Our Sarah as Joe Six-pack

Hewitt interviews Palin :

HH: Governor Sarah Palin, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Great to have you.

SP: Hey, thank you so much. Nice to hear your voice.

HH: Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media. Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?

SP: Oh, I think they’re just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It’s time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that’s kind of taken some people off guard, and they’re out of sorts, and they’re ticked off about it, but it’s motivation for John McCain and I to work that much harder to make sure that our ticket is victorious, and we put government back on the side of the people of Joe six-pack like me, and we start doing those things that are expected of our government, and we get rid of corruption, and we commit to the reform that is not only desired, but is deserved by Americans.

HH: Now Governor, the Gibson and the Couric interview struck many as sort of pop quizzes designed to embarrass you as opposed to interviews. Do you share that opinion?

SP: Well, I have a degree in journalism also, so it surprises me that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago. But I’m not going to pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful. I’m going to take those shots and those pop quizzes and just say that’s okay, those are good testing grounds. And they can continue on in that mode. That’s good. That makes somebody work even harder. It makes somebody be even clearer and more articulate in their positions. So really I don’t fight it. I invite it.

HH: Have you followed the attacks on you, say, via Drudge or the blogs? Some of them are just made up and out of left field, others are just mocking. Do you follow those?

SP: No, I sure don’t, and thank God I don’t have time to follow those. You know, I think that those shots, too, though, no matter what we’re taking and receiving, it’s nothing compared to what real shots are against Americans in this world. Americans today who are worried about losing their home and figuring out how in the world they’re going to pay their fuel bill next month, and send their kid to college, and may be worried about losing a loved one that they’re sending off to a war zone to protect our rights. Those are the shots that Americans are taking, so all this political nonsense and the lies, the rhetoric that is spun out there about someone just trying to offer themselves up in the name of service to this great country, I’ll take it.

HH: Governor, you mentioned the people who are struggling right now. Have you and your husband, Todd, ever faced tough economic times where you had to sit around a kitchen table and make tough choices?

SP: Oh my goodness, yes, Hugh. I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office. But yeah, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance. We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs. Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick. So I know what Americans are going through there. And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market, the relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 dollars last week in his 401K plan that was hit. I’m thinking geez, the rest of America, they’re facing the exact same thing that we are. We understand what the problems are. It’s why I have all the faith in the world that John McCain is the right top of any ticket at this point to get us through these challenges. It’s a good balanced ticket where he’s got the experience, and he’s got the bipartisan approach that it’s going to take to get us through these challenges. And I have the acknowledgement and the experience of going through what America is going through.

HH: Governor, when you say things are tight right now, is that simply because of Todd being off not working? Or is it because of extraordinary demands on the fiscal resources of the Palin family? What’s the situation there?

SP: No, it’s just the great financial crisis that America is in as our savings accounts also, and a 401K, they’re being hit.

HH: Sure.

SP: Our stocks, you know, they took a hit yesterday. And then of course, just the same thing that other Americans are asking themselves today. We’ve got three teenagers. How are we going to pay for their college education? How are we going to make sure that we’re investing wisely today. We’re putting a lot of faith in other people who are using our money as investments. We have to count on the federal government to be overseeing these agencies and entities, making sure that we’re not going to get screwed on this deal, and that our savings are safe. So there again, John McCain’s got some great ideas on granting authority, for instance, to the FDIC, making sure that our deposits are insured. He wants to increase that deposit insurance cap of all of our money, our savings, from $100,000 dollars up to $250,000 dollars, so that families like mine, so that we don’t have to worry about our money being safe or not under FDIC.

HH: Governor, let’s turn to a couple of issues that the MSM’s not going to pick up. You’re pro-life, and how much of the virulent opposition to you on the left do you attribute to your pro-life position, and maybe even to the birth of, your decision, your and Todd’s decision to have Trig?

SP: Yeah, you know, I think that that’s been probably the most hurtful and nonsensical slap that we’ve been taking is our position that we have taken, pro-life, me personally, and saying that you know, even though I knew that 13 weeks along that Trig would be born with Down Syndrome, and I said you know, he’s still going to be a most precious ingredient in this sometimes messed-up world that we live in. I know that my son is going to provide a lot of hope and a lot of promise in this world, and I’m so thankful of course that I’ve had the opportunity to give him life and to bring him into this world. But I think yeah truly, that that’s been a hurtful slap that we have taken, because people just don’t understand. Ironic too, Hugh, that some would consider my position on life and trying to usher in a culture of life, respecting the sanctity of life in America, that that is seen as an extreme position when to me, an extreme position is one that Barack Obama took when he was in the Illinois State Senate, not even supporting a measure that would ban partial birth abortion, not even supporting a measure that would during, after a botched abortion and that baby’s born alive, allowing medical care to cease and allowing that baby to die. That to me is extreme. That’s so far, far left it’s certainly out of the mainstream of America. To me, that is the extreme position, not my position of just wanting that culture of life to be respected, and not wanting government to sanction the idea of ending life.

HH: Do you think the mainstream media and the left understands your religious faith, Governor Palin?

SP: I think that there’s a lot of mocking of my personal faith, and my personal faith is very, very simple. I don’t belong to any church. I do have a strong belief in God, and I believe that I’m a heck of a lot better off putting my life in God’s hands, and saying hey, you know, guide me. What else do we have but guidance that we would seek from a Creator? That’s about as simple as it gets with my faith, and I think that there is a lot of mocking of that. And you know, so bet it, though I do have respect for those who have differing views than I do on faith, on religion. I’m not going to mock them, and I would hope that they would kind of I guess give me the same courtesy through this of not mocking a person’s faith, but maybe perhaps even trying to understand a little bit of it.

HH: Governor, let’s close with some foreign affairs. It is reported that you had an Israeli flag in your governor’s office. You wore an Israeli flag pin occasionally. One, is that true? And two, why your support for Israel?

SP: Well, it is true, and I ran into Shimon Peres recently at a meeting, and he even pointed that out. He said I saw a picture of you on the internet, and you had an Israeli flag in your state government office, and I said I sure do. You know, my heart is with you. And all of those trials and tribulations throughout history that Israel has gone through, not only does that allow me to want to support that country, but Israel is our strongest and most important ally in the Middle East. And they are a democratic country who I believe deserves our support, and I know that John McCain believes as I do that Israel is our friend, and we need to be there to support them. They are there for us, and I do love that country.

HH: Last question, Governor. Have you and Todd heard from your son? And how is it on your nerves having your son deployed?

SP: That little stinker, I guess he’s called his girlfriend a couple of times, but can you believe he hasn’t called his momma yet? He’s over there. They were just leaving Kuwait heading into Iraq, and I am just so extremely proud of Track, my son, and all of the men and women, of course, serving in the military. I’m proud that my son made this independent and very wise decision as such a young man at 18, deciding you know, he realized there’s something he can do to help, to contribute, to help protect our nation, and I couldn’t be more proud of him and all those who choose to serve in our military. They’re serving for the right reasons. God bless them, God love them.

