Balloonman's Comments (316)

“Packing heat is second nature in some quarters. Even for giants like Arenas. Never know when you might get no respect. Stash it In the glove box. Pants. Where does this champ keep his gun before each game? In his locker? Just for fun.”

“Yeah. Isn't that something? Progressives and Repubs joining ranks. Who would have thunk? A big difference though is that most angry Republican OBAMA bashers want to destroy him from the git-go, regardless. Angry Progressives on the other hand, waiting, waiting, incessantly waiting for an OBAMA turnabout from daily patronizing Wall Street, legislators beholding to Insurance and religion (women's rights), not to mention MILITARY FORCE as first line foreign policy, see their man betraying them, are heartbroken, and speak out with heavy heart against their own 'respected' leader who sloughs off their voter mandate.”

“"An outright liar"."You lie!" My oh my. What a thing to say. Ridiculous. Preposterous. Hyperbole of course. Surely an 'epitaph' not appropriate applied to our Nobel President's record. Just look, listen and remember. At stump speech promises, what he said he believes. At what he has said he will do. Look at what he does, done. Well okay, compromises, gives away territory to those who would destroy him, stood aside from forcing policy, delayed, reneged, abandoned, fudged on this that, but grow up. That we voters gave ourselves, our trust to him has nothing to do with his integrity, after all he is a politician.”

“As sure as GWBUSH drug prescription plan was a boondoggle for the insurance industry, no negotiatilng for lower prices, no cross border legal excursion to buy cheaper, and moreover with the donut hole amount limit reached, then you are on your own. A gap during which INSURANCE is off the hook thereby saving INSURANCE lots and lots of money. Until another amount alloted after the gap kicks in, perhaps before a citizen goes bankrupt. This stinks the same way, likely much worse. Forced, mandated coverage. Fees, penalties (punishment) to most who opt out. Demographic, the obvious statistic, healthy young folks. Government HEALTH CARE REFORM, who started this long awaited wonderful advantage for us? INSURANCE? Couldn't do it better. Reform long in the hopper coming due forced INSURANCE manipulating OZ from behind the curtain. No subsidy for women's rights, abortions. Oh, but they can buy it on their own, yay. Gracious! We retain that freedom to pay out of our own pocket. To whom? INSURANCE. Double jeopardy? Now wait a minute. We get, alloted, grace us INSURANCE exchange pools for folks with few alternatives, little money. Trapped between a rock and a hard place. Shop! Shop around folks for a 'deal'. Like reduced rate on no competition telecommunications, cable hookup. Good luck suckers. Never give us an even break.”

“I thnk we can be pretty sure there are no pleasant surprises going to come from President OBAMA. You know, like do the turnaroud thing, finally take charge, "okay people, this is the what we are going to do and do it!" Really show colors he seemed to more than just suggest on the stump campaigning. Display full blown the PROGRESSIVE many of us thought was his underpins. Yes, knowing he was not a liberal, thathe was a concilliator, a mediator, a "let's all get together at the table and just get along", Here we have? a man of good will, conscience, a community organizer type guy for crying out loud. I'll say it again, Constitutional Law professor suggesting people come first on the getting American justice scale. Negotiate/compromise with the POWERS, the MONEY, the Pentagon, Congress sure, but after the talk folks get big favors in the end. Sorry. Not that way. Not happening. We get second rate Health Reform, if that. Banker WALL STREET is alive and flourishing off taxpayer backs. GM bailed and still moving production out of the country. No explosive Government big job programs. War and more war. OBAMA talks pretty, almost logic off wobbly, false premises, (war is bad but good in this instance of comes down to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and what we must do for our security). He engages us with his handsome smile, jokes, conveys "trust me, I know what I am doing", then twists it in.”

