COLUMN: Back to Economics 101

By Tobin Barnes
I’ll admit it. I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but the recent haggling over the nation’s economy has me confused.

Granted. We’re all going to hell in a hand basket, right? Who isn’t convinced of that? It’s already starting to feel a little toasty.

Even George Bush has gotten grayer lately. Uh huh, the same guy who thinks the jury’s still out on global warming, despite videos of polar bears desperately paddling to distant chunks of ice.

Yeah, even W thinks we’re in big trouble. No more Alfred E. Neuman likenesses there. Dawn has finally broken.

Then there’s Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary. He’s got that distinct “deer in the headlights” look, too. Every time I see him, his eyes get bigger.

Paulson started out as a juggler, trying to loop pots full of cash into a recovery. Now he’s more like a magician, making those same pots disappear without a trace.

And how about those pathetic CEO’s, humbly lining up before Congressional committees to get their pre-bailout spankings? Perspiration shining on their foreheads, sitting there in sweat-stained Armani’s?

Those upper-level managers couldn’t even plane-pool to the investigations to make it look good.

But they’re willing to take executive bonuses off the table.

Well how generous. Most Americans would say, “Bonus? What’s a bonus?”

Talk about sympathy for the devil.

Now, rather than bonuses, these poor over-rated Titans of Industry will have to live on the bloated salaries and past bonuses and perks they’ve been hogging for years, enough to endow their families well into the next century.

But here’s a good question: Why are they even still around? They not only ran their companies into the ground, they took the national economy down with them.

Give’em the boot. Bring some folks up from down on the cubicle farm. Give those layoff targets a shot instead. Heck, can’t do any worse.

And then there’s those outraged Congressmen and women, acting like this crisis dropped into their laps from some unseen passing buzzard.

Looking like they’d just gotten sucker-punched. Now they’re acting busy searching for the sneaky guys who did it.

Man, I’m telling you, what a cast of characters we’ve got here.

So you can see I’ve got questions. And here’s my biggest one.

From what I understand, wild-eyed, greed-soaked credit run amok evidently got us into this mess.

The result?

People are getting laid off in the tens of thousands. They’re maxed-out on their multiple, twenty-percent-interest credit cards. They’re paying more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

And the solution, according to leading, talking-head economists?

We’ve got to loosen up those credit markets again. We’ve got to get America spending like drunken oil sheiks again. We’ve got to get those cash registers ringing again.

We’ve got to keep consumers stampeding the doorbuster sales (killing people in their greed). Get them back to being good patriotic American shoppers again.

And what’s wrong with that picture?

Am I the only one who thinks we’ve entered bizarro world? How is it possible that bottomless, unconscious debt for the individual is good for the nation?

There’s just got to be a better way. Like maybe common sense. The lack of which got us here in the first place.

Some Are Overpaid, This Guy Isn't

I'm Going to Start Practicing

Symbolic, Maybe?

Another Good One

Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: Listen to this, a guy in North Carolina, a mailman, a Federal employee, a postal worker, was arrested and put in jail. You know why? He would deliver regular mail, but he wouldn’t deliver junk mail. They got the guy, they arrested him, and they put him in prison. We got that guy, but still no word on bin Laden.

Finally we got some good news about the economy. Barack Obama got $800 billion to rescue the economy. All I can say is, “Thank you, Oprah.”

That Obama is a smart, hard-working guy. And he has promised now to stabilize the economy, going to rebuild the infrastructure, create millions of new jobs, catch bin Laden. President Bush said, “Uh, you can do that?”

A lot of people have forgotten about President Bush, but this transitional period is a busy time for President Bush as well. He’s busy granting pardons. Today, he pardoned Sarah Palin for her interview with Katie Couric.

And tomorrow, President Bush will pardon turkeys. This year, I think you know the turkeys, the Lehman brothers.

Here’s what I don’t like about the turkeys this year, they’re arrogant. These turkeys that they’re going to pardon this year, they’re arrogant. They’re flying in from Detroit on their private jets.

But right now, right this very minute, Dick Cheney is waterboarding the turkeys.

Good Monologue

Aired Monday night on CBS: I guess Sarah Palin is back in Alaska, where she pardoned some turkeys for Thanksgiving. So she pardons them and then right behind her, someone kills some turkeys, and it was gruesome. I honestly haven’t seen a slaughter like that since Nov. 4.

I heard today that the federal government was raising, like, $40 billion to bail out Citigroup. Honestly, when you think about it, who doesn’t really feel sorry for credit card companies?

NASA has developed a urine machine that will convert urine into water. Well, guess what? It’s on the blink. And you thought the coffee was bad where you work.

