"Juggling Major National Issues Should Only Be Attempted By A Professional"

The warning on fire juggling equipment websites read "fire juggling should only be attempted by a professional juggler."

If you've ever watched a juggler in action, you’ve probably done what I've done - wonder what it is that makes something that looks so simple so hard for the average person to do.

I've seen professional jugglers at the circus as a child and on TV as an adult. They all pretty much start off the same way - by standing next to a row of items they intend to juggle and picking the items off of the row one by one. The first two items they toss into the air to get their rhythm going make the action look deceptively simple. And while you're watching, they smoothly snatch another item from the pile and add it to the ones they are already circulating from hand to hand and into the air.

The next thing you know, they've got four items in the circuit - two in the air, with the other two in their hands. This, you figure, you could probably do as well, if you had time to practice a bit. It isn't until they begin juggling five or six items that you have to admit that this guy knows what he is doing.

If you watch him while he's juggling, you will see, even if he is plying his audience with a steady line of patter, that his eyes are intent on the trajectory and the height of the balls in the air.

Imagine these items are torches, the kind you set on fire.

When you see a juggler begin to light his juggling torches, any idea you may have had of your prowess matching the juggler's skills one day vanishes. At that point, you figure the juggler has lost his mind – he cannot possibly be planning to juggle torches that are actually flaming.

The most amazing act I've ever seen involved juggling lit torches.

President Obama is a fire juggler.

In some ways, he is making the balancing act he's maintaining as his administration juggles decision making on the economy, healthcare, the banking bailout, the environment, education and America’s infrastructure look too easy. Most of us, aware of our own limitations, figure we would be sweating bullets if we tried to take on any three of these at once.

The critics, who are legion, are not professional jugglers. They are a lot like you and me - the kind of people who would be afraid of even tossing lit torches into the air. President Obama may not be one yet either, but he seems to be willing, like has has in all the other endeavors he's committed to accomplishing in his life, to be giving it his undivided attention.

Is There Anything Good Going On These Days?

Yesterday, I was feeling a little rundown after a long week, so instead of getting online, or reading something, I sat down in the den and pushed back on the arms of the recliner to raise my legs. The TV was already on, so I figured I'd watch it for a few minutes until I nodded off. The show turned out to be Ugly Betty, a satire aimed at the fashion magazine publishing industry.

I’d forgotten Vanessa Williams was on the show - just when I thought I was going to fade out, she hit the screen. You can never go wrong watching Vanessa. But the program itself became more compelling than Ms. Williams blue green eyes as I realized that the program was incorporating current events into its storyline. When they showed the editor and publisher of Mode magazine, the fictional publication the show revolves around, in front of a New York legislative body, it made me think of all the recent congressional hearings where Wall Street and Detroit executives had recently been grilled.

Mode magazine was struggling, like many companies in the real world, and its executives were making a personal plea for $75 million in bailout funds. The company's executives emphasized that they'd come in on the subway to the hearings. The show segued to the title character, Betty Suarez, who was trying to figure out how to save the family home.

It wasn't until the second or third set of commercials came on that I realized how out of touch I was with the world of broadcast TV. The ads were all keying on the economy, layoffs, cutbacks, downsizing, and the corresponding change in spending habits of the buying public.

I don't know if this is typical of all the prime time shows and advertising these days, but with the constant barrage of negative images, I was more awake and more concerned about the economy by the end of the show than I'd been when I sat down.

Is there anything good going on these days?

As bad as this economic downturn is, I think there are several positive things that are taking place right now.

We are connecting to other people in intimate, heartfelt ways that some of us have frankly ignored in times of plenty. The need to contact everybody in your network if you’ve been laid off or downsized oftentimes reopens lines of communication with people you may not have spoken to in years.

We are leaning on each other emotional, spiritually and financially, which has altered how we make decisions about things. This group input is resulting in less rash or unnecessary purchases that we have often rationalized are "essential" items when left to our own devices in times of plenty.

We are all learning to really appreciate what we have, rather than covet the things we don't have.

At the end of this episode of Ugly Betty, the Suarez family got the money they needed to save their home. The owner of the publishing company, after being turned down for a bailout, decided to put up his own assets (a novel concept!) to try to save the business his father founded.

Hell, even Vanessa Williams' character decided to kick in what she could.

We’re all in this together. Even our fictitious TV personalities are joining in.

We in real life aren’t going to get a fairy tale ending, but the outcome of all of this, down the road, will be a positive one.

My Six Pence On The Economy

There is literally only one conversation going on these days - the economy.

I was in a restaurant yesterday with S. in Savannah, Georgia when she leaned over and said "all these people are talking about the economy. Can't they talk about something else?" We were in The Six Pence Pub on Bull Street, a cozy little English pub, complete with a red telephone booth outside, near the western edge of Savannah's historic district. It was the kind of place that attracts tourists and locals alike who are interested in something other than the chain restaurant fare.

The early afternoon crowd tended to be more grey haired than not. As I listened closer, I realized S. was right - at every table around us people were talking about how they were going to pay for college for their children, or how long it was going to take to sell their home in New Jersey so they could move to Savannah, or how long it was taking them to sell the houses they were building.

The tone was one of resignation, of a certain level of acceptance that things were going to be bad for some time.

The most striking thing was the lack of political rancor – no one was lambasting the president, or railing against the Democrats, or castigating the Republicans. Their conversations were at a more fundamental level than that, with occasional asides to announce the closing of a friend’s business, or the layoff of a relative.

At this level, political posturing is meaningless. Real people are losing real jobs, real property, and real businesses. Parents are concerned about their children's welfare, whether they are minor children they are trying to educate or adult children who have families of their own.

By the time we left the restaurant, I was convinced that I was seeing the beginnings of a nation that is almost ready to do one of the things we do best - come together temporarily in a crisis to achieve a common goal.

While Gotham City Goes Bust

DA-yum!


Is the smell of RECESSION in the air?


Could the nation’s financial sector be ON THE ROPES?


Are our political candidates taking WALL STREET’S GURGLING as a green light?


Irritated intellectual types debate the underlying issues!


All day, everyday, for the foreseeable future!


Same bat time!


Same bat channel!


The guy who did the voiceover for the television show Batman had a voice that was more familiar to me than Walter Cronkite. There was something in that campy, over the top delivery style that appealed to my five year old self, and helped set the stage for the logic-defying feats and the ridiculously stilted dialogue that Batman and Robin, the Dynamic Duo, were going to perform over the next thirty minutes.

Thirty five years later, I’ve got my own VIP Waterford Kool-Aid pitcher from the Obama campaign, but even us Kool-Aid drinkers have to draw the line somewhere with our candidate. Obama’s broad generalizations that the state of our economy stems from specific incidents perpetrated by the Republican Party is a waste of time. He and his advisors have more than enough brain power to evaluate each and every incident of financial malfeasance on its own merits. And Obama’s smart enough to know how interdependent all the parts of our economy are on each other and the rest of the world.

Commissioner Gordon: "Batman, you unscrambled that safe's combination in five seconds flat! How did you do it?"
Batman: "With my Bat-Five-Seconds-Flat-Combination-Unscrambler, Commissioner."

So what am really I saying here? Is it time for Commissioner Gordon to shine the Bat Signal into the sky? If the Dow loses another 1000 points this week you'll be alright, even if all of your retirement savings are tied up in your 401(k). The weaknesses of our financial sector that is being reflected in the value of the stocks that make up the Dow index aren’t the real problem. The bulge of supply in our economy, like the bulge in the belly of a boa constrictor that has eaten too much, cannot be legislated away. Like the snake, the country will be lethargic and glassy eyed for awhile, until we digest what has been one of the biggest feasts in American financial history.

George Soros has made most of his fortune following a reflexive theory he has termed "boom/bust", that basically says that all systems are usually NOT in a state of equilibrium - they are usually teetering between one extreme or the other. Batman might have been able to subdue The Penguin or The Riddler in half an hour, but reversing this economic trend immediately is impossible, no matter what the candidates promise.

The only positive I can see out of all of this, from a political standpoint, is that it makes the population and our governing bodies more amenable to trying out things they never would have agreed to when they weren't in need. Do you really think half the stuff Roosevelt enacted would have been politically viable if we weren’t hurting so bad in the Thirties?

Robin: "Gosh, there could be diplomatic repercussions if we fail this time, Batman."
Batman: "That's not the point, Robin. What's important is that the world know that all visitors to these teeming shores are safe, be they peasant or king."
Robin: "Gee, Batman, I never thought of that. You're right."
Batman: "It's the very essence of our democracy."

Truth is always relative to your perspective. Jingoism often allows us to suspend our deductive powers of reasoning. Sound, reasoned critical thinking seems to have be on the endangered species list. TV sound bites, ultra extremist ideologies, and the need for "microwave" solutions have contributed to their rapid demise.

Whether we want to pull out of Iraq in the next 72 hours, or have a slew of the corporate terrorists who run Wall Street strung up by their toes by nightfall, we are going to have to sacrifice SOMETHING – something big and something long term - to achieve our stated goal of economic equilibrium. Self-righteousness might be the first thing on the list. In either case, the outcome is going to be ugly and bloody.

Batman: "Nobody wants war."
Robin: "Gee, Batman. Belgravia's such a small country. We'd beat them in a few hours."
Batman: "Yes, and then we'd have to support them for years."

The proletariat (yeah, I’m talking about you, me, and the other 99% of the population, in case you are thinking “who, me?” as you read this) always has been and always will be abused.

Consumption of all kinds - food, fine cars, consumer goods, and bigger and bigger houses, for those of you who don’t watch cable TV - is the American way. Our entire economy, and the corporate success that is derived from it, is based on the masses (us) buying more and more of this type of stuff. I can't think of any society in history that has been able to peacefully make such a radical adjustment its learned habits, especially those that play such an important role in its corporate citizen's financial lives.

High minded ideals have been spouted by leaders since the beginning of time, but it is often those same men whose lives contradict many of the principles they purport to espouse.

Batman: "That's one trouble with dual identities, Robin. Dual responsibilities."

Personally, I would be happy doing without a lot of the things I now enjoy, but its the consequences of the “doing without” kinds of changes in what the masses (us) see as the natural order of things that I believe my fellow citizens are most afraid of, even as we say are unhappy with the status quo.

In the meantime, to the Batmobile!

"Sarah P. - BOO-yah!"

To the guys who think SportsCenter is all the news they need, which is a whole lot of guys of every political stripe, race, creed and religion, Barack Obama is the second most recognizable black voice in the country.

Stuart Scott, ESPN's hip, fast talking sports anchor, is the first.

"BOO-yah!" is his trademark, a verbal exclamation point, the equivalent of the cable news pundit "Gotcha!". Scott's fast paced, "let's get jiggy with it" style of delivery is the last thing that hundreds of thousands of men across the country hear before going to sleep.

After watching the stock market drop over 500 points yesterday, I wanted to see somebody putting some points on the board. So I turned to Monday Night Football. The Cowboys/Eagles game delivered just what I needed - four full quarters of offensive fireworks, with the Cowboys hanging on to a four point lead in the end to win it.

During the game, I was flipping channels back and forth during the commercials, alternating between CNN, CNBC, and the game. Larry King had his usual suspects on CNN, squaring off on the latest controversies between the Obama and McCain campaigns with the same old tired platitudes they’ve been pedaling for weeks. Larry Kudlow had his usual suspects on CNBC, each of them staring squarely into the camera to proclaim that they had known all along what was really wrong with the economy and how we could fix it in three easy steps.

Maybe, I said to myself as hit the remote to flip back to T.O. flashing his crocodile smile to the cameras after his first half touchdown, maybe we should take the experts on CNN and the experts on CNBC and swap them, the way they do on those reality shows like Wife Swap. As Stuart Scott and Emmitt Smith joked last night after the game, I wondered - just the thought of something like that happening in real life would be “sick nasty” – probably one of the only times in politics that a double negative could turn out to be an "unbelievably awesome" development.

I was thinking this only half in jest, though, because for the life of me, I can’t understand why McCain would put that tongue-tied benchwarmer Tucker Bounds out there in front of a camera trying to run interference for him when Tucker can barely remember which lie he’s telling tonight.

Why doesn’t McCain’s campaign have one of those square jawed, sharp eyed guys with the slicked down hairdos, the kind of guy who takes the art of telling a good lie seriously, the way they do on CNBC, instead of this rube? Why don’t they have a guy who looks like a real live Republican is supposed to look. Oh, I forgot, they’re all in high demand back at their day jobs on Wall Street, announcing that they will be “restating” the earnings they knew damn well their companies didn’t have in the first place. I hope they aren't on tomorrow night telling us how easy it is to "fix" the economy.

The fundamental changes that would have to take place in our modern American society are sacrifices most of us aren't willing to bear anyway.

I’ve been saying for awhile that when you start to hear those metaphorical dogs barking, when you start to feel those figurative water hoses stinging, you will know we are close. This thing we have all signed on for, to try to elect a black American to the presidency of the United States, is actually going pretty good. So good, in fact, that the people who want the opposition to win aren’t very happy right now. And a lot of them are on TV, masquerading as "fair and balanced" journalists.

Oh, they smile for the cameras.

They sit on the little TV news shows and puff out their chests and jut out their jaws and pontificate until it is time to go home.

But if you could see them off camera, after they’ve walked down the hall, after they’ve exited the lobby and are looking for their car, you will likely see that the smile has fallen, that the proud jut has taken on a dour droop.

In fact, they probably look a lot like most of us do when we leave work after a shitty day, exchanging our professional face for our off-the-clock one by the time we slide our seatbelts on. Kinda like the Eagles players did when they hit the locker room last night.

At the rate the McCain campaign is going, any day now I expect them to inform us that the earth has always been flat, and anyone who tells you any different is a part of an effort by the Obama campaign to “disrespect” their beliefs.

When I heard Ralph Reed’s high pitched voice earlier tonight on Larry King, asserting with righteous sanctimony that Sarah Palin was no longer going to testify in the Troopergate investigation because the investigation was tainted, my eyebrows went up. When he continued, adding that the investigation was being orchestrated by the Obama campaign, I understood right then why people throw things at their TV sets.

Are we back in the thirties? A white woman gets in hot water, doing something she’s not supposed to be doing, and what does she do? She hauls a black bogeyman out of nowhere.

Now that’s sick AND nasty.

I imagine, if I can only haul one more Sarah Palin analogy out of last night's game before your eyes start to glaze over, that it would have to be this one. In the second quarter, while the Eagles rookie wideout DeSean Jackson was taking it to the house on a 61-yard pass play, Jackson flipped the ball behind him in celebration a half a step BEFORE he got to the end zone.

What would Stuart Scott say during the Sarah Palin highlights after her last two weeks of running for the vice presidency?

"Sarah, baby, next time, wait until you actually BREAK THE PLANE before you start getting your groove on. BOO-yah!"