Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My Latest Project



I wonder if the folks at Audi knew they made a pickup truck.

Remember those strange looking things that I posted pictures of last week? Well, I filled them with concrete last Thursday.

Yesterday, I took the forms off to see the results of my handiwork. I've still got a bit of patching and grinding to do, and a lot of polishing, but I think my plan for a concrete table to complement my concrete countertops might actually work. See those aluminum tubes in the background of the picture on the right? No they're not for uranium-enrichment centrifuges. They will be bolted to the base (in the upper right hand corner of the same picture) and will support the tabletop in the foreground.
If it doesn't work, I'll always think it should have.

Obama's Infomercial

I just watched Obam's 1/2 hour infomercial. It was very well done in a Hallmark kind of way - probably about what I'd expect. He looked presidential and reassuring. Not at all like the wild-eyed communist the right portrays him to be.

I'm pretty confident that Obama will win next Tuesday, but I still have a knot in my stomach that won't go away until he's declared the winner. There are several things that just don't sit right that are causing my concern. One is that the right wing pundits are saying that the race is tightening and is "functionally" tied. You have to do some serious cherry-picking of the polls to come to that conclusion. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think they could be laying the groundwork for a "surprise comeback" for McCain. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the 2004 campaign, especially why the exit polls (which had always been very accurate predictors of election results) didn't match the voting results. There are lots of reports out there about the Republican voter suppression efforts, dirty tricks, and malfunctioning voting machines. I don't believe that it is beyond the Right to actually steal this election. The other thing that bothers me is that the US is escalating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just in the last week, American commandos conducted a raid in Syria, and Predator attacks in Pakistan have intensified. It's almost as if W is trying to provoke an international crisis in an attempt to push up McCain's numbers.

If McCain wins, it will be because of vote manipulation and/or an artificially provoked international incident. The Republicans are playing a very dangerous game. If Obama doesn't win, there are going to be a lot of pissed off people in the US. And I think there will be enough of them that they won't take the defeat lying down like they did in 2000 and 2004.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Pork Belly

Megan took me out for dinner last Friday night to The Boat Street Cafe in Seattle. When I go out to eat, I like to get food I've never had before or something I wouldn't normally cook myself. Well, the Boat Street Cafe had the perfect menu for that kind of gastronomic adventure. I had never eaten pork belly before, let alone seen it on a menu, so I had to give it a go. (I guess Megan wasn't feeling all that adventurous. She ordered a steak.) Pork belly is essentially a chunk of uncured bacon, complete with a bit of rind, a lot of fat, and a few streaks of meat. Sounds appetizing, doesn't it? Well, the way they prepared it, it was delicious. The rind gave it a bit of a crunch, the fat was light and almost buttery, and the meat held up it's reputation in some quarters as nature's candy. It was served with a salty, sweet, spicy-hot cranberrry sauce that complemented the very rich pork belly perfectly. The sauce was so good that I tried to duplicate it serve with a batch of my world-famous ribs that I made on Sunday. It turned out pretty well, so well in fact, that the sauce may become a standard accompaniment to the ribs.

On Saturday we went to see Burn After Reading, the latest offering from the Coen brothers. Like most of their movies (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, to name a few) , it was very well done and very entertaining, and made you think on top of it all. It had another trademark of Coen Bros. films - for me at least - I walked out knowing I seen a good movie and was well entertained, but I wasn't really sure if I got it.

I had an email from daughter Megan today. She's off in the wilds of Ukraine on a business trip. She was shocked to have been served some very Mennonite-looking dishes at a restaurant in Kiev. I reminded her that our ancestors came to Canada from southern Ukraine 120 years ago, so it's not too surprising that the Ukrainians may have stolen a dish or two from them.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Obama looks like he could pull off a landslide, but I won't be content until after he actually wins on November 4th. My friends at fivethirtyeight.com give him a 93.5% chance of winning the election, and the closer we get to election day the better those numbers look. I think it's still possible, but highly unlikely, that McCain could pull off a Dewey-esque upset. For that to happen, there would have to be a major international event and all of the GOP's voter-suppression and vote-manipulation tools would have to work to maximum effect. Right now though, it looks like the big question is how big the Democratic rout will actually be. I doubt that they can get 60 filbuster-proof seats in the Senate, but Al Franken is favored to win in Minnesota, so if nothing else, Senate debates should be more entertaining next year.

