In my case, too much leaping and not enough looking!

Happy Thursday and welcome to what might be called observational dialogue and I would agree with that if I had a clue as to what it means on this May 13, 2010. You know how you look at something and a thought jumps out at you? I've been tracking the British election stuff over the past several weeks which finally ended when Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister and David Cameron replaced him. When David Cameron stood outside his new power residence at 10 Downing Street I couldn't help but notice how that he was flanked on both sides by two armed police (Bobbies). They looked like they were ready to deploy to Afghanistan. They were wearing flak jackets and holding sub-machine guns. Meanwhile, the new Prime Minister was standing there in his business suit. It just looked kind of odd to me. I am a big fan of David Cameron. He is a family values conservative if you can really call any politician in Britain a conservative. At 43, he is the youngest Prime Minister in nearly 200 years. He is a tremendous speaker and can deliver at will without a teleprompter. Here's the good news for him: He is now Prime Minister. Here's the really bad news for him: He is now Prime Minister in Britain where they are facing the greatest challenge in terms of their economic survival since Hitler was raining down bombs during the 1940 London Blitz of WW2.

Another recent observation of mine has to do with the considerable number of misstatements by President Obama that receive little to no coverage in the mainstream press. Anyone can have a senior moment now and then but am I the only one who remembers how the press couldn't wait to catch President George W. Bush in the most slightest of erroneous facts, words, or phrases? Meanwhile, President Obama is consistently presented to be the most intelligent man to ever occupy the Oval Office. President Obama recently talked about immigration and compared our situation to the country of Europe. Of course any 2nd grader knows that Europe is not a country but a continent and there many different nations or countries within its land mass borders. Obama gaffe but he gets a pass. Not too long ago President Obama said working with the US Congress wasn't that different than trying to work with countries all over the world. He said he did not know the word for that in "Austrian". The only problem is that people in Austria speak exclusively German and there is no Austrian language. Obama gaffe but he gets a pass. Back on May 2nd, the President was lamenting the part of the new Arizona law dealing with illegal immigration in its requirement that non-citizens be able to show proof they are in our country legally. He went on to castigate this requirement saying it was irresponsible and it threatened the basic notion of fairness cherished by Americans. Only one problem. This part of the Arizona law only emphasizes and restates a federal statute requiring this very same proof which has been on the books for over 70 years. Another Obama gaffe but he gets a pass. I suppose President George W. Bush is left to ponder how it was that he was daily punished in how the press missunderestimated his ability to get the facts straight.

By the way, they now say they cannot determine exactly what it was that brought down the stock market last week. I love hearing people speak so clearly while saying mostly nothing. Come to think about it, I may have been accused of this a time or two myself. Here is a gem from Mary Shapiro, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, explaining the results of their investigation into the huge market fiasco last week: "Ultimately, we may learn that the extraordinary disruption in trading, however it may have been triggered, was the result of a confluence of events which, taken together, exacerbated what already had been a down day and led to an extraordinarily steep price drop and recovery." This my friend is a piece of gobbly-gook and/or doublespeak to be proud of! Not being able to determine what caused the problem is not good. I can remember back in my old computer systems days that having something working again without knowing why it had originally failed was typically like a ticking bomb. Some would tell me that if you can't be good, at least you can be lucky. Most of the time our inability to know why something failed only marked time until it failed again. Let's hope this is not how it will go while we continue to track down all that confluence stuff that created such turmoil. That's all I have for you today. Tune in tomorrow where you will hear again from my long running soap opera series: "As my mind turns." May God bless us one and all. Amen. .....More later.