The Two Winstons...
Please excuse my blatant plagerism: this title is the same exact one that appears in one of the final chapters of Simon Scharma's "A History of Britain". It refers to two of the most consequential figures of British history --- one flesh and blood and the other fictional --- Winston Churchill and Winston Smith.

Churchill, of course, should require no explanation. He was, without a doubt, the greatest British statesman (warts and all) of the late 19th through the 20th century. Winston Smith, a fictional character, was the protagonist in George Orwell's classic 1984. Both still have emaning in today's world, especially in relation to the recent terrorist bombings in London.

There are those in the West that would have you believe that Islamic terrorism is merely the West reaping what it has sown: that centuries of Western hostility to Islam and imperialism gives aggrieved people the right to hijack airliners or to strap explosives upon themselves and detonate them in subways, in both instances killing innocent people. Such thinking merely excuses one evil by allowing another. In fact, it encourages more evil by excusing it in the first place. By this logic, the United States, having nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is in line to have the Japanese do the same to us. Fair is fair, after all. Forget the "two wrongs don't make a right" argument --- guilt compels us to ensure the wronged don't have to play by that rule.

And this is the attitude that informs most of the resistance to the War on Terror. It is not based upon anything resembling conventional logic, merely on tortured philosophy and emotion. It's the philiosophy of the morally blind and the lazily resigned.Somewhat similar to the attitude one takes when one recives a parking ticket when no violation has occurred. You may not be wrong, but you're not exactly up to the fight of proving it, and so you swallow principle and pay the fine. It's easier that way. No muss, no fuss, no expenditure of energy. In the end, the principle that is being compromised is not worth going through the trouble of defending. It's the path of least resistance.

Which is exactly the point of most people's attitude: it's easier to not have to think about it. It's much more comforting to know that someone else is making the effort. Certainly, it's easier than having to make difficult decisions for yourself. If you can justify taking a parking ticket when you're in the right, then you can justify 50 dead people in the London Underground. You're not willing to make a judgement or an effort on anything.

Which brings us to the two Winstons.

Winston Churchill would have made an effort. He would have given a stirring speech. He would have stayed up all night in the halls of No. 10 formulating strategy and responses. He definitely would have made sure the public understood the threat they were under and that he was willing to make the effort not FOR them but WITH them.
Winnie would never allow them to sit on the fat behinds when there was work to be done. He would have rallied them and led them out of their complacency and given them the willpower and resolve to be a part of something larger than themselves. Winston would have appealed to patriotism, tradition, culture, to rouse his people into the proper state with which to defend themselves or to undertake whatever great task destiny had dumped in their laps.

Which leads us to Winston Smith.

In 1984, Winston is a product of the society in which he lives, a society that demands the ultimate physical, emotional and mental effort that he can muster, and which uses an apparatus of terror to enforce it's ideology and requirements. It keeps him barely aware of events (in fact, it co-opts him in it's rewriting of history and falsification of the news), on the edge of starvation, and in a constant state of privation, but continually claims that it makes his life better than his ancestors in millions of ways on a daily basis. Winston has no method of comparison, except memories of an earlier time when things were not the way they are, and so, for most of his life, accepts this. Until memory proves much stronger than uniformity and terror. At this point, he rebels; at first mentally, and then by overt action, because he comes to the conclusion that some things (freedom, human rights, dignity) are worth fighting for. Ultimately, his activities are utterly futile in the face of an all-powerful state, but you get the impression that Orwell was making a statement: no gesture is futile if there's a principle involved.

Now Churchill was an unabashed royalist and Orwell a comitted socialist (until he saw what socialism had warped into), and they could be expected to agree on very little (read Orwell's essays written between 1936 and 1945 and you'll agree with me). However, both men were absolute geniuses at getting down to bottom lines.
In the face of what we confront today, Churchill would recommend a united front, a show of resistance, and a resolve to see it thorugh to the bitter end, if necessary. Winston was a fighter whenever compromise could not be achieved. He would see that today's Islamic terrorist was every bit as nasty as the Nazis of his day, and in his estimation, no compromise would have been possible. British culture could not peacefully (or with good conscience) co-exist with Nazi Germany.

