Sports

Fringe Benefit – Will Palin Make the Country Healthier?

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Much has been said already about Governor Palin.   I want to concentrate on her looks.   Which is easy to do for most heterosexual males.   She is well put together.   I like the glasses, I like the skirts, I like the fact that she is an in shape ass kicker of a female.  

The comment thread in this post got my attention.

Here is what Helen, our friend from across the pond said:

And talking of who looks good. You know what makes me mad: how does a woman who has had five children get away with wearing a pencil skirt? Sheesh.

Mitch replied:

Sorry, Helen, but she apparently does it the old-fashioned way: by keeping to a physical regime that would kill most men of her age, let alone of mine. Let us of normal pudginess admire her, and let those who dare, emulate her. Not me, thank-you-very-much. The First Dude doesn’t look much like a citified metrosexual ponce, either, so perhaps it’s just as well they found each other. If they had found one of us regular types, somebody could have gotten hurt.

I am fortunate to have a wife whose figure recovered quite nicely and quickly  after  bearing two wonderful children.   Many women I have known are not so lucky and struggle with their weight all of their lives after having kids.   It looks like Palin may have taken the issue into her own hands and decided that she would be in shape, doing it the old fashioned way – exercise.   A quick dose of Google reveals a few interesting things.

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Wall Street, Pro Wrestling, and Seventh Grade

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A couple of years ago, Sallie Krawcheck, then CFO of Citigroup (now Chairman & CEO of Citi Global Wealth Management) was asked how being a woman had affected her career. Her response:

I think it’s an advantage. I grew up in Charleston, a very genteel, very Southern city, a gorgeous city. I will say there’s something about going to an all-girls school in Charleston that’s tougher than Wall Street. You don’t know what it’s like. I had the glasses, the braces, the corrective shoes. I was half-Jewish, half-WASPy. I couldn’t have been further outcast. There was nothing they could do to me at Salomon Brothers in the ’80s that was worse than the seventh grade.

The current issue of Fortune (8/18) has a profile of Meredith Whitney, who was one of the first securities analysts to recognize the seriousness of the subprime/CDO situation. Ms Whitney is married to a professional wrestler. From the article:

Another eye opener for Whitney has been how gracious most wrestlers are–at least when the cameras aren’t rolling–in comparison with the viper-pit culture on Wall Street. It sounds absurd–the world of high finance being less collegial than an industry in which employees belt each other in the face.

If we put these two assessments together, we get:

Pro Wrestling

is nicer than

Wall Street

which is nicer than

Seventh Grade

Mud Buns

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The Chinese government have shown themselves to be bunch of peasants with dung on their boots when it comes to international propaganda. The term in Chinese is “tu bao tz” (土包子) – pork buns (bao tz) made out of dirt.

Forget Yang Pei Yi (楊沛宜) and Lin Miao Ke (林妙可) – well, mostly. Forget the CGI fireworks. Forget that the enormous number of people used in the opening ceremony were from PLA song and dance troupes.

The big scandal of this Olympics isn’t even that that China promised to clean up its act (and its air) when the games were awarded, and this is exactly not what we are getting.

The big scandal is that China is showing us just exactly why investment there is still risky; why the “golden opportunity” everyone seems to be thinking lurks in China’s market is as frail as a butterfly. The Chinese government still has its fingers in every aspect of society, and that makes the shift from stable to unstable business environment just a power struggle away.

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