Funny thing: On my way to this global communications colossus’s back office — Hopscotch Coffee — this AM I saw a gleaming Laguna Blue Tintcoat ($995 extra cost) Corvette heading westbound on 3rd Street. Now, what’s you’re usual kneejerk to a guy in a showy ‘Vette? Same as mine? Hyper-materialist? Got a trophy wife and a girlfriend younger than his daughter? Digger of President Gag? Thinks he’s tough stuff because he’s got a one-and-a-half-ton metal phallus under him?
A ‘Vette Owner’s Wet Dream?
●
This particular guy had a faded Bernie Sanders bumper sticker and, next to it, one that read, “You Have the Power!”
Y’know, don’t judge a book….
▼
Money Makers; Planet Savers
When I first heard about Joe Davis‘s scheme to establish a carbon credit exchange I thought Oh well, that’s nice. Good luck. I figured the start-up to be as likely to succeed as one selling round-trip tickets to the moon.
See, I’ve never been able to fully grasp the concept of financial instruments. Other than counting the singles I have in my pocket at any given moment, I have zero idea of what The Love One and I are worth. She handles all that arcana. She gets these big, thick envelopes filled with annual reports and prospectus (and, yeah, that’s the accepted plural of prospectus) regularly and, more to the point, she understands them. Me? No. It took me years to get what the term national debt means. (Between you and me, I still don’t.) And when it became vital to understand the causes behind the Great Recession — magical, mystical concepts like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), tranches and mortgage-backed securities — I was as a babe in the woods.
And, to be perfectly honest, the only thing I really know about balancing a checkbook is if you fly your kite a tad too high you’ll get a call from a police lieutenant moonlighting as the neighborhood grocer’s muscle informing you he’d be happy to slam your ass into jail.
So, yeah, I was at a disadvantage when it came to Davis’s carbon offset exchange. Still, I went to his roll-out press conference yesterday, figuring it’d be attended solely by bloggers advocating for a return to the stone age.
Well, I’ll be dipped in hot chocolate fudge. Joe’s Community Carbon Exchange was enthusiastically cheered on by the likes of the City of Bloomington’s director of economic and sustainable development, Alex Crowley; president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation, Lynn Coyne; and venture capitalist and Sprout Box founder Mike Trotzke. Heavy hitters all.
(L to R) Davis, Coyne & Trotzke
●
So my advice to you if you care to reduce your carbon footprint and maybe make a spare buck or two swapping credits therein, is to click on over to Davis’s website. And, if you’re looking for something to do Saturday night, you might drop in on his roll-out party at the Waldron Center. Admission is free and the entertainment lineup includes the Vallures, comic Mat Alano-Martin, Aerialogy, the Hudsucker Posse, and more. The festivities begin at 7pm and run till 11. See you there.
▼
Resistance Is Now Officially Sanctioned
Among the countless rationalizations proffered in the countless post-mortems following the technical victory of now-President Gag last November was the charge that Hillary Clinton ran on a Beware the Rabid Dog platform. True enough, that was the biggest part of her message, the other parts being…, um, well, I’ll think of one or two eventually.
Monday AM Q-backs galore have lamented if only she’d have said something more than Donald Trump’s gonna screw us all to high heaven. Quite frankly, that was plenty good enough for me as the prospect of L’il Duce becoming the Leader of the Free World gave me night sweats. BTW: I still have them.
In any case, those who credit her Electoral College loss solely to her Cassandra-isms have got it all wrong, natch, inasmuch as there were a bushel-ful of reasons we are now lorded over by a loon. November 8th, 2016 was, to employ a vastly overused but entirely appropriate phrase, a perfect storm.
Now comes news that Democratic leadership has decided to go all in and fight P. Gag tooth and nail on every move he makes:
●
I do recall a few senators and other sachems saying early on, well, y’know, we gotta work with this guy so let’s cut him an inch of slack, a sentiment that gave me gas. Thank heavens party bosses have come to their senses.
Still, I find it ironic and especially unfair to HRC. She’d found a single hammer with which to clunk the heads of a Stooge-y electorate — and it worked, numerically. She did win the popular vote by nearly 3M. I get the feeling that as the decades roll by, Hillary Clinton will be acknowledged as one of the most unlucky figures of the entire 21st Century.
▼
Tango Talk
Tango savant Thuy Bogart appeared with me on yesterday’s edition of Big Talk.
Here’s the link to the feature on WFHB’s Daily Local News and here’s the link to the unedited, original interview with Thuy (pronounced TWEE).
And, hey, lend me an ear next week when my guest will be Bloomington war reporter Doug Wissing, whose latest book, Hopeless but Optimistic: Journeying Through America’s Endless War in Afghanistan, is on the street now.
Big Talk is a regular Thursday feature on the Daily Local News.
▲