Central Perk

It’s snowing in my neighborhood. Apparently the cottonwood trees are pollenating and everything is covered in fluffy white fuzz. It’s like Christmas without the presents. Or any vacation days. Or sub zero temperatures. So nothing at all like Christmas then.

I’m watching Olberman and O’Reilly split screen. Bill is trying to wrap his head around the idea that someone can oppose torture (illegal) while supporting a woman’s right to choose (legal) while Keith sports some hair he must have borrowed from Mitt Romney. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment.

After a few false positives last week, the Brazilian navy has found pieces of wreckage from Air France Flight 447. What happened to the aircraft still remains a mystery. Due to the location of the wreckage, it is quite possible that the flight data recorders are lost under 4 miles of salt water and may never be recovered. Bad ending to a really bad story.

Monday afternoon the Supreme Court ordered that the sale of whatever is left of Chrysler to Fiat be delayed so that three Indiana Pension Funds can make the argument to the court that they should get more money out of the deal. So much for an expedited bankruptcy. The court offered no reason for it’s decision and no timeline on how it intends to proceed. But in the event the issue is not resolved by June 15th, Fiat can walk away from the deal, leaving Chrysler no alternative but to file for Chapter 7 and liquidate. Ever notice how there’s always one guy on the team who only seems to care about his own stats? It matter that the team is collapsing around him, that the quarterback has to cut back on his deep throws, that the tailback has to split carries with the fullback, that the receiving tight end has to stay in to block to help out a banged up offensive line. As long as he gets his catches, the team be damned. The Indiana Pension Funds are the Terrell Owens of this Chrysler bankruptcy. They don’t really care if a few hundred thousand people lose their jobs, as long as they get a hundred percent return on their investment. Patriots, one and all. Yes, I’ve heard the bogus complaints by people who know better that the UAW “took no haircut” throughout this bankruptcy, that the only thing they gave up was a day of vacation and the antiquated notion of job security. The automakers have been slashing jobs left and right since 2005. Since that time over 100,000 UAW manufacturing jobs have been eliminated in the United States alone. Chrysler has cut it’s manufacturing positions in half. Most retired UAW employees no longer have the pensions they worked half their lives for, or the healthcare benefits they’d been assured of. All their wages have been scaled back, and about two-thirds of them now find themselves under new management. For their trouble, the UAW has been rewarded with a 55% stake in two car companies currently worth absolutely nothing. While all this was happening, the investors in both General Motors and Chrysler - including the Indiana Pension Funds - were being paid what they were due. They didn’t find that unfair at all. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

UPDATE: On Tuesday evening the Supreme Court decided that the Indiana Pension Funds had not met the burden of convincing four of the nine justices that the issue raised is serious enough to warrant a full hearing, and that a majority of the court will conclude that the lower court decision was wrong, thereby clearing the way for the sale of Chrysler’s assets and for them to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of the week. Turns out that the pension funds claim that they would receive only 29 cents on the dollar for their investment was, at best, inaccurate, to the tune of 43 cents. Indiana Pension Funds purchased $42 million worth of bonds for a fire-sale price of $17 million. Under the terms of the bankruptcy they are set to recover $12.2 million, 72% of the money they paid into the company. And that’s a guaranteed 72% of their investment, not the 55% of nothing the deal grants to the UAW.

On Tuesday morning the Treasury Department announced that 10 of the major recipients of TARP funding have been cleared to begin returning taxpayer dollars to the tune of $68 billion. According to Geithner, that money will be held in case it is needed to stabilize some other failing institutions, then used to pay down the budget deficit and by extension the national debt. If by some miracle taxpayers get all of the $700 billion TARP and TALF funding back from the banks, it will reduce a $1.2 billion budget deficit to a manageable $500 billion. If, by some miracle.

