editor’s note: as LK readies himself for a wider audience in both podkast and broadcast settings, we thought that sharing his prep notes would be a good way to get preliminary feedback (like a comedian trying out new material in a small club) while letting you in on concentrated versions of themes he’s been ruminating on.  Enjoy.  Or perhaps that’s not the right word….

1.  We can’t nation build halfway around the world if the ties that bind at home are fraying, any more than I can contribute to charity if I can’t pay the rent.  We need to regroup.  Economically, militarily, and spiritually, we need to regroup.  For the time being, we need to endure sorrowful images, like the one on the front page of last Friday’s NY Times where a Pakistani woman and child are drinking from a primitive faucet, while we gather the strength to once again ride to the rescue without leaving our own citizens as vulnerable as they now find themselves.  We’ve got to let the world know that they need  to put a temporary hold on giving us their tired and poor, because we ourselves are plenty fatigued, and if not poor, struggling in ways we’ve never known in our lifetimes.

2.  The shell game being played with troops coming home from Iraq, staying behind in Iraq, and being deployed to Afghanistan is so transparent that it’s astounding anyone’s falling for it.  The speech from the Oval Office rang hollow and shallow.  When an authority figure’s dictum makes it so, or pacifies us to the degree that we act as if it’s so, we’re wearing vintage Orwellian blinders while deluding ourselves into believing that our peripheral vision’s intact.  And certainly we’re going to have no trouble at all taming a country when girls are gassed for having the audacity to desire an education and the nation’s central bank is so inept that even its attempt to hide massive corruption fail miserably.

3.  The proposed Mosque/community center within shouting (spitting?) distance of Ground Zero should not be built.  Constitutional rights and visceral emotions both take a backseat to an ounce of prevention, because there may be no cure.  God (or Allah) forbid that violence befalls the building or it’s members, and WWIII could follow post haste.  If an Austrian Duke being assassinated could lead to millions of deaths as the dominoes fell and violently rearranged themselves into WWI, the tinderbox planet we live on now could be just as easily ignited.

4.  When a 2000+ page financial regulation bill is not only toothless but has dentures that have fallen out, and no one’s read it anyway, is there any doubt that the ultra-bright Machiavellian financiers who gave us the housing bubble can’t find a couple hundred loopholes to render it impotent?  Put another way, if a few rules of chess were altered, is there any doubt that Garry Kasparov or the ghost of Bobby Fischer couldn’t spend a few days thinking the changes through and then continue to beat the pants off the rest of us?

5.  The quality of the health care my family and I receive for the insurance premium I pay is terrific.  Small detail: that premium has increased 50% in the last 2 years.  We’re in NYC.  Between the premium and the deductible I’m out 20K before I see any reimbursement.  For me, that ain’t chump change.  So what I’ve really got is disaster insurance, and I’m paying out of pocket for terrific health care.  The most recent premium hike, which nearly shocked me into needing disaster insurance, came after passage of another 2000+  page bill that nobody’s read; a bill, by the way,  that Nancy Pelosi (who years ago I predicted would lubricate the fall of Obama)  gleefully announced could not be read until AFTER it was passed.  The will of the people wasn’t done, the representatives the people elected would have been fired were they employed by the private sector, as they voted on paradigm changing legislation they weren’t sufficiently familiar with, and no one, but no one knows what’s around the bend health care wise.  That we’re in the dark is shameful, and reflects poorly on us and those who, by running for office, asked for our trust.  New Who song: We WILL Get Fooled Again.

6.  Roger Clemens and the Emmys warrant less space than this sentence took up.

                          

LK examines a key element in both the “war on terror” and illegal immigration, in a PodKast that’s bound to enlighten and inflame.

Listen (Or Right Click and “Save As” to Download)

                          

LK finds some eerie similarities between the fictional Klingons from Star Trek and the Afghan wretches who executed 10 civilian aid workers.

