Whimsy Speaks Again

I'm really tired of all the commentators and politicians saying how difficult this bailout crisis is to explain.  How could it be more complicated than, just to take an example, what Simon does every day in astrophysics?  Or more complicated than what millions of engineers, actuarial professional, accountants, and scientists do?  This trillion dollar bailout is a history-making commitment, and we're going to do it without even knowing what the actual problem is?

The facts seem to be pretty simple.  A number of investment banks borrowed large sums to finance the purchase of mortgage-backed securities (or their creation).  Their balance sheets used to look like:

Assets
	Value of Mortgage Backed Securities	$100 billion
	Other Stuff	$5 billion
Liabilities
	Loans to cover the securities	$95 billion
	Other Obligations	$4 billion
Equity
	Net Worth	$6 billion

At the end of the year, having made billions in profit by borrowing vast sums of money and then creating the mortgage-backed securities with it, the highly leveraged firms would then report record profits, pay out billions in bonuses, send billions home to their top management, and get ready for the next year.  It's actually a little more complicated than this, but still not rocket science.  The investment banks would, for example, sell the mortgage-backed securities and guarantee a certain stream of income to the holder.  This became a liability to the investment bank, but the stream of mortgage payments would presumably cover it.  Until people started walking away from their mortgages and becoming delinquent on their payments.  Then, the investment banks looked around to sell their mortgage-backed securities and Oh No!, they had lost a lot of value, because some of them weren't "performing", which is to say, significant subsets of the people with these actual mortgages weren't paying.  Then, their balance sheet looked like this.
          

Assets
	Value of Mortgage Backed Securities	$85 billion
	Other Stuff	$5 billion
Liabilities
	Loans to cover the securities	$95 billion
	Other Obligations	$4 billion
Equity
	Net Worth	-$9 billion

All of a sudden, all this leverage didn't look so good.  So they did what nobody I know can get away with.  Suppose, for example, you have a friend who plays Texas Hold'em and want to enter tournaments.  You give him $10,000 as a stake and every time he wins, he keeps half.  Every night that he loses, he says, "Damn, partner, guess we lost.  I need $3,500 to get my stake back up to $10,000".  That's essentially what the investment banks are asking for.

The noted liberal economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman has an excellent article today that lays it out.  He calls the Paulson's proposal "Cash for Trash".  What he says, and what should be obvious, is that if we pay what the assets are worth (in my example $85 billion), the investment banks aren't any better off than they were before.  So, they're in bad shape, can't help finance college loans and credit card debt and God knows what else.  So, what Paulson is really saying is that we have to overpay for the value of these assets we're spending almost a trillion dollars for, otherwise there's no point in doing it in the first place.  Not to mention, with NO oversight and NO congressional review.  Do you know how much a trillion dollars is?  It's more than the yearly budget of our massive Defense Department, the one that has a budget that exceeds the sum of all the military budgets of all the countries in the world.  A trillion dollars is also more than the entire budget for the sum of the Departments of State, Treasury, Justice, Labor, Health and Human Services, . . .  Well, all of 15 them that aren't the Defense Department.  Basically, if weren't for the Iraq War and the very large Department of Veterans Affairs Department, we could run the entire US government for a year with this kind of money.

But, I digress.  Guess what happened today.  Two things: 

1)  The world's most renowned investor, Warren Buffet, committed $5 billion to Goldman Sachs.  For that, he gets preferred stock paying 10% and warrants to buy $5 billion of common stock at a strike price of $115 a share (on 23 September, the stock was $125).  It's pretty much a win-win situation if the bailout goes through, and it's politically impossible for it not to.

2)  Paulson explained that our bailout would be to "help the credit markets", and others pointed out that there would be no oversight or review of his actions, and the original plan didn't even have the bailout queens (you and me), owning one share of the companies that we're bailing out.

