OmegaMom

I’ve been using email and the Internet (in varying forms) since 1992.

While I’m really not good about replying to emails, I’m very good about sending snippets out and about, to OmegaDad, to GrannyJ, to varying friends and relatives.  A link here (”Oooh.  This is interesting!”), a photo there (”Hey.  Here’s the dotter’s school pic.”), reminders (”Pick up some milk on the way home, and we’re out of cat food.”), a kml file (”Look at the aurora map!”), a YouTube video (usually a funny one).

I read the news online; I have the local blatt bookmarked, so I know what’s going on around Small Alaska Suburb and Big City, I have Small Mountain University Town’s newspaper bookmarked (though I haven’t been reading it much lately, which is an indicator of finally moving on, I guess), I have MSNBC and CNN bookmarked.

Every morning, I check out Nielsen’s daily Top 40 news stories and Technorati’s “Popular in News” listing.

I am on IM during the working day, so I can communicate with my boss and coworkers.

When we move into a new home, one of the first things I do is set up the utilities.  These days, Internet access is a “utility” to me, and it has been for years.

All of that said, read about another child of the connected age, being forced to isolate himself from his connections.

Think about it.  You’re used to the connectivity.  You’re constantly in casual touch with friends, relatives, coworkers.  You’ve even gathered together a community that spearheaded your election victory with “MyBarackObama” social networking.

And now…now…your security officials are telling you you must give it up while you are the president.

Ooog.

I couldn’t do it.  Give up my email?  My IM?  My blog?  No more quick dips into the Internet stream to see what the daily zeitgeist is?  No zipping over to Los Angeles news sites to see what the status of the SoCal fires is?  No link to the weather?

It’s one thing to turn it all off while on vacation; that’s just a week or two.  But for four or eight years?!  Ack.  No.

You’ll get my Interwebs from me when you pry it (them?) from my cold, dead hands!

Well, bullshit.

Sorry to be so crude, but we’ve got two senate races now that are real squeakers–one right here in Alaska!–and a third that is still undecided.

Right now, Mark Begich is three votes ahead of Ted Stevens, he of the “tubes” description of the Internet.  Stevens is being called “convicTed” by liberal voters because of his recent conviction; I can tell you that our neighborhood was filled with “Republican for Mark Begich” signs, so that’s an indicator of some sort.  For some reason, Alaska still has not counted some 30,000 votes; they counted 60,000 or so today, all mailed in or provisional ballots.  Before this, Stevens was ahead by a few thousand.

In Minnesota, Al Franken and Norm Coleman are doing the do-si-do:  first one’s up, then the other, then the other.  Right now, Coleman is ahead by 204 votes, well within the required automatic recount that Minnesota law provides when races are closer than a certain margin.  The official recount begins next Wednesday, and is expected to last until December.

In Georgia, neither Saxby Chambliss (the Republican) nor Jim Martin has the required 50% plus one (the Libertarian candidate siphoned off the additional votes), and they are looking at a runoff election in December.

If all three Republicans in these races end up losing…then the Democrats would have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  (Whether this is a good thing or not I leave up to my readers to decide.  I, personally, do not want the FBPM; I like the checks and balances and negotiations that would be required to court the two independent senators or lure a Republican over.)

Your vote does count.  Yes, it does.

(ETA:  The difference is now Begich up 814 votes.)

The “lice incident” was not.  The school nurse moaned to me about how that class has driven her nuts because a few parents are paranoid about lice; the dotter’s reportage was garbled, thank heavens (she had said that Nurse Lady had found cocoons in her hair!!!!! ACK!).

The award was for creative writing and art.  No surprise there!

Obama had a press conference today which served to indicate a few things:  1) He is not president yet, which he reiterated three times to my counting; 2) he takes the economy issue very, very seriously; 3) Paul Volcker was standing to his left and was shown during almost the entire press conference, so that’s an indicator of the type of economic advisor he’s going to tap; 4) he’s not going to discuss his security briefings; and 5) the new White House dawg will need to be hypoallergenic.

Some fun stuff:

• Election cartograms, very kewl.
• Behind the scenes on the campaign trail, also very kewl.  Read all seven chapters.
• The Obama team is quite hip to the Internet:  Here’s the set of Creative Commons pics of election night; the team also had “Change.Gov” ready to go.  Remember, he plans to have a cabinet-level Chief Information Technology Officer to advise him.

I had other stuff to post, but can’t remember it.

Off to do some NyQuil.  Drugs are good.

It’s great.  It’s historic.  Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey teared up on national TV.  The first black American president.

He was my candidate.  I’m glad he won.  But…Now he’s stuck with the job. 

And here comes my cold-water, wet-blanket, pessimistic post.  Sorry.  If you’re still feeling giddy with happiness, go somewhere else and don’t read this post until a few months have passed; I don’t want to rain on your parade.

I had a draft post entitled “the Janitor-in-Chief” (based on John Mauldin’s column, “Electing the Janitor-in-Chief“) which I never published, all about my (usual) dismal outlook on the economy, and the mess that the president-elect (whoever he might be) would inherit, and I’m afraid that my pleasure in Obama’s victory is highly tempered by that outlook.

It’s a mess.  It’s a royal mess.  I reiterate my prediction that the new president will be a one-termer.  I hope not, but the economy is racing down the toilet, and there’s a helluva lot more bad economic news to come.  Auto industry executives have been quoted as saying it’s the worst their industry has seen since World War II; Goldman Sach’s investors’ outlook note leaked today says that they’re revising their unemployment estimate upwards from 250,000 jobs lost in October to 300,000, and they expect it to keep getting worse; commercial real estate investment is drying up; the ISM factory index is the lowest it’s been since 1982; real personal spending–which fuels 70% of U.S. GDP–plummeted at an annual rate of 3.9% in the month of September; and on and on and on.

I’d love to think that the hearts and flowers and joy and luv-luv-luv will win over the 53 million people who voted for McCain, but given some things I’ve read on the ‘net today, and some things I’ve heard on boards and in emails, we’ve got a whole slew of people out there who think that Obama is a Marxist/Leninist/socialist/communist/jack-booted thug who is out to tear down the structure of the United States and RUIN US ALL.

(Hey, it’s the right-wing’s version of the liberals’ dreaded October Surprise, the staged terrorist attack that would give BushCo the excuse to call for martial law and suspend the elections…)

Yup, Barack Obama, who the lefties think isn’t left enough, is too moderate and centrist, is a communist thug.  Sigh.

And I sit here thinking to myself:  What?!  Why on earth would anyone want the job?  Why on earth didn’t we let McCain take it, and have him get stuck with the tar and feathers, the anger and frustration and disillusionment that will greet the upcoming years of cleaning up the mess that BushCo left us with?

Gah.  Maybe I’m feeling like this because it’s November, and the light is vanishing fast, and it’s been cold as hell.  Or because some folks who I really love and respect are taking this…um…not well.

(Edited to add:  Okay.  That’s it.  The last.  I was so excited.  So happy.  So thrilled.  And realizing that intelligent, sensible people whom I know and love are scared just shocks me to the core and makes me want to cry.  I see hope; they see fear and hatred.  I see trying to change some of the gawd-awful stuff that BushCo has done; they see destruction.  I see an intelligent, moderate, quiet man who will do his best to do a competent job; they see a Hitler-like demagogue.  And I want to cry.)

Anyway, to read a better (less pessimistic) take that looks at the practicalities, go read John Scalzi’s post, “Reality Check“.

And really, truly, I’m very happy Obama won.  I watched the speech and teared up.  We made OmegaDotter watch with us, telling her it was a historic occasion that she would remember all her life.  It’s amazing that the U.S. was able to actually vote–clearly and decisively (though not a landslide, as some would claim)–for a black man as president.  Forty years ago, one would never have imagined this day.

I waited for OmegaDad to be done with work, then we schlepped over to OmegaDotter’s school to pick her up from “Mad Science!” class and vote.  No line, so we were in, voted, and out in no time at all…Not that it’s likely to make much of a difference here in Palinland. 

Also I delivered these red, white and blue cookies to the school election day bake sale first thing in the morning:

Now all that’s left is to bite my fingernails while waiting for the election results.  Actually, I think we’re going out to dinner, which will take an hour or so, and by then it will be called, I’m sure.

California’s Proposition 8–the “marriage is to be defined as one man and one woman” amendment to the state constitution–is running neck-and-neck (sigh).

So the Prop 8 folks have spent $$ on Google Ads to show up on blogs.

So far, I’ve run into three blogs, on wildly diverse subjects, that have had to post disclaimers about the ads, because they have no control over which ads show up on their blogs.

I thought it was interesting that enough readers complained that the bloggers had to do this.  Too bad all those people don’t live in California…

As for the proposition itself, and my feelings thereon?  In a word:  Ugh.  OmegaDad and I have been together now for 15 years (yes!).  The idea that giving someone who is gay or lesbian the same marital rights as we have will somehow destroy our marriage, cause our country to slide into moral decay, and lead to our dotter being OMG TEH GAY!!! just makes me roll my eyes.

I can’t remember where I read it, but it seems that the institution of heterosexual marriage is so devastated by having legalized gay marriages in one of the Scandinavian countries that…

…the heterosexual marriage rate has increased.

Whoa.  Those bad, bad gay folks!  Lookit what they’ve done!

John Scalzi, over at Whatever, has a number of good blog posts about the whole affair.

I watched Obama’s half-hour TV ad.

Then I bop online, and find people who were moved to tears.

I wasn’t.

I was irritated.

We saw families “down on their luck”…but not really down.  I’ve got to say, if my husband’s job were cut to one week out of every two, and I were laid off, why on earth would we be going out to eat?  Equally to the point:  why on earth would Obama’s campaign film a family in such straits doing such a thing??

Then there’s the fact that…um…look, I know they were playing to the moderate white vote, but my overwhelming feeling in this ad was…it was very white.  I suppose it wasn’t PC enough for me, har.

Then Obama says he voted for the bailout and is hoping to Do More.  Aaarrgghhh!  Right now I feel like the financial gurus are busy pulling cards out from under one side of a tottering house of cards to shore up a different side.  What we need is for the U.S.–and all the other countries who joined us on the drunken binge of borrowing and spending over the past ten years (dear lord, I am using Dubya’s very own phrase, just shoot me now)–should stop trying to get banks to loan and people to borrow, and start encouraging savings and investment in real goods.

Over the past six months, at an increasing tempo, the U.S. has flung fictional money this way and that, to the tune of:

• $700 Billion – The bailout bill; U.S. Treasury to purchase toxic mortgages and other non-performing assets from financial institutions.
• $50 Billion – To guarantee principal in money market mutual funds.
• $10 Billion+ – Treasury purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in September.
• $144 Billion – In additional MBS purchases by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.  (With a limit of $850 billion…whoop-de-do).
• $85 Billion – AIG bridge loan giving the Fed a 79.9% controlling stake in the firm.
• $87 Billion – Repayments to JP Morgan for providing financing to underpin trades with the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers.
• $200 Billion – $100 billion capital infusion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Treasury.
• $300 Billion – Provided to the FHA to refinance failing mortgages into new, reduced principal loans with a federal guarantee as part of the housing bill.
• $4 Billion – Provided to local communities to purchase and repair abandoned homes due to foreclosure.
• $29 Billion – Financing for JPM’s takeover of Bear Sterns. The Fed takes $30 billion in non-performing assets as collateral.  (Goodness only knows how much those “assets” are worth now.)
• $200 Billion – Currently outstanding loans to banks through the Fed’s Term Auction Facility.
• $150 Billion - Stimulus checks.  Remember those?
• Not to mention a whole slew of additional multi-billion-dollar chunks o’ change being handed out to GM and foreign countries…

Just where is all this money going to come from??  A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there…That’s almost two trillion dollars.  And now they’re talking about another $50 billion to guarantee up to 3 million mortgages where the mortgage-holders are underwater (more than a month late).

Look.  My husband and I aren’t poor, but we’re not rich.  We’re not the best money managers around, but we managed to put a fair amount down on this house, pay off debt, purchase two cars outright, and keep up with our mortgage payments.  We won’t see that help.  And that makes me angry.  Yes, there are people who were bamboozled into bad mortgages at the last minute, but the majority of the folks who are in foreclosure used funky mortgages to buy more house than they could really afford based on teaser rates and the assumption that their houses could only appreciate in value.  They get help; my husband and I, who deliberately looked at houses where we could afford the payments on a plain vanilla fixed-rate 30-year mortgage (even though we’d have loved to get more house) won’t.

I think I was looking for more of a “Fireside Chat” approach.  Something with more substance, and something that came straight out and said “The next few years are not going to be easy.  We’re all going to have to tighten our belts.”  What we got was fluff, violins playing, and warm-hearted shots of Obama shaking hands, giving and getting hugs, and holding babies.

It didn’t move me to tears.  Or at least, not in the way that the ad writers wanted.  And I’m voting for the man.

Just think what the people 40 years ago, funded by DARPA, looking at a new way to (a) protect communication in the face of a nuclear strike and (b) share research quickly, would think of if they looked at the ‘tubes of today.  I’m sure they would have never conceived of a world where people could buy just about whatever they wanted without leaving their computer, or the way that the music industry has been rocked to its core.

Definitely, they would never have envisioned the lively political debate that it has fostered.

Oh!  Did someone say “political debate”?! 

And I’m sure those intrepid internet pioneers would never have considered a world where such joys as this are available:

I do.  I truly do luuurve Teh Intarwebs.  They rawk!

Remember how I asked here whether Obama is supposed to be the anti-Christ, because some folks were giving us rally-ers the devil’s horn, as opposed to the finger?

Well, apparently I’m just a sweet, innocent naif from Alaska, wide-eyed and gobsmacked, because, yes, Virginia, there are folks who think Obama is the anti-Christ and that’s why they’re not going to vote for him.

Really and truly.

I was whacked by a 2×4 alongside the head with this realization when reading a 400+ comment thread on A Little Bit Pregnant.  One commenter flat-out said she wasn’t voting for Obama because he fit all the characteristics of the anti-Christ, and another one said she was pretty sure she was voting for McCain because she was merely worried that Obama might be the anti-Christ.

Setting aside the whole question of “OMG so you really believe this stuff?!”, I find myself puzzled by this approach.

Surely, if you think Obama is the anti-Christ, then you’re likely to be a person who believes in the End Times, in the Rapture wherein all good and righteous folk will be sucked up into Heaven to sit on the right-hand side of the lord, complete with halo and harp.  And you’re likely to believe that this is preceded by the second coming of Christ, which is preceded by the rise of the anti-Christ.

So wouldn’t it be logical to, say, vote for Obama in that case?  Wouldn’t that be hastening the aforementioned series of events?  Like, almost guaranteeing it?  Sing hosanna, vote Obama, get me to the Rapture on time?

(OmegaDad, when I broached this thought to him, told me that maybe these people secretly aren’t sure they’re going to be sucked up into Heaven come the Rapture, and that’s why they don’t want to vote for him.

Hmm.  This is always possible.)

Moving on:  No doubt someone will tell me that the reason for not voting for the anti-Christ is that the rise of the anti-Christ is supposed to be a time of terrible turmoil and misery for the world, and that no-one with a kind heart would want that to happen.  But…but…I thought all of that is gonna happen anyway in that world view, no matter what you do.  One way or another, the whole row of dominoes is supposed to fall; it’s all predestined.  So surely the faster it’s done, the less turmoil and tribulation, the quicker the Rapture?

I can’t wrap my head around this stuff.  I really can’t.  Here we are, living in an amazing world filled with man-made miracles, living lives of ease due to technological advances, a world where people are taking photographs of the further ends of space and the amazing intricacies of microscopic things on our own world, where people are living longer lives through the application of science, where practically every single instant of our days is touched, in some way, by science, technology, or the rational thought process…

…and there are still people out there who (first off) really, truly believe that there is such a thing as the anti-Christ, and (secondly) really, truly believe that Obama is him.  When I come across people like this, I think to myself (and come mighty darned close to saying out loud, or typing out), “You are just bat-shit crazy.”  Whoops!  There goes any pretense to tolerance I have.  Sorry…but there it is.

It’s a Bizarro World, indeed.

We haz it.

I watched the debate (of course) (sigh) (when did I decide to become a politics junkie?).  I thought that Biden came across better, but that’s because I’m on his side.  Palin’s constant reiteration of “maverick”, as though it were a magic charm, made me roll my eyes; her misunderstanding of what an “Achilles heel” is makes me worry about my dotter’s education here in Alaska; her co-opting of a series of Reagan’s catchphrases, including “There you go again, Joe!” was noticeable; and the last I heard, it was the mess on Wall Street that is impacting Main Street.  But, in the end, she redeemed herself by not repeating her gaffes from various carefully prepped interviews.  She sounded, in general, nice.

But I’m not looking for “nice” in my presidential or vice-presidential candidates.

So I came away thinking Biden “won”–whatever that means.

Then we went to dinner at the local Indian restaurant.  Mixed grill–yum!  Tandoori chicken, shish kebab, lamb, curried chicken.  Mmmm.

There was another group at the restaurant, talking vivaciously about the debate, and about the current economic situation.  I first noticed them when they were talking about the debate; one guy shouted out, “She really nailed it when she said, ‘I’m not one of those Washington insiders who says I’m for this then says I’m not for it’!  BINGO!  I want someone who’ll say what they mean and mean what they say!”

So, there ya have it:  Confirmation bias.  I thought Biden came out better; these folks thought Palin came out better.

And then the older woman in the group–who seemed to be a real estate person–started talking about the economic situation and the bailout bill.

She said that a friend had offered on a house, had the mortgage all set up, everything was going swimmingly…and then, the day of closing, the loan offer was withdrawn.  She said that these people had great credit.  I’ve heard similar things online; this was the first I had heard it “first-hand”.  She said that credit was frozen, and she talked about a few businesses she knew that were running on credit and weren’t going to be able to meet their payrolls if it kept up.  She wanted the bailout, even though she thought it wasn’t very good, because it was the only thing going right now.  She mentioned 401k’s that had taken huge hits during the stock drop on Monday and how people who were close to retirement were getting hammered.

All of which is true (except I wasn’t for the bailout).

Then they talked about not living on credit.

Which seemed a bit of cognitive dissonance to me; the entire notion behind the bailout is, in essence, that we should go back to borrowing money like crazy and spending it like crazy and the economy will just go on chugging along, growing and blossoming, tra la, tra la.

So this afternoon the House of Representatives voted for the bailout–the expanded bailout, with $100 billion of pork tacked on to make it appetizing to a wider variety of senators and representatives.

And the stock market, which had been up some 200 points prior to the vote, dropped.  And kept dropping.  And ended the day below where it ended on Monday…the day the bailout vote failed.

Say what?!  Isn’t the bailout supposed to…oh…”save 401k’s and retirement accounts”?  Aren’t we all happy campers now?  Isn’t Great Depression II averted?  Wasn’t the stock market going to heave a great sigh of relief?  The bailout certainly hasn’t saved Wachovia Bank, which is currently being fought over by Citibank and Wells Fargo, like a pair of vultures over fresh road kill.

I’ve been saying it for a while, and I’ll say it again:  This mess is too entrenched, too intertwined, too highly leveraged, for this bailout to stop the unraveling.  Oh, it may end up slowing it down a bit.  But firms that are leveraged 30:1 or more aren’t going to become solvent with a wave of the magic Federal Reserve/Treasury/bailout wand.  And those firms are global in scope; just read a bit about what’s happening in Iceland.  Or see how the Greeks today passed a blanket deposit guarantee bill after runs on the banks, emulating Ireland, which did the same thing yesterday.  Or read about the Dutch government taking over Fortis NV, a portion of Fortis, which is one of the largest financial companies in Europe, today.

I’m gettin’ a heapin’ helpin’ of confirmation bias about the economy these days…

Oh, yeah, and it’s snowing here:  Great big fat flakes.  Holy moly.  Our first snow of the winter season.

Well.  Weren’t they testy?  Both of them.  And both of them just sort of danced around Lehrer’s question about what–if any–fundamental changes to their plans the current financial situation may cause.

Humph.

As for the current financial situation:  I have been watching and reading, slack-jawed, for a week.  First the bailout’s on.  Then it’s off.  Then it’s on again!  Oops, nope, it’s off.  No, it’s on.  NO!  It’s off!  And the markets have sat there, waiting with bated breath, wondering:  which way is it going to go?

The congresscritters have been inundated with angry calls, faxes, emails, letters about the bailout.  A representative from Pennsylvania (Paul Kanjorski, D), says that 50% of his calls have been “No!” and the other 50% have been “Hell, no!”  And 200 big-name economists got together and signed a letter that said “No go” as well.

A lot of people are pointing to the Community Reinvestment Act as “the” spur for our current financial meltdown.  I liked this commentary from a person monickered “Mock Turtle” in a comment thread at Calculated Risk:

“in round numbers

100 million home owners

50 million have mortgages 50 million don’t (again round numbers)

25 million issued loans in last 8 years

one third of these are sub prime; 8 million

4 percent of subprime has foreclosed: 320 thousand

—

so are you saying that all it took was

320 thousand people failing to pay their mortgages

to bring down the financial system of the United States of America???

—
or was it

…way the mortgages were mixed, tranched, sliced, diced, resold, leveraged and derivitivized that brought the system to its knees

guess you gotta choose

who is more powerful

wall street

or

a bunch of wanna-be starry eyed home owner poor people”

Another commenter wrote:  “All the trillions of investments between banks turns out to just be invested in investments which were invested in other investments which were invested in other investments which were invested in a house in California or Florida by some guy who lied about his income.”

It’s a mess.  There are people saying that Bush, Bernanke and Paulson are running a scam.  My personal feeling is that they’re terrified.  There was an anecdote going around that Paulson got on bended knee to Nancy Pelosi, begging her to help pass the bailout.

So far, in September, we’ve had:  Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailed out…Lehman bankrupt…AIG bailed out…Washington Mutual taken over, but listed as a “failed bank” on the FDIC website…and now Wachovia Bank is looking for someone to buy them out…Brad Setser says that in this month, the Federal Reserve has outlaid some $370 billion to backstop all these failures.

When you’ve got ordinary, everyday mommy bloggers posting that they wonder if they should be pulling thousands of dollars out of their bank accounts, “just in case”…Well, let’s just say it adds up to a serious loss of confidence in the financial system.

Dudes.  Get testy all you want.  But please, please give some serious thought to what you’ll do if you’re the one to walk into the Oval Office next January.

Bobcat:  So we bought a kids plaything with swings and slides and a tower, courtesy of some money GrannyJ provided us, plus savings from the dotter’s dollar container.

This requires installation, of course.

Which requires a spot in the yard.

Which requires that OmegaDad make things complex, by planning to dig the area out, surround it with beams, and fill it with wood chips.

All very well and good, but there’s this “digging out” that needs doing.  Yesterday a.m., OmegaDad dresses in his scruffiest work clothes, grabs his shovel and pick and wheelbarrow, and sets out, all manly-like, to do his yeoman duty.

I wander out a little later, and he mutters about how it would all be easier if he had a Bobcat.

He mutters it to me a little later.  And once more.  And I say to him, “Well, why don’t we rent one?”

After some to-ing and fro-ing, we decide to do it, he calls the rental place, they bring a Bobcat over, and he starts to work.

…

Have I mentioned it’s been raining like crazy lately?  And that the yard is soaked?

…

Do you know what happens when you drive a Bobcat around a rain-soaked lawn?

And when someone who used to be expert at smoothing out lawns but hasn’t done it for 20 years decides to go at it?

Let me just say that at a point yesterday, I was out in the yard and just peered sadly at the large hole.

To add insult to injury, it rained like crazy last night, as well.  So the hole is now a big mud hole.

OmegaDad promises me that it will be fixed and by next summer the lawn will be looking bee-yoo-tiful again.

Drama:  We had OmegaDotter’s current BFF, K., over to spend the night.  The end result was two full-on scenes with tears and misery on both sides, and one time OmegaDad asking why they bothered to be friends, since they made each other miserable, and one time OmegaMom did the same thing.  When they weren’t fiercely hurting each others’ feelings, they were busy running around and being happily noisy.  How two girls, 6 and 7 years old, can make the house sounds like it’s filled with an entire soccer team of little girls, plus a couple of elephants, I have no idea. 

More Drama:  The Mother of All Bailouts.  Treasury Secretary Paulson is running a $700 billion save-the-markets-from-total-meltdown program by the Congress and the President as I type.  The markets were down 900 points in two days until rumors of the bailout began floating, at which point the markets gained more in two days, percent-wise, than they have since…

…are you ready…

…1929.  Oh, boy, isn’t that reassuring?!

The current plan is all of one page long.  It includes this fun little piece:

“Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

Ahem.  That’s not funny, folks.

This $700 billion is to be spent purchasing assets of unknown worth from faltering financial companies, then figuring out how to sell them to someone else.  The problem is that many of those assets are backstopped by mortgages on real estate where the price is still falling.  No-one knows how much that stuff is worth.  But Uncle Sugar Sam is gonna make everything all better, you betcha, and those financial companies that went blindly ahead playing with money on the assumption that real estate always goes up (wrap your head around that one for a few minutes) are going to be taken care of, all nice and tidy.

My personal preference is a conglomeration of suggestions from various commenters on various financial websites:

• Rather than create this new, sweeping agency/power backed by $700 billion, increase FDIC to $500 billion, or the entire $700 billion.
• Increase deposit insurance to $250,000 per depositor. Insure money market deposits and interbank loans for 12 months.
• FDIC judges ACTUAL capital ratios (not fakery reported on balance sheets), and seizes banks that don’t meet existing FDIC regulations.
• FDIC seizes BIGGEST weak banks first (the original commenter names a bank rumored to be very big and very much in trouble, but I’m removing that) and moves down, to maximize positive impact on public trust.
• FDIC corrals bad assets and auctions them off slowly over time. FDIC sells good assets and deposits to good banks.
• Investors in seized banks are treated as in a bankruptcy: equity is wiped out, debt is worked out based on remaining equity, if any.
• Executive management of seized banks, is fired, blackballed from other seized banks, and passed to FBI for investigation.
• Dividends of $.01 from all financial companies until things are cleaned up.
• Any “golden parachute” clauses for current financial company executives are null and void.
• Institute a website that lists each transaction purchased by the government. This could list the details of the asset, the PAR value, the selling institution, the underlying characteristics, the originators of the loans, the price the government paid (and eventual sold the asset for) and any other relevant detail.

Right now, there’s wrangling going on.  The Dems are saying, well, if you’re going to throw $700 billion at this problem, let’s add some more money to create another stimulus check.

Shee-it.

Look, the whole financial market went into a tailspin and almost froze up last week.  There are plenty of commenters at my regular blog stops who think the Paulson plan is only going to postpone things.  There are plenty of people who are terrified that if nothing gets done, and quickly, the tailspin and freeze are going to continue on Monday.  I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t really like the plan as it currently stands…

Hah.  The OmegaFamily is off to help create signs for an Obama rally tomorrow…

In the meantime, the financial Grand Masters are talking some sort of “Entity” like RTC to deal with the mortgage mess.  Like tomorrow.  And the SEC is banning/has banned some/all short selling, and some folks on various finance blogs are pointing out that the Shanghai stock market banned short selling and it’s now down some 50% from its high last year.

Later, gators.

Let’s see…

Nobody would buy Lehman, so it’s on a bankruptcy watch.

Bank of America, after turning down Lehman, is in talks to buy Merrill Lynch (my favorite new name:  “Lynch America”).

AIG–the insurer of all those humongous multi-level mortgage bond marketing schemes–is “looking for capital“.

Somebody named Bob Brinker apparently said something like “get all your money out of Washington Mutual”.

(Update:  A good quick round-up of the weekend’s financial shakeups.)

All the big news sites are still talking about Ike (which, thank heavens, wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been).  The financial stuff is only a sidebar, and only one of those items is being discussed.

So tell me, who’s the economy wonk on McCain’s team and on Obama’s team?  Whoever it is had better be prepared for a long, hard ride…

SiteMeter moved to a new system.  My problems with it…hmmm…1) It won’t “remember” me as logged in; 2) every time I try to load the stats in the new system using IE7, I get an endless “Loading Reports…” screen (though it works in Firefox); 3) hitting the “Refresh Stats” button sends me back to the home page, no longer logged in.  I’ve already sent through one help ticket and am contemplating sending in another, so I go to the SiteMeter website I have open, hit “Refresh Stats” just to see if anything happens, and I get a “404 not found” error.  So I go back to the SiteMeter homepage, and what do I see?

Whoops!

Aw, man, it must suck to be on the SiteMeter development team right now…Just like it must suck to be in that high-level group of financiers that was called into a weekend-long emergency meeting by Paulson.

OmegaDad’s four-ganger box for the regular light timer, the heating lamp thermostat, the ventilation fan thermostat, and Something Else is too small.  (This is in the Junior Coop.)  He is irritated.

The good news?  The “Alaska Women Reject Palin” protest in Big City was apparently very well attended.

Or something.

Today, I decided to do some squats while the microwave was zapping my popcorn.

Bad idea.  Bad, bad idea.

Because shortly thereafter, my lower back started hurting.

And it kept hurting, more and more.

And if I turn the wrong way, it shoots down through my butt.

Wah!

OmegaDad just informed me, after reading the subject line of this post, “You’re still a hot and sexy young thang to me!”  Which garnered him major brownie points.  Then he lost them, as he continued in the “llama voice”, “…As I push you in your wheelchair down the hallway…”

(Some day I will record him doing the “llama voice” and post it on the blog.)

Anyway.  I’m watching Hurricane Ike worriedly, as it vacillates every which way.  It’s supposed to landfall around Galveston.  At the same time, it’s pounding the coast around Louisiana.  OmegaBro and family are in Louisiana…

And politics goes on.  Apparently, the use of simile and metaphor is lost in the U.S. these days, except amongst certain people.  There’s a video where Obama essentially starts to say, “What the f…?!” about the whole “lipstick on a pig” hoorah that I thought about showing, but this one from David Letterman yesterday is better, and he avoids any pitfalls with the phrase “what the…”:

I hate to let Carosgram down , but I’m sure it’s no surprise to her that I am actually planning to vote for Barack Obama, and hope to heavens that the Republicans really don’t win.  I just feel frustrated that whoever wins the election is going to get stuck with the mess that has been the result of 8 years of Bush policies, and that whoever it is, no matter what kind of job he does, is going to end up being The Mean Mom of U.S. politics and thus voted out of office in the next election.

Okay, the virus alarm was a false alarm (whew!).  It seems to have been a hangover from the previous clean-out, a few registry entries that weren’t erased.

So now we’re onto bigger and better things:  A Modest Proposition.

Let’s let the Republicans win the presidential election.

“Whoa!” I hear you saying.  “What’s wrong with you, girl?!”

My theory was that whoever wins this election is going to get into office right as the financial shit is really hitting the fan.  Now, I’m beginning to think that the financial shit is starting to hit the fan, and going to keep hitting the fan, and maybe the best thing to do is to cede the election, so the Republicans are stuck cleaning up the mess they made.  Because I think whoever wins the election is going to be a one-term wonder, tarred with the brush of the financial mess, because whoever wins is going to have to clean up the mess.  And cleaning it up is going to be ugly.

Right now, on Calculated Risk, they’re talking about rumors that Lehman Brothers (big investment firm, you know them, right?) may be going belly up, with a government-brokered takeover a la Bear Sterns to be announced tomorrow.  And Standard and Poors just cut their outlook on Washington Mutual from “positive” or “neutral” to downright “negative”.

The government takeover (de-privatization?) of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got the Wall Street markets to jump…for one day.  This was huge…and it only got the market up for a day.

I’d love to see a dollar figure on all the financial company shenanigans of the past six months.  The S&L bailout cost $500 billion.  Thousands of savings and loans failed.  So far, we’ve had only a few banks fail, but as some have pointed out, the dollar amount of the failures are far bigger per company.

So unless Obama or McCain are actually secret miracle workers, whichever one wins is going to have to work mighty damned hard to cope with the cleanup. 

And in the meantime, we have Hurricane Ike flailing about on its way into the Gulf of Mexico.  I’ve been watching the predicted five-day path for the past week, and it would be amusing to have an animation of the day-to-day (or even hour-to-hour) change in that predicted path.  Well, amusing in a world-weary, hey, I’m up in Alaska, kind of way; I have friends and family scattered around the Gulf Coast and know that to all of them, this uncertainty must be wracking.

In my previous post, I deliberately left out a rumor that had been sweeping the internet, that Palin’s fifth child was actually her eldest daughter’s child.  First off, I don’t like repeating unsubstantiated rumors, and secondly–well, whoo boy, some of the “reasoning” that went on was just silly.

For instance, she didn’t look pregnant, and all women who are on their fifth pregnancy look much more pregnant than their first, and here’s a picture of her with her first, where she’s all blown up like a balloon, and no-one knew she was pregnant until she announced it in her 7th month.

Obviously, the people who used that as reasoning have never been around a woman who has gotten pregnant more than once–or else they have, and they assume that all women follow exactly the same pattern as the woman/women they have known.  Palin had her first child when she was a stay-at-home mom-to-be.  Now she’s a high-powered go-getter who likes to run.  I know someone who “likes to run” who was pregnant with twins, who didn’t look pregnant at all until she was in her 7th month.

Then there’s the “44-year-old women don’t get pregnant accidentally” commentary.  This was bolstered with deep discussion about the success rates for IVF for women in their 40s.

Excuse me while I howl with laughter at that one.  Haven’t these people ever heard of “oops babies” or “menopause babies”?  And applying statistics on IVF success rates for infertile women to a woman who had already had four children and is obviously fertile as all get out is…um…let me put this gently…stupid as hell.

What about the “Mat-Su Regional Medical Center’s baby nursery web page doesn’t show Trig Palin being born on that day!” excuse.  Somehow, the nursery web page is supposed to be equivalent to official hospital records.  ::blink::  The last I had heard, those nursery web pages were strictly a voluntary thing on the part of the parents.

We’ve got the “no woman in her right mind would get on an airplane to fly eight hours when she was leaking amniotic fluid!  She would have checked into the nearest hospital!”  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe she’s not a panicky person?  Maybe she actually (gasp!) called her OB and (gasp!) asked what to do and was reassured that things would no doubt hold until she made it…home.  Yes, amazingly enough, she may have wanted to give birth at the hospital she was familiar with, with the doctor she was familiar with, surrounded by her family?  The birthing fascists are particularly appalled at this one, pointing the finger of judgmental disapproval at her for risking the life and health of her baaaaaybeee.  Wondering just how dire “leaking amniotic fluid” is, I approached Teh Mighty Google.  And nowhere did I see “OMG, get to a doctor right away, an eight-hour airplane flight is bad bad news, your baby may die!”  In fact, a lot of the websites I found said, “First, find out if it is amniotic fluid” and “it can be because of a small tear in the sac that can heal or it could be pre-term labor” and “then your doctor or midwife can help you decide what to do, depending on how premature your child is…”

My assumption:  She checked with her doctor, her doctor told her given the circumstances she could fly back home and s/he would see her the next day, and when she was seen, the doc said, looks like you’ve leaked a lot of fluid, and it’s probably best if you give birth today.

But, hey, that’s me.  It just amazes me that there’s a whole slew of women out there whose battle cry is “pregnancy is not a medical condition!” who seem to have gone bonkers at the mention that Sarah Palin was OMG leaking amniotic fluid and obviously she doesn’t have the judgement to become a vice president.  I would have thought that there’d be a whole slew of women who thought, “Hey, a mom who’s given birth four times, capable and competent, knows her body, knows how her body handles pregnancies, she and her doctor together think it’s okay to return home, way to go Sarah!”  Nope.

So I didn’t discuss that rumor. 

But this morning McCain and Palin decided to release the news that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and getting married because that rumor was getting so much notice on the intertubes.  Sigh.  Yes, I do think that Bristol’s pregnancy is relevant given Palin’s policy of support for abstinence-only sex-education.  Yes, I do think that Bristol’s pregnancy is relevant given Palin’s policy of wanting abortions to be illegal.  Yes, part of me wonders if Bristol has actually been given a real choice–abort, adopt out, have the baby–or was told what to do.  I sorrow for the abrupt change from carefree teenager-hood to parenthood for her, but am sure that she’ll do just fine given the support of her family.  I’m glad that under current laws, Bristol has the choice, and I will do what I can to ensure that my own dotter, when she is 17, also has the choice should she be in that situation.

But y’know what?  There are plenty of other things about Palin that should concern people who are voting in this election.  I don’t think, frankly, that the state of her family is anyone’s business.  Let’s concentrate on the issues, people.  There are oodles of issues that the two campaigns differ widely on.  Let’s not get caught up in gossipy, judgmental finger-pointing.

This public service announcement brought to you by OmegaMom, She Of The Shiny Halo.

On Friday, in a move calculated to upstage Obama’s Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech, John McCain announced his surprise selection of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his running mate.

A horde of angry feminists immediately shouted that John McCain was out of touch for selecting an inexperienced, lightweight, far-right woman as his running mate as an attempt to gain their votes.  What?!  They shouted.  Do you expect us to vote for you just because you have a woman as your running mate!?  How condescending!  How blatant!  How obvious!

Well.  I, for one, do not think McCain selected Palin because he wanted to appeal to hard-core Democrats who were romanced by Hillary.  Nor was he trying to get hard-core feminists.  What I think he was trying to do (aside from shaking up the race and energizing the GOP) was to appeal to two different constituencies:  The hard-core right-wing Republicans, who were only very grudgingly willing to vote for McCain, holding their noses as they did so, and the large group of undecided independent women who were voting for Hillary because she was a woman and they were excited at the prospect of a woman in the White House.  A fair number of those women were Republicans, whose (confusing to me) dedication to gender advancement was momentarily in ascendancy over their Republicanism, but who now have a choice that is much more to their taste.  Another fair number were women who would be willing to go either way, depending on which collection of interests they felt more compelled by, and they will find Palin appealing because of her youth, her vigor, her integrity, and her story.

In other words, by this choice, McCain alienates those who were (surprise!) already alienated by him and the Republican party and gains points with his core constituency and a large group of undecided voters.

So:  What about Sarah?

My email box had a few emails from friends and relatives asking me what we think of her.

She’s pro-life/anti-abortion: She walks the walk, doesn’t just talk the talk. The Palins knew early on that Trig was Down’s Syndrome, but the pregnancy was continued anyway.  There are those who get angered by this, because they’d say, “Don’t assume that everyone who learns they’re having a child with Down’s Syndrome will automatically abort!”.  That’s not my assumption.  My assumption is that there are a lot of folks who are “pro-life” who will claim that abortion is horrible under all circumstances, only to be faced with a similar circumstance and decide that, oh, well, it’s okay for me. 

Pro-Oil: Well, it’s Alaska. The entire state is pro-oil. 

Pro-Corporation (Anti-Environment):  She’s for opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.  She has pushed through a natural gas pipeline that was stalled for a long time.  She opposes putting polar bears on the endangered list, and thinks global climate change is a buncha hooey.

Family Values (Anti-Gay): Marriage should be between a man and a woman, period; abstinence-only sex-ed is the way to go, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Openly supported “teach the controversy” in science classes when it comes to science versus “intelligent design”.  Then waffled and said she meant when students bring it up.

Claimed to support “transparency” in government, but keeps hella lot of stuff under wraps when requested.  For instance, the governor’s office refused to release state scientists’ emails protesting the state’s official position about opposing putting polar bears on the “in danger” list because the emails were “preliminary” and “not relevant”.

After thinking about the whole “experience” thing, though at first I was worried about McCain dropping dead and her not having experience, it occurs to me that no-one has experience being the president of the United States, and it’s a learn-as-you-go job.  She seems to have done fairly well as governor of Alaska.

My conclusion:  I see a lot to admire in the woman, but her values are not my values. 

(Thanks to Jeb for the word!)

This is how I feel about moose right now:

Yes, the moose returned, as Jean said it would.  Even with the PlantSkydd.  It’s time for the recommended moth balls, Irish Spring, marigolds, maybe a bazooka or a nuclear warhead.  OmegaDad, when we were wakened at 4:30 a.m. by the howling dawg, barreled down the back stairs (this time wearing shorts, rather than just tighty whities), lit the fuse on one of our leftover fireworks, and sent it flying.  The moose ran, most satisfyingly.  But not before it had eaten the broccoli, win win choi, mei tsin tei choi, and goodness knows what else.

My boss, when I signed into IM and messaged that I was going to do Something To The Moose, suggested “moose burgers…”  We back-and-forthed for a while with:

Moose kebabs.

Moose steak.

Ground moose.

Moose sausage.

Moose a l’orange.

Moose fricassee.

Moose a la king.

I can think of more.  Give me half a chance.

Let’s just say that it was bad enough being roused at 4:30 a.m. by the dawg, let alone the firework (only one!), let alone the realization that our SuperSized not-a-Pet had chowed down on our veggies yet again.

In other news:  The dotter’s feet have grown six inches in the past two weeks.  Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.  Maybe she’s grown six inches taller in the past two weeks?!  Whatevs.  The end result:  a dotter whose shoes are suddenly too tight throwing a mini-fit at having to wear them to Bike Day at summer camp, no matter how much OmegaDad and I reiterated that the folks at summer camp–no liability fools, they!–would insist on the shoes in addition to the helmet, and that all of her other shoes were too tight, and no, she could not wear the flip-flops.

Oh, yes, and she’s no longer an inch beneath the midline of my bust, but an inch above the midline of my bust.  (Okay, let’s be vulgar:  She’s an inch above the nipples.)  Now she’s showing large amounts of ankle and shin when wearing her pants that fit her just fine about four weeks ago.  I am left contemplating some big time shopping for basics, so she is not razzed for flood-waders when first grade starts.

In the wide world Outside:  President Bush says the “Banking system is basically sound.”  Given his track record, that’s not exactly confidence-inspiring.  Nor is the contrasting testimony of Bernanke before Congress.  Nor is the fact that IndyMac bank was taken over by the FDIC this last weekend–the second largest bank in U.S. history to get that honor–and that the government also had to prop up Fannie May and Freddie Mac at the same time.  Rumors are a-swirlin’, as is the SEC, which has subpoenaed more than 50 hedge-fund managers and analysts, looking for evidence of market manipulation.  Good luck with that; from my reading, the rumors are popping up like mushrooms, and not (seemingly) as manipulation, but as frantic “OMG, is my stock going to tank?!” as the Dow Jones keeps deflating, one step forward, two steps back.

In political news, Chez asks whether the Left has lost its sense of humor.  Or, actually, he asked a month or so ago, and now feels that he has confirmation.  I’m with Chez on this one.  I mean, c’mon, folks, one look at that New Yorker cover and you can tell it’s a cartoon, right?!  And, um, correct me if I’m wrong, but cartoons are supposed to be…um…funny, right?  I thought it was hilarious–it was a perfect send-up of all the fear-mongering.  You might also check out his dissection of the recent Jezebel.com hoorah.  Chez is interesting; very New York, very acerbic (sometimes too much so), often narcissistic, and a good source of new or obscure music.

On the science front, Scienceblogs has a concerted pre-release review fest of the new “mockumentary” about global warming, Sizzle.  The reviews are quite mixed.  There’s a certain amount of backstory here, wherein communications specialists say scientists need to “frame” issues properly to get their concerns/ideas/beliefs before the public in a persuasive manner.  In the old days, we used to call this “PR”.  The “framing”, I mean, not the review fest.  Even these days, people would call the review fest “PR”.

In the meantime, I’m going away to find me a guar-an-damn-teed method of moose eradication.  Ya, you betcha!

ETA:  Well, dayum.  I totally forgot about this one:  Disgruntled S.F. city IT dude locks entire IT administration out of computer system, and is currently in jail for this.  I’m trying very hard to ascertain whether it’s just the IT admins who are locked out, or if everyone is locked out–the story doesn’t quite make that clear.