Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney has passed.

I have this short list of journalists and news people that I have respected over the past fifty-odd years.

There's Paul Harvey, who knew how to explain a pretty difficult story in 90 seconds or less.  He preached to you on Saturdays and gave a dose of Americanism that you needed.

There was Harry Reasoner who gave out straight facts and real news.  He wouldn't have touched Brittney Spears with a ten-foot pole or ever even mentioned Bigfoot.

There was Frank Reynolds from ABC, who could sum up a big mess in forty words, and leave you relaxed because it really wasn't as big a mess as the other dimwits were portraying a story.

And then came Andy Rooney.  He didn't really cover news....he just picked out topics and gave you the 1948 view of reality over a modern-day topic.  For some reason....his 1948-view was precisely what we needed.

To be honest, we are coming to an end-point where there just aren't any more journalists.....just wannabe folks who pretend to be journalists.

The Missing "Juans"

The Feds came to Bama this week....and said they had a legal interest in knowing possible civil rights violations.  The curious thing....this new investigation involves Bama schools.  They want to know just about everything you can imagine in statistics....with every single school in Bama.  All of this has to deal with the anti-illegal law that Bama put into play earlier this year.

The Bama legal folks stood up and said they would be ok with providing this info....once the federal government lawsuit is finished (one way or another).  The Feds, for all general purposes, have said that the state lacks the authority to have a anti-immigration law.

I'm guessing this week....there will be a court-ordered deal where some federal judge says the legal request by the Attorney General is legit, and Bama should comply.  Bama will quickly walk up to another Federal judge and likely get a stay on this deal.....until a third federal judge can determine if the request is really valid or not.  You would get the impression that federal judges are kept busy these days having read, re-read, and then lay out various interpretations of the law.  No more goofing off or playing golf on Thursday afternoon.

I sat down and looked at what data the Attorney General was requesting.  It's a pretty big request.  They want every single public school in Bama to report with a list of alll enrolled students as of the last week of September.  Then they want another list of all kids who left from the school since the school year started.  Then they want the reason why the kids quit or left since school started.  Then they want a list of all kids who have at least one unexplained absence since the end of September.  Then they want the school to list the race of each kid in school  Then they want the original country of origin of each kid in school.  And then they want the English language ability of each kid on a list (the most difficult one, because some kids don't speak true English).

Having grown up in the Bama school system....allow me to offer some insightful analysis.  There were three folks in the head office of my school.  There was Mr "Joe" (the principal), Mr "Little Joe" (the vice-principal), and Wanda (the secretary).

Seventy-five percent of Mr "Little Joe's" job was discipline.  I think he literally walked from 0730 in the morning from one mess to another.  Any kid with a infraction....ended up in his office....and he dealt with them in a pretty precise fashion.  If you had to have an investigation....he was the guy running it.

"Mr Joe"?  He was generally there to handle teacher complaints or parent complaints.  I think he could pretty well fill in half the hours of the day in private meetings and sorting various problems out.

"Wanda"?  She was there to sign every note that a kid brought in from the parents to explain why they were out for five days.  Her signature was vital....otherwise, it wasn't legit.  Wanda just signed them.....she never kept a single copy or reported to anyone.  The kid would take that note around to his teachers throughout the day to explain things.  Odds were....he only gave the home-room teacher a look, and maybe one teacher throughout the rest of the day.

So I looked back at this list of data.  Personally, it'll shock me if most schools maintain some kind of data listing like this.  Frankly, they might have to go back to the kids and ask some stupid questions.  I can imagine this scene of "Mr Little Joe" confronting me and asking me my country of origin, and I respond England.  I'd likely stand there and grin.....and he'd likely be at a point of weakness....and just accept that.  My other associates?  Some might have been more creative and said they were originally from Russia, Mongolia, or maybe even Iceland.  By the end of the day...."Mr Little Joe" would have returned and spent four hours putting this all into some spreadsheet, or he might have found some 10th grader that he'd just give them a school project and hope they did it right.

The unexplained absences?  Hopefully, the 2011 "Wanda" keeps a copy of these notes.  If not, then you have to visit every single teacher.  So, you can imagine this listing.  Donny stayed out two days.....hauling soybeans to Lawrenceberg for his dad, the farmer.  Karl stayed home one day helping his dad dig up the septic tank.  Lynn spent half a day out....getting a tattoo removed that Mom never blessed in the first place.  Bobby was out for a full week....attending a alcohol rehab session in Montana.

So you can imagine 1526 schools (I checked) across Alabama.  You can imagine 1526 spreadsheets being sent to the Attorney General's office.  From this list....over 730,000 kids are listed.  You can imagine ten lawyers trying to analyze this massive amount of data.  They start asking stupid questions....why are so many guys out hauling soybeans?  Why are 122 students in some kind of alcohol rehab episode?  Why are 16 kids missing and having their tattoos removed?   Why are forty-four kids from Mongolia?  Where did these 1,226 Icelandic kids come from?

