Get up and dance

Not sure if I'm white trash, redneck, pioneer stock or just goofy, but I think the fiddle rocks.

The Myth of Fiscal Conservatism

Whether you wear a red tie or a blue one, your party likes to spend money.

Who knew Swedish statistics could be enjoyable?

How big is big?

I'm doing a lot of work in my new job with Walmart, a company for which my respect has grown tremendously as I've gotten to know them better. This year they'll do about $400B in sales. By way of comparison, the GDP of countries where I've lived are:

South Africa: $283B
Sweden: $455B
Costa Rica: $26B

Hard to believe I lived in countries that were the same size as this company.

Obama

At a family dinner the other day I realized that I had created a perception that I'm an Obama-hater and by corollary a McCain-lover. Neither's entirely true. I think they both kinda suck in their own way, but that's probably inherent to the profession. I do have a healthy skepticism of the mad rush to "do something" about the economy and that whatever that "something" is will be helpful. I don't find the federal government to be much of a savior of anything.

Along these lines, here's a great example:

According to the AP: President-elect Barack Obama says the government has been "asleep at the switch" when it comes to overseeing the nation's financial system. He says Americans are "feeling frustrated that there's not a lot of adult supervision."

Citigroup is one of the top five banks in the US. Their primary federal regulator is a man by the name of Timothy Geithner. Is he one of the guys asleep at the switch?

Oh yeah, Timothy Geithner is Obama's choice to replace Henry Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury.

Politics makes for interesting bedfellows, I suppose. That may be the understatement of the year, the year in which we get a new Secretary of State, the one that Obama railed against for her foreign policy choices in the senate...

Small victories

I fulfilled a lifelong dream in 2008 - I had to order more pages for my passport.

OK, so I didn't climb a mountain, run an Ironman, receive a degree or make a million dollars. Baby steps people.

For J

Classic Porter - the Wii reflected in his lenses. Serious stuff.
This is taken with my new Christmas lens. Great value.