HH: Governor Sarah Palin, look forward to talking to you again, good luck on Thursday night.

SP: Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.

Paulson is the problem

From the git-go, I wondered why Paulson was screaming that the sky is falling. I concluded that it was because of his ties to Goldman Sachs and his other Wall Street buddies but it could be more than that. He could just be an @$$hole. Iain Murray at the Corner writes:

The administration can reform mark-to-market accounting, we can break up and privatize the GSEs, we can reform certain insurance practices such as requiring lenders, not borrowers, to pay for PMI. We can abolish the bank/thrift divide and reform the CRA. There may be a case for some sort of structural stability office in the Treasury as a least-worst option, but we're still thinking that through. Oh, and the President can fire Henry Paulson, whose over-the-top reaction turned a big but manageable problem into an international crisis.

I recognize this will be a minority view here, but consider this. Paulson is one of the people who thinks we should "do something" about global warming as well. Funnily enough, his preferred solution is cap-and-trade, an artificial, government-created market with no underlying value whose main beneficiaries will be Wall Street at the expense of the average American. This amounts to a pattern of behavior, I suggest.

How to solve the financial crisis is easy: fire Paulson! Okay, it's late and I'm tipsy and fed up with the "crisis."

A free market fix for the financial crisis

Today I saw Dave Ramsey on Neil Cavuto. He touted his "common sense fix." The basics are:

1) Insurance

Insure the sub-prime bonds/mortgages with an underlying FHA-type insurance.

2) Mark to Market

Remove mark to market accounting rules for two years on only sub-prime Tier lll bonds/mortgages.

3) Capital Gains Tax

Remove the capital gains tax completely. Investors will flood the real estate and stock market in search of tax-free profits, creating tremendous - and immediate - liquidity in the markets. Again this costs the taxpayer nothing.

Ramsey is one of the few "financial gurus" whom I respect because the main gist of his advice is to get rid of debt and he analyzes the current crisis in the same way. (Okay, maybe I only respect him because I agree with him.)

The capital gains tax is the most destructive tax on the economy closely followed by corporate taxes and death taxes - all of which should be gotten rid of immediately. The only taxes that can be justified (or should I say "somewhat rationalized?") are income and consumption taxes.

You can read the details of Ramsey's "common sense fix" on his website.

I see that the SEC just suspended mark to market accounting today and the McCain team had this to say about it:

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, Doug Holtz-Eakin, McCain-Palin 2008 Senior Policy Adviser, issued the following statement on the SEC's plan to relax mark-to-market accounting requirements:

"John McCain is pleased to see that the SEC has finally decided to permit alternative accounting methods to mark-to-market accounting for securities where no active market exists. There is serious concern that these accounting rules are worsening the credit crunch, making it difficult for small businesses to stay afloat and squeezing family budgets. In March, John McCain called for a meeting of accounting professionals to discuss whether mark-to-market accounting was magnifying problems in the financial markets."

Background:

In March, John McCain Called For A Meeting Of Accounting Professionals To Analyze The Current Mark To Market Accounting Systems. "[I]t is time to convene a meeting of the nation's accounting professionals to discuss the current mark to market accounting systems. We are witnessing an unprecedented situation as banks and investors try to determine the appropriate value of the assets they are holding and there is widespread concern that this approach is exacerbating the credit crunch." (John McCain, Remarks, Santa Ana, CA, 3/25/08)

If you don't know what "mark to market" accounting means here is Wikipedia's fairly adequate explanation:

In accounting, mark to market is the act of assigning a value to a position held in a financial instrument based on the current market price for the instrument or similar instruments. For example, the final value of a futures contract that expires in 9 months will not be known until it expires. If it is marked to market, for accounting purposes it is assigned the value that it would fetch in the open market currently.

[...]

The practice of mark to market as an accounting device first developed among traders on futures exchanges in the 19th century. It was not until the 1980s that the practice spread to big banks and corporations far from the traditional exchange trading pits, and beginning in the 1990s, mark-to-market accounting began to give rise to scandals.

To understand the original practice, consider that a futures trader, when taking a position, deposits money with the exchange, called a "margin". This is intended to protect the exchange against loss. At the end of every trading day, the contract is marked to its present market value. If the trader is on the winning side of a deal, his contract has increased in value that day, and the exchange pays this profit into his account. On the other hand, if he is on the losing side, the exchange will remove the appropriate amount from his account. If he cannot pay, then the margin is used as the collateral from which the loss is paid.

Like all "creative accounting," (versus straightforward common sense accounting) mark to market is open to abuse and it has been abused badly in the past nearly 20 years. It has a place in the futures markets but not in banking. It only became acceptable in banks and corporations recently because they too started operating their businesses using borrowed money instead of liquid assets. Good riddance!

PS I just noticed that K-Lo at the Corner posted this:

Everyone seems to be sending me this Dave Ramsey proposal tonight. I'm thinking he might be Newt or T Boone Pickens in disguise, his pr seems that good.

Now, let's hope that they'll also send it to their Senators and Reps.

"Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer"

From an article by Jeffrey A. Miron, senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University and one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan:

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

I've posted both pro and con arguments on the bail-out because I really want to understand why the option was even raised in the first place. Miron's argument is a typical libertarian one (and one that I naturally sympathize with) but I also know that perfectly pure ideological solutions are not always the answer to the problems of an imperfect world.

I'm willing to hear reasoned arguments in favor of the bail-out but I feel that I have been stampeded in the past week and I think a lot of the citizens' opposition has simply been because there has not been enough discussion. Congress and the "pundits" have been stampeding us like a bunch of Indians chasing a herd of bison over a cliff.

Right now my take is that, if we do not do the bail-out, maybe the economy will crash and burn, huge unemployment will result and it may take years to recover but what's wrong with demolishing a gerry-built house and erecting one that has a sturdy (and fiscally sound) foundation?

The Jewish New Year

If you've ever spent the socalled "Jewish New Year" with Jews, you'll see what I mean by this:

Rosh Hashanah is more like a day marking the end of a year rather than the beginning. Unlike our New Year when we focus giddily and somewhat foolishly on the unkown future and hope for more more more, Rosh Hashanah is a sober sane calm and practical holy day for reflecting on the past, being grateful for the year that we have just lived through, repenting our sins and thanking God for what we have already been given rather than hoping for what we wish to be given. It's more about gratitude than greed.

Maybe it's my Jewish genes but I much prefer the Jewish New Year to the drunken childish idiocy of the Western New Year.

Shana Tovah

L'shanah tovah ("for a good year") is a shortening of L'shanah tovah tikatev v'taihatem.

Rosh Hashanah:

In the seventh month, on the first of the month, there shall be a sabbath for you, a remembrance with shofar blasts, a holy convocation. -Leviticus 16:24

In Hebrew, Rosh Hashanah means, literally, "head of the year" or "first of the year." Rosh Hashanah is commonly known as the Jewish New Year. This name is somewhat deceptive, because there is little similarity between Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year, and the American midnight drinking bash and daytime football game.