I can imagine these ten idiot lawyers sitting in a DC office for an entire week....and then coming to this conclusion....none of this data makes any sense.  So they try to associate every single Latino out of this list.  Somewhere down the line....they end up with this list of 2,323 Latinos who fell off the Bama listing.  So they search now for the 2,323 Latino kids.

You can imagine these fancy lawyers showing up in some Bama community and asking stupid questions about what happened to Juan.  No one trusts the guy.  So there's no information flowing.  The DC lawyers spend three weeks in Bama trying to track down the 2,323 missing "Juans".  By the end of this episode....there's not much to reveal.  However, the lawyers will all note that they gained eight pounds during this period.....eating mostly high-on-the-hog.  They also met some fine Bama gals, who gave them their phone numbers.  They got invited to a Auburn football game.  They also ate some fine catfish over at the Catfish Cabin.  They were entertained by various guitar pickers and banjo players.  They got religion via some revival that they attended.  They sipped some great spring water in "dry counties" where alcohol is forbidden.  And they were stopped at least twice each and asked by Bama law enforcement what country of origin they are.....and if they could produce an ID.

For some reason, I don't see much coming out of this episode.

Only in Bama.

The "Pass The Bill" Bill

I ended up watching the President's speech.  It's probably sixth speech of the year that I've watched him give.  It needed to be a five-star speech.  By the end....I was feeling mostly it fell into the 2-star marginal speech category.  The jobs potential?  It's hard to say.  It kinda felt like a guy was having a heart attack and we needed to use the defibrillator but in this case....we just had a K-Mart defibrillator with four AAA-batteries in it.  The "jolt" might just be a tingle, and I'd be in NCAA-heaven with Bama playing Auburn everyday (it's the best a guy from Bama could hope for....Iron Bowl in heaven daily).

The $450 billion?  Well....it'll come out of some imaginary pocket like the $800 billion that we found for stimulus a while back.  If it did turn around the jobs market, then we'd actually have more folks paying taxes, and maybe make the money back.  But if you only created 100k jobs over twelve months with the $450 billion, then it's mostly a waste of time and money.

At some point....I had this deja vu feeling over "pass the bill".  Later on, some journalist commented....it got mentioned seventeen times during this speech.  I kept thinking it was a psychological thing.....like when Luke Skywalker used his Jeda powers to make some dopey guy do something that he wouldn't normally do.  Luke usually had his hand out and was focusing hard on his victim.  To be honest, I never saw any mortal character in Star Wars defeat the Jeda mindmelt deal.  It's hard to say if that Boehner guy or Cantor kid from Virginia can stand up against the President's Jeda powers.  Mortal men just can't fight it....usually.

So will it pass?  I'm thinking that the House ought to split this up into individual bills....for each single item. Up and down vote.  Seventy percent of the bills would easily pass by the Republicans in the House, and likely stop in the Senate because they just won't dare stand for twenty-odd bills.  Frankly, they'd likely say it's all or none....making Boehner and Cantor mostly grin that the old guys in the Senate just weren't up to one-page bills (too much to read).

The plan to fix roads and schools?  Which ones?  Even split amongst all fifty states?  You can imagine everyone wanting a chunk of the money to do something with Route 16 highway, the old gym at the school, and replacing a 64-year old bridge considered unsafe.  The issue is that you don't have a list sitting there with projects ready to go (remember, don't utter "shovel ready" in any national audience or folks start laughing).  I'm guessing over 900 principals are pulling out their dream plans tomorrow morning and trying to convince Senator Tubby that they truly need eight million to build this great school annex building.  You figure four months to argue over this priority list of projects, another six months to get the contracts fixed up and signed, and another eighteen months before the school is finished.  There's limits to this concept.

Then I came to the end of this speech.  It felt like a political huddle with a coach giving you his strategy.  Confidence wasn't really overflowing on this matter.  It might have some effect, but not as much as you'd like.  Would it convince a company to grow it's jobs base?  No.  Would it convince a boss to hire up forty more employees?  Maybe, but the President left out the various regulations that he'd dump (momentarily). So that wasn't going to help much.

Simply Business

There are two interesting business episodes unfolding, which I kinda have an interest in.

First, Borders Books are bankrupt, period.  They thought someone would come out of the shadows and buy them....but the amount of debt and unsustainable profit is an issue.  To be honest, between Amazon and these digital books available....it's hard to be a local neighborhood book store (even in a massive mall).   It is a sign of the times.

A trend here?  Digital books are growing and I would suspect by 2020 that seventy-five percent of all books will be digital, as sales go.  I won't say it's a positive trend, but at least people are still reading.

Borders was this place you go and hang out....picking up an odd book for five minutes and sitting at some easy chair.  If you felt right with the book, you bought it.  Coffee?  Yes.  It was a good atmosphere, I will admit.

The other big story?  Readers Digest wants to sell itself.  Amusingly enough....they want a billion dollars.  Last year, they had around 1.4 billion in revenue, but that equaled around thirty million dollars in losses.  To me.....that's a huge signal that you've got big problems.....over a billion in sales, and you still can't show revenue.