“Clever. Our President tells us like it is. War is bad. Good though when war has to be done. As President, and needless to say a very bright man, decent sort, Constitutional Law professor for crying out loud, representing our AMERICAN INTERESTS, whether we like it our not. He is our President and he will lead us to war for our security and in our best interest regardless. That's his job. As President. To do what even a majority of Americans don't want. That's his job and he knows what's best for us. Right is not wrong when it is right for us. After all, he's got military advisors. Pentagon specialists. And he's Commander In Chief! He has decided. After all, he is the 'decider', to quote his predecessor. Yes this Afghanistan War is bad but it's got to prosecuted. Stabilize the . . . tribes. Change their faith in whatever makes them against us! If we have to build a school here and there, a road, plant wheat for poppies, destroy a few wedding plans, it must be done! For future peace. For mankind! Yes We Can!”

“OBAMA telling it like it is! Precisely what I want to hear. Those bankers are bad bad people, finance houses brought us to our knees. We taxpayers bailing the whole greed corrupted System out! Oh, my. I think dear Mister President, then how come Wall Street and its shadow Robert Rubin and Geithner, Summers, Goldman and Merri . . . and on and on with all your councellors, advisors, cabinet trustees, are just that: Your trusted advisors? To the regular folks harm. Last to consider. Break our backs one way or the other making it opossible for MONEY made off money and regular folk's sweat to exist.. I think, dear Mister President, who I backed pretty decisevely after Kucinich, I think, where in the world are you coming from? What are we OBAMA believers to believe. Considering your disappointing behaviour? Your disappointing orders, to any ordinary progressive, anyway. Not standing tall next to promises. Your washed out in compromises, if not simply priority issues abandoned altogether. Mister President always talk a fine talk. Much what I'd say if I had the wits. But I got to say, I really feel betrayed.”

“Seriously now. Debate who? Al Pacino, no script, and who knows where he's been, accepting another special actor award might even give her a run for her money.”

“YOUR SO VAIN.I loved what you put into your tunes. There was some kind of special something, your own sound, a distinctive Carly Simon sound. I like it to this day. Arrangements. Careful team maneuvering. Lyrics building a super star. A song bird voice of it's time surely together with your own physical endowed family pipes, likely osmosized with other knowing singers, resounding definitely that this tune is CARLY SIMON'S treatment, Very nice. Very nice. In those more genteel times. After all these years it is interesting to hear about your actual living circumstances, hear you talk about specific likes and annoyances although I'm not sure I wanted to know.”

“H1N1 shots for GOLDMAN first in line, betcha! If any one of them dudes got sick and couldn't think and act clearly, could not upright do daily MBA educated million dollar bonus sweat shifts at the neighborhood corner sting table shifting shell game, reinventing exotic paper derivatives/hedge funds and packages of taxpayer guaranteed ribbon bundles of sweet toxics--more tangible, imagine, than a lovely chinese wind chime--or buying up mortgages and foreclosing home owners all by themselves, why, heaven help us! We done for! Left holding an empty bag. Or am I thinking of Merrill Lynch? Or BofA. Or JP Morgan. Or Chase? CitiBank? Group? Morgan Stanley? After all, according to bailout and first things first, they R us. Don't let them get sick for gosh sakes. Keep them mighty and well!”

“Good point Paralogos. KUCINICH progressive. Clinton Blue Dog. Obama the moderate. Though BILL CLINTON CENTRIST perhaps is more like it, accounting his CORPORATISM favoring stance. Yes, Obama DID campaign as the post partisan. So we Obamatons--originally a Kucinich man myself not hypnotized mindless by charms--should not be shocked at his apparent disinterest to command the head of the table, no ifs ands or buts about it. Or surprised at arguable merit in conciliatory leadership, everybody at the table. Many would destroy him soley for politcs. This was not the time to deliberate away 100 days of swift recovery of exciting innovations. Instead water down stuff, so watered down HEALTH CARE reform may leave us with the donut hole joke that GWBush Prescription Drug (a gift to PHarma) gave us. Yes, I did vote for the "fantasy Obama". What the heck, a politic cynic wants to believe. HOPE and CHANGE. Yes We Can! Betcha! Most of us with sore hearts deserve it surviving 8 years of nightmare! It's not that I don't recognize reality. That moving CONGRESS is sluggish, drudgery and sometimes near impossible. It's that our unbeatable Hillary Clinton challenger President OBAMA fades back to the inevitable winner, our busted System, remaining ill adjusted if at all. Plus too often reverses his own declared course/promise. Promoting compromises that lean heavy to continued support for primacy of the CORPORATIST STATE, reducing citizens to serve MONEY over our benefits first. (About Afghanistan another time).”

