Another fine mess

Here is a picture of Congressman Laurel and Congressman Hardy. You might know them. They once tried to deliver a piano to a house and ended up destroying the house.

You might even be in their congressional district and voted for them.

You probably heard about Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson getting down on one knee and pleading with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He needed her. Clearly he picked a bad moment to leave his wife and propose to someone else's, but now is not the time to dwell on that. Let's leave their personal lives out of this for a moment and focus.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, certainly focused on the key issue when he said "This legislation is giving us a choice between bankrupting our children and bankrupting a few of these big financial institutions on Wall Street that made bad decisions." Yeah, who are these Wall Street fat cats anyway? I'm sure hauling sacks of money from one big financial institution to the next pays well--for them--but what about the rest of America?

We asked them for funding to keep credit from freezing up throughout this nation, and Congressman Laurel and Congressman Hardy took this as their cue to deliver a piano.

O.K., I don't understand it. The good news is we have nothing to fear, as is clearly evident on President Alfred E. Newman’s face.

Today's silver lining

It was another slightly bad day on Wall St. today. Some people are calling today's 449 point drop the "second worst day of the year." But to me it is the second worst day of the week.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University and winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, offered some commonsense suggestions today for preventing another Wall St. crisis. I think he has a point.

However, if I may take a moment to reflect, it is at times like this that I think of the following words of The Yellow Emperor's Classic on Medicine:

treating a disease that has alredy developed . . . is like digging a well after you've become thirsty or making weapons after the battle is over.

So wrote Chinese scholars in the third millenium BCE.

This is true of so many things in life, but after all these thousands of years how many of us are wise enough to understand something this obvious? Or at least wise enough to ascertain which of our potential leaders might be wise enough to understand this and nominate financial regulators accordingly?

The premise of this movie . . .

. . . is that a high-school graduate, state beauty queen, hockey mom rises from mayor of a town of 5,000 in Alaska to governor to president of the free world in the first 15 minutes--and then the high jinks begin. She would be vice president to the oldest U.S. president ever elected, see; and he drops off the scene in the first reel. I know it sounds farfetched, but it’s a comedy, not some realistic drama with high stakes. Think of it as a kind of King Ralph meets Baby Mama. I think Tina Fey for the lead, with Amy Poehler as co-writer with her. It’s a fun, heartwarming family film. Sarah, that’s the hockey mom who ends up as president, has five kids and a blue collar husband in tow. Let’s set this in Alaska--and then the action moves to Washington, D.C. Oh, it’s the usual stock characters:

• There’s the husband, Todd, blue collar worker in the oil industry, snowmobiler, fisherman, beauty contest judge


• There’s an ex-brother-in-law, age thirty-six, with three kids from four marriages, who uses a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson


• There’s the pregnant teenage daughter and her hockey-playing aspiring redneck boyfriend


• There’s the cranky neighbor and, well, you get the idea.

Now I know what you’re thinking. People in Alaska will feel picked on. They’ll say “Why don’t you pick on Alabama.” Or “Why don’t you pick on Staten Island.” Well, Alaska has a larger population than Staten Island. Besides, it wouldn’t make sense: Staten Island does not have a governor. Anyway, it’s a comedy. No one would believe these people are real. And, in the end, they have a heart of gold.