Sarah Palin’s poll numbers are ebbing among Republicans as a growing number acknowledge that she does not possess the requisite intellect to serve as an elementary school librarian, let alone President of the Untied States. But that is not to say that the current occupant of the Oval Office hasn’t freebooted an idea or two from the former Alaska governor. Like that bit about hunting wolves from helicopters. Mr. Obama, frustrated with the endless failures of two mid-East ground wars, has gone after Muammar Gaddafi from the skies. And the Kosovo-like strategy has already borne fruit; Libyan rebels have retaken several cities as well as two strategic oil refineries since the aerial campaign began. And while Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh negotiates the terms of his resignation, Mr. Gaddafi adamantly refuses to go gentile into that swarthy good night. Perhaps a couple of tomahawk missiles could provide a more spectacular departure.
In a display of wanton bipartisanship, Kansas state representative Virgil Peck (R-Tyro) cribbed the same page from the Palin playbook , suggesting that the hunters in whirlybirds used to cull the feral hog population could gun down illegal immigrants as well. Pressed by reporters, Peck rejoined, “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person.” After an awkward pause, he scratched his chin and added, “I’m not too sure about their rib meat, but think of the savings to our budget.”
It is precisely because fiscal constraints do alter the fabric of society, that the Parliament in Lisbon, despite a public deficit eclipsing 8.5% of GDP, thumbed its collective nose at last-ditch austerity measures. Once Prime Minister Jose Socrates resigned in protest, President Anibal Silva had no choice but to dissolve the government. And while the European Union dithers over whether or not to bail out Portugal (recall: Greece and Ireland), Moody’s, anticipating contagion, swiftly lowered ratings on Spanish sovereign debt and downgraded dozens of Spanish banks. I remain flummoxed therefore, given the metaphoric meltdown in Europe and the literal one in Japan, why Warren Buffet is so damn bearish on the dollar.
More specifically, the Sage of Omaha recently predicted a significant decline in the long-term purchasing power of the greenback. Perhaps this is because so many stateside investments have been built on quicksand. Unthinkable sums of money have been swallowed by the likes of WorldCom, Enron, Bernie Madoff, and for the more antediluvian investor – those of us extant before the Bloomberg iPhone app – ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning. This last gem was the brainchild of Barry Minkow who eventually did a seven year stretch in the grey bar hotel before finding Jesus and re-christening himself a “fraud-detection expert”. An ordained pastor and consultant to both the F.B.I. and the S.E.C., Minkow also went after publically traded companies with suspect financials. After one Nicolas Marsch III failed to shakedown (think: Michael Milken) Lennar Corp. over a disputed $37 million, Minkow was hired to bash the company. Problem is he shorted the stock before offering a negative report (think Barron’s) that sent the stock 20% lower. Barry plead guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy and is heading back to the poky where, this writer predicts, he will be fancied as a bashert by more than a few inmates (think: Jean Genet) before reconverting to Judaism (think: Bob Dylan).
For those who thought my earlier mention of the Japanese nuclear disaster was no more than a callous throwaway line, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I pushed this section to the rear as I remain deeply troubled by the fact that we have, in the span of one lifetime, nuked them again. Yes, we, or more precisely, General Electric. The failed reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was GE’s Mark 1 design, infamous for its notoriously flimsy containment system. GE engineer Dale Bridenbaugh quit his job 35 years ago because the Mark 1 wasn’t “designed to withstand the loads” commensurate with a large-scale incident. His warnings, he recalled, weren’t taken “seriously enough.” Around the same time, Stephen Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, advocated scrapping the Mark 1 because of susceptibility to explosion and rupture from a buildup of hydrogen. In other words, 8.9 magnitude earthquakes and tsunamis aside, safety concerns have abounded for over a quarter century. More terrifying, perchance, is the fear, first promulgated by Ishiro Honda’s classic 1954 horror film Godzilla, that a nuclear explosion could turn an ordinary marine iguana into Tokyo-destroying monster. Not to mention wildly de-syncing foreign language voiceovers.
The rest of the story, as you no doubt know, is ongoing; spewing radioactive seawater, expanding evacuation zones, recovered bodies of power plant workers and tainted milk as far away as California. The Japanese, ever resilient, are seeking revenge in more ways than poisoning our food supply. They got beloved comedian Gilbert Gottfried fired as the AFLAC duck after he texted the following jokes:
“I just broke up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, ‘There’ll be another one floating by any time now.”
“Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach; the beach comes to them.”
Then their death threats (presumably sent from campus libraries via cell phones) forced UCLA student Alexandra Wallace into hiding after her “Ching Chong” video went viral. But the Yanks are fighting back: In the wake of Ms. Wallace’s diatribe, New York City Ballet company member Devin Alberda tweeted: “Yellowface character in NYCB’s 2010 revival of The Magic Flute the worst thing to happen to the Asian American community since [the internment camps].” Given the recent discourse, I might be led to believe otherwise.
Leave a Reply