There is, however, one important similarity between the Jewish New Year and the American one: Many Americans use the New Year as a time to plan a better life, making "resolutions." Likewise, the Jewish New Year is a time to begin introspection, looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to make in the new year. More on this concept at Days of Awe.*

The name "Rosh Hashanah" is not used in the Bible to discuss this holiday. The Bible refers to the holiday as Yom Ha-Zikkaron (the day of remembrance) or Yom Teruah (the day of the sounding of the shofar). The holiday is instituted in Leviticus 23:24-25.

Jewish Year 5769: sunset September 29, 2008 - nightfall October 1, 2008

* The ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur are commonly known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim) or the Days of Repentance. This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the sins of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur.

I remember the first Rosh Hashanah I spent with my friend Steven Spiller over 50 years ago. I had never eaten apples dipped in honey before. (It's a ritual symbolizing hope for a sweet new year.) That's what I'll have for dessert tomorrow.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Snopes

Snopes was founded and is operated by just two people, husband and wife, David and Barbara Mikkelson:

Snopes receives 6.3 million site visits a month, according to media measurement company Quantcast....

"A lot of people don't realize," David, 48, says wearily, "that our site is just two people."

Working out of their living room....

It's morphed into its own verb — Snopesed, Snopesing, Snopesifying — part of an information-overloaded election where stuff needs to be fact-checked, where believing everyone is lying seems more like smarts than paranoia. "I was Snopesing about last night," a user on a parenting message board writes in wonder, "and I discovered that the bulk of [ Cindy McCain's] good deeds are more than just right-wing wonkery."

It's a one-sentence rebuttal to even the bat-craziest of e-mail forwards: Dude, Snopesify that junk....

Their site takes its name from a particularly pernicious family peopling a William Faulkner trilogy — and papering academia with hundreds of doctoral dissertations.

A few years ago, David left his job as a computer programmer to join his wife in full-time myth-busting (income is from ad space purchased on the site)....

The Mikkelsons...consider themselves apolitical....

But they couldn't overlook another query, not after it was e-mailed by dozens of concerned readers. Branded as a series of Palin quotes, the document contained such ramblers as, "God made dinosaurs ... so that when they died and became petroleum products we, in his perfect image, could use them in our snow machines, pickup trucks and fishing boats."

This text, as you, dear elite intellectual reader, may have suspected, is meant to be a joke. The Mikkelsons traced it to a blog labeling it as satire, not once but three separate times.

And yet, the e-mails came: "Does Sarah Palin really believe that dinosaurs are lizards of the Devil?"

I think I'll Snopes the Mikkelsons to see if their story is true.

P.J. O'Rourke has cancer

Fortunately it's curable and my favorite Republican Party Reptile has written about it in his inimitable hilarious style:

I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.

Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy's. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass ... well, I'll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung?

[...]

I believe in God. I also believe in evolution. If death weren't around to "finalize" the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas. We'd eat by surrounding pizzas with our belly flab and have sex by lying on railroad tracks waiting for a train to split us into significant others.

I consider evolution to be more than a scientific theory. I think it's a call to God. God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe he wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless -- the taxpayer-funded-art-in-public-places universe.

Rather, God created a universe full of cosmic whatchmajiggers and subatomic whosits free to interact. And interact they did, becoming matter and organic matter and organic matter that replicated itself and life. And that life was completely free, as amoral as my cancer cells.

Life forms could exercise freedom to an idiotic extent, growing uncontrolled, thoughtless and greedy to the point that they killed the source of their own fool existence. But, with the help of death, matter began to learn right from wrong -- how to save itself and its ilk, how to nurture, how to love (or, anyway, how to build a Facebook page) and how to know God and his rules.

Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God's grace. (Although this option is not usually open to reporters.)

O'Rourke sure has the knack of hitting on some deep truths even in the midst of (and despite?) his irreverent sense of humor.

PS I worked in the hospital pharmacy racket for 30 years and never heard of "malignant hemorrhoids" and of course don't really believe in them. New diseases seem to be invented everyday nowadays. I hope PJ tells his doc to cut the damn thing out and be done with it.

PPS Of course anyone who has suffered from hemorrhoids knows that, while they may not be absolutely malignant demons, they can be very nasty and annoying little devils.

Which Democrats voted against the bail-out?

From the Corner:

The bailout bill would have passed the House had just 12 votes switched from "nay" to "aye". Twenty-one Congressmen, all Democrats, are members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Twelve voted "nay," including Caucus chairman, Joe Baca. Linda and Loretta Sanchez, both former Hispanic Caucus members, also voted "nay."

Well, that accounts for 12. Who were the other 83?

"America as the last man standing"

From a speech by the man who made the movie Fitna, Geert Wilders, chairman of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands at the Four Seasons, New York, last Friday introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem.

"In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe?"

It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course. Without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And, frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

[...]

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe.

[...]

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that.

[...]

So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.

This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites.

[...]

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don’t think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.

I won't quote anymore because I don't know where to stop but I urge you to read it.

In related news: Austria's Social Democrats won Sunday's elections ahead of the conservative People's Party, but the anti-immigration Freedom Party made big gains.

I love broadband

After a weekend of dial-up, it's a treat to use DSL in my office and Chas just phoned to say that the satellite tech fixed our internet reception at the farm. Turns out the eyeball in the satellite was so coated with algae that it couldn't see the satellite. Not surprised - everything gets coated with algae (and/or mildew and other molds and fungi) when you live in a damp forest.

But that may all be wasted on me this week as I have to do my quarterly "lodging" taxes as well as the usual end of month stuff. So I may blog only a little this week.

The bail-out a done deal?

It's all over bar the tears for the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008."

All I can say about it is that it should really be called C.R.A.P. (Community Re-investment Act Poop-scooper.)

Update: it didn't pass.

Indian summer

Our Indian summer arrives a few days after our first Fall frost. Pant, pant. It's still 83F at 6pm. The heat will last for about a week as it usually does at the end of every September. Hopefully it will ripen the apples and pears which are late this year because of our cold Spring.

The party's over

I've read the British Spectator for 30 years. One of my favorite columns is Taki's High Life. (Taki Theodoracopulos is the Greek tycoon and journalist. He founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell.) I don't always agree with Taki but I enjoy his insights and his scathing sarcasm. This is from his latest column:

Personally, I have always operated by instinct when it comes to finance. It was instinct that made me invest with Charles Fix after my father died. The Fix Family Fund served its investors well for close to 20 years; 20 per cent per annum. In June 2007 I began feeling creepy about the markets. Too many nightclub characters dropping names of hot hedge funds and all that. I rang up Fix and told him I wanted out. He agreed. But I waited awhile, and only got out in October, which meant March of this year. I had taken big losses but, still, I consider myself very lucky.

What is interesting is that last spring I shopped around New York for hedge funds to replace Fix. It was like being in the Führer’s bunker with Hitler posting phantom divisions on his maps in order to defend the Fatherland. The hedgies were all young, very tightly wound, looking non-stop at screens while promising to make me richer than Croesus in no time. I stayed away. The investments they were hawking around were less real than Hitler’s divisions, and my s*** detector, as Papa Hemingway called it, was ringing non-stop. The bells are ringing all right, but for most people it’s much too late.

