My neighbor Bob is a nice guy with a serious drinking problem and a host of self inflicted medical problems.  He looks like he's outlived his body 3 times.  Bob is a concrete man and when he's sober....or relatively sober...he does great concrete work.   But Bob isn't the most reliable worker around and most of the contractors in town know it.  They don't hire Bob much...he's given them reason not to trust him over the years.   His addiction to booze has gotten him thrown off more than one job site and word has spread Bob is a mess.  I've hired Bob a number of times and have always managed to get good results.  I guess I'm more patient than the contractors.  

Bob's life is a mess.  He has no family, no steady work and no money.  Bob lives job to job making just enough to quench his addiction.  When the gas prices increased I wondered how long Bob would last.   It turned out....about 8 weeks.

 

On a Saturday morning this summer Bob knocked on my back door.  He told me he was in dire straits and needed $200.  When I asked why, he told me he had to get some of his tools out of hock.  My first thought was to give him the money.  I knew he needed it and I knew he'd use at least part of it to buy more beer.  But as I wrestled internally about how I'd explain my generosity to my wife and worried I was opening the door to host of his future requests for more handouts.  I remembered a small concrete project I was planning to do myself.  I told Bob I'd give him $200 if he promised to come back next week and do my concrete work.   He agreed and I went inside and wrote him a check.   Bob did a great job on my concrete, despite the backache it gave him and has never been back for another handout.   He may be knocking on other doors these days, but he isn't knocking on mine.

 

The Wall Street mess this week reminds me of my neighbor Bob.  For years bad decisions and a lack of self discipline has turned the financial industry into a corporate version of Bob.  Not many folks trust the financial fat cats these days.   They've given us plenty of reasons not to.  And like Bob they've hocked everything they had to get the next drink.   Greed like alcohol is an addiction.

So now Wall Street is knocking on America's back door and asking for $700 Billion.  My advice....let's make them work for it and like Bob let's leave them with a sore back.  It's not like the money will cure their addiction....it didn't for Bob.  So the best we can hope for is a one time handout.  I'm just wondering who's door they'll knock on next time. 

Oops, they did it again! 

 

When will the Democratic party learn that what sells in Hollywood doesn't sell in Harrisburg, or the Detroit suburbs, or rural Ohio, or even northern Minnesota.  Over and over the Dems try to go ultra liberal and over and over the American public sends them a big NO THANK YOU note.  You would have thought they had learned this before when they nominated the good Senator Kerry from the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts.  Barrack Obama and his supporters have hijacked the Democratic party and are holding it hostage with the help of huge donations by the socialist, or pehaps more appropriately communist, Hollywood elite.   The truth is....the more the Hollywood crowd donates to Obama, the more they attack the McCain - Palin ticket on TV and in the press the more the polls slide in favor of John McCain.  We've heard from Matt Damon.  Chevy Chase has weighed in.  And those great political minds of Barbara Streisand, Michael Moore, P Diddy and Whoopi Goldberg have had their say about what's best for America.  But what I want to know is where's Susan Sarandon?  How about Woody Harrelson or Alec Baldwin?  Can we please have them make a public statement!  America needs to know where they stand.  Americans need to hear their opinions!  It's good for the country.  It's a first amendment right......and it will help elect the right ticket in November.  The ticket that sells in small midwestern towns and blue collar iron belt suburbs.  In northern Virginia and eastern Washington.  In Grand Rapids, Michigan and Williamsport, Pennsylvania and increasingly in metropolitan Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Denver and even Minneapolis.  Americans enjoy some of the products out of Hollywood....but Americans increasingly distain Hollywood behavior.  It's the behavior of greed, the behavior of conceit and the behavior of a corrupt society filled with excess.  Americans are amused by Lidsey Lohan and Paris Hilton, by Sean Penn and Snoop Dog, but Americans don't want their daughters and sons to grow up like them.  Not even close.  Hollywood, filled with its actor crowd, is the poster city for everything wrong with America and the vast majority of Americans knows this all too well.  Many commentators have called into question the numerous friends Obama has in Chicago, but the ones most terrifying to me are the ones he has in Hollywood.   They are the ones most bent on destroying America by reducing its morals to the lowest common denominator and bankrupting the U.S. by turning it into the biggest welfare state the world has ever known.  While the Democrats claim to be the party of the common man they consistently nominate a Presidential ticket so uncommon that it has no chance of winning.    Why do they do this?  Because they follow the money and truth be told they're more interested in DNC cash flow than winning the election.....or perhaps they're just stupid.

Something big happened in Detroit the other day and it wasn't just the down fall of a big city mayor.  What happened in Detroit the other day was the beginning of a rust belt landslide for McCain.  Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick may prove to be much worse for Senator Obama than Rev. Wright or Mr. Ayers combined.   Obama's public meeting with the now disgraced Mayor is still fresh in the minds of most Detroit voters and what they certainly remember is the affection and praise the Senator showed for the corrupt and crooked Mayorlast year.  It really is hard to make a new first impression.  Kwame Kilpatrick, like his predecessor Coleman Young, takes the lion's share of the blame for the downfall of the once great, multi-ethnic city of Detroit in the suburbs.  Suburbanites know they are to blame and resent them greatly for the damage they've done to this city and the entire Detroit metro area.  These voters are largely union and lower middle class and they strongly want to vote democratic...but one thing more than any other will move them in droves toward McCain....race.  It's not that these voters are racist...or openly prejudice, but rather quitely prejudice with a fear of perceived slick black politicians with big promises....bigger ambitions.....and clear black inner city activism.  The "Bradley factor" in the polls will certainly show itself in Wayne, McComb and Oakland counties where nearly half of the state population lives.

 

Obama was smart to skip Michigan in the primaries....Hillary would have cleaned his clock in a straight up contest and the Kilpatrick relationship would have become a bigger issue, but now he has little choice.  He has to campaign there and as he does it the Kilpatrick relationship will plague him more than anything else.  If you like Kwame...you're not a friend of the white suburbs.  If you throw him under the bus...you still can't run from the image of the hug....and the comment of "your great Mayor."   Barrack is in serious trouble in Michigan and I doubt he can overcome it.  I suspect Michigan will go to McCain this year and if he wins Michigan...he'll win the election.  Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania all have similar racial dynamics.  If there is a landslide in this election...it'll be rust belts states for McCain.