Phew

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So, since around 1998, I've been focused on two coming apocalypses: the economic collapse and the global climate catastrophe. The former is nigh upon us, but the latter may still be up to 20 years away -- anyway, it's not immminent, and I sometimes have hope that we may have a Manhattan island throughout my lifetime. Or, not to mortally jinx myself, throughout my actuarially predicted lifetime. That's a digression.

My approach to the former problem was to start credentialing myself as a high-income worker and hob-nob with the wealthy and powerful. This, then, is pretty validating:

EMMANUEL SAEZ[, the income-share expert and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley]: Perhaps the best comparison is the Great Depression. During that period, the income share of the top 10% was stable. But that masked a sharp fall for the top 1%. The income share of the top 1% fell from 24% in 1928 to 15.5% in 1931.
...
[It was such a big drop] [m]ostly because capital gains took a big hit, and I think it will in the coming years as well. One of the most important (factors) during the Great Depression was that profits to business took a huge hit. That affected the top 1%, but the top 10 % as a whole remained stable because the high-wage earners did pretty well during the Great Depression. Those guys rarely lose their jobs and don’t get much of a pay cut.

Can I retract that?

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I really don't predict we'll hit the Bush 43 Presidency low of 7286.27 from October 9 of 2002.

So... this statement is looking more challenged every day. We could totally go through this floor. You'll have to forgive me -- this was just mindless boosterism on my part.

I still think we'll pass 10,000 definitively in five years. It'll be part of inflating our problems away.

Tanzania: What Can the Country Learn From the U.S. Campaigns?

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I just want to saw I found that headline really disturbing. Stay good, Tanzania!

It must be noted that religious and racial sentiments are tool that can be used to tear apart the fabric of society. That is why some Americans are identifying themselves with candidates of their religion and colour.

Tanzanian politicians ought to avoid the use of such tags in elections or else the unity and peace we have been boasting about may soon melt like an ice cube does in hot water.

Do you even know the corporatist party candidate religions? They're both Christians, as is Cynthia, but to Christians, that covers a lot of ground. They're probably not Eastern Orthodox or Coptic. Wikipedia says they're Roman Catholic[Cynthia], Southern Baptist (née Episcopalian)[Rep] and United Church of Christ[Dem]. So, if people are separating along religious lines, the Greens are in a pretty good position. 

McKinney/Clemente Buttons Available

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As penance for my earlier abuse of our candidate, I'm handing out campaign buttons from a big bag I bought. It's not going so smoothly. People seem to feel the Green Party was a factor in installing W in office, but this is why instant runoff voting is so high on our agenda.

A Fucktard's Guide To Driving

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So, I've been thinking in recent days of writing a book called something like "Why you're a fucktard and how to change." I made up a little definition for fucktard -- someone who out of insolence or self-absorption behaves in a manner suggesting mental disability -- and came up with little explanations of everyday feedbacks like "if you stand in front of the subway doors, the people on the train can not leave, so the car can not leave. It doesn't matter how quickly you get on, as you're not leaving without the train," and "if you stand in the street waiting to cross, or even on the very edge of the curb, motorists will slow down, the street will not clear, and you cross later than you would have had you waited more than 12 inches back from the curb."

Just, you know, a path fucktards could follow to get themselves out of the hell they create and share with other people. I don't have the time to write such a book, and I can't maintain the negativity and self-righteousness it would require. Obviously, this idea only possesses me during my morning commute. Which is full of fucktards.

I was then pleased to see that this has been done for motorists, whom you might suspect start at a little disadvantage crawling out of fucktarddom.

[Tom Vanderbilt, who wrote "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do"] disappeared for three years into the university warrens of road scholars, who, more than 125 years after the advent of the automobile, are legend. "There are people with entire academic careers devoted to off-ramps," he says.

This was my dream in 10th grade, by the way -- to be one of these people. I wasn't even thinking of the beneficial confusion introduction myself as a 'road scholar' might create.

Perhaps most eye-opening is Vanderbilt's declaration that "the way we drive is responsible for a good part of our traffic problems." That's right, it's not what urban philosophers Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kunstler and, well, my brother and I, in our 1993 book, "Where the Road and the Sky Collide: America Through the Eyes of Its Drivers," have been saying all along -- we are burning in traffic hell for our greedy sins of rampant urban sprawl.

No, what's gumming up the highways are hideously self-absorbed drivers who weave in and out of lanes -- creating a chain reaction of people stepping on the brakes -- desperate to get to some utterly inane appointment for which they think they can't be late. It's not that America has too many people and too few highways. Nearly 90 percent of our roads are not congested 90 percent of the time. Look at it this way: If one-fifth of solo drivers hitched a ride with neighbors or friends to the business park or mall, we'd be sailing along Happy Highway every day.

The tall and slender Vanderbilt, a rather soft-spoken scholar himself, doesn't resort to loud adverbs to make his points about congestion. In his book, he gives way to traffic behaviorist Alan Pisarski, who blames affluence for cities jammed with narcissists in BMWs. Congestion, Pisarski says, is "people with the economic means to act on their social and economic interests getting in the way of other people with the means to act on theirs."

NEWCAG missed the agency problem?

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In another half-hearted attempt to pretend that he wasn't at the center of an Objectivist conspiracy to bring down the global economic system, NEWCAG

...told the House Oversight Committee that his belief that banks would be more prudent in their lending practices because of the need to protect their stockholders had been proven wrong by the current crisis. He called this a "mistake" in his views and said he had been shocked by that.

Greenspan said he had made a "mistake" in believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders and the equity in their institutions.

So... he didn't get that banks are run by managers, and managers have primarily short-term interests -- they want big bonuses quarter by quarter, and want to pump, vest and dump their options. He just missed it.

You know how in letters to the editor, and in movies where people are advising policy makers, boring people say obvious things? Apparently, they're really necessary.

I saw W. last night, and it showed a bunch of people telling a policy maker just downright crazy things. Those people? Not so desirable. But, it looks like maybe it's useful to write tedious obvious letters to your governing officials. They apparently want you to believe they don't think things through.

Optimism

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"[P]eak oilers" looking forward to another supply crunch should consider two things. First, recession, by resetting the demand baseline downward, extends the life of oil reserves.

