My uncle the engineer sent me an interesting video about a guy who shows how Stonehenge might have been assembled using ordinary items and simple techniques. In the world that seems to worship the god of over-complication, the simplicity demonstrated here makes one think...
On Roadkill's recommendation, I read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. Shlaes is a columnist for Bloomberg and a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations. She writes on political economy and taxes.
I found this book very interesting and an excellent example of how hindsight can be somewhere around 20/20 vision -- especially if you have a free market optometrist. From a free market perspective, Shlaes weaves an interesting story that basically says nothing FDR did help shorten or reduce the impact of the Great Depression.
As I read this history, I kept thinking of something my Old Man used to say concerning having kids -- "Kids aren't born with instruction books." As we are seeing today, no one really knows what to do to fix our ailing economy. The Big Government experts are calling for big government remedies for the cure. Throw big piles of money at the sick economy. Lets hope that works. At the same time, a lot of former free-marketeers have their gloves open and are yelling for Big Gov to pitch a pile of cash their way. Quietly sitting in the Bull Pen are the free marketeers spitting their disgust at the economic game being played and telling us to just like the economy run its course.
I found it interesting the FDR kept throwing ideas at the economic wall and seeing what would work and what would get past the legal umpires. It something didn't work or ran into a Constitutional wall, he dropped it and tried something else. Personally, I admire FDR for having the political guts to try different things. Obviously it wasn't the case in the 1930s where our leader just sat on his hands and let the economic nature take its course. It sure isn't today.
Even Hoover didn't sit on his has. He tried thinks like putting tariffs in place that caused foreign competitors to play the same game. This game led to a deterioration of the economy's health. Hoover received a lot of ink in this book and I found it interest to get past the caricature of Hoover we are so often fed.
Hoover was an impress individual. As Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, he championed government intervention and pushed for economic modernization. Coolidge called Hoover "Wonder Boy," because he was always coming up with big ideas. Hoover's story is a rags to riches story. Before entering public service, Hoover was probably one of the richest non-capitalists in the country. When he was elected President in 1928, Hoover had never been elected to any previous office.
The book also discussed Andrew Mellon and his run-ins with FDR. Mellon must be considered one of the founding neocons. He advocated cutting the income tax rate, cutting taxes on low incomes, reducing the federal estate tax and making government more efficient. Hoover too was big on making government more efficient. However, I think the two came at it from different angles. Hoover was coming more from the "scientific management" school for Fredrick Winslow Taylor and Mellon from the "keep you hands off of my pile" school of business.
Another interest book on Mellon is Mellon: A American Life by David Cannadine. It covers the Mellon family history and details the building of an American dynasty and world behind the Mellon money. Likewise, another related book about Henry Clay Frick titled Meet You In Hell by Les Standiford. Both these books give you a detail look into two of the big robber barons and how the smell of money make Pittsburgh the major driving wheel in America's industrial engine in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Another book in checked out was FDR by Jean Edward Smith. It gave a cradle to the grave overview of FDR's life and added addition insights into the touch points between Hoover, Mellon and the economic tinkering of the 1930s. As I stated earlier, it's great to be an armchair quarter reliving the what-if game that hindsight provides.
I don't pretend to be any expert on the economic perspectives of the Great Depression, but I am very interested in the big names and no names involved in that time in our nation's history.
A Florida man has suspended his ex-wife’s alimony payments on the grounds that she is now living with someone else—her prison cellmate. A review panel this week agreed with Andrew Craissati that he could end his $2,000-a-month payment to ex-wife Patricia, 48, because she had entered a state of “cohabitation.” Patricia Craissati, now serving nine years for a DUI accident, shares a cell with another woman. “It goes to show the most winnable case is losable,” said her lawyer, who will appeal.
A New Jersey man is charging that a ShopRite supermarket refused to personalize a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son, Adolf Hitler Campbell. Heath Campbell, 35, also says the store refused to inscribe a cake for his 2-year-old daughter, JoyceLynne Aryan Nation Campbell, and that the staff at Wal-Mart is more helpful. “Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability,” said a Wal-Mart spokeswoman.