Who buys Readers Digest?  Mostly older folks and medical establishments.  If you go to a routine dentist or doctor's appointment....you typically find it still laid out and offered as reading material while you wait.

As a kid, I remember reading it.  The last time I picked up and read one?  About six years ago.  I actually bought one.  What I found laid out in the one I bought.....one extremely political story in favor of John Kerry, and two stories over the environment and global warming, which tried to sound factual but were loaded with unproven points.  I sat there shaking my head because it'd turned into the National Geographic....just another trend magazine run mostly by a bunch of agenda writers and editors.

Will anyone come up to pay a billion for Readers Digest?  I suspect few if any takers.  They might eventually unload for around $750 million and end up in the hands of some Brazilian or Saudi billionaire.  They would likely hire out a number of cheap writers to contribute and try to remake the magazine into something totally different.  Eventually, it'll fail completely and disappear from the shelves.

So in the end....two more dinosaurs dying out.  

Book Review: Reshaping of Everyday LIfe

Once in a while, I will toss out a book review.  Today?  Reshaping of Everyday Life (1790-1840).

It's an odd book, which has been out for over a decade.  To be honest, I doubt if it ever sold any good numbers at all.  You can still find it on Amazon.

It's a book you can read over in a week, and covers everyday American life for a fifty year period in the colonial years.  I would actually like to make it a mandatory reading for every fifteen year old kid in America because it really paints a harsh environment where people were lucky to live to be forty years old.

The book covers love, romance, marriage, houses, food, coffee, entertainment, booze, and just about every situation you can imagine for that period.

In the end....you came away impressed on how people survived and enjoyed what little they did have.  Just having one pair of shoes....would have been a great achievement for most folks.  So if you needed some reading material over American history that would entertain you....order the book and settle back for good reading.

The "Other" Debt

You would think there would be alot more turmoil and protests over the debt games being played out in Washington.  There ought to be protesters....angry mobs hating Republicans....upset Tea Party folks....etc, etc.  But there aren't.  So why?

Well....because Joe, your neighbor, owes $80k in college loans and he admits he won't be finished paying this off for another fifteen years.

Aunt Maude, your beloved aunt, owes near $60k on four VISA cards that she uses regularly to shop QVC....and will likely never pay off the cards before she passes on.

Charley, your favorite barber, owes $44k on a brand-new car that he bought.  He admits that he has never cleared more than $32k a year on salary but he's willing to take out a eight-year loan to get this sports car of his dreams.

Claude, your cousin?  He bought the $350k house back in 2007, with only $35k in the down-payment.  The house has gone down in value to $200k now and Claude is contemplating just handing the keys to the house over to the bank and declaring bankruptcy.

Karl, who lives down the street....wrapping up divorce number three?  He works sixty hours a week and barely takes home $1400 after paying alimony and child-support to the three ex-wives.  He's 42 and says he might find the right woman next time....if not....he'll be bankrupt by that point.

Sid, who bought property in Vegas as an investment in 2004?  The value just dumped by fifty percent and he's still paying $450 a month for this "investment opportunity".  It may take twenty years for the property to get back up to its original value....and maybe sell.

Tim, your buddy from high school?  He finally found a job after three years of unemployment....but had to move to Fargo, North Dakota to achieve this honor.  He lives out of a RV because his wife won't move to Fargo....and most all his check goes to the wife and kids at the old house.  

Frankly, we have become a huge debt crowd....in a debt nation, with no real grasp of what it was like in the 1970s.  Before the credit cards, QVC, massive college costs, alimony-on-top-of-alimony, and stupid property prices.....we were living a simple life, without much debt.  The same could be said for the nation itself.  We didn't build museum after museum.  We didn't build bridges on a whim.  We didn't hand out cash to research teams to figure out why bears like honey.

So, as you sit back tonight.....counting the few dollars left in your billfold....and watching a bunch of news folks get excited about the evil Republicans, the dimwitted Democrats, or the President's five-star speeches....you kinda wonder why anyone should get excited.  Until you've charged $80k on a couple of VISA cards....you really don't grasp debt or the depth of problems.  Course, the reverse is true too....if you as a nation owed a trillion dollars.....you really don't know debt.

Only in America.

My Walk

Yesterday, I walked seven miles.  I started out at the Arlington Cemetery.....crossed the bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, and walked all the way to the Capital building, before turning north toward Union Station, and finally ending up almost at the end of H Street in DC.  Naturally, by the end, I was fairly dehydrated and just about on my last cylinder.  Then, the German Biergarden came into focus....I stopped in there....and the kid gave me a cup of ice water and a German beer.  Within fifteen minutes, I felt re-hydrated.

The highlight of this walk?  At the end, I had this chance to watch a DC funeral.  The cops had come and blocked off an intersection to allow the possession to proceed.  There in the front....was a horse-drawn carriage with the coffin.  It was an odd deal....the horse had gold glitter over his hooves.  He was a big fellow and had no problems in pulling this short carriage.