Assuming that the GOP is indeed routed, they will be in the political wilderness for years. During the course of this campaign, they've lost the support of most of their intellectual base, including prominent writers like George Will, David Brooks, and David Frum (yes, for you Canadians out there, he is the son of Barbara Frum). Even Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley, the founder of modern consevatism, has left the fold. Colin Powell has endorsed Obama, as have countless former Reagan and Bush officials. The only ones left are the true-believer wingnuts. It's great fun to surf around on conservative websites and watch the blood and manure fly.

The markets are all over the place, but I still think the overall trend is down. People tend to forget that even once the banking mess is fixed, there is an underlying world-wide recession (or worse) looming. The only good news is that oil prices are dropping and I have to fill the tank on WaveGuide before I bring her back from Anacortes.

Project Update - My first attempt ended up in the dumpster. My second effort starts today. Regarless of the outcome, I'll post some photos next week.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Canadian elections, American debates, and more

The Canadian elections are over, and Harper didn't get the majority he hoped for. He did gain some seats, the Liberals lost a few, the NDP gained a few, the Bloc Quebecois lost a couple, and the Greens were shut out once again. Even though this is the result that the polls predicted, looking back on it, I'm a bit surprised that he didn't do better. The Liberal leader Stephane Dion has to be one of the least charismatic politicians I've ever seen. If Harper can't beat him soundly, who can he beat?

Here in the USA, the presdidential debates are over, and for those who tuned out (like I almost did) because the first couple were so boring, missed the best one. I thought McCain looked pretty crappy physically. He had the rheumy eyes of the old man that he is. But physical appearances aside, McCain finally made the "palling around with terroists" claims to Obama's face. As usual, Obama was totally unflustered and handled it well, especially when he brought up the people he does "pal around" with. McCain was trying to get in so many right-wing -whacko talking points that he never really managed to land one.

One thing he did bring up that probably went over the heads of most viewers was his claim that ACORN was tearing at the very fabric of American democracy. You'd think they were another Al Qaeda, but I'd be willing to bet that if you asked 100 Americans what or who ACORN is, no more than 20 would be able to tell you, and those 20 are already part of the kool-aid drinking fringe. ACORN is an association of community activists who, among other things, try to get people involved in the political process by getting them to register to vote. ACORN employs people (often homeless or otherwise unemployed) to register voters and pays them by the number of registrations. Not surprisingly, in an attempt to pad their paychecks, some of these new voter lists are inflated by fictional people, or fictional characters like Mickey Mouse, Ronald MacDonald and Tony Roma. The Right is up in arms about all of this so-called voter fraud. This is all nonsense. Just because ACORN registers new voters, it doesn't mean they are automatically on the voter rolls. All states have some way of screening new voters, and most require some form of ID at the polls. It's hard to imagine Ronald MacDonald showing up to try to vote.

The people tearing at the fabric of the Amercian democracy are the lunatic-right-wing fringe. They are the ones who advocate torture, unlimited presidential power, unlimited electronic eavesdropping, and suspension of habeas corpus. They are the ones who have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of people (see Florida 2000) by purging them from voter roles for the most specious reasons. Now as well as demonizing Obama, they are trying to delegitimize the results of what appears to be a landslide election in advance. The scary part is that there are lots of these whackos around. Even here in Seattle, one of the bluest of blue cities, and even in the limited group of people I know personally well enough to talk politics, I know several otherwise intelligent people who are certifiably right-wing lunatics. Scary stuff!

And for those of you who wonder what I do when I'm not doing absolutely nothing, here are a couple of photos of a work in progress that's been keeping me busy for a while. I'll post more photos as the project progresses.










Monday, October 13, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

That's for all you Canadians out there. For you Americans, you'll have to settle for Happy Columbus Day!

And another example of where Canucks are ahead of the curve, Happy Election Day Eve! I haven't been following the Canadian elections all that closely, but it seems that from a distance, there is not going to be a huge shift in power tomorrow.

The market meltdown has slowed, but I doubt that the bottom has been reached yet. I think that the best we can hope for is some stability at or near where we are now until the effects of the various bailout plans can be seen. Then we'll have to ride out the recession caused by years of this irrational financial exuberance. There is more bad news out there in that the US housing market hasn't bottomed yet, and no where in all the financial analysis do I see the effects of the hundreds of billions of dollars the US has borrowed to pay for their various wars.