My question is simple:  If we're willing to bail out the Free World with a sum equaling something like $3,000 per man, woman and child in America, then why can't we at least get as good a deal as Buffet did?

~~~

On a side note, the increasingly slimeball McCain campaign has announced the most current in their despicable and cynical statements, namely that John really doesn't want to debate on Friday because of all the horrible stuff that's going on, most of which he's at least partially responsible for.


 

Posted by jbahr at 05:52 PM | Permalink

I have been insanely rapt by the Presidential election this year.  I find myself clicking all day on HuffPo, Crooks and Liars, Talk Left, TPM, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Think Progress, Raw Story.  For God's sake, I'm even watching Morning Joe.

Time to take a break (besides, Obama is roaring back . . . )

~~~~

What happened this week?  I still can't get my head around it. 

The combination of the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae acquisition and this weekend's Fed bail out will be the largest single transfer of wealth in the history of the world.  No, I'm not exaggerating.  It makes the cost of the entire Iraq War look almost trivial.  It is the single most expensive act of socialism in our history, and it took place during the Bush Administration.

The size and seriousness of Paulson's proposed bailout is difficult to overestimate.  Though currently estimated at $700 billion, it has been argued that the total cost/investment may be as high as $2 trillion, and that doesn't count the Freddie/Fannie deal.  To give you an idea of how much money that is, it's roughly the sum of Russia and India's GDP.  All in one lump.  To be spent/invested over the course of a few months.  The mind boggles.  I know it all sounds like one of those "illion" words, and if I sound patronizing, don't read the rest of this paragraph (but read the rest).  If you had a billion dollars, you could invest it all over the world and without spending any principal, be able to spend about a million dollars a week on yourself just on the interest.  A trillion dollars is a thousand times that amount.  If you had two trillion dollars, you could give every household in America a $15,000 Christmas present.  In short, it's a staggering amount of money.

I have done the numbers on the back of a napkin, and I come up with the conclusion that this is more money than was spent in a decade of New Deal activities.  And those at least provided infrastructure improvement, employment, cultural works, and hope.

So what are they going to do?  Well, to begin with, no one knows for certain because the Administration (which includes Treasury Secretary Paulson) wants roughly $700 billion immediately authorized by Congress with virtually no strings attached regarding how it is used.  The 3-page description distributed this weekend alludes to various tactics, which include a reverse auction of toxic mortgage-related securities.  In a reverse auction, the bidder (the U.S. Treasury), makes an offer for a certain class of mortgage-backed assets (such as a bundle of mortgage loans).  Anyone who is happy with the price takes the offer.  Then the Treasury, ups the offer a little, buying up more paper (most likely that which is a little higher-quality).  Eventually, they've spent the $700 billion and we, the people, own a lot of paper. 

Is that enough to buy up all the mortgage-related debt?  Hardly.  Here's a list:

Size of the sub-prime market:  $1.5 trillion
Size of the Alt-A market:  $750 million
Size of the Home Equity Line of Credit and related markets:  $1 trillion
Sum of loans on commercial real estate:  $3.3 trillion

To give you an idea of how much money we're talking about, the total of all credit card and auto loan debt in America is only $2.5 trillion.  I would mention that the credit default swap market is $43 trillion, which is half the asset base of the entire global banking system.

OK, so we buy up all this paper.  What do we get?  Well, every household in America suddenly owns, as a privilege of being citizens, a couple of thousand of new dollars in debt (thanks to the increase in the National Debt) and we owned a whole lot of mortgages.   Does that mean we are a bank?  Sure.  We can force homeowners into foreclosure, take over ownership of houses and condos, sell them or rent them out, the whole nine yards.  Of course, since we're talking about hundreds of thousands of homes, it's going to take a lot of people to administer this. 

And what are these mortgages worth?  Hard to say.  Merrill Lynch recently sold their mortgage-related assets for 22 cents on the dollar.  One in ten homeowners are either behind on their payments or in foreclosure.  Yeah, but we get the homes.  Except in some places (like various Florida areas and Las Vegas), home values have dropped 30-40%. 

So one question is:  do we pay a fair price for the mortgages, in for example, a reverse auction?  If we do, the current holders are going to get creamed as their assets are instantly devalued by massive amounts.  That might cause exactly the crisis in confidence that the Fed is trying to avoid.