While that makes sense, it misunderstands the peak oil paradigm, which is that consumption will outstrip discovery. By a lot. I haven't checked, but I don't expect that this is yet untrue. However, there's more.

Second, the U.S., energy-consumer extraordinaire, is more aware than ever of its oil addiction. The irony is that, as OPEC stabilizes prices, it will reinforce America's political will to deal with that.

At the risk of sounding cavalier? I can't stop giggling. Everybody feeling aware? How's that will doing?

Running up a third time

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If you were wondering how long it's been since I had a running up headline entry, the answer's twenty months. A few weeks ago, I tried to focus on vulgarity and celebrity references, and that's paid off. Here's the headline in question:

How We Ended Up Giving One Another Head, But Not in a Gay Way

So, I'm back in the headline writing roster. But, at what cost?

Really, having cracked the code, I feel like I should keep at this until I win. We'll focus on the moral qualms after they're relevant, which our leaders tell us is what grown-ups do.

Regularly Scheduled Maintenance

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OK, frankly? What do these guys take me for? I started erroring out on the page at 4 o'clock, and after 6:30 they start giving me this folderol about how they're updating the site and they'd always meant to do it at this time.

Is this really building trust with their other clientele?

That's Not Party Building We Can Believe In

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Update: This turns out to have been totally misguided. She's clearly identified as the Green Party presidential candidate all over her web page. I don't know if it just wasn't there when I checked, or I simply missed it. I'm probably laying my continuing sense of betrayal from Ralph Nader at Cynthia McKinney's door, which is patently unfair.

Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party Candidate for President, and I'm going to vote for her, as I'm a straight party line voter.

But, and I didn't make any bones about this in the nomination process, I don't particularly think she'd make a good president. I'm voting for her only becuase she's my party nominee.

Now, Cynthia has started sending out a lot of desperate communiques, saying she needs more money, she needs more volunteer time, and she doesn't understand why she'd not getting it.

For my part? I don't understand why the word 'Green' doesn't show up in a search of her campaign home page. She's cobbled together a coalition to lose with. You don't need a coalition to lose! You can lose on your own. And you're not going to get a lot of party activist support if you cast yourself as the leader of a movement and accept whatever presidential candidate nominations are lying around.

Funny enough to pass on

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I've got a real fondness for humor based on spam email. This one has kicks off

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

Will Call

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I'm going to the opera -- Karita Mattila in Strauss' Salome -- tomorrow, which is great. Except I bought season tickets. And this is what's going to happen:

1. I'm going to get the whole season's tickets at once tomorrow night at will call
2. For every other performance, I'm going to spend an hour and a half trying to locate said tickets.

Isn't this majorly stupid? I don't want to manage these physical tokens! I don't want to risk forgetting them! I want to preserve the option to skip my last planned trip home before show! I'm really not optimistic about my ability to convince them that keeping the tickets at will call for the rest of the season is a good thing. But, you'd think, that if they're willing to give me the tickets at all, they'd be willing to give me the tickets every performance.

What I realized earlier tonight is that the tickets themselves are probably unnecessary. They validate me, they give me my ticket, I present my ticket. I feel like if validating me were easier, the whole ticket could go away.

As a Christian, I can't embed any identifying or otherwise commerce-enabling techologies in my body (the Bible only excludes the forehead and the right wrist, but it seems safer to generalize,) but surely there must be something we can do. Maybe tap my RFID-enabled AmEx card? Can AmEx get on this?

Back when the Blue Card was new, the marketers at American Express realized that having a computer chip in the card was very powerful, and the applications were far broader than digital cash. They just didn't know what they were. So, they opened it up for a "give your idea to a major corporation" competition. I submitted this idea of a digital ticket for an event on the card itself, and went on at length about the infrastructure it would require.

I really think the time for that idea has come. Or is still here.

Please Don't Provoke the President

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Keep in mind that we have a President who, at the very least, created opportunities for terrorist attacks for the first 8 months of his presidency so that he could claim special powers when one happened, and also invaded a whole other country to help his party in the 2002 midterm elections. In light of that, is this really responsible writing?

[I]f [McCain] does [catch up] it would probably be as a result of a mistake by Obama or some sort of national-security crisis rather than anything McCain does for himself.

We should be really clear here. A national security crisis is not going to help John McCain -- he's not someone people are inclined to turn to in a crisis anymore. Even if there were a crisis impeding Senator Obama's ability to serve, it would help Joe Biden electorally. I'm not super sure what would happen if Senators Obama and Biden were taken out, but I do not think that a McCain presidency would be the most likely result.

And, furthermore, I don't think the President's strong enough to suspend the constitution and stay in office. I don't see that ending well. Seriously, focus on destroying the evidence of your crimes. You can't stay, and you can't put McCain in.

JFK's lowest approval rating was 56 %

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That's a little disorienting.

Apparently, Kenya has really strict visa restrictions

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The American author of a best-selling book attacking Barack Obama is being detained in Kenya because he does not have a work permit, a senior immigration official said Tuesday.
...
Obama's late father, whom he barely knew, was a Kenyan economist and the candidate is considered by many Kenyans as a native son. Minibuses are emblazoned with his picture and vendors sell T-shirts bearing his image.

As much as I like the idea of imprisoning propogandists and their sponsors, I can't support it. Restrictions on free speech aren't OK when we like the outcome.

Kenya is supposed to be a constitutional democracy! I know I keep asking Barack Obama to intervene in Kenya, but it would be especially nice in this case. Think of it: After Senator McCain has rolled out, "All Sleaze, All The Time," Senator Obama calls Mwai Kibaki and asks him to let this mudslinger go. It would be a nice contrast, right?

The IReagians

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So, if you were, like myself, laboring under the delusion that Reagan was installed by the Iranians' cynical manipulation of American Public Opinion and this somehow formed a relationship that turned into the Iran Contra Affair and Dick Cheney's "Iranian Puppet" Vice Presidency, I've got to tell you that that's not the current conspiracy theory.

Apparently, Reagan, Bush 41, et al, undertook to undercut Carter's attempt to spring the hostages in a successful bid to undercut Carter's reelection. The outcome's the same, I guess, except that it makes it seem like Dick Cheney feels like he's doing the Iranians bidding as his own man.

