Upside down and Inside out

Did you ever look at the news at just think, "What the hell is going on?"  (Sorry about the cursing...I don't use it that often but it is good for when you need that extra emphasis.)  That was my day yesterday, like a nightmare, but now I can't seem to wake up.  I was actually YELLING at poor DH yesterday over the idiocy going on right now, both locally and nationally, even internationally.  The yelling didn't last, by the way; we both started laughing and then poured another glass of wine.  Anyway...

Read this article.  Seriously.  No, I mean NOW.  (And then come back!)  Atlas Shrugged, way back when I read it, was the longest novel I had ever read, 1,064 pages.  It was powerful, the kind of book that really makes you look around at things in a new way.  Stephen Moore has perfectly captured what is going on right now and shows how it lines up with the novel.  Good Lord, he is right.

Locally, our school board made Drudge a couple of days ago, which you know must mean something utterly ridiculous must have happened.  It did.  Not only do they want to make the teachers give back their 2.5% raise, the superintendent also wants to send out an additional property tax (retroactive) to all of us property owners.  We just passed a SPLOST here, for an extra 1% sales tax, not that I voted for it.  And back in July all of the incompetent I mean incumbent school board members were reelected without a whiff of a budget problem.  Something is truly rotten there.  I can look at this like a purely financial issue since I don't have kids in the system and it makes me so mad!  They have wasted so much money on real estate speculation and a bloated county administrative staff that it is hardly a surprise that problems are showing up now.

Nationally, oh, so much.  Obama wants to spend a TRILLION dollars getting us out of the poor economic conditions we're in.  What in the world makes in seem like taking the money from me and you, giving it to the government, and then having the government disburse the money to worthy projects is a better, more productive way to stimulate the economy than just letting all of us keep more of our money and using it as we see fit?  The U.S. Conference of Mayors is salivating...they have a 1557 page list of "shovel ready" projects!  Here is a partial list of those worthy projects...I swear I could not make this up if I tried.  Well, maybe, but take a look:

$35 million for the Music Hall of Fame in Florissant, Mo.; $35 million for the Scottsdale Museum of the West in Arizona and $20 million for the Virginia Key Beach Museum in Miami, Fla.

This is brilliant...we are in debt, so let's spend more.  I think I'll try that here at home, because there are these shoes I've been eyeing...

The porn industry wants a bailout.  Rich.  These people should be embarrassed to be associated with this business.  Instead they are bold enough to ask for your money and mine to save their sick business.  I think they won't get the money, but they have the nerve to ask!

Charlie Rangel's ethics investigation was supposed to be done by January 3.  Nancy Pelosi had promised!  But now it has been delayed.  Even better, thanks to Pelosi's rule changes, Rangel looks likely to not only continue serving "honorably" but also as the chair of the Ways and Means Committee for as long as he wants.  This is truly the fox guarding the henhouse.  What is wrong with the Republicans??  Why aren't they out in front of cameras talking about these things all the time?

Seriously?  You want to put a 70-year-old guy into a position for which he has only tangential experience, as Chief of Staff for Clinton, into one of the most important positions in the whole country?  Panetta as CIA chief is flat-out scary.  Transitions are high times for attacks, and I want a professional spook or ambassador in that position, not some high-level manager.  And look at the intelligence decisions made during the Clinton years:  the first World Trade bombing in 1993, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, the explosion of Al-Qeada (no pun intended).  This is a bad pick, and worse yet it is dangerous to all of us.

This was such a cheerful post!  Hopefully I'll find some good new to share later.

Tuesday Round-Up

Isn't that a lovely picture?  It's the sixth day of Christmas, after all, and so instead of geese a-laying I'm giving you Mary and Eve.  It's from the Anchoress, and drawn by Sister Grace Remington.

On to progressively more worldly matters...

Apparently, religious people have more self-discipline than those who are spiritual but don't subscribe to one particular set of beliefs.  I think the researcher who did this work is right in his conclusion that religion can imbue our daily lives with a sense of the sacred, but his solution is way off the mark:

“People can have sacred values that aren’t religious values,” he said. “Self-reliance might be a sacred value to you that’s relevant to saving money. Concern for others might be a sacred value that’s relevant to taking time to do volunteer work. You can spend time thinking about what values are sacred to you and making New Year’s resolutions that are consistent with them.”

So if I decide a value is sacred to me then it makes it easier to act in a way consistent with that value.  Which is a great idea except that the sacred doesn't emerge from within me, or from within you.  (I hope I'm not the first to tell you that.) God alone is holy, as the Psalms tell us repeatedly, and our religious practices are just an imperfect but worthy way to share in that holiness.