Another question is (and this is floated around a lot):  Can we demand vastly lower salary/bonuses for investment firm officers?  Well, that will probably take care of itself, but it will be difficult to take back the tens of billions of dollars in CEO salaries and upper management bonuses, even if we could figure out how to pass a law to do so.

Another question is:  what about Main Street (as opposed to Wall Street)?  Why not spend the time and resources to mitigate our enormous new-found ocean of mortgage debt by figuring out how to help millions of people keep their homes?  The housing price crisis is due in large part to the glut of homes on the market, some new builder homes, but many that are up for sale because homeowners can't make the mortgage, and many more because they've been foreclosed on and add to the glut of homes on the market.  With many fewer people selling or walking away from their homes, four things would happen:

1.  Supply and demand would realign home prices upward.
2.  The stock of homes on the market would shrink.
3.  Builders could start thinking about building again, with attendant gains in construction-related employment.
4.  Current homeowners would see their home values rise, yielding more of the feel-good sentiment that drove the economy for years.

Right now, the Bush Administration and Paulson in particular are threatening Congress not to add on any other riders to the authorizing bill.  Suggestions include relief for credit card debt, direct help for homeowners (what I haven't heard is help for the hundreds of thousands with 5 and 6-figure school loans).   Bullshit, I say.  Let's use this disaster to shape a situation that will be with us for a generation.   Americans are lousy savers, but this is going to change all that.  Instead of actually saving, we're going to pay higher taxes (mainly, of course, by the wealthy who got those cuts in the first place, and yes, I agree they got the cuts because they pay a disproportionate amount of taxes in the first place).  The taxes will pay off as much nationalized debt as we end up owning collectively as a country.  Basically, it's the socialist solution to our prodigal ways. 

Meanwhile, what do we do about infrastructure improvement?  Investing in new energy?  Improving educational opportunities?  Investing in health care solutions?  Et cetera.  Beats me.  Whether McCain or Obama wins the election, he will be faced with the absolute necessity to raise taxes and cut expenditures.  The alternative is a continuing balance of trade nightmare, a diminution of the faith in the dollar (it's a long explanation, but trust me, it's really important), and a national debt whose interest payments trump everything critical to everyday Americans (Social Security, Medicare, . . . ).

History will judge who was the culprits in letting us get in to this mess.  McCain and his Keating-Five mentality deregulation mantra?  Phil Gramm?  Two decades of failed Republican policies initiated by Ronny? 

Or those Americans who let the crooks and liars get in charge in the first place?

For all my other faults, don't count me in that crowd.  Nor, I suspect, can I count 98% of the poets and writers in our community.

~~~

Harper's this month offers up a the usual quirky excerpts, including "Quill Bill", a New Zealander accused of tossing a hedgehog at the offended party, and then pulling his pants down and displaying his netherside.   Derek Walcott's A Sea-Change occupies a small box on page 16:  "With a change of government the permanent cobalt / the promises we take with a pinch of salt / ...".  Harper's Index includes:  The monthly number of reduced highway deaths due to $4 gasoline is about 1,000;  75% of the $1.1 million donations to McCain from oil interests have occurred since his endorsement of off-shore drilling in June;  Estimated total cost of tax policies of McCain and Obama over the next 10 years according to their public speeches:  $7 trillion : $4.2 trillion;  Number of Senate votes cast by McCain and Kennedy (who has brain cancer):  0:1;  Number of names added to "Terrorist Watch" list every month:  20,000;  Chances that an American lives within four miles or ten miles of a Superfund site:  1 in 4:  1 in 2;  Average median increase in home value when the proportion of same-sex couple goes up by 1%:  +9%;  Estimated revenue that a quarter-acre of Iowa farmland can derive from ethanol-producing corn vs. deploying a wind tubine:  $300: $10,000;   Number of states that have foregone Federal grants and refused to teach abstinence-only sex education courses:  24.