Mazda is desiging cars for a water starved future

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The Kiyora has one very unique feature--rain water is channeled from the roof through a carbon filter, filling up a bottle between the front seats. This is the car for a water-starved future.

It's good that they're thinking ahead, but they're designing for a water-starved future with a lot of rain. They should have run this past the system engineers.

George Bush Gets Favorably Compared to Somebody

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Now that Sarah Palin's on the world stage as "George Bush without connections," it's hard to remember an incident where the sitting President was deemed more capable or accomplished in any fashion than anybody else. Rolling Stone rolls forth to fill the gap.

John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

I'll take their word for it.

My Bailout Allegory

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You're in the cockpit of a cargo plane in Afghanistan, transporting refugees to Germany. You're scanning the skies for Turkish, Iraqi, Pakistani or Taliban planes, as any of them might want to shoot you down for your own purpose. But, mostly you're there to ensure that pilot doesn't get lost.

The pilot lurches forward in evident abdomincal pain. Turning to him you see that his skin is dessicated. A chunk of dried flesh tumbles from his temple as you watch He is literally coming apart.

You: What the Fuck!

The pilot turns to you. You can see the blackened blood vessels in his yellow eyes. He doesn't speak for a moment, then starts to croak

Pilot: I'm sorry, I thought I had another couple of days. I didn't want it to end like this.
You: What is the matter with you?
Pilot: I'm a vampire. I need to drink human blood to survive. I know that's awful. I'd rather die than take blood from one more human being.
You: There are 200 refugees in this airplane. You, I, and they are all going to die unless you keep operating this aircraft.

The pilot laughs huskily

Pilot: I can't be killed that way. As soon as my blood mingled with yours, I'd be fine again.

He continues to fly on in silence. You turn matters over in your mind After a few minutes, he begins to shudder violently, causing the plane to do likewise. Refugees start shouting and banging on the door.

You: How much blood do you need? Like, if I let you... feed... on our clients, how many are we talking?
Pilot: I know what you're trying to do I appreciate it, but I... OK, this has got to happen. Ten. Ten refugees would be fine. And, I'll just take a little blood from each. They'll survive. And, if they do die, there's only a small chance that they will arise to curse the earth as evil undead themselves.
You: Ten refugees! That's out of the question! Look, just take three.

The pilot dashes out of the cockpit too quickly and silently for you to notice

You: Three refugees. Maybe I'll let you take two more later. But, if you need the other five, we're going to have to call the UNHCR for approval.

The Pilot reappears. His right arm holds the elbows of two struggling Afghanis. His left arm releases one who sinks to the floor with puncture wounds on his neck. One of the refugees breaks free and dives under your seat as the pilot focuses his attention on the other.

Pilot; And, the refugees themselves? At what point will we confer with them?

He begins to drink. The man under your seat begins to shuffle, whine and cry.

You: I can't see them approving any part of this, so we'd better not ask. But, it's for their own good. Is there any other place you could do this?

The pilot laughs and reaches around under you, intent on finishing his meal.

Azazel

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So... in my rôle as a minutiae blogger, I'll tell you this. I was chatting last night about Sarah Palin at the Vice Presidential debate, and the young lady I was talking to mentioned she'd half expected Denzel Washington to take the stage. I replied, "to stop the archangle Azazel?"

Whereas she'd gone
Sarah Palin --> Debater --> "Great Debaters" --> Denzel, I'd gone
Sarah Palin --> Evil Archangel --> "Fallen" --> Denzel.

Now, it's possible you've never heard of "Fallen;" it's main significance to me was to show how much movies where the hero fails aren't enjoyable -- it really justified American cinema's tradition of successful protagonists for me. But, it came out ten years ago, and I may have mentioned it a few times since, but probably not in the last, oh, nine or so years.

I was talking today with an Aramaic couple. I asked the woman if she'd seen Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, which, of course, is in Aramaic. She asked her husband if he'd seen the movie with Aramaic, and he says, "With Denzel Washington? And the angel that passes from person to person by touch?" Apparently, it's got some Aramaic in it as well.

So, it's a little weird that in the space of two days, the same ten-year-old box office flop has been the wrong answer to two different questions in conversations I was in. It's all part of the cosmic unconciousness.

I read Vice Presidential qualifying media!

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Sarah Palin, she now claims, reads the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Economist. I read Professor Krugman's column in the Times Mondays and Fridays, and other stories as they come up. I subscribe to the other two.

Not only am I more qualified in foreign affairs than Sarah Palin, I read the right papers. I might end up VB by acclamation.

Mountain Redoubt

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Well, of course, the long term plan is to build a retreat at the treeline on a mountain, draw water from the ambient atmosphere, of which we expect a lot on fogball earth, and grow chemosynthetic algae for food.

Of course, buying an actual house now borders on moronic. But, there are apparently great deals on land.

Horton[, the nation's largest home builder by unit volume,] two weeks ago sold about 2,000 house lots in Desert Hot Springs, a blue-collar community in the far reaches of Southern California's Inland Empire, for $7.8 million, according to county records. William Shopoff, a land investor who bid unsuccessfully for the property, estimates Horton paid about $110 million for the land before spending to prepare the property for development by grading and installing infrastructure such as sewers.

So, maybe I should tighten the time schedule for this.

Did anybody hear about planned mountain communities? Or even a resort?

Facts Matter

link -- the WSJ has apparently stopped requiring logins for all its content, btw.
Governor Palin kept decrying 'Greed and Corruption on Wall Street'. I agree that corruption's a bad thing, but could she possibly have meant that they're only bad together? Can you imagine Wall Street without greed? It's not like trading bonds is a particularly satisfying job. You don't do it to create things that matter, change the world for the better or leave a legacy. It's all about the money. Maybe she's pro-avarice, but anti-greed; that's a little hard to parse, but I do have a Bachelor of Arts degree from an accredited institution.

Senator Biden's assertion that 'facts matter' responded to Governor Palin's complaint that Democrats felt how we ended up in Iraq was relevant, and he said something similar when she said, to paraphrase, "I can't speak to the causes of Climate Change, but we have to reduce emissions to address it."