Listen (Or Right Click and “Save As” to Download)

                          

There’s a company called Energy Conversion Devices, based in Michigan, that I learned about in 2005 when I was buying a hybrid car and wanted to know which companies made batteries for them.  Back then ECD did.  But their main client for the batteries was GM (the Saturn brand in particular), and the batteries were not exactly EverReady Bunny reliable, so ECD doesn’t do batteries anymore.

They do solar panels now.  And were, a little over a year ago,  singled out by the Obama administration and Democratic office holders in general as an example of the viability of the green jobs that would be produced by the green economy that was right around the corner.

Well, let’s follow the dancing delusion.  The punchline is killer.

From PRNewswire, July 24, 2009:

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich., June 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke today visited the Auburn Hills manufacturing facility of United Solar Ovonic, a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.  (“ECD”), a manufacturer of proprietary, thin-film amorphous silicon-based photovoltaic laminates, branded under the UNI-SOLAR name (that’s solar panels to you and me).

Secretary Locke, as well as representatives of Governor Jennifer Granholm, Congressman Gary Peters, and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation  were given a brief tour of the facility to show how UNI-SOLAR laminates are produced. Following the tour, Secretary Locke hosted a town-hall meeting for approximately 50 employees of United Solar and ECD to discuss the role of Department of Commerce in nurturing innovation, expanding the global market for U.S. manufacturers, and the important role solar energy plays in creating a cleaner environment and mitigating global warming.

Mark Morelli, ECD’s president and CEO, said, “We were pleased to have an opportunity to show Secretary Locke our state-of-the-art solar manufacturing facility. Our flexible, lightweight solar laminates can play an important role in advancing the Obama administration’s alternative energy program. We look forward to working with Secretary Locke, particularly in expanding emerging markets for our technologically-advanced solar products.”

During the town-hall meeting, Secretary Locke remarked, “The Obama administration is committed to revitalizing American manufacturing – and a big part of how we do that is building solar panels, wind turbines and advanced batteries right here in the Midwest. The Commerce Department will directly assist the small- and medium-size businesses across America who are at the vanguard of America’s renewable energy future.”

Next, we go to Yahoo finance on 5/21/10.  Don’t forget the secretary’s commitment to building green  “right here in the Midwest”:

United Solar Ovonic today announced that the company is honored to host the United States Secretary of Commerce, the Honorable Gary Locke, at the company’s Joint Venture facility in Tianjin, China…..

The JV entity, United Solar Ovonic Jinneng Ltd., operates a state-of-the-art solar manufacturing facility in the Hua Yuan Hi Tech Industrial Park in Tianjin.

“We are honored that Secretary Locke will visit our facility as part of the Obama Administration’s first cabinet level trade mission,” said Mark Morelli CEO of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq:ENER – News), United Solar’s parent company. “Support from Secretary Locke and the Department of Commerce has been instrumental in introducing our products and technology in China.”

OK, so now ECD, with the blessing of the secretary, is partnering with the Chinese.   Nothing unusual there, but unlike the Japanese and Korean auto companies who build most of their cars in the U.S., we’re partnering where it’s expedient for the Chinese to partner, which ain’t here.

And now the topper. This from Marketwatch a couple of days ago.  You can’t make this stuff up:

Energy Conversion Devices Inc., which makes roof-top solar power products, said Wednesday it’s cutting 140 jobs in its home state of Michigan, while hiring workers in Tijuana, Mexico.

Energy Conversion said that later this year it will shift some of its final assembly operations from its Auburn Hills, Mich., campus to its facility in Tijuana.

The move will include 140 job cuts in Auburn Hills…. “We are aggressively reducing our cost structure to operate more effectively in the highly-competitive, global solar market, and, through these actions, we will better utilize our existing capacity in Tijuana, without any additional capital costs,” Chief Executive Mark Morelli said in a statement.

Uni-Solar, a unit of Energy Conversion Devices, was featured in a television advertisement about the benefits of doing business in Michigan, narrated by actor Jeff Daniels.

So the administration, after making a self-righteous fuss about the future of green jobs in America, acquiesces to the outsourcing of work  to China, and the company itself outsources work to Mexico.