~~~

Addendum:  I've read dozens of descriptions of the housing crisis and bailout, but this is the best I've seen:

"Trust me – you do not want to experience a full-scale bank run in contemporary America. I’m not sure how many people realize how close we were to the wheels coming off at about noon yesterday, as major commercial-paper processing banks like State Street lost 30% – 60% of their value in about 2 hours. Want evidence: When was the last time you heard of the U.S. government identifying a problem, developing a multi-hundred-billion-dollar program and announcing it within about 48 hours?"

~~~

And to leave on a laugh:  "How We Became the United States of France":

"So yes, while we're still willing to work ourselves to death for the privilege of paying off our usurious credit cards, we can no longer look contemptuously at the land of 246 cheeses. Kraft Foods has replaced American International Group in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the insurance company having been added to Paulson's nationalized portfolio. Macaroni and cheese has supplanted credit default swaps at the fulcrum of capitalism."

Posted by jbahr at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This very nice and extremely competent young man named Andrew arrived to put hardwood on my stairs.  He seemed like the silent type, to steal a line from Dylan, but opened up when I told him that I worked summers for Atlas Van Lines, a job that he lasted at for one week before hating it.  Anyway.  Andrew spent almost a day and a half creating this fabulous box at the bottom of the stairs that hid the former ugly-carpet-carpeted-round-bezel-y-thing that I didn't know how I would be able to make the transition with.  Now the beautiful oak just sits on the beautiful slate, and all I have to do is figure out how to get the banisters back in some reasonable vertical position.  You will notice the zillions of tools that still crowd out the rest of the TV room, and the sofa that Ms. Emily sleeps on that is pointed roughly at the TV, and if you look hard, the treadmill that I watch Morning Joe on at 4 or 5 AM.  That's right, Morning Joe.  Amazing, but he's actually the most liberal TV on at that time, if you discount Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!  I still have to figure out what do about the sides of the stairs, where there used to be the same ugly carpet.  Andrew suggest a light sanding, then an oil based paint through which the old varnish won't bleed.  I've got some time until Sweet Junie shows up, so I'll ponder it.


 

~~~

One of the things that I found odd about the Colorado jury selection process was the number and variety of questions to the prospective jurors.  About 60 of us entered the initial training seminar and film, and then half of us wandered over to Courtroom C, Judge Stavely presiding.  He had a stack of randomly sorted juror cards, sort of like that deck of Iraq's Most Wanted that you could buy way back when.  He called out 12 of us, and I didn't make the cut.  At that point, he directed the jurors to peruse the list of questions that he would ask, which included everyone's occupation, education (including degree level and type), number and ages of children and their occupations, questions about experiences with crime and relationships with law enforcement or judicial staff, and eight or more similar questions.  As soon as the dentist guy spoke up, the judge and prosecutor and defending attorney INSTANTLY started referring to him as Dr. SoInSo.  It was amazing.  I longed to be called as a backup.  Nobody has called me Dr. Bahr (OK, except for DP) in decades.  It's just not done in Silicon Valley.  Even when I was teaching at Cal State, the students reveled in calling me by my first name, or at best Professor Bahr, but usually with a snide look on their face.  I think once in 7 years some suck-up called me Dr. Bahr, but I'm not even sure of that.  When you remember back how much money and hell you went through, it's hard to reconcile with the lack of attribution.  But, then I remember all my friends who called me up when I decided to quit halfway through my dissertation.  They were right.  You have to finish the thing so you don't spend the rest of your life regretting for vague and un-definable reasons why you didn't.
~~~

Nada rightfully pointed out in comments that my last Blogwalk was almost entirely of the XY persuasion.  I'm here to remedy that!

One of the links on Deborah's 32 Poems site was particularly topical:  the link to John and Chad's Hockey Haiku.  They are hockey dads, no doubt.

Michelle advises us to go for the 3-for-1 deal with Eileen's The Blind Chatelaine's Keys.

Jenny recommends her audio clips at The Academy.  If you don't know Ms. Boully, she wrote the rather wonderful poetry collection that was 100% footnotes.  Brilliant.

Sharon doesn't want her blog to suffer from the same political obsession that hits me every 4 years.

Laurel just may just know what love's about.

Suzanne:  "Believe it or not, whatever has been limiting your movement has also been expanding your capacities."

It seems to be official:  Jeannine moved to San Diego.  It only seems like an odd choice because I'm already familiar with it, having lived in LA for 20 years, and having parents that live in Rancho Bernardo.

Rebecca is completely nutz.  In a good way.  She is the storm in any calm.  I like that in an XX: "Actually, if I told you what was in my head, you'd flee on your donkey. Bad, bad, head."

Lisa has some great shots from the Anti-Palin rally.

Don't even think of using "Blind Masseurs Jump From Bridge" as a poem title.  Emily has it all tied up.

There is something very strange to me about Danielle living and writing in Wyoming.  First off, I'm not that far from there, and I think of Danielle as living in some urban jungle surrounded by extremely hip dudes and dudettes.  Not that WY can't have them, of course, it's a great state, one to which I travel to see the buffalo statues and buy fireworks.  Still . . .

More XX tomorrow.

Posted by jbahr at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've gone from being insanely busy to being completely idle.  All the result of clients who say they will have the next step in our project Real Soon Now.  Dima is situating himself to his new Killer System.  I spent two days downloading wiring diagrams and using them to tear out the non-working stereo system in my 1990 Lexus to install a new extremely well-equipped Kenwood stereo (you can even plug in a USB stick with thousands of MP3, if you wish).  I finally got the sucker in and working, except the antenna doesn't go up when I turn on NPR.  Tomorrow, I'll work with Dima to get my backup DSL line in so we can talk reasonably on our VOIP lines while downloading.  Also, I'm doing jury duty.  Today, I had to go through the initial videos and watch the Voir Dire, as I was not called to be among the first 12 juror candidates.  As I suspected, the fireman and the engineer and four women were excluded by the DA or the defendant's attorney, who is on trial for some sort of aggravated mischief or something, which seems to involve him swearing and yelling at his girlfriend and breaking some of her or his possessions (not sure, had to infer that from the questions, as the actual trial had not started).  I'll be there again at 8.30 to fulfill my obligations as a citizen.  I am, of course, self-employed, so I could fill out a form and receive up to $50 a day for my trouble, but I think I'll just let them keep it and use it to buy more bean-bag guns for local law enforcement.

And now . . .