Behind the carriage?  Well....here were two forty-foot long limos.  I'm guessing "special" family members rode in these.  And then came the thirty-eight other vehicles.

At that point, along H Street....I stopped to assess the local environment.  Twenty years ago....I might have been the only white guy on the entire street.  To be honest, H Street is fairly run down and in some kind of private recovery phase.  The city is talking up a trolley car deal, and put the track on the street....although it could be five years before this electrical issue is fixed up (they have a law dating back to around 1910 which says no electrical lines can be laid out to support a trolley car operation).

If you go a street back of H Street....what you find is that the young yuppies of DC have started buying up the rowhouses....tossing in $200k of repairs, and suddenly have a half-million dollar house (least by DC standards).  In effect, they are buying the older black generation out and changing the entire landscape of H Street neighborhoods.

My guess is that half the buildings along H Street will be bought out and torn down within the next two decades....and this new urban mecca will come about.  The comical thing?  The yuppies likely vote Republican and the voting results in ten years might change in a dramatic fashion.

So right now.....you've got the urban yuppies and the remaining hardcore blacks in the same atmosphere.  It wouldn't make any sense, except in DC.      

Debt Poker

With all the discussion over the US debt situation....this odd suggestion came up from Senator Mitch McConnell this week (a Republican)....that the Republicans were ready for a possible "plan B".  This idea was that they'd just give the President the power to fix up the debt problem himself, and if they didn't like it....they'd have to muster around sixty percent of the House to fix the problem.  A lot of Republicans came back and really hated this plan.  Some Democrats came on TV and said it was a possible surrender by the Republicans and they could work with this.

I sat for a good long day thinking about the offer, and have now came to realize that this is plain and simple "debt poker".  Basically, if you hold only a pair of aces and really wanted to bluff your way into a poker win....then you'd double up or even triple up the bet....to make everyone quit the game.  Obviously, there are huge risks in doing this.

Here's the outcome of McConnell's offer.  The President would accept and then smile to the public as he now had this power to fix the debt.  The curious thing is that you'd need to show some cuts in order to get things moving in a positive direction.  The President's team would obviously work hard to avoid the cuts and double up on taxes.  You can kinda see where this is going.

So by November....a fair amount of taxes are now being shipped around to companies and rich folks.  They start to pull their money and sit tight.  Without thinking much about the consequences.....you create wave number two of the recession by March of 2012.  Everyone from the banks to Moodys....would now admit that we are in more trouble than we were in July of 2011.  Naturally, we are embarking in the Presidential election period.

So the President walks forward with a fresh new recession....that only he could create, and the only way to fix this is a massive cut in government funding....which he just can't do in the midst of an election year.  Bluntly.....it's a lose-lose situation from that point on.

So what should the President do?

One, accept any deal that the Republicans have on the table today, and offer up fair-sized cuts.

Two, hire some retired Democratic Senator to be your chief negotiation Czar from this point on because you....the commander-in-chief....are lousy at this mess.

Three....haul out to Montana and just camp out for three weeks.  Disappear from public sight.  Rest.  Drink some beer.  Don't show your face around.

Four.....hire up some economic guy and start tossing out a $500 million cut every day on the US government's requirements.  Close up our bases in South Korea, Japan and Europe. Close down the wars. Find money and just cut.

Five....order any government department that is given money by senators or congressmen....and they didn't ask for it.....to just NOT SPEND it.  Yes, forbid them from taking money unless they really asked for it in the first place.

Six.....if you don't want any advice and you want the absolute power to play debt-king....start asking yourself what you'd like to do in January 2013 when you are out of the President's office.  Return to Chicago?  Run some national charity?  Return to the senate?  Guest-host Saturday Night Live as a ex-President?  Sit around a Presidential library in South Chicago?  Run off to Norway and be a Nobel Committee member to pick future winners?  What if it's that Sarah Palin gal....could you sit there and accept that on election night, being beaten by six percent by the grizzly lady from Alaska?

I kinda think McConnell has played a few games of poker in his life....and knows how to double-up on a bad hand.

European Differences

I had a blog reader comment on this difference thing between various Europeans and Americans.  After traveling around for twenty years of life in Europe....I will offer the following observations.

The most pro-US and friendly place you end up?  Italy.  I admit....you might not run into alot of Italians who do speak English, but you just can't find that many Italians who are anti-US.  Got yourself lost?  An Italian will do his best to layout the direction to get back on course.  Comedians?  Yes, Italians are born comedians and probably have the best sense of humor of any nation in Europe.

In second place?  Denmark.  The Danes have had this fascination with America for 200 years. Danes packed up and ventured to America in the 1800s.  I'd make a guess that sixty percent of the country speaks some English.  It's difficult to find any Dane who'd be anti-American.  They might confess some dislike of Bush, but forty percent of Americans would do the same thing.

In third place?  Netherlands.  The Dutch are pro-International and would just about welcome anybody but the Nazis.  After WW II, there was a huge popular view of Americans and it really hasn't changed much.