In an interview with PBS last week on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made it clear that while he “would really like to vote for confirmation,” he finds himself unable to do so because then Senator Obama voted against seating Justices Roberts and Alito. Nice to see that Lindsey Graham never graduated from the third grade. Note to Senator Graham; grow a spine. If you want to vote for confirmation, vote for confirmation, if you don’t, then don’t. But for crying out loud, do it based of some kind of principle, not some ridiculous elementary school grudge.

On a related issue, much continues to be made of the assertion by some that due to an extra-contextual phrase in a speech, Judge Sotomayor is some sort of “reverse racist.” I stumbled across this gem today in the form of an e-mail to National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation.” The e-mailer prefaced his comments by stating that it wouldn’t have mattered to him if Sotomayor was “a man, woman, transgender, green, black, red or white, she erred in her comment that her world view is better than that of a white male.” (Which is not at all what she said, but I guess facts aren’t really relevant here.) The e-mailer went on to write, “...it is different, differently informed, but a brilliant white male once said that all men are created equal. We should find another justice who is capable of thinking larger than his or her self.” Not surprisingly, it never occurred to the writer of that e-mail, that the brilliant white man who penned those famous words contradicted those words every single day of his life on his estate full of men and women he most certainly did not consider equal. I respectfully submit that had Thomas Jefferson been privy to the “richness of experience” of even one of the slaves held at Monticello, it might not have taken 182 years for this country to legally recognize the truth of his statement.

The politics of fear and loathing raised a reported $14 million dollars for the Republican party Monday night at a dinner in Washington D.C. Luminaries like Jon Voight and Sarah Palin, and retreads like Newt Gingrich spent their time at the microphone accusing Congressional Democrats and specifically President Obama of everything from failure to oppression to tyranny to being a “false prophet.” I firmly believe that language is important - that words mean things. And the extreme hyperbole and incredible disingenuous nature of those comments is pathetic. The idea that this president is some sort of oppressive tyrant bent on subjugating Americans is absurd and obviously false to anyone capable of formulating coherent thought, so the fact that those assertions can be used as applause lines in speeches to a certain segment of the population is disturbing and somewhat depressing. We know what real tyrants are like. The 20th century was plagued by them. Men like Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot, men who murdered tens of millions of people and oppressed millions more to achieve some bizarre notion of utopia. To equate the President of the United States with monsters like those for the sin of temporarily nationalizing a handful of financial institutions and two car companies in an attempt to prevent the collapse of the American economy is a perversion of language so disgusting it should be disavowed by every reasonable individual, and the people who spout such drivel should be relegated to the fringes of society - if recognized by society at all.

Walmart announced plans to open 150 stores and hire 22,000 workers nationwide this year. Apparently, when the going gets tough, the tough go to Walmart. I have to admit, I’m a little conflicted about this. There’s nothing negative about 22,000 new jobs in this economy - even if they are nothing more than unskilled, minimum wage positions. But as a pseudo-architect, the thought of 150 new Walmart stores blighting cities all across America makes me sick to my stomach. I think we can do better. I know we can.

The city of Atlanta has begun its campaign to demolish all of its public housing projects by June of next year. It’s an enormous task - Atlanta has has the fifth-largest public housing agency in the nation with approximately 20,000 units. Having worked with public housing agencies for the past nine years, I think this is nothing short of a great idea. It’s sad that it has taken so long for society to realize that when you treat people like cattle, herding them into claustrophobic dilapidated projects, you’re going to get out exactly what you put in. Relocating all those residents will not be easy, it will not be cheap and it will not be without problems. Chicago has been undergoing a similar transformation for several years now with mixed results. But nobody makes the argument that things were better in the projects. It’s a step in the right direction. Keep walking.

Finally, an early morning fire destroyed the Grandview Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, Maine, the same coffee shop that created national media buzz when it opened this past February. Arson is suspected, but no one has been arrested in connection with the blaze. What is it about bare breasts that makes people crazy? Is it the roundness? The firmness? The perk? What is the problem? If you don’t like breasts, don’t look at them. Burning down their place of employment accomplishes nothing. The breasts will still be there. They’ll just work somewhere else and be viewed by other people. Breasts are here to stay. Deal with it.