What in the Hell has happened to us?

It is easy to blame President Obama, but he's just a symptom. For some reason Americans occasionally decide to hate themselves and go into a major funk. We send our economy into the toilet, start firing people and electing well-intentioned incompetents to national office.

Now Americans are either looking for a bailout or loathing those who are. We express an impotent rage by fighting over tax increases or gay marriage, when the real problem is we have collectively drank the "Stupid-and-Whiny" Kool-Aid.

America, we need to get a grip.

The Carter years, which followed the Ford years, which followed the Nixon years, which came on the tail of the Viet Nam years and the Johnson Administration was our last major Stupid-and-Whiny episode. It's easy to give President Reagan credit for pulling us out of that one, but he only showed us the way.

But I remember once hearing someone say "sometimes you need a Carter to get a Reagan". Maybe we needed an Obama to get who we really need to step up.

In the meantime, America and my fellow Americans, we need to pull our heads out of our fourth point of contact. When we do, things will start to improve.

Here is some "Street Talk" for you

Posted 4/12/2009 5:58 AM PDT on The Sacramento Bee
The problem with the Bee in a nutshell, or perhaps an eggshell:

No Happy Easter. Anywhere. So what's up with that?

Going through the paper this morning, the only person to say happy Easter was columnist Jeanne Phillips, a rather pleasant irony!

The Bee is having trouble, just like other papers are having trouble for a number of reasons. But one in particular is that they are so out of touch with their community of readers that they won't even wish them a happy Easter even though they must know most of them celebrate it.

I'm not talking about images of Christ on the cross for goodness sake! They could have the Easter Bunny, or even images of decorated eggs. For heaven's sake (or not), acknowledge the holiday!

The street talk angle here is simple. People do mention it to each other. Personally, I have other things more important to me than getting all hot under the collar about seasonal greetings (remember Season's Greetings?) but a lot of people do, and for every person who mentions something they are bothered by there is a larger number who say nothing.

Happy Easter and Merry Christmas are not going to save you. But recognizing things that are important to your readers, even if they are not important to you will go a long way to bringing your newspaper to its own salvation.

Happy Easter!

I must need more coffee. I was reading the Google News and saw the headline Madagascar Swears in New President and my first thought was why does Madagascar have to swear in our president?

For all I knew, this practice may have gone all the way back to George Washington.
I’m hoping it only seemed like it took thirty seconds to realize the story referred to Madagascar’s president and not ours.

Then it occurred to me that this could in fact be a useful tradition to begin with our new President. I suggest a very slow sailing ship. Large, luxurious and very comfortable of course. He is the President you know. It could be called Sail Boat One.

In fact, carrying a great idea even farther, we could load the Senate, the House and any elected official in the California State Capital as well. They could all take a big, slow ride to Madagascar and who knows; by the time they return things will probably be a lot better.

They should be back in about three years with a fair wind.

Why we need to be careful with President Obama

Like everyone else, I watched the President on Leno. Unlike everyone else, I’m willing to admit to it. But I figure why not? He’s the President. He plans to spend a lot of my money helping me improve my life so I enjoy any opportunity to listen to what he has to say, and if I watch while I have one hand resting on my wallet, well that’s an old habit and he’s not the first politician who has inclined me to do it.

The balloons and beach balls flew back and forth, which was no surprise. What was a surprise, although now I think I know why it shouldn’t have been, was when the President got a bit testy after Leno asked him about Treasury Secretary Geithner and went into his “I’m the man and the buck stops here” modality.

But once again, I realized why we have to be careful with President Obama. Smart guy that he is, he knew that all sorts of part-time pundits who probably have better things to do with their time would be going on about Leno, the President and the softball questions he would get. So even though there was no real reason for it, there is at least one sound bite with him being serious, determined and presidential.

All part of the act I guess.

Swell, now we are the terrorists.

With regard to bailing out the banks…

The president said. "It was the right thing to do, even though it's infuriating, even though it makes you angry. ... Here's the problem, It's almost like they've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger. You don't want them to blow up. But you've got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger."

Full text at:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Economy/story?id=7119504&page=1

Far be it from me to stand up and defend banks, but Mr. President, that was one hell of a thing to say.

If the public takes a look they will see that one type of institution that is not receiving bailouts is credit unions.

No, we’re not perfect and credit unions have been known to fail. That said, credit unions generally speaking, are prudently run. It is actually ironic because the bankers frequently tell us we are over-capitalized, and that we should put those extra pennies to work. Not lately though.

But comparing them (banks) to terrorists with bombs strapped on and fingers on the button is unhelpfu

A Brief Case For Not Paying the AIG Executive Bonuses.

CONTRACT - An agreement between two or more competent parties in which an offer is made and accepted, and each party benefits. The agreement can be formal, informal, written, oral or just plain understood.


I do not know what the details of the employment contracts that were made between the incompetent pixilated reprobates of AIG and the blood-sucking charlatans of questionable parentage who are now benefiting from taxpayer largesse by accepting $165,000,000 in bonuses.

Note to the respected reader: Bloggers don’t even need to pretend to be impartial.

Consider this:

There must be a good and valid consideration, motive or inducement to make the promise upon which a party is charged, for this is of the very essence of a contract

What is supposed to happen in any contractual exchange is a meeting of the minds: We hired you to make money, not to run us into the ground.

I would submit that there was no meeting of the minds between these execs getting huge bonuses at the expense of the taxpayers who bailed them out because of what resulted from their poor performance.

There was no meeting of the minds.

While I am writing this, the TV is saying they may demand the bonus amount back from AIG if they insist on paying it anyway.

I did the math. That amounts to 0.09 percent. Somehow, I don’t believe that will hurt much.

Anyway, I believe this is a very good case for denying these people their bonuses. I rest my case.

Terrorists

When we incarcerate criminals, we do so for three reasons. The first is to protect the public, the second is to exact penance and the third is to rehabilitate the felons themselves. This works fairly well in the first instance and also the second. Number three has a pretty spotty record.

Rehabilitation is predicated on the idea that the criminal understands, on some level, that what they are doing is wrong and that if we can just tap into that somehow, the felon will see the error of their ways and head down the straight and narrow path. This does not work with terrorists. They are convinced they are right and that their methods are perfectly just.

I bring this up specifically because of Sara Jane Olson, AKA Kathleen Soliah, a convicted urban terrorist who is being released, I believe today, to finish out her sentence as a parolee in Minnesota.

I also bring it up because President Obama keeps getting closer to letting bygones be bygones vis-à-vis the Guantanamo Bay detainees. I have a queasy feeling that he is going to hem and haw a lot as he lets most of them go one by one.

I’m glad he wants to stop torturing them, and water boarding is torture in my opinion. We don’t torture people, even terrorists here in America. But letting them go is something else entirely.

I’m very uncomfortable with the due process issues where the detainees are concerned. I have no doubt that had they been picked up on a street corner on some drug charge, they would have been sprung in a day or two, and the charges dropped a week later for lack of evidence.

I get it. Really.

But everyone knows these are bad guys. Some are worse than others but they are all very dangerous. When we start getting all sanguine about the time that has passed and start thinking they have learned their lesson, we are seriously mistaken.

They hate us. That is fairly common. They are fanatics. That in and of itself simply means it is pointless to try and convince them otherwise.

They are dangerous fanatics who are willing to put their ideas into action. If we let them go, they will.

The president needs to reconsider his plans.