Icewind's Ramblings

It was an interesting State of the Union speech tonight . . . Wrap things in the American Flag, throw in our great military men & women, and add some things about unity and greatness . . . we must be doing pretty damn good right now. I'll probably blog about it but let's see . . . 3 years of promises, out of control spending on borrowed dollars, massive unemployment . . . I thought it was a fairly confrontational speech going after the partisan other side.  It made a direct reference to Mitt Romney’s 15% taxes and used the charisma of his speaking abilities to ask American for a second chance.  It seemed like he was saying I have for the most part pissed away the last three years but hey look, the economy might be in a small rebound so give it another look.  I am sure the young will get all worked up in the same vein that John Kennedy’s speaking did for a nation so many years ago.  The problem is that time period is long gone and the world is so much differ...

Tomorrow is another election day and things are still in turmoil.   I see signs that ask “How’s that ‘Change’ going for you?” and “Yes we can!”   At times I wonder it the changes that have taken place are really changes at all. It’s well nigh impossible to assess the true character of a human heart . . . even one’s own.   We use words (Oh, so many words!) to describe our selves, our wants, desires, ideals (and imperfections) to others.   We go through life “self-characterized”, for the most part.   The face we reveal to the world is the face we primp and preen to present.   It sounds like a woman thing but it fits our thinking. Words are our cosmetics. I don’t really have a problem with that.   I believe most of us want to embody our ideals.   I believe we humans, for the most part, want to live peaceful, loving, noble lives.   We certainly tell ourselves that, often enough.   We assure others we are peaceful, honest, loving and ...

Last week there was the big news that Oprah is retiring from her talk show after 20 + years giving everyone information, book reviews and an occasional prize or two for her loyal fans who were in the studio to see her. Over the years she has tried to stimulate the economy as in the big car giveaway to her audience in 2004 where everyone in her studio opened a gift box with the key to a new automobile inside.  She was helping the auto industry long before they needed their bailout.  Probably better than that forty five hundred bucks the Government gave out. Has anyone ever heard of writing off charity on your taxes?  Hmmmm . . . pretty sure you can or put it as a “business expense.”  In 2008 she made 385 million dollars . . . that could potentially buy 1,428 people a new Cadillac Escalade while still having 285 million left over . . . so essentially she could afford to have all of us drive a new car with enough left over to buy plenty of Black Angus burgers and...

Politics lately have been really boring with all the in fighting between all parties on almost any talking point.  No one is happy about the Health Care proposals and the stimulus money is being squandered away like many people thought it would be with little oversight or accountability. The economy is in disarray with the jobless rate continuing to rise “as things are getting better” and the vehicle rebate program flooded the nation with scrap metal and the upcoming wave of repossessions as those who traded in cannot afford to make the payments. “Change” was promised and that is what we have received . . . like it or not. I am into being positive each day and sometimes you need those little positive affirmations to set the tone for the upcoming day.  Tony Robbins says those things help break the cycle of negativity and can change habits and thought processes. Here is my daily routine when I get up in the morning before heading off to work.  I grab my cup of coffee...

* Warning rant ahead, bifocals optional. I’ve been out of town lately so I have been somewhat lacking in the news department for the last month so when I started to catch up on a few things I was blown away about a few things. Probably many of you were too. Turns out AIG again took millions of dollars of the bail out money the Government gave them and paid more executive bonuses. Now this is the second set of bonuses paid since the financial collapse started. One guy received six million dollars. I read that over fifty others got more than a million. All right, it is an outrage. But wouldn’t you want to work at a company that rewards failure on a historic level with million dollar bonuses? I don’t know about you but I have never screwed something up on a job to the point where we had to go beg the Government for financial help three times and then the boss sat down with me to write a giant check. I wonder what you get for doing your job really well...

“The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” --Margaret Thatcher The $827 billion stimulus package is full of earmarks that probably won’t stimulate the economy. The new bank bailout package was just announced and the markets took another dump. Confidence in the new changes . . . I’m not feeling too warm and fuzzy right now. Ice

I have been following this story in the news as it has all of the ingredients of a good crime drama or even a modern day ‘western’. It has a bad guy, greed, the trophy wife, a horse (the airplane & motorcycle), the good guys (Marshals), and a moral to the story. There are so many funny little things that come to mind and how this could easily be on television. Let’s see, bailout, golden parachute, ‘Financial Crisis: The Movie’, trophy wife for an affair, flashy “red” motorcycle, and most of all . . . poor planning. The financial crisis has led to same very interesting stories that seem ready made for television movies. There is the Madoff mess that continues to bring things to light as each day passes and now for example the case of Marcus Schrenker, an Indianapolis financial manager, who appears to have tried to fake his own death by crashing his Piper PA-46 into a Florida swamp. I’m sure the idea was for the plane to go down into the Gulf of Mexico ...

Sex sells or have the headlines over the years been misleading us? It seems with the downturn of the economy and the problems stacking up in everyone’s lives there has been a huge deflation . . . of our libido. CNN is reporting that the porn industry wants a bailout. First it was the airlines, then the auto makers, and now porn is struggling to keep it up as it were. I’m never too amazed by the outrageousness of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. You might remember him from being shot in 1978 in Lawrenceville Georgia coming out of the courthouse where he was on trial for obscenity charges. He became paralyzed but continued his empire but now Flynt and “Girls Gone Wild” CEO Joe Francis seems to take the absurdity of what is going on now with our federal bailout program to a whole new level. According to their press release, the adult entertainment industry needs $5 billion of your tax money because it, too, has been hit by the economic downturn. No...

For some time now we have seen things slowly coming to the point we are now. It has not happened overnight or over one or two terms in office for our leaders. Greed has had a lot to do with the shape of things and not just in the home industry but also with the auto industry as well as our import and exports. Many people did not want to see it but the signs were always there. There were so many people with a “Jones” attitude, as in ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ that bought into the belief that with nothing or little down they could have that half million dollar house and pay only a thousand bucks a month payment. They didn’t believe that balloon payment due in five years would make any difference in their lives. Well it did and every one of those who were selling or brokering those worthless pieces of paper was making a fortune. Greed on everyone’s part and it all came falling down around us Banks are foreclosing on homes at record rates. Illi...

Friday saw the failure in the Senate of agreeing to bailout the auto industry’s Big 3. The world won’t end, nor will the US auto industry disappear without this bailout to GM and Chrysler. The Democrats and the UAW would like us to believe just the opposite. There is the rumor that Bush will fork over some of the 700 Billion for the banking industry to keep this from happening as a ‘Not on my watch’ last ditch effort. Hopefully he won’t do that either and let Free Enterprise run its course. The raping of taxpayers has been delayed for at least 3 weeks. The Senate was very close with this ‘loan to nowhere’ for GM and Chrysler & the UAW. You know what brought down the deal? This shouldn’t surprise anyone - it was the United Auto Workers (UAW). UAW is really more concerned with lining their own pockets vs. saving a company and thus their member’s jobs. Now I do hate to see people going into the ranks of unemployment having been through that m...