"Lucy? You've got some 'splanin' to do!"

I'm confused.  

Eric Mangini did a so-so job of coaching the Jets for the last what, two seasons?  Three? 

He's fired...and is up for another coaching job with the Cleveland Browns?  

How does that work?  

Isn't being fired a bad thing?  Doesn't that mean you, uh, didn't do such a swell job?

Remember Larry Brown and the Knicks?  

The Knicks stunk, they hired Larry Brown for 3 years and big bucks, they still stunk, they fired Larry Brown,  they still paid Larry Brown almost all of the 3 years worth of big bucks anyway. 

How do so many big-league coaches, inept CEO's,  cruddy Bush administration idiots, and other "captains of industry" continually fail UPWARD?  And/or get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or a big fat raise/settlement/severance package as a reward for their sub-par work?

More importantly, how can all of us get these jobs?  Right now?? 

And while we're at it, can someone stop asking Carly Fiorina's opinion...about ANYTHING?

She did a lousy job at Hewlett-Packard, many thousands lost their jobs,  the stock value took a dive; she was basically fired, she walked away with more than $30 million bucks in "bonuses" (aren't bonuses supposed to be for doing good work??); then is hired as an economic wonk by the McCain campaign (and why not -- she had such great credentials).  And then, she did her best work: stating that neither McCain, Palin, or Obama could be a CEO.  "In (her) opinion."  

Huh?  What exactly is her opinion worth?  In any event, there she was -- Carly Fiorina, on "Meet The Press" a few weeks ago.  What value (get it?  "Value."  A monetary reference). 

What value is there in anything she says, or Alan Greenspan (another so-called brainiac who was asleep at the wheel but still got like a $10 million dollar advance for his biography, but was dumbfounded at the recent tanking of the economy) or any of the various jackasses that ran so many companies into the ground, fired the real working people, and walked away with big severance packages and a clear conscience.  Why should any of them be on any network, or quoted in any newspaper or magazine ever again?  Why should they make money on the lecture circuit?  Saying what?  "How Incompetence Pays," maybe.  Yee Gods.  Don't give these criminals any airtime.

Speaking of criminals, Bernard Madoff is still under "house arrest" in his luxurious Park Avenue apartment.  And he sent upwards of a million bucks in jewels to friends and family.  Jewels he bought with, well you know, other people's money.  They're gonna have to start calling this a "Madoff scheme," because Ponzi didn't even come close to Madoff's $50 billion dollar thievery.  Please, somebody, anybody, take this guy to Riker's Island RIGHT NOW.  I can't breathe thinking of the poor suckers that are in a holding cell having jumped a turnstile or something and this crook -- total CROOK -- continues to use other people's money to get high-powered lawyers who...what?  What do these rich lawyers do that the court-appointed lawyers don't?  Do they have some sort of checkout code that gets their clients special treatment?  Like Gap points or something?  Is there a special word, handshake, flower-in-the-lapel thing that signals to the judges "oh, he's wealthy and definitely a flight risk, so I'll let him stay in his cushy surroundings, but he won't be able to go out to dinner or the opera.  Yeah.  That'll show him."  

By the way (since that was way too long a paragraph), does anyone who lives in any "project" or regular working-class home EVER get house arrest?  I'd think house arrest would be most effective if one lived in a crappy house, right?  A place so bad that prison would be a step up, don'tcha think? 

Oops.  Computer's out of power.  If I've misspelled names, I apologize.  More later.  

Happy New Year, and I know Barack Obama is just one man, but he and his beautiful family already make the United States of America look a whole lot cooler.  YES we DID!