I need a favor. Amanda and I don't have that many pictures of the two of us together, because one of us is always on the other side of the camera (no, Pete does not take a very good picture). So, in honor of our 6th wedding anniversary, we're going out Sunday afternoon for an around-the-town photo shoot of sorts. We've got the tripod, and I know how to use the timer. So, let's hope this works. Should be a lot of fun, if for no other reason than that we will be sans children for the afternoon. I love those little people, but an afternoon with just their mommy sounds mighty appealing to me.
I'm putting together a list of places that I think we could go to get some nice shots. I have the obvious ones already (Sunken Gardens, UNL campuses, etc.) and I'm planning on finishing up with the columns out at Pioneers Park, followed by a picnic dinner. Other than those, does anyone have suggestions of good places to shoot fun, candid, occasionally romantic pictures? Thanks for the help!
This Bloomberg article has six paragraphs of detailed analysis of oil prices and speculation on future prices before ending with this little bit of information:
"The oil survey has correctly predicted the direction of futures 49 percent of the time since its start in April 2004."
They've been right less than half the time over the past 4 years? Even meteorologists can do better than that. I think it might be time to try the dart board or coin-flipping model for commodity price prediction.
Given the current state of the nation's economy, I'm thinking about offering a seminar on financial security during times of economic upheaval. Some of the topics I would cover:
- How to apply for your own $700 billion bailout, while working from home
- Sell your home to the government in 3 easy missed payments
- Making money in a down market: Why it pays to be "too big to fail"
I could probably pack a room with an agenda like that…
Last week, Joe Biden lectured the wealthy among us, telling them that "It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
Apparently, a system where "the top 1 percent of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns" (source) isn't fair enough to the "little guy". Lest you think that these proportions are simply a product of the "super rich" making gobs of money while the little guy scrapes by, consider that, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, this top 1% "earned approximately 21.2 percent of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 39.4 percent of all federal income taxes." Yes, the top 1% pays almost 40% of the total tax bill. To be in this privileged class you would have had to bring home more than $364,000 in 2005. That's a lot of money, but not exactly what I would call being "super-rich".
Let's leave the upper crust alone for a moment and look a little further down the scale. What about the top quarter? They carried 86% of the nation's tax burden. The top 50% accounted for 96.93% of the bill, leaving the bottom half with a 3.07% share. The cutoff for the top half was a whopping $30,881. Yeah, it's high time we stick it to those greedy so-and-sos who are making $30k a year. How do they sleep at night?
But Biden stands by his comments and, according to the Wall Street Journal, has now "upped the ante, thundering that he also has Jesus in his corner. 'Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most.'" And anyone who knows the scriptures will tell you that the way to take care of "people who need the help the most" is to raise taxes so we can, according to Holy Joe, "take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people."
What? That's not in the Bible? It says that the church, not the state, is supposed to care for the poor? Oh.
Aside from being entirely unbiblical, Biden's formula has a few other problems. From the WSJ:
Regarding taxes and social justice, the issue is whether the high taxes that Mr. Biden favors promote economic growth and prosperity, not least for America's poorest citizens. There he doesn't have evidence on his side. Studies from around the world, including the annual Wall Street Journal-Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom, conclusively indicate that countries that keep taxes low tend to have the least amount of poverty. (emphasis mine)
But, as I've said before, the heart of the issue is that Holy Joe really, really, really cares about the poor among us. We know it's true, because he says he does. So, it shouldn't matter if his plan of increasing taxes will actually hurt the poor instead of helping them. It's the thought that counts.
And, while we're counting, the WSJ article mentions that "Mr. Biden and his wife recently released their tax returns, and they reported an average of $380, or 0.2% of their income, in annual charitable contributions over a 10-year period." While that won't land him in the top 1% of any list, at least he and his running mate are on the same page on this one.
Just remember. They're from the party that cares about the little guy.
Elsie turns three on October 3rd, but she's been going around for a few weeks now telling everyone that she's "frwee". Amanda had the audacity to tell her the other day that she's not three yet, to which Elsie replied, "I'm a wittle bit frwee."
Yes, she's a little bit three. And a whole lot of trouble. I'm going to have to keep a close eye on that little sassy britches.
One of the supreme joys in my life is "snuggling" in bed with all of my kids first thing in the morning. Tess usually wakes us all up, and then everyone piles in while Tess works on the first bottle of the day.
