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Showing posts from October, 2008

Four conservatives add up to one vote for Obama

I voted for Barack Obama today. In the end, the substance of the endorsements (rather than the actual endorsements themselves) of Warren Buffett , Colin Powell , and Christopher Buckley over-rode anything anyone else had to say - except for the now obviously loose cannon known as Sarah Palin . Palin's rhetorical spittle of hate and fear against Obama , devoid of issue-based substance, her lack of national experience, and everything this now obviously desperate choice says about John McCain trumped all other considerations for me. This election will likely be a landslide in Obama's favor. This, in spite of the apparent galvanization of the right-wing of the Republican Party by McCain's choice of Palin . Thus showing for all to see how irrelevant that political force has become. Good riddance (for now) to the politics of hate. My only reservation about Obama is the absurd amount of money he raised . I think it should be a crime to spend so much money for a presidential c

The Lower Field

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We have a section of our 10 acres called the Lower Field. It was farmed for cotton and for hay when I was a kid. It is about one acre in size. Since we bought the property several pines have volunteered in the field. We have also planted sawtooth oaks and cedars through the years. I keep it mowed about once a month in summer during seasons of normal rains. This year the grass (mostly fescue ) was turning brown, its growth stunted, in mid-July by the drought. I had only mowed the field twice in 2008 up til then. Then we had a few good rains, one of four inches from a tropical storm that passed through. I mowed the field in July after a rain and let it mostly grow from there. The result is some nice, tall sagey grass that ornamented today - a perfect, clear sky autumn day before much color has started showing around here.

"A Credit Tsunami"

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Sir Alan Greenspan was full of sound bits at yesterday's congressional hearing on the present financial crisis. Unlike many who testify before congress, however, he admited some mistakes under his watch that fundamentally led to the current situation. David Brooks praised him tonight and offered the best summary of the current finanical crisis that I've heard yet. Commenting on Sir Alan's testimony, Brooks went surgically metaphysical: "Well, first of all, I admired him for saying that. We often are in a political culture where nobody admits a mistake, and he admitted a mistake. And the question is, why? What did he get wrong about the economy? "And I think what he got wrong is -- Paul Solman had a guy named Nassim Taleb on the show not long ago who got it right, who picked Fannie Mae, who talked about the banking collapse. "And the difference between the two worldviews is Greenspan relied on quantitative models of risk anal

Mercury's in Retrograde

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I got into a real fix with my mower today. My dad had to come pull me out. I ended up finishing our entire back yard - about half an acre or so - with my push mower because the hydraulics on my Gravely won't allow me to restart it. I'll call my mower guy tomorrow to see what I need to do to fix that. I got a great workout push mowing though. It took the place of my usual 3 mile run. The market had the most volatile day I've known it to have in 10 years of seriously playing and watching it. The VIX is astoundingly over 70. The intra -day high and intra -day low was 1019 points difference. Amazing. For the week the Dow was down about 20%. Ouch...even if I am heavy in cash. The Wall Street Journal said today : "The Dow Jones Industrial Average capped the worst week in its 112-year history with its most volatile day ever, as hopes for a major international bank-rescue plan were overwhelmed at day's end by another wave of selling."

Joe Biden: Senator from Mars

We got about two inches of rain yesterday. So that should help perk things up a bit around my land. A friend sent me an email today alerting me to something virtually ignored by the major news media. In last week's VP debate Joe Biden stated: "Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years." It turns out that Katie's Restaurant has been closed for 20 years. It's enough to make you think maybe Joe ain't from around here...or there. He said this as part of a longer statement to indicate how "in touch" he is with the average American (trying to best the "Palin effect"), which in and of itself makes the whole thing incredulous. If he's so out of touch with the basic geography of hi

Jefferson speaks to the heart of the matter...

It was reported today that 60% of the American public think we could be headed for another Depression. I don't know if the American people have a clue where we're headed but Thomas Jefferson warned us over 200 years ago of what might happen should we continue on our present course of financial infrastructure. "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson , Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826) In another letter (to John Taylor) da

Obama surges in a drought

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It has not rained here in about a month. We were low on rainfall for the year anyway and the heat of September roasted a few of our plants. The VP debate was better than expected. Both candidates did fairly well and there were no real zingers to amount to anything. Biden wins on substance. Palin was confident and forceful and came across as very genuine and sincere but without as many facts as Joe, who handled the sweeping issues while Sarah went back to repeating the rhetorical "maverick" mantra three times during the course of the debate. Overall, I felt Palin held her own. Overall, I don't think it matters any more. Both candidates seemed to agree that same sex partnerships (not marriages) should be granted the same legal rights (not "spiritual" rights) as heterosexual couples. They should have property, insurance, and illness rights that partners in "marriages" do as a basic constitutional guarantee . We've come a long way in my 49 years in A