Posts from — November 2008

CBS ran a story on Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Year: bailout

So how does Merriam-Webster define “bailout”? As “a rescue from financial distress.” But Morse says those who looked it up also seemed to want to know whether it had negative nuances or suggested irresponsibility or blame.

What nasty people, wondering if giving hundreds of billions of tax dollars to corporations that were running a Ponzi scheme that is driving billions of hard working people into financial distress had “negative nuances”. What could be negative about destroying the long term viability of once thriving financial institutions by creating mythical assets that absorbed the money of people who actually work for a living.

Echidne has the staged photo op of the banks when government decided to take off the training wheels. All of those pesky rules and “red tape” that were preventing the overpaid gamblers of Wall Street from impoverishing the world as they had in the Great Depression.

One would hope that the lesson has been learned – they cannot be trusted and must be regulated, because every time you allow them to act on their own they bring chaos and ruin.

Apparently 10% or more of the House sleep in their offices.  It would appear they have a hard time finding a place to live in DC on their piddling salary of nearly $170K/year.  The justification is that they have to maintain a “residence” in their home district and can’t afford the prices on two places.

First off, they generally are only in DC during the week, heading back to their home district on the weekends, so they don’t really need a house in DC, but I would think they could pool their resources and get a room somewhere.  Perhaps they should look at all of the military bases in the area that Rumsfeld closed, like Walter Reed, they have Bachelor Officers Quarters and barracks that could be converted into domitories for homeless Congresscritters.

Actually, I’ve long advocated networking Congress from their home districts.  Carry the sessions on a VPN or a Congressional satellite hook-up to cut out the absurd travel expenses of these people going home every weekend.

There is something unsanitary about these people living in their offices.

I keep mentioning that I am surrounded by the base, so I figured I would show you what I meant. The grey area is the land area of the base. There are ranges out in the Gulf of Mexico. The light beige civilian areas are all surrounded by the base.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal draws big crowd in Iowa

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal introduced himself to Christian conservatives in this first-in-the-nation presidential-caucus state Saturday by talking up Louisiana’s hurricane recovery efforts and emphasizing the central role of culture in rebuilding America.

Anyone who showed up hoping to see the first round in the fight for the 2012 Republican nomination for president likely went home disappointed, though, for Louisiana’s young governor mostly steered clear of politics and hot-button social issues such as abortion and gay marriage as he spoke to audiences in West Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

“Enough is enough already,” Jindal said, referring to the marathon presidential race that just ended. “Clearly America is ready to take a break from politics.”

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One of the most quoted articles around today is David E. Sanger’s piece in The New York Times, Obama tilts to center, inviting a clash of ideas. His lead paragraph is a winner:

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.

First off, Obama only received “enthusiastic support” from some people who are in the left wing, while others voted in fear of John McCain.

Second, he made one speech against the war while a candidate for the Illinois senate and took no other action to oppose the war. In the US Senate he voted to fund the war, like all of the other sitting Democratic Senators who were candidates for the nomination.

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It was afternoon and I was on my way to a chemistry class. I had stopped for a drink of water when the news came over the speakers in the classrooms.

For those who weren’t alive at the time: remember what you felt on September 11, 2001 for a taste of November 22, 1963. It was a massive change for the worldview of my generation and it marked the beginning of a period of disruption and decline in the civility of American society. Arthur had died and Camelot fell.

At his inauguration John Kennedy made the point: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

The colors of my world will never be as bright as they were on November 21, 1963.

Via Paul Krugman the business world’s answer to I Can Has Cheezburger? : LOLFed.com.

McClatchy had this as their lead story, Obama calls on his Internet campaign army to march again.

It’s an e-mail campaign to all of the volunteers explaining all of the opportunities to continue to provide service to the Obama political machine as it marches forward. Then at the end you see the real reason for the e-mail:

In the hallmark of a campaign that ran on small donations, volunteers are once again invited to make a financial contribution. This time it’s to the Obama-Biden transition effort.

Will the suckers bite again? They didn’t quit after FISA, will they quit after LIEberman? How much kool-aid can they drink before they understand that they aren’t going to get anything but an e-mail thanking them.

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I live surrounded by Eglin AFB. It is one of, if not the, largest military facilities in the world. They test weapons here. They also have the headquarters of the Air Force Special Operations Command, the Army Ranger School, the Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal School, an Army Special Forces Brigade, an Air Force Fighter Wing, a National Guard tank training area, and a half-million acre national forest on the base.

The first runway was built at the site of the current main base in 1933, so it is not exactly something new to the area. The local airport is located on the base and uses the Air Force’s runaway and tower facilities. The fact that there are planes taking off and landing can in no way be considered a new phenomenon.

These realities make this report from the Pensacola News Journal, F-35 decision delayed, blatantly absurd:

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So I started to waste my time on Blogger four years ago. It’s all Andante’s fault.

It’s hard to believe that people have had nothing better to do with their lives than to stop by here about 140,000 times. Nearly 20,000 times they found something to say about the 4,900 or so posts I’ve made.

We really need to find a hobby.

So Long

Is this thing shrinking?

[Editor: It is time for Income to stop growing. Property has been the same size as her mom for a while, but “I” seems to keep getting longer.

Friday Ark

My Mother has been following the economic meltdown on television.  It isn’t a nice thing because she hasn’t been in the market for some time and when she left had to listen to some level of grief from her friends that she was going to lose money by moving to cash.  I don’t doubt in the slightest that she is using what she hears to remind her friends of their giving her a hard time.  It isn’t a nice trait in a person, but I inherited it.

I drop by and listen to whatever she has on and hear Senators from Southern states talking about how they can’t ask the taxpayers in their states to bail out the auto companies.  I think of the Senators in the states that have the plants that will be closing if the auto industry collapses and wonder how willing they will be to vote for assistance to Southern states after the next hurricane hits.

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The CBC story, Air Canada flight attendant helped land plane after co-pilot breakdown, isn’t as bad as most of the American coverage which says “stewardess”, but it is all pretty juvenile.

Yes, she had allowed her instrument rating to lapse, but she was still a licensed commercial pilot, although it is doubtful that she had been checked out on a 767. Suggesting that it was miraculous that she was able to act as a co-pilot during one landing, is fairly stupid. If you have a commercial license, you have flown multi-engine aircraft, and modern airliners are all quite similar by design, so that airlines don’t have to re-train their pilots from the ground up when they buy a new aircraft type.

The big hurdle is knowing what things are called, and what the basic instruments are telling you, because there is a check list for landing that tells you when to do things and in what order.  This is not exactly fodder for an Irwin Allen disaster flick.

So apparently the future President read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, and decided that he would model his cabinet after Abraham Lincoln’s first cabinet.

Abraham Lincoln was a great President and politician, but that was in spite of what happened with his cabinet. Matthew Pinsker fills in a few of the gaps, the little things that Ms. Goodwin left out of her book. The book isn’t quite in Harry Turtledove territory, more along the lines of George Washington and the cherry tree.

I personally preferred the biography, Lincoln by David Herbert Donald which is a more truthful telling of Lincoln’s story and the story of his cabinet.

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