A Few Things I Don't Understand

I usually watch the news several times a day (don't want to miss anything - Britany Speers may do something extra stupid). Anyway, I often catch the Wall Street stock market opening or closing. You have probably seen this performance too. A group of suits and a couple of women in red (power outfits) stand up in the Stock Market and applaud when someone rings a bell. They are all wreathed in smiles and do high fives and beat their hands together until they must hurt. I fail to see the reason for all of their joy - working people are losing their jobs, their savings, their medical coverage, and their 401k's and these guys are happier than hell. Doesn't anyone think to tell them that their financial acumen, while lining their pockets quite nicely, is raising hell with the common herd. I suppose the reason for their happiness is that they do not realize that the common herd exists, except as servants. The latest news is that the CEO of one of the automobile companies is campaigning to get a 10 million dollar bonus. Talk about living in a dream world - could his timing have been any worse? While the auto makers are in Washington begging for a huge chunk of taxpayer money to bail out their companies, someone expects to get a 10 mil bonus. The sad part is that he will probably succeed.

Off on another subject. It is rumored that local lawbreakers are refusing to be sentenced to parole with the understanding that they will be incarcerated in the Gouverneur Correctional Facility. Think about it, they get three squares a day, a warm bed, and all of the sexual activity they can stand, courtesy of the Facility's female employees. I must admit that from the pictures I have seen, none of these gals is going to win any beauty contests in the near future, but if you are locked up with a few thousand other men, a sheep would look good after a while. Actually, letting a sheep in there would probably result in a cruelty to animals charge. Interestingly, as I read it, the women who have been uncovered (heh, heh) are going to be charged with rape, under the legal provision that prisoners are incapable of giving their consent. Huh? Are you kidding me - they (the prisoners) are probably conducting lotteries to pick who the next rape victim will be. I wonder how the guilty rapists pulled this off - aren't prisons places where folks are pretty carefully supervised? As the investigation continues, I suspect that the angry finger of the law with unearth more supervisors who are involved. I suspect also that the prisoners are pretty unhappy with the person or persons who narked out their little part time hobby. This whole episode reminds me of the arrest a while ago of several school teachers who were using teen aged boys for other than homework. Of course several parents screamed how their little darlings were traumatized by this treatment and demanded justice. By justice, I think they mean, set the school up for a lucrative law suit. My old buddy Pete Drake and I were watching this unfold on the TV and got quite a kick out of the whole performance. We are both old, but we can remember being teen agers. Pete and I agreed that the most obvious expression of the trauma these kids experienced was that you couldn't wipe the smile off their faces with a two by four.