This one is everywhere now:

(Bloomberg) The Somali Pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.

The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said. "You may not like our price, but we are not in the business of paying for things. Be happy we are in the mood to offer the shareholders anything," said Ali.

The pirates will finance part of the purchase by selling new Pirate Ransom Backed Securities. The PRBS's are backed by the cash flows from future ransom payments from hijackings in the Gulf of Aden. Moody's and S&P have already issued their top investment grade ratings for the PRBS's.

Head pirate, Ubu Kalid Shandu, said "we need a bank so that we have a place to keep all of our ransom money. Thankfully, the dislocations in the capital markets has allowed us to purchase Citigroup at an attractive valuation and to take advantage of TARP capital to grow the business even faster." Shandu added, "We don't call ourselves pirates. We are coastguards and this will just allow us to guard our coasts better."
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Well, what do the Somali Pirates really do with all their capital?  This may be a spoof that comes true!

So goes the nation.  For those who are really in to the functioning of the federal government, the Office of Management & Budget is a place of subtle power and sheer anonymity.  Now Government Executive is reporting that the Congressional Budget Office's Peter Orszag is likely to be tapped by President-Elect Obama to take over the OMB director job--a cabinet level position.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=41454&dcn=todaysnews

Peter Orszag will be a welcome figure there and this confirms Obama is getting very, very astute advice.

Orszag created his own blog while at CBO which I frequent often and those interested should visit and get a feel for his style: a very refreshing and wide-ranging view on government. I suppose we can credit the LSE for that!

http://cboblog.cbo.gov/

Obama is putting together a pretty good team.

He died November 18, 1965 at age 77.  From an obituary written 43 years ago in the ILWU labor newspaper,  The Dispatcher:

Common Man's Prophet

by Sidney Roger

"Somewhat more than two decades past a Vice-President of the United States spoke---in the midst of a fearful war against fascism---to declare to all people of the world that this was "The Century of the Common Man."

He was Henry Agard Wallace.  He died November 18, at age 77 after a lifetime devoted to humanity--Vice-President under Franklin D. oosevelt 1941-1945, before that Secretary of Agriculture, publisher, editor, agricultural scientist--a man not afraid to dream of a better human condition.

Those who set property rights above human rights scoffed at Henry Wallace--a "bubblehead" they said, an "impractical idealist", even a "subversive".

He was called a "visionary" because he believed the US should use its vast food surpluses and productive ability to help feed the hungry world.  He was savagely attacked by the [Westbrook] Peglers and their ilk who sneered that Wallace "wants to give away quart of milk for every Hottentot."

While he campaigned, someone told Wallace the New Deal was dead.  "The New Deal is not dead," he answered. "The New Deal is as old as the wants of man."

There was almost nothing in the lexicon of mankind's aspirations that Wallace did not touch.  Many years before civil rights became a popular subject, and while Southern racists and reactionaries levelled their full measure of venom on him, Wallace delivered his famed December 28, 1947 "Ten Extra Years" speech [at the national convention of Alpha Phi Alpha, Tulsa, Oklahoma]

"I am haunted by one single grim fact...A Negro child born this day has a life expectancy ten years less than that of a white child born a few miles away.  I say that those ten extra years for millions of Americans are what we are fighting for."

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He ran for president in the tumultuous 1948 election leading a revived version of the Progressive Party.  After Truman won, he retired to private life and agricultural researches that benefited millions of people around the world.

Today the life expectancy gap he spoke of is down to five years.  Because of Henry Wallace and great souls like him, millions of people live longer lives and don't fear to aspire to a brotherhood of the common man.  Not bad for someone the right wing of the day branded a dreamer and a failure. 

In memory ever green.  Henry Agard Wallace,  October 7, 1888 - November 18, 1965

(Dedicated to TheraP)

It was raining a few days ago, and one of our neighborhood cats, took shelter on our porch.  Softies that we are, we let him in and gave him a few kibbles to boot.  Humans are unique in that way.

I want to shamelessly repeat verbatim some things I said on Tom Wright's  Knowledge and Morality  post because they came up in my mind when I read TheraP's  Dignity, Hospitality, Community  but I feared to repost them there as they were to the side of TheraP's goal.

When we talk about morality and ethics and community and dignity we are sometimes unaware of the hillside from which we gaze out at these issues.  That hillside is our definition of our own selves.