inkbluesky

four leaf clover on blue. An early St Patrick’s Day or just photo art with some symbolic meaning, pick your own interpretation.

The Enlightened Bracketologist

This essay is adapted from the introduction to The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything, the book that uses ingenious NCAA Tournament-style brackets to answer life’s most nagging questions. What was more memorable, 9/11 or the JFK assassination? Which movie had the better death scene, Psycho or Bonnie and Clyde? With our interactive brackets, you can check out what The Enlightened Bracketologist’s experts think or choose your own champion.

Bracketology is a little difficult to explain. There are examples at the link of Where Were You When Moments, Film Deaths and Marital Arguments. To use movies as an example: list your twenty five favorites. In list next to that list pick the twelve you like best of that twenty five, then the best six of that twelve and so forth. For some like myself this might be an exercise in mental torture especially when it comes down to picking favorites – there are two things that work against me in having favorites in music, art, books or movies – mood and eclectic taste. When it comes to Where Moments that should be much easier, I was where I was – oops that could bring back unpleasant memories. I’m just not destined to be a great Bracketologist.

Taxes suck, but then so does having to pay our monthly bills. Still as responsible adults we pony up every month to keep the basics in life up and running. Same goes for taxes, we may not like them, but there are consequences for the government not generating enough revenue, Henry Paulson’s Delusional View of the U.S. Economy

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, may have outdone even his own boss, George W. Bush, for sheer oracular idiocy. Bush, of course, set the standard with his laughable “Mission Accomplished” stunt concerning Iraq in May 2003. That one’s right up there with Dick Cheney’s fatuous claim in May 2005 that the Iraqi insurgency was “in its last throes.”

But Paulson is clearly angling to get into the game. His entry was filed just over a week ago when he proclaimed, “The economy is as strong as I have seen it at any time in my 32 year business career.” This was uttered two days after a 500+ point plunge in the stock market. The market’s slide appears to be only beginning.

It is the sheer incongruity of Paulson’s comment that is so breathtaking.

The economy lost 3 million manufacturing jobs during the first six years of Bush’s parlous tenure. The housing market is in full-scale meltdown, with prices falling at the fastest rate in 35 years. There is no bottom in sight. Bush’s tax cuts have forced the government to borrow more money than any in history: more than $3 trillion since he took office. And with the nation’s savings rate below zero — the first time since the Great Depression — he’s had to borrow more from foreigners than all previous presidents combined.