Cowboy Confessional

Like an aging porn star, Obama’s infrastructure-focused economic stimulus scheme fails to rise to the occasion.

One can contemplate any economy as a cube (or a matrix for the computer programmers amongst us). Cells in economic matrices are weakly interconnected. When lagging, an economy should be stimulated so every cell has money to spend, save or invest depending on what people therein need and want most. Once inseminated, economic intercourse resumes between the cells.

Yes, economics is dirty especially when politicians are screwing you.

Obama seeks to impassion the economy by (re)building infrastructure such as parkways to patrons, bridges to backers and damns to donors. It is Obama’s reliance on specific political cells in the American economic ecosystem that will doom the States to a prolonged recession while reinforcing Obama’s infrastructure — his political base — for the next two campaign cycles.

Three vectors sweetly summarize people who collectively comprise the economy including all those Obama purposefully leaves behind. First, people are spread across geography from coast to coast and border to border. This includes big cities, sleepy suburbs and rural ranges. Obama’s infrastructure programs target places where infrastructure already dominates, the mega metropoli. Big cities backed Obama and now rural taxpayer-financed infrastructure projects will back big cities. Think of this program as both a payoff and a down payment to his core voters. People in small towns, rural regions and even the suburb-bound middle class don’t get their money shot.

Obama arrogantly amalgamates all people as plebeians, assuming that the ignorant masses know how to pour concrete and tie rebar, and that they will move off their farms to build bypasses. Our economy is composed of a genetic soup of people who code software, style hair, pilot planes, bake cookies and invest money. Obama’s infrastructure spending provides zero direct economic stimuli to most of the people powering the nation. Any indirect stimuli from his trickle-down economics will be small, localized and unlikely to increase demand for computer software, air travel or a new dos (no use spending big for a new hair style that you’ll hide under a hard hat).

The remaining economic vector is wealth or income. Everyone spends or invests money to the benefit of someone else. Willie Brown, San Francisco’s mayoral maven and steadfast Democrat chided San Francisco swells who thought it good form to cut back on holiday parties in deference to the hard economic times. Willie wisely reminded them that a lot of caterers, waiters and booze slingers count on well heeled soirees to stimulate personal economies. George Bush the Elder destroyed the American yacht building industry by instigating a luxury tax and putting on unemployment compensation nearly everyone who laid fiberglass or ran cables in new yachts. Real economic recovery requires improving the fortunes of the rich, the middle class and the poor. Construction company owners are the only wealthy people who stand to benefit from Obama’s flaccid tactics.

Envision the economic cube above with only a dozen cells lit. That is Obama’s economic vision, one that leaves nearly everyone in an economic drainage ditch. Big city unionized workers and their bosses however will do quite well and have excess campaign donations come 2010 and 2012.

The real solution is across the board income tax reduction, preferably small, steady, and repeated each of the next four years. Everyone, everywhere, in every profession at every income level receives instant relief and will spend or invest as best suits their needs. Every cell in the economic cube will be lit and money once again will boink betwixt. But during the campaign Obama said his mission was to make “government cool again” (which it never was). Relying on the people to keep and make the best use of their own money cuts government out of the equation.

To Obama, that’s not cool. What a tool.

Bookmark to:

Is it appropriate to send a gay man a fruitcake for the holidays?

Bookmark to:

I suffer from Alzheimer’s … every morning before coffee. I suffer from everybody else’s Alzheimer’s the rest of the day.I suffer from Alzheimer’s … every morning before coffee. I suffer from everybody else’s Alzheimer’s the rest of the day.

Bookmark to:

The priest flinging water in my face was a little disconcerting.

I attended the baptism of a neighbor’s new daughter, in part to be neighborly. In part because the chain of life, family and belief systems still warm my cynical ticker. Also because the mother is Pilipino, the father is one of those gigantic Swedes, and the two merged families are an interesting gaggle (it is too early to tell what the kid will look like when she gets older, but with that set of genetic material she will likely open a nail salon for WNBA players).

I also attended because I had never witnessed a Catholic baptism before. Comparative theology is another of my odd hobbies. Since Catholicism is overstocked with symbolism, any Church ceremony is an entertaining exercise in that guessing game called “What Dark Part Of History Caused Them To Canonize That?”

Something has happened to the Catholic Church in America over the last few decades. Yes, their churches are still foreboding tombs with the interior decorative warmth of inquisition chambers (a bit more so in California given Spanish theological-architectural contributions). But American priest have devolved into semi-stoned love muffins. Their dispositions resemble new age sentimentality inflicted with residual summer of love psychedelic sensibilities.

A softer, gentler crusader recruiting post.

