Your SEC

The SEC....your Securities and Exchange Commission....has a basic mission of watching over the evil folks at Wall Street.

Today, we learned that while they were busy watching the evil guys at Wall Street....they surfed and browsed alot. They also checked out "hot booty", "lusty chicks", and "crazy babes".

Yes, they were checking out pornographic sites...while using the fancy and upgraded hardware they needed to watch Wall Street.

The inspector general for the organization noted 33 times (at least that they caught) where SEC members were doing some pretty interesting analysis.

I sat there and read through the big pieces of this report. They had a top-dog attorney working at the SEC....who spent up to eight hours a day....downloading some really hot videos. The IT guys say that when he ran out of disk space...he just started burning everything to DVDs. Naturally, he kept these organized in boxes around the office (good talent he probably picked up at law school).

From the SEC team....at least seventeen of these "players" were in the senior staff level...making at least $200k a year.

When you sit back and look at the problems that the SEC missed with Bernie Madorf and the various Wall Street organizations....you start to wonder if senior leadership ever knew what was going on or if they spent most of their hours cruising the internet? And now the SEC is still regarded as the watchdog....still?

The Air Force has a simple method when they detect these events....they track it right to the PC and then to the right guy. They have the audit trail. They tend to prosecute you and if you owe money for time spent on this event...they go after that money. Your clearance? It's taken.

Nothing from this report indicates that the SEC ever did anything to punish these guys....so I'm curious what they did do.

Just Do It

It's an interesting day in New Jersey. The state governor...Chris Christie...is on a mission...to shut the last two rest-stop bathrooms on non-toll roads...to save $270k a year.

He's at least honest about this: “We just don’t have the money for the bathroom facilities.”

So early next year....these bathrooms will shut down....on Interstate 80 at the Pennsylvania border and Interstate 295 at the Delaware border.

The positive side of this is that the parking areas at the rest areas will stay open for truckers to park.

Now, you might sit there and say this is a tragic circumstance....but consider American history. Up until the 1950s...there weren't ANY rest stops anywhere along the nation's highways. You either pulled off at a gas station or stopped by the road and did your business. We weren't shamed or anything....we just did our business.

I suspect the governor knows this precise truth.

So early next year....as you folks tour through New Jersey and need to relieve yourself....feel free to do the Jersey thing and just "do it". Yes, stop by the road....and let go. Don't feel shame...it's the Jersey way and we ought to all return to our roots.

And as you relieve yourself...think of the millions you could save across America if we just ended this roadside bathroom business. We could save enough to actually pay for healthcare....maybe.

Just Anderson Being Anderson, Nothing Else

I'm one of those folks who kinda lost patience and respect for Anderson Cooper of CNN. There are a dozen news items where I sat and watched his position on a story...and it wasn't a news position as much as selling a story or knocking a story.

This week, Anderson came up and wanted to take down an Arizona state-level senator over the new birth certificate requirement if you want to run for president there. I sat and watched the clip for its entirety. By the end....Anderson made himself look fairly foolish.

I have little agreement on this entire birth certificate business. The President will still be an American at the end of this entire discussion. The only bit of knowledge that we might be shocked about is who (if anyone) is listed as the father, or the actual sequence of how the certificate (if a year later or several years later) came to be. There's a huge relationship problem between the Kenyan guy and Obama's mother by the time of the birth. I suspect her frustrations are the only issue here and the causality of this game is the "legend" which will be somewhat curious in the end but still do nothing to disqualify him from the Presidency.

As for Anderson Cooper? You basically took every step possibly to knock this guy and failed. The mighty Anderson? Failed? Yep. For a regular guy watching this....you end up as a joke, and the senator looks like a regular guy.

And for CNN.....if you were wondering why you still have this "Fox" smell about you....it's because you can't stray far from an agenda. You are Fox New's goofy cousin....and can only take an opposite mind....no matter what the topic. That's the sad part to this story. We'd all like a independent minded news platform, and we've yet to find it.

It's Really Not That Funny

My patience to sit and watch an hour with CNN's Larry King kinda ended five years ago. I consider the show to be ok for about fifteen minutes...and then it's time to hit the mute button or head toward Animal Planet. Whatever magic Larry had....is long gone.

This week....we got another comical ten seconds of Larry on Tuesday night. Larry brought up a guest (I'll even leave her name out but it's a comedian who does mostly negative comical stuff to please her audience).

At some point, she tried to make a joke whether on whether Sarah Palin should pose for Playboy. The comic said "I think she should go for it."

I watched the clip of the episode. It was really funny (1-star gut-humor at its best)...and the stuff you laugh at once you've gulped down six beers.

Larry then responded...."Agreed."

I'm not even sure if Larry was mentally alert enough to grasp the joke or attempt at humor.

But then we come to the funny business of the week with Larry. After his wife accused Larry of playing around with her sister and chatting up the possibility of divorcing him...we then learn that Larry's wife was screwing the Little League manager for her two kids. In fact, Larry's wife bought the Little League manager a BMW and had a nifty schedule worked out...so she got her man...while Larry was interviewing folks at night.

Yep...so as Larry probably sat there uttering his "agreed" to the suggestion of Sarah Palin posing nude....Larry's wife probably was getting "homer" and "out" tips from Karl the Little League dude. Meanwhile, Karl was driving back home in the BMW that Larry's wife gave him for excellent stud services.

There's a good joke in this blog....but it has little to do with Palin posing. And somehow.....Larry is a part of the joke.

The DC Game

It's kind of a puzzling thing. We are on the surge toward marijuana being legalized (at least in the medical form) in DC. The city council is hot on this....and some folks think the city could get a massive "Amsterdam" thrust into the tourism market....where people would have yet another reason to visit DC. But there was a hint of a problem yesterday.

Apparently (and I'm not the expert on this)....there are only a couple of companies that manufacture medical marijuana (at the level and grade required to call it medical marijuana). Some say three....some say five. Well...the city council's bill, which has passed.....has some stipulations about how this works. The business folks who have examined the bill and the actual method that this works....say that no company will have any interest in the method that they've been told to operate. The profit margin is too low to attract interest.

The city council isn't saying much. And you can tell that they really don't have the slightest idea of how this will actually operate. Someone else is writing the bill and telling them what to say.

My guess is that they will have to write an addition to the original bill.....and allow massive home growth of medical marijuana to make any of this actually take place. No one is sure that this is the best or right idea over this entire mess. If you simply open the door and say one group can grow large-scale....for legal sales.....then why not large-scale for open-street sales? You can see where this is going.

If I were a betting guy....I'd say that this is not going to turn out too well. DC political folks are about the last group that you'd trust to get something right. Yesterday, for example, there was the suggestion that they are considering a 10-cent gas tax.....to pay for mass transit. What few gas stations still exist in the District....will likely fold up at this point, and shift operations over to Virginia. Nobody is going to volunteer to pay another $1.50 per tank just to run the mass transit system.

Just another day in paradise.