This is our president

Where's my bail out?

I'm a teacher. I don't have any money. All I have is a few basic assets, and the hope of a somewhat comfortable retirement one day. Is that even a reality any more? Doesn't look like it.

In all honesty, this entire financial crisis frightens the hell out of me, mostly because I can just barely imagine what it means for regular people like me. If we have an economy that was essentially a pyramid scheme or a ponzi scheme, or a shell game or..., then what steps am I going to have to take to protect my financial future? After watching all the "experts" scratch their heads all week about what's going on, unable to truly clarify or explain, let alone predict what's next, I'm left wondering what hope there is for a regular guy like me to figure out what the best course of action is.

Put my head down? Plug away? Plant a "bailout garden" in my backyard?

It is inconceivable to me that these right-wing laissez faire types are able to sell this idea with a straight face. Huge bail outs? Government ownership of AIG? Are they kidding? Why is the socializing of AIG OK, but health care is off the table? Who is going to benefit from this? If the Dems don't dig in their heels and make sure there is some accountability, this is going to be a huge taxpayer pay off to the rich - again. And they will have sold this new scheme to us because "we had no other choice".

So, here's how I understand it. The corporatists have been selling us the American dream, in its current incarnation, for about three decades, which has required extensive credit to acquire. Meanwhile, deregulation of the entire investment/credit industry has allowed some people to get very rich while the average American has gone into record debt. Obviously, the lenders were taking a huge risk in lending out all this money. But it turns out that, at the top, it hasn't been much of a risk at all because they are getting bailed out by the taxpayers - the same people who made them rich in the first place. So they sold us a life of debt then, when it got too risky, got us to assume responsibility for BOTH SIDES OF THE DEBT RISK?!

This is nucking futs!

Well America, we had a good run. Somebody hit the lights on the way out. What's that? The power's been cut? Just as well...

Palin? Is this for real?

When the African-American Democratic candidate draws tens of thousands of people to hear a speech, the Republicans call it "shallow celebrity". But when the woman Republican candidate draws large crowds, they call it "energizing the base".

Is this country serious, or have we simply gone past the point of no return? People are actually excited about a woman who might be the vice president elect in less than sixty days and she doesn't even know what the Bush Doctrine is? Watch her simultaneously bluff her way past her ignorance and still try to sound condescending to Charles Gibson - the only one in the room who knows what the Bush doctrine is.

Watch Matt Damon's response to the idea of Sarah Palin as veep, or worse, as president.



Damon gets it.

And, again with the hypocrisy: Republicans say Barack Obama's religious beliefs are out of the mainstream, but Sarah Palin, who believes that the earth may only be six thousand years old and Adam and Eve must have ridden a dinosaur to work, represents "heartland values".

Life? Living?

Something struck me recently as I was flipping through a newspaper (honestly, it was USA Today, so it barely counts as a newspaper). But the second or third section of the paper was called the "Life" or "Lifestyle" section - I don't remember which. I never gave this much thought before, but the section had quite a bit of celebrity news - celebrity gossip, lifestyles of the rich and famous, etc. (By the way, from now on I am getting all my news from The Onion and The Daily Show.)

What does that have to do with "life"? The most likely answer to that question - the one that crept into my head - was disturbing. It is possible that we, collectively, have mistaken celebrity gossip with real living. Have our lives moved away from reality and into a dream state where we actually care what is going on with Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton or Michael Vick? It is truly disturbing to think we turn to this section of the newspaper to find information about life.

I have noticed a corollary trend. About a year ago, I canceled cable television and stopped watching the grotesque amount of TV I was used to. Instead, I turned to my family and to books to entertain myself. When I share this with people, especially young people, I often get the response, "That must really suck, Mr. Huffman!" or the even more telling statement, "You must not have a life."

Why would it be presumed that I was bored by the choices I made? I guess I can see why people who never read would find reading boring. But that I choose to spend time with my family, why would anyone assume that was boring? It has been my experience that people's level of boredom is inversely related to the quality of their imagination. Or, as my brother puts it, "Only the boring are bored."