Take Richard Fuld Jr., the simian head of Lehman Brothers. One year ago, as the credit crisis first gripped Wall Street, the ape concluded that the crisis was going to be short lived and it was time to really get rich. So he doubled down on mortgage-backed derivatives, enough to drive the firm to bankruptcy. With one difference. Fuld took in $500 million in the 12 years he headed the firm, with a large salary, private limos and private jets, as added inducements.

Now what everyone likes to know is why a petty criminal — or a major one at that — has to cough up his ill-gotten gains to the government once caught (the Rico Law), whereas the Schwarzmans, Kravises, and Fulds of this world do not. What I’d like to know is why Conrad Black is in jail for posting an all-time high for his company, and the present bunch are taking a break in the Hamptons rather than in the penitentiary. I suppose it’s called justice, the same as it was called back in Moscow during the show trials.

[...]

When Fuld went to see the Koreans just before the fall, the Koreans were interested. But he played tough, probably having seen too many westerns starring Burt Lancaster, and the Koreans told Fuld to take a hike. He wanted to make a killing rather than save the company. It’s as if Rundstedt and Manteuffel had left the western front and surrendered to the Soviets.

Here’s the great economist Taki on the future: the US will sooner rather than later go begging for capital from China and the Middle East. Which means many great American institutions will be serving Chinese and pilaf baldi in their boardrooms by next year. The man most responsible for the mess, Alan Greenspan, will publish a book, which will be a bestseller, on marital bliss (he is married to an NBC reporter) and never mention the fact that it was he, the worst Fed chief ever, who did away with regulation, promoted wild leverage and provided easier money than stolen notes, which all contributed to the crisis.

Greenspan is married to an NBC reporter, that harpy, Andrea Mitchell.

Richard Fuld is the current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of now bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Poll says Obama won the debate

The CNN poll:

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please say whether you think each one better described Barack Obama or John McCain during tonight's debate:

• Was more intelligent: Obama 55%, McCain 30%

• Expressed his views more clearly: Obama 53%, McCain 36%

• Spent more time attacking his opponent: McCain 60%, Obama 23%

• Was more sincere and authentic: Obama 46%, McCain 38%

• Seemed to be the stronger leader: Obama 49%, McCain 43%

• Was more likeable: Obama 61%, McCain 26%

• Was more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you: Obama 62%, McCain 32%

Polls schmolls! Republicans don't watch CNN anyway so maybe the Communist News Network only polled Democrats.

Obama did do well but of course he hid all of his really commie ideas and pretended to be a moderate. "Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins. Just you wait. You'll be sorry but your tears will be too late!"

Anyway that's enough politics for today. And 24K dial-up is a pain in the neck so I'm outta here to have some fun.

I'm still stuck with 24K dial-up - aargh!

I'm just grabbing some time on the net before the boys wake up.

We did some trouble-shooting yesterday. Checked under the house to make sure critters had not eaten the cable that runs from the satellite dish to the router. The cable was intact.

Then we chopped down (actually chainsawed) three 50 foot grand pines on a hill in the southeast corner of the land in case they were obscuring the dish's "view" of the satellite. No luck. At least we discovered a really nice flat piece of land on top of the hill and, removing the trees, has opened it up to sunshine so we've got another useful half-acre or so of land in our otherwise craggy forest full of ravines and gullies. And the felled trees will make a beautiful archway over the front gate.

It could be the modem is on the fritz but we won't know till Monday when the tech comes. Satellite is our only way of getting broadband out here in the sticks. The phone company refuses to install DSL (too expensive and too little demand) and AT&T has not yet expanded it's wireless broadband internet service to our area. It ends about 50 miles north of us. Meantime nearly the whole of Alaska has wireless internet access as does Washington and Idaho.

The eleventh hour for the bail-out?

I don't know if Congress passed the bill by midnight as they said they would and I don't like listening to news before going to bed as it's nearly always alarming - not the sort of thing conducive to sweet dreams and peaceful sleep.

But I'll have my final say on the "crisis" before I go to bed. First: it's not really a full-blown financial crisis; it's a "banking" crisis and, since banks' main business nowadays is usury, it could also be called a money-lenders' crisis or, to be more polite, a "credit" crisis.

Now, I realize that I've only owned and operated small businesses (successfully and profitably) not a big corporation but I've never used "credit" except for mortgages which are fully collateralized. I just don't understand borrowing money without collateral for purchases or payroll but, the more I read about this "crisis," the more it seems that all big businesses are now operated by borrowing money, on "credit" which is "collateralized" by promises of future expansion and increased profit - or as us hicks call it, "pie in the sky."

I once had to get a small business loan through a bank in order to buy out a partner. I was told to come up with a "business plan" touting my future intentions for the business so that I could get as much money as possible. I said, "No thanks. No one knows the future. I just need enough money to buy out my partner and I'll collateralize it with the increased equity on my commercial real estate." Four years later the Internet Bubble burst and I lost many of my high-rolling customers. Then 9/11 happened and I lost my tourist customers. You bet I was glad that I did not have a big loan to pay off. The business was no longer profitable but I sold the real estate for three times as much as I paid for it and bought another (profitable) business.

This whole "credit culture" in business nowadays is way beyond my understanding. I cannot for the life of me get the point of it and, quite frankly, my dear, I would like to see the whole house of cards crumble. It stinks. Most of the money we borrow comes from the Chinese or Japanese and we are basically selling our children and grandchildren into indentured servitude. The money for the bail-out will also probably be borrowed from Asia.

I know I'm a very moralistic and judgemental person and can't stand this phony way of doing business and would like to see everybody on Wall Street and in Congress locked up in dungeons for life but....

There's a practical side of me too. Business has always had its fair share of con artists and smooth operators. It's a fact of life and, unless we could somehow manage to run the world on strict Christian Utopian principles (which of course would naturally mean some sort of coercion aka loss of liberty) we have to put up with the fact that freedom (and the free market) is messy and imperfect but it's better than the alternative which is socialism.

From Rich Lowry at the Corner:

1995 Redux?

A friend on Capitol Hill in a very dark mood thinks so. Last time, House Republicans got blamed for shutting down the government, this time they'll get blamed for shutting down the financial system. He also worries—did I mention he's in a dark mood?—that if nothing passes and the crash comes, the country may arrive at a turning point, moving irrevocably in the direction of a social democracy

Rightly or wrongly, capitalism (and Republicans) will be blamed if the house of "credit" cards collapses and a global depression ensues and all the Marxists all over the world will be crowing: "We told you so." And the same majority of people who currently think that the crisis is the Republicans' fault will swallow whatever New Deals the socialists can deliver.

The sad fact is that we may have to prop up the house of cards with the bail-out just to avoid a worse evil. Once again, as usual, it's a choice of the lesser of two evils.

And the winner of the debate was....

....Jim Lehrer.

