To quote Sonny Corleone out of context, "It's time to go to the mattresses!"

As in: to stuff one's money in, since it doesn't seem like you can trust anybody to invest it for you without ripping you off. Evidently, there are financial investment scams going on all the time, but as long as the economy is strong, the scammers can keep attracting new investors to pay off the old ones.

One wag-- I think it was Warren Buffett--said, "It's when the tide is going out that you find out who isn't wearing a bathing suit."

As someone whose idea of a wise investment is buying a used car that is less than ten years old, I have to admit to some schadenfreude when I hear of wealthy players who are lured into a scheme with promises of impossible returns in a short period of time. "Invest four million today, and in a year, it'll be worth FIVE! Absolutely no risk! A sure bet!"

Maybe it's just that some of us don't have a lot of loose change to go risking it on a venture, no matter how ironclad the guarantees. We're too busy spending it on things like food and electricity. So when somebody takes a massive hit at the hands of a crook, we say that maybe it's some karmic force's way of leveling the playing field when it has gotten too far out of whack.

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I was a kid when President Kennedy gave his stirring speech declaring we would go to the Moon within the decade.

My friends and I could recite the names of the Mercury Seven astronauts off the tops of our heads. As Tom Wolfe observed in his book, The Right Stuff, they were like the single combat warriors of old--the very best our side could put forward to vanquish the foe. Their suits even looked like modern armor.

We were out to prove that the American Way of Life could produce better technology and finer young men than the godless Rooskies and their evil system.

Even though our great success in the spacefaring field was born out of warlike competition, there is something to be said that both sides decided duke it out in a peaceful endeavor. The first rockets those intrepid astronauts rode to the heavens were just modified ICBMs, an updated version of beating swords into plowshares. At least we weren't using them to kill each other.

I recently took a tour of Cape Canaveral. The tour touted the space shuttle program, but the focus was on the Saturn moon rocket, which last flew in missions over 30 years ago. I wanted to see the original pad that launched the Redstone rockets carrying the Mercury astronauts aloft in the 1960s, but they didn't even include it on the tour. Evidently, there is nothing to see now but cracked concrete and weeds.

Most people just don't care anymore, someone told me.

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"Tone deaf" doesn't begin to describe it.

The Masters of the Universe screwed up so badly in their pursuit of lucre that they had to be rescued by the very groundlings they so despise. And what's the first thing they do with other people's money? The same thing they've always done--reward themselves for just being who and where they are.

They like to say that they create wealth. This is the great justification for being the middlemen who siphon off their cut for passing money along the pipeline.

Real wealth is created by the factory workers who claw minerals from the earth, who smelt steel, who build things, and who deliver them to market. Without their sweat, there is no surplus to manipulate.

The financial people say that they should be rewarded for taking risks. You know what risk is? Risk is getting laid off and gambling that your kids won't get catastrophically ill or hurt during the time you're not covered by health insurance you can no longer afford.

Sure, investment is a risky business. But when investors lose something, it's symbolic. Chances are they can still go home to a hot meal in their lovely home in Greenwich. They haven't lost their livelihood, or their health. Their children don't go hungry. They've taken a hit, that's all. Tomorrow they'll recoup.

But having the courage to take that risk is worth tens, maybe hundreds of millions. Why is this? Just ask them.

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Maybe that’s why they call economics the dismal science.

The folks who know everything—the ones with all the degree letters after their names—put on their little propeller hats, inspect their goat entrails, and pronounce that we are, happily, on our way out of the woods.

Meanwhile, there’s something called “employment lag,” which means that the people down in the trenches—who have done nothing but work hard all their lives—find themselves still falling victim to arcane forces beyond their control.

Their productivity and quality are just as high as they’ve always been, but they’re told that for some reason, they and their skill sets are no longer needed.

If the recession is “technically” over, who’s seeing the benefits of the upswing? They say the financial sector’s doing well, and everybody’s back to getting obscene bonuses for whatever it is they do, thanks to bailouts and subsidies.

So if you feel you're entitled to some “trickle-down,” walk beneath a Wall Street skyscraper. And make sure to bring your umbrella.

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When the value of your home plunges into the tank, you figure (as would any reasonable person) that at least there's a silver lining: your property taxes will go down. After all, it's only fair, isn't it?

That's in a perfect world, where money grows on trees, milk and honey flow in the streets, roads, law enforcement, parks and libraries magically maintain themselves, and FPL says, "Don't worry about that streetlight bill--we know times are tough, so we'll just let'em burn out of the kindness of our hearts."

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I used to live in the “awl patch,” which is the folksy term used to describe that part of the country where petroleum and natural gas are extracted from deep inside the earth.

When the wind was right, there was a smell--not unlike what you smell when your neighbor’s roof is being tarred. That, along with the aroma coming from the feedlots, was what the locals called “the smell of money.”

The awl patch ain’t purty. I once passed through a town in the Texas Panhandle that was surrounded by oilfields. The unrelenting removal of liquid and gas from beneath the surface had caused the land above to buckle and collapse in unnatural ways. It was devoid of vegetation, and the whole tableau--dotted by pumps and power poles leaning at crazy angles--looked like a moonscape being preyed upon by a swarm of mechanical locusts.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, because that land was probably not too appealing to begin with. But now we hear that a consortium of Texas wildcatters is trying to, um, influence the Florida Legislature to relax our offshore drilling ban with tales of vast riches to replenish the state’s depleted kitty.

Considering that preserving the natural beauty of the coastal environment is not exactly a priority for our out-of-state investors, maybe they shouldn't be trusted with the welfare of Florida’s beaches, which are pretty appealing.

But, shux--if we don't have enough gasoline to drive to 'em, what's the point in having 'em, anyway?

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When your state's economy is based on homebuilding at a time when people are defaulting on their mortgages, and tourism when nobody is going anywhere, then it's best to stick with your strengths.

And, as any marketer knows, product placement is everything.

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If you're a senior on a fixed income who, say, takes the bus to do your grocery and drug shopping, chances are the price of gas at the pump doesn't affect you much.

Or, at least, you think it doesn't. Unfortunately, it's the huge drop in energy prices (part of the consumer price mix) that has dragged down inflation to the point where the government says that, statistically, there isn't any. So you can forget that cost of living allowance in your Social Security check, Granny.

Now, anybody who goes to the supermarket knows that food prices haven't dropped, unless you're a big milk drinker. But the government doesn't parse things that delicately. They look at the whole gorgeous panoply of consumer goods when they make their heartless calculations.

The problem, as I've said before, is that once you start giving people things on a regular basis, they come to expect them.

So Social Security recipients are going to want to know, in no uncertain terms, why they didn't get their annual raise. It will be amusing, to say the least, to hear members of congress carefully explain the above rationale about inflation to someone for whom a couple of dollars may dictate whether they have to miss a meal this month or not.

My guess is they won't be able to take the heat.

> Discuss this entry

Sure, we all know a lot of those "rice burners" are built right here in the good old U.S. of A. by American workers, who stand to benefit from any increase in auto sales.

But a lot of them aren't. Let's forget that for the moment, and the fact that these companies, regardless of how many Americans they employ, are foreign-owned. Our tax money is going to prop up Japan's and Korea's bottom line. I'm sure that if the situation were reversed, they'd be delighted to return the favor.

But, as I said, let's set that aside. Isn't it sad that when congress bestows $3 billion in free money to American consumers to go out and buy cars, that four out of the top five they choose are Japanese? Are the foreigners that much better at satisfying American demand than Americans are? Do they know us better than we know ourselves?

Or is it simply that they're more nimble and can whirl their factories around like speedboats to start producing the cheaper, more efficient units that we now demand, while U.S. companies are still trying to pull off a U-turn with a freighter?

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It’s a lot like the time your new neighbors bought that bigger house down the street that you always coveted.

When their loan payments ballooned, they realized they didn’t have the means to stay in it--that is, until the government bailed them out with your hard-earned tax dollars.

Now the snobs who lorded it over you on the road in their big, fat, gas-guzzling SUV’s are getting a financial break to reform their wastrel ways. Uncle Sam is helping them buy the kind of car you originally settled for because you were doing the right thing by the environment and your pocketbook.

The only way to deal with this without going insane is to take the long view. If you’re the type who believes in divine retribution for those who irritate you, then the definition of Hell for these people will be to wait in line for all eternity at, say, Disney World while good folks like you—who, obviously, are going to heaven—jump in ahead of them to ride Thunder Mountain Railroad, over and over again.

If you’re into reincarnation, karma will dictate that they come back as a 1970 AMC Gremlin—ugly from the moment of conception and a target of universal derision. You, the hot little Alfa Romeo, will snarkily toot your horn as you blow past them in the fast lane.

If you don't believe in those things, you can just go home and try to strangle your pillow.

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We're going about this all wrong.

We all know that Florida is always at the top on the lists of the bad stuff, and at the bottom of the lists of desirable stuff. For once, we should celebrate--rather than bemoan--our strengths.

Tourism is one of the legs of our economic stool, isn't it? (The others are development and agriculture, I think, although you'd never know it from our tomatoes, which often taste like they were shipped from a Siberian sawmill). Here we have the one attraction that people will travel all the way down here for, even in a recession, and Gov. Crist goes and signs a law making it harder to get.

Is this the kind of thinking you want out of your governor, much less your next U.S. Senator? After all, if they can't get their prescriptions filled here, they'll just go and get them someplace else, like Mexico. So, no harm done in the end. Plus, it helps keep our international trade balance in line.

