he following was e-mailed to me by an all-knowing and very wise woman who is now in, or approaching, her mid-nineties. She lives in Panama City, Florida. Her name is Brooks and she will, almost certainly, live forever. This kind of thinking will keep her forever young and the rest of us informed. I think there is wisdom in her logic and almost logic in her wisdom. She told me the following,

• If you purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines just one year ago, you will now have $49.00.
• If you purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG a year ago, you would now have $33.00.
• If you purchased $1000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have nothing..$0.00 today.
• But if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received $214.00.
• Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily and recycle. It is called the 401-Keg.

A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!
Makes you proud to be an American!

Thank you Brooks.

hortly before the opening salvos of the Vice Presidential candidate's debate I read an e-mail taking me to task for my comments about the Republican candidate, Governor Sarah Palin. Along with kind comments from a listener who has been following my programs since 1982 came the following. "I do believe that if she were a liberal, you would bow down at her feet, irrespective of her experience, her family or anything else. If you are honest, you will admit that. Look into your heart and say the truth: you hate her because she's a conservative". She also accused me of "impugning her character". And then along with some 70 million other Americans and an audience around the world, I sat down with a glass of red wine and our Australian Border Collie to watch the event. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've been an ardent supporter of Joseph Biden for many years and always respected his skills as a debater. I've never seen him give a finer performance.
He represented the top of the ticket superbly. The polls which have been swinging Obama's way over the past two weeks can only be helped by his number two's presentation. What an entirely different performance we had from the running mates. It was feistier and more challenging performance than we got from Presidential candidates, Senator McCain and Sen Obama.
Governor Palin did an amazingly better job than I think most people would have expected. If I could have been a fly on the wall when she met up with the top of the ticket, today, I think I would have heard a most heartfelt series of compliments from Sen.John McCain. She delivered her talking points effectively and made a very positive impact on conservatives yearning for something a little exciting from their side. She dealt with the issues to the satisfaction of many.
She demonstrated, for me, no particular command of a single issue. The format was sound-bite friendly. There was one area where she held her own and that was energy and global warming (these are familiar issues in Alaska). Beyond that all I can say for her was, she appeared amazingly self confident if not well informed. And I ask, simply, how confident would you be, should Sen John McCain win, with this neophyte, trainee in the No.2 job.?
For those who feel more supportive of the Governor than I, I must return to the question, what if she became President of the United States?
Overall, Biden's command of the issues was evident and significant.
As in the presidential debate neither candidate had a credible answer when asked what programs would suffer or be given up as a result of the financial crisis. That was yesterday, what of today? The House of Representatives reversed itself and voted, with a large majority, to go along with the improved but still troubling , bail-out bill.
This past week has shown the legislature at its best, with the more responsible lawmakers of both sides of the aisle working together to a crisis. We've also seen congress at its worst, with a group of rigidly ideological and politically calculating legislators trying to stand in its way. The rescue plan has, over the past few days, grown bigger, the question ahead of us is, is it any better.
The Christian Science Monitor began one of their editorials this morning, putting it in a nutshell, "If the $700 billion financial rescue legislation were a movie, it would have to be "THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY".

oday Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat, gave a speech regarding the proposed Wall Street bailout. Under the heading of "Why, Why, Why?" he asked of this Congress, "what were you thinking. Why did we give $700 billion bailout to Wall Street without fixing what caused the problem in the first place? Why did we rig the free markets for security fraudsters? Why didn't we explore alternatives to let Wall Street solve its own problems?. Why didn't we have money save millions of homeowners, create millions of jobs, and a green economy? Why didn't we stop the speculators? Why wasn't there accountability? Why didn't we take the time to make an intelligent decision?
If I was on the air now, those of the kinds of questions I would be most anxious to explore. And I would surely welcome the Congressman back to the studio.