It would be wrong for the Dadio to not comment on the chicanery and nitwitery our elitists have economically, currently presented us with - like a flaming paper bag of dog shit on our wooden porches. 

    One benefit of living so long is that I have lived through several "end-of-the-worlds."   I endured the Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassination of John F. Kennedy; Watergate; the humiliating end of our Viet Nam war; the recession of the 1970s and early 1980s; the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s; the deaths of both my parents; the anticipated doomsday of January 1, 2000; the September 11, 2001 attacks; and, my own brush with blood clots and death.  

    To my, no longer surpisable self, I and the mean world are still here.  And so, like so many crisis before, this morning I awoke yet another day after yesterday's "Stock Market crash of 2008."  In a moment of reflection, I am reminded that for the blue-collar shlubs like myself, the crash of 1987 did not really affect us until three years or so later when a recession finally caught up to the day-to-day working guy by 1991.  A co-worker in 1987 reminded me at the time that it was useless for us working suckers to worry about the Stock Market.  His paradoxical and cynical words were prophetic.  We did survive as workers but were beat up down the road. 

    I wonder now what he would say after yesterday.  In 1987, America still had a surviving marginal industrial base.  Out-sourcing jobs to Third-World countries was just becoming a fad.  There was still people around that remembered "The Great Depression" personally.  We persevered.

    This current crowd of looting elite that run government, business, and media have me taking a second look at our usual resilience as a nation.  These business cretins have ravaged our beloved country, their actions validated by continual bail outs by their lackeys in government - we need just one more 700 billion dollar scheme to nip this in the bud, we promise - and the bloody economic story is told by their hand picked brethren in media - millionaires all!

    This gaggle of elitist scoundrels has turned our country into a Second World Orwellian-type nation with nukes; thereby, reminiscent of rogue nations the likes of which we mocked and languished to outsmart during the Cold War. They have brought us steadily down to a warped version of the "Misery Index" era of Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter.   Recently, they openly embezzle the national treasury to bail out their failed companies and institutions.

    Banally we average suckers plod on working benefitless part-time jobs; anguish over having no health care; often, working three lousy jobs at once; paying four dollars a gallon for gasoline; and, trying to forget we once worked for twice the wages we work for now.  The financial advice culture that sprung up over the last couple decades suggests we should save money by now not going out for our lousy pizza on Saturday nights.  Idiots, we stopped spending on extra treats years ago - while you were the ones living in a financial fantasy world of fallacy rhetoric - it is too late now for your pathetic disingenuous advice to even marginally help us. 

    The two-party-paradigm political flunkies that have brought us to this reprehensible point in our history cause me to take a pause I have not taken during other proclaimed crisis.  It has occurred to me that one of the two woefully inadequate pundits the two miserable political parties have foisted upon us to be the next President...will inherit a simmering economic and foreign-wars conundrum. 

    I can't help thinking then, that perhaps the greatest challenge the next President will have will not be the destroyed-for-no-good-reason economy.  Rather, it quite possible may be, the task of keeping an imploding United States in an intact solvent 50-state union, continually pacifying nervous regions that question the very purposefulness of..."Union." 

                                 Wisconsin military service person of the week

    Marine Private First Class Andrew Halverson, 19, of Muscoda, Wisconsin was killed on Saturday, October 9, 2004 by hostile enemy fire in Anbar province. Halverson had been assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton, California. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Andrew was known as a "character" and liked to joke around. He was voted the class clown in his senior year of high school and he is said to have gotten along with everybody. Andrew graduated from Riverdale High School in 2003 and had played on their football team. Muscoda is in southwestern Wisconsin, and has a population of around 1,500.  The Journal Sentinel went on to say Halverson also helped his father with his flooring business. Private First Class Andrew Halverson was the 22nd Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.

                                    As of this blog entry's posting date:

    87,643 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
    
    8,687 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    4,174 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    601 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    314 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    372 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    30,642 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    2,451 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    91 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    11 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    135 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    15 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.