Category: Current Events

I’ve been reading voraciously about this financial crisis facing our country, and there’s a lot of quality econ blogs out there with good information about it.  My instincts tell me that a government bailout of people who made poor choices is bad.  But the financial system grinding to a halt would also be bad.

So is this something to not really worry too much about, or should I be pulling all of my money out of the bank and stockpiling ammunition?

UPDATE: I was mostly kidding about the last sentence.  I always have a healthy stockpile of ammunition on hand.  These days, most of it I loaded myself.

From Stephen Green:

In other words, when Congressional oversight of banks forces banks into taking risks they can’t afford, the solution is more Congressional oversight of banks. To put it more plainly: When the boat is taking on water, open up the taps.

Talking about McCain’s hinting that there might need to be some undefined level of increased government regulation to get us out of this mess.

One of the last “Witness Trees” on the Gettysburg Battlefield has died.  Visit enough places, and you’ll be impressed by just how much changes through time.  Fredericksburg Battlefield has become almost completely overgrown.  Look at historical pictures, much of it is clear, but where fields once were, forest now abounds.

Apparently there are two other surviving trees on the battlefield, but living things do eventually die.  Such is nature.

From the HuffPo of all places:

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role Russia will play in the new international system. Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously similar to Stalin’s and Hitler’s in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putin’s “justification” for dismembering Georgia — because of the Russians in South Ossetia — to Hitler’s tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to “free” the Sudeten Deutsch.

Let’s hope we don’t have to repeat that sorry bit of history.  We need a comprehensive missile defense system.  We need it yesterday.  It makes this all the more troubling:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs[/youtube]

God help us all.

The Belmont Club has been an excellent resource in the following the happenings.  Also be sure to read the comments.  It’s hard to see, if Putin and his puppet in the presidency are intent in extinguishing Democratic governments, how this shouldn’t reignite the cold war.  At some point, the governments of the west are going to have to stand up to Putin.  That’s going to be hard when Europe has become dependent on Russia for energy.

How’s this for a walking psychotic contradiction:

But more charges await the 58-year-old man who authorities say has been frustrated by a lack of employment, a reduction of his food-stamp benefits and what he perceived as the liberal ruination of the United States.

OK, so you’re pissed off that liberals have ruined your country, and you’re pissed off that your food stamp benefits have been reduced.  Quiz time: Which political constituency consistently cries foul when welfare benefits are cut or reduced?

SayUncle has the coverage.  Just keep scrolling.

Over at SayUncle:

The Mrs. often asks why I carry to church. It’s because shootings keep happening at churches.

It’s often the places you least think you’d need a gun that you most need one.  I’m going to bet the Mrs. doesn’t ask this particular question anymore.

A fine example of the art of “tagging” in the late 18th Century that I have managed to dig up ;)