I'm going to grab my 15 minutes of dial-up to have my say quickly.

Republicans will see McCain as the winner and Democrats will see Obama as the winner. McCain said everything that I wanted to hear and I'm sure Obama said everything that Democrats wanted to hear. It was a tie.

But I was surprised at how good Lehrer was - all things considered.

Correction, maybe Obama didn't say everything that the Democrats wanted to hear. For instance: saying yes to offshore drilling and nuclear power. I bet that annoyed Miss Smiley Face Nancy Botox and the Undertaker from Nevada.

Obama was surprisingly good. Of course I'm not really surprised. Obama's glove-puppet handlers will get him to say anything to get elected and he said a lot tonight that will piss off his pot-head peacenick base.

Web withdrawal symptoms

The satellite Internet connection at the farm is down. Last night even our 24K dial-up was down. I don't know how long it will last today. I'm almost tempted to go into the office and get my fix on DSL but we have to take Digby to the vet this morning and drive to another town 40 miles away this afternoon to buy a new washing machine. The old one has finally died after 15 years.

We're not sure what's wrong and it may take days to get a satellite tech out here so I guess I will just have read the books that I've been neglecting and do some gardening because the three of us are going to have to ration our usage of the dial-up.

See you when I see you.

I'm OD'ed on economics and politics

I'm taking a break from blogging today.

Meanwhile here are some pics. Yesterday, when I got home from the office, I saw that the schizostylus lilies (also from South Africa) were just about to pass their prime so I got the camera to snap a few pics. That's when Miss Piggy, one of the buff Plymouth Rock hens, started following me around the garden as she always does. (She's called Miss Piggy because she keeps saying, "pork, pork" and yes, she's very talkative.)

Mac the gambler

McCain took a big gamble when he picked Palin and now he's taking another big gamble suspending his campaign. From his 2002 book, Worth the Fighting For:

“I make decisions as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can. Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”

The last of the Neanderthals

Eurasia was theirs alone for 200,000 years. Then the newcomers arrived:

The Neanderthals, our closest prehistoric relatives, dominated Eurasia for the better part of 200,000 years. During that time, they poked their famously large and protruding noses into every corner of Europe, and beyond—south along the Mediterranean from the Strait of Gibraltar to Greece and Iraq, north to Russia, as far west as Britain, and almost to Mongolia in the east.

[...]

Were they a clever and perseverant breed of survivors, much like us, or a cognitively challenged dead end? What happened during that period, roughly 45,000 to 30,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals shared some parts of the Eurasian landscape with those modern human migrants from Africa? Why did one kind of human being survive, and the other disappear?

[...]

Since 2000, some 1,500 bone fragments have been unearthed from this side gallery, representing the remains of at least nine Neanderthals—five young adults, two adolescents, a child of about eight, and a three-year-old toddler. All showed signs of nutritional stress in their teeth—not unusual in young Neanderthals late in their time on Earth. But a deeper desperation is etched in their bones. Rosas picked up a recently unearthed fragment of a skull and another of a long bone of an arm, both with jagged edges.

"These fractures were—clop—made by humans," Rosas said, imitating the blow of a stone tool. "It means these fellows went after the brains and into long bones for the marrow."

In addition to the fractures, cut marks left on the bones by stone tools clearly indicate that the individuals were cannibalized.

[...]

One of the longest and most heated controversies in human evolution rages around the genetic relationship between Neanderthals and their European successors. Did the modern humans sweeping out of Africa beginning some 60,000 years ago completely replace the Neanderthals, or did they interbreed with them?

DNA studies show that modern humans are a completely different species from Neanderthals. It seems that the Ice Age stressed and weakened the Neanderthals to the point where they became easy prey to modern humans - so we ate them.

My few quotes don't do justice to this fascinating 10 page article in National Geographic.

Bail-out round-up

Yesterday McCain met with Romney to discuss the financial crisis:

"Most Americans feel very strongly this isn't their fault. It's Wall Street and Washington and the cozy insider relationships that have caused a great part of the problems," he said.

Flanking McCain were former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, his one-time rival for the GOP presidential nomination, and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Others in the meeting were John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, and John Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch before it was acquired by Bank of America earlier this month for a much-reduced value.

The WSJ on the bail-out:

The risk to taxpayers is real, to be sure, especially because Mr. Paulson isn't telling anyone how Treasury intends to buy the assets. His concept of a "reverse auction" would let banks bid securities against a Treasury offer of cash -- say, $50 million. This is better than a flat-price purchase, but it still puts banks in a superior bargaining position based on what they know about the assets.

The better idea is an open auction. This would let private buyers join Treasury in bidding for bank securities. Taxpayers wouldn't have to buy all bad securities first, and, as the market develops, those that Treasury does buy would rise in price. Treasury could even make money on the resale.

Deriding bailouts is politically potent, but the truth is that taxpayers are at risk whether or not the Paulson plan passes. The Federal Reserve's balance sheet is distended with crummy collateral, plus an $85 billion loan to AIG and a $29 billion guarantee for Bear Stearns securities. More bank failures are likely, as housing prices keep falling. Moonlighting as a bailout agency isn't the Fed's job and only undermines its credibility on the dollar. The Paulson plan puts these taxpayer obligations where they belong -- with the Treasury.

Warren Buffett sees US bailout as a golden opportunity:

The legendary investor Warren Buffett reckons the US government can make a sizeable profit if it manages its $700bn (£377bn) banking bailout package carefully - and he urged Congress to act quickly to avert an "economic Pearl Harbour".

Having been uncharacteristically quiet through much of the financial crisis, the world's richest man broke cover late on Tuesday by investing $5bn in Goldman Sachs, delivering a powerful shot in the arm to the sickly banking industry.

The Nebraska-based billionaire, whose fortune is estimated at $62bn, threw his weight wholeheartedly behind Henry Paulson's rescue package for Wall Street, arguing that US industry will "grind to a halt" without action.

"Last week, we were at the brink of something that would have made anything that's happened in financial history pale," Buffett told CNBC television. "I'm not saying the Paulson plan will eliminate the problems but it's absolutely necessary, in my view, to avoid going off the precipice."

Buffett, whose opinions are hugely influential among millions of private investors in the US, said that if the Treasury acts shrewdly by buying banks' distressed assets at a competitive price, taxpayers will end up as financial winners.

"I bet they'll make a profit," said Buffett, who pointed out that hedge funds specialising in junk assets were already picking up mortgage-related securities with a view to making profits of 15% to 20%. He said a positive return was feasible if the government ignores the book value of instruments or the original cost to banks and instead pays the prevailing market rates for the bombed out assets.

"They'll pay back the $700bn and make a considerable amount of money if they approach it like that," said Buffett. "I would love to have $700bn at Treasury rates to buy fixed-income securities - there's a lot of money to be made."

I don't like Buffet's politics but he did put his money where his mouth is. Maybe he should spend the rest of 60 plus billion fortune to buy some of Fannie and Freddie's junk notes.

McCain suspends campaign

Breaking news on Fox:

McCain has also asked for the Friday debate to be postponed so that he can return to DC to work out a bi-partisan solution to the financial mess.

