This post is not about the GOP veep candidate.

This post is about Forbes’s hiring staff even being so illogical as to hire/publish the author of their blog titled Trailwatch. I have a few points of contention.

1. WTF – Trailwatch? I feel like I should be doing one of the following:

• Rubbing sticks together to cook tonight’s gamey squirrel I caught 100 miles outside the Willamette Valley, in order to ensure that injuns (no offense) / other caravans don’t steal my food
• Buying a new tarp/pair of flannel lined overalls from their mail-order catalogue
• Crawling around the Twin Cities MI:2/3/whatever-cause-tom-cruise-is-a-scientologist — ahem — style to see if :gasp: Minnesota really sucks as much as I thought it did before they made the brilliant choice of concentrating thousands of republicans into one town. (As an aside, does that mean the GOP is comprised of ‘community organizers’?? just a thought..)

2. This blog’s particular post on none other than the incestual procreation supporting, lipstick wearing, polar bear killing “pit bull” (see the “cute” joke from her speech the other night) is absurd. The author attempts to make a parallel between Governor I’d-rather-not-drop-the-P-bomb’s notable rise in the polls after her debut stint on television and this woman’s bad outfit:

They call it “Sporting the Full Palin.” Seriously? A woman wears an outdated suit dress, probably doesn’t see well, and didn’t realize she was making the news today and thus didn’t do her hair… and now she’s Sarah Palin’s double? COME ON, guy. Just because you have a thing for Governor Palin doesn’t mean it’s OK — or substantiated/logical — for you to go aroud photographing people in work clothes. Sorry Charlie.

Anyway, I’ve gotta check out on campmor.com… Fall shopping, you know. Peace players. D.A.

Quote of the Day; September 5th, 2008

This one coming from a scientist overseeing the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. It had been asserted by some critics that due to insufficient testing, there remains the possibility that the collider will create a black hole and destory the galaxy (or perhaps just earth). Anyway, one of the scientists involved (subject to death threats), had this to say:

Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.

Short and to the point. Let’s hope he is right.

Fear Mongerers

I refused to watch most of the RNC last night, but I was forced to catch a few minutes of it during the period before I had decided to play some MLB 2k6. In any case, it has only come to my attention now that just prior to McCain’s speech, the Republicans ran a video doing its best to return us to the fear and suffering we experienced seven years ago. It sought so strongly to score political points on that event, that Keith Olbermann was forced to apologize for even airing it. Suffice to say I am not pleased. Indeed, I find it to be a disgusting ploy to return to the politics that put W. back into the White House. It also highlights the Republicans’ fear that McCain’s utter ignorance on economic issues will impede his road to the Presidency. “If we remind them that people are trying to kill them” the argument probably goes, “they’ll forget that we were in power the last time those people killed, they’ll forget that every other issue we’ve shepherded has been a failure, and they may even neglect to realize that our Vice-President is so underqualified that we have to refer to her proximity to Russia in Alaska as foreign policy experience.”

You tried it four years ago and it succeeded, you scared the American people into your arms. No matter how graphic you get in your videos or how often you remind us that “we are under attack”, it won’t work again. You screwed up for eight years and now it is our turn. This time, I hope, the rest of the American people will join me in saying: “Go Fuck Yourself.”

Bad News for China = Bad New for U.S.

Despite their massive government and trade surplus, the Times is reporting that China’s Central Bank is short on capital. Having invested large sums of the country’s savings in U.S. backed Treasury Bills, their assets have lost value as they have let the yuan strengthen versus the American Dollar. As the yuan strengthens, the dollar-denominated treasury bills become less valuable. One possible move, of course, would be to shift their investment portfolio towards other foreign securities. We don’t want that. It would cause, in the words of the Times article, “the dollar would likely fall and American interest rates could soar.”

For instance, a Chinese blogger complained last month, “It is as if China has made a gift to the United States Navy of 200 brand new aircraft carriers.”

Bankers estimate that $1 trillion of China’s total foreign exchange reserves of $1.8 trillion are in American securities. With aircraft carriers costing up to $5 billion apiece, $1 trillion would, in theory, buy 200 of them.

By buying United States bonds, the Chinese government has been investing a large chunk of the country’s savings in assets earning just 3 percent annually in dollars. And those low returns turn into real declines of about 10 percent a year after factoring in inflation and the yuan’s appreciation against the dollar.

The other option is to ramp up their securities purchases despite their low rate of return in order to keep the yuan artificially weak. Doing so would keep their exports cheap- but would keep their people from enjoying the fruit of their labor (with, you know, a currency that can actually afford imports). Unfortunately, the debate playing out in China between the Finance Ministry (pro weak yuan) and the Central Bank (pro strong yuan) will have strong implications for the American economy. We’re still number one, but every year our resistance to foreign influence declines…