A surprisingly fertile week of news...short and sweet - and otherwise.  Remember, there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who are constantly exclaiming "WHA HOPPEN". 

• In late December, 2008, several watchdog agencies forced financial gurus Paulson, Bernanke and Cox to admit that they did not know what was happening with the first $700 Billion bailout fund directed to banks...and had no way of tracking the use of those funds.  After acknowledging that the effort was a failure, are the new gurus in any better position to track the new and highly touted $800 Billion "stimulus package" ...which nobody in Congress or the Senate read?  I don't think so, and neither do they. 
• And these are the people who are going to tackle Health Care delivery in this country.  See my earlier Rapid Response this week on the subject.
• An article in the NYTimes today points to the travails of Japan over the last two decades as a cautionary tale of what happens when a great consumer society - like the U.S. also - stops consuming.  Wrong lesson.  We must change from a consumer to a producer society, as in days of old.  And we still have the manufacturing and innovation base to do it.  (See the article in The Day today entitled "Does U.S. Still Make Anything?", pE1).  Yes, we do...the most in the entire world.  But we must increase our productivity, including having salaries that reflect productivity rather than managerial and union wish lists - as in the auto industry.
• Change of pace.  In Sports news, this is pretzel (aka wrestling) season.  These guys should be required to wear full-length leotards of different colors to help us spectators know which limbs belong to which person.  And then there is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition that I just received as part of my ongoing subscription.   A turn-off, for three reasons: 1) some of those girls appeared to be below the age of 18, or even 16; 2) they need to gain 30 pounds in weight and to get rid of those stupid pouting expressions; 3) they all need a spanking.  And no, I'm not dead. 
• Hillary Clinton, my choice on the Democratic side, is starting to demonstrate why she would have been the better Democratic choice for President.  Meanwhile, I keep getting vertigo watching Obama bobble his head from one teleprompter to the other - and never looking directly at me.  And then he is tongue-tied when forced to speak off-the-cuff.  Not a stimulus for trust. 
• Face-Book; My Space, etc.  One cartoon hit the nail on the head: "Terms of Service: You agree to waste precious and valuable time searching for new friends and also boring the daylights out of the friends you currently have with the most mundane details of your sad, sad life".   GET A LIFE, YOU LEMMINGS. 
• The NYTimes today has surprisingly outdone itself, providing actually useful articles on several important issues.  See its articles, in the Week in Review, on School Reform, on a suggested reconciliation on Gay Marriage, on how to end the Culture Wars, and on how to help in the economic crisis ("let creative destruction happen").  Add that to yesterday's article by David Brooks on the same latter subject - and echoing my offering the day before in this section - and all in all not a bad week. 
• Finally and locally, the continuing soap opera of Preston, Ct. and the old Norwich Hospital property, chronicled well in the Day (www.theday.com).  Please complete the following suggestion: GO, OR...
  

• Amorality, thy name is becoming America.  Thanks to the studied "value neutral" public education system pursued over the last 40 years, one of so many failures of our "educators", we now have adults and children who don't have a clue about right and wrong.  A-Rod and his ilk, Raymond Burris, Wall Street, kids who routinely cheat in class, kids who don't think that the steroid users did anything wrong....  See the rrecent Daily News cartoon advising  Rodriguez to "TRY TRUTH SERUM NEXT".  Meanwhile, craven politicians throughout the country, most recently in Florida, and their stupid supporters continue to block any efforts at Choice in Education.  See "A Charter Setback in Florida", WSJ Editorial, Wednesday Jan 7, 2009.  See also the recent article by Nicholas Kristof entitled "Our Greatest National Shame".  (NYTimes Sunday, Feb, 15, 2009).  Here the author is rightly referring to Public Education...but he wrongly considers the "stimulus package", with yet more massive money thrown into that massive sink-hole, to be the solution.  The only solution will be when our poorest families, totally dependent on that system, begin to demand that their Democratic Party, a wholly - owned subsidiary of the Teachers' Unions, legislates Choice and Vouchers and teacher accountability...initially and throughout their teaching careers. 

• And now to the greatest preoccupation of the new Administration after the Economy: "Health Care Reform".  Here, the best we can hope for is efforts at the margins of what really needs to be discussed and resolved; electronic health records, the least important but the most and most easily discussed; too much health care, a veritable buffet requiring priorities and rationing of needs vs wants; forced mediation of malpractice disputes instead of litigation...a lose-lose exercise for everyone except the lawyers; promote heavily Health Savings Accounts, thereby finally including the demanding/needing patient in the decision-making process, instead of systematically undermining that vital option; bring abusive managed care organizations to heel; emphasize patient responsibility, while half of Americans' illnesses are directly life-style related; emphasize and pay for coordination of care, whether by the primary care physician or by a caring specialist; promote and encourage the activities of "physician extenders", under the direct supervision of physicians; and reach out to physicians and other health care providers for a partnership in the process...instead of reaching out with the stick for the favorite pinata.  And wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air.  Meanwhile, don't hold your breath.

