Posted by
LenS on Thursday, July 13, 2006 1:16:16 AM
Hezbollah attacks an Israeli patrol and kidnaps two
soldiers, Israel invades Lebanon, starts bombing infrastructure and continues
bombing in Gaza. Looks to me like
somebody is going to get blood on the carpet.
If I were a betting man, I know where I would put my money.
Now, as just another dumb Okie, I can understand the
Palestinians being upset about losing their land – in 1948. The funny thing is, even an Okie understands
that after almost 60 years of butt whooping, your game plan is not
working. I really think a normal person
would stop after awhile and ask if this is really the best course of
action.
Who knows, maybe some of these guys attended our business
schools. Looks to me like they are
trying to beat a negative margin with volume.
It must be like Vegas. Everybody
I know never loses money there. They
always make a couple of bucks or “cover their trip.” Yet, Vegas still manages to pay the electric bill and even build
a few more luxury resorts. Each
generation seems intent on feeding the machine and accepting negative returns
on their investment.
Shortly after my oldest came of age, we found ourselves in
Vegas with the rest of the family.
Leaving Momma and the younger siblings behind, I took my oldest to the
floor to teach him the manly game of craps.
It worked out just as I expected.
We were down about 50 bucks before he knew what was happening. That was when he had a teachable
moment. Everything in him said we
should stay at the table and win it back.
I, on the other hand thought it better to walk away, regroup and start
betting against the shooter. That is
very bad table etiquette, but who cares when you are talking money. We recovered our loses and pocketed a few
bucks in return. When we cashed in our
chips, I kept one and handed it to him for good luck. He is on the other side of the world now, but I hope he still has
it with him. As a reminder of when to
walk away.
After so many years of rolling snake eyes, some father needs
to pull his sons aside and tell them that hate never wins the big pots. It clouds your reason, and blinds you to the
realities of your situation. Anger is
an easy emotion to feed but it never pays big dividends.
Unfortunately, this will not happen and there will not be
peace in Israel. Mom would watch the
news tonight with her coke and sigh deeply.
She was a realist and would know that tonight, there is going to be
blood on the carpet.