Several days ago, I said something about how amazed I am at the softness of Tess' skin. She's about 11 mos. old now, but she still has the softest baby skin I've ever seen. Pete is never one to miss an opportunity for commentary, so he remarked that girls all have soft skin.
But not boys. Boys are bumpy.
Yogi over at Red Planet Cartoons put into pictures what I said yesterday:
With the way The Media is, we won't see any real accountability on this one. It's W's fault, stupid. No reason to ask whether the policies of Big Government, aimed at helping the poor to buy houses in this case, actually worked. They *tried* to help, and that's the important thing. So what if Big Government now has to decide on whether a trillion dollar rescue strategy will save us all? These guys *care* about the poor, and they're happy to take your money from you to prove it.
Keep this in mind if, God forbid, Barry wins the election and then tries to tell you he can solve the nation's health care problems by putting Big Government in charge. If lenders were willing to make reckless decisions when they knew Big Brother had their back, what makes you think doctors and hospitals would be any different? Under that arrangement, "sub-prime" will likely mean ending up on the wrong side of the grass, if you catch my drift.
in 2003, President Bush proposed a "significant regulatory overhaul" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in order to "determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios." It didn't go anywhere. Why?
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
"These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
The Democrats' priority on maintaining "affordable housing" is laughable. "Affordable housing" means low property values, which equates to smaller mortgages and, thereby, smaller mortgage payments. Under the banner of anti-discrimination and "war on poverty" policies, Democrats in the Nineties encouraged lenders (in the form of government backing) to loan money to people who were highly unlikely to pay it back. From Investor's Business Daily Editorials:
It was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
Adding more home buyers into the market, thanks to artificially lax lending guidelines, drove up home prices. In order to keep housing "affordable", interest rates were suppressed (underpricing the risk associated with them), which drove more home owners into the market, which increased prices. This is how a bubble is created. Bush wisely saw that this cycle would eventually lead to major financial problems (like the ones in the papers today), but the Dems didn't want to put any "pressure" on Fannie or Freddie.
Jump forward a couple of years to when John McCain co-sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005. McCain warned us that "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole." It appears that his prediction was accurate, as the tab for the recent bailouts comes to more than $1,000 for every man woman and child in the country.
McCain's bill died in committee, under the leadership of Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee. Oddly enough, a scandal unearthed this summer involved Dodd receiving discounts and preferential treatment through Countrywide's V.I.P. program during 2003 and 2004. According to wikipedia, "in 2006 Countrywide financed 20% of all mortgages in the United States, at a value of about 3.5% of United States GDP, a proportion greater than any other single mortgage lender." Countrywide would have been directly affected by increased regulations, but thankfully they had a friend in high places looking out for them.
Speaking of Countrywide, during the primaries Obama accused Countrywide of "infecting the economy" and helping to create the home foreclosure crisis we are now in the middle of. However, when it came time to look for a running mate, Obama turned to James Johnson to help with the search. According to the New York Sun, Johnson received more than $7 million from the same Countrywide sweetheart program as Dodd.
You can tell a lot about a man by the friends he keeps, but if Obama's link to Johnson and Johnson's link to Countrywide isn't enough for you, consider this from John Gibson of Fox News:
Lehman Brothers’ collapse is traced back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big mortgage banks that got a federal bailout a few weeks ago. Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs. A group called the center for responsive politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. Senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were democrats and number two is Senator Barack Obama.
Now, remember, he has only been in the Senate four years but still managed to grab the number two spot ahead of John Kerry, decades in the senate, and Chris Dodd who is chairman of the senate banking committee.
So now Obama and Joe Biden, the running mate James Johnson picked for him, are telling us that Republicans are to blame for the current economic problems.
My lord, take a look at what — who got us in this hole, whose policies. This has been a Republican philosophy of letting Wall Street do what they want and the middle class be damned. It's about time we change it. If I sound like I'm angry, I am fighting mad for middle-class people who have been the scapegoat of this economy because of the policies of the McCains and the Bushes.
Obama is singing the same song, mocking McCain for stating that "the fundamentals of our economy are still strong" (they are), and claiming that "what we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it. John McCain won't. And that's the choice for Americans in this election."
Yes, Americans have a choice this election. On the one hand is a leader who has decades of leadership experience and that warned us all about this problem years before it came to fruition. On the other hand is a politician with less than half a decade of leadership experience, whose party directly contributed to this problem while his historical revisionism has led him to blame everyone but those who are truly responsible for the crisis at hand. I don't think it's too tough to see which brand of "leadership" this nation needs.
The first was...
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