Job Growth Solved by the Part Employee

Wow!  The Big O wants to give employers, especially small ones, big tax credits, $5000, for hiring each new employee.  That's great!  If you still have your business.  Or if your business makes a profit and actually pays taxes.  Which leaves out Oil Companies.

Really small businesses (No, George, not Small-Caps and why aren't you in Haiti?) often can not afford to hire on full person who might double their workforce.  Paying these new employees takes cash or credit cards you haven't maxed out already.  Not paying their payroll taxes sends you off to Kansas, too.

The solution is the Part Employee or, more accurately, the Derivative Employee.  Don't hire a complete employee.  Some of Wall Streets Quants--those discredited investment Geeks back to wearing propeller caps and living in packs just across the hall from a blond bombshell--should be tasked with creating computer programs to slice up, virtually, that is, new employees into tiny pieces that even your laid-off-and-now-entrepreneurial-handyman/consultant can hire. 

Even Part-timers are too big and costly for most small business to add on right now.  Quants would use smaller fractions, no doubt, but one-ten-thousandth is illustrative.  Say, you only need some marginal increase in workforce.  In your case, then, 23/10,000ths of an employee's intelligence, coupled with 400/10,000ths in shelf-stacking power and 172/10,000ths in touch Blackberry thumbing might do the trick. At least until carpal tunnel syndrome shuts down the thumb joints or the Republicans take over again.

Throw in around 463/10,000ths of an Illegal to keep your diced wages down and the potted Bonsai on your desk groomed.  

A professional blogger might need someone with 9,000/10,000ths in spelling ability and 100/10,000ths in sense of humor.  You get the idea.  The Quants would algorhythmically slice employees up into ever smaller, more esoteric bytes, like Cuisinarting carrots just short of a puree.

I don't know if the $5000 tax credit would apply to each ten-thousandth of a Derivative Employee.  Probably not, now that I've laid out the program.  Maybe I should have waited until after the filibuster.

There is something for the Republicans in this.  Profits would no doubt soar if newly chatty giant corporations could apply this new Derivative Employee scheme to current employees.  But that is another thing altogether and will have to wait until Big Brown becomes the lightly-crusty President Pro-Tempura of the Senate.

Yes, I heard you, but it wasn't why I came up with this plan.  That would be self-serving.  You are right, though, these Derivative Employees can be--should be--paid in my own newly amassed and partially hedged currency, Nano-dollars.

Bank Bonus Scandal. One Solution.

Here we go again.  Bank Bonus Scandal Season.

Banks are paying out pretty much every spare dollar to employees.  Each one, you see, has to pay tons of freshly printed money to keep all the talented stars that guided it so well to the bottom of, well, a well, that it had to look up for a bucket of Government aid.  Which aid was attached to a thick rope needed because of that bank's largeass (which is Latin or Greek for... it's obvious).

The Feds forced the banks to shed a few hundred million pounds (converted into dollars, it's more) of largeass so that the Treasury could crank the banks up out of the metaphorical well.

Some banks were so crazed to regain their largeass that they actually paid the Feds back.  All the better to restore the bonus practices that rewarded top producers of catastrophes, less these valuable types flee to... another well, I guess.  Citi, which never sleeps, paid employees so much it ended up with a loss.

How do those bonuses compare to investor dividends, kind of the reason to buy a bank stock in the first place?  Sorry, but if you see dividends out there, you might want to see a shrink.

All the Bernanke's, Geithner's and Dodd's in the world can't solve this bonus dilemma.  Surprise.  But I can.

Pay all bank bonuses in Nano-Dollars.

Nano-Dollars were invented by Quants, the Geeks of Quantum theory investing fame, even before Venezuela double devalued its Bolivar.  Nano-dollars are the way I make... will make money off of this blog (although the offer to sell it out to non-bank corporations for free speech purposes remains open.  I doubt banks will be bidding after today).  If you click (please, one lousy click) on the Google Adsense or Amazon ads on this page, I get, like, a zillion nano-dollars.  A nano-dollar is too small to see.  You can't even ponder how many get sucked into a black hole (a gravitational well, you know, like your VISA). 

The nano-dollar is something around 10 to the minus nine dollars.  It is a lot smaller than a quantum dot and harder to see than that tenth of a cent in interest you are getting for your regular dollar presently stowed safely in a money market account (instead of that Pacific Rim ETF sitting at the bottom of another well I don't want to think about).  Nano-dollars won't disappear into your couch, assuming your furniture was not repossessed along with your house, because they were never in you pocket in the first place.

The key is that a bank could give billions of nano-dollars to its CEO, CFO, CTO and CFSO (the newly created Chief Free Speech Officer) and still have plenty of regular dollars to give shareholders, a class that includes your mutual funds, by the way.  Of course, they can't pay their Quants with nano-dollars because Quants know how unmeasurable nano-bucks are without an electron microscope. 

Fortunately, all the derivative and hedge fund hawkers don't understand physics, negative exponentials or long division any better than mortgages.  They will hurry home all puffed up and wave their nano-dollar checks at their spouses.  "Look, Darling.  I got a bonus for 2009 of Ten Billion Nano-Dollars!  I'll bet that asshole Jones, next door, will positively sh_t himself!"

