So the bailout bill fails, the markets are in turmoil, and both Presidential candidates are laying the failure to pass the bailout squarely in the other's lap. Good times. If we really want to call a spade a spade then they both need to man up a bit. McCain should just admit he shouldn't have interjected himself into the middle of it and tried to give the impression he would single handedly avert the crisis. Obama on the other hand has given his verbal support for passing the bailout, but has done nothing tangible to see that it passes. I get the impression this was deliberate so that if it didn't pass, which I think the fact it didn't took most people by surprise, he wouldn't take the blame for it not passing (which in retrospect seems to have worked out pretty well for him).
With the recent failure of the bailout plan and what I've been assured by the media will be the ultimate collapse of civilization as we know it I've been seriously considering investing in some cows, goats and chickens and putting together a plan to live off the land. There is only one problem with this plan that I can foresee. And that is I would have to have raise cows, goats and chickens and live off the land. I've listened to the Little House on the Prairie audio book. I know how much work is actually involved and how hard it really is. Maybe we'll just go crash on my Uncle's farm once everything goes to crap. I wonder if you generate enough wind / solar power to run a TV and Wii? Not sure I could survive for long without an occasional video game fix.
So I watched the debate. I thought both candidates did well and I didn't see any obvious gaffes on either side really from a what was said department. I got the impression from watching it though that McCain really doesn't like Obama. He never had anything polite to say to or about Obama and even seemed to be scowling a couple times whereas Obama conceded McCain was correct on several points and at least seemed to be paying McCain some respect. McCain's answers seems better enunciated and never seemed to stray off message while Obama's seemed be more nuanced. I think both of them had a couple questions that they "answered" by not answering the original question at all. I did like the question about what priority are they going to have to sacrifice because of the bailout (even though they both never really answered it, which unfortunately is what I was expecting). I've seen polls saying Obama won the debate, but honestly I thought it was more a draw myself.
So John McCain suspends his campaign to deal with the bailout issue. Ticks off Letterman in the process. Doesn't even leave for Washington until the next day when there's already a deal on the bailout, but after McCain finally shows up, the Republicans decide there isn't a deal after all because
...Republicans revolted, in part, because they were chafing at what they saw as an attempt by Democrats to jam through an agreement on the bailout early Thursday and deny Mr. McCain an opportunity to participate in the agreement.
That quote is from an aide to House Republican leader, John A. Boehner. Are you kidding me? McCain takes his sweet time before actually leaving for Washington and therefore doesn't get his photo-op to make it look like he single handedly averted the financial crisis so the Republicans decide to take their ball and go home? Are they serious? Actually I don't mind them taking a little more time to get the deal right. But I want them taking the extra time for the right reason and not because they're trying to make McCain look like he understands the economy when clearly he doesn't. And before anyone gets on my case about that statement I don't quite understand when it became such a big deal to have to be a guru about everything. I honestly don't see what's so wrong about admitting to not knowing everything about the economy as long as you have access to people that do. Not everyone is Alan Greenspan and I don't think you want everyone to be.
Okay, before I burst a blood vessel or something, let's switch subjects to something more palatable. I took a couple shots of the kids tonight. I think the one of Catherine turned out better than the one of Quinn (mainly because even after I made Quinn wash his face he still had leftover dinner on his mouth it appears).
Anyone else out there worried that the economy as we understand it won't exist anymore in another year or so? I'm sure there's nothing to be worried about. I mean it's not like all the financial institutions are interconnected in one big web or anything. Actually I have no idea how it's all going to turn out. Can't say I'm happy about the government bail out plan costing 700 billion dollars. And I still don't completely get why this bail out is necessary and bailouts of things like Lehmans and Worldcoms don't need to get considered. But to top it off the thing about this that I really don't get is this line in the bailout plan for the execution of spending the money:
Sec. 8. Review: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Is it just me or is that a huge blank check that we're just suppose to trust he's going to spend in our best interests. Part of me understands limiting oversight since too many people involved gets too many agendas involved and then prevents anything from getting done, but no oversight at all? And we're just suppose to trust them to make decisions in our best interests? Nope, no sir, I don't like it.
And I really don't like what this means for the next President whoever it may be. The fact is this is going to be a huge hit and it's going to leave very little money for other projects in the coming years. Obama has at least admitted that the bailout may force him to rethink some of the plans he had. And he's hedged that by saying he still plans to implement all of his lofty goals, but will have to evaluate their feasibility when the time comes. That's politician speak for "I don't think the money I need to do what I want is going to be there." McCain has decided use more forceful wording saying he still plans to go ahead with all his changes and doesn't even qualify it with a "we may need to reevaluate". I feel that's being a bit dishonest though, since it would be like me saying I plan on taking a trip to the moon next year knowing full well that there's no way I can make the trip. I just don't get how either of them can legitimately say they still *plan* on being able to do everything on their agenda with this bailout situation when it's obvious the bailout will force concessions in what either of them want to implement. Basically that's saying the plan is now to run the deficit up even more and bring in less revenue and then do more with less money. This sounds like a great plan. Of both their statements at least Obama is acknowledging the reality of the situation whereas McCain seems determine to just pretend the problem doesn't exist (after all, the fundamentals of our economy are strong, right?).
