The Longest Weekend

Talk about weekends - this one will be a doozy - and very long.

Tonight, Trick or Treaters will be flooding the streets dressed in nightmarish garb, hoping for some sugar-frenzied fun.  

Meanwhile, for many of us, the last 4 months of presidential campaign speeches, adds, and accompanying news commentary will be percolating at the back of our thoughts.

Next Tuesday, after a weekend spent recuperating from candy overload, those percolations will be tested at the polls.  

Will the results be a Treat, or will they seem a ghastly Trick?

Enjoy the candy...

Driving The Economy - Like a Car on Mars

After a $700 billion bailout and buy-ins and 'assistance' totaling tens of billions more, the Fed has also cut the interest rate again -  to a near all-time low.   If the economy was a car they'd be stepping hard on the accelerator with no thought to the brakes.

Something the Fed and our other leaders don't seem to realize is, the economy is slow to respond to any stimulus, like driving a car on Mars by remote control from Earth.  Whatever control input you make here -accelerate or brake, takes time to result in action on Mars.  Patience and perfect, planned timing are required.

What we may have here is too much input, made without patience and with imperfect timing.  The economic accelerator has been mashed to the floor multiple times and that 'car' just won't move quickly enough for our leaders, so they are mashing it down again. 

If the upcoming Holiday season doesn't generate enough consumer buying to 'accelerate' the economy, then more pedal mashing by the Fed could be coming.

Meanwhile, on Mars all hell is about to break loose.  Let's hope someone remembers the brakes.

Not this time..., please!

Remember the 2000 and, especially, 2004 elections?  Remember (if you were a Democrat) feeling confident in the days before that NO ONE could possibly vote for Shrub Bush? Remember how you felt AFTER those elections?  Could that happen again...?

This morning the radio news seemed stuffed with Republican opioneer 'guests', all of whom were whingeing about how McCain is not conservative enough - almost a Democrat, really.  They were talking about how the Grand Old Party will need to rebuild after the coming big loss to Obama, and rebuild on its conservative base.

Maybe I am being paranoid, but I take this kind of talk as a disingenuous attempt at influencing uncommitted and independent voters that McCain isn't REALLY Republican, that, in fact, a vote for him is almost as un-Republican as a vote for Obama.  As my OCD reasoning goes, this is a shift in Republican strategy to get McCain elected by painting him as a lost cause semi-Democrat - just in time to sway undecided voters his way.  

Let's stay clear in this, if nothing else:  McCain IS a Republican, and a fairly conservative one at that, especially on social and economic issues.  He may be a 'Maverick' and he may frustrate the hardest of hardliners, but he's no Obama.  He's not even a Kerry, nor a Gore.  And remember, Palin IS a hard line conservative and she comes with the McCain package.  

On election day, don't start thinking that as republicans go, McCain would make a pretty good democrat, as the GOP opinionistas would have you believe.  If you want a Democrat in the White House, then vote for Obama.  

Let's not be fooled again, this time, please!