~~~

I like Robert's 2-D graph placing aesthetics on the dimensions Political/Apolitical vs Popular Cultur/Distain-for-Same.  I have had similar ideas a couple of years ago, placing the journals in 3-space.

Henry offers the possibility that "poets are born not made", which I agree with.

Kasey is working on "collection of poems in which the poet translates Shakespeare's sonnets, line by line, into anagrams".  Zounds!  What a project!  Not only does it have to be interesting and make rough syntactic sense, it has to follow the rhyme scheme.

Simon on the intentional fallacy, replete with #define statements.

Jonathan is obsessed with jazz.  So is my son, who recorded a Charlie Parker solo and slowed it down and sped it up until he could do it perfectly before auditioning for a top Jazz Ensemble at Columbia College.   On the other hand, Der used to do weed and wear Goth, so that's where the similarity ends, I suspect.

Ms. Dark displays a massed pictogram the color of Governor Palin's usual get-up, taken from the Poems by Mao Zedong.

(aside):  Why do liberal bloggers always have YouTube outtakes from Indie bands and jazz joints?  Right-wing blogs just have ads for T-shirts and Obama Waffles.

OK, TT wants to play chess with Rod Smith, whom I instantly thought was a Down Under tennis star from the old days.  No that's not right.l  Maybe a defensive back.  No maybe a state senator from Florida.  No, maybe a sportscaster.  No, maybe a remote-control modeling pioneer.  Ohhh, that guy, R.T. Smith (as I've always seen him in publication).

In what I'm sure is some form of ironic playfulness, Bernstein suggests we vote for McPain to "heighten the contradictions".

M. Burt reports good news from Denver that I should have known about but didn't because I'm hopelessly caught up in the greedy capitalist quest for paying my mortgage.

Steven is willing to give up his First-Book Contest List to the highest bidder of emotional capital.

Jordan shows up at the Poetry Foundation.  Good stuff.

From Gabe's blog:  "Social force is bound to be accompanied by lies".

Thank you, Josh for informing me of Reginald Sheppard's passing, about which I was unaware.  He was one of those people that gained currency with me every time I read his words.

