Sunday, January 11, 2009

It Isn't The End of the World...

...but you can see it from here.

Who the hell ever thought the Cards would play in, let alone host, an NFC Championship Game.

I'm not actually a Cardinals fan (I'm a Seahawks fan), but it's got to be good for the three people in town who are Cardinals fans, right?

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Killing the Bowls

Count me among the many that think Obama could be elected for life if he were just about to bring about a playoff system.

The flip-side of naming a real national champion in a playoff is that we'd be able to chuck a lot of meaningless bowl games and or turn them into more meaningful bowl games. Let's face it, nobody wants to attend, or gives a damn about the Aloha Bowl, featuring two teams that finished fifth (or sixth) in their conference, are 6-6, and barely bowl eligible.

There's a reason the Pac 10 Representative has sometimes declined to attend this one, and heaven knows there are other bowls in other areas of the country just as meaningless.

Accordingly, this article in the Onion is basically spot on, and funny as hell to boot:

Weekendish Random Ten

In the saga of true stories, the Rat Family recently took a week to go back to Oklahoma to spend Christmas week with Mom Rat (or Grandma Rat, from my boys' perspective).

My venerable 60 GB Ipod died on the trip. I ordinarily play the thing through the car radio, was lugging it in with some other stuff, and dropped it. Fortunately, I had some money, and couldn't contemplate a drive back home without tunes, so we replaced it with a 120 GB one. There were other fun things about the trip, including a bout with a stomach/intestinal virus that passed through the family, finally hitting me the day after we got home to Phoenix. Happily, we were not devoured by locusts, so it could have been much worse, I suppose.

With that, on to the random 10.

Family Snapshot (Live)-Peter Gabriel
Night in the City-Electric Light Orchestra
Hannibal's Boogie-Spyro Gyra
Angel of Mercy-Al Stewart
Secret Garden-Alan Parsons Project
Help Me Angel-Steve Winwood
Waiting Game-Todd Rundgren
Kashmir-Led Zeppelin
Dekalb Blues-Leadbelly
Philadelphia Freedom-Elton John

And since my IPod seems to be stuck in the 70's (with the exception of Leadbelly, anyway), let's try 1 more.

Standing On Higher Ground-Alan Parsons Project

This last is from 1986. Guess I'd better cut my losses.

Bonus Music Video:
Yes-Owner of a Lonely Heart

What About Social Security?

This post (and the bulk of the comments), forget one big elephant in the room when tracing the steady decline of Bush's popularity since getting reelected in 2004.

Terry Schiavo, and the Iraq war certainly played a part (and a very big part) in the Spring the Spring and Summer of 2005, as it turned out. But the thing that really sent Bush's death spiral into motion was the attempt to privatize Social Security.

Bush came out of the election in 2004 assuming he had a lot more political capital than he did, and immediately wasted all that political capital on the third rail of politics, Social Security.

It was an incredibly hubristic move at the time, immediately severing any goodwill that may have come to the GOP and Bush from seniors, a group that had been a big part of why Bush got elected and reelected in the first place. It cost him. Katrina, and the Terri Schiavo matters also played their parts, but it was Social Security that got the ball rolling.

He's been in pretty steady decline ever since.

Update: Yes, I know Katrina was actually in August/September 2005. I'd really meant to say 2005 as a whole, but was thinking of the Schiavo affair when I typed Spring.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The Death of Monetary Policy.

The Fed is finding out that you can lead a maxed out credit card shopper to the mall, but you can't make him put more money on that credit card.

WASHINGTON — Policy makers at the Federal Reserve appeared almost stunned by an economy that was sinking faster than they had expected on almost every front in December, so much so that they even toyed with the idea of not announcing an official target for overnight interest rates, according to minutes of the meeting released on Tuesday.

At the meeting on Dec. 15 and 16, Fed policy makers jumped through the looking glass and slashed the benchmark federal funds rate on overnight loans between banks virtually to zero. Vowing to use “all available tools” for stimulating the economy, the Fed then outlined a radical new approach of pumping money into the economy through its own lending programs and through heavy purchases of mortgage-backed securities and possibly longer-term Treasury bonds.

Despite having already created a raft of new lending programs to financial institutions and even corporate borrowers, Fed policy makers as well as the Fed’s staff forecasters began the meeting with sharply reduced forecasts. They all expected a severe economic contraction that was likely to last through at least the first half of 2009.

“All meeting participants agreed that the economic downturn had intensified over all,” according to the minutes. The housing market was still weakening, credit conditions were tighter than ever, consumer spending had fallen for five months in a row. Even exports, which had been the one bright spot, were being hurt by a global economic slowdown.


I've been explaining this to friends since the last rate cut. Monetary policy as a tool to deal with this recession will be about as effective as prayer in solving this problem.

The cure for this economy is fiscal policy. Specifically spending. Targeted spending that creates working and middle class jobs, and puts money into the hands of those people. The more the better.

Tax cuts for the rich and tax cuts for big business won't do it. Neither will the half measures being proposed by the Obama Administration. After his first stimulus package, which appears to be a lot of business tax cuts aimed at companies that don't need them, and get too many already anyway isn't going to work, Obama will have to try something more aggressive. One only hopes the real economy hasn't cliff-dived before he realizes that this is no time for half measures. From what I've seen, I'm not optimistic.

(h/t Atrios).

Monday, January 5, 2009

Panetta as CIA Director

I'm not entirely sure to make of his selection, although I thought he served Clinton well. I will say the fact that Dianne Feinstein is cheesed off about the pick, on the other hand, makes me think Panetta might be the right choice.

Any time a Democrat does something to make a complete tool like Feinstein cry is a good day.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Brief Book Review

For anybody who is a fan of the Star Wars EU, Star Wars in general, or just looking for a fun, little pageturner SF story, get thee to a bookstore to purchase a copy of Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover.

It's easily the best Star Wars novel since Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, all those years ago.

It may be the best work of fiction in the Star Wars universe since The Empire Strikes Back.