There’s a husband support group meeting and the speaker asks the audience - “How many of you had sex with your wives last night?”

About 15% of the audience raises their hands.

“Great! How many of you have sex about once per week?”

50% raise their hands.

“And how many have sex only once a month?”

Almost all of the remaining men in the meeting raise their hands.

“It looks like there are still a few out there who haven’t raised their hands. Who out there only has sex once a year?”

One guy in the back is just about bursting out of his chair, flailing his hands.

“You back there, sir. You only have sex once a year? Why are you so excited about such limited sexual activity?”

The man responds: “Tonight’s the night!”

Does this mean that I have the freedom to try some wild ass things with my business, because if they flop and the biz goes in the crapper, I can just get bailed out by nice people like you?

I think I like that.

The current Bush-proposed plan makes me nervous, if for no other reason than George Bush proposed it. The guy who got C’s in college, in charge of the largest financial bailout in world history. And the way he speaks condescendingly about it as if he’s the only one that gets it. Kinda like the pot head landlord I had in college. Dude, you just don’t get it. Drinking bong water is a BOLD move.

I’m only receiving scant bits of information about the bail out, so I think I have a very superficial understanding of what’s going on, why it’s going on, and how the $700B will help. As you might expect, I have a few questions.

Are there estimates or scenarios about what would really happen if we decided to let these companies twist in the wind? I mean real ones, not just shaky finger-pointing at sepia photos of unwashed children wearing tattered clothes during the 1930’s? Maybe that’s what needs to happen - a few million people need to have the finances ruined, lawsuits need to be filed against executives and boards of these companies, their personal assets seized, a few high profile heart attacks, a few executive suicides. Mobs with pitchforks and torches are totally optional. Sphincters across the solvent financial companies clench so hard that nobody with a credit score short of 780 sees a penny and for investment firms to regain lost trust they’re forced to offer contractual assurances that your money is safe, doing so by having some portion of their funds in a zero-risk, interest bearing escrow account. Shareholder meetings are no longer conducted by proxy, and company boards are treated to tomato showers and threats of bodily harm when they can’t keep their companies in the black.

How many of the politicians involved in the vote are directly affected by the failures of these companies? Would they have a reason to want to pass the bail out? Hmm?

And what about the top brass at each company? They should have their testicles placed on a piece of poplar and hammered with a tenderizer, obviously. But what if the bill includes minimal compensation for all executive staff at each failed company, or a zero-golden-parachute clause? Do they all leave, opting for other jobs (oh yes, they’d find other jobs)? Might nobody qualified be interested in filling those positions? (I bet dubya has a few former classmates that’d apply for those jobs.) Then who runs them? A guy who passed the civil service test in 1989?

The alcohol from my drinks is starting to kick in, so I’d better cut this short.

BTW, does Barney Frank have any teeth?

Here’s an interesting link. It’s from Fox News, so take it with a grain of salt, but at least watch the video starting at the 1:23 mark.  (I was trying to find video of Barney Frank, and this was the first thing in Google to pop up - honest.)

When I meet with prospective clients, trying to sell them on our company and our work, I probably lie about 5% of the time.  After years of sitting at the kitchen tables of families in my market, I’ve come to realize that some of the questions they ask me about our company aren’t relevant to our ability to do the work I’m trying to sell. And since my ability to pay the mortgage depends on my ability to get people to sign our contract, instead of telling the truth I’ll tell them what I’ve learned is the answer they want to hear.

And I know it won’t matter.  The project will get done on time and on budget and they’ll love it so much they’ll send us a card, give us a tip, bake us something or buy us gifts.  And the things I may have lied about will never come up during construction.

Still I find it frustrating to be in a position where one of my criteria for selecting a president is which candidate lies less.  Should I care?  I’m as guilty as either Obama or McCain for stretching a truth or manufacturing a plausible lie based on publicly available facts.

Following up on Nutmeg’s comment about McCain’s religious slipperiness, I looked into it a little.  Then I looked into Obama’s.  Obama’s spiritual journey has been varied enough to make any claim he makes at least partially legitimate.  It sounds like McCain may be on record as being a part of one faith while in practice being a part of another.  For McCain, I’m not sure there’s a benefit to claiming Episcopalian or Baptist beliefs; he’d probably be better of describing his religious affiliation as Protestant, as both Episcopal and Baptist faiths grow from the same branch of Christianity.  Obama was baptized in the United Church of Christ in the 1990’s, also a Protestant wing of the Christian church.

