Stuff You Wonder About

January 23, 2015

Reader and good friend Dick Luebke wondered about the origins of the bucket list. The term refers to those things you want/need to do or see before you die. The bucket list derives from kick the bucket, but where that term comes from is in dispute. The link will take you by beams, Shakespeare, holy-water buckets, a Latin proverb, etc. In other words, who knows! That all aside, my favorite “kick the bucket” moment comes early in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and like every scene in the movie, it’s very, very, very, very funny!

When the weather report says there’s a 50% chance of rain, do you know what that means? Really? Per the National

Continue reading...

Stuff You Wonder About!

January 17, 2015

Is there stuff you wonder about? For me the answer is a big YES, and the more trivial the better. (Many years ago a friend shared with me her bucket theory of the brain. Because of limited capacity, she said, I needed to keep filling, sifting, and refilling/positioning, to make sure I was only holding the best stuff. I took a pass, clearly!)

So … ever wonder why Bambi’s a male deer, and in the real world only women use that name? In fact, Felix Salten wrote Bambi, A Life in the Woods in 1923 in Austria. Earlier, in 1914, Marjorie Benton Cooke wrote Bambi, a novel about a young American heiress. The name stuck, but it has nothing to

Continue reading...

I Have a Question

January 17, 2015

An old friend—both in age and years as a friend—often says “I have a question,” and when he does, everyone listens. Think about the old E.F. Hutton commercials, which had an announcer stating:  “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”

My old friend and I are separated by 10,999 days—who knew?—but the age gap does not mean I can’t say “I have a question” every once in a while. So here’s mine:  If America is the greatest country ever, emblematic of exceptionalism and to be revered no matter what, why are we so broke?

My questions comes to mind for several reasons. In Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey has announced his new budget, proposing higher education budget cuts of $75,000,000.

Continue reading...

Gas Prices

January 11, 2015

I’ve been watching the gas price drop with interest and some pleasure. Less pleasure than many, I’m sure, but pleasure just the same.

Why less pleasure? The insignificant reason involves our finances. We’re not rich at all, but we haven’t had a non-Prius automobile in our garage since 2007, and at $3.60 or $2.14 1.93 per gallon, the gas price differential difference matters not so much.

The significant reason relates to concerns about how we, collectively, deal with lower prices. Senator Mitch McConnell, newly the Senate Majority Leader, blamed President Obama in 2011 for rising gas prices. (Read McConnell Blames Obama for Rising Gas Prices at Politico to get his exact words.) Now, with much lower prices creating more

Continue reading...

Keystone XL: What’s the Real Story?

January 10, 2015

The Keystone XL Pipeline will deliver shale oil from Canada to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and to a storage facility in Oklahoma. Will deliver is a misnomer, however, for a working pipeline from Alberta to Illinois and Port Arthur in Texas exists. Now.

So what’s all the fuss about, if the thing is already built? A bigger, more direct pipeline from Alberta to Steele City in Nebraska, apparently. (If you knew there was a working pipeline now, say so in the comments section. You’ll find no comment from me, by the way.)

I intended to focus on the January 9 decision by the Nebraska Supreme Court—and I’ll get to it—but learning about the existing pipeline makes it hard not

Continue reading...

Obamacare, Yet Again

January 8, 2015

Steve Brill is a journalist/businessman/attorney. He created American Lawyer (a magazine), Court TV, and several other publications. I have been following Mr. Brill since he created American Lawyer in 1979. It was an industry publication and really exposed BigLaw—the world of major law firms—to the rest of us. (My partners and I bump up against BigLaw routinely, but that world is very different from ours.)

Mr. Brill wrote Bitter Pill:  Why Medical Bills are Killing Us for Time magazine in February 2013. His book, America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System was published this past Monday. Here’s Malcolm Gladwell’s review, The Bill, from the just out January 12 issue

Continue reading...

President Barack Obama: Not a Blowhard

January 3, 2015

I heard—and then I read—the Steve Inskeep National Public Radio interview with President Barack Obama a few days ago. Here’s the sound and the transcript, and it’s worth your time.

The portion of the interview that caught my particular attention is here, offered with slight editing—and highlighting—for reading ease:

Is there a responsibility by the United States to do more in Libya, having been involved in overthrowing the Gadhafi regime?

I think that the challenge that we’re going to have is a recognition that we are hugely influential; we’re the one indispensable nation. But when it comes to nation-building, when it comes to what is going to be a generational project in a place like Libya or a place

Continue reading...

A Jew in the Time of Christmas

January 1, 2015

I am a Jew, living in America just after Christmas. The end-of-year holiday season has presented issues for decades. It’s high-time I share my thoughts.

As a child we had no tree. In school the teachers focused heavily on making those of us who were Jewish—two in my second grade class, including me, and we’re friends to this day—feel comfortable.

Twenty years later a Jewish attorney and his wife hosted a Christmas party year after year. A place to go!

Now, Ms. J and I have a tree and a menorah. The tree is a fake, from Target. It’s a 10-footer, which makes it proportional with our 12-foot ceilings. My amortized cost over eight or nine years is below $15.00

Continue reading...

RIP, Stephen C.!

December 20, 2014

A famous man died this past week. He looked like he was about 50, often acted like he was a toddler, and celebrated his ninth birthday this past October.

You won’t find any reference to the passing on the obituaries page of any major newspaper. You can, however, see the “funeral” right here, in full or part.

When I first started watching Stephen Colbert at The Colbert Report I thought he was more than a little “out there.” I favored Jon Stewart, with a more polished, traditional approach to skewering those who need a poke in the eye anywhere with a sharp object. Over time, though, I turned into

Continue reading...

Cuba

December 18, 2014

Cuba! It’s certainly a touchy topic, but it’s no longer ignorable, or a topic which can wait. So, I’m all in here.

Formal relations with Cuba do not exist. The signal feature of the relationship, however, is the embargo on trade. The embargo had as its purpose forcing Fidel Castro and his Communist regime from power. It began on October 19, 1960, under President Dwight Eisenhower. It has lasted for more than 54 years, albeit with many exceptions. (Several MRW readers have been to Cuba in the recent past, traveling from Miami on cultural exchanges.) Ten successors to President Eisenhower—Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama—have come and, excepting President Obama, gone. And the Castro brothers,

Continue reading...