We should be offering packages to our honored visitors. "Stay two nights in a Florida hotel, and we'll throw in a bus tour of the top pill mills in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Reserve within the next 30 minutes and we'll send you home with a pet Burmese python."

We can even have a slogan: "Florida. You'll love us from your first dose."

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You may be angry, but you'd be a fool if you were surprised.

This is what President Obama means when he says that you have to fix the nation's financial system before you can fix the economy. Translation: Until they get theirs, they're not going to let us get ours.

The freeze-up in the credit market was all about the financial types not seeing a way to get rich by lending out to the rest of us. Until that obstruction got cleared, nothing was going to move through the pipe. Think of it (as we should about virtually everything) from a tribal viewpoint. You look after your own first. These folks happen to have their hands on our throats, which is why they call themselves "Masters of the Universe."

How do they get away with this? Here is an analogy: I once took lessons from a flute teacher who charged $35 an hour. I said to him, "You've dedicated your life to practicing, perfecting, and performing your art. Yet, a plumber makes far more than you do per hour. Why is that?"

He laughed. "When your toilet backs up all over the floor, you don't call a flute player."

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This wouldn't be surprising if we had a Democratic-dominated legislature here in Florida. We know how they love to throw public money around, right?

But Republicans? The party of "starve the beast," "root out waste, fraud and abuse," and "government health care is creeping socialism?" They're willing to cut education and social services to balance the state budget, yet they also know how to take care of their own.

Those of us who are lucky enough to be employed by state government get inexpensive or even free health care, access to professional financial planners, and Cadillac retirement benefits, all on the public dime. Karl Marx would be grinning from ear to ear to know that the workers were so well taken care of.

Apologists say we need to give them these benefits in order to attract the best and the brightest talent, considering they have such low salaries. A check of those salaries shows they are comparable to or better than those in the private sector. And the poor dears have to do extra work now, what with all the layoffs.

Sound familiar? If you still have your private sector job, you've probably had to shoulder an extra workload thanks to all those empty desks around you.

Maybe if our coddled public servants had to live the way the rest of us do, there might be a little money left over so that elementary school teachers wouldn't have to buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets.

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Recently, the Republican members of our state legislature, in a showy burst of sanctimony, signed a No New Taxes pledge. This is their shtick and they're sticking to it, but in so doing, they effectively tied their own hands when it came to giving themselves options for how to deal with the state's financial crisis.

In the last session, they were faced with a dilemma: raise taxes as well as the ire of the people who voted them in, or make cuts in services that people really need, raising ire in the same benighted voters who think services just appear as a gift from God.

The only answer is to play semantic games, hoping the lumpenproletariat is so dense it won't catch on. The government is raising "fees." A "fee," you see, is a government charge for things people use.

As opposed to a "tax," which is...oops...the same thing.

Oh, well, as long as they didn't raise taxes.

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We're all feeling a bit spent after the mass Michael catharsis, and our president is overseas, although nobody seems to care.

The only item of interest to come out of the G-8 meeting (snore) is that the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a proud, in-your-face skirt-chaser, and he's not holding any teary-eyed press conferences, thank God, to justify his behavior. They're much more civilized about these things in Italy.

It's the dog days. Al Franken joined the other comedians in the U.S. Senate... at least he's honest enough to admit to his calling. Sarah Palin's flash in the pan has sizzled out. I'm drawing cartoons about the fact that theme parks nickel and dime you to death once you've paid the steep fee to get in the gates.

Anybody who goes to a family attraction should expect to get fleeced. What makes it special is the fantasy. The kids get to imagine themselves in the midst of a charmed wonderland. The parent footing the bill gets to imagine that he or she is a small shopkeeper in Bedford-Stuyvesant getting shaken down by the neighborhood gang in exchange for their not smashing his plate-glass windows.

That's why they call it the Magic Kingdom.

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Americans are having trouble coming to grips with all the ways the recession affects daily life.

Sure, we trim the budget at home, but when local government makes painful cuts that we feel down at the grassroots level, we get resentful. Take Independence Day fireworks, which we feel is our right as Americans to enjoy. Somehow, they just happen.

It's this preconception that causes civic leaders to swallow hard before they take away something so highly visible. They're afraid we'll take it out on them later at the polls.

On the other hand, how would you like to be a city worker who's been doing his or her job for decades, and doing it well, when some councilman comes to you and says, "Sorry, but we had to lay you off so we could save our own butts by blowing up a few thousand dollars in the atmosphere this year?"

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An armed robber goes into a convenience store to steal money out of the cash register. He pulls out a pistol and points it at the store clerk.

He has no intention of using it. He just wants to show the man he means business. The store clerk, upon seeing the weapon, involuntarily recoils. He slips on a puddle of Mountain Dew and his head hits the tile floor. He dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The robber is apprehended, and charged with something called "felony murder," which is to say that even though he never intended to take a life, he embarked on a series of activities that directly resulted in the death of the clerk.

How is Bernard Madoff any different than this guy, when his theft resulted in several suicides by people whose entire life savings had been wiped out?

He's lucky all he got was 150 years, and not the magic mojito I.V. As it is, I heard that he's not going to a country club prison. Thanks to the enormity of his crimes, he's rumored to be headed for medium security, with rapists, armed robbers, and other unsavory types who are also serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.

In other words, the system has no way of disciplining them if they should happen to visualize their own grandmother in the place of some little old lady who is now forced to survive on cat food, and decide to take appropriate action.

That's what it feels like not to know if you're going to make it through the next day, Mr. Madoff.

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I speak here as a disgruntled FPL customer ( Is there any other kind?). What ticks me, and probably others, off as much as the rate hike is the way they insult my intelligence with their lame corporate rationalizations.

FPL says that lower fuel charges and increases in efficiency will more than offset the new kilowatt-hour base rate increase, in fact lowering our total bills. If they're doing so well with all these economies, what do they need to raise our base rate for?

They say we pay less per kilowatt-hour than customers of other Florida utilities. Could this be because FPL is the biggest, and benefits from economies of scale? And, just because other utilities rip their customers off more than ours does, is that a valid reason to increase our rates?

It wouldn't be quite as bad if our service weren't so spotty. A storm doesn't have to be a hurricane to douse the power at my house. Probably true for yours, too.

On top of all that, they're picking a lousy time to do this. By further strangling homes and businesses in an already stumbling economy, they make it that much harder for their customers to claw their way back to prosperity someday. Less money for them, in the long run.

To put it kindly (and there's no reason that I should), this business tactic lacks foresight.

> Discuss this entry

You get what you pay for, and we Floridians have always undertaxed ourselves compared to other states.

It's part of our ethos here in God's Waiting Room, and some would argue that low taxes are what have fueled an economy that has, until now, been based on immigration from other states and countries.

A lot of our retired residents escaped from such high-tax states as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. They've put kids through the education system Up North, and they're through with that. I would be, too, if I'd had to pay that much.

They have some pretty fine public schools up there. I just visited an elementary school in New Jersey whose multi-media computer room was filled with the latest Apple computers, and the courtyard contained a $90,000 Zen garden for the children to relax in while they contemplated the meaning of life. One classroom door label said, "Mandarin Chinese."

Admittedly, this was a high-end residential community, but clearly the residents were willing to tax themselves to the hilt to give their kids the very best. Here in Florida, they'd just complain and try to hang on to what was theirs.

We could have a top-notch education system, regardless of whether we were in a boom or bust economy, if we had the will.

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There's a saying in my profession, "If you have to put that many words into a cartoon, why not just write an editorial?"

I tend to agree with that philosophy, and do my best to keep my stuff short and sweet. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a better way to make my point this time.

That having been said, it is an unfortunate reality that revenue shortfalls and budget cuts are having an effect on higher education everywhere.

What worries me is that, in an attempt to minimize the damage, the folks in charge will decide what programs to keep or drop based on popularity, rather than intrinsic worth.

Engineering is a popular major, because engineers tend to make money. So do economics majors-turned-stockbrokers. But what about Classics, never a major that has attracted multitudes to its doors? If one of the higher purposes of education is to further universal knowledge in increments measured by the contribution that individuals make to the whole, then Classics is indispensable.

If Classics, or Literature, or Philosophy are not passed on to the next generation, who will pass them on to the next? Will we forget what intellectual forces forged our civilization? I, for one, would hate to put the character of future human understanding in the hands of a bunch of happy-go-lucky twenty-year-olds who voted their favorite courses with their feet.

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Surely there are more efficient and less intimidating ways to buy a car, what with the Internet and all.

But is there a more American way? After all, think of all the Little League teams in small towns across our heartland, their uniforms emblazoned with dealership names that start with "Bud," "Chuck," "Buzz," "Scooter" and "Red," that will have to lay down their bats forever.

Think of the Fourth of July Sale-a-Brations we'll never sale-a-brate again. Think of the little minuet you do with the salesman, who knows all along what his bottom line is while you, sweat beading your brow, try in vain to divine it.

And let's talk about the law of unintended consequences. Think of all the American flags that will never get ordered. Enough, maybe, to shut down our domestic American flag production. Then, only the Chinese will be making American flags. What if there's a war, and we find ourselves without this critical strategic industry?

Clearly, this is a Mom and Apple Pie issue. Contact your Congressperson, before it's too late.

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This really seems to be "who'd a thunk it?" week.

It's bad enough that GM goes bankrupt, but now we have the company selling one of its iconic brands to...the Chinese!

