Real Government Reform

This is not totally original,of course, but that doesn't mean it's a bad or outdated idea:

1. On January 1-3 of each year the Gallup organization shall poll the citizens of the Republic with a single question: "What was the stupidest law passed by the congress last year?"

2. When the winner is determined, the names of all representatives and senators who voted on the prevailing side of said bill shall be placed in a hat from which the names of one (1) senator and one (1) representative shall be drawn.

3. Said senator and said representative shall be shot.

4. States shall be encouraged by generous federal tax exemptions to emulate the federal reform program among their own legislative bodies.

Flying home for Christmas?

Travis McGee on a winter flight to O'Hare:

Passengers reached up and put their lights on. The sky had lumps and holes in it. It becomes tight sphincter time in the sky when they don't insert the ship into the pattern and get it down, but go around again. Stewardesses walk tippy-dainty, their color not good in the inside lights, their smiles sutured so firmly in place it pulls their pretty faces more distinctly against the skull-shape of pretty bones. Even with the buffeting there is an impression of silence inside the aircraft at such times. People stare outward, but they are looking inward, tasting of themselves and thinking of promises and defeats. The busy air is full of premonitions, and one thinks with a certain comfort of old Satchel's plug in favor of air travel: "They may kill you, but they ain't likely to hurt you."

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"One Fearful Yellow Eye" P. 1

The media, part (mumble dozen)

AP real estate writer Alan Zibel tell us this morning that homes sales "surged" last month, "reflecting an extraordinary level of federal support that has pulled the housing market back from the worst downturn since the Great Depression."

Not quite, Al, and your own choice of words suggests the contradiction.

"Federal support " of a "market" is a serious oxymoron. Governments may disrupt markets, or distort them, or end them altogether. If fact, governments often do. But markets either support themselves or they are something other than markets.

This federal support you cite reflects the will of federal regulators who decide which citizens may or may not receive mortgages with which to buy homes. The same gaggle also decides what homes are worth in dollars, largely by controlling the current and expected value of the currency .

One proper lead (there are others, of course) could have been written thusly: "Home transfers rose in November as unprecedented federal spending further eroded confidence in the American dollar, accelerating the flight from the greenback to tangible assets."

You'd need a little evidence to back that up, but God knows it isn't hard to find.

He said vas?

Sixty-five years ago today Germans demand the surrender of the surrounded and badly outnumbered 101st Airborne Division. In Bastogne, Acting Commmander Brig. Gen, Anthony C. McAuliffe officially replies "Nuts. " The allies, principally Americans, go on to straighten out the bulge.

Greatest generation? I don't know. But certainly a higher proportion of good men than the whine-soaked boomers who came along later.