| Mike Pirtle: Ice, vice, Wall Street and Big Oil: What’s not to like? |
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By: MIKE PIRTLE, Post President and Publisher
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Posted: Sunday, February 1, 2009 7:15 am
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OK, after watching the weather news out of Kentucky with folks lining up to buy gas and kerosene to avoid freezing, I’m probably going to quit whining about our cold weather.
Looking at all those pictures of tree limbs, even trees, felled by a heavy coating of ice and hearing the news of widespread power failures, and knowing that is going to take a long time to resolve, made me feel a little badly about constantly whining about this season’s cold and wet.
OK, it didn’t make me feel too badly. This has been an unusually cold and gray winter after enjoying practically no winter the last three or four years.
Kentucky’s situation makes it all too apparent it could be worse.
I still remember several years ago driving across town in the dead of night to secure a kerosene heater in order to heat our house with a newborn baby boy inside after six inches of ice just devastated the electrical grid across Middle Tennessee.
Our lives are so blessed at this point in time we just take for granted electrical lights, running water and abundant heat (and unfortunately, ever more abundant heating bills). Most of us would have to only go back two generations to find those three utilities were not so common.
On the other hand, the news report with Kentucky’s problems usually end with a report out of warm, sunny Tampa due to the Super Bowl blitz, putting me back on the grumpy, miserable side again.
•••
Is it just me, or is the whole world just going totally crazy?
For instance the governor of Illinois. Facing impeachment and removal of office after being charged by federal authorities for basically trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat and getting recorded doing so, the governor ignores making a defense before his state legislature and instead goes around to all the national talk shows to plead his case.
Well, actually he doesn’t have a case, but argues the rules should be changed for him and how he feels like Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi.
Besides sacrilege, he is guilty, in addition to the other transgressions, of being idiot.
He’s not running for president, and the TV audience isn’t voting on whether he should be in office or not.
Happily by the end of his TV charade, he wasn’t in office. He’s just a self-styled martyr now and likely prison inmate.
•••
And, $18 billion in bonuses for Wall Street financial people?
Are you freaking kidding me?
Peeking quickly and timidly at the annual statements for the three or four funds in which the missus and I are invested modestly last week, the best performance I saw from our Wall Street service providers (yeah, that’s a joke) was minus 30 percent.
Minus 30 PERCENT!!!!!!!
I’m not hearing from anyone else about how well they did on Wall Street last year, and a quick check of the markets’ numbers clearly show that anyone who made money there last year was really smart, really lucky and really unique.
So, $18.4B in bonuses while our investments are hammered and their bosses are cashing our government checks to stay afloat seems just a tiny bit crazy.
Obviously, I just don’t understand high finance.
•••
After that $4/gallon gas last summer was anyone surprised Exxon posted a record $45 billion in profits last year?
Nah, they weren’t taking advantage of us regular working folk. And, lord knows, with gas prices down they can’t afford to do any of that expensive exploring for new oil right now.
Do you think we will ever stop getting suckered by Big Oil in our lifetime?
•••
Titans’ fans to Titans’ owner/management, re: Albert Haynesworth: PAY THE GUY.
Yeah, and get Kerry Collins signed again while you’re at it.
We ought to be watching the Titans in the Super Bowl today. We sure as heck want to be thinking we’ll get another shot next year.
Hey, Bud, got that?
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