OK, that bummed me out enough that I think I'll stop now.

 

Posted by jbahr at 06:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're like me, and I know I am (props to Kevvy), you're wondering if you should be worried about the stock market descending in one day's panic by a percentage not seen since 9/11.  Well, who knows?  Greenspan is not exactly ebullient.  McCain says everything's OK.  The Obama campaign sees a new issue to drive out the spirit of Sarah.  But seriously.  Yes, it's not good.  There is insufficient capital to backstop the highly leveraged portfolios of investment banks that recently got used to making huge profits borrowing a billion dollars to buy securitized mortgages (among other things) so they could sell them and make 3%, netting 30 million that could pad the CEO's bonus and deliver super-sized bonuses to top and upper-middle management.   It wasn't that long ago that Lehman Brothers, a 100+ year old firm, made $75 million a year running a relatively conservative business.  By embracing the Dark Side (as all the investment banks did), they grew that profit to nearly $4 billion without working up a sweat.  Likewise the other investment banks, that amazingly enough, avoid the kind of regulation and asset-to-debt ratios that normal banks have to adhere to.  And who's responsible for that?  Everybody in Washington who let the ridiculous combination of deregulation and lack of oversight happen.  Yes, there are some Democrats among the guilty, but the chief villains are the Republicans and all their apologists since the days of Reaganomics.  As we witnessed in the Keating Five scandal (one of whom was that poor POW, John McCain), when you deregulate, and then stand ready to bail out, you get a first-class greed-fest.  The CEOs of these and other companies who have profited from the Rush to Free-Market mantra have seen their salaries rise 5, 10, 15 percent every year for more than a decade, to the point where the ratio of Fortune 500 CEO salaries to their production workers exceeds 400 to 1.  If you checked the numbers for the last 100 years, you would find that this is the highest in history and far outstrips every other country's statistics (although by only about 2 to 1).

But, I digress.  Should you be worried?  The reader of my blog who are poets of modest means and little or no IRA/401(k) to speak of only have to worry about the slowdown in the economy.   Anyone middle-aged or older may see a 20% decline in their investment portfolio since June, which may be the difference between retiring early, retiring later, or not ever actually retiring.  And it's not clear it couldn't fall another 20%, which in most balanced portfolios and mutual-fund based account means another serious hit to the nest egg.  Even if you're a full prof with a TIAA-CREF account.

OK, Tina Fey was fabulous.

Just received a Crab Orchard Review, in which, stunningly, I couldn't find a single poem I liked.  Also Notre Dame Review, which had lot of them.  Names I recognize include blogmate Robert Archambeau, Ray DiPalma, John Kinsella (whose prose piece begins by telling us he was twice struck by lightning as a youth), W. S. Merwin, Susan Rich, Floyd Skloot, and Stephanie Strickland.  And Seth, of course.  The guy is a poetry machine.  He has a lifetime worth of first-class publication credits and he's still a young man, not yet finished with his MFA at Iowa.  But, I digress.   Merwin translates Dante's "Paradiso, Canto I" in what I thought was a decent job, not that I speak Italian.  Merwin actually managed to sound not entirely like the short-line, odd-breaks Merwin we all know and love.  D. E. Stewart captured my attention with an initial culinary line "Make the court bouillon to poach the sockeye with most of a bottle of Sonoma chardonnay."  It goes on page after page quite readably and occasionally brilliant.  I liked David Gordon's "From Voyage", too, a wild combination of allusion and Euclidean geometry.  Also liked Devin Johnston's "Early April":  "Under the Sinclair's brontosaurus sign, / three men collect around a coffee pot / on metal folding chairs".  Jonathan Rice's "Minkowski Space" was engaging and left me wondering if he really knows anything about it, which he could, hell, he could be another Simon for all I know.  I liked the concision shown in Larry Siems's "The Trick":  "St. Francis with a knife / set the skiff free".  There's a lesson in getting it said in few words, enjambment and imagery.  Seth has three poems to offer, of which I liked "Sixty-Day Shelter" the best.  They all take their time getting there, opposed to my in media res preferences, but that's what makes a horse race.  Alexandra Teague made me smile.  Tina Barger does her Henry Darger Poems, this caught my eye:  "A girl adorned with ram's horns growing from her head / smiles beneath a rose bush".  You have to appreciate precision to ken Thomas Dilworth's "11:15", though it is interesting.   Kevin Hart does a little formalism, but didn't grab me.  Archambeau (which has nothing to do with Rocks, Paper, and Scissors) cracks me up with "Hass and Pinsky Sail to Byzantium". 

