This whole big three Detroit auto company bail-out is really beginning to piss me off. Ford, GM, and Chrysler pay, on average, $78 per hour for labor to manufacture cars, compared to $48 for Toyota, here in the United States. This figure includes pension and health benefits for current retirees, as well as the future costs of retirement benefits for current workers.

A reorganization of these companies makes absolutely no sense unless this $78 figure is reduced to approximate the $48 figure. Otherwise, Detroit is simply not competitive. The only way this can be done is to reduce the benefits of existing retirees and the current and future benefits of existing workers. These health and retirement benefits, it is relevant to add, are vastly superior to what the vast majority of Americans receive, excluding members of Congress.

Will the Democrat-controlled Congress and White House put together a deal that reduces these benefits, even slightly? Of course not. They are not going to cross the United Auto Workers, one of their main campaign contributors. So the $78 figure will not be brought down to the $48 figure. There will be no real, effective, reorganization. The bail-out money will disappear into a black hole.

Those of us who have had our 401K retirement benefits reduced by 50%, 60%, 80%, or more, will be committing our tax dollars, and our grandchildrens’ income and assets, to finance the retirement and health benefits of former and current Detroit auto workers. Why? Because the Democratic Party is beholden to the labor unions.

I understand the reasons for wanting to rescue the indigenous American automobile industry from the current financial meltdown and the mistakes of the past. Millions of jobs are at stake. I have friends who depend for their livelihood on the big three auto companies. But if the root causes of Detroit’s bankrupt condition are not addressed, then the inevitable collapse is only being postponed, at great current and future expense.

I am in favor of a government bail-out of some kind for the American automobile industry, but only if they are rehabbed sufficiently so as to become competitive with Toyota and Nissan and Honda and Hyundai and Volkswagen and Mercedes. If they are not competitive, then the whole exercise is a very expensive waste of time.

In the long run, it will only hurt the U.S. economy, which is to say the economic well-being of the citizens of the United States, including the residents of Michigan.

Tonight we went to “Bluegrass Underground” in the Cumberland Caverns, by McMinnville. The headliner was Tim O’Brien and Friends. It was a fabulous show, tight, utterly relaxed musical mastery and good humor. Tim is a great singer, a great songwriter, a great player, a great band leader, and a very funny guy. His friends, Bryan Sutton, Danny Barnes and Dennis Crouch, are the best of the best, guitar, banjo, and stand-up bass.

The warm-up act was Kindling Stones, an unusual, sublime duet consisting of Chris Moore who sings, writes, and plays bazouki and reed organ, and Mark Wingate a fabulous fiddle player, singer, and writer of tunes. Together they sang and played esoteric original material and 19th century Shaker songs. Beautiful harmonies, great playing.

It’s a once a month show, which is recorded and played on WSM in Nashville. Next month is Cadillac Sky,, so we are definitely going to that. I forgot to bring my camera, so these pics were taken with my crappy iPhone camera.

The nutroots are angry, but I am quite pleased and relieved, that, so far, President-Elect Barack Obama has implied, by his appointments and actions (Hillary, Lieberman, Bob Gates, Jim Jones, etc.), that George W. Bush has been pretty much right about everything all along.

President Obama will be implementing the Bush policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, most likely, vis-à-vis Iran and North Korea and Russia and everywhere else. Of course he will. He’s not crazy or stupid.

He will also be following pretty much the exact same policies vis-à-vis the cosmic financial meltdown as Bush appointees Henry Poulson and Ben Bernanke. There will be no repealing of the Bush tax cuts.

There will of course be “change”. One thing that will certainly change is the reflexive judgment by the media, Hollywood, academia, and yuppies everywhere, that everything that goes wrong in the world is necessarily George W. Bush’s fault.

The ex-President will be out of harm’s way, back on the ranch in Crawford. Obviously none of the world’s woes could now, or ever, be Barack Obama’s fault.

So whose fault will it be, when the world continues to experience global Islamic jihad, global economic melt-down, and global disdain for the United States of America?

Could it be? Satan!?

I will turn 65 in January, so I decided today to apply for medicare, which one is supposed to do during the three months prior to turning 65. I began by going online and typing “medicare” into Google, which took me to the Social Security website, where, after navigating through multiple pages and FAQs, I was informed that it was not possible to apply for Medicare online.

Instead there was an 800 number to call. I called the number and sat through five or ten minutes of recorded messages about all sorts of government programs, none of which were of any interest to me. The robot then began asking me questions, which I answered in my clear, accent-free, radio-quality voice. Everything I said was misunderstood. Eventually I was put on hold. After a considerable wait, I was informed by the robot, that if I didn’t want to wait, I could have the Social Security office call me back. That sounded good, so I answered “Yes”, entered my phone number, and hung up.

