The Emerald Rose

Ok folks, time to get on the old, and well worn soapbox again. I will try and be brief, but I would like some feedback,please.

Everyday I wake up, check the weather (I’m a “baby boomer”, that means turning on the Weather Channel on Cable for my “Local on the Eights” conditions and forecast”,….whadda ya mean “Just look out the damn window!”). Then I flip to CNN to catch the “Hot News” they tell me I NEED to know before I hit the real world. At that point I have completed my “Sanity Test” for the day successfully. How do I know? Easy I get out of bed and begin my day instead of rolling over, pulling up the covers, crying myself back to sleep and hoping there are enough tranquilizers left to get me through it.

Enough levity. I usually , as you all know stop at the Pub and chat with my , seriously, VAST range of friends who like me enjoy a good beer at the end of the day. A few are genuine Multi-millionaires, a few just very rich dudes, some average Joe’s, some struggling young family folks, some forty year waitresses, and me, the resident “crazy dude”. We have a wall of flat-screen TV’s , AND because we all are long time customers and considered “local color” which attracts tourist trade and sales dollars, we get the TV controllers, and in fact a few “special channels” the management subscribes to just for us, like the Horse Racing Network. (No commercials, 38 channels of horse racing from around the world, live and recorded, thoroughbred, harness, grey hound you name it. Makes for some $1 max “wagering” when things are dull amongst the patrons, and saves us all that travel and fees to get into the track, park the car etc, etc.)

So back to the TV’s. Usually we have one channel on the News Headlines, one on the Weather Channel, one on the Financial Stock Market Channel and “talking heads of money”, and one on Sports, plus, because we are in the Southern United States, one on the obligatory NASCAR channel. “IS EVERYBODY HAPPY?…..YUP!”

Picture Cliff and Normie, and Woody from the old Cheers TV series, and Yup you been there. But I tend to take life and a lot of things too seriously and now a days am seriously wondering if I am the only sane dude left in the country.

The country in the last three years has sunk to its mostdangerous and financially unsound position EVER, yet Channel 3 talking political heads are blabbering on about hoe the “Recovery” has really taken hold and things are REALLY on the upswing,…blah,blah, blah. Meanwhile on the Financial Channel the “New York Money Guys” are touting the increased earnings, the “bond yields”, the record breaking sales and “bottom line” profits, and the overall “wunderkind” fueling this magnificent tribute to the strength and resilience of the American and even the World Financial Markets, Next TV over Ex-con,ex,Heavyweight Champion Boxer, and certainly brain damaged Mike Tyson is slobbering on (after all ever meet a boxer who could talk any better than “Rocky” on booz?) about how the guy in the new Hangover Two movie is using his tattoo around his eyes and it’s HIS tattoo and he should get a cut of the deal (and that was before the second beer even hot my lips!) Of course the Horsies are still running counter clockwise around the track in the dirt, and NASCAR is also running counterclockwise around the track on the hot top. (Hmmmm might be worth a comparative blog, BUT like the old movie says, “They shoot horses don’t they?”)

So my sanity, (see how I just slide from A to B to Z and all over the place? Early dementia maybe?) I read the news and as of this morning we have a 3 1/2 year INVENTORY of foreclosed homes on the market, nevermind the houses for sale, I’m talking JUST the forclosed ones, the folks who have lost them to the banks and other “Snidley Whiplash’s” of the world (Villin from the old Dudley DoRight cartoons). THREE AND A HALF YEARS worth of supply, and no demand! Visual here, imagine going to your local store and someone screwed up and they just got three and a half years inventory of MILK. Can you imagine how many gallons of milk that would be, and how much space it would take? Let alone how much money of the store it would tie up in paying for the milk? there wouldn’t be any money left for Oreo’s, or anything else!!

But the talking heads on News and Finance say we are recovering! Yet next line down on the daily news says “Unemployment is up again” (This is where my sanity gets seriously tested!) How does a country, a community, a village, a family, or a person “recover” when they don;t have a job, when they aren’t getting paid and can’t pay their bills, where they can’t buy goods and materials, and services? And if they aren’t paying their bills, buying goods and services, etc, then companies can not afford to have anybody continue to make those goods or provide those services! That makes perfect logical sense to me, how about you? So how are these companies making “record Profits” , and “record Earnings? Yes I took economics, statistics (twice even), business law, even logic and psychology,….and I ain’t got a clue! The closest I can come is this is the classic textbook definition of a term bandied about years ago called “Voodoo Economics”. When Americans don’t work we all lose. When Americans don’t buy goods and services ,…we all lose. So why is it we are “winning” and how is it we are “recovering”?

Surely this is “blue smoke and mirrors”,…..or the other option is that I simply am a really dumb bastard and haven’t got a hope in hell of understanding and should just forget it and go back and switch all the TV’s to the NASCAR channel and force myself to believe I enjoy watching them go around the track, but am secretly hoping for a colossal 25 car wreck with spectacular flames and flying vehicles, (but of course no one getting hurt) I guess the Democrats invented NASCAR to take the spotlight off of fiscal responsibility and of course the anti-christ of politics, INTEGRITY.

Nuff for today, gotta get some “real” work done,….”Peggy, another Mich Ultra please, and a Jameson chaser with it.”

“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. ”  –  Laurence Peter

-30-

PS. For those who don’t know Dr. Peter he envisioned what we now know to be the foundation of our Washington politicians,…….”In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence … in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties … Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.”   a/k/a – The Peter Principle