Unhinging Visitation

I am thinking of my beautiful son and daughter this morning, the two I no longer see. 

For the past eight years I have been fighting the courts that granted my ex-wife a custody order, and in doing so took me from my kids. 

Until custody is decided by a court, each parent has what is called “natural custody,” a term most judges and lawyers don’t like to hear since it isn’t the result of any legal decision.  After the court makes its own custody decree–what often is a judge’s fairly to completely subjective reorganization of the family–it’s all very cut and dried: anyone not in that court order has no legal right to parent that child.  (And all the judges and lawyers can breathe freely.)

In a New York State divorce court, if you leave the marital residence first, a legally savvy and vengeful spouse can cut you out of your kids’ lives (egged-on by the prospects of a generous monthly support payment for the next 20 or so years,) by claiming simply that the two of you don’t get along.  In that case, the court must rule against shared custody.  It doesn’t matter if your spouse drove you out of the home with threats of physical violence or even if the court ordered you out because it wanted to spare the children acrimony–even if it’s not you who is producing the acrimony.  As long as she’s still living in the original marital residence and is not a drug addict or something the court will give her sole custody of the kids. 

I opted for the feminine pronoun because, as a former Court Clerk for New York State Family Court I have observed (just as transpired in my own case) that in cases where the residence of the kids is disputed, judges give a “temporary” order of custody to the mother that has the effect of creating a legal residence for the kids away from Dad.  If not based on gender, this bias is based on something just as disconnected from legal rationality–I’d suppose something best expressed as the softer nature of the female flesh. 

This system-wide barrier to shared custody is the law in about half the states in this country, the other half each having legal precedent or even a joint custody amendment to their state constitution that says one spouse must prove there is something wrong with the other for the courts to refuse to split parenting time.  It isn’t exactly a coin toss whether or not your kids get to keep both parents–the states that respect a child’s right to shared custody are almost always less densely-populated, where the influence of feminist lobbies like the National Organization for Women are too thinly organized to sway policy significantly.

With an order allowing overnight “visits” every other weekend, and one off-week dinner, I may seem overly emotional, I know, when I say they’ve taken me from my kids, but don’t go with that.  That impression only feels like common sense, thanks to the stereotypes: the abusive man, the child support-shirker; the ex-husband who is eager to accept conflict as a passionate substitute for the lost love; and, of course, as a sure-fire last resort, the morose, clinging father whose devotion to his children is nothing less than mawkish.  –I should add in, too, the fact that in this New York City where I am living men still gladly give their life’s focus to their careers, and–I can say on my experience drafting Family Court petitions–most men welcome being removed from their kids lives, being freed to chase their financial dreams all the more.

Among the mores of the current society, the thought is taboo and an insult to many normal and happily functioning people, but still, it’s true: visitation is only a peek at parenting.  I cannot steer my children in any meaningful way; I can just remind them of the role I am supposed to be playing–let their heads get some snapshots of a person they admire.  I can’t make sure they get their homework done; I can’t get to know their friends; I have to be constantly–and awkwardly–catching up on the details of their changing lives.

I will allow myself the selfish indulgence to say visitation is a continual source of pain for me.  The briefness of the time we have together is a reminder of the injustice, and in its context I believe my children see me as victim.  I don’t think they have a good sense yet that the order is rather against their own interests.  They were so young when the first visitation order was put into effect that it is all they can remember.  They switch from one home to the other seamlessly, more pleased to switch to our home because they see it less–it is more of a novelty.  They know they get to see little of their new younger siblings, a baby boy and a 2-year-old girl of my second marriage to the stepmother they have lived with for as long as they can remember, but still, they are uncritical, and they seem content to remain subjects of their condition.

In court I have been arguing for a very simple week-on, week-off arrangement under which every Friday after school they are picked up by the other parent to go to the other home, an option the court will not consider. 

The only wild card in custody cases that can overturn legal precedent is the wishes of the children themselves–and they must be older kids for even that to carry much weight.  The kids say they want it, they know I want it, and they know their mother does not want it.  It is easy for their mother to urge them not to “get in the middle,”  and hard for me to let them know that’s where they have always been without shaping their opinions.

Now, the most recent trial, a two-year Family Court custody trial, has been over for a year and a half.  The judge conferenced with the kids, but, uncoached by me, though they did not oppose my proposal, they did not advocate strongly for it, which would have been the only hope for a significant change–and even at that, a very slim hope.  The judge still has not ruled against me, though she made it clear on the record she will.  It isn’t that she has been negligent with her paperwork–she is keeping the courts free of my threatened appeal, an attack on the court’s refusal to hear the Constitutional issue of whether a child’s right to a father and a father’s right to parent are unalienable.