It's been painful to watch Bush try and instill confidence in the financial markets. I think we should give him early release to his ranch, on the condition that he keeps his mouth shut and wears the monitoring bracelet on his ankle.

It the polls are anywhere near accurate, and barring an unforseen catastrophe, Obama will be our next president. It will be a refreshing change to have an intellectually curious president who can speak in complete sentences. That alone could instill some confidence that the world is not collapsing around us.

Oh, and congratulations to Paul Krugman, my favorite economist and one of my favorite columnists, for winning the Nobel prize for economics. I've followed him for years, and it's good to see him win the big one. I had thought for some time that he would win it sooner or later but I'm a bit surprised he won this year. And as an added bonus, it will piss off my right-wing-whacko friends who are already wallowing deep in their pissedoffedness.

Friday, October 10, 2008

End Times

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Amid the sound of markets crashing around the world, I'm not sure how appropriate this quotation is, but with a bit of a tweak to the original meaning, it somehow sounds right. Churchill used the line in a speech to the British parliament in November of 1942 after the defeat of German forces in Egypt at El Alamein. The first couple of years of the war had been a disastrous series of defeats for the British and their Allies. This was the first major British victory in the war, and Churchill was signalling that a corner had been turned, and that however distant, there was an end in sight.

In the case of the current financial meltdown, there is no end in sight. We're staring into the abyss, but the bottom is nowhere to be seen. I think this is the end of the beginning in the sense that we finally realize that we're in deep, deep trouble.

We (as in those of us lucky enough to live in the developed world) have had a pretty good ride over the years. This is especially true in my case. Over the years I've gotten almost everything I've ever wanted. I've never been involuntarily unemployed. I've never been hungry and didn't know where my next meal was coming from. I didn't worry about paying my kids' college tuition, let alone putting clothes on their backs. That's not to say everything was handed to me on a silver platter. I'm a pretty smart guy, and back in the day when I used to work for a living, I worked pretty hard, but I've never had to use my limited talents to eke out a living in desperate circumstances.

I'm not saying that I'll be selling pencils (or whatever is the equivalent in the digital age) on the street corner anytime soon, but I am saying that the long free ride the West has enjoyed over the last fifty years has ended. It appears that we are now living in the "interesting times" of that old Chinese curse.

On that uplifting note, I think I'll have another cup of coffee and, with a detached sense of morbid fascination, watch the markets melt down.

Monday, October 6, 2008

It's about time

Finally a semi-mainstream publication with national reach does a major hit piece on McCain. I didn't see anything really new in the articles, but it was good to see it all (or at least the highlights) assembled in one place. Check out these links to the Rolling Stone magazine article, The Make-Believe Maverick. The article hits all the high spots of his career including his upbringing in the middle of Washington DC's political elite (his father and grandfather were admirals in the navy); his time at the Naval Academy (would have been thrown out if not for his family connections and ended up graduating fifth from the bottom); his naval fly-boy career (crashing three planes, not including the one he was shot down in over Hanoi); his dumping of his former-model first wife for a mega-rich trophy wife; his corrupt political career; his flip-flops for the sake of his political career; and much, much, more. But wait there's more! Matt Taibbi writes a scathing piece on the candidacy of Sarah Palin. These articles are already making it around the blogosphere. They could provide a good antidote to the Hail Mary ugliness that's coming out of the McCain campaign. I hope the MSM picks up on them.

And more good news. It looks like I've just won a $50 bet I made early this year. The DOW is below 10,000!

Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Financial Meltdown



I've found several great stories and explanations of what's going on in the financial world and think I should share some of the best with you. The above video was done by a PBS station in California. Even though it's easy to say it serves the buyers right for getting in way over their heads, or to chastise them for their greed, it's more than a bit heart-breaking to see McMansions cleaned out in a few hours to be ready for foreclosure sale.

Two other links are here, A Giant Pile of Money, and Another Frightening Show About the Economy. These are both broadcasts from This American Life, a program on NPR that shows how fabulous radio can be when done right. This American Life has probably given me more driveway moments* than any other radio program I've ever heard, including the best of the CBC in its golden years. Both programs are an hour long, but they explain the horrendously complicated financial meltdown in terms that can be understood by anyone who's paying attention.

*A driveway moment occurs when you reach your destination before the program you're listening to is over, so you park at the curb or in the driveway and sit in your car until the program is over.