Yes, it's been a while.  But just like events kept pulling Michael Corleone back into the godfathering business, events keep luring my index fingers back to roughly tickle the keyboard of my electronic Underwood, like every other schmuck for the last few generations.

I thank Brendan Behan for the following: "There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman."  Nearly thirty years of professional interaction with members of the "thin blue line" have revealed the absolute unassailability of Behan's wisdom.

And it applies not just to the corner tavern, but internationally, as the world's hypercop, having drawn a line in the sand (for domestic consumption as much as for foreign admonition) prepares to show the world once again that "we meant what we said and we said what we meant" no matter what the cost in innocent lives and dwindling treasure.

I think the President did not believe he was setting the bar for our interference too low when the administration let it be known that use of chemical weapons on the rebels could not be tolerated.  But civil wars are the worse kind of conflict, where a basic fellow-feeling between former neighbors and co-workers will not stay the slaughter, even as it did among the multi-national combatants in the trenches on that first Christmas of the Great War.

So here we are, rattling that well-used sabre once again.  Donald Rumsfeld has helpfully and entirely hypocritically announced that the case for intervention has not been made.  I suppose he'd advise the fabrication of more evidence before committing to the use of force.

And the national response is at best anemic.  Most of us in the U.S. haven't wanted war since Rumsfeld and his unindicted co-conspirators fabricated the last casus belli.  Only a very few pachycephalids want any sort of military response to the present situation.  But who listens to the mass of the American people?  No one.  So strap yourselves in, folks, and keep your arms and legs inside the car for your own safety.

Grab a tin can and bail!

Is it just me, or is anyone in the least put off by the American automotive giants whining for a bailout to the tune of at least 25 billion dollars?  You know, the heirs of Ford (figuratively and literally) have been bunkies with the heirs of Rockefeller (figuratively and literally) since at least the end of the Second World War.

A couple of years ago, the CEO of Exxon was given a 400 million dollar retirement package (you know, just like the one we're all looking forward to at retirement).  Quarterly since that time, the oil giants (real giants, unlike their automotive counterparts) have amassed record-breaking profits, with each new quarterly report touting an even more obscene figure than the last.

Now if the oil companies are making 50 or 60 billion dollars in profit every three months, why don't their friends at GM, Ford and Cerberus (you may remember them as Chrysler), go to them for an assist?  I mean why destroy the wonderful symbiotic relationship they've had up to now by dragging that baneful ol' government into it?

I know we're talking bloated multinational corporate entities, but surely someone in the oil companies, perhaps even a present CEO who's counting the hours until they shovel money at him for his retirement, has some ember, some spark of gratitude for their fellow corporatistes.  He must reflect on how those billions of dollars in profits were made, thanks in large part, to an industry which fought any increase in fuel efficiency with the same tenacity and ferocity the Texans employed against Santa Anna at the Alamo.

Surely his heart would warm to the nearly bankrupt purveyors of the internal combustion engine, a device essentially unchanged since its invention at the end of the 19th century.  Even now, the old pals in Detroit are trying to ingratiate themselves by making an essentially electric car which will still have to be tethred to the ol' gas pump from time to time.  Now that's loyalty. 

So come on Exxon!  Wake up, Mobil!  Aux armes BP!  Grab anything that will hold water and bail!

The New Pharaoh

Being from the Book of Genesis, Chapter 41

15 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.
16 And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.
17 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon the bank of the river:
18 and, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fat-fleshed and well-favored; and they fed in a meadow:
19 and, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill-favored and lean-fleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness:
20 and the lean and the ill-favored kine did eat up the first seven fat kine:
21 and when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; but theywere still ill-favored, as at the beginning. So I awoke.
22 And I saw in my dream, and, behold, seven ears came up in one stalk, full and good:
23 and, behold, seven ears, withered, thin, and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them:
24 and the thin ears devoured the seven good ears: and I told this unto the magicians; but there was none that could declare it to me.
25 ¶ And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh is one: God hath showed Pharaoh what he is about to do.
26 The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream isone.
27 And the seven thin and ill-favored kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.

28 And Pharaoh sat upon his gilded chair, and his brow was furrowed with care at the words of Joseph until it seemed that a light came upon his face and he turned to his counsilors and men of state:

29 Behold, spake Pharaoh, the wisdom of Joseph's God has been revealed unto me, and it is this:

30 that we shall lay up all the wealth and provisions vouchsafed us in these years of plenty, reserving neither the moiety thereof,

31 and we shall make merry with lavish feasts and adorn ourselves with gold, precious gems, and divers finery, spending so much of our fortune as we may and sparing no expense in our masques and diversions. 

32 Then Potiphar, the councillor to Pharaoh, who had brought Josph unto him spake:

33 O great Pharaoh, what then shall be done when the seven years of famine are upon the land?

34 And Pharaoh answered, I shall dream another dream for that time.