“GOLDMAN SACHS revolving door (urging it's executives to serve in Government) has how many of it's ex top folks advising President OBAMA nite and day? This very moment likely whispering wonderous counsel how to ameliorate calamity that ruined ordinary folks. Buy up mortgages and foreclose all by themselves. These veteran expert insiders, scholars OBAMA administration might say, who know the STREET game absolutely. Superior to bust out Lehman Brothers for sure. Lehman could have been them if it wasn't for Goldman superior firepower. Inside power housing CONGRESS and ADMINISTRATION workings. Strings all the way up, likely to some extent, puppeting OBAMA. His best and brightest? Goldman in addition to its WALL STREET network associates, running our RECOVERY? GOLDMAN SACHS is in a way the Government isn't it? Far as setting rules how to reset FINANCE to 'normalcy'? Back to an 'adjusted' status quo. Old methods cosmeticized generating new inventions. New packaged securities paper instruments nobody really knows if there is any substance left, what they mean or are? Experienced Wall Street geniuses. Honourable men. Surrounding President Obama. Prime movers in place to resolve our GREAT RECESSION. GOLDMAN. Fox from the fox house. They sure made sure they got theirs didn't they? Most of it off our taxpayer backs. Nasty. A sort of suffocating enterprize you think about the grappling people gasping to survive.”

“My sentiments precisely leorising. " . . . the overconsumption of violence by kids really disturbs me . . . " Except for one point, maybe the GAME is first priority, then the slaughter. Other words, Is the game for the sophisticate player a sophisticated game, challenging, original, invigorating, incorporating new invented, heady maneuverings, sudden surprises? But now that I've said it I am not sure. Maybe that nuanced claim that the game is the thing can be examined more obvious, as close to some gamers inured and immune condition to bad taste. And that you can't separate the game from the kick of killing human beings even though they are nothing but pixels. Similar psychology to the characters in ancient story plots, adapted to film, who pay to hunt and kill trapped, hapless human prey. Regardless the extant real behaviour merit behind the excuse that violence is a natural thing, and that fiction only reflects that which is natural, and thus profiled isn't done by bad taste people who produce it, but rather by just folks making a buck, off what comes natural, still I am convinced that murder and gore for murder and gore sake, in pervasive film and video, spreads an onerous, ugly, bad taste climate that cannot help but infest, invade us, almost a kind of virus, that becomes, for some, a brain pattern that acts out the ordinarily unthinkable when unusual circumstance triggers, for that person, abandonment of checks on natural or unnatural impulses.”

“What scared the dickens out of me? SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. "Mirror on the wall who is the fairest of all?" That witch, the wicked Queen, the poison apple. HOLD THAT GHOST. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Hands emerging forth and back from the bedstead. Lou raising up, laying back, raising up, laying back. The Union soldier shot dead on the stairs by Olivia de Havilland in GONE WITH THE WIND. Splatter everywhere. The adaptation of Sayroyan's The HUMAN COMEDY. Mickey Rooney frightened at the robot human in the department store window. The JOKER in Batman comics. That frozen grimace. "Mom, leave the light on please". Real events did not terrify me. 1937-38, NANKING, hundreds of thousands of Chinese slaughtered, reported babies on bayonets. LIFE Magazine photos, on my folk's coffee table. What did I think of the pictures? It registered. The Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. Fear? My Father put me at ease. I was eight. In the kitchen Sunday, December 7, 1941. Dad washing the dishes, radio on. "Will they come over here?" I asked. "No, Son". He was too old to fight. Halloween for him? Once with his buddies he pulled over an outhouse. Now that's bad. Current horror, gore films? I wouldn't want my 'kids' to watch them. Some such bad taste too nasty to watch . . . twice. My Brother and I talk scenes. Laugh, inside stuff, so absurd, outrageous, that they are funny. Other hand, Afghanistan roadside bombs aren't.”

