Shady's Back

Due to the rigors of my job, we’ve been a little behind here on the Walrus File, but I don’t want that to continue. So… some thoughts.

-Early Obama cabinet appointments/rumors have been extremely interesting. Eric Holder would be the first African-American Attorney General. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Or maybe John Kerry? Will Gates stay on at Defense (which I think would be a bad idea, but I was never a big fan of the “bipartisanship” craze.)? Tom Daschle, the former Senate Minority Leader from South Dakota, appears to be in line for Secretary of Health and Human Services. And today comes word that the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security is the current Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano. Many have criticized this group as too full of “Clintonistas” and not symbolic enough of the whole “Change” meme. There’s still plenty of time left for that, but I tend to agree at least from a trend-watching point of view.

-Pirates are the new terrorists, which is pretty funny from a certain point of view. First an arms shipment from the Ukraine, and now a Saudi oil tanker with a cargo worth at least a hundred million dollars, have been making front page headlines after pirate hijackings off the lawless coast of Somalia. Pirates are on the verge of becoming the New Missing White Women in our news media. And really, can you blame CNN for spending so much time on the pirate story when everything else is just sort of dank. The Columbus Dispatch’s front page headline today was about “A Cornucopia of Gloom.” I think the copy editors were getting bored. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is releasing bizarre videos where they talk about how Obama and Colin Powell are “house negroes”. I guess it’s still the 1920s in the mountains of Pakistan. Also, we learn al-Qaeda are big fans of Malcolm X. Who knew?

-Forget gay marriage, bailouts appear to be the real slippery slope. Give one to AIG, now everybody and his brother wants one. Some may need them… others I’m not so sure about. How to choose?

-On the plus side, Thanksgiving is coming up. Our local Giant Eagle is well stocked with giant forty dollar turkeys. Is anyone out there headed home for the holiday? And if so, where are you going, and how are you getting there?

-It’s Ohio State/Michigan week! The greatest rivalry on the gorram planet, if we do say so ourselves. The Buckeyes are the massive favorites, but they always say that you can throw out the records when these teams play. I had the opportunity this week to meet Art Schlichter, the last OSU QB to start the big game as a freshman. He’s an interesting guy. This Saturday Terrelle Pryor will be the next. The game will be here in Columbus, and will result in widespread insanity no matter the outcome.

-COTA (the Central Ohio Transit Authority, aka the local bus system I ride everywhere) is moving its offices downtown. According to the “Dispatch”, there will be no easy available parking for employees, which is on purpose. The director says that he now wants all employees, including himself, to ride the bus to work. I’m sure that’s going over well.

Bits: Everything Sucks Edition

-The bailout approved by Congress last week appears to have done little in the short term to stop the current worldwide financial spiral, though expecting it to have done so may have been unreasonable. Stock markets around the world went sharply downhill Monday. In the US, the Dow Jones dropped below 10000 for the first time in years. In Iceland, the currency was down 7% and the economy appears to be on the verge of collapse. The Frankfurt markets hit the skids after the German government had to perform its own bailout of real estate firms. Russian stock indexes lost over 15% of their value. And so on.

-Here you can find an easy step-by-step process to construct your own "Egg of Time." "Look into its time vortex, and see all that was, and all that will be." Yes.

-Time has a list of words the dictionary is trying to get rid of to make room for 2,000 new words. I am a word geek, and had not heard of any of these.

-New polls from various sources have shown Sen. Barack Obama up in pretty much every swing state, including Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, and New Mexico. However, it's still a month until the election, and we have discussed the accuracy of polls on here before.

-Meanwhile, Cracked.com has come up with a list of 5 presidential elections that were dumber than this one (somehow). It's actually a really good read. I particularly like the caption under the pic of John Quincy Adams: "I'll kill your wife. I don't even care."

-In response to what it says is widespread piracy, Warner Bros. is trying a new tack in Korea... it's going to start releasing its movies online before they hit DVD. How that will help, I'm not totally sure, but it makes sense in other ways.