She’s not afraid I have a case.  She is just keeping me out of the courts.  The appeal will be hopeless.  Unless a judge has flagrantly disregarded vital legal stricture, poorly-funded appeals in non-criminal matters, however virtuous, do not ripple the surface of the state legal tide.

So, when the new school year approached last September, exhausted of legal options, I came to face an alternative I had avoided since first being relegated to visitor by the courts six years ago: to stop visiting my kids.  At 11 and 13, these two are older now.  They are old enough to advocate for their own interests.  If I am unwilling to be a visitor rather than father, my children may be forced to face-off with their mother.  And they may not be.

I told my kids at the end of our two-week summer visitation that there was no more I could do.  I would not pick them up again until their mother agrees to share custody.  I told them they and I would not be visitors in one another’s lives.  I told them that I had exhausted any legal options and that only they might hope to correct the problem.  I explained everything as thoroughly as I could to them, and they had little to say in return but that they believed they could sway their mother–as if it would not be a problem.  After they left, I realized my son had packed his schoolbag with some of his most special possessions.

There are no good alternatives, only bad and worse.  I believe the bad option is my refusing to cooperate any more with the worse, a legal mutilation of our relationship.

This was a very long time coming, and I’d been actively controlling the situation by putting it off.  The children were always too young to deal with their mother themselves; had I never cooperated with the court orders, the kids would have simply forgotten me, so I had to accept visitation through their more formative and vulnerable years so they would have a choice in the matter some day.  We did the best we could during that time, me working a midnight shift and shamelessly abusing the sick leave policy on my job to spend as many full days as possible with these two who have always been at the center of my life.

For the past year, I have heard from only my daughter, only once, and my son, who dialed me by accidentally pressing the wrong button on his cellphone.   I have stuck to a strict policy of never contacting them myself, for fear they could find a way to adjust to such minimal contact with me.   I do not really know whether they need me in their lives.  I believe they do, but the fact of the matter is the effect of the visitation order over these six years or so may be that I am unessential.

The legal repercussion of not visiting is that the order will be compromised.  Familiar with the pose of judges, I would expect my actions to be termed, “coercion,” as I am trying to get my kids to argue for a change in the order by withholding my visits.  I could answer with the fact that coercion is active–not passive–by definition, or that, when the court relegated me to visitor, they, in effect, declared my fatherly role unessential, something not crucial enough to be much of a loss to the kids.  Or I could try to answer with the more substantive point that fatherhood survives more fundamentally if it is honestly and openly fully suppressed than if it contorts itself to visitation. 

I will not, though.  If they force me back into one of their vile courtrooms, I will have nothing to say.

I do not get the feeling either of my children have reacted to this change in their lives much beyond adapting to it.  And once they do react, I can not see how they will be able to overcome what will certainly be a firm resistance from their mother, a woman who answers her own compelling feelings of vulnerability by being manipulative and abusive.  Still, in time, they must.  And, I think they will.

As I do every day, I am thinking of my kids, the two I no longer see, making sure there’s nothing I missed, some detail I may have overlooked. 

Mark Crane           7-26-08                 Motormanmark.com

Now that we have decided to nationalize the debt of private speculative debtors–at home and abroad–and now that we have decided to limit this debt nationalization to corporations that have extremely large amounts of debt, I believe it is clear that debt has come to mean nothing at all.  But there is a way for you to cash in!

GO BANKRUPT!

That’s right.  Get all the credit cards you can, spend a year or so maxing them out–if you want to be very savvy, you can sock away cash advances–then, when you have no credit left, just wash all that debt away with a nice, hot bankruptcy shower!  Invest your debt!  Get a nice car!  A computer to help you start a home-based business (you’re going to need one if your job goes belly-up due to this economy that is tanking regardless of this bailing-out nonsense.)

I’m talking a hundred thousand bucks, baby! 

“Unamerican,” you say???  Don’t worry–we can afford it!  

David Brooks has a column out today in the Times calling opponents to the bail-out “nihilists.”

Brooks is a good guy.  Means well.  But he lacks insight here.  Fact of the matter is this bill exercised the same irresponsibility that has paved the road to this historic meet-up with fate.   

All right, Dave, I’ll give you your big fat Congessional bill full of money.  Just do one thing for me, okay? 

PAY FOR IT. 

Let’s have a tax on all you rich guys: 25% of this year’s income.  There. That’ll do it.  Stop borrowing from my children and from the value of our dollar–the value of our nation’s economic future–to fund your excess! 

Spare me the insipid moralizing about voting NO leading us down the road to ruin.  This is all on its way down whether or not we have a 700 billion dollar bonfire first.  “Shore-up” the current overvaluation of property??  Wha?? Get back in touch with reality.

