Campaigning in Florida for Obama, so the folks who are whining, about what she is doing about Palin, please STFU.
She is doing what needs to be done, OK?
Month: September 2008
OK, This Offends My Fashion Sense
Vanity Fair, who gets such thing right, took a look at the outfits worn by Cindy McCain and Laura Bush at the convention, and generated price tag:
Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100
I know that then I comment on women’s fashion, I am way out of my comfort zone, but honestly, I find nothing wrong with ODL’s beige dress, but what Cindy McCain is wearing is fugly, and you can be fugly for a lot less than 300 grand.
If someone could help me out though….There is clearly a MasterCard “Priceless” ad in this somewhere.
Your Government at Work
It appears that the US U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a tiny error on the new Migratory Bird Conservation and Hunting Stamp (Duck Stamp), which is must be carried for all duck and waterfowl hunters. It costs $15.00, and proceeds go to acquiring and protecting wetlands for said waterfowl.
That would be fine, except for the fact that the most recent version of the self adhesive version of the stamp contains a serious misprint
The correct number, 1-800-STAMP24 (1-800-782-6724), is for people wishing to order additional duck stamps. Levin said two digits of the phone number are transposed on the card that holds the self-adhesive version of the stamp. That incorrect number, 1-800-872-6724, translates to 1-800-TRAMP24. Callers to ‘Intimate Connections’ [a phone sex service] are warned that they must be 18 years or older before proceeding.
This gives the phrase F@#$ a duck a whole new meaning.
Court Rules that New York Must Recognize Out of State Gay Marriage
Justice Lucy A. Billings of State Supreme Court in the Bronx has ruled that Governor Paterson’s executive order stands.
This is all going the way of Loving v, Virgina, and it appears to be moving quite a bit more quickly.
Cool.
Just a Moment, While I Perform a Quick Palinoscopy
We have the former head of the Alaska State Police calling Sarah Palin a liar over “troopergate”.
It should be interesting to see how this plays out, as a former Alaska Attorney General has categorized her legal defense strategy on the matter, that only the state Personnel Board (whose members she has appointed) has exclusive authority to investigate the matter as bogus.
We also have Palin’s own handwriting showing that she was lying over her opposition to earmarks, where we have margin notes in her own handwriting saying that, “We Did Well!!!,” in securing earmarks, and that John Sidney McCain III criticized the very earmarks that she had hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington, DC to get.
Meanwhile, her story of bravely persevering in her speech in the face of the dangers of a broken teleprompter is also a lie. Jonathan Martin of the right-winger funded Politico notes that he was standing where he could read the teleprompter, and it was working as intended, and he confirmed this with a convention organizer.
Of course, this goes along with the Anchorage Daily News’ analysis of her speech, where she is described as stretching the truth.
It seems like we have Alaska’s own Dick Cheney here, only she appears to be a better shot then “Deadeye Dick”.
Meanwhile focus groups of Hillary supporters in Michigan and Nevada were significantly more tepid on her speech than the crowd of mouth breathing Neanderthals* in the convention center, with a number of fairly brutal complaints about her.
Bummer of a birth mark, Hal.
*No offense intended to Neanderthals, or those Geico guys.
Quote of the Day: Mo Rocca is a Genius Edition
Of course, next week we could find out that Palin’s a criminal or a bat-sh#t crazy religious fanatic — or both. In that case, she’d disappear or become a pundit.
Rocca owes me a screen cleaner.
Economics Update
Things have seemed pretty hectic today.
Normally I don’t mention this, I think that it is just noise, but all three major stock indices are down 3%+, so while it’s not yet raining Katz and Lehmans, it’s pretty ugly.
Note that this is my economic update post, so I’m not going to claim that a certain VP pick’s speech caused anything, and instead point at jobless claims spiking unexpectedly by 15,000, though truth be told, it should not cause that sort of reaction: the weekly data is simply too noisy for any rational investor to act upon the basis of those numbers.
But this isn’t “rational investors” this be Wall Street, so it could have been the Lehman CEO’s choice of shoes today.
The rest of the financial news is no where near as definitive, and even Federal Reserve officials are publicly disagreeing on whether the concern is recession or inflation.
Meanwhile, even though the Bank of England and the ECB kept rates steady, the cost of money in Europe went up, because the ECB has significantly tightened requirements to lend to banks.
