kirktastic

In Salon there’s an article called Sarah Palin: The view from Alaska. It confirms my suspicions of the Hockey-Mom-Joe-Sixpack-Governor of Alaska. Others have called her Bush in a dress and that is an apt description. Palin is faking her Alaska frontier woman bona fides, just as Bush has his old Texas country boy act. George W Bush bought his “ranch” in Crawford as he was beginning his run for president. A large house in an upscale neighborhood in Dallas wouldn’t help sell the image he’s a man of the people. I’ve lived in Texas for 14 years and have no accent. I’ve met people from all around the state and have never heard anyone with Bush’s accent. Just as most of the voices I’ve heard from Alaska do not sound like Palin.

Bush has 100 days left in office, provided marshall law isn’t declared — it can be due to an economic crisis — and elections are suspended. I nearly died laughing when reading that we’re lucky he’s still around to help us through this crisis.

After McCain/Palin rallies started looking more and more like racist rallies, I was beginning to get a little concerned that racism would decide this election. McCain and Palin actually were silent as people in the audience shouted “kill him” or called Senator Obama a terrorist. But on Friday we see that John McCain actually stopped being the douchebag candidate he’s turned into for a few minutes to speak the truth.

You can almost see it in his eyes when he realizes what he’s done. By appealing to the hard right “base” of the party his town halls have become made up solely of the morons that really think that Obama is an Arab terrorist. They really are afraid that a Black many might be president. There are examples of this out and out racism all over the country. By really turning up the Palin mouth breather crowd, he’s also getting an ugly subsegment. And this, my friends, his really damaging any change of attracting any of the fabled “undecided voter.” Because, really the racist voters wouldn’t vote for Obama anyway. And the hardcore pro-lifers wouldn’t either. One thing I read was someone thinking that this sharp move to rile up the base was to make sure he can count on them actually voting. If the base doesn’t think that he can win, they aren’t motivated to go to the polls. Other republicans on the ticket could suffer if that happens. (Which is why I suspect that the people actually running the Republican party — you know the ones that got him to put Palin on the ticket — think that even they lose the presidency, they can make sure the base turns out to keep republican seats in congress and at the local level). Sadly, the race is close in the same states as last time and the one thing the swing states have in common is not their progressive attitudes on race and tolerance. So if the rednecks do come out in PA and OH (and others) McCain still has a chance.

His “you don’t have to be afraid of an Obama” presidency line is almost a concession that he’s not going to win.

Sadly, I read this morning, that after McCain’s words to have the fanatics simmer down, that his campaign is now saying those racist morons are actually plants from Obama. This is also part of his handler’s narrative that it is Obama’s fault there are racists attending McCain rallies. Just as when he suspended his campaign when all he really did was suspend his appearance on Letterman, we shall see if McCain and his pit bull in lipstick raise their rallies from the gutter.

Speaking of Churchy Spice, the Alaska legislature (dominated by republicans) report on Troopergate came out. Although if found her guilty of violating ethics statutes it probably doesn’t change anything. She’s a maverick. Mavericks don’t follow the rules! The McCain/Palin campaign earlier in the day released its report (made up entirely of Palin appointees) that absolved her of any wrongdoing. Palin was also whining that the legislative committee didn’t interview her. BECAUSE SHE REFUSED TO TALK TO THEM. The investigator would have flown to wherever she was on the campaign trail to do that, but she didn’t. Agent of change? Bullshit, she’s a typical politician.

The House of Representatives passed the big bailout bill it rejected on Monday. The difference in the two versions was the version the House passed had $150 billon in pork added to it (things like tax treatment for wooden arrowhead manufacturing and Nascar racetracks). The other difference is it was called a bailout on Monday but a “rescue” plan on Friday.

The New York Times has a great article today on what is next for this bailout plan. The first thing is Paulson gets to give $250B to a Wall Street firm to manage rather than have the government manage it itself. This firm (I’m betting Paulson’s former firm Goldman Sachs) will get billions in fees to manage this for the taxpayer.

What has bothered me about this is some of the conflicting information about the “Main Street” impact of this financial clusterfuck. The Politicians and the talking heads on CNBC say that commercial paper is harder to get so small businesses are having a hard time making payroll and buying equipment. But on the local NPR station and in some other places, I’m hearing at the local level, banks and small businesses aren’t having troubles getting credit. I don’t have perfect credit but I got a car last month with 0.9% interest. A credit card just raised my limit without me asking. Is this crisis really the doom and gloom that we’ve heard of? When CNBC was covering the debate on the floor of the House yesterday they happened upon a clip of a representative saying it is so bad there is no gas at gas stations in parts of his state. Really? No gas? It is hard to tell the difference between what is really happening and fear mongering.

