Bits and Pieces

She looks so ... Brit

Margaret Thatcher died at the age of 87 Monday. I haven't much to say about the death of Britain's "Iron Lady," as I didn't pay much attention to Mrs. Thatcher or politics back then.

I did pay attention to Annette Funicello, though, and she died from complications with MS. My favorite article is an opinion piece on CNN. Most guys around my age adored Annette (and, obviously, were on a first name basis with her). Annette was seventy.

Roger Ebert died on April 4^th at the age of seventy also. I used to watch "Siskel and Ebert" and they were an engaging team. Seldom did they discuss something without some sort of fireworks, and I appreciated the repartee. I didn't always agree with Ebert on what constituted a good movie, but I always had to concede his reasons for rating them as he did.

We might be looking at the death of the 401(k) soon, too, according to some articles. Of course, the title of the article is a bit misleading. Michael Lind of the New America Foundation has a three part series on Salon.com where, in one part of it, he proposes the abolishment of the 401(k) saying it mostly benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor. I don't understand it all, but I have a 401(k) and I don't agree with that assessment, of course. Our company 401(k) program is managed by ING, so how is that government funding? Any enlightenment on that would be good…

This isn't the first time I've seen rumblings of the demise of the 401(k) or (even worse) that the government might step in and control our 401(k) programs for us for our own good. The government isn't able to get the country's finances in order and they might start managing mine? I don't think so.

Finally, North Korea is kindly telling foreigners in South Korea to get out of the area. They don't want to hurt innocent people, it seems. I guess there are no American civilians that are innocent, so nuclear weapons are okay.

I don't feel very good about that.

And I'll miss Annette. We all will. Those were simpler times.