Did you know that John Kinsella was a silver medalist in the 1968 Olympics for the 1500 meter freestyle?

Also, Gioia funds $1.3 billion poem.

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Posted by jbahr at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is hilarious.  Peggy Noonan (Reagan speechwriter and sellout political hack) and and Mike Murphy (Republican political consultant) are recorded after an interview not knowing that their microphones are live.  A sample:

Ooooh, Peggy.  You got some 'splaining to do.

~~~

Ex-bug exterminator, ex-House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, indicted on conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws, boss to two aides convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal . . . decided to show up at the Republican Convention and have a party!  John McCain was less than pleased.  The party drew "hundreds of delegates and Republican officials".  You gotta love these guys.

~~~

More than one commentator has called the Palin selection and subsequent revelations "an evolving train wreck."  I mean, what's next?  Not that it would matter to the Fundamentalist core of the GOP.  As a buddy of mine said "sex with an underage monkey on the gov's lawn, a gay monkey" wouldn't put a dent in her appeal to the nutcases.

~~~



As of this morning, Obama has the lead in popular vote polling, 48% to 40% over McCain.  The current projected electoral count is 307 for Obama, 230 for McCain.  Privately, most pollsters, including Republican strategists think that the electoral lead could actually be more substantial than that.  His polling numbers have just exceeded 50% for the first time ever.

~~~

One of the 600 POWs who suffered along with McCain has something to say.  Then, he says it on You-Tube.  The fact that he graduated in the top quarter of his Annapolis class (also awarded two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Purple Hearts) means he's sure to be Swift-Boated any day now.  BTW, McCain graduated 894 of 899. 

~~~

Bueller?  ... Bueller?:  Ben Stein on Sarah Palin.

~~~

Pitbull with lipstick?  I think it was an effective speech for everyone who was going to vote for McCain anyway.  Most of it was bullshit, of course, but we're so used to hearing Republican speeches about what they wish were true that I think it might work.  David Brooks has an insightful article out today (which is unusual).  After praising Palin for her oratorical skills, he sums it up by noting that she, like McCain governs from a moral philosophy, not a political philosophy.  That having two mavericks on the ticket is one maverick too many.  We'll see.


 

Posted by jbahr at 06:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Left to right:  Red Potato Salad, Patriotic Cole Slaw, Buffalo Burger.

Red Potato Salad

15 to 20 medium-sized red potatoes
3 large eggs (more if you like eggs)
6 sliced crisp petite dill pickles or cornichons
1/2 cup of vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 cup of olive oil
1 teaspoon of fresh dill
1/2 teaspoon of Italian herbs
1 cup of sliced scallions
A couple of shakes of paprika
1 Teaspoon of chopped fresh parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
Capers, if ya got 'em


Boil 15-20 medium-sized red potatoes in their skins in a pot of boiling water, with the top of the potatoes about 2 inches below the water's surface.  This should take 15 minutes or so, depending upon your altitude (longer in Colorado).  Test the potatoes periodically by poking with a fork, and rotate the potatoes from top to bottom at least once.  When you think you're about 5 minutes from softish-but-still-firm potatoes, lower 3 large eggs into the boiling water on top of the potatoes.  When the potatoes are done, take out the eggs and set them aside to cool.  Gently pour the potatoes into a colander and lower into a sink of cold water (I generally pour in some ice cubes, also).  While the potatoes are firming up, mix 1/2 cup of either lemon juice or vinegar with another 1/2 cup of olive oil (I tried half white wine vinegar and half rice vinegar this time).  Add a 1/2 teaspoon of Italian herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano), a cup of sliced scallions, a couple of shakes of paprika, and one teaspoon of fresh dill (chopped).  Stir up the dressing after adding salt and pepper to taste.   Slice the hard-boiled eggs or use one of those nifty multi-wired guillotine gadgets you always see in the bargain bin at Bed, Bath and Beyond.  Quarter the now cool and firm red potatoes, place them in a large bowl, together with the the chopped pickles and fresh parsley, and and gently stir in the dressing, until you think the potatoes are sufficiently covered.  You can also add capers, since as my son Ky always says, "Capers go with anything!" 

