The Demented Monster Called The RNC

The RNC has convened in order to nominate a new regressive chairperson to further lead them into the darkness. One of the choices is Ken Blackwell, of Ohio, who was key in stealing the winning Ohio Democratic votes in the 2004 Kerry/Bush election. Grover Norquist, another neo-fascist Regressive party “field marshal”, Brownshirt is a better description, was a key figure in the development of the 1995 Project For A New American Century policy neo-con-wonk document, and pushed, along with his fellow lock-steppers for the war in Iraq and dominate over the Middle East’s oil reserves, as well as spread democracy throughout the region.

Norquist and his followers supported the “drowning of government is a bathtub”, of which they did for most of working America and filled it up just enough to steal the money out of the Treasury in order to prop up their 30 year long Ponzi Scheme.

What is so interesting is that they hated government except when it benefited their interests. Their interests were to preserve their control over the highest paying jobs and prevent them from being outsourced. They wanted to preserve those jobs through professional licensure and certifications. They wanted to guarantee their protection of copyright and patent laws in order advance the profits of the corporations holding them, and in return those board members, CFOs, and CEOs would show their appreciation by contributing to the fattening of the RNCs burgeoning bank account. They wanted to squeeze working Americans through tough bankruptcy laws for individuals, but lighten them for business. They so enjoyed government when the tax laws favored tax cuts, deductions on depreciation of property and equipment, and lower tax rates for corporations and dividend returns.

Norquist and his neo-fascist pluto-c-RATS could perpetuate the 30-year Ponzi Scheme, while keeping the wages of working Americans stagnant or low. Such average wage earners could not keep up with inflation or buy the items they were producing without having to borrow from the plutocRATS, who enticed them with low teaser or fixed interest rates putting them into further debt. With that compounding debt, these corporate vampires went to work in their laboratories crafting asset value derivatives, which no one could really figure out, and designed into law legislation that prevented anyone from analyzing, scrutinizing, or questioning their legitimacy. From there, they were held in shadow banks, away from an eagle’s eye, and sold on the worldwide derivatives market to a tune of $1000 trillion. Since then, much of it has gone up in flames and all that which is assumed to be left totals around $600 trillion; and this amount will continue to unwind/deleverage further shrinking portfolios and worldwide wealth.

All of the images that the Regressive Party members were able to see using their ocular neuropathways teleporting those mental pictures into the greed hemisphere of the brain, while activating salivary glands in the process, were reassembled into cold hard cash for their candidates running against those socialistic, good-for-nothing Democrats who stood in the way of progress.

So, the Regressive, oh, I meant to say, the Republican National Committee, had chosen to moderate their recent debate for RNC chairperson the one and only Grover Norquist, their neo-fascist, trickle-downster, war-mongering, vote-stealing, and golden boy hitman for the RNC Crime Syndicate. With a name like Grover, he has to be a puppet.

Here are several of the most current facts brought to us by the plutocRATS seated deep within the Bush Crime Family and the RNC.

• 30% of all credit card debt, $1.6 trillion, is held by the lowest rated consumers.
• $8 trillion lost in home wealth over the last 8 years.
• 12.5% un/under-employed
• 14,000 jobs lost Daily since September, 2008
• Home price devaluation has reached 20%
• More than 10% of the work force works in retail and around 1 million will likely lose their jobs
• A note on China—before November, 2008, they held 652.9 tons of gold, but since then, they have increased their holding to 3400 tons preparing themselves to be the world currency, upstaging the dollar, and having more gold to back up and stabilize their currency: the yuan-renminbe.

The RNC Crime Syndicate heavily controlled by many of those plutocRAT signatories on the Project For A New American Century worked to guarantee that if the top-tier executive banksta’s risky securities/derivatives scam turned sour, or into losses, they would never have to forfeit their bonuses, earnings, and leveraged “gambling” winnings through the magic of government laws.

Their rhetorical distaste for government only has been heard when it works against their own “profit-at-any-cost” agenda. Yet, as it has been revealed that without an economically stable and strong middle class, the top-tier thieves would not be able to hold on to their guaranteed “plutocRATic-styled” and government endorsed winnings without failing consequences, which, ultimately, caused what we are not experiencing as the most devastating of all national security risks—the collapse of the U.S. economy as it ripples throughout the world.