Orwell would have taken a different route, but arrived at the same conclusion. To borrow a few Orwell-isms, George would have concluded vis-a-vis the Arab nutcases we're facing down: two blacks don't make a white and you cannot argue with people who insist that half a loaf is the same as no bread. Yes, the British Empire had an awful lot to answer for (as does the United States), but when you compare it to what else exists in the world (dictatorship, slavery, disaffection, disease, dirt, etc) the British (Or American) way is the next best thing to Heaven on earth. Not because it is perfect, but because it recognizes it's flaws and makes an honest effort to correct them. And even if inequity exists in terms of wealth and political power, given time, such a society will eventually create a place in which all men live in brotherhood, free of want or violence.

The people we're fighting at the moment do not have the perspective that a Churchill or an Orwell can provide. For a start, if either man had emerged in modern Arab society, one would have been inclined to take power for his own personal benefit, and the other would have been crushed to death by heavy stones for daring to question the society in which he lives. Yet both would have an impact far beyond those achievements. A Churchill unfettered by the typical modus operandi of the Middle Eastern, secular dictator, would have shown the people that there was a better way to live and how to fight for dignity. Orwell would have presented their own ignorance to them on a silver platter. Both are prerequisites for a better, more dynamic, more equitable Islamic society in some distant (as yet) future. Until Islam has it's Chruchills and Orwells, it will continue to be merely a source of misery, turning out men willing to commit murder/suicide out of sheer frustration or the perversion of religious values.

But both have left a little wisdom for their own people, which seems totally appropriate today.

"I have nothing to offer the British people except tears, toil, blood and sweat." - Winston Churchill

"To be anti-[West] is to be, objectively, pro-[Islamic terrorist]." - George Orwell

"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. " - Churchill

"A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. " - Orwell

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last." - Churchill

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - Orwell

"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required. " - Churchill

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - Orwell

Men of this caliber no longer exist. But if they did, they would urge that decent society be defended by all means available.

NYC 2012 --- Reality Intrudes ...
New York has lost it's bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012. Many here are disappointed (particulalry the politicians and the developers), but quite frankly, most New Yorkers could give a sow's ear about the Olympics at all. It's not like it's fun anymore now that the Soviet Union is gone.

To begin with, the bid was clearly camoflague -- the real purpose was to get a multi-use stadium built on the West Side of Manhattan. Michael Bloomberg may be a fantastic businessman, but you can't sell 8 million-plus New Yorkers a load of bullshit. New Yorkers would have been quite happy with a West Side stadium (except the wussy Yuppies who are busy gentrifying adjoining Hell's Kitchen) but they would never accept a lie as a reason for bringing it into being. Finally, why would the city go a head and build a stadium when Ground Zero has next to no construction going on at all? Shouldn't there be some priorities around here?

Speaking of Ground Zero, it's become even more of a politcally correct nightmare than one could ever have imagined, but I'll get to this another time.

Quite frankly, speaking as a native New Yorker, who the hell wanted several million (more) tourists and French syncrhonized swimmers around here anyway? Especially when the cost of "hosting" them would far exceed any economic activity they generated, which is usually what happens when the Olympics come to town. And in a city like New York, which is practically controlled by it's labor unions, it would have been sheer political suicide to let Local 3 of the Electrician's Union hold the city hostage with cost overruns for the sake of completing the "Olympic Village"/high-priced Trump-style condos after the fact.

Now, we're not saying we don't want a new stadium or construction or tourists around here, because we do, if only for the jobs and money such things bring in. However, I think it would have been better if the mayor had found another location for it: perhaps at Turtle Bay where there's a stinking cesspool of foreigners in need of eviction at the UN. New Yorkers would readily accept that compromise.

But the Mayor was adamant until it was nearly too late, merely switching to plan B (new Yankee stadium, new Shea Stadium) at the very last minute. In the meantime, the IOC had already decided that New York had less of a chance than Madrid, but only slightly more than Moscow, eventually choosing London, which has now, as we all know, been attacked by terrorists.

New York was never a serious contender anyway. The IOC would never sit still for the massive 9/11 memorial ceremonies that would take place during the Olympic Games, in effect, showing the Olympics up, and the IOC is not all that amenable to America anyway in today's political climate. The Republican Party may choose New York in a show of solidarity, but the IOC won't -- not when a number of the athletes competing will be from Muslim countries. The thinking is that Americans are obsessed with 9/11, and New Yorkers only moreso (of course we are!), and we could only be expected to boo the Muslims and burn them at the stake if we could get our hands on them. In that regard, London was a fine, aleternate choice.

In the light of the events two days ago, however, I wonder what the IOC is thinking now.

While England Slept...
And the same can be said for Spain, France, Germany and Italy. It can be applied to the entire EU-rinal from Ireland to Ukraine, from Oslo to Malta. The countries of Europe have been asleep.