“Speaking of ENRON. As forerunner of monster corporations committing accounting fraud, claiming profits from profits only as good as the paper they were bogus bogus on, it seems there is a parallel here to banking houses exotic derivatives--barely if at all understood by their inventors--together with the packaging of toxic mortgages into securities bundles sold to another round after round of investors and guaranteed a win-win to the issuers. Backed by government/taxpayer bailout. All that high tech new 'derivatives' math figuring/accounting how to create enormous profit from assets that don't, in the altogether, exist. A 'thing' source on a wobbly bottom and vanishing daily in the seething bubble ready to burst. Really mostly just paper. A sort of on margin on margin (buying risk with dubious assets and mysterious value) platform on unfounded trust generated off exotic instrument gambles invented on the run. Trade which seemed okay enuf to sophisticated WALL STREET, SEC, Federal Reserve, ratings agencies, regulators behind regulations, and otherwise investors, who apparently saw no relationship to phony paper and, some wild imaginations might suggest, legal sort of ponzi schemes. Recalling to mind crooks, far out sure, but ENRON comes back to mind, and even Madoff. And now comes along a couple of deregulation Democrats apparently see stings as necessary to doing business.”

“Wake up and smell the roses mcrcc55? But if President OBAMA is not asleep and his nose is just fine then perhaps he isn't a rose smelling kind of a guy in the first place. Give dozens of wake up call choice long stems from lovers elected him, pfft. Just another prize for promise. Appears to me that he is wide awake and all dressed up to dance with power brokers bearing hat tricks. Doesn't even have to hold his nose.”

“. . . think about it.”

“Something is screwy here. Recent PEW poll and the ongoing STANFORD poll. From 80 percent not that long ago to 57 percent now? Folks who formerly believed it was getting hotter not so sure now. People less concerned climate change is happening. Or of the cause. Not sure we are the culprits. Politics the reason? Lobby for titanic polluters working in a fever 24/7. MONEY delaying action is MONEY made. Economic nightmares. Pocket books hit hard. Health Care, who gets what, if that. What gets me is this: Wouldn't you think that regardless any hype to change minds say for personal business gain, to convince us profits will go down thus more people laid off, if polluter restriction, regulation, is enacted, put in force, that people would NOT still remember the reasons why they first believed the CLIMATE was definitely getting hotter? 80 percent not that long ago. Now 57 percent. Hm. Curious development. Are we so fickle? Abandon facts? Bought? Because of . . . politics? Hype? Hard times? Just witness rising water levels. How about the POLAR CAPS? Losing ice or not? Melting! Ships moving to and fro Atlantic/Pacific on top of the world? I could understand folks changing their mind concluding most of the climate change is the geologic cycle, axis shift maybe, going into one of its JURASSIC temperature change ages, whatever, but propagandized to change their mind due to power of hype plus hard times setting new priorities, seems . . . quite feasible I”

“ELIZABETH WARREN. What a woman!”

“Andy Kaufman is alive I tell you, alive!”

“13 MILLION KIDS in poverty in a balloon. To somewhere else. Say it's a happy goofy land. With perfect parents at the other end. All for the squeezed out of society gang, like runts from an apparently scientific enuf, natural wolfpack hierarchy, just ignore them, they will die away. The strong survive to perpetuate the poverty to be sniffed at and largely ignored. The strong mutates insist the perfect SYSTEM is theirs to invent, and lead. Back to the worst off kids though figuritively imagined by Arianna, escaping us. My words now, the voting power to immediate HELP our own kind squeezed out of the loop because they simply didn't have it in them to . . . fit. But now to live on at all, beholding to our SYSTEM according to what we charitably give. Kids (parents) squeezed out. Needing HOPE and say it, CHARITY, consequent our version of the competition cock fight SYSTEM we made for ourselves. There ought to be a law. Mainline citizens awake. Herded righteous knowing we are the CHOSEN ONES, righteous in the end of . . . the world's global MONEY enterprize. Let our elected representatives deal kids homeless by gaming the System's hand for MONEY. The less paid for community service the more for Banks gambles in MARGIN, nothing really substantial there, make their interest.”

