Vulture Queens

*



Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost



Oh tell the truth, that there were voices in ancient rooms, that the chequered floor spread out into infinity, that he was bleeding on to the tiles after the beating, that his hatred and contempt for his persecutors would never die. The room had no walls that he could see, no ceiling in visual range. He simply sensed, or assumed, that some where this world came to an end. Oh cold glasses, arrogant darkness, frail figures screaming. The belting never stopped, and these psychotic attacks on his young, thin frame would haunt him for more than half a century. No wonder he couldn't deal with it then.

He was left alone to cry, to nurse his bruises; supposedly to contemplate redemption, doing as he was told, not being him. Brutal facts spill down the generations. Stand up to your children man. Different eras - and yet, the same vast, empty rooms echoed inside his skull. The same muffled shadows, the indistinct hazing, the echoes that came from walls far out of sight. He was cringing and convinced, as the blows rained down. He was shadowed and curled, like an aardvark curling up inside its armour. He started reading the encyclopaedia from A to Z. He knew the aardvark entry very well.

And he curled up inside and never came out, not really. Everything since had been a pretense. Masks of courage, masks of dismay. He was only pretending to be a human being. An atrophied creature, curled up and distorted due to long absence from the atmosphere, was closer to his true self. This creature that had disconnected long ago. As he went about his job of reporting the news. Spitting out stories he no longer cared a dime about. Encouraging others. Passing into the dream time.

They were such great enclaves, groups of adventurers. The rain pours down in another dismal day. So much for global warming. It's cold and no one is happy. Obama wakes up to orange juice in crystal glass. Everything is confirmed. We can work with this guy. The world is shifting on its axis. A black man for President of the United States. Well, half black half white. Shadows fall. Preachers predict the end time. The stock market collapse proves them alright, as they thunder from their pulpits.

And he was left abandoned in that same giant room. He shouted and the sound disappeared into soft padding. He was startled and exercised; but spirit voices were coming, from the past or the future he could not tell. He went to the same bar he had been going to for years, the one that only made sense when you were paralytic drunk. He was glad to be out of jail, although the feel of the handsome robber against him kept recurring. His eyes circled the room, identifying the vulture queens perched on their stools, waiting, watching, longing, boasting about their conquests, flapping wrists.

They all thought they were so fabulous, these social warriors. In reality they were grimy little perverts you wouldn't f... on a good day. The slimy coating on their skin. The smell of stale sheets. Rotting teeth. Battered good looks. I met a handsome robber, he told a complete stranger, and laughed at the irony. They would have all loved to have had that beautiful stranger; the one he met once and remembered forever. Did he remember him? Did nostalgia ever change anything? Was he still in there, after all these years. Genet, towards the end of his life, stayed in hotels in southern France.

Here, in far off Australia, on the bottom of the world, nothing was real. Authenticity was long gone. He pondered the toss, and ordered a double bourbon and coke, a black drink for a black day, the drink that would help him forget. IF only he could relive that moment, forever, the distant grasp of perfect desire, the masculine laugh of perfect understanding.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/22/2397619.htm?section=business

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says the Government's decision to guarantee all deposits at Australian banks has been a factor in interest rate cuts.

The four big banks have all lowered their mortgage rates over the past week outside of an official rate cut by the Reserve Bank.

On Tuesday, Westpac and St George joined earlier cuts from the likes of ANZ, National Australia Bank and the Commonwealth Bank by reducing interest rates by 0.2 of a percentage point.

Mr Swan told ABC 1's 7.30 Report the decision to guarantee all bank deposits on October 12, combined with coordinated international action, has put more confidence in the system.

"That's a good thing and I think also you can see some of that effect here because our decision on the deposit guarantee is certainly a factor in the interest rate cuts that you are seeing announced here," he said.

"But having said all of that ... it looks a little brighter than it did a couple of weeks ago but there's still a rocky road ahead."

Unlimited bank deposits

Mr Swan also said he will soon be able to announce changes to the unlimited guarantee on bank deposits.

The guarantee has prompted fears vast sums of money invested in funds and institutions that are not backed by the Government will be shifted to institutions that are.

The Opposition yesterday predicted the Government would follow the Coalition's initial advice and put a cap on the guarantee.

But Mr Swan says the Government is looking at a different model.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24531383-5013871,00.html

KEVIN Rudd was unequivocal when he told parliament last week that a blanket guarantee on bank deposits had been recommended by the Reserve Bank and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

It was just 24 hours after the Government announced the deposit and wholesale funding guarantee for Australian banks and the Prime Minister was answering a question from Opposition Treasury spokeswoman Julie Bishop. There was no mention of levying an insurance premium on depositors, only on the guarantee for banks' overseas borrowings.

"Can I say this to the Opposition at this point, when there has been much talk about bipartisanship: this measure has been recommended to the Government by the Australian regulators - the Reserve Bank, the prudential regulation authority and the Treasurer," Mr Rudd told parliament on October 13.

On announcing the guarantee, Mr Rudd said he had "taken this decision, based on advice from our regulators, to guarantee all deposits for the three-year period ahead".

But now he faces new questions over how frank he was over what the regulators said to the Government behind closed doors.

The Australian reported yesterday that RBA governor Glenn Stevens had urged the Government to place a cap on the deposit scheme, telling Treasury secretary Ken Henry last Friday the lower the better. Mr Stevens said yesterday he supported the broad thrust of the measures, but noted that the "design features of these various guarantees will be important".

Wayne Swan conceded he was considering "necessary refinements" to the previously unlimited, free, deposit guarantee.

The Treasurer confirmed an insurance fee for large depositors with more than $1 million was under consideration.

But he was emphatic that the RBA had not proposed a cap in earlier discussions. Adding to the confusion, however, is that Mr Swan was in New York during the key talks in Canberra that fleshedout the bank guarantee.

Mr Rudd has used the regulators as something of a human shield during the bank deposit debate, hounding the Opposition for offering bipartisan support but raising questions about the detail of the guarantee plan.

"The Government have been acting in close and absolute concert with the advice provided by our financial regulators," Mr Rudd said on September 22.

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2553/236/

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.