If you want to see where all the David Brooks’s of the world are heading, just take a look at some graphs covering the last century: the stock market, the federal debt, global warming, the annual US deficit… they are all hockey sticks, the elbow occurring at the Reagan Revolution.

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I just finished watching Michael Moore’s new free movie giveaway: Slacker Uprising.  If you want to see it, go to:

http://slackeruprising.com/download/location.php?utm_medium=download&utm_source=31663774

–but I wouldn’t watch it on the site, (unless you have time to let it load while it’s paused)—but rather the best thing to do is to bittorrent it.  If you don’t know bittorrent, now’s a great moment to learn—just download a free bittorrent program at:

http://www.download.com/BitTorrent/3000-2196_4-10211384.html?tag=mncol;lst&cdlPid=10807964

then, click on the bittorrent link at Michael Moore’s site, and it will automatically run you into the program that’ll download it for you. 

Then, when it finishes downloading (could take several hours,) find where the program put it in your computer, and watch it!

If that’s too much, MM’s site offers lots of other options.

The reason I am bringing up the movie is that there’s a scene near the end where Roseanne Barr says George Bush has “deficit attention disorder,” and here we are 4 years later and he’s trying hand-over-fist to empty out the government’s coffers—kill our government, dig us a hole so deep it’ll take years before we are able to float ideas like national health care again. 

700 billion dollars.  When a politician doesn’t tell you they know it will work, you can be sure it ain’t gonna work.  Let’s just say NO, and see how bad it gets.  When we start feeling regret, then we can give up the 700 billion.  Okay?

Sure, you agree with me.  But, hell, you’re not a politician.  You’re not a corporation.  What do YOU have to say about it??

They say these politicians are getting calls a hundred to one against this bail-out, but here they go marching us off to war—another rich-man’s-war.

BREAKING NEWS from Motormanmark.com:  What follows is a transcript of a tape purported to be an August 6, 2008  conversation between Arizona Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain and top campaign advisor, Joel Stiegel.  The tape was provided by a confidential source who seems to have had access to an in-house intercom system at the McCain ranch in Cornville, Arizona. 

The tape is expected to air in audio form Thursday evening on ABC News.  

The confidential source of the digital recording claims not to have caused the intercom system to monitor Sen. McCain’s conversation–that instead what was recorded with a cell phone was what was naturally overheard, a broadcast that was evidently caused by an electrical short or perhaps a situation where the system was mistakenly left powered on.

JM  [US Senator, John McCain, Presidential Candidate]

JS  [Joel Stiegel, Deputy Campaign Administration Chief, MLC (McCain Leadership Committee.)]

JS: What’s that?

JM:  Sam’s bone [refrc to JM's cocker spaniel, "Sam."]  Yeah.  He’s around back.  Nobody cleans them up.  Mary?

JS:  Request from Pifferil [Jim Pifferil, Chairman House, Ways, Means,] we get ahead of the Urban Union in Detroit–get a few votes there might make a difference.

JM:  Sure, sure.  That’s okay by me.  I don’t have a problem with doing what I’ve already done, Joel.

JS: Yeah, we’ve got [unintelligible.]  We’ve got it covered there.

JM: What did I say?  What–

JS:  The [unintelligible]?

JM:  No, no. 

JS:  God, no, Johnny.  They’re gonna go for Obama in droves.

JM:  Think?  I thought Tavis Smiley might help a bit. (Laughs.)  The Jesse Jackson thing flipped right back in our faces.

JS:  That it did.  You’re right, there.  It’s an impossible job, trying to win an urban district share with this situation.

JM: Hell, and so it should be.  Why would a Black voter in their right mind vote Republican?  If Republicans had it their way back in the Sixties, Blacks wouldn’t even have the vote.

JS:  But a few votes could make a difference in Michigan.  We just give it to them what they want.

JM: Reparations.  [Laughs.]  I’ll give them that.

JS:  Uh, sure.  That’d probably make a dent in it.

JM: No, Joel.  That’s just the thing.  They don’t want reparations.  They don’t even want a house.  They want a car.  And they mostly have achieved that.  When’s the last time you heard Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton call for reparations?

JS: They’re not going to ask for something they can’t get.

JM:  Well, I beg to differ, my friend.  If done the right way, African America could win reparations for slavery.  Why the hell not?  But, no, not Jackson or Sharpton.  Those guys are chuckleheads.

JS: [Unintelligible.]

JM:  Really.  There isn’t one good reason why Blacks shouldn’t get reparations for slavery.  Look at it.  This is a simple case of theft.  This is a private-property-loving country where a claim is a claim is a claim.  There is no court in this nation can stop a man from collecting what’s he’s owed. 