In fourth place?  England.  There is this love-hate relationship of the British for Americans.  They can list forty reasons why they have something against America, and then raise a toast to Ronald Reagan or Jerry Lewis.  A Brit could carry on for hours about American TV shows, American confusion over global warming, or talk negatively about American whiskey (it just isn't as good as anything produced on the Isle), then they'd turn around help you fix a flat or find a decent hotel.

In fifth place?  The Germans.  Presently, about sixty percent of German society has something against America.  They'd like to discuss it with you....even though you'd prefer to eat their food, drink their beer, and sip their wine....all in peace.  The other forty percent of the friendly Germans?  They will confess they've had this fantasy of leaving Germany for thirty years and would love to move to Idaho.  This group is pro-US....to the point, that they'd like to be an American.

In sixth place....the Greeks, the Austrians, and Spaniards.  None of them have a really positive feeling about Americans, and frankly...I don't think Americans really care.

Finally, in seventh place....the French.  Here's the thing...the French hate most any visitor to their country.  You could be some alien off a UFO, and most French folks would question the necessity of you visiting France.  The French hate the Germans because of the Nazi invasion.  The French dislike the Spaniards because they are "cheap".  The French hate the British because they drink alot and are snobs.  The French hate the Dutch because they are lousy drivers.  The French dislike the Americans because we mostly have no style, no grace, no fancy nature, and often amazed that a sit-down dinner cost of $44 per person.  Here's the thing though....if you start getting out into the country of France, away from cities....you start to get this feeling that you've arrived in Tupelo, Mississippi.  Folks pretty much accept an American there and there's no anxiety about "visitors".  The issue is that there's not much to see in the country....except wheat fields, apple orchards, and strawberry fields.

To be honest, Americans that show up in Europe....really don't have an idea about the European culture.  We end up sipping some mighty fine wine and beer....eating some decent meals.....and seeing an awful lot of interesting stuff.  Frankly, we don't know a damn difference between Van Gogh, de Bray, or Rembrandt when it comes to painting.  If you asked us to identify the thirty-two different national cheeses of Belgium....we'd be at a loss.  If you wanted to note fancy French Dijon mustard....we'd confuse it with French's mustard that we buy at Piggly Wiggly.  We might be pleased with Audis, but we might say it's as good as a PT Cruiser.

The plain truth is that Americans travel for reasons vastly different from the typical European.  We've come to see different things and mostly just get bragging rights when we go back to Red Bay and talk about the fancy towers in London or the fine cheese we ate in Switzerland.  I'm sorry if Europeans wanted us to be extremely amazed by life in Europe, but after you've toured Beverly Hills, New York City, and New Orleans....it's hard to be amazed about anything.

When Things Go Wrong

I sat and watched four different news episodes this morning of the meeting between Netanyahu and the President.  The video clips of them sitting there speaks volumes.  The first two minutes, there was a fair comfort level for the President, but you could tell it was draining away.

As Netanyahu went into his lecture, it was then painfully obvious that the President wasn't very happy and must have been expecting some other comment or less than a comment.

This ninety-odd minute lecture given by the Israeli Prime Minister was probably one of those episodes that you'd really prefer to avoid.  Then you have to ask who in the State Department ever gave this advice about the 1967 border line episode.  My guess....no one from the State Department would have been this silly unless they were two years out of Harvard or Princeton.  The top levels of the State Department would have stopped such commentary quickly.

So my best guess is that the President got this 1967 advice from someone who is a "friend" of the White House.  There are around 200 folks who have bought and snuggled their way into being a "friend" of the President.  They get a chance to speak with him at lunches or weekend retreats.  One would guess that this got put on the President's plate, and he just told his inner circle that this was going to be US policy, no matter what.  They turned to the speech-writer and had a speech drafted up like this.  The State Department likely sat there in shock but figured that the President must know something that they don't.

At the conclusion of this meeting....the President likely went into the Oval Office for thirty minutes....took a fair dose of asprin for his headache, and grumbled about how stupid this 1967 border advice was.  The "friend"?  Well....my guess is that he's been quietly removed from the guest list by today, and wondering why this was stupid to suggest.

Speeches over the Middle East again?  No.....even if the President is around after 2012....one must speculate that you won't hear any real Middle East speech again.  He'll talk about Asia, Honduras, General Motors, and possibly even space travel.....but I think you've heard the last of any chat over the Israel situation.

Maybe Just a Label

My associate at work and I....got into a discussion today.  He'd been out over the past week and attending a social event within his church.  He's a church elder and dispenses advice on occasion.  So a young lady from the church who is a Georgetown college individual came up for a chat.  She's finishing up her degree in social work....and just wanted his impressions.

He sat and mostly listened.  She has spent almost four years at Georgetown, which costs a ton of money.  She's borrowed and will have to spend at least ten years paying off this significant amount of money (likely over $80k).  He sat there in total amazement....for a degree in social work....you could have done this at some state-level college (without any name value) and likely borrowed $40k maximum.