If a government and corporate commitment can go to hell like this in less than 15 months, we can kiss our economic asses goodbye.

Goodbye.

                          

Hiya.  LK here, the keeper of LooseKannon.com.  That’s Kannon with a K.  I’m honored to have been named to the Talkers Magazine Frontier 50,  a selection of outstanding talk media webcasters.  Talkers Magazine, of course, is billed as “The Bible of Talk Radio and the New Talk Media”, and, in the words of Muhammad Ali, “it ain’t bragging if it’s true”.

Today, as I like to do from time to time, I want to look in on the major events screaming at us, and taunting us, from the front pages of our newspapers, our cable channels, and our favorite websites, but before dealing with these specific issues, I have to confess that lately I’ve been feeling way too much like a subject in a government sponsored sociology study, a walking, talking, tax-paying guinea pig in the laboratory of Dr. Obama  and his egg-headed research assistants.  These research assistants have titles like cabinet secretary, senator, and congressperson, and pull in much heftier paychecks than those of us who are being poked and prodded like lab rats by fundamental changes to the way things work around here, without much regard to how we feel about it.

Me and 300 million fellow countrymen in a red, white and blue petri dish.

Maybe I should take calls from those of you with guesses as to what the next new tax is going to be.  Let me know your most absurd yet still entirely plausible new tax or tax increase. Send them to lk@loosekannon.com.

OK, let’s get going, and connect some dots that are, if looked at from the right angles, clear as day.

Let’s start with health insurance.  Now my health insurance company just notified me that my premium, beginning on January 1 of 2011, will be increasing another 17% or so, making the premium increase over the past 2 years around 50%.  And this is with a family deductible of 4 grand out of pocket before dollar one gets reimbursed.  Sound familiar?  I thought so.

It almost creates the perverse desire to come down with something non-lethal just to get something back for all those premium dollars.  If this is what follows passage of a 2000 page health care overhaul bill that no one’s read, count me out.  Wait a minute, it’s illegal to not participate.  So I’m in a bind, because I’m not exactly rolling in dough and yet I can’t take any chances should anyone in the family need some high quality care.  Maybe Michelle and her cronies can cover me, as they’re having no trouble cavorting in Spain and covering that tab.  Besides, the way I see it, she owes me, as my tax dollars (and yours) are covering some of the 70 secret service agents traveling with her, as well as the plane fare, round trip no less.  Cool, that’s covered.  Not.

And speaking of executive extravagance, we’ve all heard by now that Chelsea’s wedding cost upward of 3 million smackers.  Here again, you and I fo0ted some of the bill, as Bill, with a capital B, and Hillary, the Secretary of State, both warrant government chaperons.   You’d think they’d set a better example for their daughter and for the nation by cutting back a bit, as the rest of us are being asked, or forced to do.  And you’d think they’d show a little class and good taste by not throwing their wealth in the face of the rest of us.

I mean, in these times, when simply saying you’ve got a job risks ruffling the feathers or hurting the feelings of someone who’s out of work, you’d think that folks in the spotlight would know better.  But they don’t.

And it’s not just ugly Americans who think like this.  Anyone hear about French President Sarkozy’s new jet?  His equivalent of Air Force One?  Aside from the generally accepted luxuries accorded a head of state, he’s got a special room fitted with a special air filtration system that he and his broke Euro-buddies can smoke Cuban cigars in while they’re discussing how they’re gonna divvy up Greece.  And the French taxpayers are footing that bill.  Time to dust off the guillotine, if you ask me.

OK, we’re going to take a little break, a little musical interlude, and be back with more  lucid observations.  I’m going to have a drink of water, out of a glass that’s  neither half empty nor half full.  It’s just a glass of water.  And speaking of glasses, my eyeglasses aren’t rose colored, nor are they wraparound shades.  I’m just seeing things as they are.

Alright, this is LK from LooseKannon.com, and we’ll be back in no time.  Stay right here, because  Iraq, Afghanistan, and an incredibly dumb-ass birthday card to the President are coming up next.

