Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Nancy Pelosi is HOT!

For lack of anything to post, here's what I've decided to state: Nancy Pelosi is HOT!

It's not like I'm cowering in my cube having elicit fantasies about Speaker of the Future...but for a 66 year old grandmother whose had 5 kids - that ain't at all bad.

I'd take her over Hillary. I'd probably take her over Ol' Crazy Eyes, but just because she give me the creeps.

Call me shallow, but that's what I've got today.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

My Politician Christmas Card Game

When I get Christmas cards from politicos, here's the game I play. The cards usually honor the birth of the Saviour by showing pictures of the politician's family and pets - all grinning sappily and uncomfortably in front of some fake scene that seemed appropriate. Anyway, I open these up and try to figure out the following:

1. Is the wife a drunk or pill popper?
2. Which daughter will put out?
3. If and/or which son is the gay one?
4. Which son-in-law is the loser son-in-law?
5. Finally, can we find something embarrassing in the background? - I once spotted on an elegant bookshelf in a Rep's background 10+ Jackie Collins novels.

I then have my wife do the same and we compare our answers.

Last night was the card of a Kentucky Congressman - a nice tri-fold affair.

I can't wait for the next one.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Where's Howard Been?

Three articles printed since my last post.

Ever wonder what happens when professionals give themselves awards? I know the 37 music industry award shows are proof enough, but here's further evidence from the world of architecture. Here's the award winner itself. Ahhh, I remember the old college days of wandering through...concrete.

Ever wonder what happens when a woman is thrown from a second story window onto her head? Sometimes they go to school.

Ever wonder what happens when a tech school puts on a poetry jam. Come on out next Wednesday to find out. Details here.

So where have I been? I went to bed Thursday night about midnight. 3:00 a.m. my father-in-law called to say The Divine Mrs. M.'s mom had died. The one I wrote about here.

The Divine is fine. Kids are fine. Father-in-law will be fine. We're all ready to be at home.

It's been almost of week of doing the business of death and mourning in the modern world. Strange, but there's toll-free lines, CD roms, and mega-corporations to deal with. Maybe more about it later.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Doggie Bag

I see no problem to ask for a take home box when eating at a nice restaurant. I paid for it, I'm taking it. However, don't call it a doggie bag. The executive chef worked hard on selecting that particular meal. The chef de cuisine worked hard executing it. And you're calling it a doggie bag? You're implying that you're feeding it to your dog?

Maybe a drunk sous-chef should have spit in it.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Friedman/Pelosi

Lifelong libertarian San Francisco resident Milton Friedman dies the day his U. S. Rep - San francisco values uberliberal Nancy Pelosi is elected Speaker! Coincidence?

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Big Sug and Uncle Milton

Blogging has always been a way for me has always been a way to work off nervous mental energy. It is therapy. But I've been blogging less lately...and with less enthusiasm. Basically, I have less nervous mental energy. Almost four weeks ago, I quit eating as much sugar. I've eliminated all processed sugars and reduced all other. I've also quit most processed foods. I haven't had for beloved chocolate at all. And I feel great. The best I've felt in a long time. From the second day of elinimating it, my normally roiling acid spewwing stomach is downright pacific. My rolaids are getting dusty. Sugar highs and lows are gone of course.

I'm not an anti-sugar militant. Down with Big Sug.

Sadly, I just read that Milton Friedman has died. I think any conservative - and anyone wit an interest in economics - should mark this day. He was my first real economic hero - ok, my only. His pop book Free to Choose is dated but still amazingly relavant. His thesis: freedom is the only way. There's a companion PBS series to the book - the irony was not lost on him that is also marvelous.

Something from friedman to use in everyday: When pundits say an overheating economy will cause inflation to rise, you should snicker at them. His A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, with Anna Schwartz proved it. Inflation everywhere and always a monetory phenomenon. Too much money - not too much work or economic activity - creates inflations. That is: the government overprinting money is the problem. Not us. The Philips Curve is bullshit.

His Money Mischief is a sometimes funny history of money that illustrates again and again how government playing around with money screws things up. He linked FDR's socialization of western state silver mines with causing the rise of Communist China. For moonbat lefties who have no conception of their history, he also takes on the original moonbat - William Jennings Bryant.

God bless Milton Friedman.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Party....in the EXTREME

Two Enquirer articles the last couple days. Here's one on an Extreme Home Party. Their website is here. Looking for Christmas gifts? This is the place. Want to keep your wife happy and empty your wallet at the same time? You can't beat this place.

Want to give to a good cause? Read this story. Long time readers know that the scholarship if named after my church's pastor who died earlier this year. A pic of him is here. Really, if you're interested in giving to a charity, give it a thought.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Where's the Staples?

