Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction, after all, has to make sense. (Mark Twain)

A hypothetical situation: You’re addressing a body of elected representatives, most of whom you assume (rightly or wrongly) are not jabbering, drooling lunatics. You tell them to select from the assemblage someone who hasn’t held a job in his adult life; who has no skill other than political pandering; has a completely unfounded sense of self-righteousness; has no experience in the housing, financial-services, or banking industries; and has never solved a mathematical equation more complicated than adding up the lint-balls he pulls from his navel during his more contemplative moments. Then you tell those assembled to appoint that person Chairman of the group’s Financial Services Committee.

Can you imagine that? Would you expect to get away with it? Of course, not. It couldn’t and wouldn’t happen in real life. That’s why it’s hypothetical. The only places in which it can happen are fiction, imagination, nightmares, and government. And happen it has. How can we find out where? Since no such fictitious stories have been written, since none of has imaginations that good, and since we can only hope to have no such nightmares, let’s look at government. We won’t have to look far.

In case you missed it, the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report called, The Role of Government Housing Policy in Creating the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. This article about the reports was accompanied by a photograph of the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee trying to grasp a profoundly intricate economic/philosophic concept, referred to in texts and academic journals as living within one’s means. The report states, among many other preposterous things, this:

The housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to a financial crisis can be traced back to federal government intervention in the U.S. housing market intended to help provide homeownership opportunities for more Americans. This intervention began with two government-backed corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized their profits but socialized their risks, creating powerful incentives for them to act recklessly and exposing taxpayers to tremendous losses … “affordable” but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage … [and] a nexus of vested interests – politicians, lenders and lobbyists – who profited from the “affordable” housing market and acted to kill reforms. In the short run, this government intervention was successful in its stated goal – raising the national homeownership rate. However, the ultimate effect was to create a mortgage tsunami that wrought devastation on the American people and economy.

Another situation: You’re the head of a private corporation (other than GM, Chrysler, or a bank). A report is presented to you detailing the responsibility of some of your employees in making decisions so short-sighted and so self-serving they created a set of circumstances destructively pernicious enough to severely damage your company and its reputation. At the same time, those decisions  destroyed one of your markets almost entirely. Chances are you’d clean house, repair whatever public-relations and organizational damage you could, and rehabilitate the market to the best of your ability. But not in this situation. This one’s hypothetical, too. The reason it’s hypothetical is, once again, we’re talking about government.

In a government comprising career politicians – in a nation in which the electorate pays little or no attention to the elected – there is no housecleaning. There is no chastisement. There is no damage control. There is no rehabilitation. And there is no restraint, restriction, or rescinding of power. As evidence, Blitzkrieg Barney learned nothing from the consequences of his actions, received not even so much as a “Dude! What the hell were you thinking?” from the Spendthrift-in-Chief, and hastened to inflict the same disaster on one particular segment of the market (condominium sales) that happened to survive the first wave of his assault unscathed.

It’s hard to know whether we should give Bumbling Barney credit for his ignorance, or for his audacity. If most of us had managed to wreak havoc on a huge segment of the national housing market – if we’d managed to precipitate a worldwide financial crisis and force hundreds of thousands of American citizens into foreclosure and bankruptcy – we’d skip town and be happy to make our getaways without tar and feathers. Not Barney. He works for a guy with no reluctance whatsoever to throw good money — ours — after bad. So, Barney undoubtedly will strike again. Let’s not feign surprise when he gets away with it … again. We’re the ones who’ll let him.

While there’s no morality to this story, there is a moral: You get what you pay for.

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Networking Happy Hour At Ballou Wine Bar, Guilford, CT - March 9, 2010

]]> http://www.shorelineoutandabout.com/demo/blog/2010/03/bruce-barber-on-shoreline-out-and-about-colby-strategic-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.shorelineoutandabout.com/demo/blog/2010/03/bill-chinnock-rip/ http://www.shorelineoutandabout.com/demo/blog/2010/03/bill-chinnock-rip/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:09:18 +0000 Mark O'Brien http://www.shorelineoutandabout.com/demo/?p=4759 I was pleasantly surprised to find an acquaintance on Facebook recently. His name is Mark Saleski. Finding him on Facebook reminded me that we initially connected because of the passing of Bill Chinnock, an amazing musician and human being who left us three years ago last Sunday: March 7, 2007. When I learned of Bill’s passing [...]]]> I was pleasantly surprised to find an acquaintance on Facebook recently. His name is Mark Saleski. Finding him on Facebook reminded me that we initially connected because of the passing of Bill Chinnock, an amazing musician and human being who left us three years ago last Sunday: March 7, 2007.