You know that asshole Jones, who probably works for a bank, too, will.  Positively.  And next year, he'll demand a of billions in nano-dollars.  Soon, Warren Buffet will be pricing his stock in nano-dollars so you can buy some Berkshire Hathaway shares without hitting the lottery or going to Heaven.

It sounds very workable to me.  In the meantime, I'm about to have several zillion more nano-bucks to invest in nano-slots in Pittsburgh's new Casino, all thanks to a single click on that Google ad on the right column of this blog.

You promised.

It's Healthcare Yet Again and It's Huge

I didn't bring it up, The Big O did.  He didn't say anything substantive about it, just that he hasn't given up on those two incompatible bills waiting in Congress for Big Brown to get seated and, then, to stop talking.  TBO and the Congressional bills will force Universal Healthcare Insurance Coverage by 2030 or a year after the melting of the Himalayan Glaciers, whichever is later.

Those bills, I believe, will require that you buy health insurance from Blue Cross or some other insurance company, unless you are a CEO, a union welder or a direct descendant of a Congressman.

The bills don't do any of the things that TBO had promised when he and that other guy really had to make serious promises, but the bills sound like they do.  One great thing, I believe both bills, allow only one precondition--honest, only one--insurance companies can use to bar you from getting that nice $600 a month policy.

One precondition:  Being born with Original Sin.

Sound tough?  Yeah, well, let 'em prove you were...

I'll be damned.  I just read both bills cover-to-cover and it looks like we have to prove we weren't.

So, if Congress' idea of Universal Healthcare won't cut it, what is TBO to do with all us uninsured and now pretty much uninsurable?

As usual, I think I have the answer.  Create a Healthcare Universal Group Endowment, an independent Federal Entity (a word we use when we don't know what something is), like the Post Office, but with no pretense of offering services.  HUGE would then hire all the uninsured to work for it for $100 a month, tax free.  Wait, don't scoff just yet.  Give them Senator-level health care insurance, too.  (Except illegals and their children, who probably make more than $100 dollars a month already.  The children, I mean.  They can still go to any nearby ER.)

One last thing:  You join up with HUGE or you go to jail in Kansas.

What would someone like me do at HUGE?  Wait on the beach by my cell phone in case I get a call ordering me into Public Service.  Whatever that is.  Oh, I forgot, being a Senator is Public Service.  I can do that and without a Blackberry playing K-Street stripper videos during TBO speeches.

I suppose I could negotiate with our local hospital or clinic for better prices for all us HUGE employees.  Or hammer the Medicine Shop up the street down to Walmart drug prices.  I'd do both for $100 nano-bucks (definition coming tomorrow)!

To be completely truthful (this once), I didn't come up with this alone.  A faithful reader of this blog suggested just moving everyone to Massachusetts and use their Commonwealth Operation Massachusetts Merciful Insurance Endowment universal healthcare system.  That is a great idea and COMMIE works great, only Boston is too expensive a place to live already. So I tweaked her modest idea a little into my HUGE concept.

It was pretty tough, actually.  I had to arbitrarily reverse the order of "Healthcare" and "Universal".  And what is an "Endowment"?

Still, HUGE goes COMMIE one better by using Federal Prison as encouragement to participate.  It is surely government at its best.  And, paraphrasing Mrs. TBO, For the first time, I am proud to be a soon-to-be-insured American.

State of the Union: What's Missing?

The State of the Union speech is a piece of dreck that the Constitution seems to inflict on the President of the United States, ready or not.  Maybe not every week, but from time to time.  I am quite sure that George Washington (George I, if you are counting) did not give the speech in Prime Time, preempting far more informative or entertaining stuff.  Maybe, it started with TV.  More's the pity.

My favorite current President, The Big O (TBO, to his ADHD followers) gave his first one tonight.  I'm sure he said things no one has dared say before, chanted "jobs, jobs, jobs" twice and sang "Tiny Real Estate Bubbles" in Hawaiian. Maybe I was in the kitchen opening a box of wine.

Republicans must surely have very sore asses right now, but their hands were occupied with their Canadian Blackberry's getting cures from K-Street.  The Democrats applauded more and stood up, too, but wished they were having dinner with a lobbyist and his pretty blond escort.

TBO, in the end, was right.  Americans are not convinced.  We are pulling together, as if under water, all fifty states, a few territories, probably Puerto Rico.  There's one big hole, though.  If you look on Google Earth, you'll see it, stuck between Virginia and Maryland.  Aside from the Potomac and a couple thousand limos, it is simply empty, a void.

Try and count the number of useful Representatives and Senators, Justices and Presidents. Wait, let me try.  With both hands in my Honduran-fabricated pants pockets and my toes securely in some Indonesian-made sneakers.

Wow, that was quick.  I'm done.  How about you?

Toyota Stops Selling. Suddenly.

Can it be?  Toyota has stopped making Camry's and Corolla's?  And it is telling its dealers to stop selling them?  Due to quality concerns?  No way.  Really?

Really.