While Europe has slept under the shield of American protection, it has invited a virus into it's host body which will surely kill it. That virus is radical Islamic fundamentalism.

It came with the Algerians who clean the French sewers and ensure that Jean Q. le Publique gets to vacation for four weeks a year, and pay the taxes that enable him to retire and retire at 55. It arrived with the Turks who came to Germany to sweep the streets and which allows Herr Shicklegruber to enjoy his local hospital. The pernicious germ came attached to the Albanians arriving in Italy in record numbers so that Italians can watch their annual Milan-Juventus match without having to worry about their trash being picked up.

The infection exists in the millions of unassimilated Arabs and Muslims living on the crumbs of the societies that they perpetuate with the sweat of their brow and back-breaking labor. The English, French, Germans and Italians are more than willing to let these people live amongst them, provided they do what's required of them (pay taxes, vote for this or that political party), but otherwise wants nothing to do with them.

Well, apparently, that's not going to be the way of things anymore.

There are millions of disaffected, detatched fromt heir homes and their culture, looking for something to cling onto, something to identify with. They're not allowed to be French, they're merely cogs in the machine of the French welfare state, so naturally, they cling to the only unifying and fufilling force they have: their religion.

But that religion has also been infected: by political theories, by moral relativism, by pap psychology. It's no longer a religion in the purest sense --- a moral compass by which the faitful will live their lives. It has instead become the driving force in destroying that to which they cannot belong --- Western Culture.

This is something Europeans seem to be missing. Perhaps because it's Europeans who invented the process of pap psychology, moral relativism, ridiculous political theories and deconstruction that allows evil to fester in their midst without anyone identifying it as such.

Europe has now had two serious wake up calls: one in Madrid and the other in London. You start to wonder when the political leaders will stop hitting the snooze button and do what needs to be done: either assimilate these folks or fight to the death with them. The first option will never happen because to do so would seriously undermine European society. The second will happen because it's the only option the Muslims are laying on the table.

Of Blind Hogs and Acorns...
There's an old expression that states that "even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while". Never was that more evident to me than yesterday when a friend of mine in England sent me the text of a speech by London Mayor Ken "Red Ken" Livingstone.

Now Mr. Livingstone is an avowed Communist, which makes him incredibly suspect in my mind. But when faced with the tragedy of the London Tube Bombings, Mr. Livingstone pulled out an utter gem of elequence that neatly sums up British resolve to stay the course in the face of Islamonazis.

For your reading pleasure, via an e-mail from Gene Reynolds (a Yank over the pond), I give you Mr. Ken Livingstone:

"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.
They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.”

"They'll Always be An England...."
I'm going to assume that no one who reads this will have ever heard of Vera Lynn (unless you're either a WWII buff or a Pink Floyd fan). Ms. Lynn was an English chantruese who helped solidify British resolve to beat the Nazis in the 1940's by singing little ditties that reminded people of just what they were fighting for.

It wasn't just for King and Country. There was a culture of Englishness, that was both unique and natural, that needed to be maintained (and not just for sentimental reasons) because it was inherently good, while the Axis was inherently evil.

In today's morally-relative world, the concepts of "good" and "evil" are sometimes likened to the use of a racial epithet and it is believed that by doing away with such "conventional" distinctions we'll somehow create a better world. This kind of thinking never really computes, however. There is a grave difference between calling someone a "nigger", for example, and entering a crowded subway station and igniting an explosive that kills someone. One is merely a calculated act of ignorance whilst the other is a calculated act of murder. Ignoring both the intent of either act or the ramiofications it unleashes, does nothing to better mankind or to alleviate the motivating factors behind them. In order to fight evil, one must be first prepared to define just what evil is, and further be prepared to identify it when one sees it.

A racial epithet is nasty, but it's necessarily evil. Blowing up businessmen, tourists, laborers and policemen to forward a twisted ideological mindset which masquerades as religion, is.

Good and evil do exist, and not as mere adjectives that one can apply to one and not another depending upon your political whims. The "good" England of Vera Lynn's day was a beacon of civilization and civility, the rule of law, and the ability of a people, across a broad spectrum of wealth and class, heritage and language, to band together to fight a common enemy for a common purpose. It was the England of comunity. The "evil" it was fighting against was one of the rule of the dictator, the marching of populations into servitude and death, and the ideology of hate as a national virtue.The very core of Nazi ideology was barbaric inhumanity.