• Afghanistan is increasingly in the news, including today's NYTimes (pA1).  What do we want from President Hamid Karzai?  He is at the head of a democratically elected government beset with al Qaida, Taliban, a tribal culture, a cancerous opium trade and a neighbor (Pakistan) that will not close its borders to terrorists of many stripes.  And the man is trying to stay alive.  So, what should America do there?  Seek out and destroy al Qaida and Taliban terrorists, going cross-border in hot pursuit if necessary, negotiate with moderate Taliban (?) and tribal leaders while rebuilding the country, destroy the opium crop with fair conpensation to the farmers - and to no one else in the pipeline,  all the while giving the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan plausible deniability while they rant and rave against us.  Just get the job done.  If we're successful, we'll have plenty of friends then. 
• Iraq.  Probably "as good as it gets": a fairly stable and secure democratic country led by a man who has demonstrated the "cogliones" (sp.?) to get the job done.  Now, is this administration similarly endowed?  Or will we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? 
• Iran.  As usual, we are being played for suckers there - by the best liars in the world.  We had better keep them out of Iraq and out of having a nuclear weapon...Or Israel will show us the way - and will explode the entire Middle East in the process. 
• Israel.  The coming national elections will tell us something.  But for a people who measure their history in millennia, don't expect any breakthroughs soon.  Senator Mitchell please take note. 
• Turkey.  Now there's a vital nation that "don't get no respect" from us and the West.  Why is that?  Yes, they have their problems between the seculars and the religious Muslims.  But we could and should do more to strengthen the seculars to keep control of the country, which has long wanted to allign itself with the West. 
• Ah yes, The West.  It turns out that that the least dependable of that group are France and Germany...the embodiment of the statement: Nations don't have friends; they have interests.  Vice President Biden, please take note as you attempt to curry favor among them. 
• Russia.  Well, it's Russia.  what else can I say that I have not already said.  They are Orientals, not Occidentals - and they understand only power. 
• Domestically, even Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd are starting to worry about the new President (NYTimes today).  Given my comment posted yesterday, they are in my company...but from the other pole of the political spectrum. 
• Bernie Madoff made off with $50 Billion of other people's money, and not all of them millionaires or billionaires.  So, is he going to be allowed to die a natural death in his penthouse apartment before Justice is done?  That is not what "blind" is supposed to mean. 
• On a related subject, today's NYTimes has an article on "Plan B" for those who have retired or who intend to retire...after the Wall Street meltdown.  My advice for "Plan B": DON'T RETIRE.  Or you'll be sorry.  Instead, keep adding skills and interests to your market basket as you go through life.  Maybe career change; maybe slowing down.  But DON'T RETIRE!
• The world is again all atwitter with the alleged news regarding Alex Rodriguez and steroid use.  For the Sports World: what hypocrites you are for not dealing effectively once and for all with steroid use in all sports.  For the rest of you celebrity junkies, here's the fact: we're all human, regardless of the fancy clothes and plastic surgery...and how much skin we show.  And for you, Alex:  If you did it, stupid but not fatal - until you lied about it.  That's the professionally fatal part, and you would deserve it.  I'm reserving judgment until all of the facts are out. 
• The Public Education gang is at it again, looking for yet more money to suppport a failed and discredited endeavor.  "HAVE YOU NO SHAME....?" 
• Finally, let's get real domestic: New London, Ct.  Remember the TV series, "Peyton Place"?  That's our delightful city, a garden spot of the world...in constant need of weeding.  Real people, real predicaments; and they let it all hang out.  How refreshing, especially to those of us carpetbaggers who have been here 46 years...and counting.  And that brings us to The Day (www.theday.com), our local newspaper.  Fine newspaper, always getting awards including just this past week from the New England Press Association.  But now it too seems to be having financial problems, paring staff, size and coverage.  Now lookie here!  If you can't find enough news in this community, aided by the investigative reporting that you do too little of, you deserve to fail.  You ought to be syndicating the news of New London; it's real and titilating enough.  Also, don't cannibalize the paper into a mediocrity.  You have an endowment.  If it is not producing enougn interest and dividends, reach into the Corpus to get you over this rough spot.  All beneficiaries of endowments, large and small, are in the same uncharted waters - and the Donor intent was not to provide his money for failure.  Above all,  be truth-tellers in a world where the people have no other source of truth: not the government; not the other media; not the Internet.  And we can't wait twenty years for History to tell us "wha' hoppen".  "That is your mission, if you choose to accept it".

• To have been elected in a pervasive fog of national self-hypnosis was not reassuring in the first place.  This, in spite of a public persona that began with Elmer Gantry on Prozak and progressed to the Manchurian Candidate.  This also for a man who had only a half-dozen years of non-descript public life before his coronation.
• Then came a series of blunders in the selection of Cabinet members and close advisers, most recently including the admission of his selection to head the CIA (Leon Panetta, with absolutely no CIA or Intelligence experience) that he had been wrong to accuse the Bush administration of transferring people to other countries for purposes of torture. 
• Then came half-hearted efforts at "bi-partisanship" regarding the "stimulus package" while taking dictation from the far left crazies led by Nancy Pelosi.
• Then came breathless declarations of imminent "catastrophe" and similar hyperbole if Congress did not pass this second pig-in-a-poke immediately.  What happened to: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"?
• Then came his tongue-lashing of Republicans everywhere, accusing them of "playing politics" as they were engaged in truth-telling regarding that proposed legislation.  He even alleged that he had a mandate to do this.  Nonsense.