Slavery?  Huh.  Theft of property, theft of liberty, theft of livelihood, theft of real property.  Oh, boy.  These people had generations of earning power stolen from them by this very government.  The nation was built on it.  And when my father was a boy, they were deporting them.  Deportation.  Know what that is?  That’s when a bunch of your redneck neighbors come and run you off your own land, and then the county clerk changes the property deeds to say some White guy owns the place.

And lynchings?  A man who has to live under threat of lynchings is no more free than a Jew living in Nazi Germany.

JS:  Yes, I see that.

JM:  Yeah, but people don’t think about that.  And it didn’t stop until the Sixties.  Still hasn’t stopped, some places.  It is a very simple case, if you ask me. 

So, what’s the obstacle?  Go ahead, Joel.  You’re a clever guy.  What’s the obstacle to Blacks getting reparations from the USA?

JS:  I don’t know, Johnny.  White people.

JM:  Hell, no.  White people know perfectly well how Blacks have been screwed.  That’s why we’re facing the default candidate, and all we can do is try to prove he’s evil, cause no one’ll listen to what’s good about us.  You sell this reparations issue the right way, and you could get just as many White’s will vote for it as Blacks. 

JS:  (Laughs.)  Oh, I don’t know about that.

JM:  It’s leadership, Joel.  People need to be led.  Yeah, they’re against reparations, but their core belief has as much firmness to it as, say, their belief against gay marriage.  A couple court rulings, and next thing you know gay people aren’t so bad.  See how that goes? 

You lead people–you say, “Hell, these people were thieved.  We built a nation off their being thieved.  Now, their descendants are rotting from this issue.”

JS:  You could try this in San Antonio.  [Unintelligible.]

JM:  You don’t think so, eh?  Take violence.  There’s a guy studied family violence–which is the root of most criminal violence–and he found in families descended from slavery violence is much higher.  Because during slavery they whipped and beat and chained people.  They were like a bunch of wild animals–the slave-owners, the slaves, all of them.  See, they followed up the family lines and found if you were descended from a slave or a slave-owner, you had the same incidence of family violence–and a very high incidence at that.  Now, there were less Whites than Blacks during slavery, and since then Blacks have essentially mixed mostly with other slave descendants, whereas the Whites mixed more with immigrants, so the numbers of those surviving people descended most purely from the slavery period is vastly mostly Blacks. 

JS:  And that’s why…

JM:  Blacks are so much more violent, per capita than Whites.  It isn’t poverty or some kind of stupid genetic idea–it’s all culture.  When I say culture I’m not talking about just violent movies–but, deep, deeply-ingrained impulses.  You smack a 2-year-old kid for reaching for food across the dinner table and that [expletive deleted] him up for life. 

They’re screwed. 

This culture Blacks defend so strongly–the one they keep to show they’re not White.  It’s White!  Jewelry, guns, male-dominance, loud-mouthed caterwauling.  You ever go to Africa?

JS:  Kenya.  For the summit.

JM:  The sweetest, gentlest people on Earth.  Of course until European guns and commerce were imported.  But still, today, you go out on the savanna, and those people don’t even know how to make a fist.  (Laughs.)  It’s not funny, but these African American youngsters driving around acting like gangsters, they don’t know a thing about Africa.  They think it’s full of Zulu warriors or some other Hollywood fantasy.  In fact, they’re acting out roles and culture taught them by the very people who destroyed their original culture–people who raped their mothers and whipped their fathers into servile submission.

No, if Black people had a clue, they could accomplish loads.  If they had a leader.

JS: [Unintelligible] Obama?

JM:  He’s a senator of all the people of Illinois, Joel.  He’ll help the Blacks up, but he’s not going to lead them to demand their 40 acres.  And they won’t ask on their own, because as we both know people are submissive–even angry, screwed people.  Hell, in Australia, the President is nearly in tears giving a speech begging for forgiveness from the aborigines.  These American Blacks are just sitting here wagging their tails.  You see?  People must have a leader. 

That’s why they killed King.  For God’s sake, he wasn’t leading a jackass Nation of Islam Black Man’s March when they killed him.  Do you know what he was organizing when they killed him?

JS:  Yes I do.  A poor people’s march.

JM:  That’s right, brother.  The “Poor People’s March on Washington.”  He wanted reparations for all poor people, not just Black men.  There is a difference between insulting and dangerous.  King was dangerous.  Never was spit dangerous about Farrakhan or Malcolm X for that matter.  Blacks love them because they expressed anger at Whites–that’s what they want: emotional expression, not 40 acres.     

It is no accident King never lived to the summer of 1968, when that march was scheduled.  No accident, chum. 

JS:  But, legally there’s no room for reparations.  The statute of limitations.