Awhile later, a real person called me back, asked me a few questions, and then put me on hold. I listened to static and muzak for awhile, and the real person finally came back on the line and told me that she would have to transfer me to someone else, which would take some time. I said, “I thought that the call back was supposed to make it so I didn’t have to wait.” She said that was right, that that’s why I got to talk to her, but now I would need to talk to somebody else and there would be a wait. However, she said that if I wanted to go to the local office, I could make an appointment to do that. Did I want to do that? “Yes,” I replied. “OK,” she said, and put me on hold. I waited for awhile listening to muzak and finally hung up.

I went back to the Social Security website and looked up the address of my local office, got in the car and drove there, took a number and sat down. After 15 or 20 minutes, my number was called, and I told the nice gentleman that I wanted to apply for Medicare. He informed me that they were very backed up and it would be a two or three hour wait, or I could make an appointment. I chose the appointment. There was an opening at 10 am next Tuesday. If I couldn’t make it then, I would have to wait until sometime in December. I said that next Tuesday would be fine, and he printed out a letter for me confirming the appointment and telling me to be sure and bring my birth certificate.

As I understand it, Obama’s plan for government health care will pay for itself by eliminating all the bureaucracy and inefficiency of the private insurance companies that currently burden our health care system. That is certainly something I, for one, am looking forward to.

Saturday we drove over to Manchester and walked around The Old Stone Fort State Park. It was a beautiful Fall day. Here is a slide show of some pictures I took. The sound track is Candace, accompanied by Doc West on guitar, singing Autumn Leaves.

It is historic and an affirmation of the exceptional history and spirit of the United States of America that we have elected our first half-Kenyan President. I can’t help but share to some extent in the jubilation of Obama’s disciples. I preferred McCain, but the people have spoken, and they have spoken decisively.

Barack Hussein Obama is my President, and I wish him well. Let us hope that it is Obama’s rhetoric and not his record that will define his Presidency. Although, come to think of it, I don’t like his rhetoric much either. So let us hope that neither his rhetoric nor his record will be determinative. Audacious as that hope may be, I think it has a fair chance of being realized. After all, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out, “The facts of life are conservative.”

Although I don’t believe it to be the case, just suppose that Barack Obama is in fact the Manchurian candidate acting out a plot concocted in Bill Ayer’s rec room to overthrow the Great Satan and bring about the glorious revolution, following which, as Bill Ayers himself has estimated, some 25 million people would necessarily have to be eliminated.

Supposing that is who Obama really is, what could he realistically accomplish as President of the United States to further his nefarious aims? Not much, is my guess. If he did anything that revealed his secret intentions, he would be impeached. He would not be able to maintain communications with Ayers or Rashid Khalidi or Jeremiah Wright, lest it come to light. In fact if he did anything to undermine the U.S. at home or abroad more effectively than Jimmy Carter did, he would be impeached. And we survived Carter.

And that’s by far the worst case scenario. The more likely scenario is that Obama is an ambitious politician who wants to be re-elected, and remembered as a great leader, and that he will do his best to make that happen. He’s obviously intelligent, and probably not crazy, and, fortunately, the government has no money. He’s not going to raise anybody’s taxes as long as there are fewer than 60 Democrats in the Senate. He’s not going to do anything meaningful towards universal health care. There simply isn’t any money. He’s not going to pull out of Iraq precipitously. He will send more troops to Afghanistan, which I’m not even sure is a good idea. He will appoint some new, liberal Supreme Court justices to replace old, liberal Supreme Court justices. Things will go from bad to worse in Afghanistan. The economy will not be good. And four years from now everyone will be fed up with Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. and Sarah Palin will be elected in a landslide.

I think it’s true, as my political science professor brother, Jeff, has been telling me, that world government is about to take a great leap forward. Already the governments of the U.S. and Europe are, out of necessity, groping towards a global financial rules of the road. If bank accounts are guaranteed in Ireland, then they must be guaranteed everywhere, like it or not. It is no longer feasible to have such minimal global governance of the financial system as we have had.

It is not an argument about the lack or excess of regulation and governmental economic interference in the United States. Subprime mortgages and the resulting housing bubble was somewhat more the Democrats’ fault than the Republicans, but that isn’t the problem. The bad mortgages were the trigger, but the global financial system has not collapsed because of a few bad American mortgages, which the U.S. economy could have easily absorbed. The entire global system was/is way over-leveraged. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

If it hadn’t been the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble, which the global financial community bought into, it would have been something else. The big financial brains all over the world embraced a pseudo-scientific mathematical delusion that you could eliminate risk by making it more complicated. They created a system that was fragile and vulnerable. Pull on one thread, and it all comes unraveled. The housing “crisis” was the thread.