The problem with stocking your office with supplies from Staples is that when you need staples and look in the supply closet for staples everything says Staples so it's hard to determine where the staples are because your eye keeps focus on the Staples paper clips or Staples binder clips or Staples post-it notes. The staples you're wanting to refill your stapler to staple a client report also says Staples like everything else from Staples but then in smaller letters it says staples. That's how you know that particular Staples box contains staples versus all the other Staples boxes that don't contain staples, but other Staples products.

I still can't find the staples...from Staples.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Talking Smack/Makin' Lemonade

Hey, you third district Republicans down in Louisville, what goes on? We did our job up here in the 4th - Geoff Davis is heading back to DC! Where'd you guys drop the ball? Come on! My thumb and forefinger are forming a particular shape.

As for the loss of the House and Senate. Oh, well. The Republic will survive. There's certain advantages to divided government. Maybe Hastert will let Bush have his veto pen back. For the past few years spending has been nuts, gubbermint programs have been spreading like kudzu, and I'm tiring of hear Republicans say "religion of peace". Oh, and the line at the San Luis Tienda down the street is getting longer with folks who don't have green cards but do have WIC cards. No, that last one doesn't bother me much - mostly because I'm not sure it's true, but when a guy named Ahmed jumps a fence with a sack full of anthrax just behind Juan and Javier with a sack full of the American dream, it'll be the fault of Bush and a Republican Congress.

Maybe the Party will get things sorted out. Maybe they'll turn to conservatism. Maybe they'll become the party that was when I was a kid. Dems lite. At least now, they have something to run against for '08.

It's always easier to be the complainers v. being the ones governing.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Winning Over Your Mother-in-law

That's the headline CiN Weekly gave my piece for this week - hard version is here, direct link here - please comment. It opens:
I went out for a walk last week when I saw six women beating up my mother-in-law. As I watched the pummeling, her neighbor said, "Well, aren't you going to help?"

"No," I said. "Six of them is enough."

Or how about, "How do you stop your mother-in-law from drowning?"

"Take your foot off her head."

Mother-in-law jokes are fun. I've enjoyed them. I've told them. But now they're not so funny. My mother-in-law is in the intensive care unit.
As for the election, I'll make some lemonade tomorrow (milk, milk, lemonade...oh, never mind). I walked for Geoff Davis. He worked hard. I knew he was when he took the time to call me on my cell phone to thank for last week for the work I hadn't yet done that coming weekend. Last night at the TV, he looked about dead.

The Divine Mrs. M. drove back from Ft. Wayne yesterday from visiting her ailing mother so she could vote. She gave me a report after she voted and the General Manager of the KY side of the Enquirer posted it here (scrool down).

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Election Day/Dump Iraq

I punched my vote in for everything from city council of my smallish 7,000 citizen strong city to the House of Representatives. Having done so, I performed an act that very few people in the course of human history - and today - have ever done. I'm special.

I got a card in the mail inviting me to a party tonight. Maybe I'll go. The last election night party I went to was Nov. 2000 and that party ended somewhat...inconclusively(?).

The following is unedited for logic, clarity, or grammar. It's mostly a brain dump as I try to work out some of my opinions.

I posted yesterday about being seduced by George Bush. My mind is changing - or rather clearing - on Iraq. The one big question I have to ask myself is this:

"If - as a conservative - I know that Federal government programs can't win the war on poverty, the war on crime, or the war on drugs in our own country; if I know government is a lousy tool for solving social ills like sectarianism or racism; if I know that George Bush is simply talking out of his posterior when he says that "all human hearts yearn for freedom"; then why am I still supporting this here war as it is currently being fought?"

Look, any objective person will admit that government can't solve problems but usually makes them worst. Don't believe me? It's been working on racism, poverty, and drugs for a while, take a walk down the street named after Martin Luther King in any major city on a friday night.

As for the human heart yearning to breath free - bull. Most people yearn for the comforting cloak of dictatorship. Democracy is sloppy and unstable. Poeple like stability. They also like to step on the necks of their neighbors if given half the chance. Don't believe me? Read history.

George Bush seduced me.

Growing up in the early 80s I was a little too politically aware a little too early (read, dork). I remember feeling in my gut that Reagan was right. I hadn't read that much, but just...knew. I do remember "realists" - the GHW Bush, Scrowcroft, Kissinger camp - not liking Reagan's support for the Contras, or the Mujahadeans, or SDI. But most times Reagan had to go along with them. This meant supporting some bad people. "Our sons-of-bitches" as someone nicely said. This was done in the name of stability. The crowning achievement of that was the first gulf war - winning, but leaving Saddam in power and later the slaughter of the kurds and the southern Iraqis.

Liberals at this time were always chiding these Republican realists for amorally supporting these "sons-of-bitches". They were right. I was uncomfortable being on my side when it came to this. They wanted to undermine totalitarians - usually only right wing ones - and support democracy.

This is how GWB seduced me. I was charmed by the idea that we'd really build up a nice Iraqi democracy. A beacon of muslim hope to the rest of the cleptocracy, autocratic, theocratic middle east. This dream...this oasis of desire blinded me to one base facts: government's no good at doing what we're trying to do in Iraq.

