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This
Christmas will really test a person's ability to stretch a dollar,
especially a U.S. dollar, since we've been watching it shrink for
quite awhile now.
It certainly isn't necessary for big-mouth media blabbing to everybody
that the U.S. dollar is sliding. We can see that for ourselves on
each bill. Take a look for yourself, and you'll see all the presidents
sliding to the left. I'm not kidding about that.
And to make sure U.S. citizens are aware of how Democracy is slowly
and insidiously turning into Socialism, the government has made
the center of each bill a fetching shade of pink. Of course, if
U.S. currency is now being manufactured in China along with everything
else that used to be made in the U.S.A., Mexico or France, that
would account for the color.
As of this writing (9 November), the dollar doesn't come out too
badly next to the Mexican peso at $1.00USD = $10.88MXN. It's still
fairly respectable in Canada at 0.94 Canadian, but thunders to a
loud crash in Europe compared with 0.68 EUR. The U.S. dollar appears
to do better in Croatia where a dollar comes in at 4.99 Croatian
Kuna, and it does embarrassingly well aganst the Kazakhstan Tenge
at 128.35. We noted that Tenge currency also has pink in it.
It stands to reason that, if we wish to stretch the dollar back
into shape for Christmas, we will have to go shopping in Kazakhstan.
It would help to have Borat with us ("Borat: Cultural Learnings
of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan") to translate
"Is that your best price?" into Kazakh. It's helpful to know that
Kazakh is also spoken in parts of Afghanistan so while we're there,
we can look for bin Laden and send him to Rudy Giuliani as a Christmas
present. Too bad the current U.S. President can't speak the language;
that must be why he simply cannot find the guy. Then again, he can't
speak English either. Sorry, to have digressed but I'll soon get
back to the topic at hand.
We shouldn't worry too much about difficulties with the Kazakh language.
The Wikepedia Encyclopedia describes it thusly: "[It] is a Turkic
language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak. Kazakh is an agglutinative
language, and it employs vowel harmony." Even Borat fails to understand
what that means.
If only we could afford a trip to China where the dollar is worth
7.415 Yuan, it's likely we could find some American-made products
to buy for Christmas. We certainly can't find any in the U.S.
However, there
are things we can still find in America. This Christmas, we can
find and give love, kindness, and acceptance. They're all free,
no matter where they're made and no matter what colors they come
in.
Copyright
Maggie Van Ostrand
"A Balloon In Cactus"
November 10, 2007 column
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