Bishop Tutu criticizes affirmative action

Personally I can't stand the man's politics but at least he's not a liar:

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has again slammed South Africa's high levels of crime and corruption and expressed doubt about the efficacy of the government's affirmative action policy.

Tutu was speaking at the sixth annual Beyers Naude memorial lecture at Stellenbosch University on Tuesday hosted by the Kagiso Trust. The lecture was themed "Re-imagining the rainbow".

The trust was established by Tutu and Naude when he was still alive.

Tutu said rampant corruption and crime in the country was "horrible", and added that affirmative action had been poorly applied and had resulted in the appointment of inefficient and incompetent people occupying jobs they did not deserve.

However, rugby and cricket helped in uniting the nation, he said.

The bail-out: the questions no one is asking

From Right Wing Nation:

Have you noticed that the only numbers we’re getting is the amount of the bailout? In the last couple of days, I’ve heard 700 billion and 1 trillion. But you know, there are some things we — not to mention Congress — need to know.

First, what will be the estimated economic cost of the bailout?

Second, what will be the estimated economic cost of no bailout?

Surely, economists somewhere are calculating these numbers, right? If the cost of the bailout is greater than the cost of no bailout, then passing a bailout bill would be insane. No informed decision can be made without these two numbers, so I repeat, economists are calculating them somewhere, surely?

Unfortunately, I doubt it. I’m sure this will be decided with no data or reference to cost or the real world. It’s a Democratic Congress, after all.

Precisely.

Have you ever taken apart something like an old clock and tried to fix it only find that you've now broken it beyond repair and have to throw it away and buy a new one?

Or even more aptly: have you ever tried to "fix" some "broken" human situation like a quarrelsome team of employees that you inherited from previous bad management only to find that the problems started so long ago and are so deep and complex that the best thing to do is fire them all and start from scratch?

Is it worth fixing some gizmo that is so patched together that it's a hodge-podge of rubber bands and duct tape (caused by previous attempts to fix it) or should we just throw it away and get a new gizmo? Some things are so rotten to the core that they are not worth saving.

GOP: "We do not support government bailouts of private institutions"

From the Republican Party Platform, 2008:

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself.

From Naked Capitalism:

The sorry fact is the US has consumed at an unsustainable level. We need to reduce consumption and increase savings (and reducing debt is a form of savings). Reduced consumption means a fall in GDP. In Britain, which is going through its own credit crunch, the officialdom has said that the public will experience a fall in living standards. Why are we unwilling to accept the inevitable?

Sorry, folks, but I've run businesses and bought real estate for decades and real wealth is based on savings (equity/principle) not credit. Many, if not most, Americans have been living on credit for far too long and now they are paying the price.

Why were we really rich fifty years ago? Because people put off buying toys and taking fancy vacations till they could pay for them with cash and stockbrokers did not borrow money to buy stocks and bankers didn't take gambles on bad risks. We've been living on credit based on the real wealth accumulated by our parents in the Fifties.

"Anne of Green Gables" author killed herself

The heartbreaking truth about Anne's creator:

Kate Macdonald Butler reveals a long-held secret about her grandmother, one of Canada's most beloved authors, Lucy Maud Montgomery

For many years, my family has kept a troubling secret. What has made things even more difficult is the fact that the person it involves was not only my grandmother, but one of Canada's most beloved authors, Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Her most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables, is still a bestseller after 100 years. In addition to Anne, my grandmother wrote 19 other novels, personal journals and hundreds of short stories and poems. As well, she has been the subject of several biographical studies.

Despite her great success, it is known that she suffered from depression, that she was isolated, sad and filled with worry and dread for much of her life. But our family has never spoken publicly about the extent of her illness.

What has never been revealed is that L.M. Montgomery took her own life at the age of 67 through a drug overdose.

My born again Christian neighbors in the farm next door are going to be very upset to hear this. Their daughter played Anne in the local theater a few years ago and they adore Lucy Maud Montgomery. Even I am upset to hear this because I love the story.

Did you say 700 billion dollars?

From John Hood at the Corner:

Two friends and co-conspirators of mine, Duke University professor Mike Munger and N.C. State professor Mike Walden, debate the Paulson Plan in the pages of The Charlotte Observer

today. It's a good, spirited exchange that illustrates well the nature of the disagreement among economists of the free-market persuasion (by which I mean, well, actual economists).

The pro:

The patient is on the operating table, clinging to life. Doctors have a choice – do they do everything they can to save the life, or do they discuss what put the patient at death's door? Of course, the answer is obvious. They first try to save the life, and then later, when the patient has recovered, they talk about lifestyle and other changes to prevent a recurrence. Although somewhat melodramatic, the analogy describes why the federal government's bailout of the financial system has been necessary.

The con:

The point is that you can't take money away from taxpayers who earned it, give it to the financiers who squandered it, and call that a good policy. There is no danger of another Depression, which was caused by a deflationary monetary policy. We are facing a temporary credit crunch, and it will sort itself out if we leave it alone. Things aren't so bad that a panicked bunch of politicians can't make it much, much worse.

As Marie-Antoinette did not say but I do: "Let the gamblers eat cake!"

Democrats to let offshore drilling ban expire?

I'll believe it when I see it. After all it is AP who is reporting it:

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

The ban expires at the end of this month. Maybe Nancy discovered that Botox is made from off-shore oil. Not really but I don't trust her or her other crazy colleagues as far as I can throw them.

Conservatives won't like what I'm going to say about the UN

A Madi on a Jihad or whatever that nutso from Iran's name is said we should move the UN out of the US and a lot of conservatives agree with him. I don't.

Who was it who said: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?"

That's why we need the UN; why we pay more than anyone else to run it and why it's in New York.

Today's "nuff said"

From Ace:

Biden to lawyers: You'd have to be brain dead not to help.

Biden said that he's "done more than any other senator combined" for trial lawyers.

"There are two people -- you've heard me say it before -- two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate," Biden said. "It's you and organized labor. That's it. That is it. So, mark my words, mark my words, if we lose this election, you are going to continue to see a continuation of the onslaught on everything we care about. For real. For real. So, I'm not only thanking you for your help. I would think you're all absolutely brain-dead if you didn't help. And I mean it."

[...]

But, what really gets me is the "only people that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate". There are five people in my family who come to mind when I think about standing between me and "the barbarians at the gate". Their names did not end with "esq". They begin with "Sgt", "Cpt", "E4", "T2" and "S1".

Nuff said.

What credit crisis?

This mess is about more than sub-prime mortages as much as we'd like to blame the bleeding hearts for extending loans to irresponsible people.

Anyone with a good credit rating can get a loan whether for a mortgage or a small business loan. I constantly have offers for loans thrown at me.

The much ballyhooed "credit crunch" that supposedly will happen if we don't do the bail-out is a Wall Street problem - not a Main Street or Elm Street problem. It simply means that brokers can no longer borrow money to buy stocks - which they then sell at a profit, pay off the loan and pocket the profit.

