Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Ennui

en·nui
Pronunciation: \ˌän-ˈwē\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Old French enui annoyance, from enuier: to vex, from Late Latin inodiare: to make loathsome
Date: 1732
: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction

I’ve always understood the word to be semi-depression in reaction to events: a sense of being overwhelmed by life.

So let’s see:

Bad people with Muslim names are still trying to kill us.

The Gulf of Mexico and maybe the Gulf Stream may be on their way to being devoid of life. (We won’t talk about the economic hit on the Gulf Coast, just now recovering from Katrina.)

Warren Buffett thinks Goldman Sachs is just peachy. Goldman Sachs, as evidenced by Emails, thinks we are stupid and deserving of our fate. It may well be right.

Financial market reform seems to be dead in the water.

Arizona has been watching too many old movies, “Your papers please!”

The DeKalb County, Georgia School Board, faced with laying off hundreds of teachers, is soliciting bids for a public relations campaign. I know its not very significant, just one more thing to shake your head at.

Much more significant, according to a PBS special last night, total student loan debt in the country is in the neighborhood of $750 billion, with a good sized chunk of it in or near default. When will that “market” collapse?

Then there’s the little noticed condition of the commercial real estate market – hundreds of billions of dollars of bad loans are on the books with values far below the money loaned.

Comparing all the spending done and proposed by governments (foreign and domestic) in the last couple of years with collected and to be collected taxes, how far off do you think class and generational warfare is?

That’s enough for now.

2 comments:

The Tank said...

Arizona has been watching too many old movies, “Your papers please!"

Ahh yes, the Wild Wild West!

Arizona (my State) is empowering the local law enforcement to do a very novel thing, enforce the law. An existing Federal Law the Feds don't seem to want to enforce. They would rather let the drugs and criminals come into our State. Oddly enough we have caused Washington to notice and Obama told Congress we need "Change" There is that word again.

Maybe they should enforce the laws they already have?

Maybe Kansas doesn't have the problem we have? Folks from Oklahoma to their south are pretty good about behaving when they come to visit. So they don't see why we want enforcement. I would bet we are also misunderstood in North Dakota as I am sure that North Dakota has better behaved people along their international border?

Arizona has a border that is being abused. We have drugs and criminals coming across our southern border. Mexico is our problem. Not Canada and not Oklahoma.

Dave said...

I really don't understand the new law as an aid to normal state and local criminal law enforcement. Arizona, like the other states, can put away its criminals where ever they come from. Tacking on a deportation, after a sentence is served seems to me to have little deterrent or retribution effect.

And there's a Federal program already in place for local police to enforce immigration laws, all the locals need to do is apply and conduct training to be able to enforce and they there.

This law, no matter what is said about it as being constitutional is ineffective to accomplish its goals - unless those goals are to roust brown skinned people who aren't guilty of anything else (remember, the guilty ones get tried and thrown in jail, it's only those innocent of a state crime who feel the effects of the law).