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Welcome back.  This is LK, the keeper of LooseKannon.com.  My bumper music is going to be predominantly blues and country, because I know for a fact that you can gain the same degree of deep insight by listening to a couple of hours of Muddy Waters or Johnny Cash as you can by majoring in philosophy at an Ivy League university.  I ought to know.  I’ve done both, and the latter costs a whole lot more and takes way more time.

To give credit where credit’s due, that was Slo Leak at the top of the show, and Willie, Waylon, Kris, and Johnny recording as The Highwaymen just now.

Back to business.   Let’s talk Afghanistan and Iraq.

Any West Point freshman who’s read a book on military strategy, whether it’s the ancient Art of War by Sun Tzu or Future War by Colonel John Alexander, knows the basic routes to victory that were completely ignored by President Bush, and now by President Obama.  In fact, military textbooks aside, any veteran or, for that matter, any civilian with a whit of common sense knows the following:

First, you can’t fight an effective war against an undefined enemy. No uniforms, no national allegiance, no lust for life?  It’s a no go.

Secondly, you can’t bribe a native populace to cooperate with you unless you’re prepared to put them on the payroll for life.

And you don’t declare your troop strength, unless it’s purposeful misinformation.

You also don’t declare your invasion date, nor do you declare your withdrawal date, and then reveal your cluelessness by fudging on the previously declared date every Sunday on Meet the Press  .

And anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows that drug dealers make lousy allies.

And still we’re committing  money we don’t have, and blood we don’t need to spill, to a war in a country that isn’t a country at all, even as far as its own inhabitants are concerned. What we call Afghanistan is tribes and warlords spread out on a land mass whose borders are figments of our imagination, not their reality.

In terms of Iraq, once we pull out, it’s maybe 2 weeks before all hell breaks loose.  We’re the trestles that are holding up the bridge between the Sunnis and the Shias.  So we either stay there forever and drain our ability to fund our own future, and demoralize our troops in the process, or we pull out, circle the wagons, and we attempt to regain our strength.

I can’t contribute to charity if I can’t cover my food, clothing and shelter, and we can’t go nation building when we’re in such deep debt that we’re firing teachers, cops, firemen, postal workers, and on and on and on.  It couldn’t be clearer.

Finally, LooseKannon got an e-mail from BarackObama.com.

It starts out:  Dear Loose.  I love that.  Then it continues, as if I’m 2 years old:

President Obama turns 49 next week, and OFA supporters across the country are sharing in the fun.

Volunteers on the ground are holding birthday parties — and we’ll use the occasion to recruit new folks to join this grassroots movement that has helped President Obama so much throughout his first year and a half in office.

Want to come? Here’s what we’re doing in New York:

and it gives a NYC address for the President’s birthday event.

Then it asks: Can you make it? And the options are:

Yes, count me in.

No, but I’d like to sign a birthday card for the President.

No, but I want to see if there are other events near me.

Have they lost their minds?  Have they not seen the latest monthly unemployment figures?  Have they not seen the latest consumer confidence numbers?  Are they so clueless they believe us to be that infantile?  Americans don’t have time for a freaking political birthday party.  We’ve gotta go job hunting, or go back to school to learn a new trade, because they shipped that work overseas, or we’ve gotta work 2 jobs, or handle the workload for what used to be 2 people at the job we’ve got and we’re desperate to keep.

And the note’s signed by some clown named Jeremy Bird, who’s the deputy director of Organizing For America, whatever the heck that is.  It’s waaaaay too easy to say I should give Bird the bird, but it’s such a fat pitch I had to swing at it.

Alright, this is LK from Loosekannon.com, and that’s Kannon with a K. Next time around we’ll get to immigration, legal and illegal, we’ll get to the celebrity worship that’s killing us, and we’ll deal with how, in a time of economic stress, it’s a good idea to develop a healthy skepticism when someone, anyone, tries to sell us anything from a car to a head of lettuce.

Be well, and don’t let the spin become a death spiral.  Bye bye.