My associate kindly pointed this out....you will spend a whole decade of your life....working toward paying for this degree.  In her logical mind....the name value of Georgetown made this worth the effort.

I sat and pondered over this.  The thing is....the only places in America where she can get a starting salary of $45k for her field work....is DC, New York, and probably LA.  Philly, Chicago, Boston, and Miami would be a step down.....maybe a $1k less.  But in eighty percent of America....your starting salary for a social worker would be roughly $28k.  She's going to be anchored to the DC for the rest of her life.

The positives?  She has name value and she has connections.  As some former college buddy gives her a name and possible position....she'll use her connections and degree from Georgetown to sidestep things.....and maybe by age 45....she might be making $80k as a social worker.  In most of America....you'd kinda max out at $45k.

Maybe there is a logic to this game.  Maybe she will eventually pay off the degree and by age fifty....be successful with the Georgetown label.  The curious thing for me.....forty years ago, anybody with a year or two of college could be a social worker....even with a degree in physical education.  We've specialized this field to the extent that colleges now see a great moment to entice you to spend $80k that you don't have.....just to become something....that you might not be sure of.

Only in America.

A Long Pause

It was a curious thing to note today.  Down at LSU....in Louisiana...the campus had a bit of excitement today.  Some guy (Graduate communications student Benjamin Haas) had decided that a US flag had to be burned to say something personal about the killing of bin Laden and the evil American government.

Unlike situations that occur in California....this is Louisiana, where I spent three years of my life.  Flag burning...at any campus in the state....is generally not tolerated very well.

The school had given Haas permission to burn the flag....but since he lacked a burn permit.....a key factor in a state that has grass fires left and right during leaf season....he was told burning wasn't going to be allowed by the local county.

Then a problem came up with students who eventually decided to chase the flag burner dude...even with campus security around him.  Things didn't go well....as kids shouted: "USA, USA".

At this point of reading up on the event....I kinda stopped and paused.

It's a strange thought process.  When it comes to flag burning....you just don't see IHOP managers, Dairy Queen employees, 7-11 guys, folks on welfare, folks who get food stamps, or roofers ever attempting to burn a flag.

So I continued on with this thought process.  I've never seen a guy who was a Ford mechanic, or a guy who fixed lawn mowers, or a gal who was a beautician.....who might be willing to burn a flag.

In fact.....I came to realize that it's generally always college students from fancy colleges....not technical colleges or community colleges.  You'd never see some 1st year student at a Bible College doing something like this.  You wouldn't see an electrical engineer doing something like this.

Generally, the flag burners are all punks who settled in for a four-year degree deal....without much engineering tied to their degree.  If it was....they'd be asking themselves questions....which the other flag burners would hate.

In the entire history of America....I doubt if a single septic tank salesman has ever burned a single flag.  The same could be said for farmers, diesel mechanics, and blacksmiths.

This might leave you with a long pause in thinking....if you got that point of wondering about things.

Just something to think about.

Fall is in the Air

This week....barely making any notice in the papers after bin Laden and various four-star news....there's this one piece....the federal government sent a letter to the BCS bowl boys, and asked directly why no play-off situation is utilized.

Naturally, the head guy of the BCS bowl boys responded in an direct manner....why would the federal government care?

For anybody from Bama.....this is a sore topic of sorts.  On any given day in November....at least one out of every five Bama guys is openly talking about the bowl selection process and this ranks in the top three topics of the day.

This federal letter came from the Justice Department, and hints of antitrust laws.  The problem for the BCS folks....is that almost every other sport within college sports.....allows for some kind of play-off situation.  The Justice Department is likely moving toward a confrontation.

The problem here is that you've got 34 bowl games now organized, and another two about to be created (the Cure Bowl out in Orlando, FL and the Christmas Bowl out in LA).

This was real simple back when there were ten bowls (up until 1970).  Then folks started to add various bowls and confuse folks.  Today, you have very marginal teams which get invited to play in the Music City Bowl (in Nashville of course).

You've got thirty-four cities which have a money-maker and know precisely about profits and the influence of forty thousand folks arriving from five states away to play in some half-ass marginal Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana.  None of these thirty-four cities want the federal government involved in this mess.  In their mind....it's bad enough as it exists right now.

A playoff system?  You could have some #3-ranked Bama team in the first round....meeting up in San Diego against a #8-ranked team.....and getting beat in the first round.  You could actually end up with the #3-ranked team playing the #12-ranked team for the national championship.  The comical thing is that you'd spread this out over six weeks.....going from early December to almost the third-week of January to ensure some fairness to the mess, and toss in various potential injuries to just screw this up more.

The heart of this matter is that you can draw up a list of winners from the twenty colleges in America....and typically, it's two of the twenty that always appear.  I admit in the past five years.....Boise State has kinda shocked folks and they really are in a huff about not getting to the number one ranking.  I would imagine part of this discussion centers entirely on Boise State.

