A few notes

• It's easy to call Michael Jackson a pedophile. It's easy to make fun of his plastic surgeries and financial problems. Then you look a bit deeper and you see an abused child with a lot of mental health issues crying out for God and fulfillment. It makes the criticisms a little less justifiable.
  
  
  Boy, could he dance....
  
  
• Sarah Palin left her one big office. She should have said "They drove me broke, and I've got kids to feed. I can make enough on the rubber chicken circuit to pay off my debts and put my kids through college. My family comes first, and I know I'm leaving Alaska in good hands with the Lt. Governor."
  
  
  Does she still have a chance at President? Don't look at me, I'm usually wrong.
  
  
• Why are the Federal Reserve Governors, Henry Paulson, and Tim Geithner still walking around without tar and feathers on themselves?
  

Is that so wrong? (Was: Crushing the Grape)

I had to go over to one of the campus bookstores in Lexington. They still have 5 copies of my book in stock. There's just something nice about seeing your book in stock.

We are closing Blue Grape Press, LLC. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the state and county have made Blue Grape unprofitable. I've closed down selling Student Hebrew Bible completely. We will be selling the rest of the publishing business to one of our author's business concerns, so that she can keep her books in print. Once that's complete, I expect to unwind the rest of BGP's business before November.

I guess I'm officially a libertarian now: I've been mugged by the government.

I'm sorry, but he's not "excessively evil"

Bernie Madoff is a jerk, and he's greedy. It looks like 10 of his closest friends and relatives will be going to jail with him. However, I don't understand the "excessively evil" part.

Madoff took people's money. That's it. He didn't kill, he didn't threaten, he didn't even extort. People who were greedy for "guaranteed results" flocked to give him money when they should have known he was crooked.

I'm sorry that a lot of innocent people lost their life's savings. If it is your life's savings, you shouldn't have every cent of it with one person anyway.

Bernie's old; any sentence worthy of his crime would be a life sentence. I just can't see the glee at 150 years when murderers get less.

Leaving Questionable Preachers to God

We are studying Phillipians for an in-home Bible study with the kids. Once again, Paul has struck me with something very uncomfortable:

Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill: The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains; but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice. (Phillipians 1:15-18 New King James Version).

We have had issues with my previous church. I think the minister there was too young, and should have had a career before becoming a minister. This has reinforced my beliefs against the ministry career path for some time.

Even so, Paul doesn't give me that option. So long as the Gospel is preached, I'm supposed to rejoice that it's being preached. It's not my job to question the motives; God will take care of that. We should correct incorrect teaching, and lead all who will be lead. Even so, those who are not against us are for us, as Jesus said.

Not quite 100%

I looked at the test twice, and I still couldn't figure out which answer it wanted for a couple. Oh, well....

88% Geek

Hat tip to The Grey Monk.

A surprise WWDC

Apple has made an impressive WWDC. First, they snuck a complete refresh of the MacBook Pros under the radar. There wasn't a single rumor out there of any of it, and boy, are they sweet! Then, they make Snow Leopard $29, and integrate it with Exchange (that's my work killer app).

Then, iPhone OS 3.0 is announced, and its very nice too. IMHO, the killer app is "Remote Wipe". If you lose your iPhone, you can log into MobileMe and brick it remotely. You can also make it make noise, even if you had the phone ringer off. That alone might be worth the $99/year for MobileMe. Plus the idea of writing third party hardware add-ons (think old school) is just too neat.

Now, if Jobs had just walked out with the iPhone Tablet as one last thing...

Number 1 Son has pericarditis again

Last weekend, Number 1 son started hurting all over, including his chest. Of course, he doesn't ever hurt on weekdays, only the weekend. His body loves going to the ER even if the rest of us don't.

This time, it acted more like the flu than pericarditis, so we treated him with ibuprofen for the fevers and body aches and waited until Monday. This let just enough fluid build up to let them tell that the pericarditis was back, and had probably never gone completely away the last time.

