Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Meanwhile, in the real world

The famous Chinese curse says, “May you live in interesting times.” We’re cursed, all right.

  • Item: Dick Cheney survives an assassination attempt while visiting the war zone. Not surprising at all that an attempt was made. Not surprising, either, that people would be trying to kill him. What is sad is that a number of people posting to the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington’s compendium of nonsense, were openly sad that the assassins were unsuccessful. There’s a term for that sort of thinking: sick. Back in the day, Bill Clinton used to drive me absolutely nuts. But I never wanted him dead.
  • Item: Stock market takes a 500 point nosedive on Tuesday. Correction or harbinger? Hard to say. But at this writing the market has recovered over 100 points. That’s because many stocks are available for a sale price today. I am concerned about the default rates in consumer lending, especially since a lot of people who used exotic mortgages to get into a house are going to be very overextended if they don’t refinance. It bears watching, especially since many of these mortgages have been securitized, so the effect of defaults and foreclosures will have larger ripples in the overall economy. I don’t think the bears are appearing yet, though.
  • Item: Joe Lieberman hints he might caucus with the Republicans. There’s a reason why the Democrats have been pushing their agenda like crazy since the beginning of the year; they know their window may be short. Lieberman is probably the most powerful man in Washington. As Glenn Reynolds might say, heh.
  • Item: Badgers lose two games and Brian Butch. Tough week in Madison. Bo Ryan is a resourceful fellow and he does have some other players who can fill in for Butch, who appears to be out for the rest of the season with an elbow injury. If the Badgers can make a run in the conference tournament, I’d say they will be okay. But this dream season may be turning nightmarish.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only thing that's nightmarish is the officiating in the Big Ten. It's about time that the league sent some of those old referees that have been calling games since the Bradley Lohaus era out to pasture. For whatever reason, the league has decided that it is ok for these hacks to call games in such a way that the disparity of calls between a home and away team is dramatic. And another thing, lose the criminal rapper who always appears at halftime of games. I'm not sure what market the Big Ten is chasing, but it sure doesn't seem like many gangster rappers are going to be attending college.

Mr. D said...

Hey anonymous,

I thought Kam Taylor got fouled at the end, too. Whatcha gonna do?

I noticed those gansta rapper ads, too. The market they are chasing are bored suburban white boys, who have always been the primary demographic for that stuff. Nothing says glamorous urban life quite like Iowa City, eh?