The sad thing is that if you take away this mess.....take away the Monday morning rankings appearing in USA Today and the local news....what would guys have to talk about for twelve weeks in the fall?  For some folks....this ranking business (while fairly fake) is their life and passion.  Guys exist in Gainesville and Huntsville to objectively discuss rankings and how one bad play led to their team being dumped from #16 and lodged to #20.  Suddenly, they speak of their chances of going to Gator Bowl as ten percent, and now they try to have some positive words to say over their chances of going to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl.

For some reason....I kinda see this Justice Department involvement as being something of a double-edged sword.  There's probably a pair of young rookie lawyers working for the Justice Department who've been given this task....and I can imagine this odd discovery at some point in the process....both rookie lawyers grew up in Boise, and attended Boise State University.  Yes, it would be an odd thing.....if you ponder upon it a while.  What are the odds?

Keep Moving Along

Its interesting to watch the various debate topics of today.

Orders on Osama to take him.....orders on Osma to kill him.

Osama's wife killed.....Osama's wife merely shot in the leg.

Osama had a gun at bedside.....Osama had no weapons.

Sixteen percent of America believes in no birth certificate for the President.....Sixteen percent of the Muslim world believes Osama is still living.

Pakistan knew little to nothing about the million-dollar compound.....Pakistan had to know everything about the million-dollar compound.

War with Islam all but over.....War with Islam will intensify over next month.

It's best to describe the news of the day as somewhat comical.  If I could have imagined ten years ago the details of the day after Osama was shot.....I could not have come near the amount of high school-style reporting going on.

I suspect by the end of the week that Doctor Phil will interview several of the neighbors to Osama bin Laden and treat them for bin Laden-ism and send them to some two week rehab center in Colorado Springs.  I suspect that Oprah will interview some random Navy Seals and make them cry on camera at pictures of bunnies being mistreated.  I'd even suspect that VP Joe Biden might admit to the public that the entire plan was his to start with.

It's best to simply keep moving and hope that bigger news by Friday consumes this.  I'd suggest Charlie Sheen admitting his entire act over the past one hundred days was bogus, and that might be big enough to end the Osama story.

The Most Interesting Thing

I spent around forty-five minutes today reading the news on Osama.  There are various pieces to this operation which are curious notes....but there is one fascinating piece.

This house that he was found in....isn't just a house.  It's a one-million dollar mansion in Pakistan.  We are talking about a million-dollar estate with 18-foot walls surrounding the place and almost no windows.  This would all be a bit odd.  But here is the unusual piece.....here in a million-dollar estate....they burned their garbage.

I would imagine that you could drive around Pakistan and maybe over the whole country.....find around 250 million-dollar estates.  If you were looking for one with almost no windows and 16-foot walls....you'd probably find less than three of them.  But finding a million-dollar mansion where folks burn all their garbage?  No....you just won't find that.

You can go off to France, Germany, Japan, and a dozen countries where you'd find million-dollar estates....and you just won't find anybody that burns their trash.  It's always picked up.

So I go back to my Bama days.  My dad, and almost everyone around where I grew up in the 1970s....burned their garbage.  You'd have a 55-gallon drum and toss a bag in....light it up, and then watch it burn.  After two months of this....the drum would be full and you'd tie it onto the truck and dump it at the local garbage dump.

This was a regular habit of my dad up until the 1980s.....when the locals are all got peppy about grass fires, and then it kinda got to be a bad thing.  Yes, I can remember twenty-odd grass fires starting and having to rush out and douse them with a hose before they became issues.

So I can kinda identify with the Obama folks here.  They probably had this habit from the Africa years and just kept up the trend....even when they were living in a one-million dollar estate.  Course, he also probably didn't want anyone ever reading his fantasy letters to some lusty gal in Bossier City, or gazing at his credit card information which had details over his 1-900 chats with a service out of Detroit.  So I can understand things like this.

Why I Hate Modular Furniture

This week....came the biggest five-star mess that I've ever had with modular furniture.  Most of the time....it's personal modular that I end up with, and the pieces just don't match the drawing in the box.  This time, it's slightly different and worse.

I'm a government guy and we had to buy an entire office area new modular furniture.  Naturally....the cheapest bidder won.  This stuff was ordered or approved back in July and supposed to take 90 days for delivery and installation.

Well...the 'expert' from the company came over for an actual site visit and remeasured the area, and decided one particular horse-shoe area (four desks in such a shape) didn't really fit right and was four inches off.  The government mandates that a 36-inch path must be in place and we only had 32 inches.....so he required a modification to the contract.  This mod?  Well....it took about a month to arrange this and the company was then looking at a longer delivery period.  Oh, and there was supposed to be an allowable 36 inch path at the conclusion.

Well....after weeks and weeks of delay....we finally got the installation team into the Pentagon this week.  Twenty pallets of gear.  You haven't experienced life until you've dragged twenty pallets down various hallways and avoided hitting folks in fancy uniforms and suits.  So we get to the end and here is the installation team.