This is now a global argument, and, although economic power is the coin of the realm, consensus, and therefore compromise, is being, and shall increasingly be, required of all parties, to a much greater extent than heretofore. Necessity is a mother.

Since the nation-states of Europe have adopted the Euro as a common currency, all else follows. National sovereignty is over in Europe. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but within Europe, which has no guns to speak of, just these cute little toy armies, power grows out of the barrel of the Euro.

So Europe, and the rest of us, the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Brazil, Venezuela, and the lesser (lessor) nations, will now have to hang together economically, or hang separately. This is very big news that has barely begun to be assimilated by world leaders, let alone the world’s citizens. The domain of national economic decisions is shrinking. The domain of the G7 and the IMF is expanding.

Of course I’m aware that this warms the cockles of the heart of the one world cult, and that it all sounds a lot more like Obama than McCain. I don’t like it. I am a big fan of national sovereignty. I am also a big fan of state and local sovereignty. It must be from my SDS days and the worship of “participatory democracy”, for which idealists like myself and Bill Ayers sacrificed so much.

But I don’t see an alternative. We are stuck with a global economy and we might as well get busy administering it. One bright side of the global financial collapse is the attendant collapse of Kyoto-style carbon emissions fascism, but we are about to experience the emergence of many more economic constraints on national sovereignty.

If the Republicans had not won|stolen (choose verb based on Party affiliation) the last two Presidential elections, this global financial system meltdown would have happened anyway, only it would now be the Democrats’ fault, because of too much regulation, and the Republican candidate would be 8 points ahead in the polls.

In other words, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and in that spirit, here are some reasons why the inevitable ascension of Obama to the Presidency will not be an unalloyed evil.

1. The mainstream media will start reporting good news from Iraq, now that Obama has cleaned up Bush’s mess.

2. Paul Krugman will become optimistic about the future of the U.S. economy.

3. Maureen Dowd will start writing snide columns about Barack Obama.

4. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will no longer be the official spokespersons of African America.

5. Black youth will gain a well-dressed family man role model.

6. Affirmative action will have even more people shaking their heads.

7. The U.S. will become beloved by the peoples of all nations, for several weeks.

8. Rising gas prices caused by no drilling, no nukes policies will further the quest for alternative energy sources.

9. The depression resulting from increased taxes and trade protectionism will reduce carbon emissions.

10. The Fairness Doctrine will get rid of all those annoying right-wing radio talk shows and Fox News commentators.

11. The Republicans will be severely punished. Lord knows they have it coming.

Now that racism has been redefined as criticism of Barack Obama, I imagine that a lot of people will lie and say they are voting for Obama, when asked by a stranger on the phone. I know I would, but they won’t call me because I don’t have a land line. It doesn’t mean you are a racist. It just means you don’t want to be called a racist. There’s no way I’m going to put up a McCain/Palin sign in the yard or a bumper sticker on the car, even if my wife would let me. Having an American flag out front is risky enough.

I don’t get this whole “racist tinge” mainstream media accusation against the McCain/Palin ads and statements. I can see how Al Gore bringing up the Willy Horton furlough in the 1988 Democratic primary debate, and the George H. W. Bush Horton television ad, could arguably be considered racist. Whoooo! Dukakis is going to let all the bad Negroes out of jail!

But Dukakis was white. You don’t have to make subtle appeals to racism to get racists to vote against Barack Obama. He’s a black guy! This is not a secret. If you are a racist, you don’t need a subtle remark from Sarah Palin to remind you that Barack Obama is black and that you don’t like black people. You already know this. You don’t require assistance.

White Republican racists were already going to vote for John McCain, because they’re Republicans, an endangered political species these days. Black racists were already going to vote for Obama, because they’re Democrats. 95% of black people are Democrats regardless. White people tortured by guilt over America’s racist history were already going to vote for Obama, because they’re all Democrats.

That only leaves white racist Democrats, who would otherwise have voted for the Democrat, if only he were white, but are now going to vote for McCain, and lie to pollsters about it. How many of those could there possibly be? Of course, now-a-days, the definition of a white racist Democrat, as established by the Obama campaign and the MSM, is anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

So if Obama loses, and it is decided by the media that the cause is racism, then the Democrats are to blame. How long will it take, dear Lord, for the Democratic Party to overcome its racist legacy!?