Oh, how the Regressive National Committee, and their economic predators loved government to create NAFTA, which eliminated trade barriers for those working at the bottom of the labor ladder, but excluded the free trade of highly skilled, college and university educated top-tier executives at the more protected end of the same scale. Those highly paid, top-tier and mostly white educated workers were guarded by RNC supported government laws, yet they did not express any objections of such government intervention in the free market even though they had regularly called for the drowning of it in the nearest bathtub. How ironic. They sure live by their principles.

You all remember Reagan’s famous remark, “Hello, I am from the government and I am here to help.” He made those remarks in order to ridicule government and suggest that it should stay out of the people’s business, especially if it is to support the interests of those who desire it to act as a political and policy equalizer and supporter of the common good for all.

The RNC has been very embedded in the development of a public policy favorable to crafting laws, rules, regulations, as well as mounting political pressures through intimidation and exclusion upon the members of Congress from both parties who were not part of their 100-year plan for control. For the most of 30 years, the Regressive plutocrats controlled Congress and nurtured their desired style oligarchy. They referred to Democrats as cowards, traitors, socialists, and worse, yet, as we have just witnessed, it has been the psychopathic son of the Bush Crime Family who mounted the nation’s most aggressive socialistic government interventionist policy initiative in America’s history; and, with pride. In spite of the Bush economic policy recovery program being called socialist, it has been targeted on behalf of working people, as most socialistic programs are, but at the very richest of Americans, such as, the nation’s highest paid executives in the financial and insurance industries, as well as elsewhere. The Bush TARP—Troubled Assets Relief Program—is being targeted at the trouble assets of the “Haves, and the Have Mores!” as referred to by Bush when describing his base of supporters, and not at the “Have Lesses”, those people he has disdain for.

In other words, for the Republican Party members spewing venom at government by insisting that IT get out of THEIR way, and that lowering taxes on the wealthy, would help stimulate the economy, they have been shown to be wrong, and wrong all along. This has been done for 30 years and look where it led.

Instead of reforming the RNC, and the Republican Party to become more moderate, and choose a centrist to sit as their committee chairperson, they continue to pursue the path of a regressive political party monster-like buffoon.      (Ponzi Scheme)

Thanks for reading, Jerry

George W. Bush's Legacy

The end is near. The threshold has been crossed. We are now living in 2009. The days of the pretending cow-boy-president are waning. He has begun to pack up his toys, and boots, and trinkets accumulated over his years in the Oval Office. He will be known as the worst commander-in-chief to preside over this nation. The moniker of “Bush 43” is what some comics call him. Others gave him less honorable titles. He has been an executive over a pseudo-cabal that led the country to war on two fronts and grabbed the lynch pin from the world’s largest 30-year Ponzi Scheme finally bringing it down over the lives of most Americans. The dark shadows, rubble and dust that followed have begun to cover much of the world like volcanic dust blanketing its sleeping surroundings. But the Bush commanded Ponzi Scheme is more like a campfire, which grew into a bonfire, and eventually, losing control and growing wildly into a raging forest fire spreading into the farthest reaches along its path toward a destiny still unknown.

This is the Bush legacy. He was successful in his objective to create a fascist oligarchy during his eight years as the “decider”. Everything he touched turned into a toxic sludge nearly impossible to wash off if one was so unfortunate to have made contact with it. He poisoned the well, and now as he packs up his Stetson and American flag lapel pins to be loaded onto a 40 foot moving truck headed for Dallas all we can do is breathe a huge sigh of relief that it finally arrived. The truck drives off into the sunset of a crescent moon heading down the superhighways once dominated by the 4-5000 lb. motorized, gas and oil filled chrome and steel clad Coupe de Ville, Eldorado, Crown Victoria, El Camino, and Imperial representatives of a rich and powerful nation dominated over the world’s economic and financial resources. But today, the men and machines which stamped out and assembled those cruising land yachts lay idle with uncertainty and fear that they, too, may fall upon the wake of the chard remains of Bush’s legacy.

So, off he goes strapped in on his last flight gazing out upon the landscape of the nation from the same round and thick-glassed window riveted into the body of the plane which flew him over the symbols of his presidency—the drowning city of New Orleans-the smoldering remains of the Twin Towers-the gaping hole inside the Pentagon-the crater in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This is his legacy and it will remain that way forever. The reverse Midas Touch, you might say. If he had really spoken to a Higher Father for advice and direction, instead of the one he has known since childbirth, then he should have listened to those heavenly Omnipotent answers more carefully. Maybe Bush only pretended to understand the language spoken to him so as to not appear more inept and stupid than he really was.