The problems start to multiply.  The drawing they have?  A copy of a copy of a copy.  You can't read much of anything.

They start assembling and about an hour into it.....nothing makes sense.  They call the folks who did the sale and are responsible for the furniture.  What the lady in Georgia didn't know....as she went negative with this installation team....was that I was standing in the room with them.  She went negative and it was like attending a bunch of Catholics walking into a Baptist revival.  Back and forth, negative help.  About four minutes into this....she agreed to help to some minor degree....still not knowing that I was in the corner and hearing this whole conversation.

After 90 more minutes of screwing around....we've come to a quitting point.  The picture?  Out of nine potential desks there....they've assembled two completely.  The rest are lacking pieces.  On top of that....there were two additional desks which weren't delivered at all.

The assembly crew left, but promised to get their boss to call this company involved.  I tried calling these folks but no one ever picked up my call.  On top of that, I sent an email around the middle of the afternoon, but no one responded to that.

The curious thing is that money has yet to be paid out and by not helping much with the crew....the company is simply wasting time.

My boss then put the cherry on this cake....wanting to know precisely each piece missing.  This means I'll spend 90 minutes today....going over the contract and trying to figure out how each piece fits.  I'll be helped by my associate, the facility manager.  Between the two of us....you can figure we'd charge around $40 an hour for anything we do.  So far, this week, we will have invested around $1000 just playing tag and monitoring this entire mess.  The measuring and piecing together of what is missing?  That will consume $90 roughly.  All because the idiots never simplified the stupid modular furniture and never delivered all the pieces.

Yes, I do hate modular furniture, and its for a good reason.

A German Story

It's an interesting German story.  One of the 'legends' of Germany is the Gorch Fock....a mast & sail boat that the German navy uses to train junior officers.  It's a vessel out of the 1800s and routinely used today to take junior cadets out on long voyages and introduce them to the harsh environment of sailing.  If you bring up the topic....everybody in Germany knows the Gorch Fock.

A number of weeks ago....there was a cadet to fall from a full mast to her death.  Things kinda went downhill in a hurry when the Captain tried to order crew to continue the mast duties.  Yes, you still have to climb to the top to rig up the masts.  Well...the remaining crew took the climbing duty as unnecessary and too harsh.  They rebelled and refused.

In essence.....a mutiny took place.

They ended up in a port, and the German navy ordered the Captain to fly out, and a crew was flown in to sail the boat back....minus the Captain and his student crew.

A number of folks came up to blast the German military....especially the Secretary of Defense....Von Guttenberg.  It was thought that the leadership of the German military had allowed a number of things to occur.  It was discovered that the instructor crew allowed boozing and various unauthorized activities to take place.

This week.....it came out that this female student that fell.....was severely overweight.  She stood around 5'2" and weighed near 180 lbs.  Based on US regulations....the max she could have weighed and been allowed to stay in the military would have been around 135 lbs at that height.  She was basically 45 pounds overweight and likely the worst possible candidate to send forty feet up on a mast.

Why did the instructors allow her to remain onboard?  No one has explained that.  The folks who dumped on the chief of German defense?  Well....they've kinda shut up now and avoiding any negative comments at all.

There are simple rules that the US military keeps in effect to ensure you don't have people of great weight trying to accomplish thing that are practically impossible.  I'm guessing that the German navy probably had some rules but just chose to overlook most of those because they needed volunteers and were desperate to  keep anyone who raised their hand.

What Happens in Bama, Stays in Bama

Being from Bama....sometimes involves a great deal of pondering.

Yesterday....out of Goodwater, Bama....we had a shooting.  The facts as of today?  A case had been brought up in some local court, to be tried in a townhall courtroom......where the guy was accused of a domestic dispute.  He'd been injured in a car accident prior to this and broke a hip....so naturally, he was hobbling around on two crutches.  I would suspect that he had a few drugs to help kill the pain as well.

So the city judge came to a decision, which went against the guy.....and he was a might-bit upset.  At this point, he started waving his two crutches around.

Facts are cloudy after this point.  Some say he tried to reach for a gun.  Some said that he was just waving the crutches around.  But the one cop on the scene felt the situation was out of hand and tried to push the guy down.....then perceived him reaching for his weapon....and shot him once.  Then as the guy went down.....shot a second time.

Both shots went into his gut but he appears to be in survivable condition.  Folks around Goodwater are a bit upset, saying that the guy should have been tased instead of shot.  Some are just upset about the second shot, saying the first one was justified and the second one wasn't.

State cops got called out and will have to sort this out.  I'm guessing they'd rather this not turn into a big episode, but they probably will have to interview at least twenty folks and collect statements.  My guess is that the guy will get another charge or two dumped on him but the court will feel sorry and just let him off the hook at the end.

The bottom line?  Well....this all started with a domestic situation and if he hadn't argued with his wife....he'd never been dragged into city court, never been charged with anything, had his car accident, had the broke hip, waved any crutches around a court to threaten folks, or been shot by some city cop.  The Bama morale of the story....always agree with your wife.