I do love how Biden slammed John McCain for refusing to speak to the President of Spain.

Governor Palin held it together pretty well, and the debate was more watchable than I'd thought. I sort of felt her answers degraded as time went on. My biggest laugh was when she accused the abusive mortgage lenders of Putin-like head-rearing. But, this is it for Governor Huckabee, who is not going to fulfill my secret fantasy of swooping in to save the GOP ticket after Palin had been found wanting.

And I expect we'll see her again in 8 years. It's good that she supports fair marriage.

There's a 20 % chance of a hurricane hitting Ireland Saturday

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I know I always seem to be advocating panic, but... can I get a little panic? There's a 73 % chance Laura will at least be a tropical storm when she makes landfall.

This is a great time to leave Ireland.

The big news out of Ireland yesterday was that they're guaranteeing all bank deposits. This caused a run on English banks, as everyone transferred their accounts. Funny, right? Unlike a hurricane.

Look at the Belfast Telegraph. It's not that Tropical Storm Laura gets much less emphasis than "Britney Spears' ex-boyfriend offers sex tape for sale," it's that she's not mentioned at all.

These people had better focus.

Like Being President, But With Less Travel

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Bloomberg's going to blow through the term limits and be mayor again. This is good news, as I don't imagine his successor would be competent to understand our economic situation, much less navigate through it.

I'm not in general a fan of handing power to the wealthiest possible person and letting him or her do as they want, but it really seems to have worked out for us so far. And this explains Bloomberg's ultimate disinterest in being President. Mayor of New York just seems to be a better job.

How does putting off the Bush impeachment sound now?

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I just want to point out, that this was the folly of failing to do what the American people elected the Democrats to do in 2006, which was to eject President Bush.

The Pelosi/Reid cabal wanted to use their political capital on failing at other initiatives, as if it didn't matter who was in the Oval Office. Reasonable observers, by which I mean me, have rejected that as bunk right along.

It turned out that we did need somebody in charge. Who knew?

Quick Question

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Do you think those guys hanging out in Grand Central dressed in camouflage and holding machine guns work for the government?

Trouble Getting Off

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If you are in the last five cars you will not be getting off at South Ferry.

This pisses me off. I'm frequently on trains that have instructions like this -- the last two cars don't open at such-and-so or what-have-you. So, the natural follow-up question is, "What car am I in?" Have you been in a train in the US that you knew which car you were in? How about from the other end? All you can do is sort of hope it works out.

"The last five cars" is particularly egregious. You'd probably know if you were in the last car, as you would note a lack of following car. You might even have noticed you were in the second-to-last car when you got on. But, the fifth to last car? And the workers blame you.

Shoulda listened to directions.

Now, this is true in any system that serves the public but hides necessary information. They always have a lot of upset people, but the workers can't fix the information flow and don't want to feel they're participating in an unfair system, so they blame the user. It's human nature."Shoud've know you can only get down from the roof before dark!"

But, the fact that we put up with the crappy MTA information flows blows my mind. Where's the famous New York demand to be adequately served?

Laura

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How many storms have been named North of Cape Hatteras? Or even in the subtropics? The discussion says she's just getting tropical characteristics now. The wind speed probabilities give her a two-in-five chance of being a hurricane tomorrow, and a one-in-five chance of being one on Saturday. When she hits Ireland.

I'll bet they're not expecting that.

Update: I searched the Belfast Telegraph for Laura. Apparently, there was a model of that name mugged in July. When was the last time a hurricane hit Ireland?

Palin's the first politician with national profile I've heard admit the possibility of another Great Depression

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So, there's that.

Unfortunate for Sarah Palin

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I was just watching Jack Cafferty at CNN frame a Sarah Palin answer to a Katie Couric question. The question was, "couldn't $700 Billions dollars be spent better," and the answer was "shore up our economy." I think. Watch it and try to paraphrase it yourself.

Now, I know this got a lot of play when Palin was first selected. But, it seems more relevant every time she does an interview.

It it weren't for Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, we wouldn't have an easy metaphor for the Alaska Governor.

Carbon Dioxide output rose 3% from 2006 to 2007

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I'm really feeling like I should get on developing that mountain redoubt.

[I]t remains unclear how much industrialized countries will be able to reduce their carbon output in the years to come, regardless of whether developing nations seek to restrain their greenhouse gas emissions. The federal government predicts U.S. fossil fuel consumption will increase. Japan, Canada and several other countries that committed to reducing their carbon emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol have fallen far behind in meeting their targets.

Moreover, new scientific research suggests the globe is already destined for a greater worldwide temperature rise than predicted. Last month, two scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego published research showing that even if humans stopped generating greenhouse gases immediately, the world's average temperature would "most likely" increase by 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.

...

[T]he worldwide emissions growth is beyond the highest growth in fossil fuel predicted just two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

...

[W]e would be exceedingly lucky "for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastrophic," said Stanford University climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider.

And decreasing economic output doesn't seem to help.

Emissions in the U.S. rose nearly 2% in 2007, after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon.

...

Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said he was surprised at the results because he thought world emissions would drop because of the economic downturn. That didn't happen.

It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

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I could have warned the National Hurricane Center that putting a cartoon character's name -- in this case Kyle from 'South Park' -- on the Hurricane name list almost guaranteed it would be a bad one. And Kyle's got a 5% chance of hitting New York City with Tropical Storm force winds some time in the next five days.

With the bailout failing, the Pakistan responding military to our incursions from Afghanistan, WaMu failing into JPMorgan, GE cutting its profit outlook by 3.5 billion dollars, and presidential candidate John McCain trying actually to leave the race, things can start seeming a little shaky. But, cherish these days of global chaos! They're so much more distant and abstract than days of local chaos.

$17 billion in tax credits for wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectric, and geothermal power

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The Senate Tuesday voted to extend $17 billion in tax credits for wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectric, and geothermal power, easing fears that the fledgling alternative energy industry would find itself unable to compete with fossil fuels.

The tax credit, which was added to the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act, would extend residential and business tax breaks for solar energy for eight years, wind energy for one year, and other renewable sources, such as tidal and geothermal projects for two years. The bill also includes a tax credit of up to $7,500 for plug-in electric cars. The Senate approved the bill 93-2.