Also, let us not forget this $700B is in addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars spent taking over AIG and propping up other financial institutions.

The New York Times does a good job laying out the timeline of this financial clusterfuck.

And we learn on Friday morning Wells Fargo wants to buy Wachovia even though Wachovia was in an FDIC arranged marriage with Citi. But Citi’s deal required the government to take on the debt. The Wells Fargo deal doesn’t require government intervention. And when WaMu failed, the FDIC worked like it was supposed to. It lined up Chase to buy the bank operations meaning that depositors didn’t lose a cent. Nor did the FDIC have to pay anything out from its dwindling funds. If Wells Fargo is going into this deal saying publicly it will do it w/o government bailouts. But to hear pundits talk, the end is near and only this $700B check will fix it.

The housing “industry” is in crisis due to a lot of stupid people doing completely stupid things. Yes, you can blame the dumbshits that bought houses they couldn’t really afford. But you should also blame the dumbshit banks that made the loans. Banks that didn’t require a verification of income or ability to pay. It was easier to buy a house than it was to get a cell phone contract! But the engine needed new mortgage or refinances to work. The huge house construction industry needed new home buyers to buy the homes that they were building. The mortgage brokers and realtors wanted commissions. Everyone was winning when homes were doubling in price. Now everyone loses.

There’s a great story called Foreclosure Alley about what is going on in Southern California right now. When I visit my momma in Las Vegas I see the same thing (except they painted grass part) and in my former home in Phoenix. Giant subdivisions rotting from the inside. When you see the comments in newspaper websites or other places saying the foreclosures are the person’s own fault and being happy it is happening are forgetting a critical part that this KCET story has in it. When all your neighbors default and abandon their homes, that makes your home worthless too. Your $400K house is now worth $180K. Too bad if you owe $380K on it. I’m not exactly sure how Mr. Paulson’s bailout is going to fix that.

Oh, Sarah. The debate on Thursday was kind of a letdown in the sense we didn’t get to see as much of the Sarah Palin that mean Katie Couric showed us who couldn’t name a newspaper she reads or a Supreme Court case she disagreed with (even the one between Exxon and Alaska that lowered the damages of Exxon fucking up Alaska). But we did see the talking points machine not answering questions. In her rush to make sure she got all of her talking points out she failed to actually say anything substantive. If you missed the debates (or even if you saw them), here’s Mr. David Letterman’s roundup. Is it really too much to ask for a candidate that is running for an office that gives him/her the opportunity to launch nuclear weapons to actually be able to pronounce it correctly? I know I’m coming off as an east coast elitist when I say this, but it would also be nice to have her pronounce words ending in a ‘g’ as well? And “betcha” isn’t really a word.
Oh, and this McCain/Palin Ad? That was a real ad that appeared on WashingtonPost.com for a few hours on Friday. As someone who has managed advertising, I know how it is important to proof work before sending it out the door. Then again, I’m not a maverick.

I don’t really care what “Famous Person” thinks, I’d rather here the opinions of “Area Man”. This is The Onion, right? It isn’t? We are so fucked.

Required reading: Make Believe Maverick — The Real John McCain. Yes, it is in that commie rag Rolling Stone, but it does paint a different picture of that maverick running for president with Churchy Spice. That line about going to Rio to get laid? This lady says McCain was “tasty” (shudder)

Do I know my way to San Jose? Yes, I was in California for a few days earlier in the week for a business conference thingy. Instead of having to stay at a chain hotel near my company’s offices out there, I got to stay on Santana Row this time. Which was nice since being within walking distance of something to do was nice. Starbucks coffee and Wahoos too. Nice people watching. I do indeed wish they all could be California girls.

It meant I had to fly in American fucking Airlines. So the plane was 90 minutes late leaving Austin. Not due to poor weather anywhere in the US, but just because American Airlines sucks and there was something wrong with the 27 year old plane they chose for this route. Beer was $6 in coach! You can get a 12-pack of of Old Style for that! The flight back left on time, but when we landed in Austin and I turned on the my phone I got a tweet from the newspaper that the power was out in the terminal. This explained the longer than normal time rolling around on the ground. We were parked out in the middle of BFE when the captain came on to tell us that the power was indeed out at the airport terminal and we had to wait for them to restore it and open the airport. I went online to learn that part of the fuckup was when the power went off and it set the fire alarms off. So of course, the TSA freaked out and emptied the terminal even though there are backup generators. We ended up waiting about an hour. Since there is a noise ordinance there are no departures that late, but the last few planes that come in (including mine) are met with a skeleton crew of ground staff. So when all of the planes that had landed in the past hour or so all got the OK to come into the terminal, the place was packed. In the baggage claim it was a zoo with all the people that had come to meet the incoming planes and only about 2 guys in the back to unload the planes and put them on the baggage carousel. I think if I had checked a bag, I would still be there waiting for it. The van to the parking lot was full and it has valet and all these special services so I jumped off when we got there instead of waiting for them to get to my car. The time I saved doing that was sucked up when I get to the cashier. One dude that seemed to be a complete moron working the gate. God I was pissed. I mean it is nice they hire special needs people there, but fuck I just want to be home. Turns out a snake caused something to fuck up at a substation near the airport. Damn snakes.

Speaking of snakes… the drama that is the John McCain campaign continues. I’ve spent way too much time hitting reload on websites since this all came to pass. Sarah Palin’s interviews with Katie Couric were telling. She got all her talking points messed up and came across as a babbling idiot that didn’t even manage to really actually answer Katie’s questions. And this person is who John McCain thinks is ready to lead the country on day one if something happens to him? There are tons of conservatives calling on her to bow out of the election. Last week they were blaming the “liberal” media for “attacking” her, now they see that even if handed softball questions, she can’t answer. Palin is way out of her league.

When he “suspended” his campaign and asked to delay the debates until the economic crisis was over on Wednesday I was stunned. What does that mean? It turned out he didn’t stop campaigning or running ads. He ended up pissing off David Letterman who showed him instead of rushing to the airport to get to DC, he was in makeup prepping for an interview with Katie Couric. Dave’s rant was great. Obama’s response to the suspension was great. A president should be able to handle more than one situation at once. With the “suspension” stunt McCain lost a lot of cred with the conservative media. It was a stunt. Just like Palin.

It then turns out that part of the last-minute revolt by House republicans was so that McCain could inject himself into the process (even though he’s not on any of the relevant committees and he himself admits doesn’t know shit about economics). The meeting at the White House was telling: Obama showed up with his Senate aide since this was a legislative matter; McCain showed up with his campaign aide since he was there for politics.

McCain ended up “blinking” which according to his running mate is not something the president should ever do and showed up at the debate. I really think McCain would think that Obama would roll over and agree to delay the debate. It shows that McCain’s people have no idea what Obama is all about. Had McCain not shown up at the debate, it was to be a town hall meeting that the networks had already blocked time for. Of course that crazy old bastard had to show up.

I started to watch the debate but after a while I just got angry. McCain was there bullshitting and using his trademarked platitudes and not really debating anything. Obama was measured and thoughtful, but I wanted him to be more on the offensive. On the “Montana Bear DNA” line he could have jabbed back with “but you’re OK with the Seal DNA earmarks your running mate asked for?”. He could have hit back of how expensive the fucking war is. He could have been better about the fact that if McCain’s health care plan passes, we have to pay taxes on our health care (not just the part you pay, but the part your employer pays… it comes to thousands more a year. For rich people it is a small part of their income and offset by other tax cuts, for the rest of us, it means we have to pay more in taxes).

I’m sure Obama was not going on the attack so as not to appear to some as an “uppity negro” beating up the old man. The fact is most of the racist wouldn’t going to vote for him anyway. But McCain needs to be beaten up. His answers were only about 10% more lucid and 0% more meaningful as what Palin said about the economy.

What bothers me is no matter how many stunts McCain/Palin pull, the race will be too close to call. Which means it will be too easy to steal. The single issue voters will stick with Palin. The racists will never vote for a black guy. The warmongers will vote for McCain since it means more war. And there are still many weeks for McCain to be all mavericky and pull more surprises out. One thing is certain, he will do anything to be president. Risk the nation by picking someone incompetent for the job as VP. Ask for a time out. Anything. McCain is dangerous. I don’t believe a word coming out of his mouth. I didn’t think it would be possible that anyone could be worse than Bush. But I didn’t have the imagination to dream up Johnny McCain and Sarah Palin.

I can’t help but be a little nervous about the Bush Plan For Saving the Economy. If this is anything like the War on Terror or response to Katrina, we are all fucked. We (as a country, as taxpayers) are going to take our $700 billion in new debt. To buy up bad debt from Wall Street. The “losses” are not really lost. Many people got billions of dollars making these bad loans and setting up financing schemes that they themselves did not understand. The premise all along was that housing prices would always go up. It cannot go down. Then when housing prices did go down (fortunately, I live in an area where prices are still going up, like my friends in the PNW) the cards came falling down.

The fact our economy is based on mortgages on people’s homes and to a lesser extent on stuff we manufacture should give people pause. We’ve mortgaged our economy and as long as times are good, no problem we can just borrow more because our collateral is worth more! This isn’t a way to run your household budget and it isn’t a way to run the largest economy in the world.

The fact this deal is being rushed through in a matter of days and there’s no deliberate thought put into this scares me. Naomi Klein’s incredibly awesome The Shock Doctrine. Here thesis is: You need a disaster to push through unpopular policies. She gives several examples in the book and she thinks one is playing out right now in front of our eyes. If you haven’t read her book, you need to read it right now.

The government is throwing good money after bad to bail out an industry that abhors regulation because it stifles free market capitalism. What a load of bullshit. In a truly free market there would be no bail outs. If a business fucked up it would fail. Because there is the Fed and there is the promise of bailouts, these douchebags can continue to make money without risk. The government will bail them out. If you don’t pay your mortgage the bank will take your house away. But if you have billions in mortgages don’t worry, Uncle Sam will take it off your hands. Eventually you and I will be paying for it in the form of taxes and a weaker dollar.

Just as when a consumer takes on more debt, they run the risk of having their credit rating fall as their debt to income ratio gets out of whack, the United States runs the same risk. This $700B plan dilutes the dollar. If the people on the planet that have the money and buy US treasuries stop, then we’ll have to pay higher interest in them. If the value of the dollar falls, other countries may tend not to base their multinational deals on the US Dollar. If OPEC did that with oil we are fucked. If other countries decide to keep more of their reserves in euro rather than USD, we’re fucked.

I had an economics professor on the first day of class tell everyone to take out a dollar bill. It didn’t matter the denomination. It says “In God We Trust” which is odd for a supposedly secular country. At one time, the US Dollar was actually tied to gold and silver. The dollar used to say that you could get a dollar’s worth of silver or gold upon demand. Well, now the dollar is based on trust from God. Or for the secularists and heathens, the idea that the dollar is worth something. As long as everyone believes the dollar is valuable, it is valuable. When people stop believing the dollar is worth something, it will be worthless. Can’t happen? Right, go back to that show about the people trying to fit through giant styrofoam blocks.

Although cats can’t vote, they do have a lot of influence on politics in the US. Kitties like having a cat in the White House and use a lot of “soft money” donations to make that happen. After Bush sent his cat off to live in Crawford full time, this country went to hell. Since McCain is steadfastly against the cat agenda, kitties worldwide are lining up behind Obama.

He doesn’t have a cat, but his daughters have wanted a pet for a long time and so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see claw marks on the desk in the Oval Office come January.

Ike. Thank you all for the cards, letters telegrams and electronic mail inquiring how the cats and I braved the storm. Well, Ike landed east of Austin and tore up Galveston and Houston instead. I don’t even think it rained a drop here and no strong winds. Nada. Yesterday was overcast. Today there’s nothing but blue skies. If the breezes stay it might not feel so goddamn hot.

Oh, Sarah. I’m still in that stunned phase that Palin was selected by old man McCain. It really shows his maverickness. Sort of like the maverickness of lying his ass off and not giving a shit if he’s called out on it. Palin was for the bridge to nowhere. She personally lobbied for earmarks. She knows nothing about foreign policy and that visit to Iraq never happened. Nice little wrap up from Mr. Olbermann on her first interview last week. And John McCain got hard questions from the ladies at The View?

The New York Times today has a great article on Governor Palin’s “reforms” today. The media who haven’t been doing their jobs lately do seem to be waking up and starting to be critical of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin. Then again “real Americans” don’t read the NYT or the Washington Post. Back in the day, when I was a mass communication major I learned in journalism classes that although the national dailies like the Times and Post aren’t read by the masses, almost every editor at smaller newspapers do read the those papers and they can set the tone for the stories that appear locally. That was a long time ago though. Now it doesn’t seem to matter.

It is as if many Americans are willfully ignorant about the world around them. The major broadcast networks have shows about making it through a moving styrofoam wall, or guessing numbers, or outsmarting a grade schooler.

If there is a silver lining to this, Tina Fey on SNL last night.

I’m taking today and tomorrow off. I needed to be free of my cubicle.

Oh, Apple. The other day Apple announces some really sexy new iPod nanos. Dedicated readers of this site will remember that not too long ago I bought a short and stocky iPod nano to replaced my 2nd gen nano that went off to another plane. I do find the old nano sort of a pain. I don’t like the arm strap. On my 1st and 2nd gen nanos I always used a lanyard. But because I have three iPods (the iPhone, a full sized 80GB iPod for the car, and the 3rd gen nano for the gym) I’m not n a hurry to get another one. My favorite feature is you can shake it to shuffle the songs.

The other product announcement was the iPod touch next edition which seems to be less of an iPhone without the phone part and coming onto its own. The new touch has the Nike+ thingy built-in so all you need to do is put the other thingy in your shoe and you can get your run on. I think they should have put a GPS antenna in it too so you could figure out where the hell you ran to without hoping you ran into a place with wifi to triangulate to. But I think the iPod touch and iPhone are too big to stick on your arm for working out. Plus they are to pretty.

They announced a new version of iTunes. It is all the way up to 8.0. The “killer” new feature is a thing galled “genius” which supposed to put a little guidance into your musical journeys. You anonymously send iTunes your music library and history and it spits back a playlist that is based on some algorithm (it also has a bar over to the side which offers you ways to spend lots of money getting other songs you might like). So how does it work?

The bait song I used was Sausalito by Connor Oberst. Not too bad. There’s no Black Sabbath recommended and his Bright Eyes stuff is there as well as “like” artists. There was a thing I had back in my Windows days (it has been 5 years!) called moodlogic which attempted this idea but using peers to add not just genre but mood attributes to your MP3 tags. Of course it is subjective as there are no definitive definitions of genres. Pandora is something similar with internet radio to what iTunes is trying to do but it uses the music you already have (and makes suggestions as to other music you’ll like similar to what iTunes 7.x does with its store thingy on the bottom pane. And it does a better job than “iTunes recommends” since that tends to be only based on what you’ve bought and although I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on iTunes music, it pales to the thousands of songs that came by other means.

It is a nice start but it also shows just how unwieldily my music collection as become. I have a lot of music without and mp3 metadata and cover art. That is my constant rainy day project of cleaning up the music. I’ve gotten to the Ds. I have a strict rule where any new music I put in the damn thing must be tagged with album art.

Speaking of rainy days. Hurricane Ike is coming! Everybody panic! Earlier in the week it had a trajectory that after hitting landfall around Corpus Christi it would head to San Antonio and then up to Austin. Today’s models show it will got farther east toward Houston/Galveston where it could be nasty. They are canceling outdoor events and expecting lots of people in shelters. Unlike Louisiana, Texas has a very good disaster preparedness system and the money to pay for it. The only area of concern in the lower Rio Grande Valley near Brownsville and McAllen where some of the most impoverished people in the US live. And many of them are not exactly here legally.The feds have promised that they wouldn’t have agents at the evacuation centers or for those driving/riding at the inspection station. Which is damn humane of Chertoff (a man who should have been fired after Katrina and the stupid worthless liquids in bags rule). Except he said that after Hurricane Dolly and many people were busted anyway because the evacuation was voluntary and not mandatory. Yes these people might be here illegaly but they are still people. The good news is at present the storm is tracking to completely miss the south coast and so the rain shouldn’t be too bad.

I didn’t even know Mad Magazine was still around.

When the Palin announcement was first made, like many other people I asked “Who?”. One of the first discussion boards I saw had this video…

While of the subject of AD, I was saddened to read that Michael Cera isn’t planning on doing the Arrested Development movie.

And as I wondered how the country could be fooled into thinking she was all that, I thought of the beginning of of Idiocracy…

Of course that film was set in the future. There’s no way that would happen so fast. But it would explain a lot… like how things like logic and education and crazy notions like science are looked down upon by many.