less 2008 and more 1800

The McCain campaign really has gone batshit crazy. From this post over at jrittenhouse's journal, I give you some choice tidbits:

Townhall's Kevin McCullough is saying that Senator Obama will be America's First Gay President, tho' later he says he means it in the Clinton sense - or does he? Muah ha ha.

In Godwin news, the Pennsylvania state GOP sent out letters to Jewish voters in that state, and I'll let the New York Times take it from here, that "equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the 'tragic mistake' of their Jewish ancestors, who 'ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.'" Yay! Nazis!

But my favourite of that set has to be this blogger over here who asserts in all seriousness that, and I am quoting, "life as we know it will end if Obama is elected."

Really, I wasn't sure whether to post this list or not, but then I got up this morning and nihilistic_kid had discovered Fox News political commentator James Pinkerton saying Senator Obama has ties to Satanists. Yes, really. He also points out Obama analogies to Jesus, here, at the New York Times, but that's part of making an analogy to calmness, rather than an actual allegation of actual chumminess with actual Jesus. Or Satan. Or at least Satanists, but, well, whatever. And he found this other Story From The Dystopian Obama Future, with tasty lulz.

And if you think this is awesome, just wait for the Republican civil war and the election of 2012! One of Bush I's White House aides, Jim Nuzzo, says that the "litmus test" for so-called Republican conservatism is going to be support of Sarah Palin. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry or, well, really, laugh.

Meanwhile, back in the now, Sarah Palin recently called Texas "Alaska's little sister." Aw, isn't that cute? I wonder how many bar fights that'll start in Lubbock.

A roundup post, with anecdotes

Good morning; I got stupid and was up until 2am playing Portal last night. Not really on purpose; I thought I'd play for a bit around 10pm and then OH HAI 2 O'CLOCK. Clearly, I am some sort of genius. So all you get is a roundup post this morning.

Mish is apparently in a similar mood, because he posted a roundup post too. Well, yay.

Anecdote one: Last year, in this quarter, Volvo sold 41,970 of their commercial trucks. This quarter, they sold 115. That's a 99.7% decline. More importantly, ask what that says about shipping and forward investments.

Anecdote two: Oklahoma State University is Officially Screwed. Seriously, that's the headline. T. Boone Pickens donated $165M for the sports programme, but insisted it stay in his hedge fund and that they borrow against it for building. This was a good idea, at first; it hit $300M in 2007. It's now hit zero and the school is in massive debt. eta: sarakate in comments says this report is inaccurate; the losses are less than total and Mr. Pickens has said he will donate additional moneys to restore the capital.

Anecdote three: General Electric gets to go playing with the Fed lending facilities. They call it "testing" and "a way for us to demonstrate our support for what the Fed is doing, which is providing all-around liquidity." Which is another way of saying everybody else is being wedged out, leaving governments the primary functional source of lending.

Equities (stock) markets: Dr. Roubini reminds everyone that this ain't over. I should've posted this on Friday, but non-TED/LIBOR credit spreads are widening, not contracting, at least as of that article late last week. Annoyingly, the TED kicked up a little last Friday, and a little more again so far today. That's bad.

Mish draws a bunch of charts for you, comparing the Nikkei and the S&P 500, and shows things like wave counts and all that other technical analysis silliness.

Currencies: I'm not the only one who thinks the Canadian dollar is oversold. Brad Setzer notes that there have been a series of credit crises in developing-world currencies, which are creating bigger waves than the Asian crisis of 1997-1998. He also writes on the end of Bretton Woods 2, the not-entirely-formal currency system in place over the last couple of decades, noting that it will probably be less gradual than he'd like, and that, "[t]he US taxpayer are currently getting hit with the tab for much of the credit risk that supported the big increase in US household consumption – as Martin Wolf quipped, what looked to be private lending turned out to be public spending. And China’s taxpayers will get eventually have to pick up the bill for the currency risk associated with lending to the US in dollars at low rates." Mish also has commentary on the currency crisis as it's currently affecting the G7.

And finally, a macro view: I haven't read this paper, "Forecasting the Depression" yet, just the abstract, but I think it's going to be worth reading and keeping in mind. One thing I haven't talked about a lot - because I've got more reading to do before I open my trap on it too much - is how the French currency and bonds crisis of 1720 looks like this one, and more importantly, how the response to that crisis looks like this one. The difference - and this is very important - being that the de facto French central bank took on all the prop-up debt, and the actual French government didn't. When the collapse came and the currency failed, the actual central government's debt didn't significantly grow, and a new (gold, in this case, but they were all gold then) currency could be brought in. In this case, the US government itself has been picking up most of the debt, with the implicit assurance that it'll pick up all of it if necessary. So this had damned well better work out better than it did in France that year. So far, it's not. (We're through the inflation ramp-up and appear to be pretty clearly headed into price, in addition to monetary, deflation now.)

Fabius Maximus at RGE Monitor - who I read, but not regularly - rolls out the Big Money solution to deflation:

Now we are Japan. Interest rates must go to near-zero. Government spending programs must be rapidly initiated on a scale not seen since WWII. Government decisions will determine what America looks like for the next two decades (at least). Who gets loans, what kinds of infrastructure to build, what kind of training programs for young people and the older unemployed … it is a long list.

Trillion dollar spending programs for 2009-2010. Plus a trillion or so in capital infusions into the financial system. While other nations do the same. The global savings pool might not suffice for to provide so much capital, and the effects of such massive borrowing might destabilize interest rates and currency values. Hence the need for my recommendation #3: the “Master Settlement of 2009“ – a meeting of the major nations to, among other things, reschedule America’s debt and form a new geopolitical and financial global regime. ...

Only extreme statists will rejoice at these measures. The need for such result from the accumulated policy errors of the past half-century (or more), a bipartisan orgy of folly. We must do as our ancestors did during adversity: stay cool, make the necessary decisions as best we can, and move on.

All this, of course, to try to upend a deflationary cycle. One thing he says that bothers me a bit is, "One advantage we have over the folks of 1930: we know this song." Yeah, but the thing is, they then knew the song of 1872, and if you also know that song, some of the things they did make a lot more sense.

i hate my brain

So I wrote the music for "Stars" two months ago at this point, and I still can't fucking play the first verse from memory. Sometimes I don't even get that far, blowing the opening set of arpeggios - not just on technique, at which I still suck, but getting the chords wrong, of which there are all of three. WHAT THE FUCK, BRAIN?

On an earlier topic

A few days ago, in comments in this post, smeehrrr noted that Focus on the Family seemed to consider queers getting hitched a lot more important than, say, terrorism. I noted that this is true, and that they've been saying marriage rights will destroy western civilisation for some years now.

I mention this because today there's new commentary to that effect:

"It’s more important than the presidential election... We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation," said [Family Research Council's] Mr. [Tony] Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. "But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage."

The Family Research Council is one of Focus on the Family's political spinoffs^*, and probably their most important; and they don't do anything without James Dobson's approval. Again: the US will not survive if queers can get hitched.

Think about how crazy this is, won't you?

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^*: Focus on the Family has several such political wings, as well as a still-affiliated Focus-branded political arm called Focus on the Family Action, or sometimes just Focus Action. Sockpuppetry is a big thing in fundamentalist politics.