The story seems to be that Toyota has a problem with these best-selling cars.  But so does GM and Ford, last seen chugging along way behind in a Camry's rear-view sale volume mirror.  How bad a quality problem can a Toyota car have?

This raises a lot of question marks (see above).  Toyota has already recalled over four million US sold cars, more than it, and almost everyone else, for that matter, sold in 2009.  They seemed to have recalled that the cars don't work quite right.  In large part, they were built well and looked sweet, that's for sure.  They still have great acceleration for their respective classes of vehicles, but, I guess, it ends there.

Or, more accurately, not.

These cars love to accelerate so much that they will just suddenly do it on their own.  And keep on doing it until you land in the ocean, if you are lucky enough to as live near to an ocean as I do.  Your new Camry might generate more G force than the last Space Shuttle roaring into the skies of Florida and later landing in the drink, too.  Except, NASA's ten thousand MIT and Cal Tech PhD's carefully planned for all that and your less schooled Camry didn't even hint at it.

Toyota did assure us all that this sudden-and-endless acceleration is even rarer than that Space Shuttle launch, does not cost nearly as much and won't require a tow back to Texas.

So.  Have you driven a Ford lately?  It might not be as exciting as a Corolla, but it won't deform your cheerful smile into Zombie-face, either.

Party's over, Geeks

No more worshiping Geeks  Not for me.

Or you, either, if you're smart (but not too smart).

Not after what I read yesterday on the Wall Street Journal site. Normally, you would only want one of their guys to write an editorial for your birdcage, but not this time.  Reporter Scott Patterson outs the Geeks in his book "The Quants" and published an article about it for those of us who can't get through a whole book.

Maybe that "Quants" designation is short for Quantum Theorists but it basically means "Geeks".

You think the world is topsy turvy now?  Then it was turvy topsy before it became the current tospsy turvy.  Wall Street used to run by investment bankers, security lawyers and people so rich they owned the bankers and lawyers.  Somewhere along the line, it appears, the Geeks took over.  It took a while, as they gradually crafted all the programs that controlled buying, selling and inflating stocks.  Pretty soon, the Geeks had their own investment vehicles and, no, not mint '57 Chevy's.  And those Geeks drove their fancy vehicles right into the East River in late 2007, faster than a recalled Camry.

Which is fine, except they dragged the rest of us pedestrian investor types with them.

Time was, you wanted your precious daughters to marry doctors, quarterbacks, even security lawyers.  Now, you'd jump at an assistant manager of the Geek Squad or a master of Grand Theft Auto.  Geeks have their own TV shows, too.  On the one I  watch, "Chuck", the head geek is at least as spy, too.  The geek on "Numbers" is practically FBI.  But along comes "The Big Bang Theory", raising geeks who are just geeks to near-Emmy status.

And we loved all the damned geeks. Me, too.

Not any more, pal.

The geeks are the ones who modeled harmless mortgage-backed securities into the derivatives that even Greenspan didn't understand.  And they created a virtual stock market that acted so much like the real thing, they thought it was the real thing.  Only, they weren't smart enough to program their own panic into their algorithms.  Thanks to them, your 401K is worth less than a truckload of wet Chinese drywall.

So lock up your daughters--and maybe your wife, for that matter--when the next nerd comes over to reboot your WiFi-n router or make your Bluetooth mouse actually point at something.  Do not let your kids watch "Big Bang Theory".  No more video games like Resident Evil 5 or Guitar Heroes, Beatles or not.  Get them  "War and Peace" or a catcher's mitt.

I'm not saying geeks are evil or not funny, but if one lives next door, quietly report him to TIDE or the local neighbor watch, at least. Remember, it's your daughters we're talking about.

The Constitution is Frozen in Time. Unless It Isn't.

My previous post may have glossed over the real issue decided by Justice Tony and the Scalia Court, as it is now called, on January 21, 2010.  Not intentionally... Okay, intentionally, but only because it would be complicated and, worse, sillier than a Newt Gingrich essay on Family Values.  And I hadn't figured it out.  But this is too important a ruling to leave unexplained.

Does the Constitution protect all forms of speech?  If I am a Scaliaist, I'd have to say, "It did last Thursday."

The Constitution is not an organic document, except that it was printed on organic matter, but it was dead organic matter.  And the Constitution is like that.  It only incorporated ideas, modes, mechanical devices and the very law of the late 18th century, as well as all manner of different spelling of any given word.

Simply put, the First Amendment is from that time.  It protects freedom of speech, the Gutenberg press and religion, as long as God is a Christian.  We are only interested in speech for the moment.

Scaliaists, such as I, have long held that the Constitution and its first batch of Amendments only restrict the Federal government in restricting rights as they were in 1787 through, 1791.  That is when Virginia got around to ratifying the bedrock Bill of Some Limited Rights. Of course, the Constitution and the various Rights were discussed ad nauseam (the use of Latin is protected, of course, if not desirable) even before being officially adopted.

Cars were not invented until after 1791, so hiding something in your car should not be protected by the Fourth Amendment, unless it is crystal meth, which did not exist then either.  Hence, the Fourth Amendment does not protect you from a police search of your car because your tail light was broken.  Tail lights did exist in 1791, even if they burned whale oil and were often cracked, so they are acceptable rationale for avoiding the Fourth Amendment.

