Am I A Bad Person For This?

CNN just ran an article announcing that Congress finally announced their resuce bill. From the article:

Lawmakers' goal is to shore up a deal before financial markets around the world open on Sunday evening.

By which they mean the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Naturally, the first thing I do is to look up the time in Japan, they are 14 hours ahead of CST (3:00pm here 5:00am there). Next I look up the hours for the TSE: trading starts at 9:00am.

Finally I have to smile, in kind of an evil way, at the thought of over 400 congress-persons running around (literally) trying to find the votes to get this to go through.

Guys, you have 3 hours and 39 minutes to find the votes, pass the bill, and get it signed.

Enjoy.

Up Too Late / The Bailout

First, I don't really know why I am up right now. I really need my sleep. Second, on a topic I wasn't going to blog about...

CNN has an article titled: Congressional Leaders Reach Tentative Deal On Bailout. By then end of this post it will have been updated in under 20 minutes and hence is scarce on details. But there is a single part of the three paragraphed article I want to quote and comment on:

The aim of the deal is to prevent credit from drying up and causing a meltdown of the U.S. economy.

• First, we are talking about the world economy. There is saying that when the U.S. sneezes (economically) the rest of the world catches cold. This is much bigger than the average joe understands.
• Second, when CNN says "meltdown" they mean it. The MSM (mainstream media) hasn't been completely truthful on the current crisis (and I will call it a crisis). The financial periodicals are comparing it to late 1929 -- the beginning of the Great Depression -- and for good reason.
• Third, damn near every American (or person on this planet for that matter) will be affected by this deal. You make think that New York is too far away to matter but odds are your mutual fund, 401k, or pension is tied up in this mess. Sorry, but it sucks for you.
• Fourth, CNN says "aim." The real point here is the people that understand the current situation (there are very few, a few dozen at most; some of us simply believe those people are right [and maybe understand why they are]) may or may not be fixed by a "Rescue Package." This is shooting from the hip, that is not secret, but there isn't a better plan. We are certainly damned if we don't pass this bill (and the global economy) and may be if we do. The only certainty is that not trying is sure to fail; the bill at least has a chance to help things.
• Fifth (I am almost done): don't blame your incumbents come election time, even though they will have almost certainly voted for a $700b bill that you don't like. Given the reasons above it is the most responsible thing to do even if their constituents do not like it.
• Finally: I won't say much more about this in future posts unless someone specifically asks me to in a comment. I am a finance/econ major, even if I lack a PhD. I can explain the broadest components of the crisis, the bill, and why it matters if anyone cares. (E.g., what drying up credit means [more than most people realize] and why this is so important [the aspects the MSM keeps missing.])
  

P.S. Rumor is that I have another reader. A 250% increase in a month isn't bad! (Ok, so that means 5 people...)

P.P.S.: For most of the people that read (meaning all five) who care very little about this type of post I have another coming up. I just have to actually type up half of it, the half that was written in pencil instead of typed. And I should have another Bethel University Commons Time Lapse Video up soon.

Ooops...

At least it's the first time, not again. I think I just annoyed (or at least really confused) a VP. It's a long story. Still, note to self: do not approach [VP] again unless it is with good news...

On a Musical Note

I just have to get this out: Bill Gaither is worse than Perry Como, by a lot. The songs in and of themselves are ok, but not the performance. Maybe he thought he was Frank Sinatra, because it sounds like he is trying to croon like him. And no one croons like Old Blue Eyes.

The Worst Time to Blog

Is when you are bored. Very. Bored.

The writing tends to lack any sense of spontaneity and often fails to attract any interest -- especially from the writer. Back in the day this was never a problem, or at least rarely. At least for me. There was always news. And I mean real news, you know, the stuff that is interesting.

Today the news is dominated by piddling topics such as presidential elections and a financial crisis or something on Wall Street. Wall Street is in New York and that is too far away for me to actually care about.

And the politics, the politics are quickly becoming incredibly boring. Seriously, when the best I can do is make fun of attack emails it is bad. When I was a youngster there was always a president, high ranking official, or congressperson having an affair, being charged with murder, starting the most absurd policy changes ever. Today the news centers around whether John McCain or Barack Obama is running a dirtier campaign, whether Palin is an angel or a demon, and what people think of either campaign. I don't care what other people think of the campaigns, I care about what I think.

In a completely separate event readers of my blog just went up by 50%; yup, I have one more reader.

If rather alarming events (and non-events) keep on happening at such an astounding rate I make have to take the unprecedented step of blogging on a regular basis and trying to make it interesting.

Firefox is the Safest Browser Because...

Recently the Firefox start page started advertising itself as the world's safest browser. For the record the merits of this are up for debate, no one has decisively claimed that title yet. (Also, the add-in's that have helped make FF so popular may increase or decrease security.)

Anyway, the best part of the whole thing is this:

Using [Firefox] is the safest way to surf the web because:

• We don’t try to tackle the problem alone. An international community of security experts is working around the clock to make your web browsing safer (thanks to our open source way of doing things). It’s like having your neighborhood watch led by a group of highly trained ninjas. [Emphasis Added]
  

[...]

Hmk, so that's what those Firefox developer's are up to...

@ Tubagirl: Not all of my posts that show up were written during work hours, but scheduled to show up during the morning. If I write several posts at once I generally schedule them out two or three days in a row.

The Things You Can't Blog About

I've always disliked the number of things I can't blog about because they usually are the most amusing. I can't blog about most things at work, except for the boring stuff, and even then I have to make sure I'm not disclosing any proprietary information.

I can't blog about half the stuff that happens at my house to protect the guilty (including myself at times).

I can blog about politics (and obviously do) but unless I make it particularly amusing neither of my two readers (seriously, both, that's it) care much. (Although over half my traffic comes from search engines almost all of them leave the page immediately).

Ditto about most geeky stuff.

Guess it will just be a boring blog unless I decide to start making up life stories. Actually, that could be fun...