JM: Did anybody ask what legal basis there was for Bush to be sending multi-million dollar checks to the families of 9/11 victims?  Or, what’s the legal basis for giving 25 billion to Fannie and Freddy Mac?  Bear Stearns?  This subprime bailout?  There is none at all.  But, hell, at least with slavery reparations you’ve got a simple case of thievery and loss–great, generational loss.

And that statute of limitations?  What are you talking about?  When were they supposed to get their money?  At the end of slavery?  Are you kidding?  Or at the turn of the century when the KKK was more popular than the Boy Scouts?  No, sir.  Or maybe at the end of the Sixties, not yet 40 years ago?  If after 400 years of being victimized that 40 years makes them unreasonably late, I’m never coming to your house for dinner.  [Both laugh.]

JS:  But I know what you’re saying.  I could never get behind it, though.  [Both laugh.}     

JM:  You know, Joel, I'm a politician.  Sometimes a politician has to speak his mind.  Now, let's get real.  You know if we want a Michigan win there is no worse strategy than wasting time talking about Detroit.

JS:  Yeah, well, this [unintelligible] like it’s like so gratifying just to consider.  All the what-ifs.

This concludes the excerpt we have been made privy to.  Keep an eye on Motormanmark.com for future major news events such as this.   

 AAAARGH!!!  Someone STOP them from saying the bailout will be paid for by the taxpayer.  NO ONE is saying we should raise taxes to pay for the bailout.  This will be paid for by NATIONAL DEBT!  NATIONAL debt!  WE ARE PAYING FOR PRIVATE FINANCIAL CORPORATE DEBT WITH NATIONAL DEBT.

(If the politicians had to actually pay for this, they would NEVER suggest it!)  This is robbery of future generations & the value of the dollar in relation to other nations - and who benefits?)

Can this be put on a public referendum?? (answer: No.  Who’d vote for it other than the politicians??)

I really hate to hear people saying how the taxpayer is going to be paying for this disgusting bail-out of the speculating-investor-class.  The taxpayer isn’t paying for SQUAT until taxes are raised.  The taxpayer’s grandchildren are maybe paying for this.  All right?? 

Now, I’m watching This Week (ABCNEWS.com) and Paulson is saying we’re going to be buying up foreign debt!  ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!  We are going to be buying up foreign debt to stabilize our DOW?????  NO.  NO FREAKING WAY, DUDE. NO. NO. NO.  These people are absolutely whacked!

“The key to getting through this situation is to get through it with as little negative impact on the American people as possible.”  This is Paulson giving his asinine economics theory.  The theory is: never fault.  Never suffer.  Never lose. 

This is to me a sure prescription for absolute disaster. 

Everybody’s grandmother knows you must pay for your excesses.  You can’t take out a loan every time you fail.  You need to learn to balance your books. 

Look at our national debt.  On a graph it looks like Al Gore’s greenhouse graph.  Reagan was the axis in the hockey stick curve.  from that point on it has headed for the sky–and now they want to ramp it staright up.  No.  No freaking way.  This is so irresponsible.  If I was a politician, this would be my moment.  I’d oppose this like Barack opposed Iraq.  A single year from now this is going to be seen as the greatest single blunder in US history.

This is garbage being foisted on the US people like we do not exist–like we do not have a say.  And we do not.  Our country is in crisis! 

Log on to these news shows–look at this Paulson guy.  This guy does not have a grip.  Not a grip.

Live blogging you’ve got sam Donaldson and George Will opposing one another on opposite sides you’d expect them to take.  Donaldson is saying there’s no time to be contemplative, and George Will, the lunatic, coaxing him to slow down.  Weirdo politics like haven’t been seen in my life.

This is the last vicious strike against the integrity of our government by the Bushies whose sole purpose has been to destroy government.  This is an effort to impoverish an Obama administration the second it was clear he would win the election.

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. 

I am now watching Treasury Secty Paulson on Face the Nation (CBS.com) and he sounds like a man who does not have a clue, using language that is all ornament with nothing that means squat.  The fact that this congress is going along with this administration’s rushed bail-out is OUTRAGEOUS.  It is exactly the same dysfuctionality that led to the Iraq War–a Bush led ”bold action” that is completely full of crap, followed sycophantically by a congress afraid to misstep so close to election–and EVERY LAST PERSON IS WRONG!  There is NO reason to spend all this money to save all this speculative loss!  Let them all lose!  Let the market adjust!  Let the depression come!  And take it on the chin like you deserve it rather than passing it down to your kids!

We have no right to put them further in debt.  No right! 

Want proof?!  I’ll give you proof!  PAY FOR IT!  Go ahead, administration and congress!  Wanna spend a trillion dollars?!  Hike taxes a trillion dollars this year.  Go ahead.  You can do it.  Spread it out.  Corporations, rich people, even poor people–we’ll all take a sock in the ribs.  Now, you’ve raised a trillion dollars.  And you still want to pay it to banks to buy their bad debt???!!!  NO.  No freaking way.  It would never happen./

The only thing that makes this bail-out digestible by this administration and congress is that they are not going to have to pay for it.