Hey!  Look at this!  Chrysler just wanted to say thanks...I think we know a little of why they're in financial difficulty.  Our tax dollars at work, ugh.  Apparently these add purchases cost in excess of a million dollars.  I know, compared with the $4 billion they'll soon receive it doesn't seem like much, but it seems to reflect the same attitude that led the CEOs to take their private jets to beg for bail-out money.

Congressional watch:  Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is coming under increasing fire for being a Friend of Angelo.  Good.  He looks dirty and this matter needs to be made clear.  Charlie Rangel, of New York, is already in hot water (we hope) over his tax evasion problems; now it's come out that he even is using campaign funds to pay parking tickets.  (via Instapundit, Rangel's fate apparently hangs in the balance right now...good)  And Franken, who's not in the Senate yet, looks poised to take the seat in Minnesota.  I was born in Minnesota, but thankfully left before the lake-water craziness could overtake me. What are they thinking up there??!!

Let's see, what else?  Oh, the Flight 93 families are encouraging the federal government to just confiscate the land where their loved ones' remains lay.  I understand their wanting the memorial, and I think it should be treated as the cemetery that it is.  But the land is owned by a quarry and the owners should be compensated.  If they don't want to deal with the Feds, then pressure them buy publicizing the process, or by trying to buy the land yourself and then donating it to the government.  I'm reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism right now; what these families are proposing is using the muscle (and guns) of the government to further their goals.  I don't want to throw the term around the term, but this looks like fascism to me.

This was a long post!  Lots to look at.  Don't forget to post what you got for Christmas...see below!

Merry Belated Christmas!

Well, I took an unintentionally long break!  We headed down to the lake right after Christmas, for a long weekend.  Part of the appeal of our lake house is the peace, and maintaining the peace means NO INTERNET.  So, no blogging.

Our Christmas was wonderful...DH and I had agreed to cut back (hot tubs not selling like they have in the past, you know, and stupid government officials not helping matters), but I really don't think the kids noticed one bit.  That's a lesson we are going to hold on to, I think. We decorated a lot less, too, which I kind of missed during the month but now that I'm thinking of the clean-up seems pretty awesome.

Ann over at Gorgeous Things' blog asked the question, "What'd you get?" So here are my answers: A Wii Fit Board!!  It is so much fun, and we have all had a good time playing with that.  I also got Aquaglobes (DD5 can recite the commercial by heart), some Georgia Tech paraphenalia, this cute dress from my mom (Thanks!), and a couple of cool books.  Wow, listing it makes it look like a lot!

So what did you get?  Did you do anything different to celebrate?  Post your link in the comments, or just list it there!  Lots to blog about, as usual.  Sometimes the hardest part is choosing good topics.  More later, I hope.

Observations

There has been so much in the news lately, and it's so overwhelming that I'm not sure where to start...so I'll just jump in.

The Blago thing just looks dirtier and dirtier.  But do you remember the sit-in staged by workers at Republic Windows in Illinois?  They did it earlier this year; the company had closed when BoA said "no more money." Blagojevich strong-armed BoA, saying he'd take away state business if BoA didn't loan Republic more money.  At the time I thought it was an astonishing threat--how dare he interfere in the private sector like that?  Apparently, though, interfering is the name of the game for this governor.

It also continues a disturbing trend of government officials telling private companies what to do.  Think about what we are seeing at all levels:  Fannie and Freddie collapsed under the weight of subprime loans they were ordered to make by Congress; an auto bailout will subject those companies to the oversight of a "car czar;" incentives and threats to locate new plants in locations (less egregious but still). I have another story that I'll tell in a second post about something going on in DH's industry, threatening to put the entire industry out of business.  (Where's their bailout?) 

But I want to stay on this for a moment...I didn't realize until yesterday that Rahm Emanuel worked at Freddie Mac for a while, riding the gravy train.  Who else?  Gov. Tom Vilsak has just been named Ag Secretary.  He was responsible for taking away local control of hog farms in Iowa, among other things.  That has been terrible for the water quality in several communities.  He's also tied in tight to Monsanto and ADM...neither party will take on these guys, but it looks like were in for, at the best, more of the same.  Both of those companies are also big into food-based biofuels, which are responsible for driving up food prices with no comparable benefit in the fuel department.  

