If the economy goes into the dumper, as it looks as if might, there will be very good sales at Fred Meyer and Macy's. It will be a good time to stock up on socks.

Okay, you little wussies of the pampered generation. The economy is going south, and things are going to start getting a little rough. Those of us who are a little older will remember when there were days in the early '70s when some days there wasn't hamburger in the stores or gasoline at the station. There were times when prices would make big jumps for no real reason. We heard our parents talk about the '30s when massive amounts of people were thrown out of work. Now folks are used to being to buy what they want, when they want it and sometimes even if they can't afford it. Hah!?!

Securitized credit card debt!?!??
This is where credit card companies who gave 18% credit cards with a credit limit of thousands of dollars to gomers who barely have jobs. Then they urged these yahoos to use the cards to buy everything from groceries to their gas bills on the things using the faint hope a free trip to Tahiti.
Then some Wall Street guys figured out how the credit card companies could slice and this debt up into unrecognizable parts and sell them as blended securities with promised high returns. Guess what many of the knuckle-heads with $10,000 balances can't or won't pay their credit card debts. Now the folks who bought the securities would like to sneak their way into the proposed federal bailout package. Give me a break!

Forget all of the other noise going on in the world right now, here's the big question. What is it in raccoon's DNA that makes them chew up plastic swimming pools?
Early this morning the raccoon came back and again chewed up our duck's pool. He bent the edge over and put teeth holes through the bottom so it probably won't hold water. What do we do? Go out and buy a stack of plastic kids swimming pools?
Put Ben Bernanke to work on that one!

I hate to obsess about the GOP vice presidential candidate, but can you visualize Sarah Palin in charge during an economic meltdown like we are now going through?

The economic news has been very dire lately. But I don't know who is scarier: the goofs on Wall Street who invented a series of financial monsters which caused the system to implode or the mass number of idiots who are gaining traction in the political sphere. For the past couple of decades it has been cool to be stupid. I fear we are now paying the price. Happy early Halloween!

Okay, I have been trying to be objective. I have been sitting on the sofa with my laptop reading the leading opinion makers of America and browsing news stories about Sarah Palin. Granted these are all members of the "liberal media elite," but everyone seems to be apoplectic about the GOP's vice presidential nominee. Everyone seems to be as cranky about it as I am.
While the American public seems to be approaching the presidential election with the same consideration they gave the election of the senior class president, (Popular? Check. Cute smile? Check. Enthusiastic? Check. Not a geek? Double check!), they are caught up in the mania of a fresh face. I guess everyone has seen to many Alicia Silverstone movies and don't think competence matters.
Meanwhile, Bob Herbert of the New York Times frets that not only is dimwittedness taking over, it may now actually prevail. My favorite comment came from James Fallows who writes for The Atlantic. It's his opinion that while Palin is now boning up on economic issues and international relations, these are things she has really never ever cared about. Someone who has followed a subject such as government or sports or rock music their whole life has a complex depth of knowledge, unlike those of us who have ignored fashion, opera or home decorating. She may knock our socks off on the nomenclature of a snow machine engine, but the world economic system?

To steal a phrase from Tom Friedman, America's best newspaper columnist, the presidential campaign is starting to make us all stupid.
As the candidates are starting to look for votes among the general electorate who are just starting to wake that there is an election this year, the campaigns have take a turn to the insipid.
John McCain has his crowds chanting 'Drill, Baby, Drill.' Never mind that even if we started drilling off our coast it will take 8 to 10 years to see the gasoline in our tanks and never mind it will only maybe knock 20 cents off the price of a gallon of gas, Republicans have successfully been able to launch themselves into the lead in the polls. And we won't even mention more drilling just continues our dependence on a polluting energy resource.

More politics: Despite all the sneering from the liberal media elite, the presidential election has gotten very close. Obama, at the this point, still has a bit of an edge in the electoral vote, but McCain has seen his poll numbers rise.
In his own wacky way, McCain has managed to separate himself from the Bush crowd and is now running well with the majority of voters who have just figured out there is an election coming up. Should be a wild ride.

Now that the political conventions are history, the presidential election moves to a new phase, one in which many new voters will enter into the discussion. From here on out the candidates will not be judged by their views on issues, but on very basic aspects of their personalities.
John F Kennedy edged Richard Nixon, not on his views, but JFK's hair beat Nixon's 4 0'clock shadow. Eisenhower's plain-spokeness beat Adlai Stevenson's pedantic lectures. Ronald Reagan's folksy ease beat Michael Dukakis' wonkiness and Bill Clintons goofy laugh beat Bob Dole's sneers.
Also the Republicans have the one argument that will alway win for them. They just have to say: 'The Democrats are coming to take your money and they are going to spend it on their friends.' I am betting that's what the election this year will come down to this. Watch out for the Wal-Mart moms.

The hard-core Dems and the news media are in a feeding frenzy about John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. Yeah, I did that too. However, liberal NY Times columnist Bob Hebert has a warning for all of us. Don't be too quick to bash Palin and her typically Alaskan family. It could be a trap.
Don't the Palins seem like a family right out of the off-beat '70s comedy 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?' (Today there is a news report that Bristol's boyfriend Levi Johnson is headed to St. Paul to appear with the Palin family.) There is a slim possibility that this family may strike a chord with broad centrist electorate. Yeah most liberals and Democratic activist think that goverment should be run like a 'West Wing' episode, but a lot of Americans realize real life is a lot messier.
Yeah, McCain is probably an impulsive lunatic and Palin would scare the hell out of your PTA much less the whole country. But the GOP is uniting and you never know. One would hope the yapping class will stop for a moment and rethink its humanity.

Someone whack me on the side of the head. Please. I don't get it. Does this sound like a bad movie script. A elderly presidential nominee, for reasons known only to himself, dissatisfied with his choices, almost on a whim picks an obscure young politician few have heard of from an isolated state to be his vice presidential pick. She has held statewide office for just less than two years, and before that was mayor of a very village. In fact she just recently got her first passport.
In the next scene, we see the obsequious political operatives falling all over themselves to explain 'her narrative' and the major press sopping up details about how the new candidate likes to hunt moose and totes a gun. They also hint about how the young mother is five is a major babe, er make that former beauty queen.
Now we see the bad old liberal media raising questions about how she was picked, spreading scurrilous rumors about her pregnant teenage daughter and wanting to know about what she really thinks about 'the bridge to nowhere.' Could Mary-Louise Parker be picked to play the part? Who would play her husband, John Cusack?
Sarah Pallin may be a wonderful person and would make a perfect neighbor. But vice president? Everyone thought they wanted a veep very different than Dick Cheney, but this is ridiculous.