It is thievery of our children, leading to absolute ruin.  This country is shot.  And it is all due to the destruction of good government by special interest control over election funding.  An absolute horror.

Sarah Palin’s email recently got snapped up by hackers who changed her password by guessing the answer to her yahoo security question.  Something for everyone to think about.

But, the reason I write: 

My birthplace is Media, PA.  I like to use this as my security question.  About a month ago, I noticed while–I dunno where I was: MSNBC?  NYTimes?  Can’t remember.  Anyways, wherever I was, there was one of those verticle banner ads for Classmates.com.  And it had a list of high schools scrolling there for you to click on.  And right smack in the middle–you guessed it–was Media High School!  In noticing this, I realized I had seen this same ad before, and just ignored it as a coincidence.  Now, I see the ad regularly (what site am I on when I see it???!!  Can’t remember.) 

I believe someone has sold this company my security question and they are using it to entice me to play with their site.  So, I guess I have to now invent fake security question answers just like I have a fake birthdate I use whenever I’m asked that online.  My fake phone number?  I’ve used it so much I just hope it’s not a real person’s home! 

Just thought you might like the warning.

Your pal,

Stan. 

Fellow New Yorkers:

According to the Brookings institute, it is only a matter of time before some terror group gets its hands on a portable nuclear bomb.  There seems to be absolutely no inclination towards developing a world government or even a worldwide control of weapons and violence, so there is no reason to believe we are not advancing swiftly towards the event of the first nuclear act of terror.  Certainly among the top most appealing targets of terrorists is our home, New York City.

Still, here in NYC, the citizenry is completely unprepared for the possibility of such an attack.  Yes, the police and military have planned their top-secret responses, we well know.  But, what would you do if a bomb went off right now?

What should you do?  Odds are, there won’t be any subway service. Even if the electricity and signals continue to operate, the subways and buses will operate only if their operators are heroes.  MTA New York City Transit has instructed its staff to flee in the case of a dangerous situation, such as nuclear fallout or crumbling buildings.  They are not trained or assigned as emergency workers (that’d be extra pay, which MTA–remember the strike?–is unwilling to pay.)

And do not count on electricity.  Or telephone service.  And the roads are instantly jammed.  So, let’s say you are lucky enough to hop in a taxi the second the bomb goes off, and the guy is so stupid he still wants to earn a fare…  where do you tell him to go?

You want to head northwest, probably.  Odds are, the bomb we are talking about is downtown, right?  That’s my guess.  So, picture a mushroom cloud over lower Manhattan.  That’s just a hop and skip from 95 South in Jersey.  That highway’s not going to be a good escape route unless you want to be the first to breathe the radioactive fallout. 

Always try to know the weather.  High pressure means everything should stay right around here for a while–so if you don’t get out fast, take cover.  Low pressure means the fallout should be moving along in a direction you do not want to be headed.

If you are unlucky enough to be in Brooklyn, you take a stab at the Verrazano Bridge, if they haven’t closed it down–which they might to check for structural damage. If you get over that bridge, you are in Schaefer City, because odds are the fallout will not be dropping in that direction.  If no Verrazano,  you can only hope to beat at least a few of the several million people in Queens to get in line on the Long Island Expressway, putting some space between you and Wall Street quickly as you head through your broad borough.  Local roads on Long Island could yield you extra, valuable miles between you and ground zero.  If there’s a swift northern movement of air, you might even get on the eastern shore or even the Rockaways and hunker down in a basement until you can get rescued.  Depending on weather and the area of the hit, those areas might have only small exposure.

Using Hiroshima as a guide, which may or may not be a good idea (I’m just a blogger,) a Wall Street detonation would, for all intents and purposes, destroy Manhattan below 14^th Street.  Outside of that, your worries are radiation exposure and the effects crowding and panic may have on your survival.

Queensites should try to get over a bridge, as it would probably be better to be on the mainland where you can really hope to escape radiation exposure.  Still, it is a matter of a short time before the bridges to the Bronx are just jam-packed to hell, and it would be a good deal to be among the first looking for a rescue ferry from the far end of Long Island, which, depending on air currents, could escape exposure.

But clearly the Bronx is the best place to be.  If you are in the Bronx, you are going  to head straight for 87 or the Saw Mill or Broadway on the local route through Yonkers–not 95–that’ll be the path of the fallout, as the jet stream and prevailing winds move that way.  You want to get up next to the Hudson River and take the first moving path over–the Tappan Zee, the Bear Mountain Bridge, the Beacon-Newburgh Bridge—beyond Beacon, you’re probably far north enough to take the accelerator off the floor.  The second you are over the river, head west, as that’ll get you out of the path mother nature will be carrying the deadly cloud.