The nation’s presidential jumbo jet will land on a tarmac in Dallas, and the boy president will be escorted into a limousine for his new ranch-style home lying inside the cage he is having built around the property to keep him inside and away from the millions of angry, and worn torn citizens injured by his destructive legacy.

In his new home, he will watch his replacement preside over a deeply damaged country scarred by his policies and decisions. These decisions and policies were made with certainty and commitment indicating to all that he did NOT fail to deliver his mission accomplished fait accomplis. He came. He decided. He left. And, in his path he leaves the infancy of a growing deep recession possibly leading toward a depression; a Middle East in ruins and flames, yet even more empowered by his long time arch enemy, and “Axis of Evil”, alleged key sponsor of his War on Terror-Iran; an ever tattered and anorexic rust belt; a landscape forever expanding with ghost towns of empty and foreclosed homes littering communities, while ruining the lives of hard working families and individuals who had put sweat equity into their now abandoned castles which once filled them pleasure; the beginning desertion from malls, retail and office spaces; a shrinking industrial and manufacturing sector, which had been the brawn and pride of the nation; joblessness growing in the millions; tens of millions of medically uninsured; a phony free-market splayed open revealing a systemically diseased and rotten core controlled by a network of foul smelling and insulated gilded and jeweled parasites sucking out its life force not unlike a vampire needing the victim’s blood to sustain its own life; a mounting need to care for war veterans left to fend for themselves after servicing their country with honor and dignity; soaring homelessness; a $10.7 trillion national debt, which doubled over his 8-year reign of error; a $1 trillion ballooning budget deficit stuffed with bail out Ponzi Scheme reimbursements; an evaporation of $14 trillion of personal wealth, stock and home equity; a nation sold off to foreigners now owning much of its physical infrastructure and Treasury wealth, and what was our nation’s tradable exports moved off-shore only be sold back to us as imports; $700 billion, and mounting handed over to the Ponziites to hoard as they wait for the sheriff’s sale of fallen banks, and businesses in order to consolidate their massive wealth portfolios; and tens of millions of worried Americans uncertain for their future.

This is the legacy of George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States. We can only hope that he finds himself tangled and mired in the process of fending off war crime indictments, and investigations into the lies that led to his devastating objectives. His rank among the nation’s list of accomplished and respected presidents will lie at the disgraced bottom of the pile of chief executives elected to the highest position in the land.

This is the legacy of George W. Bush. And now, the incoming president will be faced with a daunting task once laid upon the feet of Franklin D. Roosevelt. That recovery took decades. How long will this one take?

Thanks for reading, Jerry

The World's Biggest Ponzi Scheme

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” may be a film-remake from the past grabbing the imagination of viewers by telling a story of an alien space craft landing on Earth, starring a human looking outer space man and his loyal robotic companion, but the fact is the Earth has begun to stand still because of the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme, which began 30 years ago, and now, has come to an overwhelmingly loud screeching halt.

The nation has fixed their eyes on the economic vampire, Bernie Madoff, who ripped off his richest-of-the-rich investors out of $50 billion, as well as others managing funds of funds and closely similar concoctions. The media has clamped on him the ball and chain label of Number 1 Ponzi Scheme Con Artist. I have to disagree. The Number 1 Ponzi Schemer, the world’s honorary economic predator, goes to President Bush and his 2 heister-shyster racketeer side-kick vampires: Hank “The Paulie” Paulson, and “Bada Bing” Bernanke. The grandmaster Ponzi Schemer award goes to Alan Greenspan, who began the entire plan under Ronald Reagan.

This 30 year in the making, American government-endorsed, and president-presided-over Ponzi Scheme is what has severely damaged our economy, as well as other economies around the world. China has played a big role in the downfall by becoming the world’s assembly line using low paid, unprotected workers. Millions of drone assembly line recuits paid for by multi-national corporate greedsters killing jobs in our country while enriching themselves through low paid, with no-to-minimal benefits exploitable workers. By doing so, these corporate predators have increased the GDP of China, which has funded our debt oriented lifestyles, while, at the same time, kept their currency artificially as low as the dollar so their “stuff” could be readily available and real cheap to the maxed-out, over-spent American consumer.

