find themselves very well off indeed, it seems that they like being chauffeur driven and the new back seat arrangement allows them to feel more like they’re in a luxury car and the added horsepower gives it more status among upwardly mobile young buyers.

This isn’t the part that bothered me, the part that bothers me is the fact that the revamping was being done while we the people gave General Motors a loan of approximately 50 billion dollars to stay in business!

My question is this did the ....U.S..... government get any pressure from the Chinese to keep General Motors afloat? They are after all our largest trading partner they have continued to buy ....U.S..... treasury bands while pretty much no one else wanted them lately to me it just kind of smelled like a rat!!! A very large one at that. I was all for saving our big three auto makers, don’t get me wrong there as they employ a vast amount of workers, but we used to call this collusion if I’m indeed right. Oh well just a thought I had yesterday and decided I’d share it this morning.

On a different note congratulations to President Obama on winning his noble prize this morning, lot’s of Americans don’t like him but it seems everywhere else in the world does.

Ok forget this crap lets say I’m Saudi Arabia and because the world floats on the American dollar, but the last few years I as a government or better yet the House of Saudi I have lost countless billions or even trillions of dollars because of the United States, and I wanted to change the way the world does business I might start a rumor that I was looking to change the way currency works around the world, next I would say to the world that’s a very, very foolish rumor someone has set out there, and I would then deny the rumor as having no merit what so ever. I already know that both the Russians and the Chinese would like it if the world economies were based on their currencies but I also know that neither of them singularly have the clout to pull that off, but if I wanted them to know that I too was now somewhat worried about my U.S. dollars being based on an economy that lately has been printing money as fast as they can make it, and I know that at this point all my American dollars aren’t worth anywhere near the paper it’s printed on well, I might want out of that deal.

If I started that rumor and then flatly refused to admit I started it, now I would have all the other countries of the world coming to my House to talk and put forth proposals and I can remain totally innocent of all allegations while I hear from everyone who wants to sit at my table. Yes I know that this might cause me a very great loss of my fortune as I have so much invested in America but my investments are pretty much worthless at this point anyway, all of my real estate holdings continue to devalue, as does all the useless paper so really at this point how much do I stand to lose?

I see that you have not reigned in Wall Street who stole billions of my dollars, and you still allow them to fuck me over even more, and I and the rest of the world know that this global economic collapse was caused by YOU tell me again why should I continue to back you’re piece of shit country?  

I just looked and at 7:30 this morning it was at 49,999, It may sound kind of funny but I remember when it hit 2,000 views for some reason I found it very odd indeed that anyone out there could or would be interested in what I might have to say, or what I might be doing. Over the past few years I have written many varied and assorted stories, articles etc. and the only thing I can say with great certainty is that my stories with anything sexual in them seem to generate the most views by far. I can write a story like that and maybe have 1,000 views in as little as half a day, and years ago it wasn’t always about what I wanted to write or felt like writing as much as it was to get views, in the last year or so I write less as the state of our economy seems to piss me off a little, but what I’ve learned from it all is that I will write about what I want and not give a shit about the blog count, yes I still like the fact that people read them, but now it’s more about what I’d like to have them read.

So this morning the government released it last jobs report and of course to me it was no surprise as the monthly number climbed to 562,000 people last their job last week, yes indeed things are getting better, the market did what it should do upon receiving this news and dropped about 72 points in the first 20 minutes or so, but as I’ve said many, many times what should concern Wall Street and what does are 2 different things as of  approx. 8:00 this morning it’s now down only 34, this news’s to the street should have sent the Street into a spin, but as I keep telling you, it never seems to really matter as they march to a different beat, the street had expected a decline in jobs of somewhere around 471,000 not 562,000, almost 100,000 more but we can just shrug that off along with anything else we don’t like.

She’d gone and cut her hair very short a few weeks ago, at first he didn’t like it at all, but he would have to admit as they were leaving all he could think about was getting her sweet ass home and between the sheets, yes the dirty possibilities had sprung forth from his mind the last few moments she was sitting in the chair at the salon, the thought of being pissed off at her for cutting so much off would some what hide the excited feeling’s he was having with all the new idea’s that came leaping from his mind. AS she got too the front desk, he paid and she asked, what do you think of it? He said rather curtly not much, maybe it will grow on me, and the stylist said I’m sorry you don’t like it he grumbled something and walked out, even though he paid for it and gave the woman a very healthy tip, hoping not to give away his excitement. Yes he was indeed an asshole, god sometimes he loved the way you had to play the game.

