I know Judd Greg well enough to have punched him in the arm. “Good t’ see ya’ Judd,” I sarcastically sneered. I don’t much care for the fellow primarily because he’s a nerd but secondarily because he beat the draft during the Vietnam War because he had acne. ACNE! I knew guys in the army who had acne. Did they have to get special permission to be drafted because of a non contagious skin disease? I don’t think so. Was Judd a wuss who was too precious to go or does… and I know this is a stretch, it make any sense that his father was the governor and maybe helped his Exeter and Ivy League scion to keep from having to fulfill his duty. Judd said no to his country then and no to the country now.
Anygate, he’s a dickwad and is now decrying the administration’s plan to try to turn the world economy around. He said in so many words, even if the economy recovers in four or five years we will be stuck with a tremendous debt. And he agrees with the others who have absolutely no plan on what to do, that this administration is “just kicking the can down the road.” They might even, sometimes, allow that the previous prez was FUBAR in regards to his spending this country half unto death. But the hackneyed acneed Senator who almost joined the opposition until he figured out that it would be hard work (like serving in Vietnam) decided to defer that honor too. I am so glad he did because we really don’t need gutless phlegmatic do-nothings right now.
We need brains and leadership. Nobody really knows what the right answer is to solving this fiasco. What we do know (or think we do) is that doing nothing is not an option. I think that if someone had predicted the mess we find ourselves in a year ago, we would have thought that they were nuts. Now we can’t imagine what would happen if the world banking system should collapse. I know it is not going to happen because I just got an increase on my credit without even asking for it. They have to know something we don’t. The goofy grumbling about the Wall Street goons has almost already died down. There is a glimmer of action in new housing and there are indicators that are now turning up a little instead of free falling. The middle may well hold and if it does than we have to give the credit to the people who came up with a plan, got congress to pass it, and thank them for freaking doing something. If Mitch McConnell had it his way the Dems would fail and we all would suffer. Now you are starting to see all of these scalawags trying to get ahead of the action, almost like they know it’s going to work, to say “Yeah, but. Look at how much it cost! Damn those tax and spend socialists.”
If there really was fairness or karma in the world, the Obama team should be able to accomplish what they have set out to do with the most positive results just like W had eight years to do what he wanted largely unfettered. But I don’t really believe in that stuff and I know that too many people would rather see him flame out than have to admit that they were wrong. And it will kill me to have to listen to the geniuses who had absolutely no plan but will be telling us they told us so and now we have this monumental debt and it’s all Big Ears’ fault.
It’s all a gamble. Not a reckless one and not a wreck-less one. It requires that good thinking gets concentrated and strategies are devised and gone over. That computer models are worked and re-worked till you have at least 70 percent of the information (the Powell Doctrine) you need to make a decision. Then you implement and tweak with your fingers crossed and your breath held.
The risible response of the Republican innumeratti, whose “budget plan” had no numbers other than those to count the pages, will hardly do anything to advance their cause, which is... Well, I guess I am not sure what the heck it is. It’s kind of ethereal like a budget without numbers or the logic of protesting going to war because you have a skin problem. If you can believe that kind of thinking, the thought of a President Palin should gladden your heart.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Let me count the ways
I have been having way too much fun writing stuff I actually know something about lately. But it’s time to get back to the serious situations that confront this nation. However, rather than dredge up the Cramer v Stewart dust up I want you to know that I am all over the latest confrontation which pits the lovely cross-in-her-cleavage Laura Ingraham against the “curvy” Meghan McCain, the twenty-something daughter of the seventy-something Senator with the same name.
Just kiddin’.
I would be quite happy to never hear the word “transparency” again and most especially in connection with the behemoth, mind-boggling boondoggle that is our economic nightmare right now. It’s the numbers. The media throws them around the way weather channel chicks talk about temperatures across the country. La di dah, $50 bazillion here. Ho hum $700 billion for this. $Who cares, 168 B for them. What gets my goat about that last number which is what the chatterers are saying that AIG has already paid out in bonuses with at least seven execs getting over 3 million each for “performing”* so well, is: they freakin’ lost $41 billion! How cool is that by the way. Your bonus is tied to how much you lose. To my point, MoveOn has an email circulating that says the bonus amount for AIG is $450 million. O well.
