Sometime between fifty and sixty years ago, when I was living in the Los Angeles area, I was struck by the incredibly prescient comment of a UCLA economist. I think his name was Caplan.
When someone equated the enormous freeway traffic jams with business and productivity, he noted that all those people in the cars driving to the downtown business area were not producing anything. He said, simply, “They are all on their way to sell second mortgages to each other.”
What sets this note apart from all the others I write in my blog is that this is the first one that is intentionally not funny.
Thousands and thousands and more thousands of protesting Iranians have taken to their rooftops at night, where they can’t be seen while they shout, “God is Great!”
If they get caught, they run the risk of getting beaten, shot, locked up, or simply disappearing.
In other news from Iran, it was confirmed that three of the ruling Ayatollahs had been outed as atheists.
Some of the very same financial corporations that destroyed ours and the world’s economies, were fearful of losing the execs and sales forces that ruined them, and paid these losers huge sums to stick around. They explained that these were not bonuses for past dreadful performance, but retention payments to keep them on the job for future terrible performance.
I have a somewhat better retention in mind. How about ten to twenty. That will keep them in one place.
The United States Supreme Court just decided that people could carry loaded guns into bars and restaurants serving alcohol.
That’s a smart, life-saving idea! These idiots can now get rid of their pent up Rambo desires while downing a few brewskis, and they won’t get all testy when they visit a school.
In a Fox News (now there’s an oxymoron) interview, ex V.P.’s daughter Liz Cheney charged that by releasing images damaging to our reputation internationally, Obama was siding with the terrorists.
The Obama administration was quick to respond, and will not release any more pictures of Cheney.
The mantra of Republican opponents to the Obama health reform plan with public participation has been, “Look at the Post Office, etc., etc. You can’t trust the government to do anything right.”
In a vain attempt to prove they are honorable, concerned legislators and not just a tightly controlled bunch of idiots or lying sons of bitches joined at the hypocrite by their owners, the Republicans have given up their government health coverage and are moving over to Blue Cross.
This selfless act will also save the country a fortune in future benefits, as their new coverage will have them die much sooner.
They were furious when it was pointed out that their condemnation of the ability of the government to do anything right referred to themselves.
In a snit, they disbanded the publicly run United States Army, and privatized it to another spinoff of Halliburton (under a new name, of course). Halliburton had previously changed the name of their private army from Blackwater to Greystone. It will now be run by their old boss, Dick Cheney, and in honor of his five deferments, be called Yellowbelly.
Although the opponents of the Obama public health reform proposals spoke in glowing terms of the advantages of our own private health care system, the World Health Organization rated Canada at seven levels above the U.S. Undeterred by this sobering bit of news, Republicans crowed that we were one slot higher than Slovenia, which finished at 38.
As they descend to a public hell
That they believe is a private heaven
The A.M.A. mob continues to yell
We are number thirty-seven!
If we had known that The Promise Keepers, and the Just Say No crowd had so much fun, we would have joined them a lot earlier.
So many of these conservatives are falling from grace, and from contention as possible presidential candidates in 2012 that the entire Republican party is in desperate need of a hypocrite replacement.
Delivery of the oft delayed, aptly named 787 Boeing Dreamliner was delayed again because of a last minute discovery that the wings might fall off due to structural design failures. The geniuses in command of the company assured the press that they already had a highly skilled group working to fix it.
It is to be hoped that it is a different highly skilled group than the one that designed it in the beginning.
A lot of people are worried needlessly that Boeing might move its Washington State production operations to another state.
Get real. The wheels would fall off their bus before they got to I-90.
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