Mastery of the trivia

WMUR TV sponsored debates between Sununu and Shaheen, Horn and Hodes, and Buckley and Shea Porter, the NH Senatorial and US representative candidates. I watched them all. Arggh.
Sununu spoke well, made good points and supported them. I gained a knowledge of what Sununu would do in office.
The rest of them were terrible. They used the statewide TV exposure for vague generalities, spectacular accusations of obscure misdeeds and platitudes. Republican Jennifer Horn failed to point out Paul Hode's complicity in the Fannie-Freddie disaster that caused first the housing market crash ans second the stock market crash. Shaheen sounded like she was campaigning against Bush, who isn't standing for re election, rather than for US Senator from New Hampshire. Hodes came across as a middle aged weasel. Shea Porter and Buckley did themselves no good.

The tax man cometh.

I hear Obama and McCain each claiming that their tax plan will be better than the other guy's tax plan. Unfortunately the US personal income tax is so complex and loaded with gotcha's and loopholes that nobody knows what will happen, no matter who wins. All we taxpayers can figure is the man who wants to spend more will raise taxes more. So far, Obama is miles ahead on the spending front. He plans to offer free health insurance to everyone. That's gonna cost so much it will bankrupt the country.
All of Obama's tasty goodies will have to be paid for some how. Once a federal goodie is offered , it can never be revoked, so each of Obama's pricey goodies will burden us taxpayers for ever and ever. We will have to pay for them somehow, taxes, borrowing, or just plain printing the money, none of which is good for the economy.
Obama's goodies mean taking money away from industry, investment, research and development and just consuming it.

Will a one hour speed bump save the market?

The Dow is down 400 points and the market has only been open for 20 minutes. There is talk about a one hour timeout of trading should the market drop 1100 points. Will just one hour allow enough time to reset all the computers (which sell when the market drops) and reset the investors who will be in solid panic mode?

Alternative Energy subsidies

Interesting NYT article here. Apparently nuclear energy enjoys a $1.59 per Megawatt hour subsidy where as wind and solar get $20 per Megawatt hour. Let's see, I pay $160 per Megawatt hour up here. So the 1% subsidy doesn't make much difference. The $20 for wind and solar seems a bit much, especially as neither wind nor solar goes into my car or my furnace, my big energy costs.
What does hurt is the green anti nuclear stand. I'm still paying off the damage they did to the Seabrook nuclear plant back in the 1970's. "Stranded cost recovery" right on my electric bill every month, thanks to the Clamshell Alliance. Plus a whopping big share of the cost of a nuclear plant is the humungous pile of paperwork the greens have saddled the industry with.

$150 million "alert system" scratched

An unnamed Homeland Security system to provide unclassified but sensitive warnings of terrorist threats to first responders and all levels of government has been "put on hold". With luck Congress may be able to kill the entire $150 million boon doggle.
The way you pass threat warnings is by email. Everyone reads their email. If the contents are sensitive, or even classified, encrypt the email. Problem solved.

Let's get petty

The MSM are now trashing Sarah Palin over the cost of her wardrobe. How petty (and sexist) can you get? She has to appear in public daily, travel (which clothes hate) and as a national political candidate she has to appear well dressed. Of course she needed more clothes to campaign in.
Plus, women have to work harder than men to appear well dressed. A dark suit, clean white shirt, well shined shoes and a tie and a man is good to go. Women's dress is infinitely more complicated. Any reasonable woman would need more decent outfits to campaign nationally.

Roasting Ratings Agencies on Wall St

Sen. Henry Waxman, that bald headed twit, held hearings today to roast Moody's, Standard and Poor's and the other bond rating services. The raters gave AAA ratings to "mortgage backed securities" which later tanked and took down the financial markets. Although the roasting is well deserved and fun to watch, it misses the point.
The goodness of the "mortgage backed securities" was no better than the goodness of the mortgages backing them. There is no way a bean counter in a Manhatten office can know how good a mortgage in California or Florida is. To evaluate a mortgage, you have to know the value of the real estate (which requires a visit to the property and local knowledge) , the income of the borrower (which is privacy protected) and interview the borrowers. No way a bean counter at a rating agency can do this.
The buyers of the "mortgage backed securities" should have known this. Once a mortgage maker knows he can sell the mortgage for cash, and all the risk is passed to the buyer, then he will make a mortgage to anyone with breath in his body. We should close the entire secondary mortgage market because it is impossible to know the soundness of any mortgage backed security.