Take Your Pick

Let’s try something different this week: rather than dwell on one subject, how about touching on a few salient topics from the headlines? In perusing today’s (October 3) Sacramento Bee, several things caught my eye:

Chicago loses Olympic bid: I’m surprised that Chicagoans weren’t the ones celebrating in the streets while those “lucky” Brazilians were wishing they were more careful in their wishes. Now, I’m a sports fan, but when I hear the Olympics is coming to town, I make plans to be somewhere else. Just like most everyone else. Promises of profit and opportunity abound and, depending on how you define “profit” and “opportunity”, the promises may be valid to varying degrees. Google “(un)profitable olympic games”. The top of the list will take you to an article from tourism review.com and I think you’ll be interested in the findings. (I’d link it for you, but it opens as a downloaded PDF. Sorry.) One would think that Chicago could put the same money to work in different ways to revitalize the economic maelstrom that now racks its citizens.

And Obama is getting heat from the conservative media types for going to Denmark when there are so many more important things to decide and discuss. (Of course, the conservative media would rather talk and discuss Obama’s trip to Denmark.) Who knows: maybe it was all show and, in the cloak room, he begged the IOC to give the games to those lucky bastards down south! I guess we’ll never know...

David Letterman: OK, here’s a guy who works with women and, over time, has found himself in a personal liaison with some. Who hasn’t? Hell, we’re all working about fifteen hours a day: if you can’t get lucky at work, you’re in deep trouble. True, Dave was in a long-term relationship with his future wife, but that’s between the two of them. The harassment angle is overplayed because no one has cried “Foul” and if someone comes forward now it is only because visions of fame and wealth are dancing in her head. We’ve all shared private time with co-workers (some above us on the career ladder and some below) with little or no fallout. Let’s move on and leave Dave alone.

Roman Polanski: Jesus, is this still going on? Let’s see, he rapes a 13 year old girl, leaves the country, promises to pay her a large sum in a civil suit (which he apparently never does), and now gets arrested to face the original charges. (Am I close?) Well, hell yes, he’s guilty. And of more than one thing and he should face the music regardless of elapsed time or his wonderful career as a film-maker. This has to do with taking advantage of a teenager and refusing to be held accountable. Enough said...

Paul Krugman: Paul writes for the New York Times and the Bee carries his column a couple of days a week. He won a Nobel Prize for economics last year and I find his point of view interesting, if not intriguing. His piece today is titled, “As difficult as it is to sell, spending is what U.S. must do” and it delves into how the government is doing too little to get the economy turned around. Yes, too little. Damn the deficit, full spending ahead! And you know what? I believe him. Picture a normal day in your nice, lovely home when, all of a sudden, a ray of sunshine (or drop of rain) intrudes from a space where intrusion is normally not allowed. That’s right, buddy: time for a new roof. But how can you afford it in these tough economic times? A blue tarp is cheaper and almost as good, isn’t it? Well, we all know the blue tarp ploy will only delay the inevitable and, in the meantime, more and more of your home is subjected to nature’s forces. At the end of the day, you’ve saved nothing and, more than likely, will end up spending much more than you would have in the first place.

Why would our national house be any different? Our financial roof is a mess and we’re trying to jury-rig a solution that will only come back to bite us on our collective backside. We do it all the time with our possessions when money is tight and what happens? We’re generally the worse off for it somewhere down the road. So I’m with Paul on this one. There’s no difference between your roof and our economy: they are both worthy of investment for long term security.

Not bad for one day’s news, huh? Maybe there’s still hope for the newspaper industry, after all.