CatherineRhodes.com

I just don't see this dude at a Priesthood Meeting

I HEARD Brendan Flowers, lead singer of The Killers, interviewewed on the radio and it went a little something like this: DJ: “What’s up with ‘are we human or are we dancer’?” Flowers: “It’s my band, I write the lyrics, and I can do what I want.”

Must admire his spunk. We gotta fight for the right to broadcast gibberish.

The curious thing about Mr. Flowers is not just his name or his odd use of syntax but the fact that he’s a practising Mormon. As someone raised in the faith, I gotta wonder: WTF. As with all other religions, Mormon followers land somewhere on a continuum of faithfulness. The truly devout eschew Coca Cola and shopping on Sundays, the merely devout don’t drink coffee and pay 10 percent of their gross income to the church. Sure there are heritage Mormons, like myself, who are proud of their pioneer ancestors who opened up the American West, but who don’t claim to practice the religion.

Hard to imagine a rocker like BF being a devout Mormon. After the show, is he going back to his trailer with some Postum and a copy of The Ensign, the Mormon magazine? Mormonism is an all or nothing committment, and let’s face it: he just doesn’t look a thing like Jesus.

People feel burned by "irrational exuberance" but we need a shot of optimism

LAST WEEK, Bill Clinton was all over the airwaves with his interview encouraging POTUS to be more optimistic. He said that while we don’t need “happy talk” we also need a shot of good-old fashioned can-do. I think Obama struck just the right note in his address. When he stands to speak you get the sense that he actually understands the words, and is implementing the words, he is not just propped up there reading the teleprompter.

My two favorite insights:
• “Quitting high school is not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.” Shades of JFK?
• “During the Civil War we built the nationwide railroad system.” I never thought about that. Good things can happen during bad times.

Sadly, the markets have not responded well to the speech. I suspect there won’t be a rally until after the banks are flushed out. I’m following George Stephanopolous on Twitter who just tweeted that there is going to be a deal with Citibank this morning. The big issue is valuation.

In summary, the message I’m getting from Obama is that this is a tough situation, but we have the wherewithall to get through it, and although we collectively seem paralyzed by the depression, good things are still happening.

Rod Serling was ahead of his time!

THE BOOK, French Women Don’t Get Fat was all the rage last year with the premise that it’s not what you eat, but how much. The French diet is loaded with buttery pastries and creamy sauces yet their population stays svelte because they opt for petite servings. Restaurants and fast food joints are usually to blame for mega portions — think Morgan Spurlock and Super Size Me.

However, an interesting piece in the Los Angeles Times shows that the real culprit is much more sinister: Mom at the stove with her dogeared copy of The Joy of Cooking might as well be poisoning you.

…the report examined 18 classic recipes found in seven editions of the book from 1936 to 2006. It found that calorie counts for 14 of the recipes have ballooned by an average of 928 calories, or 44%, per recipe. And serving sizes have grown as well. Take beef stroganoff: In the 1997 edition, the recipe called for three tablespoons of sour cream. The 2006 edition calls for one cup. Then there’s waffles: In 1997, the basic recipe made 12 six-inch waffles; in 2006, the same ingredients made about six waffles. Overall, the scientists found, changes in ingredients and serving sizes led to a 63% increase in calories per serving in 17 of the recipes between 1936 and 2006.

Remember that classic episode of The Twilight Zone, ‘To Serve Man’? Remember, what it was? That’s right — a COOKBOOK! The aliens are coming to take over and they want us all to be nice and plump.

Children were exploited horribly in this movie

WHEN ‘HOUNDOG’ WAS SHOWN at Sundance last year, there was a passionate outcry and harsh complaints from religious groups, parent associations, and Hollywood in general  because the movie contained the scene of a 12-year-old girl played by Dakota Faning, being raped. Writer/director Deborah Kampemeier went to great lengths to explain that the scene in question was with an older teen boy, that it lasted less than a minute and that no nudity was involved. The “rape” takes place in the editing room. Despite critical acclaim, ‘Houndog’ did not find a distributor.

My question is this: So it’s an outrage (understandably) to simulate the rape of a child on film, but it’s permissible to torture them, beat them with a club, drop them in a hole of human execrement, sell them into prostitution, beat their mother to death while they watch, and blind them with hot oil? I’m referring of course to ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ the Best Picture Winner and the so-called ‘feel good’ film of the year. Has the Academy lost its mind? The relentless brutality towards children in this film should have resulted in protest not a gold statuette.

Our country is bursting with innovators looking for capital

THOMAS FRIEDMAN is a very smart man. Reading his column in today’s New York Times, I wanted to shout “bingo! Somebody got it.”  The basic theme is this: Why continue to subsidize the Big 3 under the “too big to fail” extortion? Or, the way Mr. Friedman puts it, because the automakers  “claim that their funerals would cost more than keeping them on life support.”

His incredibly smart idea: instead of pouring $20 billion more into the black hole of Detroit, instead offer it as it as investment funding for start-ups.

Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way. If they go bust, we all lose. If any of them turns out to be the next Microsoft or Intel, taxpayers will give you 20 percent of the investors’ upside and keep 80 percent for themselves.

Or break it down further — instead of 20 companies getting a billion each, 200 companies get $100 million each, or 400 companies get $50 million. (The money is absolutely staggering.)

I say, let the automakers go bankrupt, forcing them to reorganize and rewrite their contracts with unions, vendors and auto dealers across the country. In the meantime, the tax payer bailout money has a better home.