Patriotic Coleslaw

1/4 head of red cabbage
1/4 head of white cabbage
2 diced red peppers
1/4 cup of lemon juice
3 large carrots
1/2 cup of mayonnaise
1 cup of sliced scallions
2 Teaspoon of chopped fresh parsley
Salt and pepper to taste


This coleslaw is patriotic because it is red, white, and green.  So, if you're from The Maldives, Italy, Iran, Bulgaria, Hungary, or Oman, it's the colors of your flag.  This coleslaw is difficult to make without a food processor, but it you could probably use a mandolin.   No, not that kind of mandolin, the kind that has a cutting plane and a blade to create thin slices.  Loosely chop up the red and white/green cabbage and process in batches.  You can stop when you think it's been reduced to the size you like (I like it very finely chopped).  Break the carrots up with your bare hands, just to show you still have upper-body strength, and process them until you can't process them any more, which generally means that tiny pearls of carrot are stuck to the side of the processor bowl.  Roughly cut up the red pepper and process, as well.  Slice up a zillion moons of scallion, chop up the parsley and throw everything together in a large bowl for mixing.  For dressing, drizzle in the lemon juice and mix with a good mayonnaise.  Actually, I've found that a touch of Worchestershire sauce is nice, but try a little first to see if you like it.  Some people add mustard powder, which isn't bad, or celery salt.  Other additions to add some spunk include a small shot of Tabasco or a pinch of cayenne.  I've also tried for dressing a concoction of vinegar and cream, which sounds awful but is actually pretty good.  I've also seen yoghurt substituted for the mayo, but I didn't care for it.

~~~

Now, where was that rondelle?  I had it here somewhere.  Ah, here it is:

Rien Au Réveil Que Vous N’Ayez by Stéphane Mallarmé (1897)

Rien au réveil que vous n’ayez
Envisagé de quelque moue
Pire si le rire secoue
Votre aile sur les oreillers

Indifféremment sommeillez
Sans crainte qu’une haleine avoue
Rien au réveil que vous n’ayez
Envisagé de quelque moue

Tous les rêves émerveillés
Quand cette beauté les déjoue
Ne produisent fleur sur la joue
Dans l’oeil diamants impayés
Rien au réveil que vous n’ayez

and the translation:

Nothing in the waking you have
Foreseen by some pout
Worse if the laughter shakes
Your wing on the pillows

Indifferently you drowse
Without fear which a breath confesses
Nothing in the waking you have
Foreseen by some pout

All dreams filled with wonder
When beauty thwarts them
Produce flower on the cheek
In the eye unpaid diamonds
Nothing in the waking you have


Actually, I liked the translation that turned réveil into "alarm clock" best, but I had a feeling it wasn't quite right.

~~~
 

"On the pinhead front, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The sister of Britney says she is shocked. I bet.  Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her ..."

Bill O'Reilly, 20 December 2007

~~~

A Wasilla resident remembers Sarah:  They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness.  This is the best and most detailed account I've seen yet.  Pretty good replacement for Cheney, I'd say.  Now, if she would only shoot somebody in the face.

~~

You can get any kind of Obama pin you want here.  I particularly liked "Crotch Rockets for Obama".

 

~~~

I just ran across this fairly amazing site, retrevo.  It's linked to by a lot of online electronics stores, but you can just go there, too.  You pick your technology (such as HDTV's) and then narrow down the selection based upon price and features.  As you're doing this, retrevo is updating a graph of features vs. price and ranking the selections for you.  When you click on one of them, you obtain a large page of reviews from many, many sources.  This is really slick.

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