Above is a screenshot of when tailored advertising might work against you (note the ad above the story in relation to the story itself). I actually don't think the ad was targeted, I think it's a rotating ad. So you may or may not see it as pictured above if you view the story, but if you want to read the actual story it's here.
Finally Heroes is back on the airwaves after last year's shortened season due to the writer's strike. And while it's great that it's back, after almost ten months off the air I've completely forgotten everything that was going on. I probably should have watched the primer that was on prior to the two hour premiere so I wasn't constantly going "Wait, how did he end up there?" and "How did they resolve that?" And it certainly seems that Heroes is the place where old sci fi stars get their second chance at life. After Sulu and Uhura had their roles in previous seasons tonight we saw Bruce Boxleitner from Babylon 5 making an appearance. And I'm wondering if they've just decided to drop some storylines (or maybe they finished them and I just don't remember), but so far they haven't shown anything about Micah or Monica (the girl with photographic reflexes) from season 2 (and Molly seems to have been written off the show entirely in a throw away line). Still, even though everything is somewhat new more and more information is revealed. The one thing I do like about Heroes versus other mysterious serialized shows (like let's say Lost) is that while I still think they're making some stuff up as they go along, I do feel like they're building on a consistent prewritten backstory. And for for every new mysterious question that arises they introduce the answer or reveal information to an older question.
Quinn I played some more street tennis today, hence the picture. And at lunch we were able to convince him to try some new foods. It was pretty weak as far as new foods go since it was just pizza (he'll eat pizza with no tomato sauce, so this was a piece with a little bit of tomato sauce on it). Since it was a minor victory I told him we could play a battle in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Ken let me borrow the game to see if we would like it. So instead of playing the actual game (which I think might be more than a tad on violent side for Quinn), I told him we could play the battle or versus mode. When starting he inadvertently started the story mode first, and it starts out like so many Star Wars things do with the "Star Wars" Logo, the scrolling backstory and then opens to shot in space of that iconic image of a Star Destroyer flying overhead much like from the first (first being episode IV) film. When Quinn see that Star Destroyer he immediately said "I know that ship! That's the ship that goes pew pew pew!" I found it highly amusing, but I guess you had to be there. Anyway, the game controls aren't the best, but controlling the lightsaber with the Wii control movement is somewhat entertaining. Watching Quinn and myself fight in the versus mode was basically like watching two completely spastic people waving their arms around. Ahhh, good times.
Catherine's class at school had an ice cream social gathering on Saturday. But before we went to that we all played outside for a good while. Quinn finally convinced Catherine to try playing football. All things considered it went about as well as one could expect.
Now I admit to not being a complete football connoisseur, but I'm fairly certain Catherine would get called for holding in the shot above.
In addition to football, we also got out the aerobie. And we did some bike riding and tennis in the street (no pictures of either the last set of events). And if you couldn't tell, the pictures above were all taken by Ginger with the old D70.
After that we headed over to the social gathering for the parents and students in Catherine's class. I'm still not sure why I go to these things considering I just don't end up socializing with the other parents that much. I will say the food was good. It was a pot luck style dinner and there was a ton of food. I had a hamburger, some steamed dumplings, some deviled eggs, more dumplings, another hamburger and then some more eggs and dumplings. I almost didn't have room for dessert (several cupcakes and brownies). Overall I think I gained 10 pounds. Still, the kids had fun. Catherine spent just about every moment she could in the trampoline. And since this was for Catherine's class there weren't a lot of kids there Quinn's age, but he managed to keep busy by either sucking me into some batting practice or instigating races with the younger kids. There was one girl there (I think her name is Katie) that I believe is a year or so older than Quinn and she managed to continually smoke Quinn every time they raced, so racing would only last until she showed up.
Aye, the text o' this post has been adjusted t' account for da fact dat today be Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ye'll ne'er get me buried booty!
Ahoy, i'm startin' t' get a bit concerned about Quinn's gullibility. Arrr, one o' his friends at school recently had a bandage on his fin'er. When asked about it he informed Quinn that he had recei'ed this wound in the America / Hawaii war. Aye, when further questioned about his ol' scalwag told him that when he was flyin' at some point he had seen the America / Hawaii war, and that somehow apparently some stray hang from the yardarm had wounded his fin'er. Arrr, not only that, but e'en though he was in a plane he was able t' see the indi'iduals in this alleged war fightin'. Gar. Aye, me parrot concurs. This apparently was after they had flown o'er top o' a hurricane. Aye, now the funny thin' is when we try and tell Quinn that his cabin boy is probably just makin' this up he gets 'ery adamant that this is indeed the truth. A pence for an old man o'de sea? Gar, Where can I find a bottle o'rum?