"I'd rather be ashes than dust. I would rather have my spark burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and perseverant planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist."
Jack London 
"Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucent'--and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me."
Viktor Frankl
Man's Search For Meaning
"The progressive movement is a vital moving force that transcends personalities, politics and parties. It is based on the fundamental principle that the will of the people shall be the law of the land."
Senator Bob LaFollette, Jr. (1945)
"White water fountains, colored water fountains. You couldn't sit at the lunch counter, go to the bank or get a hamburger. The pain will always be there, but I think there's a realization that people have evolved."
Florida State Sen. Frederica Wilson
After casting her electoral vote to elect Obama as President
"Every time I think of it, I get a little misty eyed. I am undone by the election of Barack Obama and what it says to me as a black American, and his victory in the whitest state."
Jill Duson
The first black mayor of Portland, Maine
Chairwoman of Maine's Electoral Voters
Read more @ Lawrence Journal World.
"Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay."
Charles Dickens
"If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
That's right sports fans, I took this picture on Christmas Day 2008 while sitting on the dock on the bay on the lake behind my house. It wasn't my dock, but the dock worked fine for a spot to have a cheese stick and drink a carton of OJ. The tracks were made by my yesterday. Today was an excellent afternoon for some XC trudging around the neighborhood fields and ponds. I shot these pictures while sitting on the dock. Not sure whose dock it is, but it sure is handy for taking a break.
A blanket of at least 12-inches of loose powder snow covers the fields and lakes in this area of Western Wisconsin. The skies were clear when I started out and turned partly cloudy as the afternoon progressed. Winds were brisk in the open areas and coming from the south. The weather station says snow is coming tonight and turning to freezing drizzles tomorrow. If that comes true, my plan to go downhill skiing tomorrow might get pushed out to Saturday.
Snowmobiles were out crossing the lake on the trail that runs from somewhere south around River Falls to Superior. Traffic was light, but the trails are open. The trail groomer came through the area on Monday. My guess is that hardcore snowmobilers are spending Christmas up north -- or maybe down in southern Wisconsin where record snow blankets the hills and dales. The fewer the snowmobiles on the trails, the longer the trails will be open. The snow is really light and fluffy and won't provide much trail cushion.
Yesterday, while sitting on the same dock, I saw a small herd of deer over in Bill's Bay. I skied over there earlier, but the springs in that part of the lake leave water under the snow. Once my skis sink into the water, the water freezes and the skis don't slide until I scrape them off. Hence, today I told the field on the south side of the lake and followed the snowmobile trail down the lake. There's a trick to this XC skiing.
Anyways, it was an excellent, invigorating afternoon of XC skiing for me. When I got home, it was time for an excellent Christmas dinner with the wife.
"A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus."
Herbert Hoover
"Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas."
Calvin Coolidge
"Violence, specifically domestic violence, always spikes during the holiday season." he said. And this year, because of the economy, Psychologist Jim Dasinger believes it could get worse. "Remember we've got more job losses, more foreclosures coming on, so this is putting greater stress and conflict on couples."
Dasinger also cautioned that "There's three phases to domestic violence, the argument and assault, followed by an apology. The only way to break the cycle is to report the abuse."
"Financial regulatory reform will be one of the top legislative priorities of my Administration, and as a symbol of how important I view this reform, I’m announcing these appointments months earlier than previous administrations have. These individuals will help put in place new, common-sense rules of the road that will protect investors, consumers, and our entire economy from fraud and manipulation by an irresponsible few. These rules will reward the industriousness and entrepreneurial spirit that’s always been the engine of our prosperity, and crack down on the culture of greed and scheming that has led us to this day of reckoning. Instead of allowing interests to put their thumbs on the economic scales and CEOs run off with excessive golden parachutes, we’ll ensure openness, accountability, and transparency in our markets so that people can trust the value of the financial product they’re buying. And instead of appointing people with disdain for regulation, I will ensure that our regulatory agencies are led by individuals who are ready and willing to enforce the law."
President-elect Obama
Dec. 18, 2008
Read more @ Washington Wire.
"This should be a year of no bonuses for any firm that took bailout money. The assumption of having to take public money is that your firm is in an emergency situation, and you put out your hand for public help."
