Republican Jonathan L. Payton is an otherwise obscure state legislator seeking reelection in Arizona. But Payton is also an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve and has asked… asked to be deployed to Iraq. He will report for duty only days before voters go to the polls because, in his words, “I had to put my money where my mouth is.” It’s a matter of record that during Vietnam Dick Cheney used five deferments to avoid the draft. As for the President, well, he simply went AWOL. And while it’s true that five sitting members of Congress are weekend warriors, they are protected by a federal weasel law that automatically assigns them to the Standby Reserve. It is rather improbable, then, that they will ever be hit with a stop loss order or lose a limb to an IED. Nonetheless, I think Lieutenant Payton is on to something. If every able bodied citizen who voted for George Bush had to serve on the front lines, we would have, even after adjusting for fraud and the elderly (recently slackened recruiting standards obviate the need to disqualify drug addicts or the criminally insane – two demographics, by the way, that overwhelmingly vote Republican), plenty of troops to clean up Iraq and to invade Iran as well.
Those of us left behind – the un-Raptured, if you will – can benignly watch summer’s last glints surrender to autumn’s leaves. And with the kiddies back in school and your swim trunks tucked furtively into the dark recesses of the old lady’s armoire, you are free, once again, to let your beer belly spill out all over the living room in celebration of the oncoming football season. The Dallas Cowboys, for those unaware, have acquired the maladaptive if supremely talented Terrell Owens, which should provide for plenty of headlines of one kind or another. What no longer garners attention in this era of outrageous salaries and free agency is the attendant carousel of roster changes demanded by the peculiar economics professional sports. (These are the same convoluted monetary forces that result in dozens of brand-new, half-empty stadiums.) Yet the San Diego Chargers had every reason to expect starting linebacker Steve Foley to take the field in Monday night’s opener against the hated Oakland Raiders.
Unfortunately, Foley’s $775,000 contract wasn’t the only thing locked and loaded as the season approached. So too was the firearm of an unidentified off-duty police officer who shot Foley multiple times outside the player’s upscale home. The cop, out of uniform and driving an unmarked Japanese sedan, maintains he observed Foley recklessly speeding and, in the interest of public safety, entered into pursuit. Foley contends he thought he was being carjacked by a crazed gunman. Either way, it’s not exactly an aberration that the fuzz would think it necessary to gun down a 6’4″ 265 lb. Negro lurking around an affluent neighborhood. Look, Paris Hilton was pulled over for drunk driving and the officers extended nothing but courtesy (well, and an offer to sniff her panties). Even Warren Jeffs, the FBI’s most wanted polygamist, was taken into custody without force even though Jeffs’ $50,000 stack of cheddar and collection of cell phones did little to betray his lily-white, Utah inbreeding. Because was rollin’ like a player in a pimped out 2007 cherry-red Cadillac Escalade, the Las Vegas police may well have gone in guns blazing. But Tupac, this time, turned out to be a cracker. (A child-molesting cracker, but a cracker nonetheless.) So the evidence clearly points to racism; cops and large Negroes, therefore, are a decidedly bad mix, which can’t augur well for the NFL, because if you ever go to a football game you’ll assuredly see a plethora of both.
Now to the hardwood where USA’s collection of superstar basketball players was drubbed out of the World Championship tournament again – this time by a Greek team suffused with sluggish no-name sharpshooters willing to play defense. Pundits who cover the NBA lament the preponderance of individual play, the dearth of off-ball movement and the relative obscurity of any strategy to prevent one’s opponent from scoring. Yet payrolls continue to skyrocket, forcing small market teams to shuffle from one city to the next like some freight train hobo. Wouldn’t you think, therefore, that Howard Schultz or George Soros could snap up one of these flagging franchises, rent some crumbling arena in Akron or Cookville, hire the Lithuanian national coach, load the roster with low-paid Euros and kick some serious ass? Then again, it might be a somewhat of a stretch to take seriously – whether on Madison Avenue or in the ‘hood – a bunch of pasty white guys in ’70’s nutter shorts and store-bought shoes.
Yet for Steve Irwin, the lesson of underestimating your opponent came with dire consequences. Filming a new underwater adventure show, the erstwhile “Crocodile Hunter” was killed on the Great Barrier Reef when a stingray’s tail shot a noxious barb through his heart. Video footage reveals no evidence that the ray was threatened or provoked before the attack, although Irwin was a bit out of his element. Still, losing one of Australia’s biggest celebrities found Parliament suspending session to honor their countryman. Prime Minister John Howard: “He was a genuine, one-off, remarkable Australian individual and I am distressed at his death.” Oscar-wining friend Russell Crowe (himself known to battle feral New York hoteliers with nothing but telephone handsets) added, “He was and remains the ultimate wildlife warrior.” After handling gobs of poisonous snakes and wrestling hundreds of crocodiles twice his size, Irwin was well aware of the hazards of his chosen profession. It would have been equally sad if not unexpected if he was devoured by the jaws of a ten-foot reptile; but a stingray? The point is that you never know from which quarter danger will emerge.
Just ask Dell Computer. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that the Round Rock, Texas computer maker would be negatively impacted when IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo. I challenge you to find any American manufacturer who can compete against the Chinese with their slave labor, unconstrained polluting and inimical disregard of intellectual property rights. But who could have foreseen Dell losing market share to domestic plodder Hewlett-Packard? Especially since H-P, unlike Dell, has refused to slash prices. Thus Hewlett was able to report a huge leap in quarterly earnings at the same time Dell saw its profits cut in half; Dell’s first mover advantage of direct shipping and just-in-time assembly has obviously evaporated as these methods have been adopted industry-wide. To wit: since H-P’s much maligned 2002 merger with Compaq, the company’s stock has more than doubled. Dell shares, over that same span, are essentially flat. Now fetching 21 and change, Dell common did in the interim visit the low 40’s, but unless you fortuitously sold at the top, you – like so many of today’s bewildered homeowners – have gained nothing save the thrill of a round trip. Those holding pat until the next rally may want to reconsider because the story, unfortunately, gets worse. Dell has issued a recall for 4.1 million laptop batteries (the largest such retraction in history) because of problems with explosions and spontaneous combustion. (For safety reasons Korean Airlines has banned passengers from bringing Dell laptops on board.) And then there’s the pesky matter of “information relating to revenue recognition” (read: cooking the books) currently being scrutinized by the SEC. Short of Michael Dell confessing to the JonBenet Ramsey killing, things could hardly deteriorate further.
With several H-P honchos facing criminal prosecution for illegally obtaining journalists’ phone records during a leak inquiry (attorneys for the defendants are planning to implement the if-the-President-can-do-it-why-can’t-we? defense), some proponents criticize the singling out of Dell; Apple, too, is under investigation (for back-dating stock options) and is burdened by the same (Sony produced) battery issue. As Conan O’Brien quipped, “A Mac fire is just like a PC fire, except it’s more hip and condescending.” And, traditionally, significantly more expensive. But even given Apple’s design and interface superiority, a low-end Mac Pro is now 30% cheaper than a comparable Dell Precision Workstation 490. How then to turn things around? Perhaps Dell could snare a multi-billion dollar no-bid contract to stuff those 4 million discarded batteries into Lt. Payton’s rucksack so that our soldiers, in a radical turn of the tables, could actually blow up the other guys.
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