When I learned of Bill’s passing and went to the Web to investigate, one of the first things I found was this tribute from Mark. It moved me to write to him, initiating our acquaintance. I later found another tribute to Bill at this site, which features the beautiful photography of Debra L. Rothenberg.  I posted these comments there:

I met Bill in 1977, at the Silver Bullet in Moodus, Connecticut, a club in which I played every Thursday night. He played the Bullet several Friday and Saturday nights before moving up to more prominent Connecticut venues like New Haven’s Toad’s Place. In fact, I was with Bill at the Silver Bullet on his 30th birthday.

We always had wonderful conversations about the business and about Bill’s growth as a performer and musician. During one of our visits, I mentioned how much his guitar playing had improved. He said he thought he’d honed his songwriting to a point at which he was happy with it, so he’d turned his attention to his chops.

Aside from the fact that I’ve seen very few people command a stage or an audience the way Bill did, his was (in my humble estimation) THE definitive reading of “Georgia On My Mind”.

Just this morning, I ordered Dime Store Heroes and Out on the Borderline on CD. I have a feeling we’ll never see Badlands on CD (I have it on vinyl) because Atlantic Records won’t view it as viable. Our only hope might be that Bill’s passing will draw the attention to his music it deserved. Anyone’s who never heard “Something for Everybody” in live performance missed a thing of beauty and wonder.

Rest in peace, Bill. You deserve to.

If you’d like to hear the studio version of “Something for Everybody”, go here.  If you’d like to see Bill in a performance of his song, “Dime Store Heroes”, from the album of the same name, go here. Watching Bill in that live performance brought back many haunting memories of the time I spent with him so long ago. I’d rather be haunted by those memories than without them.

Thank you, Mark Saleski, for reminding me of that.

March Girl’s Night!
Join me on Wed, March 31, 6pm at Torrington Country Club! My guest speaker is CT Superior Court Judge Charles Gill who will share his “View from the Bench…it is getting better, or worse?”
Judge Gill is a nationally renowned trial judge who has been honored by Presidents of both political parties at the White House.
Dinner is only $25.00, call 860-491-2440. Hope to see you there~

UPDATE: As a result of this shout out, we’re appearing on WTNH’s Good Morning CT this Saturday at 7:20 am. Set your alarm clocks, you won’t want to miss this one.

Well this is the last of the pre-Oscar blogs and I am going to talk about the two remaining movies up for best picture, some other worthy notes and finally, my predictions.

“A Serious Man” written and directed by the Coen brothers was one of my least favorite films of the year’s ten nominated for the top prize. Their unique style has been proven with gems like “The Big Lebowski”, “Burn after Reading” and “No Country Old Men”, all of which are films I admire. But “A Serious Man”, in my opinion, lacked the tonal color necessary to remain consistently interesting. I felt the story was weak and a little boring at times despite some very good performances by Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind and Sara Lennick. Maybe I need to see it again, but I think I can wait.

A big surprise this year was the sci-fi action thriller “District 9”. In addition to best picture, it is up for three other awards including film editing, visual effects and best adapted screenplay. I thought it was a very entertaining film with an excellent performance by Sharlto Copely. Expanding the category this year has made it possible for a film like this to get the recognition it deserves, but I don’t think it will take home any trophies.

Some final thoughts – if you didn’t see “The Last Station” with Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, you should. They are both up for awards in their respective categories and gave

outstanding performances. This film could have been in the top ten. I felt Amy Adams was snubbed this year for her role in “Julie & Julia” and I didn’t care much for Matt Damon in “Invictus”. Lastly, I think Stanley Tucci’s performance in “The Lovely Bones” is worth a mention.

