Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Solving the Economic Crisis Begins with Identifying the Cause
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." --George W. Bush, Greater "A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness." --George W. Bush, The Edge With Paula Zahn, Sept. 18, 2000 "It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas." --George W. Bush, "The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of their own money." --George W. Bush, "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." --George W. Bush, Reuters, May 5, 2000 "It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is "I understand small business growth. I was one." --George W. Bush, "My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire." --radio address, Feb. 24, 2001 "Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled." --explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005 "You work three jobs? ... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." --to a divorced mother of three, "First of all, I don't see "There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments." --George W. Bush, speaking at a private fundraiser, "I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand -- but the president doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, 'low gas.'" --George W. Bush, "The economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It's not as good as we'd like, but -- and to the extent that we find weakness, we'll move." --George W. Bush, "Let's make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times in our economy." -- George W. Bush, "We got plenty of money in "And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." --George W. Bush, "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --George W. Bush, "We want people owning their home -- we want people owning a businesses." --George W. Bush, "Wait a minute. What did you just say? You're predicting $4-a-gallon gas? ... That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." --George W. Bush, "The decisions we make in "My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions." --George W. Bush, The Decider, "You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket -- in this case, a woman more money in her pocket to expand a business, it -- they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody has got to come and build the building. And when the building expanded it prevented additional opportunities for people to work." --George W. Bush, "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." --George W. Bush, addressing Australian Prime Minister John Howard at the APEC Summit, Sept. 7, 2007 "There are jobs Americans aren't doing. ... If you've got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I'm talking about." --George W. Bush. "I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality." --George W. Bush, interview on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007 "It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce." -George W. Bush, at the "A lot of times in the rhetoric, people forget the facts. And the facts are that thousands of small businesses - Hispanically owned or otherwise - pay taxes at the highest marginal rate." -George W. Bush, speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 19, 2001 "My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire." -George W. Bush, radio address, Feb. 24, 2001 "I've always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics." -George W. Bush, "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." -George W. Bush, "I'm thrilled to be here in the bread basket of "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." -George W. Bush, discussing the decline of the French economy with British Prime Minister Tony Blair "Over 75 percent of white Americans own their home, and less than 50 percent of Hispanos and African Americans don't own their home. And that's a gap, that's a homeownership gap. And we've got to do something about it." -George W. Bush, "Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes." -George W. Bush, "I mean, if you've ever been a governor of a state, you understand the vast potential of broadband technology, you understand how hard it is to make sure that physics, for example, is taught in every classroom in the state. It's difficult to do. It's, like, cost-prohibitive." --George W. Bush, "Recession means that people's incomes, at the employer level, are going down, basically, relative to costs, people are getting laid off." --George W. Bush,
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Not good for the family business but...
I’m a dork first so I am obliged to share… Never buy magazines again! How about I use it as an environmental pitch so it doesn’t sound like such a betrayal? Haha, enjoy!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
I looooveee the haltertop, Butterface!
Friday, August 15, 2008
That Story
I want to write that story which begins in the soft flabby arms of Esperanza Dela Cruz. She wore red shorts and told me that if anybody asked, she was always 35 years old. I want to tell you about how I would wake up in the middle of the night with the fluorescent light in my eyes and walk around looking for Ising, who would be with the other house help working nights at my father’s factory next door so they could have extra money to send back to their mothers. I would climb up a chair and hop onto a formica countertop and fall asleep there, until she could take a break and carry me back to my bed and pat me back to sleep. Very carefully she would decrease the increments of patting until all my senses disappeared, but the moment she stopped touching me I would flinch and she’d resume her rubbing with a furious frequency, hoping I could stay sleeping long enough for her to go back downstairs to finish her work, oftentimes foiled by my crying, “Mommy…” I want that story to have the cool mornings at I want it to have that part in the living room on the antique four-poster daybed where my mom held my sobbing nanny in her arms when she got a call that her mother suddenly fell to the floor and died. This part I’ve started to write, the summer Mommy took me to Barrio Tumbar with her and told everyone I was her child. My father told me not to eat anything raw and not to make the barrio children envious of my toys and clothes. I swam in the river and rode the carabao, ate a raw oyster and scared the prayers out of Mommy when I burned up with fever the last night I was there. She wiped my face with a washcloth and asked someone to search the barrio for a cure. Later on she handfed me an orange pill which I swallowed with warm water from a thick green glass which used to be a tumbler of Nescafe coffee. I think I can tell the story well enough but I don’t know how to end it, the thought of that woman from my memory is enough to bring me to tears. When I think about her I realize all the work it took raising someone else’s four children for a salary, and what heart my own working mother must have had when the youngest and the oldest of those children started to call the nanny “Mommy.” I think about how she feasted on my cheeks daily like it gave her the greatest pleasure to love me, and how to this day I still believe that everything I know about love I learned from those arms which longed to hold me day and night – same arms that would have held on if I didn’t grow up, she didn’t grow old, she wasn’t sent back to the barrio and I didn’t move away. Those one set of appendages I might not ever know again, if life and time and age and the inevitable end this story the only way it will: the childless Esperanza passing on, and my broken, guilty and regretful heart never forgiving myself for not being able to change how the story ends.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Toads at the Chinese Market
T-Mobile
Friday, August 08, 2008
8/8/08
Today, 8/8/08, is the opening of the Olympics in
The Race Card
When Barack Obama gave a speech to his supporters a couple of weeks ago, "Playing the race card" is an expression used when alleging that someone I was once accused of playing the race card by my Caucasian Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the N-Word (look for it on This is also another thing I hate: denying bigotry because of one If our beliefs, ideals and core values were defined by single isolated
he said that the Republican party would attempt to scare voters by
saying that he "doesn't look like all the other presidents on the dollar
bills." He was quickly accused by the opposition of playing "The Race
Card." This is surprising because Republicans don't seem to feel that
there's anything wrong with playing a similar card when they circulated
pictures of Barack wearing a traditional Muslim attire, or when they
said that Muslim extremists would dance in the streets if Obama won the
elections.