Arne Duncan will be Secretary of Education.  He's from Chicago, of course, and Bill Ayers has spoken highly of him (yes, I know they've gotten crossways with each other, too).  Mostly, that one is that he is from Chicago.  Really?  Another Chicago guy?  We are seeing the unwinding of a dirty, Byzantine political machine and I cannot believe that there are too many clean guys up there.  

It occurs to me that if someone from that pool really is clean, as it appears Obama is, then there were other people working very hard to make sure he stayed clean.  I wonder what the real story is there.  None of this feels very hopey or changey.

I'll try to check on some more cabinet members later.  I want to do that other post and also need to make some cookies.  Tis the season!

UPDATE:  Here is some information on Holdren, Obama's science advisor.  And here.

Well, that was 20 minutes I'll never get back.

But it was worth it.

Back with some links

I'm turning my last paper in this afternoon, which explains the dead air around here.  Meanwhile, can you guess who that cute guy is?  You'll have to go here to find out.  Yeah, I was really surprised, too!

And have you seen the coffee commercial with Ozzy?  Wait, it's not a coffee commercial, but it should be, because I can't remember what they are really advertising.  Anyway, DH remembered this little bit and it is worth resurrecting:

I think we needed some levity.  I've only been paying a little attention to the news lately. I'll catch up today, but I have to say it is scary.  Nationalization--that was the headline on Drudge.  What makes Nancy Pelosi think she can run a bank, a car company, or an insurer better than people who have spent their lives doing it?  (Although I have to say they haven't exactly been doing a stellar job, either.) I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty powerless right now.  And I'm wondering again, Where's MY Bailout?

Sorry so quiet!

Christmas stuff and the conclusion of school have gotten in the way.  I haven't even been able to get to pay as much attention as I'd like to the bailout baloney, although my general impression is that the senators are unimpressed, just not to the same extent as the rest of us.

Financial news continues to worry...but there are a lot of good sources of basic information.  I've started getting John Mauldin's financial newsletter, available here.  You have to register for it, but there's no detectable spam associated with it.  

School stuff?  I'm not done yet?!  Nope, one more paper, due Tuesday.  I have to write about myself, my cultural background, and how I look at people of backgrounds different than mine.  I've learned some things this semester, definitely.  But I have to say that if you approach another person as Jesus instructed us to, it is a lot easier to get your head around.  Unconditional positive regard (a wonderful concept originated by Rogers) is at the heart of Christian love.  It doesn't mean condoning a person's actions; instead, it is having a positive attitude to the person you are with.  For me, it's the same as looking at every person as someone God loves.  If you really try to look at people that way it can change you.  I don't quite know how a person who doesn't believe this summons the fortitude to feel positive towards people without any help at all.  Just a thought.

DD5 and I are going to inventory the baking supplies, too, to get started on some cookies.  Tis the season.

Finally, out of the mouths of babes...DD7 is taking art lessons.  A professional artist friend of my dad's saw her paintings and was suitably impressed.  When I told DD7, she sighed and said, "Well, I guess I can be an artist.  But then I'll have to give up my dream."  "What's your dream, baby?" "To be an actress." *sigh* I hate that she'll have to give up her dream of being an actress to be an artist.  I want to live in her world.

And DD5 just started taking horseback riding lessons this week.  She's been obsessed with cowgirls and (inexplicably) Texas for a long time.  She just informed me, "I'm going to grow up and be a famous horseback rider in Texas.  And I'll throw everyone two-handed kisses." I'd live in her world, too.

Have a good day!

Hey, that's me!

Over here at the Corner.  Which is what I was doing instead of blogging.

Up with the White and Gold

I've got two finals early next week, so not much posting...and I've also got to carve time out for the BIG GAME.  Toe meets leather at noon, eastern, at a soggy Sanford Stadium, and my Yellow Jackets are trying to snap a seven-year losing streak.  Please, Paul Johnson, please.  I was no Chan Gailey fan, so I'm hopeful today.  At any rate, these Jackets are a lot of fun to watch, so no way am I studying while the game's on.

Meanwhile, here are some interesting reads...Amity Shlaes has a piece in WSJ, and WSJ also has a great piece on how immigrant kids understand Thanksgiving better, in many ways, than those of us lucky enough to be born here.  I am so grateful for teachers who can give that gift to their students.  Mark Steyn links to a hilarious bit about those poor drunk Brits in their high heels (thanks, Instapundit!).  The Anchoress has some great places to do some unusual Christmas shopping. (That post is a little old but I keep coming back to it.)  

And, finally, I bring you...the GTGs.  Yes, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.  Go Jackets...TO HELL WITH GEORGIA!!

UPDATE:  45-42.  Paul Johnson, I love you.