Fair enough about making a profit but since when has it become acceptable to use borrowed money to trade on the stock market? It probably happened long before the Goldman-Sachs "cartel" of Bernanke and Paulson et al got into the Federal government but it was they who started expecting the Feds to bail out their buddies on Wall Street when they lost money in bad gambles.

Yes, a lot of people (including ordinary folks with 401ks) stand to lose if we don't do the bail-out but hey - life's a gamble and I don't like covering someone's ass just because they bet on the wrong horse.

Anyway there may be a free market solution. It seems that Japanese investors are already buying up some of the assets of the failing institutions. Let capitalists buy our "bad notes" at MARKET prices. The bail-out is aiming to pay way too much for them. Sell the notes to the Japs ( in Bernanke's words) "at fire-sale prices not the hold-to-maturity prices." Of course he expects us taxpayers to pay "hold-to-maturity prices." What BS.

I don't always agree with Newt Gingrich but he's right to urge caution.

Jonah Goldberg's also against the bail-out.

PS So the Democratic bleeding hearts "forced" investors to make bad risk loans. What BS. We live in a democracy. They could have protested but - no - they didn't because they figured high interest loans were a good gamble but of course, like anything that's too good to be true.....anyway I don't like saying "I told you so."

First fall frost

We had our first frost last night - right on cue. But it went up to 75F during the day. Tomorrow we're expecting our first Alaskan storm with some real rain - which we desperately need.

T.S. Eliot's birthday

The American poet lived from 1888 to 1965. He wrote this poem when he turned from agnosticism to Christianity in 1927.

The Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Snow on first day of spring in South Africa

More snow coming:

The South African Weather Service has warned of cold and wet conditions for large parts of the country.

Snow has been forecasted for KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and several higher-lying regions.

Minimum temperatures of -2'C have been forecast for Sutherland and Graaff-Reinet, while very cold conditions were also forecast for the Free State.

It's that damn global warming again!

California town changes name to "Obama"

Marin County Town Changes Name To 'Obama':

Motorists entering the quaint, woodsy town of Olema near the sea in Marin County may notice a subtle change as they enter: it appears the burg's name has been changed to ''Obama.''

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama supporter and bed and breakfast owner Kelly Emery created a perfect mirror of the green sign people read as they enter the town's limits.

Now people unfamiliar with the area may think they are entering the town of Obama, population: 55.

Emery's sign has created little fuss in this politically liberal area, but the county said there are laws regulating such behavior.

Marin County senior planner Curtis Havel said county code allows for political signs on one's residence or place of business not more than 45 days prior to an election.

Olema is a cute little town near the oyster farms on Tomales bay. We used to stop off there for lunch on the way to Point Reyes and have barbecued oysters on the deck of a restaurant. I'm not surprised. Most of the residents are "artists."

BIll Clinton says Sarah Palin is "hot"

Bill, just keep your dirty hands off our beautiful Sarah:

Bill Clinton said Monday he understands why Sarah Palin is popular in the heartland.

"I come from Arkansas, I get why she's hot out there," Clinton said. "Why she's doing well."

Speaking to reporters before his Clinton Global Initiative meeting, the former president described Palin's appeal by adding, "People look at her, and they say, 'All those kids. Something that happens in everybody's family. I'm glad she loves her daughter and she's not ashamed of her. Glad that girl's going around with her boyfriend. Glad they're going to get married."'

Clinton said voters would think, "I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They're wonderful children. They're wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy."

Palin, the governor of Alaska, became an overnight star when Republican presidential candidate John McCain tapped her for his running mate. Her family, including her Down syndrome baby, Trig, her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, and her husband, Todd, four-time winner of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, have garnered intense media interest.

"I get this," Clinton said. "My view is ... why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don't we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket? And just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?"

"Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy." ??!!

No, Bill, Todd's not your "kind of guy." The only thing you probably ever broke was a condom or your girl-friend's fingernail.

Well, I guess we now at least know who Bill will be voting for.

S.H.I.T

From the Corner:

Courtesy of Breaking Views:

The US government's $700bn bailout plan needs a name — what should it be called? The US Treasury likes 'Troubled Asset Relief Programme', or Tarp. One of our readers suggests 'Secured Housing Investment Trust'.

TARP is cute but SHIT's probably more accurate.

The bail-out

Maybe it has to be done. I don't know for sure. The problem always seems to be that, when the government interferes with the economy, it makes a mess (see the ethanol fiasco) and then it has to interfere to "fix" the new problem and on and on and on.

It's not that I believe in total laissez-faire "free markets." I realize the need for a certain amount of regulation to protect the consumers/citizens from the cold cruel workings of raw capitalism. But it seems that actual government intervention in the workings of the market always end up making the problem worse.

I haven't read enough about the details of the bail-out to know exactly what the consequences will be. All I know is that it does not seem to conform to the spirit of our Constitution and I am concerned about the "money." Is it real money or just just more "paper?" Printing "money" does not create wealth but it does cause inflation and devaluation.

The per capita GDP of the USA is $46,000 which, multiplied by 300 million, comes to a total of about 14 trillion dollars. Then inject the bail-out's estimated one trillion dollars into our economy. Are we adding one trillion fake dollars? If 14 trillion is currently 100% then 15 trillion is 107%. So can we expect an inflation rate of at least 7% compared with the current rate of 4.28%? Or will the dollar simply be immediately devalued both at home and abroad?

Whatever it is; there will be a price to pay for the past 34 years of politically correct and profligate lending.

Stonehenge site over 9,000 years old

It was probably originally a burial site for ancient kings around which a "healing temple" grew:

The researchers said the proof was not only in the stones, but also in the bones found around Stonehenge. Skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill said.

The evidence, they said, pointed to a kind of shrine where people from across the Europe would go to seek healing. But they cautioned that that did not rule out alternative theories for Stonehenge's uses.

"It could have been a temple, even as it was a healing center," Darvill said. "Just as Lourdes, for example, is still a religious center."

Indeed, their findings indicated that the Stonehenge site may have been inhabited as long ago as 7200 B.C. Past excavations have indicated that a wooden circle was erected around 3000 B.C., and earlier this year, a different research group reported that remains were buried at the site starting in that same time frame.

Stonehenge is not as amazing as the Egyptian Pyramids but, if you have ever stood inside the circle of monoliths, it becomes obvious that, unlike the pyramids which are tombs, Stonehenge is a "cathedral" - a place of awe and worship.

South African Crocosmia lilies

When I posted this picture below...














...Gayle commented:

Those red flowers in your yard look like Indian Paint Brush. If they are, they are growing a lot taller than the ones in my front yard.

Andy responded:

Gayle: I can't quite hone in on the shape of those flowers, but it doesn't remind me of Indian Paint Brush. I've seen a lot of them in Texas during the wildflower season. The blooms look too broad.

My recollection of Indian Paint Brush is that the petals are very small, and the plant almost looks like a "back scrubber" you might win at a carnival...not tall at all.

They look like our orange pop-ups that we get every autumn down here in Louisiana. We call them "Spider Lillies." I understand that in other parts of the US they are called "Naked Ladies."