Ok, I got nothing worth mentioning (even more so than normal), but I wanted to get something up to move the political stuff off the top. So I present you with a "stadium" full off stuffed animals / doll the kids set up to watch racing and sporting events.
I really don't want to get into a big political discussion on this, but earlier today I was talking with my Mom (who happens to be a hard line conservative and apparently has become enamored with Palin) and she was telling me that she heard if Obama is elected he will raise everyone's taxes. I've heard this talking point before and frankly it bothers me a bit that she's so willing to believe everything being espoused by some of the right wing talking points. In this particular instance I feel the right is being more than a bit disingenuous when they claim Obama is going to raise everyone's taxes. Maybe they never say "everyone's", but they certainly want you to believe that's the case. The graphic above is a depiction of the tax plans for both candidates. As you can see McCain wants to lower everyone's taxes across the board, but the wealthiest get the biggest break and poorest get next to nothing. Obama's plan only raises taxes on the top 1%. And for the people with the least money it lowers taxes more than McCain's plan. Based only on this I think I can dispute the idea that Obama is planning on raising everyone's taxes. Now I can see how if you're in that top 0.1% Obama's plan doesn't look too appealing (11.5% is a big jump). And if anyone out there wants to perform a social experiment and give me a several million dollar a year income in order to determine if my views will change if I am actually in the top 0.1% category, then by all means let's perform that experiment.
The fact of the matter is both campaign parties are guilty of playing a bit fast and loose with the truth at times to try and make the other side look bad. I feel it's our duty and obligation as voting stewards to try and cut through the spin and look at the issues objectively, and frankly you can't do that if you take everything someone says as a talking point as gospel. So instead of parroting information you've heard someone else spout, if you feel it's an important point then take some time to investigate and get the facts for yourself.
I watched Forbidden Kingdom the other night. I can just imagine how this was pitched.
Dude1: "Hey, we should totally make a Kung Fu movie."
Dude2: "That would be totally awesome. I love those movies."
Dude1: "Yea, we could basically redo bits and pieces of all the best Kung Fu movies. And we'll call it an homage."
Dude2: "Sounds good. Who should we get to be in it?"
Dude1: "What about Jet Li. That guy is so cool."
Dude2: "Didn't he say he was going to quit doing Kung Fu movies?"
Dude1: "Don't be such a downer, besides, he said that back in 2005, he probably needs the money by now."
Dude2: "Oh! We should get Jackie Chan too. He's still popular, right?"
Dude1: "Yea, definitely get him."
Dude2: "What about a plot?"
Dude1: "What about it?"
Dude2: "Well, we need one don't we?"
Dude1: "I guess. Let me think... Ok, I got it. Picture this. They fight."
Dude2: "Dude, you rock!"
Dude1: "And we have to have them flying around and stuff when they fight. People love that."
Dude2: "Excellent. But we need to make it appealing to an American audience. How do we do that?"
Dude1: "We'll just have the main character be a modern day American."
Dude2: "Does he need to know Kung Fu?"
Dude1: "Nah."
Dude2: "How does he meet up with Jet Li and Jackie Chan?"
Dude1: "Hmmmm... How about we not explain how or why, but say he is the chosen one that has to fulfill a prophecy and to do that he has to journey to the Orient where he meets up with Jackie Chan and Jet Li."
Dude2: "That could work, but that's really complicated. Can't we just have him time travel back to the Orient with no explanation?"
Dude1: "Whoa, that's perfect."
Now despite all that, I actually liked the film just for the fight scenes. They're all choreographed, but I still like watching those types of movies. Just don't go in expecting anything deep and you should be fine. Heck, don't even go in expecting something shallow. Just watch for the fight scenes because honestly if you start trying to make sense of the story you'll hate the movie. Watch it for what it is, a chance to see a couple of really good martial artists going at it.
Today was Catherine's first full day of school. As you can see she even color coordinated her clothes with her lunch bag. I'm hoping this doesn't mean she's going to be the Imelda Marcos of lunch bags. I'm not sure how Catherine felt about the concept of a full day. In the picture below it looks like she's forcing herself to smile. The good news is this means Ginger has more free time during the day. I even got to meet up with Ginger at Whole Foods today and have lunch with just her. I can't even recall when I've been able to do that before. Lunch would have been even better had Whole Foods not recently raised their pulled pork lunch sandwich price by a dollar. I guess with soaring gas prices and increased food prices I can't expect prices to stay the same for long though.
