Joe Zawodny

Well as long as I’m taking shots here today. Caroline Kennedy is, “ya know”, not exactly qualified for the Senate - by any stretch of the imagination. Simply being a Kennedy is insufficient qualification. She’s been, for all practical purposes, in hiding for decades and now pops up (with someone) wanting to make certain that there is a Kennedy in the Senate. There must be several other truly qualified and established public servants in NY that should be higher on any one’s list of potential appointees. Is this simply an ongoing media love affair with the Kennedy name or something more behind the scenes?

Oh (now for a cheap shot), and what is with that nose/spoiler/winglet thing she has going on? Has she been trying out for a part as an alien in Star Trek (Worf’s long lost half sister or something)? It certainly, “ya know”, looked better on her mother. If she makes it to the Senate at least the cartoonists will have a bizarre facial feature to grotesquely caricaturize.

I’m going to cross a few lines here. If you disagree, please feel free to comment. I’m open minded and can be persuaded to change my point of view. Having said that, here I go.

First some context, I think it was arrogant and short-sighted when Israel was created after WWII. The local population did not see the Empire as having the authority to redraw the map and give away their land. I believe this act is the root of the current hostility. I can imagine other things contributing, but this is certainly the main problem. If this is true, then there can only be two long lasting solutions to the problem.

There have been so many attempts to solve the Middle East problem that there isn’t enough room or time to summarize them in a meaningful way. Let me just say that there has been a lot of give and take, but there has never been an agreement where every one of the parties that needed to partake could fully support. There are now so many factions in the area that is it is virtually impossible to get complete agreement.

These agreements and cease fires are tenuous at best partly because of the eye-for-an-eye Israeli way of neighborly foreign relations. All it seems to take is for a small group of neredowells to lob a few rockets over the border and we are where we are today - AGAIN. Honestly, I really can’t blame them. I have a hard enough time keeping my neighbors from driving on my lawn as they back out of their driveways. It is a good thing I do not own nukes, but I digress. The Israelis are not without blame. They do have a tendency to overuse bulldozers and erect settlements in sensitive areas with a thumbing-their-nose attitude.

I do not have a solution to the problem. I’m not that smart. Well I do have a solution, but it is a certainly too heavy handed. There are surely too many weapons in the area and they are in the hands of too many autonomous factions whose power is derived from sustained hostilities. If the neighboring governments had any control and authority over their countries and populace, there might be a ray of hope for peace in the region. As it is now, it reminds me of our Wild West days. I would not be surprised if things get very very heavy handed in the coming weeks.

I have a hard time decoding the oft quoted ‘we have a Special Relationship with Israel’ concept. I do believe that we have a fundamental responsibility for creating the problem in the first place. Honestly, if all of this was happening in the middle of Africa, like so many other and more horrible things are occurring today, we really would not care so much (not that we should not care). If it were not for the potential disruption of the flow of oil from the region and it, therefore, became just a moral issue as opposed to an economic issue, I do not think we would have a ‘Special Relationship’.

So other than making me feel a little better, where does this leave things? Although we would like to think of ourselves and the world as civilized, we are far far from it. We are too obsessed with Our Needs, Our Desires, and imposing Our Way on everyone else. We appear incapable of caring about anyone else, especially if they are not just like us. Civilized - yeah right!

Another year has just about passed and it is always a good time to look back and reflect. A lot has happened this year, some good and some bad. For us it has been good enough in that we are all still here and in reasonably good health and spirits. We hope the same is true for you and wishing that the next year will be better than the last.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I was just reading this story on CNN and began thinking (always something to be worried about). In the old days, deflation was a worry because the reduction in prices meant cut backs in production which led to job losses and salary decreases which then reinforced the deflationary cycle. Those were the old days. Now we hardly produce anything here - in the US - anymore. The production is overseas. Yes we still have sales jobs here, but even those are being phased out thanks to the internet. Cutbacks will surely include a reduction in advertising (thank God!). What we tend to ‘produce’ now in the US are services and intellectual property (something large parts of the rest of the world do not even recognise). The MPAA and RIAA members really do not have much cost tied up in production so they can easily reduce prices along with the reduction in demand. Many service industries (like medical) are simply not discretionary spending - so they are safe.

What is really going on here and is it something to worry about? It will not be painless, but all I see is a reduction of this mindless consumerism that is destroying the planet. As technology progresses we will eventually have to face the prospect that most people will not have to have jobs - and I’m not talking about living on the dole either. There simply will be very little reason to ‘work’. It is going to happen and when it does we had better be socially ready for the consequences. Perhaps a bit of deflation will serve as a test of how we will deal with our inevitable future.

