Comments (0) Just arrived in Cody, Wyoming for a long weekend of work on my brother’s estate. Always a bit amazed at how many times I’ve traveled the 460 miles from Orem, often in the dark, with no accidents. Someone is watching over me. Maybe the one after whom this part of the world is named?
For the longest time, the person dressed as the Dark Knight has been a mystery:
Wonder no more:
Fighting Until Florida
Speaking to supporters in Birmingham, Alabama, Gingrich vowed to remain in the campaign, saying he would fight all the way to the party’s national convention in Tampa, Florida.Still, with victories in only South Carolina (PCSTSC) and Georgia, the former Georgia congressman and U.S. House speaker now faces a struggle for his political survival.
People who are shocked by this:
TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
Should have been following the GS Elevator Gossip twitter feed:
The following paragraph in a post on TheMacroTrader.com caught my eye today:
This is a good time for a disclaimer-Some people might call me right of the right wing when it comes to personal views and voting. When it comes to trading, politics absolutely need[s] to be put aside. I take a pragmatic view of things and never confuse politics with policy.
Which, in turn, reminded me of one of my posts that had the following poll result:
Which brings me back to the claims in the first post I referred to: “When it comes to trading, politics absolutely needs to be put aside.” I get TheMacroTrader’s point: when creating policy, we need to operate from facts. But remove all politics from the equation? I’m not so sure about that proposition. Remove all politics, and any sane person would vote for Romney, based on the poll result I posted above. But the fact is that all kinds of considerations enter into virtually all of our decisions. In the case of Romney, many won’t vote for him because of his stand on abortion, but they’d be happy to have him managing their financial affairs. Likewise, facts can only tell us so much about oil: that we’ve probably passed peak oil; that many reasons other than Obama account for the recent rise in the price of gas; etc. But then there’s this in that TheMacroTrader.com post:
T Boone Pickens is not lying when he says that every President since Nixon has declared that we will be energy independent and then has proceeded to do nothing.
Is this time different? Will one of the candidates–including our current President–step up and do something? And so we’re back to politics.
We’ve all been there. We just didn’t know it. (Courtesy of Ben Spackman)
American folk hymn (NETTLETON)
Arrangement by Mack Wilberg
Come, Thou Fount of ev’ry blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.Here I raise my Ebenezer,
Hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wand’ring from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, as a fetter,
Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
So Molly Ball of The Atlantic thinks people–read, the media–have misjudged Romney’s sense of humor. Welcome to the party Molly. I’ve thought that all the time. Instead of the gaffe machine the media portrays (and fairly, in some cases), Romney actually can tell a good joke. Or as Ball says,
For all the hype about his woodenness, Romney, I submit, actually has the most sophisticated — and underappreciated — sense of humor of any presidential candidate. It is dry, self-deprecating and a bit dark, a far cry from the safely hokey laugh lines of most politicians on the stump. And it bespeaks a confidence and flair not often attributed to the much-maligned candidate.
That’s what I’ve always thought. I have some experience with his sense of humor, as I mention in another post. I was interviewing him once in the lead-up to the SLC Olympics as part of a panel of journalists and TV news people, a panel that included ESPN and some guys from KFI out of LA. We all sat around a half-moon shaped table, with Romney sitting in the middle of the straight side of that table. One by one, each reporter asked his or her series of questions, most of which revolved around security, given the recent events on 9/11.
Finally it was my turn to ask questions. I introduced myself as representing the Marriott School Alumni Magazine. He knew I was there to ask about his CFO Fraser Bullock for a profile piece. But for my first question I asked Mitt what he was going to do so that the Los Angelenos coming to the Games wouldn’t confuse Utah’s powder with their favorite nose candy. I asked the question as pokerfaced as I could. Now I admit that my joke was of the you-had-to-be-there variety. But in that setting and at that moment, my timing was excellent and the line worked. It caught him totally off guard, and he laughed hard.
So add that to the evidence that Mitt Romney has a sense of humor. He laughed at my joke. If you do that, ipso facto, you have a sense of humor, even a sophisticated one.
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