Just thinkin’ aloud

The U.S. economy is beginning to look like Uncle Billy misplaced more than just the Bailey Building and Loan’s deposit.

Best understated line of the day, so far

“Man, that guy is good.”

Bart Bryant, who lost when Tiger Woods made a 25-foot birdie putt on 18 to defeat him.

Here’s the putt:

This probably isn’t good news

The deal calls for J.P. Morgan to pay $2 a share in a stock-swap transaction, with J.P. Morgan Chase exchanging 0.05473 share of its common stock for each Bear Stearns share. Both companies’ boards have approved the transaction, which values Bear Stearns at just $236 million based on the number of shares outstanding as of Feb. 16. At Friday’s close, Bear Stearns’s stock-market value was about $3.54 billion. It finished at $30 a share in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.

The Wall Street Journal

Read it again. The company was valued at $3.54 billion Friday at 4PM and sold today for $236 million.

Neither rhyme nor reason

I’m starting to think that Obama
Could rescue us all from the trauma
That W started
With Cheney, whole-hearted
Cause Hillary’s way too much drama.

Among the limericks at the 2008 San Patricio Limerick Festival at Fluency.

Link via Bitch Ph.D.

Excuse me?!?

“But it’s one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother’s basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they’re a pathetic get-a-life loser …”

Bob Costas quoted in The Miami Herald

Really!?!

Saturday Night Live

We thought we’d go see Asra Nomani when Saturday evening began. Ms. Nomani is an Indian-born, American-raised Muslim. She was a friend of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter abducted and killed in Pakistan as portrayed in the film A Mighty Heart. (Angelina Jolie played Pearl’s wife Mariane. Archie Panjabi portrayed Ms. Nomani.)

Nomani is the author of Standing Alone is Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She was scheduled to give a talk last evening on her life as a single, unmarried mother and a Muslim. Alas, she missed her flight to Albuquerque (luckily for her — a landing in Albuquerque is always an E-ticket ride; with yesterday’s winds it would have been more scary than thrilling.)

Plan B — Arlo Guthrie on his “Solo Reunion Tour” at the KiMo Theatre.

Fortunately there were about 15-20 tickets left when got to the box office less than an hour before show time. We ended up in row X, the back of the balcony, but there are no bad seats in the historic and beautiful KiMo (built 80 years ago in Pueblo Deco style as a movie and vaudeville theater; an attraction in itself).

Guthrie was wonderful. Not only did we get “Alice’s Restaurant,” but two hours of a wonderful selection from his repertoire of songs and stories. These included a couple of his dad’s songs, including “This Land Is Your Land” — just enough to give the evening a sense of wonderment and connection to the great folk music tradition of the mid-20th century.

Guthrie also quoted Marilyn Monroe — he said — for a philosophy of life: “When it comes to life’s decisions,” Marilyn supposedly said, “‘What the hell’ is usually the right answer.”

We thought Arlo Guthrie would be good. He was terrific. (And we were glad Ms. Nomani had missed her plane.)

War Is Hell

An unpleasant anniversary worth noting.

A group of South Vietnamese villagers reported today that a small American infantry unit killed 567 unarmed men, women and children as it swept through their hamlet on March 16, 1968.

They survived, they said, because they had been buried under the bodies of their neighbors.

The villagers told their story in the presence of American officers at their new settlement, which lies in contested territory less than a mile from the ruins of their former home.

The officers refused to comment pending the outcome of an Army investigation into charges of murder against Lieut. William Laws Calley Jr., 26 years old, of Miami.

The New York Times

A pretty good line from four years ago

From Sideline Chatter in The Seattle Times:

New England might never have won a Super Bowl, let alone two, had not Gen. George Custer decided to leave Felix Vinatieri — his bandleader and the great-great-grandfather of Pats kicker Adam — back at the fort with his band when the troops embarked for the battle of Little Big Horn.

Added Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Those guys were the luckiest musicians in the world, not counting Ringo.”

Happy Birthday Dear URL

The URL newmexiken.com is four years old today.

(The blog itself began seven months before that.)

By the way, the first mention of Barack Obama on this blog was four years ago today as well.

March 16th

Today is the birthday

… of Jerry Lewis. He’s 82.

… of Erik Estrada of ”CHiPS.” Ponch is 59.

… of Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli’s son Wolfgang Van Halen. He’s 17.

The individual most responsible for the U.S. Constitution was born on this date in 1751. That’s James Madison.

No government any more than an individual will long be respected without being truly respectable.

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

[I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.

Most insightful line so far about Spitzer

“Men such as those in Spitzer’s position do not so much pay for women to have sex with them; they pay for women to go away AFTER having sex with them.”

Psychologist David Buss quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A lesson Bill Clinton never learned.