But speech is the key to democracy.  Everybody talked in 1791.  So talking is protected, unless you yell fire in a crowded theater, unless there really is a fire, fires having existed in 1791, too.  Everybody who could talk or write with a quill pen bitched about the government, so those modes are protected. Using a hand-operated printing press is protected and so is shouting like a town-crier.  But what about on-demand movies showing up on your TV with an honest appraisal of the demon Hillary Clinton.

Well, demons did exist, so that part is fine by the First Amendment.  Hillary herself didn't, so she's not protected.  Many people would speak on-demand, so on-demand is protected.  But TV?  Including, those really nice 55" LCD or Plasma sets at Best Buy?  That is not so obvious, is it?  They are sort of like really clear billboards, but billboards only existed to tell you how few people lived in your town in 1791 and never counted the local demons.

Here you see the Scalia Court dilemma.  This stuff is complex.  TV's weren't around in 1791, so anything appearing on them can't be protected by the First Amendment, unless the screen shows only a wood plank with the population of your town on it.  That means Congress can regulate speech, including corporations' (they having existed in 1791), that shows up on TV or even the Internet, the invention of which I can remember myself and thank you Al Gore.

But that is not the point.  We need more money for political campaigns, especially since that guy, who shall remain nameless to us Scaliaists, except maybe as code-named The Big O, came along raising scads of millions on Al Gore's invention.  So never mind what we Scaliaists have said in the past.  Things change.  TV is the town crier of the day.  That Web thing is like a printing press only in the clouds

So.  Let the corporations speak or, since they don't actual have voices or quill pens, let them pay unlimited amounts of money to have politicians and, one hopes, bloggers speak for them.

I guess it wasn't so complicated after all.  Just silly.

Hurry! This Blog for Sale

Now that the Supreme Court has said that corporations can contribute as much as they want to exercise their free speech, I am offering this Blog for sale to any corporation, but especially AIG, Goldman Sachs, Exxon-Mobile, Walmart and any American-based Chinese Red Army subsidiary.  (I'd include Amazon and Google, too, but I've kind of sold the right side of the blog to them  already).

What free speech is more free than a blog?  And its influence can be virtually unlimited.  (I said "can" be.)

In freeing heretofore politically mute corporations, Justice Anthony ("Tony" to his corporate friends) Kennedy mentioned this blog--though not by name, I'm still sure it was this one--as a reason to give corporations unbridled right to free speech, but especially political speech. 

So, come on, Corporations.  Don't waste it all on politicians who won't stay bought longer than Conan O'Brian.  My blog, you can keep.

Maybe a consortium can buy my blog.  Realizing that free speech is going to be very expensive, I invite all health insurance companies can get together and buy this blog, and I, at least, might waive all preconditions.

With freedom, too, comes competition.  Justice Tony has removed the shackles that have kept corporations powerless to influence political campaigns for ages and they will be eager to exercise their most basic of human rights.  Corporations can now pour unlimited money into speech, especially since Tiger Woods doesn't get any.  With the decision itself is barely cold, does it seem I am acting inappropriately quickly?  You bet.  I am worried sick that some of their billions will be siphoned off in the usual and less enriching ways before it finds its way to me and this blog. For example:

• Congressman will take a leaf from NASCAR and wear hundreds of logo-laden badges on their jackets, ties and slacks.  Some may only wear one, but exclusivity is very expensive.
• Checks to Presidential campaigns for $100,000,000 or so can say "Please don't regulate banks" on the memo line.
• Corporations can now supply free campaign Jets to Senatorial candidates, but, in the name of disclosure, must carry corporate brands on their tails.  Not the planes, the candidates.
  
• Corporations can pay blog writers (hint) to write speeches for Vice Presidential candidates.

I had better stop with the suggestions already.  I want the sell this damned blog first.

Which Main Street?

Ben Bernanke is in trouble.

Ben Who?  And what does he have to do with Main Street?

Ben Bernanke is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, affectionately called The Fed.  The Fed is different from "a Fed", who is a guy or gal who wiretaps your phone, reads your emails and contributes names of undesirables to TIDE.  The Fed is a big printing press that used to be America' only source of money. That was before credit cards, mortgage-backed securities and the Chinese.  It also controls the banks, or doesn't, depending on your election year status.  Nobody knows how it controls the banks, of course.  It sure doesn't seem to control bankers' hours or NSF fees at all.

Ben's term ends at the end of the month. You'd think Ben would want desperately to retire to the obscurity of a desk at Goldman Sachs or the hut in the North Woods.  President Obama wants him back, which makes him The Big O'lone on this one.  All of the House and the unlucky third of the Senate are up for reelection this year and they all sound like Ben personally favored AIG and Goldman Sachs over us plain old mortgage-happy folk.

That was Hank Paulson, George III's Exchequer Secretary, not Ben.

Even those who realize that last part, don't want to vote for Ben.  It turns out that he is a pointy-headed academic, which must be worse than a derivatives salesman.