-The Tampa Bay Rays are in baseball's final four. Hell has told us that it will take more than this for it to freeze over. Hell is just stubborn that way. In other sports news, the Ferocious Walruses fantasy football team remains undefeated. Because I know you've been hanging on every play.

Breaking News: Bailout Passes on Second Try

The US House of Representatives passed the "bailout" of our nation's financial institutions earlier today, by a comfortable margin of 261-171. The bill gained substantial support among both Republicans and Democrats. I guess Republicans weren't as insulted by the package of "sweeteners" as I would have been in their shoes.

The bill was then rushed to the desk of President Bush, who signed it this afternoon. The largest group that switched its votes from no to yes were probably members of the Congressional Black Caucus (all Democrats), who were reassured by recent pledges from Sen. Barack Obama that, if elected, he would support legislation that would assist homeowners who are currently facing foreclosure. Republican Sen. John McCain was also credited with helping to secure votes on his side of the aisle, especially among the delegation from his home state of Arizona.

The vote was far from unanimous, however, and opponents voiced dire concerns. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) told us to "Pray for our Republic," while a better known Ohio Rep., Dennis Kucinich, delivered an impassioned speech highlighting the case of a 90 year old Akron resident who shot herself yesterday after authorities attempted to enforce the foreclosure of her home.

It is too early to tell what the final effect of the legislation will be, but here's hoping our government did the right thing here. It'd sure be more convenient than them being wrong. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he would move swiftly to begin the distribution of the funds.

Vice Presidential Smackdown: Vice Harder

Some quick thoughts on the Vice Presidential debate that just finished. I personally was bothered by Sarah Palin, but I don't think a lot of Americans will be. This is where I have a fundamental difference with a lot of my countrymen and women. I don't think it's too much to ask the Vice President to put gs on the end of words when they go there, or to use words the way they were actually meant to be used. And yet afterwards on CNN the commentators, on either side, universally praised how "folksy" Palin was. Just because people seem to like it doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Is she going to be in the room with Putin, as the current cliche goes, saying "I'm hopin' and wishin' we can find some positive impacts for our folks back home"?

Okay, rant over. I'm going to try not to do that too often. In terms of actual analysis, I think that Biden did a fairly good job of calling Palin on any outright lies she made without seeming petty (he didn't call her on calling Gen. McKiernan "General McClellan," for example). Palin tried her darndest to do the same, but I don't think she made many of her points with the same specificity. She also said a few things that may come back to bite her. She said she agreed with Vice President Cheney on the subject of expanding the powers of the Vice Presidency. She said she is not convinced humans are responsible for global warming. These are positions that I'm not sure are in tune with what people are looking for.

I think it was a decent strategy on Palin's part to try to link Obama and Biden to "looking backward" when Biden tried to link McCain to the failed policies of the Bush administration. It worked rhetorically to shape the debate the way she wanted it. Biden, however, did not let that effect his own strategy, which was to do just that. In my opinion, "looking backward" or not, every time McCain/Palin talks about changing something from the status quo, Obama/Biden should come back with "Republicans have had the Presidency 20 of the last 28 years. Republicans have controlled the Congress 10 of the last 12 years. Why hasn't any of this happened before now?"

It was sometimes frustrating how much Biden insisted on sticking to the "3rd Bush term" idea, at the expense of offering more coherent versions of his own ideas. It may come off as overly negative. However, I don't think that will be an issue in the long run in a campaign where Democrats seem to often say good things about John McCain but Republicans resolutely refuse to say anything positive about Barack Obama. The "attack dog" role is a traditional one for a Vice President candidate, so the Presidential candidate doesn't have to get their hands dirty.

The usual question after these things is "well, who won?" That is of course completely subjective. I think Gov. Palin gave Sen. Biden the openings he needed to really ram home any advantage he may have had, and I'm not sure he followed through on those. I think he may have performed better overall, but I recognize that many reasonable people may disagree. Many people thought Palin's performance here would hurt the McCain campaign, and I don't think it really did. However, McCain's been steadily losing ground lately in several key states, and I doubt Palin did anything here that would change that.

In other news... wow, the Cubs are in trouble. You'd think I would have seen that coming, but I definitely didn't.

Updates: As the Bailout Turns

-The Senate voted for a version of the bailout today, 74 to 25. Both Barack Obama and John McCain voted in favor of the bill. The current version is very similar to the one the House rejected earlier this week, except for "sweeteners" (and yes, that's apparently the official term) that were added, especially tax cuts. Said cuts are apparently intended to lure Republicans. If I was a Republican, I would feel insulted by that. "They'll vote for anything with tax cuts, it doesn't matter how much they hate the rest of it." And of course, that makes it even less likely that we actually have the $700 Billion dollars to use for this.

-Scientists now say the AIDS virus jumped to people as early as 1884, much earlier than previously thought. I'm not sure what the implications of that are, but it's interesting stuff.

-Sarah Silverman, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jonah Hill are among an all-star cast that doesn't want you to vote. That reverse psychology won't work on me! http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1832128

-The Baseball playoffs are underway here in the States. Early victories for the Phillies, Dodgers, and Red Sox.

-Comic books too... booky for you? Ever thought "this is great, but I wish it was more computerized?" Comic book stories animated through machinima, now on the intertubes. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DF54DE54A3BAA597

-Real life blind people have apparently decided that the upcoming film "Blindness" is offensive in its depiction of blind people. Shocking!

Welcome to the Internet, US House of Representatives

According to CNN.com, The release of the proposed bailout plan online resulted in its site being overwhelmed with traffic, followed by literally millions of e-mails being sent to addresses on the house.gov website. With internet use more and more ubiquitous in this country, governement servers weren't quite prepared on an issue where everyone had an opinion. "Digital traffic cops" have since been installed to manage traffic and only let a certain people on the site at a time.

Now, when specific pages begin to reach their limits, citizens receive a message asking them to "try back later." There was apparently very little drop in web traffic today, even with the Rosh Hashanah holiday. Jeff Ventura, who appears to be the chief resident IT guy, said that this was a much higher level of traffic than after 9/11 Commission report was publicly released online, which was the previous high he had seen. As for the number of e-mails, he said, "We know it's in the millions, but we haven't counted yet, because when you're about to get hit by a tidal wave, you don't count the drops of water in the wave." Kay.

As more and more US citizens begin to live more and more of their lives online, the government has, sensibly, tried to do as much of its business online as possible. It's cheaper, and people don't have to be mobile to deal with it. However, for that system to work, the government has to run its online operations effectively. In my capacity working for the Ohio state government, I have often run into cases where people ran into technological snags while trying to take care of essentials. Now the government can't be responsible for people's home systems (which I'm sure is the actual problem much of the time), but it has to at least be able to anticipate demand in certain situations or else this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The bailout issue is a specific issue that has brought up the strongest electorate opinions since the start of the Iraq War. It's certainly the first time since then that I have seen widespread street protests around the country. It's strange to think how much things have changed since that time. The internet 2.0 has really hit the mainstream in the interim. While many sites have been around since 2002, it is in the time since then that we have seen the rise of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc., as well as perhaps an even greater phenomenon: the point where the internet became a pretty much essential part of life.

I have seen several local newspaper stories recently concerning how libraries are rushing to add internet capacity to keep up with demand, as those without their own connections still have some things they have to do online. I head to the library about once a week. My local branch has at least thirty computers available with internet access, and when I go there in the 5pm hour, all or nearly all of the computers are in use.

So, the upshot is, when we now come to an issue everybody's got an opinion on, and feels personally affected by, the e-mails being sent to our government officials are going to number in the millions rather than thousands. Not only do the servers have to be beefed up, but my heart goes out to the person whose job it is to read all of them.

In other news, I have CNN on in the background, and they've actually sent somebody to the one tiny town in Alaska where you can see Russia from your house.

Breaking News: Bailout Voted Down

In one of the most dramatic floor votes in a long time, the US House of Representatives today rejected the proposed emergency bailout of financial institutions, and not by only one or two votes, either. The final tally was 205 for, 228 against, with Democrats supporting the measure 140-95 and Republicans rejecting it 65-133. This despite the urging of leadership of both parties, as well as the President and most national financial leaders, for passage. On news of the vote, the Dow Jones average fell over 700 points, a one-day record.

Many representatives seem to have felt that the measure, which would use approximately $700 billion to buy "bad debts" from financial firms, was so unpopular in their districts that a "yes" vote would amount to political suicide. Others felt that it represented too large of a government intervention in the free market. Even those who supported the bill were often see as "holding their nose" while voting for it, with House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner calling it a "mud sandwich" while explaining why it was necessary. (what does that even mean?) Democrats immediately blamed the Republican leadership for failing to get their rank and file in line, while Republicans blamed Speaker Nancy Pelosi for turning off some of their members with a "partisan speech" just prior to the vote.

It's unclear where we go from here. Wall Street will probably continue its toilet spiral. The measure will probably come back up for a vote at some point this week, but it's unclear what sort of changes they'll have to make to get this past the House.

As I have said here before, I'm not an economist. But I take it as a good sign when individual members of Congress at least attempt to think for themselves and represent their districts rather than just doing what they're told. Were they right in this case? I guess we'll see.

More details here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30bailout.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Breaking News: We Have a Deal

In an update on some of our previous discussions here, the US Congress seems to have negotiated a deal for a Wall St. bailout that at least a majority can live with.

CNNMoney discusses the provisions of the deal here: http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/28/news/economy/Sunday_talks_bailout/index.htm?cnn=yes

Basically, the deal is based on the original $700 billion package proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson. The Democratic add-ons (the most discussed of which have been additional Congressional oversight of the money and caps on CEO pay for those companies receiving the money) seem to be included, as well. The Republican "revolt" in the House was placated at least somewhat with a provision involving mortgage insurance (which was pretty much that group's alternate plan), but Paulson has (not in so many words, but these people never say anything in so many words) that he doesn't think that will help and doesn't want to use that option.

In the end, we have a somewhat more sensible version of the plan we started with a week or so ago. This is the plan sparking public public protests around the country, roundly accused of favoring "Wall St. over Main St." Polls this week have showed that Americans are pretty much split... one third favor the plan, one third are opposed, and one third are undecided. No one will ever accuse me of being an economist, but I personally do not yet understand how this will actually solve the root problem. I hope it will, though, since otherwise this is an awful waste.

The US Financial Crisis: It's Only Money

I wanted to write a thoughtful post about the current US “Financial Crisis.” It’s all the news wants to talk about these days. I found I didn’t quite have the understanding I wanted, and so I tried to do some research. This just made me feel like an idiot. You want to know the real reason no one in charge of anything did anything to stop what’s going on right now? It’s because those in the industry have filled the air with so much double talk and nonsensical weirdness that it’s impossible even for someone like me (who, not to brag, is a member of MENSA, and thus am not used to being completely befuddled by technical jibber-jabber) to make any sense of it.

The gist? All this appears to come from the “subprime mortgage market.” People took on way more debt than they could ever pay off in order to own their own home, because we’re supposed to have “an ownership society.” I think that may originally be Bush’s phrase. These people of course defaulted on their loans quite a bit of the time. Why they were given the credit in the first place, no one seems to be able to explain. Many of these homes were foreclosed. Other mortgages were picked up by finance firms, who through some strange bit of chicanery seemed to think they were worth something. No one can explain this part to me, either. Part of the reason they could do this was government deregulation that the Republicans have been pushing for years.

Now these firms are failing. Big insurance firms like AIG are failing too. The upshot is we’re theoretically on the verge of a spiral where it will become harder and harder to get credit, people will lose their homes, the stock market will plunge, and those whose retirements are based in the stock market will lose their money…

So the White House has decided that the solution is to use $700 Billion (along with a strange package of demands involving lack of oversight that, again, don’t make sense) that we don’t actually have to buy the “bad debt” that the financial firms apparently thought was worth something as a “bail out.” The obvious problem with this, besides the price tag, is the fact that all it does is perpetuate the status quo, which is how we got here…

I don’t want to give this topic more space than I think it deserves, because honestly I think it’s being overblown. A few times recently people have looked at me strange when I used the phrase “It’s only money.” I have trouble getting worked up over financial matters. In any case, this isn’t why I made this blog. But it feels like Bush wants to railroad us into something, like Iraq all over again, that makes no sense. I feel like I’m using that phrase a lot. At the very least, I need somebody to sit down and explain this to me, slowly, in words that have set definitions, before I agree to it. Congressmen say their offices are getting deluged with calls, and those calls are 90 to 1 against.

I can tell you one thing. The way to “prevent a financial panic” is not to go on television and tell us the sky is falling, the way the President did last night. One more thing that makes no sense.

John McCain Throws a Hail Mary

So, we find out John McCain is desperate. I didn't make this blog to be a political polemic, that wasn't really the point. But really, this is pretty much unheard of. Today he announced that he is suspending his campaign for President until the economic crisis is resolved. He wants to cancel the Presidential debate on Friday unless the proposed "bailout plan" (which I was originally planning on posting about) is passed, an eventuality that's looking increasingly unlikely (despite the White House's claims that it would be "unthinkable") since Congress has developed an inconvenient ability the past few days to think for itself. Obama's response?: "I think that one of the president's jobs will be to focus on more than one thing at once."

I don't really have a sense of what public reaction to this is going to be. The Debate Commission (theoretically unbiased, though notorious for excluding even vaguely-viable third-party candidates) says Friday's debate in Oxford, Mississippi (and why there, exactly?) will go on as scheduled. The McCain camp says it will not show up. President Bush went on TV a few minutes ago to say our "entire economy is at risk" because of this Wall Street business (the causes of that, as I mentioned, are probably another post). The proposed bailout (which both campaigns said tonight in a joint statement is "flawed") involves the Treasury Department and the only quasi-governmental Federal Reserve 700 Billion taxpayer dollars to such companies as AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc. in order to keep them remotely solvent. Some members of Congress (seemingly on both sides of the aisle) have balked at this for a variety of reasons, ranging from free-marketers who say government intervention in the economy is how we got into this mess (who are sort of right... if you look at it in a skewed way) to populists who believe that this would only "reward bad behavior" for overpaid CEOs, who would suffer no punishment for their gross mismanagement. And most prominently, $700 Billion is quite simply money we don't have when we're already grossly in debt.

I will try and post further updates on this situation as it develops. I personally believe this is McCain trying to manufacture what's known as an "October surprise" out of thin air, or thick air, anyway. The latest polls, for what they are, show Obama with a big lead in some key states and surprisingly pretty much tied in a few others that Republicans win most of the time, not to mention a lead nationally that is nearing double digit percentage points. In a third millenium election, that's a massive blowout. And the polls don't even take into account much of one of Obama's most solid voting blocks, voters under 26, because they only poll those with landlines. (i.e. if you only have a cell phone, presidential polls act like you don't exist).

McCain knows this. He's trying to change the game. I don't know if it'll work or not. It's probably worth a shot on his part, at any rate. Bush & Co. are trying the same fear-mongering tactics they used in the run-up to Iraq. Again, I'm not sure if it'll work... and the only reason I can even see for them to want to is because they're in deep with the Wall Street CEOs... but surely they're not that corrupt, are they? Oh, wait...

p.s. Not all our readers are (hopefully) American, so I thought I should explain the title... a Hail Mary's a play in American Football (the most complex strategy-based sport in the world, for my money, which is why I love it). More on THAT here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass