When I was rich

For a glimmering moment around mid-morning I was a stock market mogul. My net worth soared by $7.53 as traders speculated that Ben and the Feds would keep on printing $85 billion* brand new Federal Reserve Cartoons  a month.

Then speculators of contrary opinion took over, and erased every cent of the gain on my eye-dropper full of a little ETF, a leveraged bond fund which is "interest sensitive." It pays a humongus dividend, but the price of the stock itself  goes up and down as often as Bill Clinton's shorts. Up when the market thinks Ben will keep printing free FRCs, down when it worries that he may cut back a little.

Fortunately, this doesn't signal complete financial disaster here at Camp Jiggleview, because The Commandant, yours truly, has just received a bonanza from the federal government led by President Obama.

He informed me that I have done such a wonderful job of retiring -- that is, becoming a lazy tax-sucking parisitical slob -- that I am to be awarded a raise in my monthly salary. It comes to $19 net, after allowing for deducts to Medicare. You've probably heard of Medicare. It's a gift from cuddly ol' Lyndon Johnson allowing me to be sick for free.  "Y'all just go ahead and stay in that hospital a while longer, Jim. We gone send the bill to your kids."

We had no money then --1965 -- either. We were financing a lot bullets to kill wogs -- mostly, but not exclusively, Vietnamese --  and on wonderful urban utopias such as Cabrini Green in President Obama's neighborhood.

Someone asked how we would pay for all that plus Jim's doctor bills. Lyndon said, "Why Hell, boy, we ain't actually gonna pay with real money or nothin'. We gone find a bunch of smart (ethnic slur deleted) boys who went to Harvard and Yale and them places and learned how to make make up money just by saying so. Y'all quit frettin'." 

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Hey! You in the back. Stop singing whle I'm talking, dammit! Besides, you got it wrong. The song goes "Marching to Pretoria. Not Weimaria."

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*More, actually. The 85 billion is just what they admit to.

Then there's the guy with the shovel and the wheelbarrow

The political class and journaloids can't seem to get over the Ryan-Murray "budget agreement."  It not only "reduces the deficit," but also ushers in a new era of "bipartisanship."

I think we plebians are supposed to see a nice little Jewish girl,. She and her husband  worry an ass to Bethlehem where she gives birth in a barn.  And they called the baby Bipartisan. Kneel and praise.

My faith is weak, so I reviewed what I know of our Constitution and  Amercan political history. No where can I find biprtisanship listed as a stated national ideal -- or even a very good idea.

It is not even very well defined.The closest you can figure it, the word means "We got caught doing something stupid as Hell, but  they helped so it's their fault, too."

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Jimmy Durante raises his eyebrows in mock amazement and asks the cop, "What Elephant?"


















The pachyderm of the moment is Ben Bernanke, soon to be replaced by one Janet Yellen.  For six long years, Ben has taught Janet the art of plopping flops along the parade route, then decreeing  them to be "money" or even  "weath."

She thinks she has the knack now, even finds the thought of being the head flopper and decree-er  rather exalting.  She campaigned to be ringmaster of the printing press, and His Ineptness bought it, as will his Senate, probably in a more or less bipartisan way.

Bringing us back to the Ryan-Murray deal which saves a few bucks here, spends a few more bucks there and, in the end, promises (fingers crossed) to reduce the federal deficit by $23 billion over two years, or ten, or something. 

Every little bit helps, but there's that damned elephant again. Jumbo Ben has been creating Federal Reserve Cartoons at the rate of 85 billion a month.   This arithmetic for avoiding bankruptcy does not appear promising to this obsrever.

And just how does Ben go about creating the money to pay Barack for those IOUs (to which, conveniently, the president is permitted to sign your name, and mine)?

Easy as pie, as I earlier suggested.

"Plop."

My Underpants

Getting ready to go visiting, I changed into fresh clothes a few minutes ago. It's cold, so I decided on long johns and grabbed the set on top, a high-tech, micro-fibered, odor-destroying, item. Probably thirty or forty bucks worth of  redneck lingerie which came my way, unnoticed,  in an inventory buyout.

They're camo.

Camoflage underwear?

A guy can only assume someone has identified a niche market of perv hunters who like to flash Bambi before they shoot her mommy.

I don't think I could get this one by the TSA metal detector.

It's in fair condition, speaking generously, because someone was more in love with his six-inch 3400  rpm coarse grinding wheel than he was with this old veteran. You can't quite call it "poor" because it still has the skinny saw blade. True, Barney ground the teeth off when he finished worrying the big blade,  but judging from the ones for sale online, a fair number of them are missing the saw blade entirely.

I'm not always too fussy about the condition of my World War Two relics, and for the $6 bid which earned this one, I'm not fussy at all. That cheap, it could pay for itself as a spare canoe anchor. Big fella, sometimes called the "giant jack knife" by the pilots who carried it. It must weigh better than a pound and measures six inches closed and 15 1/2 with both blades open.

It was one of the solutions to the survival knife problem late in the war. Colonial developed it . This one was made by United Tool Co. in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A fellow over on the knife forum seems to have all the other information you're likely to want.

Excuse me. I must retire to my dressing room and pare my nails.