A Phone Call

Sometimes, I get a wrong phone call here in Germany. It averages around four times a month.

This past weekend....near 7PM on Sunday evening....I had this call. It was a German guy and he started running off in a hurry....in German. In the background, I could hear ambulance sirens, yelling in the background, and fire trucks. It took around 30 seconds to get him to stop, and then I kinda mentioned I was American and this was a wrong number. He was sorry, and then hung up.

I kinda sat there and paused over the call. Evidently, this was one of those circumstances that would have been interesting to know the situation. The caller was either calling to announce he’d been in an accident, or calling to let someone know that their house was on fire.

For two days, this has kinda bothered me. Things happen, and you’d just like to know the final outcome, even though you don’t know these people. Heck, maybe two beer trucks collided.

A Bad Poker Hand

The congressional budget dudes...who analyze things for congress...finally came back and said the bailout and stimulus episode so far....may end costing us a total of 23 trillion dollars....give or take a trillion or two. They admitted, this was the worst case scenario, and they couldn’t go beyond a certain point on this “game”. They also admitted that the folks who are responsible for spending the bailout and stimulus packages.....aren’t taking the advice of the congressional budget office too seriously.

Most of the big-name media types will just report a short blip on this and keep moving. Folks in the senate and house are standing there and know the impact of this report. You’ve got elections coming up in eighteen months. You know from another report from last week that the recovery phase really isn’t going by the plan that exists....so the economic spiral is still in full swing. By next summer, if you voted for the stimulus package (even as a Republican)....you could be finished politically.

It is a simple way to campaign as an unknown in July 2010.....against any state representative or senator. You start with the package that does little to stimulate. Then you start to mention that the current guy never read anything, suggesting that he or she can’t read (illiterate). Then you start to suggest that they lack the intelligence required of the job.

The chances of the universal health care package now passing (as is)....zero. There will have to be some dramatic change to the package and the method of paying for it. I think this congressional budget report sinks the package for the rest of this year. The White House needed a clear agenda to make this happen...and this poker game has gone in a vastly bad way for the past month for them.