…and then after an hour or so I’ll pick my head up and wonder WTF I’m doing, scouring the religious minutia of these two men.   Am I worried that McCain’s apparent shifting of religious preference between Protestant and Protestant makes him evil?  Am I worried that Obama, with his varied religious experiences, will stand behind The Seal with eyes big and tongue hanging out, hands raised with index and pinky fingers extended and yell “Suckers!  You’re all my bitches now!”

I need to go to bed.

So I watched last night.

Going into the debate I was about 60% Obama, 40% McCain, based on my thus far unscientific review of the candidates and my positions on the issues (no matter what Nutmeg might think).  I felt Obama at least had assembled an economic plan and was going to be better able to adapt to the quickly changing financial landscape, and that’s got to be among the most important, immediate challenges facing the next President.

Then the debate got rolling. McCain spoke in simple terms about votin’, fightin’ and taxatin’ that reminded me a little of Sara Palin. Not an advantage.

Obama was very articulate. At the start. I don’t know if he felt like he was coming off as elitist relative to McCain, but soon he was talkin’ ’bout taxatin’, too. By mid-debate the closed captioning service had to make a run to Wal*Mart for more apostrophes.  It didn’t seem to take very long before it appeared Obama was getting flustered and on the defensive, accidentally thwopping his mic and spending a good portion of each of his time chunks explaining and clarifying.
Obama fired the first salvo, the first negative shot. He spoke first, so I suppose that’s to be expected.  McCain, possibly following on the success of Obama’s lines in his acceptance speech about things McCain doesn’t understand, sang the same refrain about Obama, and did it often.

One thing McCain did on a few occasions with success was to give a more historical perspective on current situations; an understanding of what happened in the previous two decades  that led to today’s current state in the various situations abroad (Pakistan, Iraq, Russia) that were discussed.  He made a point that resonated with me; if Obama was so concerned about the situation in Afghanistan or Pakistan, why didn’t he get on a plane and go see for himself?  McCain claimed that as the chair for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on European Affairs, he’s done little.  It’s a job his running mate worked to be able to turn into something truly substantive.  The selection of Biden for his credentials as a foreign relations guru came because of his work holding the very same position Obama holds in the Senate.

Another thing that resonated was the claim of meeting without preconditions Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (totally copied and pasted that name, btw).  And not the substance of the point, but the nitpicking of factual details, mainly because they were so easy to track down and verify.  Obama claimed Henry Kissinger and other of McCain’s own aids said the very same should be done.  Ha!  Except that I was near a computer, googled it, and discovered that Kissinger never said the President should meet with Ahmadnoyoudi’int without preconditions (this wasn’t the page I found at that moment, but I can’t find that page now - google it yourself to do your own fact checking).  He said talks should begin at a much lower level.  Obama had it wrong.  Next, Obama said he never indicated he would meet personally, but would possibly have a cabinet member start the discussions.  Nope.  Unless he wants to channel Bill Clinton and challenge the meaning of the word “I”.

And advice to Obama - the telecast was carried live in the Middle East, so when Obama described Ahmadinejad’s rants as a crazy lunatic (or whatever it was, I don’t recall exactly), he may have soured Ahmadinejad on Obama, should the conditionless meeting ever come to pass.

In the opening statement Jim Lehrer quoted Dwight Eisenhower.  Shortly thereafter McCain provided as part of an answer an anecdote of two letters Eisenhower wrote.  One of Diane’s concerns was whether the 72 year old McCain still had all his faculties.  Either it was spectacular luck that Lehrer opened with that quote, of McCain really does still possess his full compliment of mental abilities.

I thought Lehrer did a great job of making this about the two candidates speaking to each other and not to himself.  And he tried his best to get both to answer the “what would you do without, now that we have to spend $700B on a bailout” question; McCain fired from the hip on Lehrer’s second time around, while Obama stuck with the things he wanted to spend on, not the things he’d have to cut out.

In all, I thought Obama did not perform as well as I’d hoped.  I think this debate could be chalked up as a McCain win.  This makes my decision harder, as now I’m back to about 50-50 for each candidate, with VP selection favoring Obama.  Two more to go.  If Obama wants my vote, he’ll need to have a better command of his opponent’s record, his own record and be able to take control of the debate instead of very much looking the subordinate.

And one last thing - I think I agree with Nutmeg on one part of her earlier comments - most everyone has already made their decision and will not be swayed by the debates or any facts presented contrary to their beliefs.  McCain and Obama are probably fighting over 10-15% of the population that have not yet made up their minds.  I’m part of that population, so taking notes during debates and doing some online digging then posting my findings here feel relevant to me.  I’m not really trying to change a McCain or Obama supporter’s mind; I’m not of the left, nor necessarily the right (though I’ve made my leanings as clear as I’m able, and an argument on that last point could probably be made).

Game on, Obama and McCain.