is injecting race into a debate or a discussion in order to gain
advantage. Supposedly when the race card is played, one accuses another
of being a racist as an attempt to distract everyone else from the
actual issue/s. What I want to know is this, how come only white people
accuse minorities of playing the race card? The reason is clear : when a
white person gets an undue advantage over a minority, it's not called a
race card, or racism. IT'S SIMPLY CALLED LIFE. It's reality, Bub, it's
nothing new.
(psychopathic) former employer, when I made a joke to a black co-worker
by saying "Oh you're only saying that because I'm Asian." The co-worker
laughed (minorities can say these things to each other), but my boss
exclaimed, "Oh, so are we going to play the race card now?"
YouTube) - it's the same sticky wicket. When will white people
understand that when it comes to race it is impossible to for them to
understand, much less comment, on anything that has to do with racial
discrimination and profiling? It's like men saying that they know what
it's like for women to be marginalized, or worse - men who are staunch
anti-abortion activists.
seemingly generous act, and non-bigotry by association. For example on
CNN, democrat Lieberman (a McCain supporter) said in response to race
issues in the candidacy, said that McCain is absolutely not a bigot
because he and his wife adopted a baby from Guatemala. I LOVE IT. Or
people who say, "I am not homophobic because I have gay friends." STOP
using incidental circumstances of your life to defend the ugly things
that come out of your mouth. It is insulting. It's like me proclaiming
my environmentalist stance by saying that the other day, when I finished
a bottle of wine, I put it in a recycling bin.
acts, we would all be saints.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Standards of Beauty
At my workplace, if you are not completely consumed by the financial markets, then you are completely outside it - its essentially Narcissistic and self-absorbed world, that is. This means that you are either indifferent (and incredibly bored) or an avid observer of this complex array of personalities, idiosyncrasies, and the usual goings-on of office politics. Add a dose of sarcasm and some creativity and you have for yourself the perfect canvas for critical thought. How else is it to be of use if not for sharing? :o) In the beginning of the summer we got for ourselves an intern from one of the top MBA schools in the country. Christened “McDreamy” because of his Elvis eyes and seemingly bashful ways, he became a point of interest for the ladies in the house, until a few attempts at small talk revealed that he was, even at this rookie stage of his career, already a total douchebag. Not a surprise since most of the men in this industry are totally devoid of manners and communication skills anyway (I call it the phenomenon of being so rich that you can actually pay your mother for giving birth to you, so you can probably also pay her to shut her mouth about manners…but I digress as usual) – which led me the question, do we have different sets of moral standards depending on physical beauty? I asked someone if she thought a friend’s partner (who wasn’t so attractive) was nice, and the reply was “Kung di pa babait eh.” (“She’d better be nice,” but again, much is lost in translation) Are we more tolerant of obnoxious people if they look good, and feel that ugly people have no right? Or do we secretly hope that beautiful people are well-rounded with great personalities to complete the package, but are disappointed when they are inherently flawed? Please do not tell me that looks do not matter to you. I won’t believe you. I think there is some kind of resentment for beautiful people, because they were born with something that cannot be learned or developed no matter how hard the effort. And even with the technology of cosmetic surgery, you cannot replicate the pride and self-worth of someone who grew up physically desirable. It’s almost identical to that of a less-attractive person who was too built-up by her parents, except that at one point someone is bound to put the latter back in her place. Would it be fair to state the fact that beautiful people get away with more stuff? Surely pretty ladies get more favors done for them and have their way with a lot of men. They are also easily forgiven, get more jobs, and simply have it easier. So with handsome men, aside from having to shoo away women, they are more likely to be always taken back by their wife or another woman – versus an unattractive man. And haven’t we all heard the excuse that wives give when confronted with their husbands’ infidelity? “It’s not his fault, they threw themselves at him!” (Are men uncontrollable jackhammers? -- that's another story!) Of course we’d all like to subscribe to fairy tale ideals a la Beauty and the Beast that ugly people get to be loved for themselves, true beauty comes from with in -- blah blah blah – love is blind and insert your favorite cliché here, please, before I throw up. Is it enough punishment for beautiful people that one day they will grow old and become wrinkled and ugly too and slowly face the impending reality of becoming undesirable? But by that time won’t they have garnered all the successes from their superior physical attributes? These are all sweeping generalizations, of course, but maybe in the course of your next days try to see if you expect more or less of people based on how they look. I think I might be guilty of that. Just a little bit.