As they were getting in the car she said, so you don’t like it? His somewhat slow response was maybe I just have to get used to it, we’ll see, he knew he was lying if he could get away with it he’d have ripped her clothes off right here in the Starbucks parking lot and world be damned as he wanted her legs wrapped around him right now in the worst way, he didn’t care who saw them, he do it with the windows open and tell people going in the store see what a triple snicker mocha will do for you!

Instead she said we have to go to the store so I can get hair color remover and try and get the last of the red out of my hair and go blonde. Once again he feigned shock, but inside his cock now seemed to almost leap out of his shorts all on it’s own, drive slowly to the store he thought as his hard-on was bulging beyond belief, at first he thought maybe she’s just toying with me, but no she had continued talking about what it would take too try and get the red out. He now knew it would be awhile before he got to take her as he wanted to she had more plans, damned hair color, damned her, he just wanted her now. Two or three times as they were walking through the store he was glad he was the one pushing the cart, trying too hide the thing in his pants from customers, of course he didn’t really care as often women would look a little startled, but his mind was going a thousand miles per hour about all the things he was going to do with her in just this day alone forget about next week tomorrow…

Who knows maybe I’ll have to write more about this?

So a year ago the bottom had just fallen out of the market, AIG was fixed to crash and burn, and unless you missed it is still burning, Merrill Lynch was getting ready to file for Bankruptcy, unemployment was starting to hit record numbers, George Bush was still in office and finally agreeing that a few things might be wrong with the economy, You couldn’t buy a house because you couldn’t find a loan anywhere!

So today when I read that home sales are up 5%from this time last year I have to laugh and think Yes the economy is really kicking ass. When the stock market goes up 100 points based on there being fewer layoffs this week then last year, I’m … well almost thrilled, when they say that nation wide unemployment is at less then 10% and the market goes up another few hundred points again I’m almost happy, but as usual Wall Street is comparing how things were this week versus a week ago last year, it tells me we are still very deep in the shitter as things at this time last year couldn’t have gotten much worse!!! So really what the analysts have been doing lately is just putting the same old shine, on an unpolished turd! Then hoping that we all will continue to buy their bullshit and bullshit it is. We all know now that home prices were so over inflated I had been saying for years if it continued my kids would never get to own a home, well now they can but they either cant find a job or don’t make enough money to even think about getting a loan!

The home loans that people are getting generally are for short sale homes, and even they are risky at this time because home prices in most areas of the country are still going down. But hey we are selling more homes now then a year ago so that’s got to bee good news for Wall Street. We pump in about 3 trillion dollars to help prop up the economy, well ok, we gave it to the car companies and a bunch of banks and insurance companies, but where is the stimulus that they were talking about just a few months back? About 90% of the U.S. Economy runs on the small businesses but they can’t get loans because most states that have received their shares of the stimulus money need it for themselves. As far as borrowing money from a bank goes it the same old thing, yes we have money but you can’t have any because you need some and that tells us you are not worthy of having it.

Last fall after a summer of paying 4.29 a gallon for gas we as consumers got a break for about 3-4 months we found ourselves paying about 2.00 a gallon, it was short lived but for a few months it felt good, it was as I recall about the only good thing that happened. However it didn’t last long as once again Wall Street speculators weren’t profiting from the low price so they decided to drive it back up, there has been no shortage of gas except that’s what they’d like you too think, so for about 4 straight months here in the Reno area it has stayed at 2.80 a gallon, yet I read that nationally it’s around 2.50. I do remember OPEC last year saying they would be happy if they could get 75.00 a barrel, so why don’t we have Wall Street leverage it for us.

If you’ve noticed like I do everything now indicator wise goes back to this time last year, well this time last year everything sucked big time but if we are to follow the stock market we are all way better off now then we were.

I’ve got some smoke and some mirrors, want to see me pull a rabbit out of my hat? Opps I don’t have a hat a had to eat that after the unemployment ran out, it’s not bad with gravy though.