THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE

Ah, mysteries and contradictions. Gives us all something to wonder about. Scratch our heads even, maybe send us to the library or the internet to investigate what's up. Take that Twitter thing, where people get to annoy the crap out of their friends all day long sending them short messages informing them what they had for lunch, that they just sneezed or how much they think that fat lady on the bus weighs. The curious thing is that it is wildly popular, proving that there are at least 25 million people with far too much time on their hands. What's really curious, though, is that they just raised another hundred million simoleans to "fund" their company, on top of the $55 million that they raised to start the Twitter company.

The people who sunk the 100 mil into Twitter say they their investment means that the company is now worth a cool billion dollars. What? How that works exactly is a mystery. Of all their funding, Twitter has spent just $25 million, leaving $115 million. And they have taken in exactly zero dollars, since the Twitter service is free. Many industry experts say that there is no way for Twitter to ever make any money, and so far, so good, they haven't earned a dime. Is this some sort of clever strategy? Throw so much money at a money-losing enterprise that people think it's a good investment and then they sell the Twitter company to someone else or maybe go public and sell shares in the thing? To which the rest of us scratch our heads and say; "Good luck to you, sir!"

People generally like things to make sense when it comes to world events and business. Poets, painters, comics, actors and rock & rollers can get away with making very little sense, that's part of the excitement and challenge of our various arts. Gives us something to think about, and sometimes forces us to look at things in a different way and provides us with unique insights into life and humanity. That's what artists do. Political and business leaders, on the other hand, should be a little more down to earth, what with them being engaged in very serious activities and all. When all the bankers went nuts last year and made 5 trillion dollars disappear like they were a bunch of Houdinis and David Copperfields, few of us were amused, and any insights we gained were pretty negative, to say the least.

The whole world was plunged into a dangerous recession and many small investors were ruined, those who could least afford it, especially those older people who lost their retirement nest eggs. What came over these titans of the finance industry? Why did they decide to cheat, lie and steal? They were already very wealthy and their businesses were the closest thing to the Golden Goose that could be imagined. They made tremendous profits for many generations and provided their children the opportunity to join their executive club and make their own fortunes when their time came.

Which of them popularized the notion that regular banking and wise investing was too boring and the time had come to have some real fun with everybody else's dough? If their hare-brained schemes hadn't blown up in all our faces nobody would today be questioning their obscene salaries and outrageous bonuses. All they had to do was keep doing what bankers have always done, keep an eye on everyone's dough and don't take any crazy chances. Maybe they took their cue from President Bush The Younger, who acted like the opposite of a president, doing crazy things that made no sense at all and acting like a real jerk all the time. Couldn't even put two coherent sentences together. Very unpresidential.

Funny thing is, the country got used to having a real crude rube without any brains at all as its head of state and elected him to a second term. And that was after he invaded the wrong country (!) in response to America getting attacked. That was a pretty crazy turn of events. Maybe the bankers noticed this stuff, maybe said to themselves, "Saaay, maybe we can get in on some of that crazy dumb guy action!" And then they started packaging tons and tons worthless mortgages they should never have written in the first place into obscenely high priced bonds and sold them as the best thing since gold bouillon. That worked out so well for a while that they figured they'd just help themselves to huge bonuses out of their stockholders' money to celebrate being real live rootin' tootin' outlaw cowboys!

And so the rest of us once again were left scratching our heads and can't help but notice that presidents and bank executives are not entertainers or artists at all, but people we expect to act with some dignity, intelligence, discretion and integrity. To make sense. Watching a president let a major city drown doesn't qualify as performance art. Allowing him to conspire with the wealthy elite to transfer trillions of dollars from the working classes to the wealthy in his famous tax cut didn't seem so amusing either. Getting mugged by your own government in a Robin Hood-in-reverse heist may be a thought-provoking variation on an old theme, but upon reflection wasn't such a rewarding learning experience at all for the suddenly poorer poor.

Then the corporations noticed that there was very little regulation going on anymore, what with the Feds being obsessed with reading people's e-mails and otherwise violating the Bill of Rights as well as trying to convince people that when Americans torture people it is not really torture because they do it in the American way. How that worked exactly was never satisfactorily explained, nor was the fact that most of the outlaw bankers kept their jobs when the bottom fell out of their crazy schemes.

Then a new president was elected, this Barack Obama guy, a real smart fellow who said he was going to do things differently and change a lot of stuff. Only it's been nearly 10 months now and he hasn't done much of anything with the overwhelming Congressional majority we just handed him except to reward the bankers for their stupidity and greed by bailing their asses out of trouble with trillions of our tax dollars. Now we're really asking what's up! Guantanamo prison is still open for business, our troops are still in Iraq, our cars are all still lousy mileage clunkers and will be for years to come and Osama bin Laden is enjoying a thriving video career while we prop up a doomed democracy in Medieval Afghanistan.

Not only that, he's letting Congress decide what to include in his big health care bill. That ought to be interesting, as in tragic, confusing and unworkable interesting. Didn't Obama lead us to believe he had a solid plan? When you have a solid plan you don't let the jugglers and clowns in the circus add their two cents worth. They're jugglers and clowns, for God's sake, and you're supposed to be the damned ringmaster! Ah, mysteries and contradictions. Is it any wonder why we prefer our artists, actors and singers? At least they are straightforward about the fact they they don't need to make a whole lot of sense to be effective. Poetic license, however, does not extend to presidents and executives, and they need to snap out of it pronto.