Remember when you saw a Hummer (usually when it was blocking your line of sight to make a left turn, or back out of a parking space), and its owner looked so tall in the saddle? Remember that surge of good old American pride when somebody who drove a vehicle that got about ten miles to the gallon left it running in the parking lot to keep the A.C. running while he or she shopped, just because they could? It does bring a tear to one's eye.

Now the stylish street knockoff of our armed forces' standard combat vehicle is just another rice-burner, like all those Toyotas, Hyundais and (shudder) Mitsubishis that lesser mortals sneak around in.

No, it's worse, because the Koreans and the Japanese aren't poised to take over the world, and they don't hold the tattered remains of our economy in thrall. That's right, every Hummer that gets sold now is aiding and abetting the enemy.

Looks like it's time for our own Cultural Revolution.

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The fact that many coastal residents are not prepared for a hurricane is no surprise.

Nobody is going to prepare for anything as long as the threat remains an abstraction. It's human nature. They will begin to prepare, however, when the news that a storm is approaching percolates its way through the ordinary stress and distractions of their daily lives.

This usually happens about forty-eight hours before the storm hits. All of a sudden, there are lines at Home Depot for (now scarce) plywood, and at the supermarkets for water, batteries and other staples that should have been bought months in advance. Incredibly, home improvement stores report that much of the plywood is returned after a storm fails to materialize, as if by surviving a near-miss, we have been inoculated against future catastrophes.

That kind of attitude can only be ascribed to blind superstition. This is what a lot of people must be taking solace in when they fail to perform simple preparatory tasks despite incessant government and media reminders.

It's too late now, but realize that I left ground bat wing and eye of newt out of the cartoon. Shoulda been better prepared.

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It's supposed to be a "controlled bankruptcy," not the death knell of a once-great company. It's a way to reemerge, like Phoenix, from the ashes. We've expected it for some time.

All the same, it's still a shock. Who'd have thought it would ever happen in our lifetimes? GM was the very backbone of our country, its stock solid as bedrock. "What's good for General Motors is good for the United States of America."

I guess we're still supposed to believe that. With one in ten jobs in our economy dependent upon the auto industry, we need to pump yet more billions down the memory hole and just pray that this particular infusion will work.

A word about competitiveness on the world market: It doesn't matter how well you build a car, if the Japanese, the Koreans or the Germans can build one just as well at a lower cost. Until Congress passes some meaningful health care legislation that takes some of the burden off corporations, companies like GM will always have to build health care expense into the price of each unit they sell.

A silver lining...maybe this is just the kind of pressure our spineless pols need to resist the siren call of the health care industry for once in their craven lives. Yeah...that's the American Dream.

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My editor knows something about economics. At least, he says he does.

He knows more than I do, which to me makes him an authority.

He likes to terrify us during editorial board meetings with little hypotheticals, like: "Suppose a massive hurricane hits, and you lose your roof. Sure, you have a windstorm policy, but because it's now so expensive, you opted for the highest possible deductible...say, $12,000. So you go to the bank for the twelve grand, and they say, 'We're not lending, especially to you, since the value of your home has dropped below the amount of your mortgage.' Now, multiply that by several hundred thousand cases, and you've got a real catastrophe."

Then he says that the only solution will be for the state to step in and start handing out money to people so that they can pay their deductibles. Since the state is required to balance its budget every year, that means all of us taxpayers will have to step in, including those who bought before the bubble and whose mortgages are not upside-down. A political nightmare.

Which is when we turn our eyes to our rich uncle in Washington for Federal relief. You know that old expression, "There are no atheists in foxholes?"

Try this one: "There are no Libertarians in roofless homes."

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The reason the oil companies gave us last year for the terrifying run up in pump prices made at least some sense: the Chinese. Their unquenchable industrial growth sucked all the oil out of the market.

Well, this year it’s different. The economic meltdown is global, and the Chinese engine has throttled back. With fewer jobs to commute to, the rest of us are driving less, as well. We’re in a glut of crude.

So why are we experiencing déjà vu from last summer?

I love this one: “Reconfiguration of refineries to adjust for seasonal blends.” What is that? First of all, it’s not like the pending arrival of summer comes as a big surprise. Why do they suddenly have to shut down all of their refining capacity to “reconfigure?” Who’s doing the planning—chimpanzees?

My car, by the way, runs just as badly on “winter” fuel as it does on “summer” fuel. No need for a “seasonal adjustment.”

We consumers should band together to demand more creativity in excuses from our oil companies. We deserve at least that much.

Of course, they’ll tell us we’re lucky they even bother. If they wanted to, they could charge extra for plausible ones.

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CAPTION CONTEST UPDATE: SUBMISSION PERIOD CLOSES SUNDAY NIGHT AT 6PM EASTERN TIME! ONLY FOUR DAYS LEFT TO SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY!

This cartoon idea seemed like a natural under the circumstances. If Take Your Child To Work Day is supposed to teach kids about the reality of the workplace, they might as well learn that the term, “pink slip,” like, “green card,” is just a figure of speech.

In reality, it’s an icy smile from some HR type who knows he or she still has a job as long as there are people left to fire, and maybe a security guard who escorts you out just in case you turn psycho and try to firebomb your computer.

Maybe, if you’re like the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather II, your erstwhile boss catches up with you in the street with a basket containing a loaf of bread and a salami.

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Remember how the $600 toilet seat helped us finally understand defense spending waste in a concrete way?

The auto company CEOs who flew to Washington in private planes to beg for handouts... the obscene bonuses for the same Wall Street masters of the universe whose greed got us into this mess...these are the convenient handles that we, the great unwashed, must grasp if we are ever going to comprehend the bewildering abstractions that swirl around us and snake their wispy tentacles into our pockets.

The problem with this banking paradox is that it isn't making sense to us taxpayers. If they're doing so well, why do they need our help? Even if they do need help, why should they get it before we do? And what happened to that first $600 billion of TARP money? It was supposed to grease the skids. They aren't skidding yet.

Somebody's got, as Ricky Ricardo said, some 'splainin' to do. Or some better 'splainin', anyway, because it seems like the only constant in all this backing and filling is that we, the public, keep getting ripped off. When we ask why, nobody has any answers.

The 'Splainer in Chief, for all his rhetorical abilities, could be doing a better job at laying it out. And the Loyal Opposition, rather than just sniping and obfuscating, could be displaying a little more statesmanship by presenting a credible alternative.

We should be holding their feet to the--oh, that's right. This isn't an election year. No wonder they aren't sweating it.

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If you ever wanted to see the law of supply and demand in action, this is the time.

We're bombarded daily with incredible sales: a third off, half off, sixty percent off. The fact that they can afford to sell stuff at this much of a markdown and still clear a profit makes you realize how artificially high retail prices must have been when everybody was flush. Back in the good times, even so-called "deep" discounts were ripoffs.

How sad. All this wonderful junk that we always wanted, at prices we can finally afford. Only, we can't afford them anymore. We'll just have to do without.

Wait a minute...that's un-American. Ahhh, that's where credit cards come in.

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My Creationist friends aren't going to appreciate this, but Florida--South Florida in particular--is a Darwinian environment for people and dwellings.

It is a rare building indeed that does not fall victim to such local perils as windstorms, the Formosan termite, the Cuban Death's Head cockroach, tuberculosis-inducing mold, and a host of other natural nightmares.

As if that weren't enough, we have to face brimstone-laden panels of Chinese-made gypsum board, predatory lending institutions and additional man-made threats to home and hearth, like entire neighborhoods turning into ghost towns. Only the toughest humans and domiciles survive this brutal natural selection process.

Back to Creationism: Anyone who really believes in the doctrine of "Intelligent Design" should take a good look at how this region developed. It'll make a Big Bang theorist out of anybody.

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They're calling it "tough love." President Obama has given General Motors sixty days to clean up its act and present a plan for the future, or we're cuttin' it off. He demanded the head of its CEO, Rick Wagoner, as part of the price of government aid.

Of course, Mr. Wagoner isn't the only one to blame. Sure, his company built big, fat profit-rich SUVs, but we--the American consumer--happily snapped them up. Then, being fickle, we abandoned them when the price of fuel rose. Now, nobody's buying anything, even small cars. Is that his fault?

Let's not forget the unions. I just heard that they get five weeks of vacation, 15 paid holidays a year, and Cadillac health insurance, for which they do not have to pay. Pretty hard to be competitive with the Japanese when so much fat is built into the cost of every car.

Why didn't Obama sack the big financial types? I heard it was because they're the only ones who know enough about the Byzantine system they created to unravel it. Wagoner's big weakness is that he runs a big industrial concern, and there are a lot of people who can do that, certainly as well or as poorly as he did.

It may or may not have been the best move, from a businees standpoint, for Obama to reach in and make breathtaking personnel decisions, but it was certainly politically astute. It looks dramatic, and in this climate, it gives people a warm feeling to see some bigwig's head rolling around on the assembly line floor.

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Law enforcement types are really scratching their heads over this one. Normally, when the economy sags, there's an uptick in violent crimes and murders. In this recession, however, the year-over-year numbers are down, at least in Broward County, FL.

My theory is that we are confronted with the worst economy that those of us who still have the strength to lift an assault weapon have ever seen in our lifetimes. It's scary, and everyone's too busy out looking for work or trying to hang onto his job to indulge in flighty diversions like killing other people.