Well, I think I’ll wrap it up here and leave you with my predictions. As I had stated earlier, I have my own scoring system which includes categories for who should win, who will win and my sentimental favorites. To score me you would look at who I predict WILL win. If you would like to play along, send your predictions to jmoniello@gmail.com . Thanks for letting me share… enjoy the big night!

I remain, John

“Eli’s on the Hill is a great place not only to socialize with friends, but also to host a Bridal shower or wedding related event,” says Nikki.  There will be raffles, drink and appetizer specials, demonstrations, and complimentary spa treatments where brides-to-be can relieve some wedding related anxiety and ask Bridal experts their wedding related questions.

Nikki Rasmussen, owner of YOLO is especially excited for the Bridal Fashion Show to be held on April 25th at Laurel View Country Club, where the winner of the contest will be announced.  Nikki says, “We have an amazing array of Bridal Fashions provided by The White Dress by the shore (http://thewhitedressbytheshore.com/), Beneath the Gown, fine european lingerie (http://beneaththegown.com/), and Couture clothing by Astrid Niemelaeinen (web http://astridcouture.com/events.html)  These wedding professionals represent the best in the industry, I’m excited to have them participate in our Bridal Fashion Show.  Final contestants, their fiance’s and mom’s will be our invited guests, to watch the Fashion show, meet wedding professionals, feast on a delicious array of appetizers’ and possibly win additional raffle prizes”.

Interested Brides may enter at www.yolobridalmakeovercontest.com

You can’t catch me. Nyah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. And … oh, yeah … as soon as we can pull it off, a few thousand more of you infidels will die.

Nevertheless, the CIA is on the case. I’m reasonably sure Osama has been a New York cabbie since some time in the late ‘90s. He was sent there to scout locations for the September 2001 … uh … shoot. There’s a difference of opinion, since the CIA seems to think he’s in Pakistan. Nevertheless, how can one be less than reassured by a statement like this, from none other than CIA Director, Leon Panetta?

I guess one of our hopes is that as Pakistani military moves in, combined with our operations, we may have a better chance to get at him.

Can anything inspire more confidence than a man in Uncle Leon’s position guessing at his hopes? Thank goodness he chose not to bore us with anything like circumstantial facts, strategic plans, or tactical objectives. What a man.

To be fair, Uncle Leon is facing some stiff challenges and some rather rude realities in what the World-Pal-in-Chief tells us we can no longer refer to as the war on terrorism. After all, considering the fact that all al-Qaida operatives are required to be highly accomplished members of their high school and college debating teams – and all are mandated to be card-carrying members of Toast Masters – who could have predicted this?

Past offensives against Islamist militants often faltered, with the government choosing to strike peace agreements with the extremists.

Given the undivided political and media support past offensives against Islamist militants have uniformly received – and given the wildly popular decision to keep such ne’er-do-wells detained in the offshore retreat at Guantanamo Bay – that’s the kind of curveball that has to keep a keen and accomplished anti-insurgency shrewdy like Uncle Leon awake at night, right?

But all is neither lost nor hopeless. Uncle Leon is emboldened by past oratorical successes – and reassured by our commander-in-chief’s domestic policies, which suggest money is no object to anything:

Panetta also said the CIA will spend nearly $250 million in the next five years to double the number of intelligence officers that are proficient in a foreign language. Less than a third of CIA analysts and overseas spies are proficient in a foreign language, according to the agency.

So, there you go. Within the next five years, whenever militant crackpots of any stripe are threatening – be it with guns, bombs, commandeered aircraft, or just a few pounds of explosives strapped to their bodies – we need not trifle with offensives or detention. Rather, our intelligence officers, CIA analysts, and overseas spies will have the fluency to ask said crackpots to behave themselves in their own respective languages. That certainly should help Uncle Leon get a few more winks. But I’m not at all sure the rest of us will find it quite so easy to sleep, perchance to dream.

Will Rogers said, “Politics is the art of saying, ‘Nice doggie’ … until you can find a rock.” Wherever Osama Bin Laden is, let’s hope “nice doggie” is the first phrase taught in CIA Language School – and that some of that $250 million is spent on an ample supply of rocks and a pitching coach.