The England of that day fought to remain not only English, but to remain HUMAN. The spearpoint of Nazi barbarism was countered by the shield of English community and humanity. The concepts of politics, freedoms, economics and social forces are merely secondary to the main thrust of English resistance in 1939-45: we have seen evil and hate it, in fact, we'll destroy it.

And so the same holds today.

The same London that burned under the bombers of the Luftwaffe, the doodlebugs and the V-2, and emerged victorious, will again stand up to the Nazis of the 21st century and similarly emerge victorious. Times and attitudes may have changed in post-War Britain, but it takes more than that to emeliorate the inbred virtues of a people. The Churchillian race of the Bulldog British will once again emerge, counter the threat at it's doorstep and triumph.

History, after all, does repeat itself.

Apologia...
I've been busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest recently, so I have not been able to spew on here as much as I would have liked. I apologize to three or four fellow misfits that might actually hit this page.

In the meantime, there's been a ton of stuff happening elsewhere. London has been bombed by depraved Islamonazis. New York City has lost it's bid to host the Olympic Games. Cats and Dogs have signed as peace treaty at an historic summit in Helsinki (not really).

But fear not, gentle reader, I will take a crack at all of these subjects, and more.

Excommunication By Any other Name...
A virulent brouhaha has erupted here in the idyllic burgh of Staten Island, NY over the pronouncement of a local priest concerning church attendance and religious instruction.

Father Richard Chicon of St. Thomas-St. Joseph's RC Church has decided to toss 250 children out of his catechism program since they do not attend church on a regular basis. Father Chicon knows the children are not attending mass because each child was provided with a series of bar-coded envelopes to be used for the donation plate when they did show up. Having identified a whole battalion of non-churchgoers via electronic means, Father Chicon decided to make a point; you cannot come to my school for religious instruction and then not follow up by attending mass.

The Father is correct, of course, on many a level. He's also wrong on a variety of others.

I'm a product of the Catholic schools here in New York. As such, I was practically in church every day. Many of the kids who attend the catechism are not members of the church school next door. They attend public or other non-religious private schools. They attend religious training for the purposes of receiving the sacraments, for the most part. By denying these children the opportuniy to be taught church doctrine and theology, Father Chicon is simultaneously denying them the right to receive the sacraments.

Policies like this helped kick off the Protestant Reformation, you know. If the Church is supposed to be saving souls, why is it trying like the Devil to keep the souls from the instruction they require? The issue, of course, is money. Hence the bar coded envelopes.

It takes money to run the church, it's school and it's catechism program. Parents, of course, pay a fee for their children's instruction, but it's not enough. The Catholic church never has enough money, it seems. So, while the Reverand might be perfectly right in his assertion that receiving instruction and not attending mass afterwards is hypocritical, he's also wrong in selling indulgences. Which is what this amounts to.

But then again, this is also the same church which invented the concept of purgatory in order to suck money from guilty noblemen. The concept of purgatory, basically stated, was that a soul did not immediately proceed to heaven or hell upon death, but lingered in a waiting room of sorts before judgement. During that time, a borderline sould might be saved if he had enough people pray for him. So, many a rich aristocrat ponied up vast sums to have masses said for them, or candles lit in their honor, have churhces and monastaries built, or simply left everything to the chantry (litterally a fund to pray for the souls trapped in puragtory). The message was then, as it is now, if you don't pay up, we cannot vouch for the safety of your soul. Chruch policy is that only people who have been properly prepared and educated (counselled) about the sacraments can actually receive them. If you deny the counselling, you deny the sacrament. Father Chicon has reinstated the purgatory chantry.

Of course, most of the parents and children involved have little or no intention of attending mass on a regular basis. They send their children to catechism because they feel that some traditions, whether they actually mean anything anymore or not, have to be obeyed. Father Chicon is not just denying people the sacraments, he's denying them their traditions and heritage.

The Bulletproof Beast...
apropos of the new Joe Klein "tell-all" about potential 2008 presidential candidate Hillary (It's Takes a village...) Clinton, I have but one thing to say to my fellow republicans: if you haven't already noticed, scandal seems to follow in this woman's wake like seagulls follow garbage scows, and after all this time, all the scandals, all the miserable, petty details, she's still dancing between raindrops. Clean that drool off your lower lips and forget Klein's book.

When it comes to shit, it just doesn't stick to Her Heinous.

