Wishy Washy
by James Glaser
September 23, 2008

Wishy washy is the phrase I now use to describe investors in the stock market. It doesn't take much to change the trillions of dollars of value the market represents by 3 or 4% in one day.

A rumor can make things on Wall Street worth billions more one way or the other. A hurricane can be headed in just the right direction, and the market will maybe fall or maybe rise.

Somebody decides Wall Street needs a government bailout, and everything goes to hell in a hand basket, but when talk starts up about Washington sending money, everyone starts singing, "Happy days are here again."

I suppose at one time the market went up or down because of something in the business cycle, but today, nothing about the market seems to be based on facts. The media and speeches by politicians can make billions of dollars change hands.

Is that really a place you want your savings or retirement account to be invested?

Joe Biden, War Hero?

Barack Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, was getting on John McCain for saying that he would chase Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell to get him. Biden wanted to tell McCain that he knew where both the Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are. Here, according to ABC News, is a what Senator Biden said:

"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden said. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

Biden makes it sound like Al Qaeda or maybe even Osama bin Laden himself forced that chopper down.

The truth of the story is that Senator Biden was in Afghanistan riding in a helicopter with Senator Chuck Hagle and Senator John Kerry along with some Army general. It started snowing, and it started to be a white-out where the pilot could no longer see to fly. The pilot put the chopper down and his passengers took a truck the rest of the way back to base. Here is what John Kerry said happened:

"The weather closed in on us," Kerry told the AP at the time in a phone interview from Turkey. "It went pretty blind, pretty fast and we were around some pretty dangerous ridges. So the pilot exercised his judgment that we were better off putting down there, and we all agreed... We sat up there and traded stories."
Kerry joked, "We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do it... Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."

There were no Al Qaeda fighters, Osama bin Laden wasn't in the area, and truth be told, Joe Biden has no idea where Bin Laden is.

Just for a bit of information let me tell you, Senator Joe Biden and Vice-President Dick Cheney are in a pretty exclusive club. Both men used five deferments to keep themselves out of the Vietnam War, and they both tried as hard as they could, and succeeded in sending a younger generation to George Bush's War in Iraq.

Now, Joe Biden wants to become Vice-President of the United States, and who knows what stories he will be able to make up then. Just maybe he will be able to get a medal.

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