Northern Manhattan is the same escape plan as the Bronx, unless the GWB is productive.  If that’s not happening, you must make it over the Henry Hudson at the top of the West Side Highway or over the Broadway Bridge as Broadway leaves Inwood.

Timing is everything, so do not spend a moment thinking about possessions, family photos, the computer hard drive.  I heard a guy on WNYC talking up a “go bag” full of special treats to help you survive an emergency. Okay, if it’s by the door.  Otherwise, don’t waste the time to fetch it.  Some cash for the taxi.  That’s all you need. 

Well, except… get a bottle of potassium iodide pills to keep in a special place.  That will keep your thyroid from absorbing deadly iodine.

Have a plan for your family.  If you are separate, you will each escape as fast as possible, and meet in New Paltz.  The kids will meet you here or they’ll leave a note that they got a ride out of the area, which they will know to do–never to wait for you.  Everyone should know Uncle Sid’s house in Dover, Delaware is the place to telephone if you can’t reach one another.

If you don’t have a car, if you don’t catch a ride, your plans will be different.  It would be great if you had some good bicycles.  Now that I think of it, a bicycle would probably be your best bet!  Well, then again, you’re exposed to the poisonous air more than in a car, but it takes a while before the fallout starts coming down.  Yes.  A bike might be best.  Zoom!  Through the Lincoln Tunnel, would be a dream–that’s if they haven’t closed it down.

I mean, nobody talks about this, so what if we find the authorities have been planning all along to severely control access to the bridges and tunnels… and even the highways to make sure movement is smooth and orderly??  Who knows.

I’m just a blogger.

So, failing the Lincoln Tunnel, I hope you can pedal fast, upstate. 

No bike, and you will find yourself like all those folks footing it after the blackout a few years back.  The walk over the George Washington Bridge might work, but now the question becomes will you be smarter to take cover from the fallout than escape in a radiation snow.  You can’t outrun a radiation fallout anymore than you can a rainfall.

New York City has many thousands of good spots for hiding out deep underground where the government can send rescuers in a month or so.  So, wherever you are, make sure you are aware of a nearby spot with a large underground.  As soon as you get there, fill many bathtubs, sinks, and or garbage bags with fresh water, as it will be undrinkable in just a short time.  Let your family know this is a possibility.  Have the kids know all the possibilities of people they can contact to come pick them up from wherever they’ve been rescued to.

What’d I leave out?  You email me whatever I overlooked and I’ll edit it into this piece, which I’ll republish in a few weeks.  We all have to get this plan together between ourselves, as the authorities obviously don’t think we need to be prepared.

I’m not saying this is going to happen.  I think the amount of people in the world who are heartless enough to be capable of such villainy is much, much smaller than it seems most would think.  But the flames of violence around the world have been fanned in the past 8 years, and we really should be prepared at least mentally.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac are corporations funded by low-cost loans by the US government for the purpose of providing mortgages—loaning people money to buy homes, originally conceived as a spur to the US economy.  The US investment was not lost because the whole affair was eventually sold mostly to foreign investors as shares, and Freddie and Fannie were from then on private corporations.

US voters elected a Republican president and congress, which led to a total loss of control of financial industries, and it got to a point virtually anyone could get a credit card; anyone could get a mortgage.  Since people are not all rich, the chickens eventually came home to roost and all those bad loans that made all those financial services companies rich went belly-up. 

Now, get this, because this is what most people do not understand, and what the media never tries to explain: all businesses can write-off their business loss instead of paying taxes.  Think about that.  If your business made 28 million dollars last year, but you took-in bad loans of 8 million, and your tax bill is 8 million, who pays for the bad loans you wrote??  All your fellow citizens.  You keep your profits.

I’ll bet you wish you could do that with the clunker used car you bought last year, eh?

Anyhow, those financial services companies raked in the dough, their managers had great salaries over several years, real estate developers and sellers made another bundle, all that money coming from credit given by Uncle Sam and by investors, who supported these loans, knowing they were too big a part of the economy to ever fall through.   And most of these loans weren’t taken out by hardworking families pursuing the American Dream, but by investors with kat-ching dollar-signs in their eyes, who were buying homes to resell for a profit, taking advantage of the easy credit F&F offered.

So now we have an economy that should fail.  All those years reaping false profits, investors deserve to lose and lose big.  But the federal government is not willing to see them lose their money.  Even though they’re mostly foreign investors.  Because if foreign investors lose money, they may lose confidence in the USA and the dollar will lose its value even more, and then we’ll really be in trouble.