William F. Buckley, George Will, and John Derbyshire of NRO have said this from the beginning. Why I didn't listen, I don't know.

The american revolution was a freak - some even say that usually only Anglo nations can have a stable democracy. Most revolutions don't end up like 1789 with a Madison designed Constitution lasting almost 250 years, but end up like the French Revolution - lawlessness, bloodletting, personal reprisals, the destruction of long-lasting institutions, and - finally - dictatorship.

So was going into Iraq wrong? No. Trying to rebuild it in some poli-sci class ideal was. Saddam needed ousting. He should be dead now. We needed to bust up that who damn place to let the world know that the holiday from history ( 1991- 2001) was over and we knew it. No need to rebuild. Let them all kill one another. Station troops along the border to keep the Iranians out, put a carrier group in the gulf, tell the Saudis to sod off, and, if the people choose, let the blood run. Maybe a Jefferson will rise from the sand - but most likely a Idi Amin will. If it's a jefferson, Allah be praised. If he's an Amin - make him ours. If he gets out of line - kill him; find another.

Colin Powell's Pottery Barn warning to Bush on Iraq "You break it, you bought it" is crap. If in 3 or 5 or 10 years, the Iraqis get out of line again, we smack them down again. Move all those troops from German into Iraq.

But us building a modern liberal democracy in the desert - a mirage.

George Bush seduced me with hopes of doing something noble. Of doing something romantic. But the human condition is still the human condition - that's conservatism. The war was neither liberal or conservative - but right. The rebuilding is too bleeding heart.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Monday, November 06, 2006

Chinese Dance at NKU

Keep an eye out tomorrow. I think I'll have a large post about how I was seduced by George W. Bush, how I've now come to my senses, and why I think I'm joining the cacophony of voices saying we're totally screwed in Iraq and it's time to bug out.

Here's a story I did from today's Enquirer on the Nai-Ni Chen dance troupe coming to NKU.

That's part of the reason I like doing these types of articles. I'm learning a little bit about a lot.

This weekend I walked a few hours - Bellevue B precinct. I got several calls from campaign workers. At least, here the turnout machine is full bore. More than I've ever seen it before. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'm right and that it's nationwide.

Came back from walking on saturday, went to restart my computer -and it puked. It's in the shop now. Let's say a quick prayer.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Friday, November 03, 2006

72 Hours Starts Tomorrow

That's it. Then it's over. Then it begins.

Work your asses off - if you're on my side. Otherwise, please keep your asses.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Kentucky's 68th - Fischer/Klembara

If you're interested in podcasting and/or podcasting in education, here's an article I did for today's Enquirer on a podcasting philosophy professor. His personal - somewhat lefty (surprise! surprise!) - blog is here. Nice prof, nice students. They made the story easy to write. Thanks to them.

State Rep. Joe Fischer actually has a challenger this year in the 68th District. I think the Dem has a shot in this solid Rep district. He use to be my state rep. I can't remember if I lost him due to redistricting or my move (two streets over is his district), but I campaigned for and with him when he ran the first time in 1998. I remember climbing the stair of an apartment complex on a rain soaked Saturday with him. I think I might have wrote him a check. I was more active in party politics then.

Here's why I'm kind of hoping he losses:

He didn't return my phone call. Twice. Most recently, I lost my insurance license. I felt it was because of a bad department of insurance policy. Long story short - I didn't return a form on time. I don't get a ton of income out of insurance - but some. Anyway, because of the committees he's one I called him, he said he'd look into it. then nothing. I followed up with two more messages. Still nothing. I got my license back after paying a couple hundred bucks.

This is the second time this happened to me with him. Neither time was in the heat of a campaign but in the off-season.

Simply bad politics to ignore people who have helped you in the past. Who else is he ignoring that will for for Klembara?

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Kenton County Sheriff/Inner Bluegrass Trees

Two stories I did this week that I forgot to point out on this blog. Here's one on the Kenton County (Covington) Sheriff Korzenborn getting some accreditation.

If you live down in the inner bluegrass (Lexington and sounding areas) you might like this story on a Thomas More College prof doing a lifelongstudy of trees.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor

KY 4th District Report

On Monday night, I was at the gym and saw our Judge-Exec Steve Pendery's wife Dana handing out signs to folks from her aerobics class - she teaches it. Later that night - about 8:30 - Steve himself called me to thank me for volunteering this coming weekend.

I volunteered to do my precinct this weekend - nice, houses close together, all sidewalk urban setting - no biggie. But I appreciated the call.

About 10:00 am today, 4th District Representative Geoff Davis called me on my cell to thank me for the same thing. He was downright chatty. We've met a couple times before. We sat around his office with some other guys yakking early in his first campaign for about 45 minutes. Nothing that would be that memorable.

Their discipline is showing. They're doing the work. They're going to pull this out big...if everyone does their job.

Stay You.
Back to The Pure Investor