The Vig

Christopher Hitchens(!) saw today coming two months ago.

There’s something horrible and undefeatable about people who have no life except the worship of power, people who don’t want the meeting to end, the people who just are unstoppable, who only have one focus, no humanity, no character, nothing but the worship of money and power. They win in the end.

If nothing else was accomplished today, at least cable news showed us exactly what a Clinton administration would look like.

I’m watching him lecture the Democratic rules committee right now.  His rewriting of history and his minor cursing (you bet your ass I’m mad!) is both amusing and infuriating.

Know this about Michigan and Florida.  If they had simply played by the rules, their delegates would have been seated.  At full strength.  AND they would have each had their moments in the media sun, just like Oregon received earlier this month.  They were warned not to go down the path they chose.  But they didn’t care.  Or rather their leaders didn’t care.  See, it’s like this.  Ickes complains 30 wise men and women are subsitituting their judgment for that of 680,000 voters.  What of the 30 or so wise men and women in Michigan and those in Florida who chose to substitute their judgment for that of the voters.  You want to blame someone for this mess?  Blame the individual state parties.  They’re the ones who made today necessary.

The more I think about it, the more I believe NONE of those delegates should be seated.  It’s the only way to prevent similar chaos from happening again.  Instead, Democrats are once again proving they’re unable to govern themselves.  What an absolute joke.

Here’s a curious story I found on Drudge.

It was not immediately clear what information on the laptop might have been compromised, but it would be highly unorthodox for any U.S. government official to carry classified data on a laptop overseas to China, especially one left unattended even briefly. Modern copying equipment can duplicate a laptop’s storage drive in just minutes.

Of course given the number of brain surgeons this president has surrounded himself with, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that there was something on that hard drive that the Chinese would like to know.

And as long as we’re talking about the Chinese and computers, have you seen this thing about the Trojan virus they found on a bunch of imported digital photo frames?  They briefly touched on this during Fresh Air last night.

Some may remember that pre-9/11, the Chinese were going to be our big enemy.  Remember the spy plane incident?  It seems like forever ago, but it was only April 2001 when that happened.  It was part of Condi Rice’s plan to knock the Chinese down a peg or two.  We all know how that worked out.  Meanwhile the Chinese now have all our money and are working on acquiring all our secrets too.  And we’ve given up both without any fight at all.

I didn’t see the foul until I caught up with PTI last night.  Was it a foul?  Yes.  Should it have been called?  Probably.  Am I glad it wasn’t?  Honestly?  Yes.  These debates over calls and non-calls in basketball have become tedious and are a huge part of why American basketball has ceded its supremacy to the world over the last two decades.  Watching a bunch of athletic guys bowling toward the hoop and flailing while putting up a shot while expecting an old guy (or Violet Palmer) to blow their whistle is not basketball.  It’s stupid.  And it’s not entertaining.  Even Kobe Bryant, the greatest on the planet right now, expects to get a call every time he drives the lane.  Sorry kids.  If you’re going to go into the tall timber, you should expect to get bumped.

It’s exactly this sort of officiating which leads to teams like San Antonio and Miami to go out and flop and flail all over the floor for 48-minutes.  It’s a joke and it should get cleaned up.  Unfortunately this style of ball has permeated the game all the way down to middle school.  It would take a lot to change.

Offered without comment, an oral history of Y.M.C.A.

From Jack Bog’s blog:

This town is filled with overgrown children, riding around on bikes, spending their trust funds, and waiting for the second coming of Marx. Grow up.

Truer words…

Chuck Klosterman and ESPN’s Bill Simmons got together last week for a podcast.  It’s worth checking out on several levels, not the least of which is two writers my age talking about their craft.  You, no doubt, will find it tedious.  I found it inspirational.  If you’re so inclined, give it a listen.

Obsessed as I am with the weak dollar, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to strike back.  Or at least take advantage.  I keep hearing investing in precious metals is a good way to protect against inflation.  We’re in the middle of a pretty serious inflationary cycle, despite what the president and the “professionals” are telling us.  One need look no further than the price of gas to know where prices are headed.

How does one go about buying precious metals?  There are two ways to do it.  You can either buy it yourself or you can let someone else buy it and hold it for you.  The exchange traded fund is probably the easiest way to do this.  There’s one for gold and one for silver.  Somewhere someone has accumulated a bunch of the stuff and is basically selling off shares which pretty closely track the spot market.

That was a little complicated for me.  It would involve opening an account somewhere and putting my money in there and doing transfers.  It just looked like a lot of work and no fun.  If I’m going to own precious metals, I want to own them.  How?

A little Googling around landed me on the US Mint’s very helpful website.  From there I was directed to a mint up in Auburn.  Who knew such things existed?  Unfortunately it looks like they’re more tailored to larger investors.  So I dug a little further and ended up on Columbia Coin Company’s very spartan website.  What the hey, right?

So I emptied my piggy bank, actually it’s a glass milk bottle I’ve had for a few years, and took the coins down to the credit union.  With a few dollars in my pocket, I headed over to 50th and Hawthorne during my lunch hour.  Columbia Coin shares a building with an insurance company.  A simple red door marks the entrance.  No windows.  No flashing neon signs.  Just the door.

Upon walking in, I was very quickly and warmly greeted by the lady behind the counter.  I mentioned I found her on-line and she went into this long story about how they used to be located downtown but things had become way too expensive, so they left.  Even though it’s been two years, you could tell she was still heartbroken about moving away.  But between parking and rents, she said it just made no sense to stay.

Anyway, I asked about boullion and she took me over to a case with all kinds of gold and silver coins.  American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, and a few others.  She ended up guiding me to a couple of silver coins.  Perfect!  I walked out with three 1 ounce silver coins and a new hobby, tracking the daily spot price for silver.  I’m guessing the dollar will keep sliding against the Euro and oil will flirt with $200/barrel until George leaves office, and maybe a little beyond that.  It just seems he’s hell bent on letting his buddies raid the cookie jar as long as he possibly can.

The plan is to take my normal savings withdrawal from each paycheck and buy a couple of coins instead.  Nothing big.  And nothing that’s going to put me into too much trouble.  Yeah, I could turn out to be flat wrong and lose a few bucks.  But if I know George like I know George…

Either way, I’m going to have fun.

Jack Bog’s got it.  Like him, I have no idea what it means, but it sure looks bad.  It may be time t get to know these guys.

An interesting thought.  The zeitgeist is leaning toward Jim Webb and a year ago I would have probably been all for it.  But Webb’s caving on telecom immunity is borderline unforgivable.

Obama, as is his nature, will think long and hard about this pick.  I don’t see it being anyone from inside the beltway.  I need to start reading up on Sebelius.