Of course we know that AIG is scheduled to get about 1,000 times the 168 number in bailout relief. No less a reliable source than Chuck Todd thought that amount is 1 percent rather than the .001 percent it is. People in that biz just don’t care and then they try to come off as caring so much by saying “BBBBillion” with an omigod look on their face like they can hardly believe it. Then on Monday morning BarackO spoke to small-business types in the White House and iterated Secretary Geithner’s sucking-up statement about how wonderful small businesses are and that they are the backbone of the economy and held out an injection of $386 million to facilitate loans to them. Whoopdy freakin’ do. That means they will get a little more than half of what the AIG crooks are getting. One third of a Billion dollars. We spill that amount in Iraq every month. It gives me an eye ache.
In his most excellent book, “Inside the Emerald City”, Rajiv Sandrasekaran details what a disaster the Viceroyalty of Jerry Bremmer was in the Green Zone of Baghdad during the early years of this hideously unpopular war. The pompous and dictatorial Bremmer replaced career professionals with party loyalists and flunkies in the same way that he was picked. The amount of money that was wasted, lost and pilfered is measured in the tens of billions and in one instance palates of 100 dollar bills wound up “missing” and of course was never found. But the point is that nobody knows what the numbers are. Iraq costs “between 10 and 12 B per month.” Wouldn’t you think that the pentagon with all their resources could figure out where every dollar goes and not have to guess with in a couple of billion what the monthly tab is? I would think after 6 years of this war they would have it down. I can’t get over how comparatively paltry that number for helping small businesses is, and yet very specific. Perhaps the Admirals and Generals could sharpen their pencils and help us with this one.
And what was the real amount that Bernie Madoff made off with, $50 B or $65 B? It’s no big deal unless you’re a small business guy and you look at the difference between the first number and the second and realize that it’s FORTY-FIVE times the size of the help being offered for honest loans for SBA loans. Wifey Ruth’s independently earned fortune has gone from 68 to 100 million according to the sneering punditry who justify the new tally by throwing in a couple yachts, a $39,000 rug (big deal) and some “fine silverware” (amount not disclosed). She had the sand to say that she earned that money as the bookkeeper for the family ponzi business and salted it away. Doing the math it actually does make sense that the bookkeeper would only make a hundred mill for a company raking in 50 to 65 billion.
In a society where high school kids don’t count their change, can’t add simple fractions or do common multiplications tasks, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the general public doesn’t seem to care about numbers. They may be thinking, let the liars lie. There’s nothing I can do about it.
*AIG says the money is a “retention bonus,” to keep these good people on the job to “wind down” (ever what the hell that means) various units and that these people are under non-negotiable contracts. We now know 53 of them left anyway and got bonuses anyway. This is definitely a pants-on-fire moment.
Just kiddin’.
I would be quite happy to never hear the word “transparency” again and most especially in connection with the behemoth, mind-boggling boondoggle that is our economic nightmare right now. It’s the numbers. The media throws them around the way weather channel chicks talk about temperatures across the country. La di dah, $50 bazillion here. Ho hum $700 billion for this. $Who cares, 168 B for them. What gets my goat about that last number which is what the chatterers are saying that AIG has already paid out in bonuses with at least seven execs getting over 3 million each for “performing”* so well, is: they freakin’ lost $41 billion! How cool is that by the way. Your bonus is tied to how much you lose. To my point, MoveOn has an email circulating that says the bonus amount for AIG is $450 million. O well.
Of course we know that AIG is scheduled to get about 1,000 times the 168 number in bailout relief. No less a reliable source than Chuck Todd thought that amount is 1 percent rather than the .001 percent it is. People in that biz just don’t care and then they try to come off as caring so much by saying “BBBBillion” with an omigod look on their face like they can hardly believe it. Then on Monday morning BarackO spoke to small-business types in the White House and iterated Secretary Geithner’s sucking-up statement about how wonderful small businesses are and that they are the backbone of the economy and held out an injection of $386 million to facilitate loans to them. Whoopdy freakin’ do. That means they will get a little more than half of what the AIG crooks are getting. One third of a Billion dollars. We spill that amount in Iraq every month. It gives me an eye ache.
In his most excellent book, “Inside the Emerald City”, Rajiv Sandrasekaran details what a disaster the Viceroyalty of Jerry Bremmer was in the Green Zone of Baghdad during the early years of this hideously unpopular war. The pompous and dictatorial Bremmer replaced career professionals with party loyalists and flunkies in the same way that he was picked. The amount of money that was wasted, lost and pilfered is measured in the tens of billions and in one instance palates of 100 dollar bills wound up “missing” and of course was never found. But the point is that nobody knows what the numbers are. Iraq costs “between 10 and 12 B per month.” Wouldn’t you think that the pentagon with all their resources could figure out where every dollar goes and not have to guess with in a couple of billion what the monthly tab is? I would think after 6 years of this war they would have it down. I can’t get over how comparatively paltry that number for helping small businesses is, and yet very specific. Perhaps the Admirals and Generals could sharpen their pencils and help us with this one.
And what was the real amount that Bernie Madoff made off with, $50 B or $65 B? It’s no big deal unless you’re a small business guy and you look at the difference between the first number and the second and realize that it’s FORTY-FIVE times the size of the help being offered for honest loans for SBA loans. Wifey Ruth’s independently earned fortune has gone from 68 to 100 million according to the sneering punditry who justify the new tally by throwing in a couple yachts, a $39,000 rug (big deal) and some “fine silverware” (amount not disclosed). She had the sand to say that she earned that money as the bookkeeper for the family ponzi business and salted it away. Doing the math it actually does make sense that the bookkeeper would only make a hundred mill for a company raking in 50 to 65 billion.
In a society where high school kids don’t count their change, can’t add simple fractions or do common multiplications tasks, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the general public doesn’t seem to care about numbers. They may be thinking, let the liars lie. There’s nothing I can do about it.
*AIG says the money is a “retention bonus,” to keep these good people on the job to “wind down” (ever what the hell that means) various units and that these people are under non-negotiable contracts. We now know 53 of them left anyway and got bonuses anyway. This is definitely a pants-on-fire moment.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
LXV
O woe is me. I’m not 23. I’m not even 25. I’m almost older than dirt and yet lucky to be whinnying amongst you all. As I reflect on my three score and five I wonder at how fate didn’t take me out long before this. How did I last longer than me own sainted mither? The answer has to be: clean living and a fortunate gene pool. If you throw in a downhill paper route and a Kevlar liver it begins to tie together the unfair inequities of life.
I bet luck is what it’s all about. I have done all the things that I taught my children not to, and yet I don’t have a limp and the only prosthetic device are my bifocals. I’ve got most of my own teeth and hair that’s unfair. The family thing, without boring details, is fabulous. I’ve been from here to there and lots of places in between and one of my only regrets is that there are so many places left to see but not nearly enough time.
It is interesting to ponder just how much time there is. We of course don’t know and only our own individual minds can attempt the calculus of how long our progenitors lived and in what kind of shape. Did I quit smoking soon enough? Will that old skiing injury take its toll as the arthritis gallops in to take control of my body? Is it a good thing that my older sibs are hanging in valiantly and that we will die off in order, or will I become the sacrificial goat?
I always tended to do things that should have done me in. I had a Harley down in Texas that I spent as much time under as on top. I bought my single lunger BMer 250 when I was still in a full length cast from a skiing mishap. I used to strap my crutches on the back with a bungee cord when I was down at State U. I’ve skied from the top of Mt. Washington and the top of Pike’s Peak, which it turns out, isn’t any easier when you’re straight.
There’s a lot more that now embarrasses and makes me wonder what possessed me, for surely the dibble himself must have been behind some of the idiocy and daring do. I like to think that I developed some skill along the way which may have helped. After crashing or rolling a half dozen cars before I got out of my twenties, I’ve been accident free these many but fleeting years. I’ve even survived Woods Hole (more luck than skill) but I plan to go back and that just can’t be very smart. Not so much a death wish as a Russian roulette kind of thrill. Sailing into hurricanes is a thing of the past.