In any case, the lack of rate hikes strengthened the dollar.
Mortgage rates are down this week, which would ordinarily be good news, but I think that “the markets” (and I) see this as a sign of a weakening economy, just as “the markets” (and I) see declining oil prices and declining gas prices as signs of a weakening economy.
Even so, the numbers for the service sector were good, so the blood on the street today is a bit odd.
Of course, it sucks to be a bank right now, with Community National Bank of Sarasota looking to be on the FDIC’s Friday afternoon press releases, and Lehman floating the idea of creating a “bad bank” to shift bad assets to.
Someone needs to explain the concept to me, because it seems to suffer from the, “We’ve run out of gullible idiots,” problem.
In any case, it appears that insurance giant AIG is considering something similar.
I’m not sure how piling crap in a separate pile really helps anything.
Peanuts Animator Bill Melendez Dies at 91
I Guess It’s Sufficient Reason to Go on O’Reilly
I guess it’s not so stupid if Obama goes on O’Reilly opposite John McCain’s acceptance speech.
So will the septuagenarians who make up the O’Reilly audience watch McCain or Billo?
Honda Passes Chrysler in US Market Share
So this puts Chrysler #5 in market share.
Maybe if we weren’t spending more than the rest of the world combined in defense, we’d be more competitive in the civilian economy, though the overpaid incompetent management at the big little 3 auto makers has contributed to this quite a bit.
NATO Conducts Raid Inside Pakistan
Way to piss off an essential ally against terrorism in the region, by sending in a helicopter based infantry assault, and killing some number of civilians.
I’m not sure if this is the start of a new policy, a statement of displeasure regarding Pakistan’s Ramadan cease fire, or some attempt to gin up something for the us elections, but in either case, the consequences, in terms of destabilizing a nuclear armed Pakistan, are very concerning.
Note that this was not the NATO force that did this, as, “American troops in Afghanistan operate under a NATO chain of command, the Special Operations forces who carried out this attack answer only to American commanders.”
In any case, this does not bode well for US-Pakistani relations.
Palin Nomination: Bad for the Jews
Actually, the title is a joke, but it does reflect a sort of American Jewish political idiom that Palin will have to deal with.
The problem is that her church hosted a talk from David Brickner, and unlike Obama and Jeremiah Wright, Palin was in the audience listening happily (see also here)
David Brickner is the controversial founder of Jews for Jesus, a front group for evangelicals targeting Jews for proselytization. Additionally, while speaking before her church, and Palin, he, “told the congregation that terrorist attacks in Israel are God’s ‘judgment of unbelief’ for Jews who reject Christianity.”
Let me be clear, there are some politically conservative Jews who might find a way to alibi for Brickner’s quote, but never for a church inviting the founder of Jews for Jesus.
In American Jewish life, inviting him to your church crosses a line that cannot be uncrossed.
This trumps any concerns about Obama’s middle name for the bulk of American Jews.
In Texas, There is No Money Laundering
So long as you pay by check.
That is what the Texas Third Court of Appeals voted on a straight party line.
Thoughts on Sarah Palin’s Speech
I couldn’t listen to all of it, her voice really grates on me.
I would note that to the to the degree that I could listen to her, it’s clear that she is a big time “movement conservative”, and that her career has been the three Gsm Gods, Guns, and Gays (and abortion)….And not much else.
Certainly, this is getting the Christo-Fascist/Talibaptist* wing of the Republican party energized, but I’m not sure how it will play in Peoria.
*Which term do you think is better? I find that “Talibaptist” flows better, but that it implies that it’s only Baptists, while “Christo-Fascist” is a nice turn around of the admittedly absurd “Islamo-Fascist”.
You Cannot Make This Sh$# Up
It appears that the US is granting Citgo’s request for 250,000 BBL of crude from the US strategic petroleum reserve.
Citgo is the state owned oil company of Venezuela, and is thus controlled by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Time for a Painful Palinectomy, Dude
I’m not sure what the hell McCain was thinking, but my most likely reasons are that he:
- Did it in a fit of pique because his reported first choice, Joe Lieberman, who was shot down by the religious right.
- That he had no number two after his reported first choice, Joe Lieberman, who was shot down by the religious right, and he panicked.
- That he figures that after picking her to be the VP, enough will come out so that he can dump her after the convention, and select his his reported first choice, Joe Lieberman, who was shot down by the religious right.
My money is on the first possibility, but in any case, you have McCain staffers saying that she was not interviewed until the day before the announcement.
In any case, you have to love the irony of Dr. Laura saying that Palin is morally unfit to be VP.*, though the fact that Jamie Lynn Spears† sending a a gift of designer baby burp cloths to Bristol‡ Palin to show moral support comes close.
The strange thing is that as Josh Marshall notes, the McCain campaign appears to be doing it’s level best to pimp Levi Johnston, the alleged father of the alleged child:
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Overwhelmingly, reporters are pressing eminently reasonable questions — her role in troopergate, her lack of experience, her connections to the AIP, her history of earmarking and lobbyists, etc. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is going absolutely non-stop about Palin’s daughter. It is unmistakable.
Look at the video. It’s clear that McCain is attempting to make sure that this self described “Red Neck” is front and center:
Of course, it would not be fair to mention the National Enquirer article which said that Palin was pressuring Bristol‡ to get a quickie marriage, but that, “Bristol, 17, refused to go along with the plan and that sparked a mother-daughter showdown over the failed coverup.”
Honestly, I expect that there was some shouting and screaming in such situations, but those are private matters, and the National Enquirer should be ashamed of itself.
That being said, Palin’s opposition to reality based sex education, along with her veto to slash funding from the Alaska program that helps teenage mothers get their lives together and keep their kids are legitimate policy issues that should be on the table.
Meanwhile, it appears that the state house investigation of “Troopergate” will be released a few weeks before the election, at least it will be if Palin’s private lawyer, hired at state expense, doesn’t manage to quash the investigation.
Thus far, we have already been treated to the spectacle of Sarah Palin filing an ethics complaint against … Sarah Palin in order to move the investigation to the state Personnel Board, whose members are appointed by … you guessed it … Sarah Palin!
Still, we have other ethical problems, such as her violation of state ethics laws by failing to disclose business interests.
Additionally, Time took a loor at her time as mayor of Wasilla, and found her systematically going after professional staff who were not sufficiently “loyal to the mayor”.
I believe that the translation for this is, “Heck of a job, Brownie.”
*Actually, you have to love the irony of Dr. Laura saying that anyone is morally unfit for anything.
†Yes, I know, she is, indirectly at least, one of Those Who Must Not Be Named, but there is a political context here.
‡Is it that I affect British English too much, or do other people find it odd that someone named their kid a slang term for breasts?
Economics Update
It’s generally not been a good year for manufacturing and construction, with the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index falling to 49.9, with any number below 50 meaning contraction, though I wonder how much inflation is being measured as “growth”, which is what I think is driving much of the US Commerce Department data showing an increase in factory orders.
I think that this is entirely export driven growth, a position that the abysmal auto sales reinforces, but these export sales are being driven by a cheap dollar, which will eventually drive interest rates higher in the US (foreigners will demand higher returns), crushing domestic consumption.
That being said, construction is clearly cratering, falling 0.6% in July, twice expectations.
Meanwhile, banking continues to look pretty heinous with the FDIC expanding office space in the expectation of a spate of bank failures, S&P downgrading two regional banks, and suggesting that 37% of regional banks will be down graded.
Additionally, when GMACis laying off thousands, you know that the industry is in dire straits.
With Euro zone inflation falling, it appears that the ECB will hold rates steady, for a while at least, which will serve to keep the dollar relatively strong, as evidenced by the US Dollar’s rise today.
Since the hurricanes in the Gulf were relatively mild, oil and gasoline have continued their downward path.
Russia Explicitly Claims Prerogatives as a Regional Power
Russia’s declaration of its regional interests is a major pushback against the US view, and desire for, a unipolar world.
One thing that was clear when the USSR fell was that the US as the single unchallenged hyperpower in the world had an expiration date, and I think that we have found out that it expired a few weeks back.
5 Months to Go, and Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Frantically Try to Make Things Worse
In this case, it’s a blatant assault on organized labor.
As it currently stands, if an employer chooses, they can elect to go with a card-check, as opposed to an election to certify a union.
Well, Bush is looking at signing an executive order making elections to certify a union a requirement for government contracts.
Only To go.
If You Can Make it There, You’ll Make it Anywhere
And the housing crash has hit New York, as Manhattan apartment prices are falling, and the same thing is happening with luxury homes in central London which is even pricier.