(A verse from a song that got me fired for singing it in a TP Crockmiers in 1980 dressed in black face, spats and a tuxedo with a top hat playing at a baby grand… performance art wasn’t invented by Lady Gaga. Sometimes ya gotta go on the offensive.)

“strong rental society” — I thought rent-seeking was a BAD thing.

Gee, Morgan, glad to have you back. Things are getting so serious around here — good to have the prospect of more comic relief.

Don’t forget — the name is “Paul,” and don’t forget that like in the story you extravasated that tic from, “Paul” was not the guy who started it.

We have PLENTY of cash waiting in the wings to buy up properties when they are no longer artificially inflated. There a nation of landlords who saved their cash, didn’t get extended. We need to let the market reward them.

This damn thing is like removing a band-aid, and we’re not 20% of the way done. We need to finally grit our teeth, and just yank.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” — Proverbs 16:18

And remember that telling scene in Michael Moore’s “Roger & Me,” where the upper crust of Dearborn Society pays a hundred bucks a head to dress up in satin “prisioner garb” and spend a catered night in the brand new jail, about the only new construction in the area. Before the stinking detritus of Detroit moves in with the stink of sweat and fear and urine and disinfectant.

Here’s a link, if you haven’t run across this gem that so perfectly captures the “vast indifference” of wealth in the face of, well, what we are facing today. “Producer Moore captures with biting humor the indifference of the lucky few who are unaffected by the layoffs, depicting them at a lavish “Great Gatsby” party, and celebrating the opening of a new jail with a gala in which the well-to-do pay $100 to stay the night. In the face of rising hostility among the town’s residents, GM sponsors celebrity shows designed to boost morale. It is comical to watch Anita Bryant exude Florida sunshine juxtaposed against the appalling hopelessness of families evicted from their homes. “

Babel redux…

Hope it withers into nothingness…or maybe becomes the 9th Lost Wonder of the World as another cautionary tale that all will forget in a couple of hundred years.

But people like Beck are still making good money blowing smoke up reality’s skirts, and people are worrying about him being the real enemy. Posh, the real enemy is a congress that can’t wrap its collective head around the level of economic disaster that our health care system has become, greater than our wars even, and do something other than construct a good-enough-to-pass gift to insurance companies, or, worse, insist that big business is the only proper decider of our future. Since it gets them re-elected, it must be so.

And the good citizens say bah (but do nothing), or Baaaahh (and do the same old same old), and the life of the Big Myth that is America continues after a fashion. We will only respond as a nation after the true collapse.

And I go back upstairs to work on a Christmas music video about homeless children like a man throwing water from a mason jar on a house fire.