It's been a while, I know...

I guess I've been proverbially "busy"...

Here's a quick need to read - shocking, I didn't see anything about this on any news channel, and I'll wager that I won't. 600 Sadr troops captured

Quick thoughts on the last month's world events:

- Missouri kidnappings. OK, so I usually avoid any "news" stories that have the potential to appear on Greta Van Susteren or any Geraldo-related show, but why in the world does anyone sit in wonderment about why the Devlin boy "didn't try to escape". Fortunately, I've never been in a situation that even remotely resembles what he went through, but 2 reasons come to mind with relatively little preponderance: fear (no doubt the kidnapper gave him grisly details about what would happen to him and his family should he try to escape) and shame (a teenage boy who being sexually abused by a man is bad enough, considering that most victims of sex-based crimes need years of therapy to stop blaming themselves, but on top of that, who knows what kind of compromising video or photos the kidnapper took and threatened to post all over the internet). Seriously, what is hard to understand about that?

- The "surge". Can we call it what it is? An escalation? Seriously, this word-gaming crap has got to stop. Pre-owned (used) cars. Climate change (global warming, global cooling, el Nino, etc.). Redeployment (troop withdrawal). Just call it what it is and move on. If your best justification for your stance is to come up with a descriptor that doesn't carry connotational baggage, then you'd probably better shore up your talking points.

As for the surge itself, I'm not sure it's going to work. I DO like the strategy change - in its essence, it's the one advocated by John Nagl in "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife". Obviously, the tactics need to adjust to meet the challenges posed by different weaponry, different terrain, different culture, IED's, etc., but "separating the fish from the water" and then keeping them separate was a common theme in the book. The strategy outlined by Bush is strikingly similar. I'm just not sure if 20,000 or so troops will be enough to do it. It takes a lot of manpower to hold and maintain security over cleared areas...

Given the former operational strategy (conducting search-and-destroy missions, and responding to specific security breaches), the troop levels were very adequate. From the analysis I've read, to effectively carry out the current strategy would require around 80,000 more, not 20. I know that 80,000 would be completely unpalatable to an already-reluctant (if not downright hostile) domestic electorate, but you can't go in half-assed (or quarter-assed, as the math seems to work out in this instance). Obviously, I'm hoping it works and the end goal of a self-sustaining, secure Iraq is the result, but I'm concerned that the political arguments were made more loudly than the tactical ones. Time will tell, I guess...

- The first 100 hours. Nothing terribly unexpected here - I'm predicting that the bulk of what got passed will stall in Senate (or Senatorial committees), and if they do happen to make it through, Bush might actually pull his veto pen out of whatever orifice he's had it stuck up for the last 6 years.

One piece of legislation that needs to be talked about more in the national discussion, though, is the slashing of student loan interest rates. They currently sit between 6 and 7 percent - a pretty cheap loan - but Pelosi and Company voted to cut it to 3.4 percent (of course, banks wouldn't offer the loans at such a ridiculously low sum, so federal loan guarantees and subsidization dollars come along with the legislation, meaning that you and I are footing more of the bill for anyone and everyone who takes a Stafford loan). Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to see the Stafford loan program axed completely, but such a ridiculously cheap loan is not the answer.

Besides the "spreading the burden on John Q. Taxpayer" issue, simple economics makes this a dangerous and short-sighted policy. If you don't know how supply and demand works yet, get "Applied Economics" or even "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. If you do understand, then consider that excessive subsidiziation is, in effect, a lowering of the price of a product. That leads to increased demand, which leads to higher prices. What happens? Colleges and universities (especially the for-profit ones - full disclosure: I work in this industry) will raise tuition - because they can. And the net effect is that, long-term, Congress won't help the low-income students who "wouldn't be able to go to college otherwise." What they will do is put people into higher-risk situations than they otherwise would have been willing to take on (isn't that what interest rates on borrowed money are all about?).

This is no different than the so-called "housing bubble". We've had artificially low interest rates for the better part of the last 10 years, and we've seen skyrocketing home prices and the advent of 125% equity loans as a result. But now that interest rates are on the rise again, monthly mortgage payments are going up (even with housing prices staying relatively flat), which means that more and more people are stuck in their homes, because they won't sell their home with their inflated second mortgage and wind up OWING money at closing rather than GETTING it. I'm no Nostradamus, but the future of mortgage foreclosures and student loan defaults should be relatively clear to most people. It's time for government to stop meddling with interest rates and just let the business cycle (boom and bust) run its course. Americans (myself included) could use the wake-up call of a tough economy to remind them of how good they've really got it...

- State of the Union. Probably nothing new in this - the media all seem to get an almost-final draft of the speech a day or two ahead of time anyway, which means the pundits have already started analyzing it. The surge, yada yada. Calls for bipartisanship, yada yada. Threatening vetoes (although I'll guarantee he won't actually use the "v" word), yada yada...

I'm a big traditions guy, but might it be time to stop with all the pomp of the SOTU address? Other than watching the "eye-rolling-as-dissent" and "nope-I'm-not-going-to-stand-and-clap-for-that-sentence" childishness, there's really been nothing new revealed in any SOTU speech that I can recall.

- Super Bowl XLI. I can't tell you how thankful I am that the Patriots didn't win. Not that I don't like watching Brady or that I don't respect Belichick's coaching genius. I just don't think I could stomach 2 blaring weeks of "the '85 Bears vs. Patriots rematch".

Granted, I like the 1-Sunday layoff between the Championship Games and the Super Bowl that allows the little bumps and bruises to heal, but the "Jerome Bettis Homecoming" storyline from last year might have snapped a neuron or two in me. I can't handle what the extra week of coverage does for the media's tunnel vision on such a mundane theme. Of course, we're already seeing the "can Peyton win the big one" question becoming the recurring theme of this year's game, but at least that's game-related. Does the fact that Jerome Bettis had 100 family members in the stands really matter to anyone but Jerome? Does a game played 21 years ago really have an emotional effect on the players today? No. So can we get back to our regular routine of cliche-ridden analysis and talk about "Peyton playing within himself" or "Rex just not making enough mistakes to lose" please? Thanks.

One other note and then I'll shut up. Bill Belichick is absolutely slovenly. Now, this is coming from a guy who breaks his company's dress code almost daily by wearing jeans instead of khakis or slacks, but BB's appearance on the sideline is a disgrace. I wish I'd have had tickets to the game this past weekend, because I'll guarantee I'd have made a sign that the CBS cameras would have shown at least once. My sign would have read:



Can't
Belichick wear a
Suit?