MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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recession

“Gonna be a Bumpy Ride”

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sends us

Foreshadowing the “R” Word- A Day Late and Many Dollars Short

Our Government is finally admitting what seems to surprise only them, that we are in a recession and have been for some time. “Duh”?! The following is a re-posting of a previous entry on this blog originally dated July 11,2008. Read in today’s light it seems like a 1,000 years ago and a lot more unsettling . . .

I just got back from a trip to California, going from Mexico to San Francisco, and other than the shore line, it is one big brown state. And the smoke, when you see all that dry dessert grass on the mountains, you get an understanding of their fire risk and why that state won’t stop burning.

In Mexico I learned two things I didn’t know. First California was named by early Mexican natives and it means “hot oven” and second it is a statement of accepted fact there that the U.S. is in a recession. My personal, though admittedly limited, international focus group collection data revealed that our international neighbors throw the fact of our recession around pretty comfortably and seem unaware that our own administration states we aren’t in one.

(“Oh Amigo, tourism is down due to American recession”; “The artisans will barter as business is down due to the American recession”). Is it important what the rest of the world observes about our economic health? I think so.

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MoveOn Ad*

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All in your head

The McCain campaign finally rid itself of former Sen. Phil Gramm. Let’s put aside for the moment whether Gramm should be investigated and, possibly, imprisoned for corruption and economic crimes against this nation when he was a United States senator and destroyed banking in this country.

The particular comments that led to his demise (“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. … We have sort of become a nation of whiners.”) is pretty much what McCain has been saying all along, as this MoveOn.org ad attests.

Americans have a choice to make in the general election: to back a political party that has shifted the wealth of the nation from the working and middle classes to the very rich, or back a Democrat who, maybe, could protect the American way of life.

It’s a no-brainer.