An alternative postulate: you know what they say about most murders being committed by someone the victim knew personally. Maybe that someone, at the moment of pulling the trigger, remembers that the bullet's recipient is the one who brings home a significant portion of the bacon. These days, a person with a steady job is somebody to be valued. Maybe it's in everyone's best interests to kiss and make up.

Just an idea. I'm willing to hear others.

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When Walt Disney first built his amusement park in Anaheim, CA, his genius was in creating a mystique around it. It wasn't a place, it was a fantasy experience. You paid once to get in, and that was it--you and your kids turned yourselves over to the confectionery world he conceived.

Now Disney World, Florida's biggest tourist attraction--the destination point of the great American hajj--is suffering the same fate as any other business that relies on disposable income. The suffering is real. Actual people are being thrown out of work.

And while we feel sympathy for their plight, as we do for everyone who has lost his or her job, it's impossible to resist muddying the line between the Disney concept and reality.

> Discuss this entry

You know you're in trouble when the head honcho expresses his unqualified confidence in your abilities.

Yes, there's no question that Tim Geithner has walked into the kind of hailstorm not faced by a Treasury Secretary in any living person's memory. All the same, his days are numbered. For one thing, he hasn't exactly covered himself with glory. For another, Washington is never happier than when there's blood in the water.

Some feel it's time to put a chink in the armor of the Victory Garden-cultivating, Jay Leno-schmoozing arriviste whose poll numbers remain annoyingly high. What better way than to pick off a Cabinet member?

Pack your bags, Timmy.

> Discuss this entry

When we first heard that an idea floating around Congress was to tax these arrogant incompetents, some of whom don't even work at AIG any more, 100% of their bonuses, it seemed like the perfect way to rattle their sense of entitlement.

If the government's going to take it all away anyway, why not get ahead of the parade and look like a patriot by offering to give it up for your country? You can walk away thinking you're a hero instead of the bottom-feeder you are.

The problem is, they still can't quite bring themselves to pry their fingers completely off the loot. AIG CEO Edward Liddy said in Congressional testimony that he has asked the bigger bonus recipients to give back at least half.

To me, this is even more insulting than standing their ground. It's like they're throwing scraps to a dog. Don't they realize that what they're keeping, in some cases as much as $3 million, would put a large family that had lost its income out of its misery forever, and then some?

Are we supposed to be grateful for this show of generosity? I'm beginning to agree with Sen. Grassley that a public apology followed by a hara-kiri performance may be the only way these guys will ever learn their lesson.

Even then, they'd probably have their fingers crossed behind their backs.

> Discuss this entry

I always thought that bonuses, by definition, were something extra that was awarded for good performance. The government is claiming that AIG is contractually obligated to pay these obscene amounts of money to its executives, in some cases as much as $6 million.

Most of the bonus money, we hear, is going directly to the division that made the shaky investments that put AIG in the hole. If they have the bonuses coming to them no matter what, they really aren't bonuses. They're salary.

AIG argues that if they didn't pay bonuses like these, they would lose their best and brightest talent. I submit we could find better and brighter by randomly running a finger down the Manhattan white pages.

And another thing-- AIG fears that if the execs don't get paid, they might sue. I say, let them. No, encourage them. It would be high entertainment indeed to watch their lawyers try to assemble a jury of American taxpayers that would return a verdict in their clients' favor.

> Discuss this entry

I think some of the vitriol aimed at Madoff, even by those who weren't his victims, is based on the acknowledgement that he is not sorry for what he has done. Not in the slightest. A sociopath, devoid of conscience.

While he was confined to his apartment, (a show of leniency that added insult to those he injured), Madoff brazenly mailed expensive jewelry and cash to friends and relatives, right under the noses of his federal keepers. Now skeptics say he's pleading guilty in hopes the feds will leave his family out of the investigation. He holds no cards, yet he's still trying to game the system.

Personally, I find it refreshing. I'm tired of people in the public trust--like politicians, for example--dragging their wives up to the podium with them to blubber about how sorry they are for what they did (read here: for getting caught at what they did). Madoff is a genuinely detestable character, unrepentant, an equal-opportunity perp who is shuffling off to the slammer with his head held high.

There is no room for pity. None asked for, none given. Bernie is offering himself up as the national pinata, someone we can hate without reservation. We needed a clear embodiment of the inchoate violation we all feel, and he has done himself proud.

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I've stopped listening to National Socialist Radio. Every day, whether it's Morning Edition or All Things Considered, you might as well just call the programs Forty Variations On The Theme That The Economy's Going To Hell. It's like Groundhog Day without the video.

For a little comic relief, they sometimes slip in a story about how Afghanistan and Pakistan are lost causes.

Forget that stuff. Here's the news that will really make your flesh crawl: a liquor wholesaler I know told me that business is the worst he's ever seen. The world is awash in wine. The French, who until last year were still arrogantly raising prices on Champagne and Cognac (because they could) are now drowning in their own swill. Nothing to celebrate. People are buying jug wines and cheap no-name vodka, which this guy says the average person can't tell from the expensive stuff in a blind taste test, anyway. And they're buying less of it.

When Americans start skimping on nutritional necessities like booze, it means they're really out of money. Time to go to the mattresses.

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It must be pretty grim up there in Tallahassee. I never thought I’d see the day when Republicans would abandon their creed and agree to look at “revenue enhancement.”

It was one thing when just poor people were hurting…they’re Democrats. But now our legislators are hearing screams from all levels.

Remember the exquisitely named Laffer Curve? As I recall, it held that lowering taxes would stimulate commerce, which in turn would create more revenue even at the lower tax rate. It didn’t say anything about what to do when you’re spiraling into the tank and there’s no commerce to tax no matter what the rate, even though there are still necessities to pay for, like schools, cops, and firefighters. Who’s laffin’ now?

So, the desperate pols are thinking about taxing previously exempt items like bottled water. Bottled water is an absurd idea, anyway, and un-green besides. Everybody should get a filtration system and reusable bottles. It’s much cheaper.

Also, they can raise the “sin tax” on stuff like booze, butts and exotic dancing. Why tax sin? Because sin is fun, and a whole wing of the Republican Party, the social conservatives, believe that "fun" is something that nobody should ever have. Raising sin taxes, therefore, has a double-edged appeal: a politician can both generate revenue and shore up his base at the same time.

See? It really isn’t so hard, after all.

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Like John McCain, I’m proud to say that I don’t know much about economics. Didn’t study it in school, because it involved numbers.

I do know this much, though: it looks like “Trickle Down” has had its day. The Reagan-era concept that if you let the rich get as rich as they possibly can, they’ll share their largess with the hoi polloi--floating all boats--has been discredited.

They got richer all right, but the rest of us didn’t. In fact, those at the lowest end of the spectrum are doing even worse than before. Other trickle-ees like me at the middle-level feel like the fire hydrant outside the Westminster Kennel Club. They need us, but they don't want us inside.

I read somewhere that the Swedes have a tax system that we rugged individualists in America would abhor. Rather than allow the huge disparity in incomes that we have here, Sweden taxes its wealthiest citizens as much as one-hundred-and-ten percent of their income to keep everybody more or less in line. This is why the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman moved here (I get the feeling I wouldn’t have understood his movies even if they weren’t in Swedish, but that’s another story).

Punitive? Maybe. Stifles the capitalistic impulse? No doubt. But the last survey I could find of the U.N. Human Development Index showed Sweden as No. 2 in world standard of living, with the United States stumbling in at No.8.

But then, those Swedes have all those un-American things like cradle-to-grave health care, child support, decent retirement benefits…I could go on.

But I won’t, because that’s socialism…and as we all know, socialism sucks.

> Discuss this entry

You've heard conservatives use the term, "Tax and Spend Liberals." Well, at least there's a certain moral defensibility to taxing and spending.

If you tax before you spend, then you are asking the beneficiaries of government largess to pay up front for the cost of their benefits. There's a built-in accountability to that.

Borrowing and spending is less defensible, and utterly indefensible when you do it to the degree our federal government did it during the Bush years.

With the stimulus plan, we are now asking the unborn to shoulder yet another burden. This is what John McCain calls "generational theft," a term we did not hear out of him when Congress was appropriating off-the-books money for prosecuting a war in Iraq that we did not need to be fighting. Maybe an eight-hundred-billion-dollar bailout wouldn't hurt our grandchildren quite as much if they weren't expected to pay for that, too.

As we know, it is the American Way to have our cake now and pay for it on credit. The difference between this and buying stuff on our MasterCards is that the dunning calls probably won't start until after we're dead.

Yes, future generations will curse us. I think the Octuplet Mom should go ahead and have a few more. The country will need them to help pay the bills.

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This must be what they mean when they say "leap of faith."

Imagine how worried you are about your job, your home, your health...you watched that speech, and you wish you could summon up the confidence that President Obama appeared to exude up there on the dais. You want to, but it's soooo hard.

Then, try to imagine how things would look to you if that were John "Don't Know Much About Economics" McCain standing up there, instead of Obama.

And count your blessings.

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It sticks in your craw, doesn't it? It goes against everything your mama taught you about there being no reward for bad behavior.

You remember that day a couple of years ago, when you were standing on your front lawn holding a beer, watching as the moving van pulled up down the street. You saw it unload all that stuff for the family that bought that house with the bigger pool than yours, the one YOU'd wanted but knew was just a tad beyond your means.

Now they're in trouble because they bought too much house, and instead of being thrown out into the street like they deserve, the feds are asking YOU to bail them out so they don't lose their home. And your only crime was to mind your p's and q's. You know what that is? That's SOCIALISM.

