Dear Hank,

Re: Meteor Shower of October 8, 2011

Okay, let’s get right to it. I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of meteors raining down in a veritable shower of light.

Not!

I saw two.

And that over three sightings times. I had to keep coming in to warm up. Standing on the deck in October in only shorts and a tee shirt didn’t quite hack it.

When I came in to warm up I caught up on news and opinion stuff. Peggy Noonan, the Reagan speechwriter, had a piece that wasn’t her usual snarky thing. It was actually informative. She talked about “The Wal-Mart Moms.” At first I thought she went to Wal-Mart and talked to people but that was not the case. She was reading from a survey. Guess what? Women who are trying to make ends meet are tired of Congress not doing anything. They don’t care about the Republican candidates for president and they think Obama is trying but he’s only one man and Congress is blocking him at every turn.

Then I read George Will. Now there’s snarky with big words and it says nothing. Well, that’s not quite right, he was saying that Elizabeth Warren’s comment “that nobody got rich in this country by themselves” was a statement about socialism and government having a right to your money. I wondered if anyone else thought he was way off base. Lo and behold there was a link to the Plum line saying not only was Will off base he misquoted Warren and missed the whole point of her argument.

Then I saw an interview with Bill Clinton asking what he would do to fix the economy. When you hear what he has to say you realize why he’s so good: insightful, pragmatic and to the point. One thing I’ll mention here. I had recently read that there’s a glut on the housing market (duh?) and one solution, offered by multiple economists and ready to be enacted by one mayor, is to tear down houses. This seems dumb to me, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Clinton’s idea? Let people occupy the houses if they can pay the utilities and taxes. Brilliant.

I also find it astonishing how so many conservatives, tea-bagers, Fox news casters and the like are vilifying the occupy Wall Street crowd. They have put themselves on the side of Marie Antoinette and “let em eat cake” crowd.

It’s going to be a very interesting time.

I gotta go.

Bryce