What I worry about is an humiliating end. The dragged out disease that ends me up in the long-term care center of the VA hours from here. Or discovering and trying to cope with Alzheimer’s before it sucks me into the vortex from where no wise cracks will be heard from these lips again. I think I beat the chances of a stroke when I had my cheese choked carotids rotor-rootered, but you never know. An aneurysm suggests itself if only because the delicious irony of not being able to speak again would give so many of y’all a chuckle.
But the surer bet is that I’ll probably still be teaching the first time skiers from the local grammar school how to make turns on the slopes when I do hit my biblically touted 70. And, god knows I hope not, but there really shouldn’t be any reason not to be still flipping burgers at Phil’s if the building outlasts us. By that time Owen will be riding a bike and JP will be driving. Of course I want to see if he really does get into Yale and if Josephine can kick his butt in Karate by then, so I better start cleaning up my act. More exercise, fewer carbs, cut back on cocktails. Look both ways when crossing the street. No more grand standing hand stands for grand children. Take deep breaths when watching the news. Keep emailing friends and obey the speed limit.
If this sounds a little grim to some. It ain’t. It’s just the reflections of someone who is almost two thirds through an interesting life.
I bet luck is what it’s all about. I have done all the things that I taught my children not to, and yet I don’t have a limp and the only prosthetic device are my bifocals. I’ve got most of my own teeth and hair that’s unfair. The family thing, without boring details, is fabulous. I’ve been from here to there and lots of places in between and one of my only regrets is that there are so many places left to see but not nearly enough time.
It is interesting to ponder just how much time there is. We of course don’t know and only our own individual minds can attempt the calculus of how long our progenitors lived and in what kind of shape. Did I quit smoking soon enough? Will that old skiing injury take its toll as the arthritis gallops in to take control of my body? Is it a good thing that my older sibs are hanging in valiantly and that we will die off in order, or will I become the sacrificial goat?
I always tended to do things that should have done me in. I had a Harley down in Texas that I spent as much time under as on top. I bought my single lunger BMer 250 when I was still in a full length cast from a skiing mishap. I used to strap my crutches on the back with a bungee cord when I was down at State U. I’ve skied from the top of Mt. Washington and the top of Pike’s Peak, which it turns out, isn’t any easier when you’re straight.
There’s a lot more that now embarrasses and makes me wonder what possessed me, for surely the dibble himself must have been behind some of the idiocy and daring do. I like to think that I developed some skill along the way which may have helped. After crashing or rolling a half dozen cars before I got out of my twenties, I’ve been accident free these many but fleeting years. I’ve even survived Woods Hole (more luck than skill) but I plan to go back and that just can’t be very smart. Not so much a death wish as a Russian roulette kind of thrill. Sailing into hurricanes is a thing of the past.
What I worry about is an humiliating end. The dragged out disease that ends me up in the long-term care center of the VA hours from here. Or discovering and trying to cope with Alzheimer’s before it sucks me into the vortex from where no wise cracks will be heard from these lips again. I think I beat the chances of a stroke when I had my cheese choked carotids rotor-rootered, but you never know. An aneurysm suggests itself if only because the delicious irony of not being able to speak again would give so many of y’all a chuckle.
But the surer bet is that I’ll probably still be teaching the first time skiers from the local grammar school how to make turns on the slopes when I do hit my biblically touted 70. And, god knows I hope not, but there really shouldn’t be any reason not to be still flipping burgers at Phil’s if the building outlasts us. By that time Owen will be riding a bike and JP will be driving. Of course I want to see if he really does get into Yale and if Josephine can kick his butt in Karate by then, so I better start cleaning up my act. More exercise, fewer carbs, cut back on cocktails. Look both ways when crossing the street. No more grand standing hand stands for grand children. Take deep breaths when watching the news. Keep emailing friends and obey the speed limit.
If this sounds a little grim to some. It ain’t. It’s just the reflections of someone who is almost two thirds through an interesting life.
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