It's probably not Naked Ladies either. I just can't close in on the flowers close enough with my stupid computer...maybe Patrick will set us straight when the curtain comes down on today's drama.

Gayle and Andy, they are South African Crocosmia lilies not Indian Paintbrush or Naked Ladies. They are red version of what Andy calls "orange pop-ups" or "Spider Lillies." Crocosmias are usually orange. Fifteen years ago in San Francisco I bought one bulb of the red Crocosmia (known as Lucifer) and it multiplied to about ten which I brought up to Oregon and planted here. In the five years that I've been here, they have multiplied into hundreds of bulbs. - so many that I have had to move many down to the trailer park.

Here's the Naked Lady lily (South African amaryllis belladonna) which is the last lily to bloom each summer. They're called Naked Ladies because the leaves die before it flowers so the lily blooms at the end of a naked stalk.















Both Naked Ladies and Crocosmias naturalize easily in the wild.

Here are pictures of my South African Crocosmia lilies that I have taken over the past five years. You can see that they are related to what is probably South Africa's most famous lily, the gladiolus.















Crocosmias are also known as Montbretias.


















The common orange version.




































The yellow version.














A really dark red version.

The biggest problem in my trailer park - meth

A few years ago Oregon enacted a law restricting the sale of pseudephedrine, a common cold and allergy drug, which is used to manufacture methamphetamine. Sales were limited to six packs of 30 tablets and you had to sign for it.

Then about a year ago, it was further restricted and has since been available by prescription only. Local meth labs started to disappear and it began to look like we had licked the problem. No such luck. The meth problem has returned with a vengeance thanks to cheap meth smuggled in by illegal aliens from Mexico.

Meth causes most of the problems that I have to deal with in the trailer park and the problems are not minor - like not having the money to pay for rent or petty theft. I'm talking about major problems like assault and incestuous child molestation. It's gotten to the point where I wish meth dealers could be executed and addicts who commit crimes could be lashed and put in chain gangs.

I'm sick of it and do not understand how white Americans can sink so low. It's not as if they do not have the same opportunities to pursue happiness, wealth and success the same as the rest of us. To me, they are sub-humans who do not deserve freedom. The price of freedom is self-discipline and responsibility and these pieces of dung have neither .

No blogging this morning

I've got a few "dramas" to sort out at the trailer park.

American Hunters And Shooters Association endorses Obama

I just heard that on our local radio gun show. From the NRA:

American Hunters And Shooters Association: The Ultimate In Political Camouflage:

AHSA was created with the specific intent to provide political cover for anti-gun politicians by allowing them to claim support from a “sportsmen’s” group. In truth, the anti-gun credentials of AHSA’s leadership is well documented. For instance, AHSA president Ray Schoenke has a long history of giving political donations to some of the most anti-gun politicians, including Al Gore, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Bill Clinton, Dianne Feinstein and Ted Kennedy. In 2000, Schoenke donated $5,000 to Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign) and the Ray and Holly Schoenke Foundation also made donations to the Brady Campaign. AHSA Board member John Rosenthal remains the leader of Stop Handgun Violence, the Massachusetts anti-gun group. And one of the leading organizers of AHSA is Bob Ricker, who has been a paid expert witness against gun manufacturers in a number of reckless lawsuits.

I think "camouflage" is too kind a word to use to describe what the AHSA is doing.

The one thing I miss about San Francisco...

...is the opera - especially the free opera outdoors in Stern Grove and in Golden Gate Park in September at the beginning of the season. Armed with a picnic basket full of munchies and wine, you could spread a blanket on the lawn and kick back and listen to some of the finest singers in the world - free.

The cheapest seats in the Opera House are $80 (up from $65 since I left SF) and the most expensive are $260. That's a bargain compared with the prices for Broadway shows, Madonna concerts or the generally banal shows in Vegas.

Here's the line up for this season:

* Verdi's Simon Boccanegra

*The Bonesetter's Daughter - a new opera by Stewart Wallace based on an Amy Tan novel

* Korngold's Die Tote Stadt

* Mozart's Idomeneo

* Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov

* Donizetti's The Elixir of Love

* The Elixir of Love for Families ("The Elixir of Love for Families is a condensed two-hour version of Donizetti’s delightful comedy in a charming production set in Napa Valley circa 1915. Sung in English.")

* Puccini's La Bohème

* Puccini's Tosca

* Gershwin's Porgy and Bess

* Verdi's La Traviata

* Three Decembers - ("Two of the Bay Area’s best-loved musical artists, composer Jake Heggie and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, reunite for this poignant new chamber opera, based on a play by Terrence McNally.")

I would love to hear Frederica von Stade but, if this opera is anything like Heggie's Dead Man Walking or Harvey Milk, it will be mediocre at best and unpleasant at worst.

My naked pussy

My blog posts yesterday were pretty gloomy and Carol Mac commented:

How about a pic of some cute chicks or pretty flowers to remind us of the good stuff.

Well here some pussy pics so don't tell me that I only post pics of naked chicks and cocks.

This cat has turned out to be very nice. I'm not much of a cat lover but we needed a cat in the barn because chicken feed attracts rats and mice. This cat was abandoned as a kitten in the trailer park so I brought her home and named her Smudgie because of her dirty face.

I think the reason that I like her more than any other cat that I've had is because she doesn't live in the house. I always ended up hating my other cats because they were so destructive to my furniture - especially drapes. Cats are not as civilized as dogs and I prefer them when they live in barns. Smudgie is the friendliest, happiest and least neurotic cat I've known and I'm sure that's because she lives outside and can come and go as she pleases.

Did Obama really say this?

I found this quote at my Australian buddy, Jim Fryar's blog, Real World Libertarian.

"In America we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations."

As the Marxist Norman Thomas said:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."

I'm a tortoise

Pinched from Patrick at The Pagan Temple:

Do you want to learn what your power animal is, or what power animal you can attune with for any specific purpose in mind. This site might give you the answer.

I got the tortoise:

Self-Belief Commitment Protection

No dream is too large, no goal too impossible, no destination too far, now that you are the tortoise!

The tortoise will teach you how to make time work for you. She knows that if you simply put one foot in front of the other and keep moving, you are bound to reach your destination. She is not afraid to set ambitious goals, even seemingly impossible goals, for her patience and tenacity are built upon a deep belief in herself. Allow her to give you this faith, this deep knowledge that you can accomplish anything you set out to do, if only you will keep going and never quit. For you are the tortoise, and the tortoise never gives up.

Let her also teach you how to pull inside yourself and find peace and quiet there, no matter where you are or what is happening. Whenever you need to, you may call her spirit to you and she will wrap you in her protective shell, surrounding you with so much love and caring that the events of the outside world will not disturb your center of peace.

Yes! I love it although I've always thought of tortoises as masculine. I realize of course that there have to be lady tortoises to make little baby tortoises but tortoises have never struck me as being very feminine critters. You can put lipstick on a tortoise but, to me, it will still look like an old man.