The House passed a version of the bill in May.

Nice. I was induced to read the article by the 'eats shoots leaves' headline, 'Senate passes tax breaks renewable energy,' which is missing something, probably the preposition 'for.' Initially I thought they'd passed a tax which would break renewable energy; this didn't sound like a good idea.

There was lots more on the Christian Science Monitor's Bright Green Blog. For example, New York is number 5 on the sustainable cities list. Not too shabby, as there are a lot of cities.

On the main site, there's the Moringa tree, which I'm all hot to try. I'm going to put this on the list with purslane.

The point, I guess, is that I should subscribe to the Monitor again.

Stop the Bailout

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FreedomWorks has an online petition to stop the bailout. Online petitions are fun!

I just saw this AP headline Bush warns 'entire economy is in danger'. I wonder what he says about how it got that way?

The president turned himself into an economics professor for much of the address, tracing the origins of the problem back a decade.

But while generally acknowledging risky and poorly thought-out financial decisions at many levels of society, Bush never assigned blame to any specific entity, such as his administration, the quasi-independent mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or the Wall Street firms that built rising profits on increasingly speculative mortgage-backed securities. Instead, he spoke in terms of investment banks that "found themselves saddled with" the toxic assets the government is now proposing to buy and banks that "found themselves" with questionable balance sheets.

Even the AP's getting feisty.

Movie Musicals

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I saw the Met Opera Opening Gala in HD on Monday. The wandering correspondents were all opera singers, divas, as they were female headliners. One of them came upon a fellow who was slumming it on Broadway, getting washed out of somebody's hair. He shared with his interlocutor that he was doing eight shows a week generally, and nine shows that week, as there was some charity event.

She and the next lady were a little bemused by the idea of doing that many shows. They found it a little difficult to compass. And it underscores how singable musical theater is compared to opera. And, it's easy to sing because you have to do it all the time.

But, movie musicals don't have that restriction. I'm suggesting that you can have both complex scenes with multiple locations and interesting music in a movie musical, given its special advantages. Of course, some one would want to stage it, and you couldn't have, say, Rick Moranis in a starring role.

'Tent cities' of homeless on the rise across the US

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Sent in by a reader...

"The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future," [Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the Washington DC-based National Coalition for the Homeless said.]

Homeless groups and government agencies from Seattle, in Washington state, to Athens in Georgia, report the most visible increase in homeless encampments in a generation.

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the '80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group of homeless groups in west coast cities.

Weasel Words

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[Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson] plans to work with Congress over the weekend to get legislation in place next week, he said, calling for "prompt, bipartisan action." The program must be big enough to have "maximum impact," while protecting taxpayers, said Mr. Paulson.

Well, as long as protecting us is a main goal, front and center, we can probably trust Secretary Paulson. He did come out of an investment bank, but he's a trustworthy government regulator now. I'm packed with trustiness.

"The ultimate taxpayer protection will be the stability this troubled asset relief program provides to our financial system, even as it will involve a significant investment of taxpayer dollars," he said.

What‽ He's going to protect us, but not by not giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to clearly irresponsible bankers. He's going to protect us by using the projected wealth of this country's future to shore up their bankrupt business plans!

There isn't that much money! Who knew the Federal Government would default during my lifetime? I guess, really, that this mean Communist China will have control of this area by the time we start encountering tsunamis and famine. And, frankly, we'd probably be better off under a totalitarian government during that time -- I'm not sure Democracy works in a crisis. But, be ready to fight for freedom once the climate's settle in a new mode.

Update: Robert Reich checks in:

What to do? Not to socialize capitalism with bailouts and subsidies that put taxpayers at risk. If what's lacking is trust rather than capital, the most important steps policymakers can take are to rebuild trust. And the best way to rebuild trust is through regulations that require financial players to stand behind their promises and tell the truth, along with strict oversight to make sure they do.

We tell poor nations they have to make their financial markets transparent before capital will flow to them. Now it's our turn. Lacking adequate regulation or oversight, our financial markets have become a snare and a delusion. Government only has two choices now: Either continue to bail them out, or regulate them in order to keep them honest. I vote for the latter.

One Last Snotty Question For The Night

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So, with stock markets around the world crashing, and foreigners and sovereign wealth funds deeply regretting buying into American institutions, do you still think that foreigners are going to continue to prop up Manhattan real estate?

Dow 10,000

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Just pointing out that I posted on Dow 10,000 last November. I also wanted to clarify that although the comments section made GE look like a good bet, I didn't recommend them -- I did know about GEAC (which exposes GE to the housing market and mortgage backed securities) even then. I'd interviewed there!

The Nadler Amendment

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Glenn Greenwald: My guest today is Congressman Jerry Nadler, the Democrat from New York....

Jerrold Nadler: I am drafting now a constitutional amendment... to limit the president's pardon power.

[A] president, number one can't pardon anybody except for a crime of they were already convicted.... The pardon is supposed to be tempered justice with mercy - get the justice first....

Number two, I would say you can't pardon anybody in your own administration, for anything connected with an action of that administration....

Number three, which I'm thinking of, but I'm not sure I want to do yet, is that no president can issue a pardon in the last six months of his administration.

It's a little odd that #1's needed, right? This has always bothered me about Ford's pardon of Nixon -- we should have convicted him first! This shouldn't require a constitutional amendment. This should just require somebody challenging a preemptive pardon, and the Supreme Court saying, "yeah, that's nonsense." Article II, Section 2, if you've forgotten, reads

The President shall... have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Backing a constitutional amendment here is an admission of a process failure. I always think it's harder yet better to fix the process itself. The judicial branch should be asked to clarify that blanket pardons are part of our country's more innocent youth. Not that I'm anti-amendment -- it'd be exciting to have one! The age of majority was set when I was three, and the only other one to pass in my lifetime I didn't even remember.Seriously, what's the 27th Amendment to the United States? Oh, yeah? So, smart guy, when was it proposed (Hint: the anniversary is in one week. The 219th)?

Number Two... well, I'm not convinced. The thing is, that 'the administration' is so broad. Without some effort to reduce the number of political appointees -- In 2005, it was 2786 -- you're creating a pretty large class of unpardonable people.