To begin with, if you were expecting salacious details of tawdry business deals, steamy extra-marital affairs, White House shenanigans a plenty, then go ahead and read the book. I'm sure there's a few morsels of Bill and Hill scandals that haven't seen the light of day. Some of them might even be entertaining. However, if you're expecting one of the potential scandalous tidbits upon the printed page to jump up, come to life like a freakazoid Frankenstein's monster, and put short shrift to the apparent Heir Apparent, then forget it. Save yourself the heartache and the ulcer.

Something we should have learned from 8 years of All Clintons All the Time: it does not matter how sleazy her husband is. It doesn't matter how sleazy she is, she always manages to weasel out. So, why bother? It's not like a revelation about Hillary stealing the White House silverware would actually shock anyone (we kinda expect it), nor would anyone be surprised if it turns out it was actually the Hildebeest that ran over Buddy the White House Labrador. It's not as if people actually think the woman is nice. You can't make the charges stick, and even if you did manage to get her frock just a wee bit dirty, the media and a million supporters crawl out of the woodwork to defend her. Eventually, they talk so much, and change the subject so much, that we all forget exactly what we're talking about in the first place, and Hilly goes merrily upon her way.

Unless there's something so completely out of left field, so egregious, so disgusting, the book helps no one on my side of the isle to score political points. So drop it. Joe Klein will not be an avenging angel, a messiah delivering us from the specter of a Clinton presidency that comes equipped with it's own tits (instead of some intern's).

And I wish to God that some of my fellow 'pubbies would get the idea out of their heads that Mr. Klein's book is a godsend. Nothing in there will ever dissuade the true believers in Hillary's camp, and the rest of us are under the impression that her picture already appears besides "SCANDALOUS" in the dictionary.

Heck, we're still three years away from the election, for the love of God!

In the final analysis, if you need to formulate a strategy for beating "the smartest woman in the world" in 2008, I'll give you a start on it:

Simply let her talk. She will eventually talk herself in to a hole anyway, because she's not as smart as she thinks she is. People already see through the phony support for the troops, the zeal with which she appears to be fighting the war on terror, her sudden urge to be a fiscally responsible senator, and the session with Billy Graham. Heck, it was obvious after the last election that most democrats would be back in church the following day. In short, all this "moving to the center" nonsense that Dick Morris says she's doing is simply too transparent to even the dumbest amongst us.She can get away with it, in terms of seeming to thumb her nose at the rest of the democratic party, because she's popular (like almost-Oprah popular) with democrats and they could forgive her "moving to the center" because they know in their heart of hearts that she means none of it. The only thing they could never forgive her for would be divorcing Bill to marry Newt Gingrich.

So let her talk. Let her put her ideas (actually someone else's with her name written in crayon over them) on the table and let her defend them. More importantly, ask her for the details. Because there will be none. She'll mouth a laundry list of platitudes which will all sound so scrummy we'll ask for seconds before we've finished what's on our plate. And she'll dish out even more, so much so that we'll forget to ask what the recipe is. When someone finally calls her on that, the details, the specifics, she'll stand there like a deer caught in your headlights.

That's how you beat Hillary Clinton. You do not do it by expecting some journalist to do it for you.

The Price of Surrender...
Vis-a-vis yesterday's rant about the "Surrender Now" crowd, I'd like to follow up and think a little bit about what packing up and leaving Iraq might cost us.

To begin with, we'd suffer a huge international black eye (even worse than what we've gotten already) if we leave Iraq a (bigger) basket case than it is already. We'd be in the same position as the European empires at the end of the Second World War, running off and leaving a trail of busted countries, cultures and governments in our wake. Morally, we have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to at least put things in some semblance of order and leave them in a position to fend for themselves. The United States is obligated, regardless of how long it takes or how much it costs. This point, I believe, stands on it's own, irregardless of what side of the war debate you stand on.

Cutting and running also encourages others who might have evil in their hearts to surmise that the United States doesn't have the stomach for a prolonged fight. The second we leave an Iraq still in the throes of disarray, we invite even more terrorist attacks as the terrorists at work today can claim victory for having chased the "Great Satan from the Holy Ground of Iraq". This is not the same as cutting and running on the South Vietnamese. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt sewer which deserved to be flushed down the toilet, and our enemies were not in a position to strike at he United States (the Russians were too sane, the Chinese too weak, and the Vietnamese too exhausted, at the time). The battle over Communism in SE Asia could be lost because in the end, there was no direct consequence to the United States, as opposed to the Vietnamese themselves, the Cambodians, the Laotians, etc. Leaving Iraq would have direct consequences for the US: although most countries in the Middle East couldn't muster enough military force to beat a troop of Boy Scouts with the runs, their wacky, Islamo-fascist citizens seem quite ready to martyr themselves on America's landmarks. Provided they can kill a bunch of us too, of course.

