Memnison Journal

Yesterday was my first day out with both feet in REAL shoes; it was snowing in Chicago, and I had to go downtown to have my monthly all-day session with the leukemia docs and get my IVIG treatment.  The two dogs had torn up my sleep a lot the night before with getting up and [...]

Hedge Fund founder who lost a serious bundle in the Madoff ponzi scheme commits suicide, and no, he didn’t jump out a window.
The radical Israeli settlers in the West Bank are a political nightmare that any government will have serious problems with and neither main party coalition wants to deal with.  Of course, government policies [...]

Craft stores and online stores that sell handmade stuff are doing well as cheap gift-things with the recession.  Me, I’m worthless at handmade gifts, unless you make ‘em on a computer.
People (and primates) will believe lies and deceive each other far more than dolphins will. I say we elect dolphins.
Yes, the non-US based [...]

A commercial real estate attorney speaks up:
Suddenly, and coinciding with the Lehman/Goldman fiasco, the commercial lending markets completely disappeared. Not just a slow down, but a complete and total shut down. Loans for which there were commitments were suddenly pulled. Term loans (most in the development world are for 1-2 years at a time) were [...]

Well, pawnbrokers are doing well from the frantic sales of the desperate, including tapped-out mortgage brokers.   Business is up 20%!
Things are so grim that investors are willing to snap up US Government securities that will be worth less than the amount that the investor put in in the first place.   Reason?  They’re really secure, and [...]

Susan reported about a week and a half ago that my van (we have two vehicles, Susan’s SUV and my van) was acting up, as if it was overheating and underheating the inside of the vehicle.  We’ve had heating-cooling problems for a while, and we were dreading this, on top of the big recent vet [...]

I’m noticing that a lot of my friends-list and others online - and the few I talk to on the phone (man, I am so housebound) - are going to take the holidays easy, cheap and local this year.  Our household will, as usual, trot out to Susan’s aunt Marlyce’s house and do the holiday [...]

If some particular division of Citi has done well over the past few years, I can see letting the management of that division stay on. But the people who either ran Citi into the ground or were asleep at the wheel need to go. That should be the condition of a bailout: if you turn [...]

The ‘audition’ stuff, much as I had expected, turned out to be a situation where they were willing to take on Mere as a student, with a $2300+ fee for the acting lessons, etc.  Plus running her back and forth for all sorts of lessons quite some distance away.
The answer is:  we can’t afford it.  [...]

So whatcha gonna spend it on?
I’d have to consult with Susan, of course.
I’d be Mr. Conservative.  Stick it into some needed repairs and fixes around the house and outdoors.

The pancreatitis has died down enough to bring Dot home from the vet’s office / animal hospital, and while she’s still shaky, she’s obviously a whole heck of a lot better.  And there’s a ferocious vet bill, over a grand, and I really DON’T want or need that with Christmas coming up.
Susan’s knee is better, [...]

From Nico Pitney in HuffPo:
3) John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. He hasn’t cast a single vote in five months, since April 9. All of a sudden, McCain is demanding that the presidential race shut down so [...]

From the Bailout plan: Sec. 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
So we give you 700 billion dollars without any kind of accountability or oversight?  To spend [...]

There was a discussion in an earlier post (lj version) about Bush’s negative impact on the economy between me and Bill Roper on a Senate bill in 2005 (S. 190) that allegedly would have prevented the whole mortgage debacle.  A year after the bill was sent out of committee with huge changes, McCain added in [...]

I started to consider the actual stats on Bush versus Clinton’s stewardship of the economy and the country; came up with this.  The prices are from a day or so ago, but I think you’lll get the idea: Bush has been a disaster for the American economy. 
The 93 date is Clinton’s inauguration, the 01 [...]