So the federal government is bailing out F&F.  With what?  The federal government is strapped!  The federal debt is 9.7 trillion bucks, a large part owed to China.  Sooo, where’s this 50-100 billion dollar bailout coming from that the politicians are being so generous with.  I’ll tell you where: not from me or you, but from where all this ballooning spending since 1980 has been coming from—our kids. 

This is entirely irresponsible.  For our behavior, we are owed a great depression, and, instead, we are taking none of it, passing it all down to the future to deal with—why, McCain is even opposed to the discomfort of raising taxes in a time of war!

Outrageous!

From the Motormanmark.com Election Center, this just in:

During taping for Wednesday’s segment of “Entertainment Tonight,” Republican Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, has evidently admitted she has never weaned her eldest son, Flip, from breast-feeding.  “Well, of course it’s good for his calf strength,” says she, referring to the young man’s participation in high school hockey.

When reached for comment, the Wasilla High School hockey coach, Roy G. Biv said, “Breast milk contains appropriate amounts of carbohydrate, protein, and fat. It also provides the digestive proteins, minerals, vitamins, and hormones that young hockey players need. Breast milk contains valuable antibodies from the mother that helps the young hockey player resist infections.  There is no known substance that better promotes a young person’s health and vitality.” 

When asked if she intended to continue breast-feeding the young man if elected Vice-President, Palin responded, “Well, of course not.  He’s deploying to Kuwait.  I’ll be expressing milk with my pump while reading my morningly foreign policy dispatches.  He’ll get the little bags next day, Fed Ex polar mail.”

Presidential candidate, John McCain, when reached for comment, said, “I really don’t know what all the fuss is about.  This liberal media is focusing on this very private mother-child issue just because it doesn’t like sports!  They’re afraid that if too many people get carried away with sports, their newspapers will lose readers.  If she was breastfeeding to make his mind healthier so he could get high grades on the SAT, would the New York Times be investigating this then?!”

Ronald Steinman, Editor In-Chief of the New York Times, admitted this was a concern:

Sports does seem to play a strangely important role in this story.  Look: you have this incredibly backwoods town in the sticks of Alaska.  The people up there don’t read, of course.  All they do is watch sports on TV, and in the few months when everything isn’t covered in snow, they go outside and play sports.  Now, you have this incredibly right-wing woman who is their mayor by virtue of being one of those go-getter types makes you want to go jump off a roof, and she becomes governor.  Now, this woman knows nothing.  Somebody asked her who John Updike is and she responded, jokingly, “I dunno.  Sounds like somebuddy who up-chucked his spike!” ["Spike" is a popular lemon-lime slushy beverage sold at Wasilla hockey games.]   And this imbecilic woman somehow has figured out how healthy breast milk is.  I mean, nobody–nobody–in stupid towns like that know that breast milk is good for you.  Every one of ‘em works a job and doesn’t have the time to breast-feed, and even if they did, they’ve been brainwashed by the formula industry to believe the slop they sell can do what breast milk does.  So what motivates her?  One word: sports!

When reached at his ranch for comment, Senate Minority Leader, Republican, Mitch McConnell stated, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.  This is obviously a ploy of the liberal media.”  When asked if Republicans favor breast-feeding of teenagers, he replied, “Well, of course.  Republicans have always supported a woman’s right-to-breast-feed, as long as she has a heavy towel covering up the indecent act.  And especially, if she’s doin’ it to help the boy excel in sports!”

Flip’s girlfriend, Betty-Lou Clampett, says she is not concerned that her beau is still latching on.  “Oh, hell.  No family is normal from the inside looking out.  Why, I hear when Mr. Palin was trainin’ to become a world-champion snowmobile racer, he was takin’ them illegal steeroids.”  She lowers her voice to a whisper, and adds, “It was wrong, I know, but they did help him steer better!”  

See Motormanmark.com’s other great blogosphere scoops of the election season, including John McCain getting caught on tape talking about slavery reparations, the Irish News video revealing Barack Obama’s roots, and the speech Obama wasn’t allowed to give, in addition to very serious, very cogent insight into Palin’s speech and a video revealing John McCain’s REAL greatest moral failure. 

Pirateer of the Immaterial World                    

by Alger Q. Hiss

The Depravity of My Soul

I am writing under a clever pseudonym because I am an enemy of the state, a shameless evildoer who selfishly disrupts the good order all decent people depend on.  If I were to associate my true name with this writing, agents of justice would hound me with the fervor one would summon for a cop-killer or terrorist.

If only I had been born in a previous century, I’d have no avenue through which to spread my wickedness, long ago  when there was no internet, there were no recordings or logos or brand names–before there came the temptation of these invisible, incorporeal–what sh