Peter Singer
Princeton University philosophy professor 
With the election of Obama, does that mean he is required to dance to the Left tunes? Apparently not. President-elect Obama has picked Rick Warren, head of the 20,000 member Saddleback church in California, to say the prayer at Obama's inauguration.
One of my right-wing co-workers who eats his lunch in his car listening to Rush Limbaugh said lots of "conservatives" think Warren is too weak on abortion. Another friend who keeps her ear glued to left-wing radio via Air American told me how Obama is pissing off the gay community by picking Warren who opposed the recent anti-gay marriage amendment in California.
I may have heard Warren's name mentioned a few times and was reminded that he invited McCain and Obama to his church together during the campaign. It's a beautiful sight to see the myopic, partisan visionaries lined up against the Left and Right walls of American politics seeing the tone of the government settle into the center. Did the Left wing think the political world was going to suddenly veer to the Left ditch? Lord knows that's what the Right wing was telling us during the campaign. The no-compromisers are going to learn, if you want to tear down the partisan wall in America, you will be meeting in the middle.
From my humble perspective, politics is about working out compromises among groups with differing opinions. The Right may want the whole pizza to be sausage and the Left may want the pizza to be peperoni, but the result in a democracy will be a pepperoni and sausage mixed with some onions, mushrooms and green peppers sprinkled in to represent some of those third party voices that can't scream, bitch and complain as loud as the mouthpieces on the Left and Right. 
From The Right...
"Unless Rick Warren has changed, he is very disappointing in the pro-life cause. Just ask pro-life leaders their opinion. He doesn't like to deal with it at his church. It just seems funny that he is known as 'pro-life' when he largely ignores the subject and teaches others to do the same. I fear God for these 'men of God'. We have lost 50 million babies, and most won't say a word. Reminds me of Nazi Germany or our slavery days. Very few spoke out. It was more comfortable to keep quiet."
E-mail to Pat Robertson' Christian Broadcast Network @ Alert Net.
From the Left...
"My take on this is that President-elect Obama and his staff are being incredibly disrespectful to Progressives who were a major part of getting the Obama-Biden ticket elected and having Warren anywhere near the festivities on January 20th is just flat-out stupid politically.
People in the Religious Right will never support Barack Obama or his agenda, so giving a homophobic bigot like Warren such a prominent place on such a special day for our country will do absolutely nothing to gain Obama support from that lot. Meanwhile, he will piss off a lot of his supporters before he even takes office and will be going against what the mainstream of America thinks by boosting someone who is anti-choice, for continuation of the Iraq occupation and who clearly hates gay people."
Bob Geiger @ Huffington Post.
“Business is a game, the greatest game in the world if you know how to play it.”
Thomas J. Watson
"...Our point is that journalists have a fundamentally different relationship to facts than that of most political operatives. Facts are the foundation of what journalists do—get them wrong and your credibility suffers; get them wrong often enough and you’ll be out of a job. For creatures of politics, facts are malleable—weapons to be used as necessary to produce victory at the polls and in the policy-making arena. Journalists are taught to check facts and assemble them without regard for whether they like the picture that emerges; political operatives only have use for those facts that enhance the picture they want to project...."
Read more @ Columbia Journalism Review.
"The powerhouse credit card company American Express has just joined the storied list of financial firms converting to bank holding companies. Like Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers, American Express is seeking shelter from the subprime storm by converting to the highly regulated Bank Holding Company form. In another economic climate, these voluntary conversions from the largely unregulated corporate forms that shape credit card companies and the minimally regulated and often wild, risk seeking investment bank culture would be inexplicable..."
"...There is a word for what I am feeling about American Express' flight to regulation: Schadenfreund, or comeuppance. The stress and worry that the highly-compensated executives of American Express, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch are experiencing in this crisis can't be half as intense as the customers of these financial giants who were trammeled by high interest rates, risky investment strategies and huge compensation packages for executives who cooked up the products that caused us all so much financial pain. Like my mother used to say: 'what goes around, comes around.'"
Emma Coleman Jordan
Diving For Dollars and The Discount Window
