World Food Day

Today is UN World Food Day and my thoughts have drifted to concern about food availability and production amidst the world financial nightmare swirling around us. Yesterday I happened to be doing some necessary but distasteful deferred maintenance on my septic system and yet another metaphor came to mind of the offal and scat being flushed into my tank from the mouths of our contemptible leaders, no.......our handlers who daily deceive us and obfuscate the real issues facing our nation. Hank Paulson , the current leader of the pack told us today that hedge funds wont "initially" get federal aid. That's reasuring. Are the unregulated hedge funds whose leveraged largely untaxed trading strategies contributed to the current collapse in equities and the oil futures going to be feeding at the bailout trough too? What planet am I on? Is there no stopping this corporate juggernaut to re- inflate a debt-bloated failed market? They persist in telling us it is a liquidity squeeze, a credit crisis, but anyone with the brain of a prairie dog knows that it is in fact A DEBT CRISIS. We are daily informed by all manner of bankers, CEOs, and politicians that we "must" take these measures to save our economies. It is obvious that they are doing it to save their power and their wealth which their greed has destroyed. And the partial nationalization of the banks has done little to change their business model of privatizing the profits and socializing the risk. If this Republican administration is going to socialize the risks, it can darn well socialize the profits, if there ever are to be any. And "Plumber Joe" from last nights presidential debate was unhappy with Obama's tax plan which seemed to him "socialist." Joe! Wake up! The cowboy capitalists are taking the lowing herd of Americans from unregulated capitalism to unregulated socialism right under your nose. If they can't fuel their greed one way, they'll try another. Here in the Dammerung of our American Dream, a story from Bloomberg about a lap dancer fallen on hard times in Las Vegas added a surreal touch:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a5I2yxVie96I&refer=home.
Good luck baby as you face a diminishing supply of laps in your desert paradise. Meanwhile back in Reykjavik, nothing catastrophic to relate. Icelandreview.com continues to run columns from worried islanders who are angry at billionaire bankers and Gordon Brown except that the prime minister Geir H. Haarde is thinking about filling a law suit against Gordon Brown since Gordon is suing Iceland. Geir also urged his countrymen to cope by going fishing. Our leader told us to go shopping. Iceland is looking better and better. ECS's blog Reykjavik Harbor Watch has posted a huge collection of her photographs on her blog site in an older post which soothed the turmoil in my brain this morning as I listened to the most beautiful operatic duet ever created: Jussi Bjorling singing "Au Fond du Temple Saint" from Bizet's Opera Le Pecheur de perles, the so called pearl fisher duet. If there is a better duet in the world, I'd sure like to hear it. Happy World Food Day. Dorthea Lange's haunting photographs from the Depression may become regular images on this blog.