Obama does better at debating

Naturally I stayed up to watch the Romney-Obama rematch.  Not bad.  Obama looked better and did better than last time.  Romney was as good as last time.  Obama made up a few "facts" on the fly. He said he had called the Lybian outrage terrorism the day after it happened.  I certainly don't remember that, and ever diligent Fox News found the tape, and although Obama had used the word terrorism, it wasn't in connection with the Lybian outrage.  He was just trashing terrorism in general.  Romney got on Obama's case about the pipeline and drilling permits and Obama didn't have much in the way of answers.
  The moderator was a tubby women with an attitude and bad hair (Candy Crowley).  She interrupted, argued, sucked up valuable time, and was totally in the tank for Obama.  I'd never heard of her before.  The audience questions were bad.  I mean does anyone care about the "assault weapons ban" any more?  That question did give Obama a chance to declare himself in favor of the right to bear arms. 
   Nothing new in the way of ideas, issues, or policies came up.  Everything that was said the two candidates have said before and said many times.  What's fun in watching it to see them going at each other face-to-face and seeing how good they are at thinking on their feet.  Both candidates managed to avoid fatal gaffes, and nobody was ever at a loss for something to say.

Nobody can vote for HIM because..

I hear this a lot.  But when I ask " What has he said or done that is so awful?"  they cannot think of anything.  But they KNOW that HE is awful and they could never vote for him, they just don't know WHY they feel that way. 
    And the MSM aggravate the situation, 'cause everybody knows they don't tell the truth.  So nobody listens to THEM. 
   Which might be why the debate was so effective, everybody got so see their guy, on national TV, all by himself. 

Libya is for Losers

The TV newsies have been talking about the Libya disaster for a couple of weeks now.  Coupla things they haven't talked about.
1.  Marines.  I watched the whole congressional hearing, where they had four State Dept guys getting grilled by 20 Congresscritters for hours.  During all that time the word "Marines" never passed anyone's lips.  The back and forth was all about additional State Dept security guys.  Now as for me, when I got Al Quada climbing over the consulate wall, I want a company of Marines.  They know how to handle this sort of thing.  Once over the wall, Al Quada is on American soil, and the Marines can shoot them all.  Nobody talked about this.
2.  Coverup story.  Just what is the White House trying to sell to the voters.  And why?  Apparently the real story is Al Quada planned to attack and burn the consulate, and they suceeded.  To which an intelligent White House would say "We are gonna track 'em down and kill 'em."  A lot of voters are OK with that.
Instead they said "We Americans are to blame for stirring up the natives with provocative Internet video".  Few voters like that story much.

Winter is coming

Mt Lafayette from the Mittersill Inn driveway.  Took this picture two days ago.  It snowed on the deck that night and it stuck up on the mountain.  Notice that leaves have not all fallen yet.

Drive away bill payments

Paying the bills on a rainy Sunday.  I open the bill from Time Warner Cable.  (cable TV & broadband). Inclosed is a nice form letter explaining that they changed my account number, for the convenience of their computer wienies. 
   And would you be so kind as to redo all the paper work for your credit card payments 'cause when the new account numbers go into effect, credit card payments to the old account number will no longer be accepted.  Likewise if you are paying by electronic funds transfer.
   Right.  I'll drop everything and go thru all that again.  Real Soon Now
   Fortunately I still pay with old fashioned paper checks so I don't have  to bother.
   I wonder how many payments Time Warner will never see because their computer wienies were too lazy to program the new bean counting system to use the old customer account numbers.

  

Scam. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT)

A legal US tax scam.  All a company has to do is convince the IRS that they are in the real estate business, at least that a lot of their business is real estate, and presto, chango, NO US CORPORATE INCOME TAX.
Nice deal if you can get it.  Right now a cellphone operator, American Tower is trying to become a tax exempt REIT on the basis that its cellphone towers are real estate.  In line behind American Tower are data center operator Equinox (they own a fair number of big buildings full of computers) and bill board company Lamar Advertising (billboard are real estate).
   This tax scam is essentially unfair.  Business is business and all businesses ought to be taxed alike.  No special deals for special business.  The REIT scam sucks money out of everything else and pours it into real estate.  Which might be why a real estate bubble caused Great Depression 2.0.  We would be better off to have investors decide where to put their money.  They will pick things that will make money (and employ workers).  The REIT scam is  picking winners and losers via the tax code.
   Romney and Ryan might be willing to repeal this ugly bit of tax favoritism.   

Ryan vs Biden last night

A slug fest.  Biden was a lot feistier than Obama and I scored the event as more even than last week's showdown.  Biden was rude, smirking, laughing and interrupting.  Color him obnoxious.  Ryan was cool, polite, knowledgeable, a nice civilized and polite man I'd happily invite  home for dinner.  Biden can go eat at McDonald's.
  The moderator asked stupid questions and interrupted too much.  Give me Jim Lehrer anytime.
  Both guys presented arguments for their sides, but they kept quoting "facts" that I had never heard of  to bolster their arguments.  Being something of a political junkie who follows this stuff, I figure any fact I never heard of before is likely made up on the spur of the moment.  Bogus.