Brentology.com

Usually I love a quiet Sunday morning reading the paper and drinking enough coffee to wake me up. After the reading of the comics and being saddened that Opus no longer graces the funny pages, I dive into the part with all the little words running together that make me aware of the world around me. I can’t get all my worldly knowledge from the world web of internets or cable news. I still like to blacken my fingers with cheap ink on crinkly paper. Besides Finnigan likes to play with it too.

There is lot of news on the economy of course, and in particular there are a lot of stories written about those people who are suffering. Two of them today struck a nerve with me, and not in a good way. Maybe it’s my perpetual state of crankiness that usually coffee or Crown Royal represses or I'm just tiring of the same news stories. The gist of the first is a couple struggling to pay their mortgage because of their payment resetting to a new, contractually agreed to, higher sum of money each month. It’s a sad story and I’m not unsympathetic, but midway through this story that was clearly written to elicit sympathy and cast a harsh light on anyone but the couple is the fact that they refinanced from the original mortgage which had good affordable terms THREE times in the last five years. And each time the money went for vacations, a new more expensive car and other materialistic goods. Although, they did buy some new windows for the home along the way. And here they cry “unfair” to anyone who will listen, including a staff paper writer who clearly needed something to write this week.

The next was about a Mother of three, 21 years old, hoping for some help. To go into Joe Biden debate mode I will repeat, 21 years old and three kids. No twins or a set of triplets, three kids born at different times all by the age of 21. My emotions on this go from wanting to write her a check for the sake of the kids to wanting to scream at her to stop having kids she can’t afford or care for properly. Maybe I will do both.

Now I’m pretty liberal and I don’t think anyone makes it through life without help along the way. And whether it’s a helping hand from family, support from a friend, being born an heir to a pickle fortune, or even from a stranger reading a newspaper, everyone should be so lucky to have people in their lives and pay it forward to help others when they can. But sometimes help should come with strings attached even if it is just a lecture.

Switching to the auto industry, sorry no good segue way, they need the help but with lots of strings. These include: lower executive pay all around, union contracts renegotiated, detailed business plans that they have to stick to, repayment of the loans with interest, and mandatory production of hybrids and clean technology. Oh and the P-R departments should be cleaned out of the monkeys currently staffing them and replaced with humans. Seriously, was there nobody who could tell these moronic executives not to come to Washington for a handout in their expensive polluting corporate jets? Getting past the fact none of the auto execs thought to fly commercial or even drive, since you know they do make cars, there really was not anyone who could convince them of the disastrous press they would get? Really? They all should have crammed their fat heads and even fatter wallets into the smallest car they produce and hit the Ohio Turnpike singing road trip songs. What a mess that trip unnecessarily turned into.