TimesToCome

This past week we took our first five day cruise from Galveston, TX to Cozumel and Chichen Mexico on Carnival’s Ecstasy.

All in all I was happy with the trip and would gladly do it again. Since we live close to Galveston we can pick up last minute fares pretty cheap.

We spent a day at sea, a day at Cozumel, a day at Chichen and a day at sea.

The food in the main dining is very good but you have to put on real clothing to use the main dining room. The come-as-you are food was about what you’d find in any fast food chain and not so good.

The gym was well equipped, but running on a treadmill while the ship is rocking is a challenge even in calm waters. So I only managed one run.

There is a spa on the ship, shops, clubs and plenty to do. I was curled up with a book most of the time. The back decks are quiet and sheltered from the wind and a good place to have coffee and read.

We had a balcony with our cabin, but when you aren’t in port the wind on the balcony makes it unusable.

I wish I’d brought more clothing, especially warmer clothing and jeans. Galveston’s chilly this time of year and indoors everywhere the a/c was on high. It turns out you can wear blue jeans in the main dining hall now.

I’d've brought more Dramamine too, I went through two containers. Turns out that sea-sick pills are available at the information desk and that’s a very good thing or I’d not have survived our last night out at sea.

We stopped at Cozumel, Mexico on our cruise this week. The island is tiny and most of it is geared to tourist entertainment: shopping, drinking, snorkeling, swimming. But I love to wander around cities and explore so that’s what we did.

We made a break from the tourist area down an alley and headed north. The first 3 or so miles we walked we had a line of taxis parked along the street. There were hundreds of them all lined up to pick up tourists from the cruise ship ports.

Eventually we found a road leading inland away from the tourist area. The housing is a mix of old, new, wealthy and poor as you can see in the photos. Everywhere there were dogs, more than a few came out to chase us off. Nowhere did I see a cat.

The locals all get around on foot, bike and scooter. You’ll see young children, mom and dad all piled up on a single scooter.

Cozumel was originally a Mayan settlement and the island was a religious site. Women who were pregnant or hoping to become pregnant traveled to the island to pray to Ix Chel the goddess of the moon, pregnancy and childbirth.

Unhappy about the bailout for billionaires? Our only option is to throw them all out and start over.

If you live in The Woodlands, Texas, we have Kent Hargett challenging Bailout Brady, and Rick Noriega challenging Crooked Cornyn.

If you are not living in in the 8th in Texas, check out US Elections which lists the candidates running for office across the nation.

Use the internet.  Link to the challengers websites. Get the names out into cyberspace.

Send a message to your government “We’re angry and we’re not going to take it anymore”.

Thanks to the internet we can now rattle our so call ‘representatives’ in DC.  And we have.

It is not just the bailout that is grating on the US population.  It is yet another, dark of the night, planned in advance, power grabbing, must pass now or die bill before Congress.

We’ve seen them before.

There was the ‘Patriot Act’ which essentially allows the government unlimited spying and powers of detention on whom ever they choose.  ‘Bill of Rights’ you say?  It seems to have been written out of existence by the ‘Patriot Act’.

There was also the $600b rush to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  For $600 billion you’d think they could have at least found one lousy WMD.  I would’ve settled for BinLaden.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times buddy and you had better start finding new employment.

We have had enough of politicians bought and paid for by corporations that act in the corporations interest, not ours.

We’re having a problem with CEOs that collect multimillion dollar bonuses while they run companies into the ground.

We are fed up with companies that move the best paying jobs over seas and put their company finances in banks outside the US to avoid US taxes. We’ve had enough.

American is slowly waking to the credit hangover of all credit hangovers. Perhaps it’s time to buck up and just live with in our means?

Yes, there will be hell to pay for ‘Just saying No’, but there would have been hell to pay anyhow.  We may as well take a few CEOs and politicians down with us.

The vote fell through, the dollar went up, oil and the market went down. But we all know the market will come back up. A stronger dollar and cheaper oil? How is that bad for the guy on Main St?

If this is such a good deal for the American public, then why the scare tactics and why the rush?

It is time to take America back from Corporations and put it back in the hands of Americans.

See Dan Krohn’s Blog for some interesting legal insights in to the bailout bill

This bailout for $700 billion dollars is roughly equal to 10% of all US money in existence. Now if you add in the Iraq war ( $600 billion ), and FannieMae/FreddieMac ( $20 billion ), AIG ( $20 billion ) then W, Congress, the Federal Reserve and out of control CEOs have blown 18% of all  United States money greedily gamboling for more. Now we, the middle class and poor, are supposed to bail out the super wealthy.

We have an FDIC, perhaps you’ve heard of them?  They insure all accounts in banks worth less than 100,000.  How many of you doesn’t that cover?

Bernarke has been doing his best to terrorize the stock market into collapsing.  Every time he opens his mouth it is a threat of dire consequences should we not give the Federal Reserve and Paulson, unlimited power and money.  Why the scare tactics if the government is doing the right thing?

The Democrats are holding out saying we need to block Golden Parachute payments to CEOs of bailed out companies.  Is this a joke?  Hold back the bonuses?  How about we throw all these greedy corrupt bums in jail?

Printing money is inflation, and inflation is a tax on the poor and middle class who tend not to hold ‘hard’ assets.

It is time we took back the government that is supposed to be ‘of the people, for the people’, clearly neither party in DC meets that standard.

I say if they vote for this bailout, we vote them out and we recall and impeach anyone we can not vote out of office.

I gave up writing politicians. You have the net. Blog your thoughts on the bailout, Digg them, YouTube them. Plaster your thoughts on the ‘Billionaire Bailout’ all over the net. Let DC know just how much this displeases you.

Consider this: If we’re going to pump $700b into banks to keep the economy flowing, shouldn’t we be putting into banks that are not failing?

Take the Pledge. I did:
Pledge to vote against representatives who vote for bailout petition

See also:
A bailout we don’t need
Lobbyists in feeding frenzy
NPR Why Congress Objects to the Bailout Plan
One set of thieves bails out another set of thieves
McCain was thick in the previous banking/mortgage scandal he doesn’t need to go to DC, he knows all about these scams already.
25 Harsh reactions to the Bailout for Billionaires

On a dark but light note: Request for urgent confidential business relationship Clearly our leaders have been reading too many 419 scams in their inboxes.