Then they come along and tell you that if you don't help everybody in you neighborhood stay in their homes, the value of your own property will go down the toilet along with theirs.

Hmmm....now that you put it that way...

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Editor's Note: There has been some misinterpreation of Chan's cartoon. The governor's complexion is a play on his tan, and is not meant as a racial slur.

Antonio Fins
Editorial Page Editor

Governor Charlie looked good the other day on Meet The Press.
Compared to Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana wunderkind who is clearly positioning himself for a presidential run in 2012 (and spent most of a minute playing a coy game of tag about it with David Gregory), Crist seemed the soul of common-sense.

Charlie said he cared more about the people of Florida than political labels, and he was going to grab the money and be grateful. "We're all Americans," he said of his support of the president (he must have been reading the Lowe-Down).

And how about that magnificent tan? I like to call Charlie the George Hamilton of Politics. With the possible exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger, never has a governor so embodied one of the bedrock industries of his state, unless you want to count that bizarre Sarah Palin interview where a turkey was being slaughtered in the background.

When Charlie casually drops the term "Sunshine State" into his conversation as a synonym for Florida, you can just imagine the shivering bluenoses Up North logging on to Travelocity for the cheapest fares.

The sad thing is, his bipartisan attitude gives him a lot of appeal as a presidential candidate, but he'll never win the Republican nomination by acting so sensible.

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It's easy to posture and spout the Newt Gingrich mantra about cutting taxes when you're up in the Washington fairyland and "deficit spending" is just a couple of words that cause some eye-rolling at Georgetown cocktail parties.

It's quite another when you're where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. State legislatures have annoying little realities, like constitutional requirements to balance the budget, to deal with.

If some federal program comes along that is going to shower billions on your state, you're going to grab the money and run, whether the Democrats passed it all by themselves or not. If it keeps you from having to make those painful cuts that bring screams from your constituents, then it doesn't matter if Karl Marx himself wrote that stimulus plan.

All together now: YES WE CAN!!!

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It looks like Obama's already gotten lost in the "bubble." Sure, Denver has economic problems, but why did he have to fly a 50-ton airplane all the way out there and back to "emphasize" that the cavalry is coming to the rescue? Tone deafness has set in all too quickly.

What do we maintain a White House Rose Garden for? Sure, it's cold out there this time of year, but Denver isn't exactly balmy in February, either.

If Obama wanted to make a point about housing and jobs, he could just as easily have motorcaded over to one of the many neighborhoods in D.C. that are suffering. The visuals would have been just as compelling, and the government would be a few million dollars less in debt.

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Talk about tunnel vision. There are three things uppermost in Americans' minds right now: save my job, save my house, give me and my family medical care. Not among them is the scoring of temporary political points in the Washington echo chamber.

Congressional Republicans, by voting almost unanimously against the only possible remedy for our economic predicament that we've got going at the moment, find themselves in the unenviable position of hoping we all continue to suffer for two more years so they can gain a few seats in the House and Senate if the stimulus fails.

This is truly strange. I thought we were all Americans here. This bill was going to pass no matter what, so wouldn't it have been better to get on board, and shoehorn in some of their own pet stuff in the process? They did get more of their precious tax cuts as it was.

Remember that nutball ultra-conservative Congresswoman from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, who distinguished herself last Fall by calling for a full-scale investigation into the patriotism of members of Congress? She had no idea at the time how right she was.

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A survey I once read about said that men feel more stress over Valentine's Day than any other holiday. Evidently, the fear is that the wrong gift, or one not lavish enough, might wreck everything.

There was an attractive young Cuban-American reporter in our newsroom a few years back. I'm not sure being Cuban-American had anything to do with it...let's just say she was a traditionalist in matters romantic. She was known to have had several suitors on the string at the same time, and as Valentine's Day drew nigh, she began tapping her foot. Sure enough, Security began arriving carrying enormous batches of roses to the point where it looked like a funeral service was taking place over in her cubicle. Her haul became the yardstick by which all future Valentine's floral offerings were judged.

Our current economic situation is bound to create even more trauma as young swains seek to pinch pennies without looking penurious.

It will also stimulate cleverness and creativity in the art of gift-giving. For what it's worth, Ladies, I suggest you go with the creative guy.

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Imagine being a statewide politician so obscure that the first time most of your residents even realize you exist is when you're caught sponging on the public dime.

Our clueless Lieutenant Governor, Jeff Kottkamp, who flew his family around in the state plane while "forgetting" to reimburse taxpayers for the expense (as required by state law), has suddenly gotten religion and said he will pay us back, now that he's been exposed.

As for "legal" use of state aircraft, apparently no newly-completed outhouse or equipment shed in Kottkamp's home district of Ft. Myers is safe from his flying all the way down from Tallahassee at our expense to cut the ribbon for it.

In his oversight, Mr. Kottkamp has raised another issue, which is why do we need a Lieutenant Governor in the first place? He has no constitutional role except to take over if, God forbid, something were to happen to Charlie Crist. And, it's not like Charlie carries the nuclear codes around with him or anything. Surely a constitutional chain of succession could be put in place without fear for our collective safety.

It's a time of severe fiscal austerity for Florida, and worthy programs are being cut to balance the budget. Since it looks like we're stuck with the guy, the least he can do is have the grace to remain in one place or the other until his term is up.

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Whenever there's any kind of bad news, from a high incidence of HIV/AIDS to soaring school dropout rates, Florida is well represented. Our state regularly rates the poorest in the desirable statistics and the highest in the negative ones.

It is no different with the Madoff scandal. Floridians constitute a huge proportion of the con artist's victims. I suppose we can be happy we're not in the majority, but it's bad enough.

Moving beyond the Florida connection, it's fascinating that a number of really famous people--like Kevin Bacon and Steven Spielberg, to name just two--were stung. We peons have this feeling that famous people must be "in the know," and that there's some secret code among them that prevents them from falling victim to the usual scams the rest of us face. Also, they must be smarter than we are or they wouldn't be famous.

The fact that these people were not insulated tells us something important about the nature of fame: in some cases, it's a byproduct of hard work and excellence in a particular field--like Madoff victim Sandy Koufax.

In other cases, people get famous for things that have nothing to do with intelligence, like non-victims Paris Hilton and the Octuplet Lady.

Fame, in other words, says more about us than it does about them. It's about whom we're willing to confer it upon, and for what reasons. They're just folks, with the same problems and susceptibilities we have, only they can't go out to the driveway and grab the paper without some jerk sticking a camera in their faces.

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Yes, the democratic process is slow and cumbersome, but we're hanging on by our toenails while these guys grandstand for the local audiences and their lobbyist financial supporters to craft the finest possible stimulus plan.

Sure, we don't need money to re-sod the mall, or fund psychotherapy for pets or whatever little goodies are tucked in there. Normally, we'd all be against earmarks and sweeteners, but sometimes that's the necessary juice that gets things passed, Congress being what it is.

Remember Terri Schiavo? They passed that bill in about fifteen minutes, and W. even quit clearing brush and flew all the way back from Crawford at a cost of $10,000 per minute to sign it in person.

So here's an idea, Congress (Democrats and Republicans alike): Think of America as a comatose patient, and the stimulus plan as a feeding tube. Pass something, pronto.

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Just who do these people think they are, anyway? They get richly rewarded in the fat times; they get richly rewarded in the lean times.

Now the times are so lean that they need a bailout from taxpayers. And what is the first thing they do? They richly reward each other.

I have a theory about this. Take the podiatrist. Does a person go to medical school and then look at smelly feet all day to save the world one foot at a time, or because he wants to be the Albert Schweitzer of Podiatry and win the Nobel Prize for Bunion Research? No, he does it because it's a living. If he can do some good while he's making that living, then he can go home at night feeling like he's worth something.

Financial types, on the other hand, do not benefit from this spiritual remuneration. If your living is to make money, nothing more, nothing less, then the only sin is in not making as much of it as you possibly can. Who cares if somebody else gets screwed, or if the money comes from the taxpayers? It's green, and it pays the mortgage on that mcmansion in Greenwich, Conn.

This is where Obama has it all wrong, trying to shame Wall Street. They do not know shame. Shame is raking in less than the guy in the cubicle next to you. The only answer is to cut off the nutrition stream. Starve the beast. Regulate everything, and then double- and triple-check the regulations, because like cockroaches, the financial types will find a way to slip through the cracks.

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First off, I would like to thank Joseph, an observant reader, who pointed out that I mistakenly made Southwest Airlines the original subject of this cartoon. My apologies to Southwest, for it is, in fact, Spirit Airlines that I should have spotlighted. The correction has been duly made.

And, yes, Joseph, I do read my own newspaper, usually around 5:30 a.m., and at that hour I have been known to make more than a few mistakes.

Many of us in the newspaper business still think of what we do as a calling, not just a job. That having been said, nobody better understands the direct relationship between advertising and meaningful, rewarding employment better than we do.

We hear over and over that consumer spending is the backbone of the nation’s economy. The fact that consumers are now stashing their discretionary dollars under the mattress for a rainy day is one of the reasons why the recession is spiraling out of control.

But, when consumers are in a buying mood, advertising helps them make decisions about where to spend those dollars. It’s the circulatory system for that economic backbone, to extend the metaphor a little.

So when Spirit Airlines' flight attendants whine that it’s unprofessional to wear aprons with an ad for Bud Light on them, I say buck up. Instead of their grousing, they should join the rest of America in trusting their colds to Tylenol, in not squeezing the Charmin, in taking the thirty-six hour pill that’s ready when they are, and in choosing the adult diaper that has been proven in independent lab tests to be more absorbent.

Their jobs are probably the ones being saved by that ad.

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A candidate for Treasury secretary who "forgot" to pay all his taxes? That's like saying Al "Carbon Footprint" Gore quietly pays a huge electric bill on his big fat house in Tenne--oh, wait a minute.

The cheeses were opining that Geithner's confirmation was "too big to fail." The country desperately needs his matchless talents to steer us safely through the economic maelstrom. Nobody else will do, not even Larry Summers, who's supposed to be the true economic brain in the Obama Administration.

Especially Larry Summers, because as president of Harvard, he said some intemperate things about women that essentially blew his chances out of the water as far as the liberal base is concerned. Evidently, he wasn't too big to fail.

Neither are you or I, for that matter. Try pulling a stunt like Geithner's and see how long the IRS will let you get away with it.

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Not to rain on President Obama's parade, but the American people (at least the current crop) do not weather hardship well. The difference between us and our forebears from the 1930's is that they never had it all that good to start with, so the Great Depression represented, for them, a more severe degree of personal restraint, not a quantum contraction of lifestyle as our current situation demands.

Our history of living high on the credit hog, those big fat cars and houses we really couldn't afford, the flat-screen TVs, the travel, the dining out, are all too vivid in our recent memory. We got used to the taste of prosperity, even if it was just a chimera. We want it back, pronto. A few more months of denial, and we're going to forget that the crash happened on George W. Bush's watch. All we'll think about is that Obama seems to be spinning his wheels at a furious pace, but we're no closer to moving back into our mcmansions.

That'll be right around when things start heating up for the off-year Congressional elections, and the Republicans will be more than happy to point out how little progress we will have made under an all-Democrat government.

How did it all begin? Heck, who will be able to remember that far back?

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You've probably heard the epithet "Tax-and-Spend Liberals" bandied about, particularly by conservatives who no longer have Communists hiding under their beds to demonize.

Whatever your political stripe, at least there's a certain integrity to taxing and spending, because the pain is being inflicted on the payer at the moment that the public "servant" is making the expenditure. He who spends can then be held accountable on election day.

There's a moral bankruptcy (if you'll pardon the expression) about borrowing and spending, because those who distributed the largess will have gotten the credit for whatever the money did, but be long gone by the time the bill comes due.

Since conservatives refuse to increase taxes on anybody, it appears that borrowing is going to be the only way out of our current predicament. It's curious that these same conservatives who worry so much about the rights of the unborn are not afraid to saddle them with crippling debt that they had nothing to do with.

Of course, the unborn don't vote.

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Nine years ago, back at the turn of the century, I did a cartoon montage for the op-ed page looking forward into the future. One of the drawings was of a typical 21st-Century ultra-couch potato, an inert organism with an electrode implanted in his brain. Through the implant, he was fed all the virtual experiences of a full, rewarding life as we knew it at the end of 1999.

Technology is moving even faster than anyone could have predicted. As we tighten our belts, "virtual" reality, which is cheap, is becoming more and more the norm. Look at all the fantasy computer games, the online dating services, Facebook and Myspace, which substitute for physical interaction.

My question is, at what point is "virtual" so commonplace that it becomes "actual" to those who have grown up never having experienced the things of which "virtual" is only an artful facsimile?

What happens to those genuine experiences safeguarded only by the old-timers and their failing memories? They become arid wisps, consigned to the history books and back copies of the newspapers. And nobody reads books and newspapers anymore.

> Discuss this entry

Were you really naive enough, back when Treasury Secretary Paulson first made his pitch for the bank bailouts, to believe that this wasn't going to happen?

As soon as he said the 700 billion absolutely had to be appropriated posthaste or the republic would fail, the scheme had disaster written all over it. Not only are the banks paying their executives the compensation they think they deserve, they're paying dividends to their shareholders, and they're not even telling us exactly what they're doing, because nobody is there to tell them they have to.

The idea was for the financial institutions to sluice the money out to us in loans to get the economy moving, not to feather their own nests, but somebody forgot to include oversight into the legislation. Now, the only unlikely hero at the gates protecting us from a Visigothic sacking is a comical character who resembles a garden gnome, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. He's fighting a valiant rear-guard action, trying to shame the banks into doing the right thing by exposing their shenanigans to the public.

This also is destined to fail, because shame is not a word in their vocabulary. Who ends up with the bucks is the only credo they respect.

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It would be easy for us working stiffs to indulge in a little schadenfreude over this Madoff investment Ponzi scheme uproar. The rich, trying to get even richer, ended up hoist on their own petard of greed.

Unfortunately, there were quite a few charities that placed their money and trust in the hands of this criminal as well, so a lot of innocent "little" people are being hurt.

Since Madoff's fifty-billion-dollar crime was white collar, he'll probably end up doing a few years at the Allenwood Federal Country Club, if he does any time at all. Meanwhile, a small-time crook who rolls a Seven-Eleven with a pistol will probably do twenty years or more, even though his crime affects far fewer people far less drastically. But that's the way the system works.

Meanwhile, where were the Feds while all this was happening? According to recent stories, they were probably sitting around with their thumbs up their derivatives, giving each other inside stock tips instead of doing due diligence.

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The old-timers allow as how, back in the day, folks would dress up in their Sunday-best duds to go up in aeroplanes.

Why, shucks...they used to gussy up to go on the train, or to the doctor's, even. Those were the days when people showed respect.

But flying really was something special. Pilots were like gods with Apollo's wings attached to their shiny brogans. They say the first stewardesses, (yep, that's what they called 'em back then--none of this mealy-mouthed "flight attendant" claptrap) were required to be registered nurses.

They served real food, too. Not just peanuts and crackers, but gourmet stuff, and they gave you little printed menus with names on 'em you couldn't even pronounce.

Course, in those days before deregulation and all, a plane ticket would set you back about six months' pay. But that didn't matter, 'cuz back then the dime-store science fiction magazines were telling us that by 2008, we'd all be traveling effortlessly by tele-transporter to points across the globe.

With no surcharges for blankets and pillows.

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Remember the fat years, when we could afford to sit back and get voluntarily offended that our own religious symbol was omitted from some public gathering place, or that one representing a creed we didn't like was included along with ours?

That's a luxury for people who aren't worried about their livelihoods, or whether they'll ever get to retire, or whether their kids will ever get to go to college. It all seems so trivial now.

It's a shame, because the annual mall protests were one of the things that gave South Florida its pizzazz. Is it possible that this recession will forge us into one big, disgusting cesspool of brotherly love?

Naah. We're stronger than that.

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Our national motto, "E Pluribus Unum," isn't just a bunch of Latin. It embodies what we stand for as a nation: "Out of many, one."

"One," as in, "me," as in, "me first." Let's face it--it's our rugged individualism that made this country what many of its citizens call "the greatest civilization on Earth."

Rugged individualism, for a lot of people, is interchangeable with the term "social Darwinism," which means that the strongest survive, while the weak perish.

So if you are feckless enough to find yourself between a ravening crowd of shoppers and a store full of Black Friday bargains, be prepared not only to get trampled, but to have your body treated like a speed bump.

When asked to clear out of the store because somebody had died, the shoppers protested, saying they had been waiting all night to be first.

Fairness. Another principle that makes us a great nation.

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There's a valid argument that allowing any of the Big Three automakers to go under would have catastrophic repercussions throughout the economy, since so many hundreds of thousands of jobs depend upon their survival.

As they sink beneath the waves, the titans of free enterprise are turning to us taxpayers for a lifeline. Yes, the same folks who, I'm sure, have done everything they can to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

If we are really going to do this, at the very least we should demand that the execs who drove the companies into the ground take a hike, without the usual obscene compensation that CEOs snag regardless of profit or loss.

It would make the bitter medicine of rewarding incompetence a little easier for us to swallow, if nothing else.

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There are quite a few Americans this year who don't feel they have a whole lot to be thankful about as they lace into their Spam turkey.

Well, take heart. Uncle Sam is looking out for the fat cats. Remember, the ones who made all the mistakes that got us into this mess? Seems they're too big and too valuable to the economy to be allowed to fail.

Guess what? We're not.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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We've had the stock market scare, the banking scare, the insurance company scare, and now we're in the middle of the car manufacturer scare. Your latest assignment is to be terrified about the holiday non-spending scare, although you can wait until the day after Thanksgiving to start hiding in the closet.

The experts keep telling us that the pillars of our economy rest upon a base of consumer spending. So, as George W. Bush told us back in 2001, it's your patriotic duty to go out there and shop.

Buy lots of stuff for your friends and relatives. Even for people you don't like.

Not me, I'm terrified. I'm hanging on to my money. But I expect you to spend yours, as unwisely as you have in the past. Our future depends on it. Good luck, God bless you, and God bless America.

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The inspiration for this cartoon came to me this morning when I considered handling my paper's business front with barbecue tongs. The bad news- DHL, Circuit City, the auto companies, AIG- to mention just a few, continues day after day.

No wonder John McCain gave such a gracious concession speech. On Election Day, he stared into the abyss and said to himself, "What was I thinking? Maybe being just one of 535 legislators isn't so bad, after all. The job's still got great perks and bennies. The only thing I don't get is my own plane. Good luck with everything, Fella."

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Not since 9/11 have Americans felt so connected and vulnerable as they do in this economic meltdown. Like smacking a mule with a two-by-four, it has really gotten our attention.

With the exception of a few hedge-fund types who probably immediately invested in gold to hoard their ill-gotten gains, the rest of us don't know if we'll ever retire, much less manage to feed ourselves. We really are all in this together. Remember when Congress stood on the steps of the Capitol seven years ago to sing, "God Bless America?" I suggest the rump parliament do the same when it reconvenes after election day.

Artistic note: As a cartoonist, I deal in visual shorthand. While sketching the character on the left, I realized that one of the most enduring stereotypes is that of the goateed, pince nez-wearing, tweedy psychoanalyst, probably based on the Sigmund Freud prototype. A hundred years from now, cartoonists will be still characterizing them as nineteenth-century bourgeois Viennese.

It's like the universally-held misconception of librarians: invariably ancient, eccentric types who fasten their hair up with chopsticks. This is unfair. I knew one in Oklahoma who used a couple of forks.

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Alan Greenspan says he may have been somewhat wrong all along about financial institutions' self-interest ensuring that they would never do anything as reckless as giving out loans to people that couldn't be repaid. He says maybe a little regulation might not have been such a bad idea after all. He is "shocked, shocked."

This is like St. Matthew coming down and saying, "You know that Gospel I wrote a while back? Never mind. My ideology was flawed."

The only thing more stomach-turning than following our 401(K)s down the drain is the spectacle of congressmen and senators, who a few short years ago were lining up to lick Greenspan's Guccis, now falling all over each other to get a few seconds in the spotlight to scold him. "Election's in a week and a half. Make sure you show my good side while I look stern and condemnatory."

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This economic meltdown is child's play compared to what's in store for us now. The Feds, not exactly known for their crackerjack efficiency, will now own a piece of America's largest banks. Does this mean they'll be run with the same well-oiled precision as the U.S. Postal Service, another partially-owned subsidiary?

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Inspiration for cartoons comes from all places and at all times. I'm sure some of my detractors have their own notions of where I pull my ideas from.

This one was the direct result of a conversation I had with a newsroom colleague. We had both decided to place the quarterly notices from our 401K's, which had arrived earlier in the week, in the File and Forget Drawer. It was best, we agreed, to take them out and examine them later, when things had begun to look a little better.

Like, twenty or thirty years from now.

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It takes an economic crisis for gas to become more affordable...just when we're less likely to be able to afford it.

It's virtually impossible to get ahead. The deck is stacked. The best plan remains the lottery, because at least when you buy a ticket, you have a ghost of a chance.

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Let's face it: the Wall Street meltdown has been good for the Democrats and the Obama campaign. His poll numbers suddenly surged as the numbers in our 401K's diminished.

I doubt Obama has any better idea how to fix the problem than McCain, but campaigns have little to do with truth and everything to do with perception. The fact that the Illinois senator cautiously stood back while Sen. Can-do McCain charged into the fray like a runaway rhino now makes him look like a wise elder statesman.

You can't help but think that, way down in their guts, die-hard Dems are praying that we teeter on the edge of the Apocalypse until November 5, when the clouds miraculously part and the future once again beckons under a President-elect Obama.

And not a day sooner--we know that the American electorate has the attention span of a flea. They might get seduced by another come-hither wink from Sarah Palin.

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The real story about getting this thing through Congress is about packaging it for digestion by the American electorate. It isn't "ground-up snouts and tails," it's "cold-cuts."

One can only marvel at the political tone-deafness of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who first stuck the label "bailout" on the plan. Tack on the modifier, "Wall Street," and it immediately set up a populist "us vs. them" mentality that had Congresspersons heading for the tall grass.

Nobody likes the "rescue," but the stock market gyrations that followed its original failure showed us that this is no time to play cute.

I almost didn't go with this cartoon because I thought the "lipstick on a pig" analogy was getting shopworn. It seems to be the metaphorical currency of the moment, however, so I decided to go with the flow, as long as I could use it to say something meaningful.

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Normally, I don't feel too sorry for members of Congress. They have gold-plated medical and retirement plans, and they get repaid for the cost of their commute, among other things.

This bailout, though, is when they really sweat their salary. They hear from screaming constituents that they should not spend taxpayer money to rescue greedy Wall Street capitalists. At the same time, they're afraid that if they do nothing, Main Street might tank from frozen credit.

Here's their real problem:
Today, they chose to weasel out and bow to the will of the people. But, come November, if the economy really DOES crash because Congress did nothing, how many constituents will remember that they sent an email to their representative telling them to vote "nay?"

About the same number as those who remember that they voted for President Bush four years ago. Like, maybe, five.

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This cartoon is a smorgasbord of images: a little something for everyone.

In searching for a vehicle to make my point, I intentionally harked back to those heroic equestrian statues of George Washington, because the Washingtonian resoluteness in the face of adversity is what John McCain is trying to evoke by suspending his campaign and returning to the capital. Here is the great leader marshaling his troops, rousing their morale when things seem at their most hopeless. He did, curiously, use the word, "patriotic," when he made the announcement that he was temporarily folding his tent for the greater good of the nation.

Of course, the image of the mounted leader is also reminiscent of Napoleon, and we all know what happened to him.

In keeping with McCain's militaristic persona, I dressed him in a 19th Century U.S. Cavalry uniform, and Baby Boomers will recognize Cpl. Agarn's buffoonish head cover stylization from the television series F Troop.

Finally, for you art historians, I wasn't consciously channeling Picasso here (God forbid!), but when I finished the drawing, I realized that the horse definitely has the same facial expression as the rearing steed in Guernica, which brings an element of chaos to the picture.

After all that, what the hell does the cartoon mean?

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I heard an economic journalist from the Washington Post say the other night that this bailout wasn't about fairness, it was about saving the economy.

In other words, for the rest of us to stay afloat, we're going to have to make sure the Masters of the Universe get what they feel they deserve, or they may not sign onto the package.

Evidently, these guys would rather see the economy tank than give up their obscene compensations. This will be interesting: the power elite-- which are an immovable object, up against an irresistible force--a Congress full of politicians running for reelection in six weeks.

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There was a story that immigration, both legal and illegal, is way down lately thanks to our anemic economy. If things get much worse, it is not a stretch to imagine the scenario envisioned in the above cartoon.

In his waning days, President Bush may at last be able to point to a positive legacy: the immigration problem was solved on his watch.

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All you had to do for the last few years was look at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Yorker and see all those ads for wristwatches that cost more than your house to know that Wall Street has been in a period of excess.

It rankles, galls, and irritates us lowly taxpayers that somehow these guys don't have to take the fall for their high-flying ways. What was it Jesus said about a rich man and the eye of a needle? Looks like the U.S. Treasury has built a hole the size of the Gateway Arch for them to pass through.

There's talk that Congress is going to rule out golden parachutes for the big shots who made all the greedy decisions. Don't bet the homestead that anything's really going to change after this.

Oops, too late...you just did.

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Here’s another one of the Great Mysteries of Economics (no wonder they call it the “Dismal Science”) that I’ll never be able to get my mind around. Maybe some Ph.D. can explain it to me: How is it that the price of gasoline in the underground tank, the stuff that’s ALREADY BEEN BOUGHT, is instantly affected by storm- or terrorism-induced fluctuations in the futures market? I thought “Future” meant the prices hadn’t arrived yet.

Conversely, why is it that it takes weeks after the supply situation has returned to normal for the prices to “work their way down through the pipeline” to our local gas pump?

I guess if you’re the type of person who can understand this principle, you are the type who gets invited on quail “hunts” with Dick Cheney. Be sure to wear face protection.

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Up until about forty-eight hours ago, John McCain had a reputation for being Mr. Laissez-Faire. He fought government regulation tooth and nail. But, like his previous stance on offshore drilling, the scales have suddenly fallen from his eyes.

Funny thing how nobody's using the term "flip-flopper" this year. Remember 2004, when people dressed as huge sandals followed John Kerry around on the campaign trail? Remember the windsurfing ad? Oh-- wait a minute--he was a DEMOCRAT! When it's the Republican candidate, we call it a "strategic reassessment of the situation on the ground."

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Okay, I don't understand much about high finance. Obviously, neither do any of these Wall Street cowboys, or they wouldn't be in this fix.

I'll bet any of us, me included, could have run these companies into the ground just as efficiently as those guys, and for half their compensation package. If I'd known it was this easy, I would have followed my college roommate into investment banking, rather than go into the newspaper business.

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For those of you old enough to remember, this could turn out to be the $600 toilet seat of the 2008 election. Or not. Back in the 1980's, when waste and bloat were problems with military procurement (as if those problems ever went away), the American people had a hard time getting their arms around billions and trillions of dollars being spent on defense. Too abstract to compute.

Then a $600 contractor's invoice came to light for a bomber toilet seat, an everyday item that cost less than ten bucks at the time down at the local hardware store. Finally, Joe Taxpayer could visualize the waste. All hell broke loose in Congress as constituents began bombarding their representatives with phone calls and mail. John McCain's not being able to remember how many houses he owns could be another toilet seat moment, the tipping point when Americans grasp how out of touch he is with the rest of us. Or not. After all, it's probably a common problem for fat cat Republicans. Why single McCain out for ridicule? Shame on me.

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Nobody likes $4 gas, but you have to admit that, while we had it, it got us talking about a comprehensive energy policy like nothing ever has before. People actually drove more slowly, thought about those impulse trips in the car, and, yes, experienced a lot of hardship.

As the price continues to drop, so will the pressure on Congress to do something meaningful about the long-term question. Our elected leaders really didn't do much anyway, except rail about how we should either drill offshore, tap the petroleum reserve, or give people a rebate so they might buy more gas.

Our old habits are sure to return, until the next time we have a spike. My advice: Buy oil company shares, if you can afford them. They'll never let you down, at least not in our lifetimes.

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It doesn't really surprise me that 60 percent of Americans believe that allowing offshore drilling is going to have some kind of immediate downward effect on gas prices, rather than a decade-and-a-half from now. Desperate people grasp at straws, because they WANT to believe so badly.

It's also no surprise that the politicians pushing offshore drilling the hardest are the ones from states farthest from any coastline. I can just imagine the folks jawbonin' about it down at the tire and supply store now: "Shux...who cares about Florida? I been to Disney World. They ain't even got a coastline there, so what are them folks bellyachin' about? And that there ANWR. Just a buncha caribou. Not like they're cattle or nuthin'. I got me a mighty thirsty VEE-hickle outside to fill, and if this lops a coupla cents off a gallon, I say bring on the slick! Leastways, we won't be buyin' it from the A-rabs."

It's almost too easy for the oil companies.

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Don't feel too sorry for Exxon's corporate relations person; their salary is probably higher than the President's. It is rather ironic, though, that quarterly earnings reports always mean cringe time at oil company headquarters (Of course, we groundlings can't hear the champagne corks popping in the corporate suites).

I don't understand why Exxon even needs public relations. They produce something we desperately need. What are we going to do, stop buying their gas because we're even MORE angry at them? If maintaining a favorable corporate image is designed to keep Congress at bay, then some well-placed re-election campaign contributions are surely more effective at maintaining governmental regulatory inertia than the money they spend on all those feel-good ads. You won't find me complaining, though. Nosiree, there's nothing more all-American, in my book, than spending money on media advertising.

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Listening to the President giving his happy talk speech about the economy the other night first amazed, and then depressed me. It reminded me of his press conference a couple of months ago, when a reporter asked him about four dollar gas. "Four dollar gas?" he retorted, testily. "Where'd you hear that?"

It also reminded me of his father, who was taken through a grocery store as President, and saw his first price scanner. "Wow. I've never seen one of those before. Isn't that something!" Or President Reagan, who, upon entering a McDonald's, said: "How do you order?" (Postscript to this post: I've just been informed that the price scanner story is apocryphal, and has been repeatedly debunked. It is, nevertheless, part of public lore. My question: If you're going to make up a false rumor about somebody, why something so tame? Doesn't begin to compare to blue cocktail dresses in the Oval Office).

I guess it's the President's job to be a cheerleader, even when it clearly makes him look as if he's completely out of touch. What if he'd told us the truth? The stock market would have tanked. Maybe he should have just left well enough alone. Then, at least, we wouldn't be worrying that the country was another Exxon Valdez heading for the rocks with a drunken captain at the tiller. Actually, our situation is worse. The Exxon Valdez was full of oil.

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Several years ago, I drew a cartoon that depicted a politician explaining the difference between "tax and spend," and "borrow and spend," to a small child. "Borrowing," he says, "is taxing somebody who isn't old enough to vote."

A lot of people seem to think that if it comes from the Federal Government, it's free money. "Heck, they'll just print some more!" They don't understand the correlation between the federal budget and a household budget, and why should they? This stuff is too abstruse for most people to understand, which is why Congress has gotten away with it for so long.

It's like pork barrel spending, also known as "bringing home the bacon." Say you go to the store and buy a barrel of pork (let's pretend it's still sold that way). On the way out, your Congressman waylays you and takes the barrel. You go home, the doorbell rings, and the Congressman proudly presents you with the pork barrel, as if he'd slaughtered the pig himself. After he leaves, you open it up, and find some of the pork inside is missing. Call it a processing fee.

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Those two guys can yak all they want about Kyoto, NAFTA, Iraq, immigration, capital gains, health care insurance, and whether or not there is intelligent life on Mars.

In the end, if gas is pushing five bucks a gallon by November, the one who lies to us the most convincingly that he's got the answer to bringing that price down is going to be the winner.

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I have developed this recurring character of the imperious monarch that, in my opinion, captures how we unwashed ratepayers feel about the utility.

It's interesting that while we all have to tighten our belts because of rising prices--cutting here, cutting there to make ends meet--FPL never has to do any belt-tightening. It just goes back to the trough when the raw materials get more expensive, its lawyers do a little boo-hooing in Tallahassee, and the dance is over until the music starts again the next time.

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Starbuck was the first mate on the Pequod, wasn't he? As I recall from high school literature class, or maybe the Cliff Notes version of Moby Dick, the whaler sank in the end. Maybe the founders of the coffee chain will rue the day they asked for all that bad karma.

We'll never see that time again when an eight-ounce coffee drink cost more than a gallon of gas.

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One of the tools in a cartoonist's box of tricks is exaggeration. Now and then, as has happened to a few of my cartoons over the years, reality overtakes imagination.

Judging by the add-on fees airlines have been charging for things like reserving your seats, sitting on the aisle and even for soda, an advance deposit for oxygen insurance and
a life jacket that inflates might not be far behind.

Maybe a year from now I'll do a "look back in anger" gallery and we'll find that this cartoon was clairvoyant rather than fanciful.

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In the middle of all this, we're watching our Presidential candidates conduct an Alice in Wonderland debate about remedies for high gas prices that won't have any effect until today's kindergartners get driver's licenses. Which they won't need, because we'll all be riding bikes by then.

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To me, the most effective cartoons combine seemingly unrelated topics that happen to be in the public consciousness at the same time. Maybe they aren't so unrelated, certainly not to the poor flood victims.

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When it comes to affecting economic cycles, there is very little a President can realistically do. Candidates for President can do even less, so they bloviate like whales spouting on a distant horizon.

The debate between McCain and Obama on this topic has an abstruse, how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin quality about it. We should move on to topics that matter to the American People, like whether Cindy McCain looks like a Stepford Wife, or whether Michelle Obama is too radical and edgy to be a First Lady.

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When I think charitably of President Bush, which is not often, I visualize him as an amiable dupe in the thrall of the incarnation of evil, Dick Cheney. There is talk that someday Cheney (along with Donald Rumsfeld) may be confined to our borders thanks to international warrants for his arrest on war crimes charges, a la Augusto Pinochet. I say fine--that will give the American people a chance to track him down first.

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This is a subject which, as I have mentioned before, is dear to my heart. I read a story recently where the resale value of these behemoths is dropping like a stone. It reminds me of people who bought up condos to flip during the housing bubble and got left holding the bag.

Back in the good old profligate days, I remember seeing people leave their giant SUV engines running in the parking lot while they went shopping, so that the AC would keep the car cool until they got back.

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Thanks to budget cuts and higher food costs, the schools are having to choose between cutting back on the quality of the lunches they serve and raising prices, which will make them harder for low-income folks to afford. Is it just an economic issue, or is it a failure to assign the correct priorities? Somehow the legislature managed to keep funds in the budget for consolation payments to companies that lost out in bidding for state contracts.

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It seems like every day we pick up the paper, there are so many insoluble problems and other horrors that we can't even begin to fix them. So I thought, "Why not combine a few?"

It's a little like getting one of those consolidation loans so that you can handle all your debts with one easy payment. One-stop cartoon shopping.

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Asking a politician not to pander is like asking a shark not to bite into your thigh. I just wish they wouldn't so brazenly insult our intelligence. They assume we're all idiots...now THAT'S elitism.

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This cartoon was inspired by a business story about a well-known coffee retailing behemoth whose quarterly profits were, shall we say, disappointing. There are certain not altogether fatuous economic indicators that many experts follow carefully, for example the Macaroni and Cheese Index. When average people really start hurting, sales of this particular foodstuff show a marked rise.

We hereby inaugurate the Latte Index, which drops in indirect proportion to the rise in economic woes.

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It almost seems like we went to sleep feeling smug about our brilliant real estate investment, and knowing that we could take the behemoth wherever we wanted on the slightest whim. We woke up the next day upside-down on the mortgage and searching desperately for that old pump in the garage so we could run quick errands on the bicycle.

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You know we're in trouble when fuel and food prices reach the point of threatening that sacred all-American summer activity, the family driving vacation. Fortunately, modern technology will enable us to enjoy this pastime without ever having to leave the comfort of our homes...the ultimate green getaway. Let's hear it for the virtual open road!

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What are we supposed to think when the man who is supposed to be tuned into every nuance of the economy finally cottons to what the rest of us have known for months? It gives you a warm feeling, right in the ulcer.

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Yesterday, I heard on National Socialist Radio (a.k.a. NPR), my broadcast news provider of choice, that one in 10 Americans still believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim, despite all the recent brouhaha in the news about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his inflammatory comments. I checked with our editorial assistant in charge of handling nutty calls from readers, and she said that there had, in fact, been a down-tick lately in the almost three per day she had been fielding, demanding to know why we didn't do an expose on Sheik B. Hussein Obama's "Secret plan to turn America into an Arab country." (That's a direct quote).

Anyway, this got me thinking about the continuing misapprehension on the part of many of our compatriots that the Saudi terrorists on the 9/11 planes were actually Iraqis. I suddenly realized that with a brain-trust like this, the Bush Administration must think we'll believe just about anything they feed us. Well, almost.

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Once again, it's the economy, Stupid.

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