October 2008 Archives

When I was an aspiring musician in days of yore, the Beatles were my inspiration way before I became conscious and later, a serious fan, of Eric Clapton.  My favorite Beatle was always George Harrison.  When he gravitated towards eastern music and transcendental meditation, I followed right along, becoming aware of Ravi Shankar, George's sitar mentor.  I came to appreciate Indian music and Shankar, buying his recordings over the years.As I've written about before, Clapton...

Coming off of her Thursday night debate loss against Joe Biden, Sarah Palin made my dirtbag list by repeating a long ago debunked smear against Barack Obama, claiming that Obama called US troops in Afghanistan murderers, which, of course, he didn't.  She repeated the lie yesterday during an appearance on Fox Noise, the Official Network of the GOP.  Of course, Fox made no effort to challenge her lie.  As an aside, they also gave her...

UPDATED FOR VIDEO OF PALIN READING HER NOTES: In probably the most rehearsed debate performance in history, Sarah Palin survived the debate with Joe Biden without making a complete fool out of herself, but clearly was over rehearsed to the point of looking (and sounding) like a kabuki actor, winking and making faces, mugging for the camera. Several times during the debate she was actually reading responses off of whatever had been placed on her...

I know the partisan Republicans are all a-twitter this morning over what they perceive as a victory by Sarah Palin in last night’s vice-presidential debate, and the McCain campaign would like nothing better than to take the focus off of our economic woes, but unfortunately for them, that’s not going to happen. The credit freeze is deepening, unemployment is up, and companies large and small are tightening their belts in anticipation of a severe economic...

So.  How's ol' McCain doing after that last couple of weeks?  I would say, not so good.  After lurching from insistence the the economy is just fine, thank you very much, to demanding more deregulation, to "suspending" his campaign to push for the largest government bailout in history, it seems that the electorate is a little confused about which John McCain is campaigning for President.  This erratic behavior, coupled with Sarah Six Pack's disastrous interviews...

Yesterday, the practice of mark to market accounting (MTM) came up in our discussion.  It is a practice that has been pushed very hard by regulatory agencies in the last 20 years, only becoming apparent to the public during the Enron scandals in the early 2000's.  Since, the SEC through the Financial Accounting Standards Board, has continued to require more arcane "fair value" accounting practices, sometimes resulting in irrational and illogical  financial reporting results, and...