Sell your Greek Bonds, for 35% of face value

The Greeks are making an offer you can't refuse.  They will buy back their bonds.  But they will only pay 35% of the face value.  Your choice is take  65% haircut now, or risk getting nothing in the future.  The Wall St Journal recommends bond holders take this deal now. 
  Can't say I don't agree with the Journal. 

So who gets blamed if we go over the fiscal cliff?

Good question.  If hitting the bottom of the fiscal cliff hurts as much as we think it will, fingers will be pointed.   Paychecks will get  smaller in January as withholding bumps up and as the FICA tax holiday comes to an end.  Ordinary folk will probably see their withholding tax double.  That ought to bring 'em up fighting mad.
   If Congress passes anything, Obama will have to sign it, otherwise he will take the blame for all the bad stuff that follows. John Boehner probably has the House in hand enough to pass anything reasonable.  He ought to do so.  The Senate will be under tremendous pressure to pass it, what ever it is, 'cause if they don't, everyone will blame them.  And no Senator likes that idea. 
  The circular firing squad is in place.  Who ever fails to keep us from going over the cliff will get shot.

Cops want access to old text messages too

According to CNET, law enforcement types want Congress to mandate internet server providers to store all text messages for two years and allow them to go fishing for evidence pretty much any time they want.  I favor requiring the providers to erase text messages and email as soon as it it successfully delivered. 
  If law enforcement is investigating, they can obtain a warrant from a real judge and see any messages sent AFTER the warrant is issued.  They should not have the right to go fishing thru every message you ever sent looking for something to hang you with. 
   Note to the wise.  Never put anything confidential or  incriminating in a text message.  Your competitors, random hackers, and the cops will read it.   And you will be toast.

English Muffins

A tasty breakfast.  I usually buy run of the supermarket house brand stuff, (Surefine) to save a few pennies, but I pay full boat for Thomas.  They are worth it.  I have given up on the fork torn muffin however.  They are tastier when divided into two equal sized pieces so they toast up evenly.  Fork torn too often gives one plump half and one skinny half which burns before the plump half is decently brown.  Bread knife sliced is the way to go.  There are plenty of nooks and crannies in a sliced muffin.
  Once sliced, a toaster is good, but buttering them and browning them under the grille is better.  I set the ding-ding timer for seven minutes and they come out just golden brown in my oven.  Just about the right length of time to let the coffee brew.

Have you ever heard of UN CRPD?

Well neither had I , until this morning.  The phone rings, and it's a robo caller urging me to call my senator to oppose it.  So I did a little web surfing and I find CRPD is a UN treaty on the rights of disabled persons.  If ratified by the Senate, it would replace all American law (the Americans with Disabilities Act mainly) with UN law.  Which is a good reason to vote it down.  Nobody knows what is in it.  Ratifying it would be buying a pig in a poke.  We have pretty good law on the subject, that was worked out in Congress some years ago and we are mostly satisfied with it.  It would be dumb to replace what we have with a mystery treaty written by the UN which is full of little countries that don't like us much.
   Apparently, in an effort to avoid dealing with the fiscal cliff, Harry Reid decided the CRPD is just what we need to pass in this lame duck session of Congress. 
   That's keeping the best interests of the United States in mind.  Good show Harry.

NH General Court gets started

I surfed down the NH legislature "bills pending" site.  Wow.  The 2013 session hasn't even started yet and we have 397 bills in the hopper.  NH seems to be a reasonably well run state and yet our gallant law makers have nearly 400 changes to NH law that they want to make.  So far all we have a titles, and the titles seem fairly innocuous.  There isn't text for them yet.  Some are harmless time wasters like a bill to establish a Franklin Pierce day.  There are likely some that are really bad ideas, but you wouldn't know it from the title.   

Meet the Press

As usual I tuned in my Sunday pundits.  David Gregory had some democrats and republicans on Meet the Press, talking about the fiscal cliff.  He had Timmy "Turbotax" Geithner, US treasury secretary, claiming that his administration has planned trillions of dollar in spending cuts.  Then he had tax gadfly Grover Norquist on claiming that Obama wasn't offering a dime in cuts, but instead trillions in new spending.
   They can't both be right. One of them is lying.  The moderator, David Gregory, offered no help in sorting out who was the liar. Gregory isn't contributing to a useful debate so long as us viewers are saying, some one is lying, so nothing anyone says is worth listening to.  'Cause we cannot tell who is lying for sure, although we have our suspicions. .
   So what happens next?
1.  Congress fails to pass anything.  In which case taxes go up for everyone and some painful spending cuts take place real soon now.  This is called "going over the fiscal cliff".  Doing nothing is easier than doing something. 
2.  Congress does what Obama wants, passes a soak-the-rich tax hike. Most of us escape the tax hike.
3.  Congress does some serious spending cuts (Medicare reform) and gives Obama his tax hike in return for signing the spending cuts. 
   Place your bets.