Greenspan claiming he had no idea that our financial institutions were not capable of policing themselves is like saying that a vampire has no idea that their victims would end up completely drained of their life-sustaining blood after having drunk their dinner. In Japan, such a widespread and devastating failure would find the prominent authority figure responsible for the grand theft swindle taking hold of the honored Samurai sword for their final admission of guilt. Mr. Greenspan, we are still waiting for this very final apology!!

Bush has allowed Bernanke and Paulson to further the government’s Ponzi Scheme role by dumping more burdensome, unsustainable debt onto the shoulders of taxpayers, their children, and children’s children. Bush never took on the blame for the economic meltdown. He has always been compelled to deflect the finger-pointing away from himself and toward Congress, as well as Wall-Street, yet it was HE who put the Ponziites into the SEC, the Congress, and embedding them throughout the government, while encouraging lenders to loan to anyone who was breathing when they were walked in to sign for a home mortgage loan.

“Corporate America has a responsibility to make America a compassionate place”, said Bush. His code word for Ponzi was compassionate. He also said, “Wall-Street got drunk”, and corporate greed, along with market excesses, and the flow of foreign cash were to blame, yet he has yet to identify himself as the bartender for those drunken Wall-Streeters. Bush himself a proponent of greed and excess, and the recipient of his own personal foreign cash bailouts resulting from his failed oil businesses, has embraced the failed Ponzi framework disguised as free market economics. Such trickle-down, laissez-faire, free-market policies were actually the propellant used for this blazing bonfire of the economic “vanitees”.

President Bush and many congressional cons and hacks were recipients of generous campaign contributions from the financial banking industry indebting themselves to the richest of the financially rich allowing their Ponzi Scheme to go unregulated and unsupervised, and without question or transparency, while escorting Bernie Madoff into the arena of fraud with top hat in hand, as one bows gracefully before the Man. Bush’s con-artist advisor was his senior Ponzi promoter—Karl Rove.

Bush began his own presidential phase of the 30-year Ponzi Scheme with his effort to use his position as president to push his government into enticing and encouraging middle class Americans to use their credit worthiness to borrow and buy bigger, heavier, and even, thirstier vehicles, fancier washer and dryer machines, stainless steel stoves, vacations and much, much more pleasing the Ponzi bankers.

The Ponzi bankers wanted to squeeze more and more from the shrinking budgets of middle class Americans by convincing them to take equity out of their homes and increase their mortgage debt, while raising their debt burden, but softening their blow with lower rate re-financing packages. The economic Ponzi Parasites delighted in more available credit-driven debt formed into more non-transparent derivative obligations, which were insured against failure through credit default swaps.

Next came the “Go-Shopping” bugle call following the 9-11 tragedy. Polish up your credit cards and do your civic duty. Add to your debt, again, for the sake of the nationalized Ponzi Scheme!!!

All of this increased middle class debt giving the Ponzi Predators more debt to sell, while grabbing more fees, commissions and bonuses for themselves. This process turned into more non-productive wealth increasing the GDP, and fewer non-exportable products sold in order to help lower the trade deficit, which actually added to it.

They used the incomes of middle class consumers to fuel their Ponzi Scheme. All forms of consumer-driven debt was packaged and sold from bank to bank from hedge fund to wealth fund to broker-dealer, everywhere in the world, excessively leveraging their manufactured debt-driven derivative toxic hot potatoes turning one toxic hot potato into 100 of them; and then, taking those 100 toxic potatoes and making thousands more from them to the tune of 1000 trillion hot potatoes spreading worldwide in scope. Today, many have vaporized and all that is left is around $62 trillion.

Much of this exploding debt asset bubble inflated home and commercial real estate values increasing the opportunities to further speculate, which pushed prices artificially upward. What began as mortgage debt selling morphed into a serial re-financing Ponzi Scheme eventually collapsing for most of the investors down the Ponzi Line, except for those close to the top who profited immensely as they tried to stash their bootie into more secure locations.

