From the by M.D. Fletcher |
November 2009 |
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Got no check books, got no banks For those of you still able to afford to pay attention, it might interest you to know that the Thanksgiving Season is now hard upon us. Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, created back during the Hoover Administration to divert the attention of the American public from the fact that they were all broke as Job's turkeys. Hence, the hapless turkey became the focal point of the holiday as both the symbol and the entrée. Folklore has it, as any grade-schooler can tell you, that the Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the holiday by giving thanks that they had survived their introduction into the New World. This notion is, historically, hogwash in that the Pilgrims would have ended up bear droppings had not the natives intervened in their plight and kept them warm and fed through the brutal northeastern winters. Any thanks that were shown to the natives by the Pilgrims were manifested in their subsequent introduction to alcohol and infectious diseases and much later, of course, casinos. I'm not sure the natives came out even on the deal at the time, but I think they're catching up. In fact, you can bet on it. Anyway, since I know you've been really busy squeezing blood out of the old turnip and clipping coupons for that 48-roll pack of one-ply, I thought that I'd provide yet another valuable service to our loyal and long-suffering membership by telling you exactly what you should be thankful for and would in fact be thankful for if you weren't such an unrepentant ingrate. No need to thank me; it's what I do. First of all, I think we should all be thankful that our President of these United States recently was honored with the Nobel Prize. This award represents the recognition of a culmination of a lifetime of sacrifice and service to the advancement of the collective good of all the peoples of the world. Al Gore got one, too, earlier, for saving the planet. Imagine that. |
We should all be extremely thankful that the New York Stock Exchange is still in business and stock handlers, hedge fund managers, financial executives, insurance speculators, derivative manipulators and all manner of other brokers and bookies are once again thriving. Our money, of course, is long gone but it's good to see that not everybody is suffering during these tough economic times. Speaking of suffering, the great State of New Mexico has suddenly found itself in a bit of a financial pickle after years of unprecedented growth in state government. It now seems to appear that it's really not wise monetarily to add 40% to bureaucratic governmental employment over the span of five years while at the same time failing to anticipate any kind of significant reduction of revenues. While it's true Pollyanna could have probably predicted this outcome, it is equally true that Pollyanna wasn't running for President at the time. So we can be thankful we've got Sen. John Arthur Smith in Santa Fe. Next time maybe we ought to listen to him. We can also be thankful that we are all carbon-based life forms and still enjoy the luxury of a great debate on whether carbon-based life forms should declare carbon to be a dangerous polluntant and ban it from the atmosphere. That's really not the debate, of course. Like most things, the debate is about economics and the question is whether or not industrialized nations can afford to abandon proven cheap and reliable power sources in favor of proven unreliable and expensive power sources. That's it. It is not about global warming. The globe is indifferent. It is about creating winners and losers. I am personally thankful that statements like the one above are sure to get me the usual jihad reacton from my devoted critics. More power to them, I say, and it's always a pleasure for me to get them worked up now and then. They should be aware, however, that as stalwart defenders of Mother Earth and everything on it except people, they are huffing and puffing an enormous and probably ecologically unacceptable amount of carbon dioxide through those flaring nostrils. But Happy Thanksgiving anyway, folks. |