And down in Washington, D.C., the Capitol Hill Christmas tree arrived. And there is no surprise here. You know, they’ve got to decorate the tree. So the contract to decorate the tree, a $10 billion ornament contract, went to Halliburton.

Hillary Clinton is going to be secretary of State in the Obama Administration. Well, political insiders are now saying that Barack and Hillary actually have a good working relationship, but they don’t have a close personal relationship. No, wait a minute, that’s Hill and Bill.

Dude, Where's My Bailout?

COLUMN: Making Good Use of a Fool

By Tobin Barnes
Last time I was talking about putting up with fools. How some people don’t “suffer fools gladly.”

I said these persnickety people were probably miserable all the time, seeing as how humanity is liberally peppered with fools, including just about everybody’s inner fool lurking just below the surface ready to emerge at any given moment.

The only recourse, I said, is to learn to live with fools, even make them useful to a certain extent. Abraham Lincoln was a master at this. He sought the grain in others, even those contemptuous of him, and disposed of the chaff.

His tribulations have been much in the media lately as a comparison to Barack Obama’s massive challenges. You often hear the phrase “team of rivals,” taken from the fine book of the same name, since Obama, like Lincoln, seems willing to go out of his comfort zone for cabinet members and advisors.

Another recent book I’ve read about Lincoln’s superb leadership skills is “Tried by War” by James M. McPherson. Lincoln was not only adept at handling and using fools, he seemed to have sympathy for them: “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”

And “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

Sometimes Lincoln was “wise enough to play the fool” himself. Allow others to underestimate him. Think they were dealing with a hayseed hick. Then he’d turn the tables on them. He knew that we make more blunders underestimating than overestimating.

Lincoln was surrounded by underestimating fools. Many of his generals during the Civil War were card carriers and proud of it. Some of his own cabinet members thought they’d make a better president than he. Scoffed at him behind his back.
Fools.

By the end of the war, these fools came to realize who was who: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt,” Lincoln said.

He understood psychological manipulation for benevolent ends, which is what great leadership is all about. Yes, Lincoln understood fools and fooling: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

He was a person contemporaries could seldom fool but were oftentimes fooled by him. And with a kindly air: “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

Or “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

His depth of understanding of the human condition is a marvel. And like no other president, he could express the profoundest thoughts in a simple manner that any fool could understand: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”

And his humor was unparalleled by any other politician before or since. Along with all his other great qualities, he was our wittiest President: “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”

“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.”

“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

And best of all, Lincoln is still speaking to us: “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

Best of the Monologues

Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: Little cold outside today, kids? Well, so much for your global warming, you know what I’m saying.

John McCain announced today that he is beginning his 2010 senatorial campaign. And I’m thinking, wow! Two more years of a John McCain campaign, hey, cut me a slice of that!

But there are some nice aspects during the transition period. For example, the Bush twins gave the Obama girls a tour of the White House. It was very sweet, but the Obama girls got really scared because they heard creepy organ music coming from Cheney’s underground lair.

And then the Bush twins grabbed a candle and took the kids on a tour of Cheney’s torture chamber. Read more…

The Recap: When You Don't Have Time for It All

COLUMN: Fools Are Here to Stay

By Tobin Barnes
“And he didn’t suffer fools gladly.”

You often hear those words. They’re used to describe cranky people, particularly once they’re dead. Evidently, such souls didn’t enjoy putting up with nonsense and incompetence.

But then, who does?

The words first made an impression on me when I was looking into the English playwright and critic-at-large George Bernard Shaw. He’s the only person to win a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar for his play-turned-into-a-movie, “Pygmalion.”

Much in his world seemed to irritate him, from nonsensical spelling rules to Victorian morals, and he was quick to express himself on such subjects, sparing no false idols. He once said, “My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.”

Another time I ran into the phrase was when I read that Paul McCartney said his late bandmate George Harrison also “didn’t suffer fools gladly.” Of course, I’ve run into many other uses of the phrase that I can’t now remember. Same for you, I would imagine.

When I think of fools, I don’t necessarily think of people who are stupid (that often cannot be helped), but rather of people who pretend to know more than they do.

They’re the puffed-up types who pester us with the nonsense and incompetence that drives people nuts. Unfortunately, too many of our politicians and authority-types fall into this category.

Go ahead, make up a mental list. I’ll wait.

(Dum-de-dum-dum-dum.)

Didn’t take long, did it?

Yeah fools.

They’ll bluster knowledge and competence but can’t back it up. They’re all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas. They’ll boldly leap to the forefront to take on challenges they’re all too ill-equipped to handle.

And deep down they know it.

Yeah, fools.

They’re the people poet Alexander Pope was referring to when he said, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

But wait.