My biggest disappointment was the ceremony itself. I had been expecting something more energetic, along the lines of a Catholic wedding I once attended, which to date is still the best one hour aerobic workout I have ever endured (stand, sit, kneel, sit, kneel, rise, genuflect, kneel, sit, spin, hop on one leg …). A California Catholic baptism is a quick and quaint affair whereby the priest — with a perpetual smile seeming caused by severe neurological trauma – grills the parents on why in the Sam Hell they brought the kid in to be baptized.

Unlike Baptists – who by definition and name sake take the act seriously – Catholics do not require consenting adults to come to baptism/salvation by their own accord. The Church prefers to get ‘em while they’re fresh. It is easier to wash the sins off someone whose only sin is soiling their diapers and keeping their parents up at night (which, incidentally, is what caused conception in the first place). This is why Catholics get by with sprinkling water on the baby’s head while Baptists have to dunk the whole body into the nearest river. By waiting for adult participation, Baptists have a bigger load of sin to scrub. Baptist also prefer the near death experience of having a preacher drown them. Attempted theological homicide puts the fear of God into a man real fast.

Give the non-consent of the infant, the priest must interrogate the parents since the most cogent answer he could expect from the baptizee would be “goo goo”. Baptizing a body that has not consented to such is against theology and could also get a friar arrested for running an illegal bath house.

At one point in the ritual, the priest uncorks two bottle of olive oil and proceeds to baste the baby. The cleric didn’t mention if the olive oil was extra virgin, but given that the little girl wasn’t even a year old we can safely assume she was. The oils are blessed by a higher primate in the Church hierarchy on some sorted holy day (incidentally, if the Church disclaims evolution they should avoid calling one caste of the priesthood “primates”, though the mental vision of an orangutan in a mitre is amusing). The parents strip the infant to the waste while the priest slathers scented and unscented oil on the kid’s chest and back. As if kids weren’t difficult enough to keep a grip on.

After a few more passage from scripture, auto reflexive answers from the assembled Catholics and a final spritz, the priest loudly shouted in an overjoyed, high pitched, fan crazed schoolgirl voice “We have a new Christian!”

He should read the opt-out clause and check back with the baby in twenty years or so.

His proclamation was frightening in its eagerness. Granted, as a priest he is dedicated to expanding the ranks of the faith, but his delight held a blue note of surprise, as if the excitement of winning one was a great achievement in a world where Satan seems to be ahead on points. It is like a bottom rung baseball team that is thrilled when to their surprise they are not skunked.

During today’s baptismal ritual, the priest palmed a small clam shell dish to hold the holy water, which as best as I can tell is tap water over which that some top-tier ecclesiastic waved his hand. What transformative power this has remains a mystery, but one would think that we should be drinking the stuff instead of dripping it on cherub foreheads. Perhaps holy water should be issued to fire departs since it appears to have prophylactic properties over Hell fire.

With the baby now sufficiently moistened to protect it from eternal damnation, the padre turned to assault the audience. Enraptured by baptismal conquest and from tallying a new tither, and with holy water dish in hand, he finger flicked droplets in my direction, simulcasting unsolicited blessings. If I understand this all correctly God allegedly perks up when a vicar precipitates and prays simultaneously, and I’m the beneficiary thereof.

Hmmm. My lotto numbers didn’t hit today, so this theological theory seems flawed.

Bookmark to:

The toughest part of writing songs is understanding one’s limitation. Mine are vocals.

No kidding Guy? Aside from our ears bleeding, we never noticed.

When peddling a song to publishers the recording and mix don’t have to be perfect. Publishers are looking for good raw material done in styles that will make them imagine some particular singer or band performing that song. A tune for sale needs to be developed enough to ignite that ah ha moment — that spark of recognition that blah-blah-blah could record that song and sell a million copies.

But if any part of the song completely misses the mark — especially vocals where most of the emotional outlet of the song lay — then the song won’t sell because the publisher won’t hear the artist in his stable in that song.

Enter Mister Earl J. Rivard, a vocalist I recently met at a long open mic. For songwriters and working musicians open mics are rehearsal opportunities with beer and cute girls watching (or in the case of our local dive, ex biker chicks singing along off key).

Earl took to the mic and started singing like the bastard child of Bocephus and Joe Cocker. I instantly knew I wanted him to do the vocals on One Heartbreak and take the song into the next realm — to make it sound like a ruling blues master could make it their own.

One Heartbreak (Away from the Grave)

In the studio, we ran through several takes. The first was good and Earl was following my requests for placing a certain emphasis or emotion on certain phrases (Earl, more anger when you say “can’t take those lies”). The second take was a hatchet job as we kept over dubbing the parts I didn’t like. I suddenly got smart and said “Earl, on this next take sing it however it moves you.” I figured letting him place his emotions into the song might create some interesting elements I never considered.

I was right. The sounds in the player above are the unedited Earl J. Rivard additions to the song. If you have ever had your herat broken, you may just like his redition.

Bookmark to: