Floors!!

My on-line presence might be pretty sketchy for the next week, as I'll be living in a very posh hotel as my NEW FLOORS are being installed.

I've been moving stuff out of the rooms with the warped hardwood floors to the kitchen and guest room, and I should have everything completed by the time the crew comes on Friday morning. I imagine I'll come home to all kinds of dust and nastiness, but beneath it all will be beautiful, shiny, freshly stained oak.

In other news, I'd like to thank the House, the Senate, and Drinky McDumbass for finally passing the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008!

Sure, there are some annoying provisions in there, but on the whole, I really believe this thing will create a more organized regulatory structure. It will force banks to assist homeowners in need, which will in turn bolster the work of banks, thrifts, and the bond market.

Oh, and it sort of saves my job for the time being.

"Bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure..."

Nancy, I knew you'd make me love you. Thank you for being a Democrat. Thank you for calling a spade "a spade." Now will you please use your considerable wisdom and wit to pass a reasonable GSE bill? Fannie and Freddie, who control half of the residential mortgage market, are flailing and our two largest private housing finance institutions (Countrywide and IndyMac) are hemorrhaging money right and left.

And you know what this means, Nancy my dear? It means that ordinary taxpayers with ordinary mortgages, and ordinary salaries are going to pay for the speculation, the shady deals, and the absence of credit checks and counseling for people who should have never been given an unsubsidized home loan in the first place. And you know what? We simply can't afford that.

Because certainly you've noticed that a gallon of milk is over $5? Have you noticed that gasoline is $4.50 a gallon? Inflation is a dirty word, and it is only going to get worse if our incomes are further stressed by foreclosure, continued money printing, and loans from foreign governments to the tune of $3 trillion a pop.

Remember the S&L Crisis Nancy. Don't let Henry forget it either.

But I digress. You made me smile, and for that I thank you. But how's about getting some real work done?

PS. When you see Barack around, if you do see him, will you kick him in the pants for me and remind him that he has a job in Illinois?

Lookit Here!

Since I know you won't all understand this, I've used the Google translating tool to translate an article from German. The result is pretty funny. The original text is here.

But I wasn't posting to be funny, I was posting to express extreme joy!

My favorite author in the whole wide world, Christa Wolf, is being considered by the leftist party in German as their candidate. This bit of excitement is helping to lift me from the doldrums after watching Austria get defeated in soccer against the Germans.

I won't lie to you, my dear Christa is missing a few screws. She's brilliant though, and has such a way with words.



In other news: I've had emails asking for my vacation photos. They are coming, I promise. I took over 300 and I need to go through them all. I would expect at least pictures of Vienna to start showing up late this week, early next week.

It's another rant-y day in the neighborhood...

Have a look at this article about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who apparently said during an interview in the UK that "it would be absurd" to say that inflicting pain on terrorism suspect is wrong. This creature, who is supposed to be looking out for my rights under the US Constitution actually said the following:

I suppose it's the same thing about so-called torture," he said in the interview. "Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited by the Constitution?

Well, Your Honor, I would start with the Bill of Rights, and the part about protection from unreasonable search and seizure; cruel and unusual punishment. And from this article, I can't even determine if he's talking about terrorist suspects or someone caught in the act of performing acts of terrorism.

I absolutely despise how militaristic and violent the US has become. I don't know that we've evolved from the days of the "Wild West." We treat everyone who enters this country like a potential terrorist (come on people, retina scans?) but our terror alert rating has fluctuated between high and elevated since it was enacted. I've yet to see any proof that we're safer than we were in August of 2001. I know that the President likes to say that the proof is in the pudding - we haven't had attack of 9/11 proportions since then. We never experienced terrorism to the extreme it reached in September 2001 before then, and we had no Department of Homeland Security to provide for our safety. I'm not pretending that the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 where six people died, or the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, in which 168 people died, didn't happen. But we can't go back in time. We'll never know if the DoHS would have prevented the nearly 3,000 deaths of 9/11.

Today, the Senate voted to expand the country's power to spy on people, with no direct protection for US citizens. (According to the New York Times, the bill only provides for checks to see if those the government chooses to watch are US citizens after the fact.) We're still holding people prisoner without trial or charges at Guantanamo Bay, and we're still inflicting capital punishment. The US executed 42 inmates in 10 states during 2007. I am pleased to see that the trend is declining. However, according to Amnesty International, "In 2006, 91 per cent of all known executions took place in just six countries: China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the USA." Check out the human rights abuses in these countries. I'm not happy to see the US listed in this grouping.

Check out our newspapers and the local news. We're using violence against each other at an alarming rate. I can hardly bring myself to watch the local news anymore.

As a nation, why are we so aggressive? Where are we hoping it will take us? Why are our own officials supporting this image to the media, and why are we, collectively, representing ourselves in this way?

The Difference Two Years Made - New York Times

The Difference Two Years Made - New York Times

Don't forget to vote, people!