An example is Senator Barbara Boxer (no, I did not make that up to make you giggle, but you can this once).  She is from California.  Why is that important?  Wait a second and you'll see. The Senator won't vote for Ben.  She claims to want for "Main Street to have a champion at the Fed."

Does she mean champion, like Derek Jeter or Big Ben Roethlisberger (no, I did not make that up to make you giggle twice)?  She didn't say who.  I guess she does not mean a guy from Wall Street or Princeton.

More importantly, does California even have a Main Street?  I thought it was all freeways, Golden Gate bridges and streets named Sepulveda.

You are way ahead of me.  You have a Main Street in your city, town, borough, village or ungated community.  We all do.  Some have more than one.  Does anybody live on yours?  Okay, maybe, a few, next to Wendy's.

But you know what?  Mine has three big frakkin' banks on it.

Tweets from Space. Live!

The Space age as finally entered the... Hell, I don't know what age we call it.  Maybe the Cloudy Age, which was certainly first tested in Pittsburgh and Seattle.  Whatever it is called, you probably used a Tweet to call it that.

We've spent  a lot more than the Insurance Lobby's yearly budget to send men, women and mice to the International Space and Now-Twitter Station.  It was bound to pay off in killer-asteroid avoidance for all of us and advanced tech skills for our astronauts.  TJ Creamer had the honor of sending the first truly live tweet to the eagerly waiting people of Earth.

I can't report what Creamer tweeted, because I still can't find tweets.  I may be behind the curve, but I do know that Moon walking (either kind) is very much passe.

Creamer has undoubtedly inspired countless Earthlings to leap fearlessly into 2008 and try tweeting.  Including those, who like me, have texted on occasion, but only to other people who don't read text messages.  Or who thought Tweets were something akin to a chocowate bar.

Anyway, maybe tomorrow, I'll get into it.  I'm sure I can master it.  Even a spaceman can do it.

Global Warming More Glacial

Remember Global Warming.  We ignored it starting October 2008 and really put it on ice this winter, but Climatologists tell us it is on its way, say, starting again next year.

One of the most frightening warnings was that the Himalayas, the sky-scraping mountain range that is home to Everest, would be glacier-free by 2035.  That was a lot of melted hydrogen hydroxide pounding down the slopes, most probably into Bangladesh, which wouldn't have to wait for typhoons for its extra water.

I had heard that there would be dozens of little Shangri-La's springing up in the toasty mountains, lots of fresh-tap-bottled water and damned little snowboarding.  A scary picture, indeed.

Or not.

It seems that the melting away you'll see won't be those glaciers but just some hard-won scientific credibility.

At the World Future Energy Summit, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Catastrophes (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri apologized for the little mistake.  He said they had just screwed up one stinking number and the glaciers would be staying put.  Not that they were wrong about anything else. Probably.

"Don't you even consider using one minor error to justify listening to Rush Limbaugh or using your fireplace," he surely warned.  "Global Warming is real and will eventually make all of Southern Florida a Disney Underwater Adventure, Himalayan glaciers notwithstanding. That is almost a fact."

It is actually refreshing to hear a Chairman or President of anything acknowledge a mistake, if only by the only Indian glaciologist you'll ever heard of. That does not happen very often and should give us all more confidence in the IPCC.

Except it doesn't.

Big Brown UPSet Leads to Dem Finger Painting

Not surprisingly, the Democratic Socialist Medicine Party is all fussed up about Scott Brown's upset win in Massachusetts. He just drove off with Teddy's seat and he's on his way to DC faster than a UPS truck at the end of its shift.

He's not "Brownie" any more, folks.  He's Big Brown and he's about to put the breaks on the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Sort-of-Reform movement.

It was a shocking blow to The Big O.  The Democrats will need The Ghost Whisper to keep Teddy's once-determined spirit from running screaming into the light.  Oh, and the filibuster can come swaggering out of the closet Harry Reid and Arlen Specter jammed it into back in the good old days, clearing room for a couple Health Care Rejiggering bills.

The Democrats desperately need to create a credible story to sell each other and, maybe, MSNBC.

For my follow-up post to the election and related retractions, I dug deep into my iGoogle page and saw a disturbing headline link from NPR (which I can't quote because it, too must have gone into the light).  It said, basically, the Democrats are now furiously focusing on finger painting? Great. Just Great.

Can you imagine the mess the House Democrats would produce. Not very bright, clashing colors swirling every which way with no numbers or Painter of the House to guide them. And the Senate? Well, they might never get paint on paper, since their thumbs have been up their... haven't been seen lately.

Why not just take a break for a couple weeks and brush (couldn't resist) up on real painting?

Retraction for Scott Brown and Others. Almost.

To be honest, even the best, well researched blogs make mistakes or take things out of context.  This blog is not one of those, so mistakes and exaggerations are pretty much its stock and trade. Still.

One reader (or 20%)  was upset with my near-smearing of Near-Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts.  So maybe I smudged him a little.  If this is a retraction, it is only because this reader has a brother who is a lawyer.

Here goes:  Apparently, Brownie did not draft an entire law designed to redirect rape victims to atheist euthanasia centers, or maybe France, for morning-after pills.  It was just a lame amendment that even didn't make it into a bill and didn't really involve UPS.  And no, Brownie did not drive in to vote today in a brown truck; it was green.

There was no mandated phase-in and you never would have had to worry about Jewish or Muslim doctors frantically checking their iPhones and Blackberries for guidance on treating Swine Flu, which is now h1n1 Chest Syndrome anyway (isn't that like dreaming up "venison" to replace "Bambi Meat" on 1950's menus?).  "C"hristian triage nurses would not have simply culled out infidels, the way they do scrapes, colds, broken legs and the uninsured.

And then there is Rev. Pat Robertson.  I was a tad harsh in the Orlando comment.  After some research I should have done before smudging Pat, I found that the whole gay concern involving Disney World goes back way before that gay first pride parade.  I think it started with Tinker Bell, who should have been called a faerie.  Tink was actually a really tiny but decidedly female with a great figure and legs to go with it (wouldn't she look good on a 55 inch screen?).  She also had wings that could out hum a hummingbird.  (I said wings.)  This was all long before parades were even invented.

On the other hand, I seem to recall that Florida had never, ever been hit with a really big hurricane before that parade.

So, retractions and apologies all around, especially, you, Brownie.

And that Massachusetts end-of-health-care election is pretty much over.

US Exporting Ogre Again

Finally, we have seized the day.  A major export triumph for the Fed's midgetized Dollar.  Americans can crow again about making what the world wants.

Only it is The Simpsons, The Hulk, the Terminator and Shrek.  No cars, tractors or vacuum cleaners involved.  Maybe the upside down world of Poseidon.

Upside down, indeed.

Universal Studios, the good part of the GE-Comcast-NBC-Leno deal, announced that it will build a really big theme park.  Covering the northern half of South Korea.

I guess North Korea lost out in the bidding, but Chairman Il is spec'ing a counter-theme park, DMZly Land, a scud's-throw away, based on its famously entertaining nuclear warhead technology.

The project, not built by Americans, will create 40,000 non-Americans jobs  But it is not just Koreans who will benefit: I believe the Universal personnel department will add 5000 high-paying, highly accented jobs.  In India.  Spider Man's knockoff outfits sold in the park will be fabricated in Vietnam of polyester/silk webs spun in China. 

Dudley Do-Right's ride will be built in Canada.  Nobody else knows what a Mounty is. But Dudley and Nell will be played by very attractive Koreans.  Don't worry, they will never marry.  Snidely Whiplash, at least, will be an American.  Horse will be part of an exquisite post-ride dinner.

The Cat in the Hat will complement Horse, but is a la carte.

The Revenge of The Mummy is being held in reserve until Koreans are taught what the hell a stiff-kneed, gauze-wrapped, dialog-free Mummy even is. (Hint: They are not Zombies, who are currently working relief in Haiti and Hollywood.  Ever see a Mummy do that?)

The US economy, once again the envy of the non-industrial world, will be boosted big time by Universal-Leno-Comcast executive bonuses, expected to be half a trillion wons.  Or losses.

Papists and Friends to Rule Massachusetts' ERs

Massachusettsans!  I don't see how any of you could not vote for Scott Brown.

Some religious beliefs turned legislative agendas would be Unconstitutional in China, but Brownie was uncowed.  You have to love his idea:  Any Catholic or Born-Often sitting in an ER waiting room could demand the UPSing of a traumatized woman across town, preferably to the Cult of Death Memorial Hospital, if she even asks about a morning-after-the-rape pill.

Brownie can even be seen wearing a UPS uniform in one of Martha Coakley's ads, so you know he's still all for it.

Why should hospitals, their doctors, nurses or window washers be forced to tolerate something they are sure God doesn't much care for and they, themselves, really do not like?  There is nothing I've seen in the Hydraquatic oath that says window washers should honor others' beliefs.

At first, Brownie's law would be limited to "doesn't like (or the in the more likely plural "don't like).  I mean seriously, stone-tablets really don't like.  After a short phase-in period, "don't like" would be defined as "don't like Two and a Half Men".  Me, I have a big, unshakable thing about using any left-over body parts to fix my car.  Unless it's cheaper.

I'm not sure if Brownie's law would mandate out-patient prayer only by prescription.

I'd move to Boston just vote for a guy like Brownie and eat at Legal Seafood one more time.

Okay, no I wouldn't.  But only because it's too cold and too expensive to get my car fixed.

Suspending Return Tickets

You would never expect the US Department of Fatherland Security and Disaster Disasters to show compassion.  That's not why George III invented it.  It is supposed to curtail civil liberties, raise terror alerts and read your emails.

But along comes a disastrous earthquake in Haiti, and the Katrina-Kops are suddenly all soft and humane. 

Now-temporary Secretary Janet Napolitano has announced that she is suspending Haitian deportation.  You have to admit that is awfully sweet.  A few days ago, Haitians illegal in the US were being sent home to their pretty Caribbean half-island quicker than you can get a passport with a tracking chip in it.  At that time--those good days seems ages ago now--our ousted Haitians had huts to go home to and the prospect of landing a dollar an hour job by the time you got your next 55" TV.

Well, the Haitian huts are gone and job prospects have dimmed, so Secretary Janet had second thoughts about plopping even an illegal alien down onto Hell's Beach with cameras rolling.

And her slightly less-temporary boss, sent the Navy and Coast Guard out to help out any Haitians, the one's sailing the wrong way, with their navigation.

Except there doesn't seem to be a boat or raft left in all of Port au Prince.  We'll have to help the Haitian's rebuild them, too.  It might be cheap... more humane to send a big cruise ship and sail them all to another Frenchified paradise, say Montserrat.

The Blog in the Forest

If you posted a Blog on a avatar of a tree in a virtual forest and no one reads it, is it a blog at all?

Well, it is now.

Those of you have visited before--you don't have to raise your hands; I think I know you all pretty well--you will note that this blog site is kind of mucked up with commercialism.

Sorry about that.

Life is no day at the beach.  But the Haitians already knew that. The truth is, it's hard to make any money as a writer who does not have a current novel to sell or does have a screenplay about eggs that are neither robots nor primed to explode after the opening credits.

My mother had always wanted me to be a surgeon/columnist.  But I hated the idea of putting my opinions in writing less I decide to run for President and I literally could not pith a frog in high school bio.  My middle school aptitude tests told my guidance counselor that I was best suited for farming potatoes and, after shipping most of the spuds during a blight to England, swapping sacks of them for babies in the dead of night, all the while operating from a Gypsy caravan.  Maybe, the Irish-Romanian heritage thing trumped my uncanny skill with long division and isosceles triangles.

So, I had to pursue other work, with screenplays and/or fiction getting some limited attention.

Along comes Blogging and those maternal dreams may be partially fulfilled.  At least, it is fun.  Of course, the gods who oversee jobs and executive compensation do not figure that doing something you like is acceptable homage to them.

I guess Google operates in a cloud above those gods.  Google's Blogger told me I could "monetize" my blog.  That sounded really good since I am not monetizing anything else at the moment and Christmas is taken.

So, Google was nice enough to place some ads on my Empty Glass Full blog site.  If enough people click on the ads, I get about 30 cents a month in nano-dollars.  Hey, more than I had coming in.

Then there was Amazon.com.  Great place.  I use it all the time and their Kindle operation was the first place to offer ebook versions of my, uh, twentieth century novels.  So very yesterday, I know, but I appreciate their willingness anyway. When Blogger offered to monetize my site further via an Amazon associates program, I figured, Wow, maybe, 60 cents a month.  And I may get to share my page with Taylor Swift.

So there it is, off to the side, but real obvious and... colorful.  Amazon access through my blog site.  Pretty cool and very convenient.  It ain't pretty, but making money usually isn't, unless you're, say, Megan Fox.

Bush & Clinton to Work with Devil

Yes, the Bush that does come first to mind, not the usual one.  The second one, called, with appropriate deference by some, George III.

They are going to Haiti, in the wake of a brutal earthquake, hoping to improve housing as both men did while in the White House.  Of course, during their 16 years in Washington, they had the help of the Fed, mortgage brokers and Wall Street.

In Haiti, it will only be Satan.

Rev. Pat Robertson revealed Satan's role in Haiti's government very recently, although, Pat said, Satan has been sort of President Emeritus in Haiti a long time.  That was thanks to a deal with the Haitians to force Napoleon Whatever to give it up in 1803, the same year he pulled off a sweet short-sale of the Louisiana Territory to the US for half a Bank CEO's base salary.  I think Pat would agree that Thomas Jefferson got the better deal.

Satan, apparently, has been fuming ever since, sticking Haiti with voodoo, the French language, pushy tourists and a Gross Domestic Products lower than a Bill Clinton speaking fee.  He did get even with Jefferson, as Pat Robertson will probably tell you, with something called Katrina.

Bush and Clinton can hardly make things worse in Haiti than Satan has, so they are a good choice.  One good fund raiser a piece and Haiti's housing will rise again.  Assuming China has not purchased all of 2010's the corrugated sheet supply already.

And those repossessed Katrina-FEMA trailers would look great in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince. 

It probably won't matter, but Satan may be of little help after all.  Reports have him skipping town before Bush and Clinton even land there.  We know where he's going, too.  Pat Robertson is sure Satan still has his place just outside Orlando.

Go to Google Disaster Relief Page to Help Haiti Out

Save the Dying Whales

No, not those whales.  At least, not today.  But like that.

I mean the big newspapers.  The Internet is killing them, along with music, TV and  books, while monetizing teenage chatter.  More and more people, especially those who chatter, get their news from the Web.  I know I do.  Until recently, it was a lot of AP, but Google doesn't need them anymore, either.

We all used to get papers.  We even had to recycle them.  Some of us read them.

Now, I'll bet people line their bird cages with disposable plastic liners instead of that day's Wall Street Journal Editorial Page.  Surely this accounts for the sad, smart-assed birds who still quote Alan Greenspan as an authority on--what was it?--economics.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy--the guy with the supermodel wife--wants Google to pay to a tax to save French newspapers.  And maybe French music, if there has been any since Edith Piaf.

Of course, it sounds silly.

Every once in a long while, a chance comes up to save something big on the verge, as the in the Marine Biologist episode of "Seinfeld".  This one is my latest chance.

Have Google buy everyone a cat.  There are lots of them.

That simple.  Test in France if you want.

People who have or had cats know exactly what I mean.  Open a paper and a cat will walk on it, maybe sleep on it, right over whatever you were reading.  What good is a cat that won't sit in your lap?  Like they actually kill mice very often.

Here's the key.  One of my cats, Lucy Liu, will not sit on my lap.  Six years.  I still have a lap, I know because her sister, Lila, uses it frequently.  Not Lucy Liu. She'll jump up on my desk, my chair, my bed, any table.  My lap?  Nope.

Unless there is newsprint on it.  Even a day old USA Today I oft... once borrowed from a coffee shop.  No matter, Lucy Liu is right there. And Lila watches and waits her turn, however impatiently.

We cat people all know this.  If you have a cat--here comes Google's part--you have to have a newspaper. End of "Dying Whales" crisis.

Oh, yes.  Deprive a cat of his/her newspaper and PETA will send some naked women to spray paint your door.

Coffee Run Off

So much ado over Bill Clinton's remark to Ted Kennedy that a few years before the comment, now-President Obama would have been getting Bill & Ted excellent coffee.

Please. This is Bill Clinton, the guy we called "Slick Willy" before we even knew what that really meant.  He's the Man Who Gave Us George Bush, for God's sake.

Secondly, it is not a racist remark.  Bill meant that youngish, inexperienced political operatives do the menial tasks, like getting coffee or writing tax legislation.  Interns, as Bill knows, are especially good at handling refreshment.  Of course, the Big O is nowhere nearly pretty or gilrly enough to work for Bill Clinton, so it was a joke to begin with.

Besides, race?  As Harry Reid knows, the Big O is Hawaiian.  It's why we white folk felt safe in voting for him, instead of that guy who was way too white.  He was more likely to be a surfer than a Crip (which is not to say that Crips can't have an Aloha chapter, it being a somewhat free country). 

My advice to Bill Clinton, which he won't even read:  For now, Bill, do something useful, say buzzing on over for a cozy chat with Kim Jong-Il and get your owned damned coffee.

Theory of Relativity

Say you are standing outside in some place like Naples, Florida.  Naturally, you are wearing shorts and a palm tree-laden short sleeved shirt.  Probably sandals.

And it is 40 frickin' degrees.

In your frame of reference, you are freezing your ass off and feeling incredibly stupid for moving there. Of course, you are anxious to tell everyone over the nearest sidewalk, phone, email or even blog.

Then you get an email from a couple friends back in Pittsburgh and maybe Rochester, NY, who laugh at you (LOL is the term they used).  And remind you it's 10 degrees where they still are and the white stuff up to their knees isn't sand.

Suddenly, you realize that Einstein and your own move were pretty damned smart after all.  The choice of outfit, not so much.

Great Idea on Many Levels

Finally, a good economic idea. And from, of all people and places, Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.

Their currency, the bolivar, was too expensive. In dollars, for God's sake. So Chavez has devalued the bolivar. Twice in the same devaluation. How efficient is that?

The bolivar will now be worth two values, depending on what it is buying. Brilliant! Chavez will now buy a $10 chicken sandwich for 26 bolivars and a $10 Marc Anthony download for 43 bolivars. He has actually devalued the bolivar against itself!

Why can't the US do something similar?

Essentials, like bread, cat litter, cable or a certain author's work, would be had for 50 cents on the dollar. Frivolities, like a Starbuck's Latte or a Senator's campaign contribution could be had $1.50 on the dollar. Debt held by the Chinese, maybe, $2.00 on the dollar. The potential for tricking our way out of recession--okay, we've mostly done that already--are tantalizing.

And suggestions are solicited. (Remember, under Blog policy, I will take credit for the good ones and send bad ones to TIDE.)

NY Trying Whom?

Did New York want the big 9/11 terrorism trial? Now, Mayor Bloomberg is demanding money from all of us to act as host.

Sorry, I'm not convinced. Sure, it will be more expensive than the Tony Awards or the Crystal-ball dropping shindig on New Year's Eve, but...

Think of the tourism dollars. Or, better yet, Euros. New York could hold the trial in Yankee Stadium with $500 / seat tickets in the bleachers. $10,000 for behind the judges bench. The security needed would be less than that mandated for a Tuesday Red Sox game.

And you know al Qaeda would book a Hilton or two itself. Does Bloomberg want to share all that, huh?

Join the TIDE

The Big O wants more names on the terrorist watch lists--there may be a couple hundred, I guess, with twelve for Yemen alone--much faster. "Use 'texting' abbreviations if you have to."

Great, now I can't read it.

Our National Counterterrorism Epi-Center (ONCE), the eight guys who hand-write the lists on GSA note pads, are swamped already. Of course, ONCE, harried by the political pressure, just punted yesterday and added the Dearborn Yellow Pages in one crack and damn the duplication.

Does it help that they call their central database the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. Yes, TIDE, a name which only frightens dirty socks.

How about a higher-risk database called TIDE Ultra Evil?