“To finish: The BALLOON BOY, who I felt at first even sort of kin with, on second thought, although apparently not a real Balloon Person (BP) should be given a break for being misrepresented as a Balloon Boy by the media. You can't force anyone to become a Balloon Person. A boy to become a balloon boy. It's a natural thing. You either are or you aren't. I am just lucky myself. But maybe I am wrong. Looking at the RICHARD and MAYUMI HEENE family again, they all look like potential Balloon People to me. I got an eye for that sort of thing. And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Broken Dream Release!”

“They all ought to go to jail. The whole family. No excuse for this kind of thing. This expensive hoax replacing a week's worth of real news. Put them away for awhile, for disturbing the sanity of our desperate lives. For casting a bad light on UFO trackers at least. And particularly Balloon People. (BPs) Making us look real bad blown up by association. Taking up all of our valuable TV time. Shouldn't the National Guard be off fighting a war? The sheriff setting up another speed trap? And after doing hard time, duct taping 10,000 doors and windows for incoming alien's gas, each one of them gets a job and start paying off a huge fine, if only for taking CNN away from Breaking News. if they have beg for a reality TV show or fold origami balloon ships and sell in the streets. The BALLOON BOY, who I felt at first even sort of kin with,”

“FLEECED! FLEECED! WE BEEN FLEECED! Ongoing! By our shepards. Earned off our backs, shear us good! Can't trust your banker who can you trust? Stings, shell games around the corner? If we all ran and took out our money whoa! CRASH! All the back up, MONEY, we give MONEY, so WALL STREET didn't go belly up. Not just a GREAT RECESSION but a BLACK GREAT DEPRESSION. CRASH! Taking us with them, most of us in ways, sure, so why DID we bail them out? But MONEY give us appreciation? The auto industry relocating plants to . . . China/Mexico? Am I wrong? Favor returned? None to speak of. Everything we get from FINANCE HOUSES--which we now partly own but unable to make regulation with teeth--is forced on them. We don't get loans. Refinanced homes according to devaluation. Oh, get a credit card loan at 12.7% up and up until the principle is never touched up to death. Or has that kind of usury been corrected? Free card annual fees? Overdraft fees, a prime income for banks. BANKS take our money over the teller's window, use it for whatever, a gamble maybe, plus we bail them out for losing that money in their gambles. We pay a monthly fee, starting at an arbitrary low balance index, to write a check on our money that they use for restarting exotic potential toxics, hedge funds and derivatives (a math formula change complexity) and they prospers better than ever. It's madness.”

“Mable Randon. Why in the world did that community fund set up for people like her turn her down? How is that possible? What's the story here? The real skinny. The Texas ENERGY company we can understand no heart. But a last resort fund, survival, like need an oxygen tank to breathe? We're there. A cancer victim moreover, believe that? Is there conspiracy for her to die? Of course not. But wouldn't the result be, for all lack of charity, but for this Texas Amegy Bank--a bank no less--creating a charity fund for her, not a loan just donations apparently (is that possible?) But if nobody helped at all, wouldn't she likely die? Much sooner than need be for sure. Don't people in her condition die without enuf of their own natural breathing apparatus working? Thus have to have extra oxygen? For her creditors refusal to work it out so she can breathe, it's virtually a death sentence. Isn't it? Seems to me. What excuse for that? Money saved? Is it that her creditors know for sure somebody will take care of her continuing to get oxygen? So considering that attitude, "oh, she won't die, somebody (else) will take care of her" lets them off the hook? I don't think so. In any event, and it doesn't look like fun, how is it that a network in business and so closely relative to health care be so cold hearted cruel? I got it. Not my problem, Pal.”