Just in the last couple weeks, The Ponzi Aristocracy are considering adding more to the smoke and mirror illusion by bailing out hedge fund vampire predators, since they have gone to Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush crying for help. They want the taxpayers to permit the bundling of auto, student and credit card loans to create securitized debt obligations in hopes there would be investors awakening from a deep, deep decade’s long sleep willing to buy these non-transparent loans, many of which might actually go into default, as a way to add more debt to America’s balance sheet. This Fed Window is called TALF, which means Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility.

These hedge funds want to borrow $200 billion from the Fed’s TALF window at virtually a zero interest rate to sell pools of credit card receivables, auto loans, and student loans. Their drooling desire is to find suckers who might be brainwashed into buying them up. I wonder if there are any Rip Van Winkle-types, now waking up, who are looking for investments?

As America falls further into its economic abyss, the Ponzi Aristocracy want to further their riches, while the United States enters, what maybe viewed as, bankruptcy, in 2008-09. The projected cost of the bailout is $8 trillion. Fannie and Freddie Mac are guaranteed $5-6 trillion. In 2007, the public debt, what the U.S. owes foreigners for funding our economy—the two wars, etc.- amounts to $10.6 trillion. Yet, our GDP, all that the U.S. brings in to the Treasury and the nation’s net worth comes to $13.8 trillion.

Our debt is, at least, $23 trillion, but our GDP is $13 trillion. America’s private debt is considered a bit more than 100% of the GDP. Our debts exceed our revenues. So, what we are left with is our current government willing to create more Ponzi Scheme debt, but not invest a penny into the real economy—the economy that produces things, hard goods, that are created, crafted, and sold worldwide. This is what is called the industrial and manufacturing economy, and not the financial-debt-paper asset-class economy that has miserably failed us.

This Ponzi Scheme was known, supported, facilitated, promoted, and advanced by those given permission inside the government and from those contributing to it. This was all a massive predatory vampire-like scheme to suck the personal assets out of working America in order to enrich the richest of people; and now, once it has collapsed around them, they want to be bailed out!!! This has been nothing more than the biggest economic heist ever planned or schemed.

Two real burning questions to ask about the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme are: where is the outrage, and, where are the indictments?

Happy New Year, jerry

Republicans Killing the U.S. Auto Industry

Children of Christmas please sit down and listen to this extraordinary tale of a once lively and proud political people who are now beginning to fade into a dark and distant past. They have been renamed by the survivors of a great nation. The Regressive Party, as they are known today, were once known as Republicans-conservative Republicans. A most fatal blow came to them when some powerful Regressives: Senators Ensign, Coburn, Shelby, and DeMint, to just name a few, circulated a self-incriminating communiqué amongst themselves stating they were voting against the auto industry's request for a bridge loan. This was their DeMinted method to inflict revenge against the Democrats, and unions for supporting Democrats, who are generally behind union workers.

The very people who created the now United States of a Socialist America (USSA) through their kleptocratic,  greed-based formula, which was built upon their recipe of political favors and revolving door politics, while throwing government regulation, accountability, transparency and any degree of responsibility to middle America out of the mixing bowl as the economy of America went crashing upon the Wall (Street). (By the way, the term, "Side Street" to further describe the adjoining Main Street, but not quite on it, was first used here on this blogspot, and is now being used by those appearing on the public airwaves!!! You heard it first on Eye on Washington.)

The gall of such Regressive political mobsters, who, no doubt, took their "driving" lessons from another wiseguy-Rod "the Hose" Blagojevich, the drowning, yet King of Hairdo, a place very few go for fear they may never return looking the same as when they entered, and  governor of Illinois. Rod, you need to whack that do!

What is left to say about America's top three's executive industrial thieves, who were paid in the tens of millions of dollars per year, along with big bonuses, opulent expense accounts,  huge perks, and other luxurious  compensation packages filling their Christmas stockings year after year after year. The Regressives had nothing to say about this over the last 30 years, but hated the idea of working union members earning a good salary in order to float the economy. The auto industry has been 4% of our GDP. The financial industry was around 23% of our GDP, but now is virtually zero.

We have now learned it's working Americans who pay the way for the nation, and not the top-tier rich. If this were so, then why aren't they carrying the economy during this credit freeze? Then why are they selling off their diamonds, extravagant second and third homes, and cars and yachts? It is because without a financially stable, secure and well paid working middle class America, there is NO economy!! It disappears. And, without an industrial and manufacturing economy, which is able to export products made by highly skilled, and educated workers, there is NO economy. If all there is is a financial, and service economy, there still is NO economy that is sustainable, viable, and exportable. It is not the CEO of G.M, Mr. Wagoner, and his uber-rich kleptocrats who keep the economy moving, but the workers in the plant who do so.

