Guest Post: Bunner's 2 cents

The following doesn't vary much from the way I feel about our slide into national insolvency. So rather than write a post myself, here y'go, y'all:

Money started out as a convenient form of exchange. It's become an adversarial construct, a tin deity and the scoreboard for our existence. We can pretend it's still working for us, but it's become a lever that - as the length and stiffness of that lever expands for the haves - is used to pry us from what little hard wealth we have. 14,000,000,000,000.00 in debt notes is a stupid thing to trade anything for.

You can harrumph and wave your made in China flag and wait for Michelle Bachmann to lead you to the promised land of loonies and pray to Bill O'Reilly and keep crushing those aluminum cans but the pooch has been hosed and we're holding the bag for these junk notes.

We need a concise game plan that includes a lot of hard and fast changes to how we allow businesses to function, who gets to do what and to whom and for how long or the hard and fast change will come via a molotov cocktail when there's no more malarkey to sell and the curtain is pulled back from the man in the booth. This - shit - isn't - working - anymore. Pretending it is has put us in this sack.

This is cut point for America, y'all. With or without me or you and recess is over. So if anybody has some useful ideas that don't include guillotines or mathematically gymnastic bar graphs that add up to "shut up and don't pester the wealthy", I'm all ears. Cause I don't want to see riots in the streets, either. But this shit is way past band aids and if we don't waylay the getaway car, we're gonna be left with ashes and whatever we can grow in that corner lot where those small shops used to be. I got nothing against wealth. How you got it and what you do with it matters, not the wealth itself. I got a huge problem with pirates and thugs. Don't you? .02 USD.

- by that Internet entity known as "Bunner."

First Nanny

Now, the new, improved First Lady has suddenly emerged as full-blown First Nanny in "Partnering with" -never say "scolding"- the restaurant industry to cut down on the portions it serves. This is typical of the top-down unrealistic idealism that pervades certain circles of our society, and the audiences it garners, who believe that celebrity somehow equals authority. There' s not the slightest reason to believe that Michelle Obama is any better informed on this issue than the next person, and yet she receives instant credibility from the media.

In fact, there are many very good reasons why this proposal is going to fail. Restaurants serve large portions of food in this country because food is a relatively cheap part of overhead, and the portions justify the amount the restaurants must charge. Many people who don't want large portions simply get a doggie box and take what they don't eat as leftovers, which helps with their perceived value of the meal. And people who are still hungry will probably just eat more, regardless of the portions being served.

And, last, the timing of such an initiative is extremely poor. The country is in a recession, which has cut into restaurant revenues, and the proposal is to do something that may cut into them even more. Push this enough, and it could precipitate the ultimate disaster.....people might actually learn to cook for themselves.