Vic Socotra

02 October 2009

Buying Time

(Parking Meters)

I have some friends- bless them- who volunteer in Hospice programs. Those groups help the terminally ill confront the inevitable with peace, comfort and dignity.

It is among the most selfless of volunteer activities, and the hardest. All of the sturm unt drang of life is burned away for the individuals in their last days. There is no amount of money that can buy more time life is not a meter, and there is no feeding it for an extra few minutes. Everything at Hospice is distilled to the immediacy of the present.
Those of us not as close to the end of the line can waste our time on other things.

France and Britain are feeding the meter. They have spoken of December as an informal deadline for Iran to get real about negotiations to stop the enrichment of uranium, and the American representatives to the talks that will continue late this month seem to agree with that.

Surprisingly, the Iranians say they will allow inspectors into that suspicious underground facility near Qom with the next couple weeks. Even more amazing was the revelation that Iran had agree “in principle” to ship “most” of its lightly enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into nuclear fuel.

That process would not produce weapons grade material. Or something. There are several important issues that could make this highly significant or totally irrelevant. The Iranians have been watching the follies at Yongbyon in North Korea for years, after all, and I am betting a Persian could make a better profit selling rugs to Koreans than the other way around.

Still, it is interesting. They say it may buy some time. Alternatively, it could provide just enough time for the Iranians to complete something they seem to really want.

Oh, an Alert Reader in Seattle pointed out that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (1974) was the vehicle by which the Federal Fiscal Year was amended to commence on the first of October.

Some of us were actually tax-payers when that happened- astonishing that I don’ remember it.

I was going to write about that this morning, but the Invisible Girlfriend pointed out that when I write about the budget everyone goes to sleep, or starts screaming.

Naturally, I bristled. The budget has everything in it, I said: high drama, excitement, crime and sex.

Well, maybe not sex. But you could ask Senator Ensign (R-NV) about that, and it certainly does wind up paying for a lot of it.

The Tigers got their butts whipped in Detroit. It was a messy game; the Twins pitcher lost his composure and threw behind a Tiger. There was necessary retaliation.

Nasty business that. Makes you think of international negotiations and rug merchants.

Three games to go; the meter is running. The magic number is two.

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