Chilled Bill

It's not as cold as it has been, and that's not as cold as it could be. But it's cold -- about nineteen degrees this morning; about thirty-five now. I was just out, taking my mother to yet another medical appointment -- which is not really fair, as we try to schedule those on the day that her companion comes, so I really don't do all that many. It just feels like it, sometimes.

I've seen snarky comments to the effect that if its the best and brightest who've pulled this financial wool (and different colors, too) over our eyes, maybe we need the least and dumbest. I am sure that no one really thinks that it'd be better getting Elmer, who barely graduated from the county VoTech down the road, instead of Stephen, who studied economics at the Sorbonne -- it's simply that we're irritated beyond belief at how we've gotten taken to the cleaners. In a way, its like those clowns who used to -- and still! - spend their time hacking into computer systems, doing little bits of mischief, malicious and not, and then offer to show you how to prevent people like them from doing it again, for a hefty fee. The AIG people have that ethic, I think: Whatever We Can Get Away With; Whatever The Market Will Bear. That's their ethic -- but what they don't have is ethics in the common sense -- the feeling that tells you when you're about to go too far, step a little or a lot over the line. For them, the line was a movable feast, and they went out of their way to see how far they could move it. Now, they're willing to move it back - for a price. They're surprised and dismayed that the rest of us don't seem taken by that concept.

An article I read this morning said that it was too bad we didn't believe in public floggings and show trials. I don't think the author really meant it.