Catching Up

There are times when life intrudes.  Right now, what with work and the general winter hibernation period, we’ve been spending all the cycles trying to keep on top of the other things in life, aside from RoadDave.  But, we have had a chance to catch our breath and attack the keyboard:

Whitney Houston passing was sad and distressing, not just because she was relatively young, at 48, but more for the underlying reasons.  Those will eventually come out, but one can make educated guesses.  Fame is a killer, pure and simple. 

Mitt or Newt?  We can’t actually believe the number of news cycles being devoted to those miscreants as well as the hangers-on.  Rick, Rick, Harold and the four or five other meat puppets who ‘threw their hat into the ring’ for the Republicans.  Newt shouldn’t be allowed to run for any actual political office beyond “County Retardate ”  He makes Nixon look honourable.  Willard (Mitt) Romney has been taking personality suppressants for so long that one longs for another Ed Muskie or Tom Eagleton to inject some excitement into the campaign.  Obama might be a disappointment, but the alternatives from the Republican Party are causing the stock price of Tena to increase ten-fold as reporters stock up on absorbent undergarments to preclude evidence of pissing themselves laughing.

The Euro Zone Debt:  Greece has fallen and can’t get up.  The last person to leave Hungary has promised to turn off the lights and lock the door, while Italy has taken a sixteen week government subsidized vacation to Spain.  That leaves France and Germany as the Bank of Last Resort for the rest of the EU.  The math isn’t working anymore but nobody has the stones to say “Screw it, we’re done.”  That would mean a number of banks in the EU would have their stock reduced to cat box filler status.  That’s a problem for Bankers and Stock Thieves, not the rest of us.    

Winter:  It’s been wobbly.  Vicious cold, followed by a thaw cycle.  Roads and sidewalks are sheets of glare ice that salt can’t melt and sand can’t penetrate.  The only folks happy about that are orthopaedic surgeons who have to reassemble the hips, knees, elbows and arms of those who have gone for a splat.  Right now, the only safe place is bed, under a blanket.

Middle East:  Syria is getting more YouTube coverage than anyone else, except piano-playing Lolcats, as the government puts the boots to the citizens.  Bashar (Bobby) Asad isn’t too keen to give up the usual trappings of despotic power and figures that tanks firing AP rounds at citizens armed with cardboard posters is fair game.  Meanwhile Egypt, the Arab Spring poster child, hasn’t figured out how to employ their citizens, or get the economy out of the toilet.  Hey, why not trying making things that other people want to buy, then selling it to them for a profit? 

Energy Prices.  Obama cans the KeystoneXL pipeline from the Canadian oilsands;  we’re happy about that and not for environmental reasons.  For four hundred years Canada has cut down the trees or dug out the ore to have it sold back to us later.  We say we’ll get the oil out of the sand, turn it into gasoline and sell you the finished product at a merely grotesque profit.  Pulling stuff out of the ground does nothing for our economy and if China is willing to pay more than the US, then we’ll sell it to the highest bidder as a finished product.  That’s what the free market is all about baby.