We need to turn off our televisions, take the ear buds out of our ears and walk away from the internet. And then we must begin to reconnect with people in our lives. Starting with ourselves. I think we should all spend at least a little time alone with our thoughts everyday, meditating on what "life" really is. Then, as we discover it, we should share it with the people around us. From what I can tell, too many people (advertisers, TV network executives, USA Today "Life" section editors) are living our lives for us via the different forms of media.

Do we even know what we want, what makes us happy, how to feel without being told by the blinking box?

Will it be Obama?

The election this year may be one for the history books. For mere diversity, we have an interesting race. On the Democratic side, we have had an African-American and a woman as the two front-runners, but also in the race has been Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is of Latino heritage. On the Republican side, we have a born-again Christian pastor and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormon).

Before we go patting ourselves on our back, however, we should remember that the majority of the candidates are still white men. And before we start declaring this a year of firsts, we should remember that many other countries have had women in leadership roles - as presidents or prime ministers.

And yet, for America, as egalitarian as we think we are, this is the first time it has appeared that either a woman or a black person has offered a real possibility of election. I was just recently sent a link of Barack Obama speaking at Martin Luther King's old church. It was a stirring and powerful speech. It is worth watching when you have 15-20 minutes.

Will it be Obama? I don't know. But after this speech, I am excited to see what is ahead.

Peace,
Huffman

Convenience, Justice and Privilege

So I was recently reading through some recent posts of my favorite blog - No Impact Man. For those of you who don't know, the basic premise of this guy's blog is that he kept a year-long web journal while he tried to reduce his environmental impact down to nothing, all while living in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.

"What is environmental impact?" you ask. For ease of reference, it is the amount of negative impact we have on the ecosystem just by living. To give you an idea of how important this is, if everyone in the world were to live like the average American (i.e. making the same "environmental impact"), it would take 6 planet earths to sustain all of us. Obviously, we only have one. So we can't keep using all the power, burning all the fuel, using up all the water at the pace we are or we will die. It's pretty simple, really.

So Colin Beavan (a.k.a. "No Impact Man") conducted an experiment in which he tried to get down to a zero impact on the environment. That means no electricity, no cars, no packaged food, no paper products (not even toilet paper - I know...gross). The year of living like that is over, but he learned a lot. Mainly, he learned that he doesn't need to live as he did before. He learned that consuming and using as much as he did before added nothing to his happiness. Now that the experiment is over, he has added some things back to his life, but he is nothing like he was before.

This guy impresses me, but I am writing now to share an idea that came from one of the comments on his blog. I read it today and it was written by a woman named Sharon. You can read it here. Basically, here is her point. There is a finite (limited) amount of resources on the planet so, reasonably everyone can have a fair share, provided the amount used leaves the place working well for the next generation. If we use more than our fair share, we are effectively saying, "I deserve more than other people." If we are too lazy to change, then we are choosing our own laziness over somebody else's suffering.

How can we continue this?

I mean, morally and ethically speaking, why do we feel we have the right to more resources than other people on the planet, and people not yet born?

We can't. We have to find a way to reduce what we are burning, using and throwing away. If you are going to post a comment to this blog, I would like to hear what ideas you have. Unless, of course, you think I am off my rocker, then you can tell me that, too.

Peace,
Huffman

Huffman's Westview Blogosphere...Welcome!

This is the beginning. In the beginning was the word.

Welcome to Huffman's Westview corner of the blogosphere. If all goes as planned, this blog will be a place to share ideas, respond to each other, give constructive criticism and get a peek into the way Huffman's head works.

The idea is this. I will post here at least once a week. You will come to read what is going on in my head - I know that is incredibly arrogant of me, but this is not intended to be an exercise in massaging my own ego. At weird times, I find a lot of interesting stuff out there on the internet. I will post some links here for you to check out and respond to.

You will be required to post at least one blog response a week (at around 50 words - not even a paragraph). Also, you will have to respond to at least one of your peers' posts. The point is to be interactive. What do you think about what is being said out there? What do others think? How can we grow together?

This should be fun. (My kind of fun, at least. Maybe not yours. But have an open mind - you might end up enjoying this, too.)

For now, I would like you to respond to this blog post. I am also going to add some links to some interesting sites out there that might provoke some other good discussion. Check any of them out and let me know what you think.