We’re surrounded by fools. Heck, sometimes I surround myself with foolishness. Being a fool is part and parcel of being human.

That’s why I wonder about people who supposedly “didn’t suffer fools gladly.”

They must have been miserable.

P-o’d pretty much 24/7.

How could they have read the newspaper without getting apoplectic? How could they have sat down to Christmas dinner with black sheep, even white sheep, kith and kin? How could they have even walked down the street without blowing a gasket?

Veins must have stuck out of their faces like Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus.”

It’s like, take a chill pill, Man.

Fools aren’t going away anytime soon, Bro.

It’s the stuff of life, Homes.

Fools are already factored into the market as they say on Wall Street.

Some of our best Americans have been great with fools. Abraham Lincoln was a master. I’ve been reading another book about him, “Tried by War.”

Yeah, “another.”

I never grow tired of reading about gold old Abe. I don’t grow tired of writing about him either. I’ll have more to say about him soon.

Let's Make a Deal

From Best of Craigslist (Raleigh, N.C.):

I will trade my sombrero for your kayak.
Date: 2008-07-21, 10:21PM EDT

So, you finally realized that kayaks are work. You would much rather replace all that sweaty paddling with a cool, shady nap under a wide-brim hat dreaming of nachos.

You think about all the space in your garage that kayak’s taking up and just start to count how many jars of salsa you could fit on that shelf.

You remember last Cinco de Mayo when you showed up to the big party sans sombrero. Someone threw a bell pepper at your head.

Don’t you think it’s about time you traded in that kayak for a nice comfortable sombrero?

Okay. How about I also throw in a piñata with 300 dollars worth of loose change?

Think about it …I f you no longer need that 10-12 foot, sit-on-top kayak, I have a sombrero that—-and I’m not even lying—–would look stunning on you.

You think you look good in that poncho of yours, you just wait until the ladies get a load of you in that sombrero. Meow, indeed.

Call [DELETED] to talk details about what’s been missing in your life (my sombrero).

COLUMN: It Can Get That Bad

By Tobin Barnes
Haven’t written in about three weeks.

Needed a break. Needed to experience some writelessness. Needed to hunker down in it. Needed to get bored so I’d think writing might be a good idea again.

Well, I’m there faster than I thought.

That’s because it’s day three of our captivity. And nothing has changed in all that time.

They’ll need extra-big equipment to clear the road in our subdivision. We’re out here on a few acres about four miles outside town. If there’s life beyond the snow drifts, we’ve seen no evidence of it yet. Won’t get paroled until we hear a big engine moving snow and that beep, beep, beep as it backs up to take another run at it.

Never thought I’d long for that sound.

Problem is they’ll need extra-big equipment everywhere else, too. Who knows when our turn will come. And the temperatures are too cold for the kind of melting we need.

It’s not a recipe for freedom.

Sometimes I get the creepy feeling we’ll never get out of here. Isolation does that to you. Makes you feel like you’re the surprised victim in a Stephen King novel. You’d never volunteer to be in one of his books. But here I am. The five-foot drift outside our window at times takes on a malevolent aura.

Yeah, it was that kind of blizzard.

Heavy winds compacted the foot of snow to the consistency of concrete...almost. Dogs can walk over it, but when you try the same you break through. Then it’s a struggle. If the dogs could laugh, they would. You can see them trying.

Makes you wish you hadn’t tried to be a dog walking over a snow bank. Getting out turns into exercise the intensity of climbing Mt. Everest.

Only good a four-wheel drive will do you in this kind of snow is give you the false impression you can drive through it. Been there, done that. A few times. Won’t do it again. I’m not as dumb as I’ve behaved in the past. Need extra-big equipment to bust it up first.

By the way, where the hell is it?

There’s a fine line between not having enough time to do what you want to do and having too much time to do what you want to do. In other words, life plays with you. You’re the ball.

Now I’ve got too much time. Feel like old flattened gum on a linoleum floor.

When I’m teaching school, it’s rush, rush, rush. When I’m home for a couple snow days, it’s lounge, lounge, lounge. Where’s the happy medium? Why isn’t it ever rush, lounge, rush, lounge, rush, lounge?

Somebody screwed up big time. I could have designed life better.

At first, a snow day sounds nice.

But the glow of idleness is short lived. It takes only a couple hours to do all the things you don’t have time for on a work day, and that includes being happy that it’s a snow day and eating some pancakes.

After that, the hours start to drag. Before long, you’ve come to despise newscaster banter, so-called television drama and laugh tracks.

But if the electricity goes out, you’re overcome in a suicidal sweat.

By noon of the third day, the only thing left is writing a column.

Yeah, it gets that bad.

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“Hey, this isn’t a library. Either buy something or get outta here.”

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Found here.

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