Corey's Important Post

What fresh hell is this?

After returning from performing three days of my civic duty in Jury Duty, I couldn't have found a more timely post than this one from Corey Wilde's blog. He eloquently highlights Banned Books Week and its celebration of "the Freedom to Read" by the American Library Association. This is an important observation that, unfortunately, requires a constant and vigilant reminding to all. Kudos to the ALA, and to Corey who posted this.

"There are better ways forward."

A Bad Bank Rescue

by Sebastian Mallaby

The more I listen to the Sunday news talk shows, and read the (web) news articles, the more it sounds like we've been here, before. The hurry placed on the Congress to approve the proposed bail out of financial institutions, without much examination or proposed changes, sounds like a another "mushroom cloud" threat and reaction. And we now know the results of that endeavor.

The Post Op-Ed columnist, Sebastian Mallaby, brings some sense into our current situation and mentions the other, more viable, alternatives that isn't getting much attention. And, puts the proper historical perspective to the proponents comparison with the clean up of the savings and loan crisis. The key segment:

Within hours of the Treasury announcement Friday, economists had proposed preferable alternatives. Their core insight is that it is better to boost the banking system by increasing its capital than by reducing its loans. Given a fatter capital cushion, banks would have time to dispose of the bad loans in an orderly fashion. Taxpayers would be spared the experience of wandering into a bad-loan bazaar and being ripped off by every merchant.

Now, whether cooler heads will decide this one is the question. Again, we're being sold fear, and the need to act quickly, over scrutinizing what we're buying and ignoring more bad policy from an administration with a long record of proposing such.

Finally Finished the [insert epithet] Amazon Guide

One of the things I promised I'd do this summer was create my first Amazon So you'd like to... guide. Under my profile, there, I had done some reviews and listmania lists, but never a guide. This year, with the summer 2008 release of Robert Crais' latest, Chasing Darkness, and Brilliance Audio finally releasing the first five in the Elvis Cole series, in unabridged form, I thought it would be a good one to start with. Easy, right? Yeah... It all reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite westerns, Richard Brooks' The Professionals:

Everything is as usual. I need guns and bullets, as usual. The war goes badly, as usual. Only you, you are not as usual.-- Jesus Raza (Jack Palance)

Nothing came easy in that film. Same here. First, I had to wait until all of those new releases came out and I listened to those audiobooks--along with all of the others in the series. That was enjoyable (re-reading a favorite series is great stuff). But, then I had to start composing the guide. Start...stop...on...off (rinse and repeat). I envy those who can write so elegantly--so effortlessly. That's not me (sigh). Anyway, when I finally had it where I wanted it, I went to Amazon's create a guide page. Filled in the title, qualifications, tags, and copied in my text. I saved and checked it over. But when I pressed the Publish button: "Inappropriate Language, please edit the text below."

I love language filters...not. After spending the last six days going blind to find the inappropriate parts in my guide (no bad words ever existed there), speaking with Amazon's call center (somewhere overseas--one can always tell by the phone lag), writing to their contact email (not very easy to find, and they never replied), I found myself getting nowhere, quickly. No cavalry would be coming over the ridge, at least from Amazon's part. Turned out, since I first drafted the guide on a word processing application (who shall remain nameless), it insisted upon inserting unicode symbols for my punctuation. After weeding them all out and getting it all down to plain text, did it finally post my guide. Whew... If anyone is interested, here it is:

Learn About the Elvis Cole, Joe Pike Series / Audiobooks

 

I Hope I'm Quirky Enough

The generous Jen (Jen's Book Thoughts) has 'tagged' me in the quirky game. Fair enough, I'm quirky...er, game.

The Rules Are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you

2. Post the rules on your blog

3. Write 6 random things/unspectacular quirks about yourself

4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them

5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

My quirks are:

One...I've never liked the feel of velvet--it has the like scratching your fingers on a chalkboard-like feel for me.

Two...I can snag anything. Meaning, I can walk by an object, and if it has a part that can be caught up (like a loop in a loose knit sweater), I'll accidentally catch it with something on my person...it's a gift, I know.

Three...when I sneeze, and my family can attest to this, it is in a group of three. My kids now know to wait for the third one to say 'bless you'.

Four...like Jen, I despise 'reality' TV programming (it's a senseless narcotic that keeps us unaware of the more important things).

Five...red would be my favorite color, but I never wear it (though, I'll quickly notice it on others, especially a woman wearing red lipstick).

Six...without effort, I can spot out-of-plumb wall fixtures or pictures wherever I go (and I fight with myself to not straighten them).

For this social network game, I'm suppose to tag six others. So, I'll pick what I think are six interesting bloggers, who just happen to list L.A. Requiem, a Crais favorite of mine, as one of theirs in their blogspots:

1. Ryan at Worst Case Scenario
2. Gay Degani at Words in Space
3. Cory at The Drowning Machine
4. Dave Stewart at Fabric of Verse
5. D.S. Brown at Slings and Arrows
6. Slade Wilson at Slade's Place

For those of them interested in playing, I look forward to their posts. If they opt for not, (hopefully) no harm done.

Need 9/11-like Commission? Not Really...

Regardless what the Republican Presidential candidate says, we don't need a 9/11-like commission to get to the bottom of the current financial crisis. It's pretty clear what's driving this meltdown:

How We Got Here: It's Housing, Stupid

And, there's plenty of blame to go around:

Market Crisis: Where Were the Regulators?

Key quote here is:

Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington ended up "supporting deregulation, even as newly minted but little-understood products like derivatives proliferated."

Add to this our government's inclination (and bad habit) of printing money to try to pay for things. Our balance sheets are getting trashed--plain and simple. The dollar continues to lose value. And, it all comes down to bad policies by our government. Unfortunately, we (the taxpayers) are going to have to pay for this. Great... Sounds like the answer to the question: How to move from a government surplus to a humongous national debt and global economic crisis in eight years, or less.