Say I'm a presidential appointee, and I become aware through my position that we're going to gas a village in some country we're occupying. Yes, I know we're totally incapable of committing war crimes, but hear me out. I call the foreigners and tell them to evacuate the village before we kill everyone. I've committed treason in time of war, and it'd probably be pretty hard to hide and I would obviously be guilty. I would then be sentenced to death. It'd be nice to know the president could pardon me.

Number Three... So, Dubya is having a tough last six months. He doesn't seem to get heard a lot. If he'd pardoned a large group of malefactors on July 21st, would we think any less of him?

The point here is that Representative Nadler, bless his heart, is trying to tie the hands of overtly criminal presidential administrations. But, the pardon power is potent and necessary. I like the pardon power. I would really, really rather the focus was on strengthening, or rather reforming, the organs of impeachment, so that if we have another overtly criminal presidency we can deal with it appropriately. And I prefer 'reforming' to 'strengthening' because Bill Clinton should not have been impeached -- his crimes and misdemeanors simply weren't high.

Leahy still concerned about assassination attempt

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I kind of have to say, if Patrick Leahy is not entirely satisfied with the explanation that a sorority-obsessed government bioweapons researcher tried to kill him before his (the researcher's*) suicide, I'm not.

Sen. Leahy did not say why he believed Dr. Ivins had help and he also cast doubt that the Army scientist was the attacker in the first place.

"If he is the one who sent the letter, I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people. I do not believe that at all," Sen. Leahy said.

He added: "I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact. I believe that there are others out there, I believe there are others who could be charged with murder. I just want you to know how I feel about it, as one of the people who was aimed at in the attack."

* -- Really, parenthetically clarifying the referent of a pronoun seems so David Foster Wallace. As does this footnote. And that stand-alone dependent clause. It seems like everything makes me cry these days, suggesting I'm in the fourth stage of the Kubla-Ross Anger/Denial/Bargaining/Depression/Acceptance stages of grief. Although I don't recall any bargaining per se, possibly because denial was so hard to muster in light of the short story "Good Ol' Neon" in "Oblivion", where DFW muses at length about phoniness and lack of self regard and suicide as the most accessible way to deal with the previous phoniness and lack of self regard issues.

Guess I should start saving up

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New York developer Mario Procida is also concerned; he's about to open a luxury condominium building overlooking Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza -- charging an average price of $1.9 million for units. "There has to be kickback in the marketplace across the board," he said.

Yes. A kickback. I don't think that word means what he thinks it means, but his meaning's clear. I know I've been telling you to sell for a while now. I think around March, Manhattan home owners will have taken a big enough hit that I'll stop saying that. I was a little demoralized when the banks pushed their fake profits all last year to prop up local real estate, but I'm guessing that's over, and we can refocus on the plan.

Even before the weekend, the financial-services industry had shed more than 11,000 jobs in New York and 20,000 in London. Lehman has about 25,000 employees, a majority of them in London and New York. Thousands more positions are expected to be cut through the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America Corp.

Jobs in financial services tend to be more important for the overall economy. About 5% of New York City's jobs are in financial services, but they account for about a quarter of wages, some $60 billion in 2006, according to the New York Office of the State Comptroller. That same year, personal and corporate taxes paid by the securities industry accounted for about 10% of the city's tax revenue.

Well, I thought the direct tax blow was a little worse. But, still. Bankers and "management consultants" buy the luxury goods and go to the goofy bars. Bankers pay the rent for "actresses." And now I wonder how many "professions" I'm going to end up putting in quotes.

The finance industry, much like the automotive industry, still may have more jobs than the economy can support. "Just how many investment bankers does the economy need?" said Thomas Philippon, a finance professor at New York University.

That's a great question. And the answer's not none. I'd say about a hundred. One in every ten thousand investment bankers are probably necessary to our economy.

Still, stocks of companies that own Manhattan real estate were hammered. Merrill's biggest landlord in New York, Brookfield Properties Corp., saw its stock plummet 18% to $17.40 Monday as of 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Little House on the....

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“It’s a very exciting moment,” said Shay Salomon, a green builder in Tucson, Ariz., and the author of “Little House on a Small Planet” (Lyons Press, 2006), “because it feels like a chapter of American history might be ending, the chapter called ‘Bigger is Better.’ I’m not the Gallup poll, but I hear the same story over and over: We got rid of that big house, and now I have time to see my husband. Before, we used to work all week and then we’d spend the weekend on the house.”

I started titling this blog "little house on the" and then I was searching for something that recalled 'prarie' but was accurate to complete the reference. Then I realized the picture captioner from the New York Times had done the exact same thing, calling it "little house on the freeway." Shame on you, New York Times! You have to leave the easy references to us armchair commentors! Coming up with clever captions is your full time job!

I had a friend who bought a little house, a 'bungalow', in Ballard in the early 90s. It seemed a little nutty, but of course I was convinced that what everyone else saw as appreciation and free money was in fact a real estate bubble. Uh, time will tell -- Seattle certainly hasn't relaxed to 1993 prices yet. It was only big enough for him -- a bedroom, a kitchen, a dining room. I believe he had a crawlspace as well.

But, I would totally buy a house like that if I were to start a family. It would have to have a second bedroom, to stack the children in, but I'm really befuddled by the size of the houses people I know live in. Don't they know that if you can't use up all the space you have at home, you'll never participate in civic life?

Gregory Paul Johnson, a founder of the Small House Society in Iowa City, said that the notion of very small houses becoming popular was “an absurdity” five years ago. “But there are so many powerful forces at work right now,” he added, “like rising energy costs and the mortgage crisis. I think people want small homes because they cost less to purchase, maintain, heat.”

In July, Mr. Johnson, who lives in a 140-square-foot house made by the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company of Sebastopol, Calif., took to the road to promote his vision of living small, along with Jay Shafer, Tumbleweed’s founder. The two men drove from Victoria, British Columbia, to San Diego, pulling Mr. Shafer’s house behind them on a trailer. (Tiny houses, which rarely have foundations, are often built on trailers.)

Along the way they stopped to hold workshops and give (very brief) home tours. Some events drew hundreds of people. “It seems like everybody is fascinated by the idea of living in a tiny house,” said Mr. Shafer, who started Tumbleweed eight years ago. “But for a long time, I was just selling the dream.”

OK. I think I'm going to start doing this with everything I spend over $100 on. Tow it around the area and give tours. There are a lot of details to work out, but that's the plan now.

“I’ll have a sense of where the balance is,” he added — a sense that he hopes will help his family decide on a reasonable goal for downsizing, something he is eager to do soon. “We bought this house, I think, for prestige,” he said, sounding chastened.

Oh, did you see that coming? That's right, I'm talking about the housing bubble. Buyer's remorse is maybe too modest a phrase for the real estate hangover from the NEWCAG years. So, these huge houses will be foreclosed on, and eventually destroyed. They're just going to go away. I'm looking forward to a brighter future.

Biden

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OK. I'm going to try to mention this without getting sucked into campaign ephemera.

"There's a gigantic - gigantic - difference between John McCain and Barack Obama, and between me and I suspect my vice presidential opponent. And that is that - "
The crowd laughed.
"Well there's obvious differences," Biden said, beginning to ham it up. "She's good looking," he said, laughing.

Does this remind you of Senator Biden's remarks to the Observer in January of last year?

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Apparently, Joe Biden is a lookist.

BWX not looking so good

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So, these foreign countries were weighted toward ones with serious problems of their own. BWX is now 0.13 % below it's open last October. And, of course, Lehman is on the verge of collapse.

With its massive losses on troubled real-estate securities, the 158-year-old Wall Street firm has been subject to persistent rumors about its solvency, which it says are false. Mr. Fuld has presided over a stock decline of nearly 90% this year... [T]he rolling financial crisis [has] claim[ed] other big players -- Bear Stearns Cos., which was bailed out in March, and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac....

I don't imagine the ETF will do very well if its sponsor pulls out -- I'll just be another creditor suffering through receivership.
But, there's hope. Not for Lehman, for me.

Last week, the central banks of Russia and South Korea again charged into the markets to shore up their currencies by selling billions of dollars from their stockpiles of reserves.

Other governments in developing countries, including Thailand, India and Pakistan, have also intervened to bolster their currencies in recent months.

The sums involved are large. Russia spent about $14 billion in August alone, the largest such drawdown in its reserves in at least a decade, as foreign investors fled following the conflict with Georgia. South Korea has spent more than $21 billion -- or roughly 8% -- of its reserves in the past five months to assist the ailing won.

Maybe I'm too sentimental to be an investor. Or too attached to being right. In any case, banks fail on Fridays, so I have a couple of days to act. Maybe the Everbank Debt Free Index CD?

Bush Interior Department's Minerals Management Service: a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity

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As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

Doood! Even if blanket pardons make the Bush appointees unprosecutable, we should investigate them anyway just for the lurid details.

Carfree Communities: One more thing it's easy to forget about in New York

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I have a Google Alert on my name, and it often dredges up old stuff. So, I was looking at some old bulletin board postings of mine and came upon the list of communities by how non-car-dependent they were. As far as car free households in the US, only eight communities top 50 %. Hooper Bay City, Alaska tops the list at 95.67 % (it does have roads), but it only has 1000 people. New York City is Fifth -- Second, Third and Fourth are nearby Hasidic communities. For some reason, Atlantic City squeaks by at 50.28 %, but New York City is the only other community with more than 40,000 people of which more than half the households don't have cars.

And, not to go out on a limb here, but I suspect the cars are overwhelmingly in the boros. So, I really live in a community with fewer cars than the norm. Not that I have anything to say about it, I'm just trying to keep it in mind.

If we just look at cities with populations over a quarter million, Seattle's 25th. This might not sound so bad, but LA's 24th. Compared to Boston (8th -- America's Walking City) and Manhattan, it was much tougher to get by without a car in Seattle.

The End of the Federal Government

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Wow. I guess the Objectivists have won. America couldn't survive their agent Alan Greenspan. You've heard that

the government now has control over the companies that fund around two-thirds of all new home mortgages. Or, as the LAT succinctly summarizes: "Washington's move means the federal government will directly back the great majority of the nation's home mortgages."

But, really, this is the line that got me.

But, on the upside, if the companies return to profitability, the government would be first in line to get its money back.

Yes. The government can break even if it engages massive inflationary policies now.
Sounds like Iraq update:

The NYT emphasizes that when Congress awarded Paulson the power to bail out the mortgage giants if necessary, he never intended to use it. "But he quickly learned that getting those powers made their execution inevitable," says the NYT.

Report: US should stop bombing Afghan villages

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So, I've captured a part of Salon.com's wire feed (Glenn Greenwald from Saturday was great, by the way) and reproduced it below.

• Powerful Hurricane Ike may slam Florida Keys
• Russia to send naval squadron, planes to Venezuela
• Report: US should stop bombing Afghan villages
• US government takes on big role in mortgage market

More Wires

Imagine that you're an associated press headline writer. What's the moral thing to do? I guess trying to stop the bombing of Afghanistan in the way you frame your headlines could help. I'm not sure why they stopped there, though. Why not, "US should focus more resources, leadership on disaster preparedness, response;" "US should cool it on erratically antagonizing neighbors;" "US should undo 120 years of mortgage enablement." What's funny here is that the AP -- and news outfits in general -- don't take that extra step and draw the obvious lesson from what's going on unless Human Rights Watch releases a report, reviewing what they published themselves, but adding a line like, 'and that should stop.'

Here's a bit from the story.

The U.S. and NATO militaries must stop carrying out airstrikes in densely populated Afghan villages unless intelligence is highly reliable, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday that also urged military leaders to accept responsibility for civilian casualties as soon as possible.
...
Afghan and Western officials say Afghanistan's intelligence agency and the U.N. both have video of the aftermath of the airstrikes on Azizabad village showing dozens of dead women and children.

An Afghan government commission has said 90 civilians, including 60 children and 15 women, died, a finding that the U.N. backed in its own initial report.

In the report released Monday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said that at least 540 Afghan civilians have died in insurgency-related violence this year, including at least 367 killed by insurgents. The group said it used the most conservative estimates of civilian deaths and excluded the Azizabad incident.

An Associated Press tally of civilian deaths this year found that international forces have killed 160 civilians, while insurgent attacks have killed 540. That tally also excludes Azizabad.

Human Rights Watch said its investigation found that civilian casualties rarely occur during planned operations and airstrikes on Taliban targets, but that high numbers of civilian deaths happened in retaliatory strikes after troops were attacked.

One More Enemy Going

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So, I used to subscribe to the New York Sun. They'd bring it by my apartment every morning. They'd also leave copies at all of my neighbors doors, a fact which did not amuse them. I canceled my subscription, and the papers stopped.

I moved.

I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal comes faithfully to my stoop every day. But, so do three copies of the Sun. The Journal and the Sun both refuse to do anything about this. My only option has been to call the Sun three times, misrepresent myself as the mythical addressee on the paper, and ask that the subscription be stopped. I haven't done it, because I think members of Hewlett Packard's board went to jail for something similar.

But, now, the drama is coming to a close. The Good Lord, as he always will, is smiting my enemy.

The New York Sun will shut down at the end of September unless it can find new investors to pump millions of dollars into it, the newspaper announced on Wednesday.

Shouldn't have screwed with me. Just saying.

New Story Up At The Spoof

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These are the images I wanted to use.

Don't waste all of your worry on Gustav

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I wonder when the last time two hurricanes made landfall in the United States during a major party convention? Maybe Michael Brown can keynote.

And, oh, by the way, there are now three systems the NHC think might turn into tropical cyclones. This should keep McCain focused on the GOP's powerful service to the country during Katrina.

China is so... China

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Sorry, this is probably not the worst thing China's done during the week, probably not even the most dishonest thing they've done in the Olympics, but it's just so bald-faced.

Fireworks over the Olympics pyrotechnics erupted when it was learned that part of the elaborate display broadcast to the world in the opening ceremony was faked, done digitally in 3-D computer graphics.

...

Even those at the city’s new Bird’s Nest National Stadium, where the Olympics are being held, viewed the fake footage from their seats as they watched on the stadium’s giant television screens, said Britain’s Sky News, in a story, “Olympic Fireworks Faked for TV.”

...

“Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” [Gao] Xiaolong[, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony] said in comments that appeared in the Daily Telegraph. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live — so that was mission accomplished.”

Just when you think that your government ranks among the most deceitful in the world, the Olympics creates a reality check and lets you know what the competition's really like. At least 'mission accomplished' is now used to mean 'I have successfully defrauded a large number of people.' C'mon Team Bush! USA! USA!

In Anthrax Scientist’s E-Mail, Hints of Delusions

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I love how the media rushes to reassure us that only madmen acting alone try to kill Senators in the Democratic Caucus, as if to say, "This is still not a rational thing to do." The official government line is that there was one man, acting alone, sending Anthrax out from his grassy knoll.

Does Secretary Rice care to comment on how torture helped close the case?

It's worse for America if we don't

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Dahlia Lithwick from Slate talks to TPMTv. I had no idea people besides me were even talking about Truth & Reconciliation. I guess I should start reading blogs.

Once again, the jig is up

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Just making sure you didn't miss this illicit book preview from the Politico.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

Once again, it looks like the Bush Administration has been caught in an act that would make it impossible for them to govern, and should force Shrub's immediate resignation.

It's important to keep hope alive. One of them might stick!

Agora Financial argues against marriage

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I've been reading Agora Financial's 5 Minute Forecasts, and I'm excited about seeing their IOUSA movie on August 21st, the one night it's playing. But, I just checked out their 'Rude Awakening' and saw this:

[I] prefer as little irrational volatility in life as possible. It’s the reason he prefers gold over Pakistani tech start-ups; a simple espresso over a $19 frappa-mocha-something-or-other; a steady girlfriend to an ex-wife. To be sure, there’s probably value to be found in the riskier alternatives, but the opportunity cost of perusing them invariably outweigh the potential benefits. 

Ah, OK. Apparently getting married is an increase in volatility. Well, there you go.

I wrote a theme song

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You might wonder how often I write songs. I write them whenever I do the dishes, which works out to about four times a year. Anyway, I was thinking of holding a 'Malechem in Manhattan' get together, so each of you could come to know there was more than one of you, but I wondered how you'd know each other. My thought was, each person would sing the first verse when he or she walked in, we'd all respond with the chorus, four people would take a line each of the second verse, then we'd all sing the chorus again. I'd sing the third verse and the chorus, and we'd all sing the last bit together.

But, I can't really see that happening, unless I can get out of the real world and into a movie musical. Without further ado, here's the song

---

I get out of bed every day in the morning
A fog in my head and a taste in my mouth
I'm looking around to find someone to tell me
Why it always seems like it's all headed South

(Chorus)
Wo ho! Malechem's on fire
Wo ho! Malechem's the one
Wo ho! We all read Malechem
We read him for profit
We read him for fun

I'd be all for nuke were there no Homer Simpson
I get all upset that sea levels attack
It'd simplify things if we paid tax to Goldman
Democracy's gone, how can we get it back

(Chorus)

I sit all alone 'cuz no one will sit near me
They say I speak doom when I'm speaking the truth
I don't see that much, but I think I see clearly
I've been such a downer since I was a youth

(Chorus)

Wo ho! We all read Malechem
Wo ho! Malechem for fun!
Wo ho! Rionn Fears Malechem
There's only one blog you need under your thumb.

Barack Obama has played the race card and he played it from the bottom of the deck

link via Talking Points Memo
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said this Thursday on a conference call* with reporters. Doesn't it make the McCain campaign seem kind of inchoate? 'Playing the race card' is an obvious references to a trick game, like Hearts. I think of it like the Queen of Spades. But, dealing from the bottom of the deck is part of, well, dealing. You have a card to want to direct to a certain special someone, so you deal from the bottom of the deck for that person. Or, really, you can see the cards on the bottom of the deck, so you might just deal from the bottom to know what everyone's getting. It's underhanded. Come to think of it 'underhanded' itself may be a reference to dealing from the bottom of the deck, but it's more likely from dueling.

Anyway, the metaphors come from two distinct parts of game play. Mixing metaphors is fine, but these two are so close that the quote just gives you a sense that McCain HQ is sort of falling apart.

* -- I think. It's not actually clear from the story.