He's back on the colchicine, a steroid, and ibuprofen.

The United States of Europe

We now have nationalized banks and a zombified national automobile maker. All we need is a national strike or two, and we'll be Britain or France.

Political payback, Chicago-style

The Chrysler bailout is going from tragedy to farce: several bloggers have all but proven that the Obama administration is rewarding political supporters and Democrats at the cost of Republican supporters and non-political owners. A small list of links:

• A quote showing that the government is choosing the plan.
  
• Joey Smith has an entire blog at http://chryslerdealershipshutdown.blogspot.com/
  
• Doug Ross is documenting a lot of evidence of political favoritism over at http://directorblue.blogspot.com/
  

I could post at least 10 other links, but I think this is a good start. It's clear: the Obama campaign is rewarding its supporters, Clinton's supporters, and other Democrats, and punishing Republican supporters under the color of a Government Motors bailout.

Pablo, email me

You posted a comment to my sqlite3 post about needing the sqlite3 code. I can't find a way to look up your Email to mail you, so I need you to Email me about it. Use this link.

Thanks,
David

Why is GM's stock above 0?

According to Reuters, GM is going to go bankrupt soon, becoming Government Motors. Even ignoring the insanity of the government essentially nationalizing two car builders at the same time, the markets are past irrational.

GM will go bankrupt. Their good assets will be bought to pay off their secured debt (at least they're not robbing bondholders like Chrysler). The trash gets left to pay off the unsecured debt (hah!). Yet, at the time of writing GM's stock is 1.29 and rising.

Essentially, GM is going to destroy itself and void the stock. The current stock will at best be worth pennies on the dollar, and most likely is now worth 0. Even so, people are buying it.

As Milady pointed out, perhaps there's a deal to save the stockholders over the bondholders. Maybe program buying of the Dow or S&P 500 is holding up GM. Or maybe people are just plain dumb.

I would short GM with borrowed money if I wasn't afraid that the fix was in.

Jeff posted! Jeff posted!

I knew if I kept Jeff of Think Sink fame in my RSS Folder, he would finally post. And he did!!!.

Now, if I could just post more...

Why the Stress Tests were fraud

Karl over at The Market Ticker has nothing good to say about the "Stress Tests":

Second, some of the data points and "expected losses" are comical. For example, the banks are expected under the "more adverse" situation to believe that prime mortgage losses will not exceed 4%, and ALT-A (liar loans and Option ARMs) will not exceed 13%. HELOC loss (most of which is unsecured!) is expected not to exceed 11%.

Commercial Real Estate, in total, is not expected to produce more than a 12% loss.

...

If these numbers have any sort of credibility then this paper should be trading at 85 cents or so.

The truth is that you can't find a bid for anything over 40 cents, and the reason is that for those pools where the internals are exposed the known loss figures are high enough to make the actual "today" value of that paper 40 cents, not 85 or 90.

I suspect we're looking at the complete insolvency of most of the banking system by 2011. We would be much better off in just allowing them to die now, and spread what's left of their capital out to work. Until then, I think we're stuck in a Japan-style deflation.

Would you like a little cheese with that whine?

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera over at CNBC is in full whine mode. Why? Amazon has released a new Kindle too soon. Her 3 month old one is now obsolete.

Ms. Caruso-Cabrera needs to go back to her brick analog cell phone and her two-ton 486 IBM clone (with the turbo button!). Technology improves. The whiz-bang cutting-edge item of today is second-string tomorrow.

To steal a phrase: Give me a break! Unless you're obsessed (and rich), you can never stay on the cutting edge. You buy what you need at the time, and then you use it. If Michelle really needed the Kindle DX, then she should have waited. Instead, she'd jealous (and covetous), and wants someone else to fix her lack of judgement and toy money.

I am glad that we no longer have the dish, so that we don't get polluted by CNBC.

Why I am still a bear

Several people, including Mark Perry over at Carpe Diem, are becoming bullish about the economy. The stock markets seem to be going with them, rising from bottoms over the last month.