I understand the argument that saving GM with a $25B “loan” might prevent an $80B shock to the economy, but who can say whether $25B will save them? GM does not produce a quality product that the consumer wants. If they did they would not be in trouble now would they? Then there is the other problem of the high cost of union labor. I’m sorry but I do not believe that a guy/gal with just a high school degree and a union job should be earning $100K+/yr putting parts of a car together.

If GM can come forth with plans/agreements that cut the cost of labor in half, build cars of the future (i.e., don’t rely solely on giant internal combustion engines), and do so with a quality product - I’d be in favor of a loan. Otherwise let them die and well pick up the pieces later. I still think they should be building wind turbines instead of cars.

I’ve cast my vote for president and was pleasantly surprised that I had virtually no wait to do so. I’ve been playing with some on-line electoral simulators recently and predict that the winner will end up with 338 electoral votes. The shocking news came this morning when I read and realized that Karl Rove chose exactly the same state-by-state outcome that I did. Very scary.

If you have not done so already - Go VOTE.

Voter: “Senator McCain, How would you … ?”

McCain: “My friend, I know how to get things done.” Followed by attacks.

And so it went for 90 minutes. I thought the town hall format was supposed to be his best event! At this stage I need to know specifics. Ideas. Why I am going to vote for you, not why I have to vote against the other guy. At least I can take some comfort in the fact that there is now less than 4 weeks until this turkey is done.

‘nough said.

I’ve got so many thoughts and emotions running around my head that I will have to take some time to sort out things rationally. However, my irrational response is as follows. I find it somewhat befuddling/amusing that it is the republicans that are against the Wall Street bail out! Aren’t the Republicans the ones who are supposed to be in favor of big business and against the average Joe? Did they want more? We’re they repelled by the cut lines to the golden parachutes for CEOs? And conversely, why are the Democrats so gung-ho in support of this? Is it because of the help for those who borrowed under ‘unsavory terms’ for their mortgage from predatory lenders? I don’t know, but it isn’t making sense to me right now.

I must admit that if I was a republican in the house and had just sat through yet another partisan tirade from speaker Pelosi, I’d probably vote against it too. Of all of the people (and I use that term loosely) in the house, ol’ Nancy scares me the most. Today she had a golden opportunity to demonstrate a non-partisan side of her persona and she completely failed the test. If and when this bill comes back up for a vote, I would only vote for it if Nancy agreed to step down as speaker afterwards.

The thought of Obama and Nancy running things together was worrisome. Now it is frightening. It might actually be sufficient grounds for me to reconsider McCain. I’ll wait to see how Palin comes across in the VP debate before I change colors.

Good god it would be great to have a real choice beyond these two non-starters.

Here is another article that caught my imagination. As I read this I could not believe what I was reading. Why do people have to be told these things? We have been saving for retirement for quite some time. We keep our cars for at least 10 years. We did not build the biggest house we could have qualified for (although it will be paid for in 2 years). We do not have to have everything - every new gadget, fashion, or trendy experience to be happy. We do not have to give the appearance of affluence to be affluent (whatever that really means). At the same time we do not deny ourselves very much. Perhaps I would define this as being realistic and living realistically. Setting proper expectations is the key to happiness. I’m sorry but the problems we currently face with the mortgage meltdown and financial collapse is primarily a manifestation of having unrealistic expectations. We have taken a huge and hopefully short lived hit to our savings as a result of the excessive lifestyles, unrealistic expectations, and outright greed of others, but I know we will be alright. I can’t say the same for everyone else because I think they believe they deserve more than they will ultimately obtain from the future. There is a bigger collapse looming than the current market crisis, it is a return to reality from this fantasy many of our neighbors are living. As I drive to work each morning I often wonder how these neighbors of mine afford to keep up the appearance that they strive to uphold. Now that the housing bubble has burst somewhat (I say somewhat since the valuations here have not changed much, only the growth has slowed a bit) we have an opportunity to examine our role in this calamity. I suspect few will take the opportunity to do so but rather bemoan that they are being denied their rights.

Tropical Storm Hanna passed closely by yesterday afternoon. Aside from some tree damage and a broken mail box post, the storm was not much to talk about. This image presents some of the data from my weather station. The top graph shows the Humidity in percent (the red and green lines are the temperature and dew point - not to scale). The highest wind gust was 35 MPH. The third panel shows the temperature (red) and heat index (orange). The bottom panel shows the barometric pressure in mb (gray) and the rain (cyan). Hanna produced 0.85 inches of rain total.