Why Do They Do It?
The news this evening made a great deal of fuss this evening about the convictions and sentencing of the Rigas, pere and son. These are the guys that once owned Adelphia Communications, a cable television empire, and looted their company to the tune of about 1 billion (with a B) dollars. Mr. Rigas, Sr. faces 20 years in the slammer, unless old age (he's 80) or his cancer, kills him first. Mr. Rigas, Jr. faces 30 years in prison.

The sentences brought about a great deal of speculation vis-a-vis Mr. Bernie Ebbers, the former CEO of World-Com, who faces his sentencing next week. If the judge in this case was not willing to show mercy to an 80 year old man, the thinking goes, then Ebbers is in a heap of trouble. World-Com, by the way, was an 11 Billion dollar boondoggle. Additional speculation related to Dennis Kozlowski (Global Crossing) and what he might face when he gets in front of a judge.

The whole situation of runaway CEO's, the huge amounts of money they seem to either borrow without promise of repayment from their companies, or waste on the mere accumulation of useless wealth, leads one to ask what at first blush to be commonsense questionsHow do guys who are supposed to be financial geniuses manage to get themselves into these situations? I mean, don't they already make a ton of money as a CEO? What leads them to loot the corporate coffers with such reckless abandon and why do their individual boards of directors allow them to get away with it?

As to why, my theory is that in this day and age, wealth by itself no longer confers any distinction. I read recently (I can recall if it was Forbes or Fortune) that the number of millionaires in the United States has doubled in the last 10 years. Once upon a time, having a million dollars in the bank was considered a big deal. Now that just about anyone can do it, it's not all that exclusive a club anymore. Ego dictates that since you cannot impress with wealth, you now have to impress with ostentatious displays of wealth. The Enron crowd, Kozlowski, the Rigas, et. al., all have multiple homes in the most tony neighborhoods (Georgetown, the Upper West Side, Aspen, Malibu, etc). They all have private jets. I'm sure they all have more automobiles and yachts than they could ever hope to drive or sail. Mere possessions no longer work as a measure of distinction. Now the idea is to have something no one else has.

So, the Rigas built themselves 18-hole golf courses on their properties. Kozlowski got himself an $8,000 shower curtain or somesuch nonsense, and a $16,000 umbrella stand, not to mention the $2 million toga party he threw for his wife at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. If it can be overdone or overblown, then rest assured, it will be. Penis envy writ large.

And who pays for it? Certainly not the guy who wants it. He can simply raid his corporation and because he's a "genius", no one will question him, or press him very hard to pay it back. The shareholder is shafted so that the CEO can have platinum-plated toilet seats, and a full-time ass wiper in his 4,300 square foot, italian marbled, centrally heated, bathroom. The one on the EAST side of the 40 room mansion.

This lead me to start wondering about something else that seems to bother the financial world greatly to the point of becoming a very dangerous fixation: the fascination with corporate earnings. Now, earnings, naturally, have value as a measure of the profitability of company, which invites other investors, which attracts customers, and so on and so on, as they taught us in Economics 101. In that sense, the better the earnings, the better the company. However, when you stop to consider that the number of millionaires is doubling every few years, it brings up a very interesting proposition (and I hope someone actually does some research on it, because it's beyond my tiny brain). We live in an investor society now. Fifty years ago, when perhaps 1 in 80 people had any interest in the stock market, earnings, while important, did not mean all that much (comparatively). The only people that were going to get paid dividends were that 1 in 80, and they were happy with what they got. Nowadays, when 1 in 10 people actually own stock, those original 1 in 80 are quite pissed. They just don't quite make what they used to, having to split it with the peasants, so to speak. The only way to keep the big investors happy is to increase earnings, which gives a bigger return per individual investor.

All of which leads to some very stupid business decisions, prime among them, giving the guy who pumped those earnings up the ability to steal. That's his reward for keeping the old money happy. And what does he do with it? He buys a $16,000 umbrellas stand or gets himself sentenced to 30 years in prison when he's caught juggling the books to artificially keep those earnings up. The CEO also (not always) receives a large portion of his compensation in stock options (meaning he's also looking for the biggest return he can get) and gives him an additional incentive to steal and cheat.

What's the solution? Heck if I know. But I'd line 'em up and shoot 'em. After the concrete enema.