I got home tonight as the kids were going to bed and Catherine was more talkative than she has been in a long time. She was a real Chatty Cathy tonight telling me all about her day. I don't know how she really felt, but from listening to her she seemed pretty proud of the fact that she was there for the full day now.
So we tried to make sure the kids got some outdoor physical activity today. I took Quinn on a bike ride around the neighborhood. We were going to go all the way around, but about ten minutes into the trip he had already had just about enough and was complaining that I hadn't brought anything for him to drink with us. So we ended up shortcutting some through the neighborhood. Even so there were a couple of hills that he ended up having to walk up. His bike is pretty basic and doesn't have gears, so it doesn't take much of a hill for him to get overwhelmed. After the bike ride Catherine wanted me to go rollerblading with her. So I broke out my old blades. It's been years since I've bladed, but it didn't take too long to get back into the swing of things. And since I was never what you would call "skilled" at it before, getting back to merely competent isn't exactly impressive.
Catherine did better today. She almost made it all the way up the driveway on her own. She got about 3/4 of the way up and then lost her rhythm, but just the fact that she's able to generate forward momentum while going up an incline is pretty good for only her second day. I'm still not convinced she would be able to pick herself up by herself if she fell, but I think she's getting close.
And while Ginger was out helping Catherine, I got out of my blading gear and played with Quinn for a bit. He's back into football now. I'm not even sure why he's suddenly interested in it again since it's not like he knows it's football season or anything. I suppose it's possible the kids at school talk about it and maybe that's how he knows. Anyway I took this photo of him catching the ball, and yes, he did actually catch it. But from looking at the photo I'm not exactly sure how he caught it since his hands are nowhere near where the ball is, and unless I'm seeing things it certainly looks like he has his eyes closed.
Catherine got to try her new inline skates outside today for the first time. There was a lot less falling down than I expected. Partly because either Ginger or I were nearby and caught her before she fell a couple times. Overall though she only ended up hitting the pavement a couple times. Initially it took her a while to get the hang of turning her legs when trying to move forward. At first she was trying to move like you would if you were running and getting nowhere. It's a good thing Ginger was holding her at that point because I'm fairly certain she would have face planted otherwise. The problem initially was she was holding onto and depending on Ginger too much. Getting her to do it all on her own was slow going at first, but eventually she started getting the hang of it. I'm still not convinced that she ever really mastered braking since instead of leaning back on the blade with the brake she was putting the blade with the brake in front of her and pointing it up in the air.
We had Quinn recording the event. I can only imagine how that video is going to turn out. The whole outing didn't last overly long though since we all had to get ready so that we could go attend an ice cream social gathering for all the kids in Quinn's elementary class at school. The goal was for it to be a meet and greet for the parents. I really don't do well at these events because I'm not much of one for small talk. But the kids had fun, so I guess that's all that matters.
Ginger had a meeting at school to attend tonight so I got to put the kids to bed. And as we were reading books beforehand Catherine leaned over and told me "I like you Dada."
It was completely unprompted and I was very touched, and told her "Thank you Catherine. I like you too."
Then she followed it up with "I don't like you as much as I like Mommy, but I like you." So I'm not in the number one spot, but at least I might be in the top ten.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been in the news quite a bit recently. Probably because they just activated it and did a couple of test firings. The experiments where they do actual collisions I believe are scheduled for Oct 21. So we have some time before the supposed end of the world. I'll admit to having some concerns about a device that could theoretically destroy the planet. At the same time though I'll admit to not fully understanding the problem space and suspect that some of the disaster scenarios that have gotten play in the media are probably just far fetched hypothesis speculation (it's not like anyone has any actual facts at this point to prove anything one way or the other). Gaz has a much more thought out examination of the issue than what I can give here.
Related to the above though, I did find this link to Gordon Freeman at the LHC today hysterical (sent to me by Ken). For the uninitiated Gordon Freeman is the scientist in the Half-Life video game. Where basically a scientific experiment goes off the rails and threatens to destroy the Earth. So even if things go pear shaped, no worries because Gordon is on the scene.
And lastly, if you want to check the status of the experiment to see if the world has been destroyed yet, follow this link (for even more entertainment, check the page source code).
Catherine's new inline skates showed up today. She hasn't tried using them outside yet. And by the time I got home I only got to see her trying them on in her pajamas. But she does okay moving around in them as long as she stays on the carpet. Once she moves onto a smooth surface where she'll actually roll, it's a different story. She seems excited about them though, and maybe I'll end up breaking out my old pair and we can go blading together sometime. Although based on her performance tonight it'll probably be a while before she's ready for any extended trips. If nothing else this should help prepare her some for ice skating later this school year.
