Good Morning from OYIT [ Tuesday March 17 2009]

By Glenn

Good morning. If you'll allow me to get personal, I've been out of the state last week. First I was in Iowa visiting Katy, who usually writes the "Hi Katy" column on on Mondays. Next I traveled to Illinois where my parents live. Upon entering their home I was immediately grounded for not being funny enough on this website. I wanted to protest but couldn't: their house, their rules. I'm back now and I've learned a lot about being grounded. I hope to have children ASAP so I can ground them, but until then I'll continue to ground planes as in my official capacity as Director of the FAA.

[Yeah I finally got a job - and it's running the FAA. President Obama was looking for someone with an impeccable tax record who he could appoint to run a federal agency that would probably be dissolved by the end of his first term and I was it. That's what you get for putting your resume into Change.gov.]


Today's Weather

As you can see, there won't be any travel weather in the Iowa-Illinois corridor I drove around, through and in last week. I'd like to take credit for it but the weather, as you've learned from weeks of this column, is wider and more complicated than of us can ever truly understand. The high today where I am is 75 degrees and sunny, so I'd like to hear some suggestions in the comments section what I should do to enjoy the weather. I'd also like to hear if you think it's funny South Dakota is getting rain today while North Dakota gets off rain free!

[By the way, I will NEVER use weather.gov maps for any editions of this column I create. Just consider me the Rick Perry of OYIT.]


Today's Quote

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
-- Thomas Szasz

Today's Holiday
I'd prefer not to mention this at all because it's stupid, but today is St. Patrick's Day. In practice, this is a day where people get drunk and wear green. I don't celebrate any of this, of course; the only pseudo holiday I've really enjoyed in the past few years is Flag Day, because it gives me a chance to burn the American flag legally. I think we're all better off if we skip the drinking, skip the green and instead celebrate today the fortieth anniversary of Golda Meir being elected the first female Prime Minister of Israel. She was elected from the Labour party, which is almost as irrelevant in contemporary Israel as St. Patrick's Day.


Today's Populist Anger
Are you familiar with AIG? Like most acronyms, we hear about it relatively often but have no idea what it means. I'm not hear to tell you what AIG stands for, but rather what it does. But I don't know! I think it has something to do with insurance. For some reason, when it was going bankrupt, the federal government spent billions of dollars to keep it afloat - unlike the TITANIC, which they let sink. What makes us, as populists, particular mad today is that AIG used money the government gave it to pay bonuses to people who put it in a situation where it needed the government's money, which was paid to AIG before they turned around and paid to the people who created the scenario where this money was required. It's circular and cyclical, like a bicycle tire. None of us will ever know what really happened with AIG, but please remember to hate them for the rest of your lives.


Today's Prediction
The rain in South Dakota and the drought of my presence in Illinois and Iowa will cause massive financial difficulties in the upper Midwest. The federal government will offer to give the area $500 trillion dollars in loans to preserve solvency, but Golda Meir will turn down the money from beyond the grave, just like Rick Perry is doing in Texas. He's not dead yet, but politically he might as well be. You can't stop Kay Bailey Hutchinson from becoming governor of Texas any more than you can stop her from getting drunk at Bennigan's tonight.