Don't buy in. Yes, manufacturing inventories are dropping, but that's because factories are closing or furlowing, dropping supply, not because of an increase in demand. The fundamental problem, a crushing debt load, hasn't yet been solved.

Until all of that debt is unwound, one way or another, this economy is a dead cat bouncing.

The loan sharks have taken over

If I were a hedge fund manager with a secured loan from Chrysler, I'd be so pissed off right now. They are getting all but raped in order to give Chrysler to Fiat and the UAW.

Fiat? Are they the only car company greedy (or insane) enough to get in bed with this merger?

If it was my hedge fund, I'd insist on getting the asset or a 100% payoff, just on the principle of the matter. With asset in hand, you can at least threaten to box it up and ship it to China, or scrap it.

I used to think it was the Republican neo-cons that wanted business socialism. I had no idea that the neo-lib Democrats were in on it too.

What I'm Listening to today

As I've mentioned in comments on other blogs, I have grown tired of Contemporary Christian Music. I've not heard many people who are new, fresh, or even very interesting. Until Wednesday.

Every Tuesday, Apple releases 3 or 4 free songs on iTunes, and I make sure I grab the free music. I enjoy joking about creeping out Little Miss with If I Had A Heart, which was a free tune a couple of weeks ago. I freely admit to liking strange songs; they are something new and different. I've grown tired of hearing the same old formula from the same over-produced pop singers.

This week, I downloaded Come Save off of Sweet Sweet Sound and was amazed. Sarah Reeves knocked me off my feet. Her voice is good, the song is powerful, and it's the first Christian song to make me cry since Rich Mullins.

Go download Come Save now. Or even better, go buy all of Sweet Sweet Sound.


(Disclosure: I am a new iTunes affiliate, and clicking the links will throw a few cents my way. Go get the songs anyway. If the links don't work, please try again in an hour.)

Filing taxes

I hate tax day.

The little company would have made money if the county government wouldn't take their $100 off the top, and if the state wouldn't take their $175 off the top. Yes, it's sad for a business to only pull in less than $275 profit, but that was going to be $275 profit....

Looks like I need to put a little more elbow grease into it.

Welcome Coach Cal

OK, we now have the richest coach in college basketball. Nothing like how a little constructive desperation can make a "rough" choice sound good. I just hope that Sandy Bell keeps the NCAA on speed dial, and that Cal keeps a short leash on "World Wide Wes" (or even better, leaves him in Memphis).

Please stay clean, John. I'll sacrifice a title or two for a fun, clean set of seasons.

G's gone

Billy Gillespie was fired. Good job. One down, one Mitch Barnhart to go...

I think Billy would have gotten a third season if he'd just have signed the contract. Yes, the UK coach gets millions a year, but most of that money doesn't come directly from UK. UK pays around $600k - $800k (or so) of the salary directly from the Athletic Association. The rest comes from advertisements, endorsements, and speaking engagements. I think Billy G. wanted to keep getting his millions of dollars, but not do the advertisements, endorsements, and speaking engagements that paid for those millions. That just wasn't going to happen.

I'm disappointed that UK is paying some of the $6 million parachute, but I can understand why they did pay it off. First, they have to fire Gillespie to hire someone else. Second, the next coach has to know that UK will pay off their golden parachute if the deal doesn't work out. I don't think that the letter was a contract (they can argue that Gillespie failed to make a good faith effort to sign a deal), but it's cheaper to pay out that sue.

I personally like the idea of Travis Ford for UK coach. Donovan needs to really consider it, but his wife is probably already told him no way. (Tip to Mitch Barnhart: woo Mrs. Donovan more than you've ever romanced your own wife. It might just get you the #1 coach in the country.)

If John Calipari comes to UK, then we need to take pitchforks and torches to Maxwell Place. Calipari is a sleezeball who cuts corners and leaves storm clouds behind him. If we hire him, we'll have the death penalty within 10 years.

One final aside: I'm surprised that Billy G. can't outrun Alan Cutler.