A bridge loan of some sort needs to be presented to the CEOs, along with hard-hitting contingencies. For example, downsizing the number of car models and makes, sending big SUVs to the bone yard, ending the cash delivery system which has enriched the CEOs and top-tier executives, and replacement of the CEOs, who made the decisions that killed their companies; and not to forget an EV-1-like affordable replacement; or, the government should consider "nationalizing" G.M., and Chrysler, since they want some economic gravy poured over their burnt-up industrial offerings. Take them over, restructure, and merge the two companies into one quality-driven and lean operation, and then, offer a lifetime warranty on specific models, such as the Aveo, Malibu, Vibe, and Caliper for new car buyers. By doing so, America might be able to begin taking market share away from the foreign car companies, which would, in turn, lower the trade deficit. Once this was done, then sell the new and revamped Car Corporation of America to the highest bidder, with a guarantee that the UAW would maintain a 49 or 50% ownership stake in the company in exchange for a leaner contract, which would be negotiated and in place for a 5-6 year period of time. It seems like it could work, except for the Regressive Party's insurgency power plays.

But, many of us know that the Regressive Party wants a steep and prolonged recession so their Bankstanista pals can buy up the remaining hard assets once the economic meltdown cools off and what remains standing can be bought up on the cheap. The Regressive's dirty little fingers have been kept warm by the Bankstanista's own hedge and private equity fund groups that offer safe protection from those finger whacking poor, down-trodden, and economically damaged constituents, who just might send them walking on the next election day.

So what might the Regressives do? They could dump the entire auto industry bail-out/bridge loan plan into the lap of Mr. Accident-Pants, their exiting boy party leader--President "Two Shoe-Duck and Cover-What's His Beef" Bush. It is now he, that will lead the nation closer to the socialistic state that the free-market, neo-liberal, freedom-fry fighting Regressive foot soldiers despised in the open, but embraced behind their office doors.

But how it has changed. The Regressives now fly the flag of Ronald Reagan and Herbert Hoover high in the cloudy sky as they begin to retreat in their waning days of power only to dream of amber waves of grain and colorful majesty, while sleeping in their styes, hoping to return, once again, for a victorious win sometime within the next decade, or two. By then, most will be gone only to reminisce over their glory days when money could be created out of thin air and life in the Hamptons was grand.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Thanks for reading this blogspot, which has over 200 pages of opinion written over the past year. We appreciate your time and interest, and hope you continue to return. Thank you all. Jerry and Carl.

A Low Budget Christmas List

Jerry says,

I love the Christmas Story movie. Festival Express DVD concert train trip film is terrific fun! It is a favorite. Homemade CD compilations, homemade cards, chutneys, salsas, and jams, aluminum lined coffee mugs, firewood for friend's fireplaces, smooth and flat cut stump logs to use as plant stands or in other ways (you can find them wherever a tree trimmer is found), Down slippers (Baffin brand found in the Sahalie.com catalog), winter ear bands, neck gaters are nice, books (Jim Harrison books --fiction), Naomi Klein's book, Disaster Capitalism), coffee shop gift cards, "Mr. T In Your Pocket" adult gag toy (Google Mr. T. in Your Pocket), quality gallon jugs of pure apple juice, and sweet potato maple pie with pecan crust originally found in Gourmet Magazine (November, 1980s) some 10 plus years ago. For younger kids, the tool belt found in The Duluth Trading Company catalogue. It is really cool!!!! New CD's "Edele 19", and Ryan Adams, "Cardinology" Older CD's, Van Morrison's "Days Like This". If you want to splurge, check out those electric mattress pad covers. I have one, and love it. If you keep your home very cool in the winter, this makes the bed so toasty warm. Also, Duluth Trading Company (duluthtrading.com) has an men's and women's catalogue. Great stuff. The men's MN Trucker's jacket is great. A warm sweater-like shirt, nylon, and very warm and light weight. I have a similar one and wear it always in my very cool house. I just gave a cousin of mine the "Space pen" found at Staples. I use one all the time. They are pressurized ink ball point pens, and will write anywhere, anytime.