Mitt Romney fields questions after his big speech yesterday:

I love this guy - I actually subscribe to his daily posts along with a few hundred or thousand other people so that he can keep on writing.

This is the most cheery discussion of the silliness of the LDS faith; nearly as nuts as Scientology.

Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!
by Bill in Portland Maine
Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 02:52:27 PM PST

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Mitt Romney fields questions after his big speech yesterday:

Reporter: So Joseph Smith put the golden plates in a hat?

Romney: Well, I really don’t want to get into all the nuts and bolts about...

Reporter: And he translated what was on the plates with what, again?

Romney: The Urim and Thummim.

Reporter: Can you spell that?

Romney: No. Look, the point is that religion and politics should never be...

Reporter: And the angel Macaroni told him where the plates were?

Romney: Moroni! It's the Angel Moroni! And I really don’t see why...

Reporter: Did anyone else see these gold plates?

Romney: Look, guys, this is getting way off-topic, and...

Reporter: Isn’t it odd that Joseph Smith put the plates in a hat...then read the words on the plates to a transcriber...who was writing behind a curtain...and then Smith buried the plates so there's no independent verification that they ever existed?

Romney: Oh, they exist, pal...they exist! And if you say one more goddam word about...

Reporter: Hey, you're not supposed to swear!

Romney: I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just... I just want to talk about why my faith won’t interfere with my being president, is all. So if I could just say...

Reporter: Now, your church considered blacks to be cursed during its first 150 years. So when that position was reversed recently, in 1978, was there an adjustment period where it was like, Hey, this is a little freaky...

Romney: No!

Reporter: Like, Hey, get outta my chair! Oops, I forgot, you're on our team now...

Romney: I'm not answering that!

Reporter: Governor Romney, about the Planet Kobol. As president would you have NASA send some sort of a probe to explore the surface of...

Romney: That's it! We're done here.

Reporter: Would you say your magic underw...er, sacred garments are in a twist?

Romney: God, I need a drink... Of water! Of water!

[Ker-SLAM!!]

62% of Texans think country is off on the wrong track

Source article, with links

TX-Sen: John Cornyn Fares Poorly in Statewide Poll
by KTinTX
Thu Dec 06, 2007 at 07:07:24 PM PST

(From the diaries -- kos)

I'd like to announce some really great (and even surprising) poll results regarding the Texas Senate race here in Texas. The following poll was conducted a couple weeks ago by Lake Research, a highly regarded polling firm. Analysis of each major point will be below the section.

The survey was conducted among 500 registered voters in Texas who are likely to vote in the 2008 General Election. The survey was conducted November 13-18, 2007. The margin of error for the full sample is +/- 4.4 percentage points.

* KTinTX's diary :: ::
*

1. Opinion of John Cornyn

40% favorable
22% unfavorable
24% no opinion
14% never heard of him

Cornyn has been a statewide elected official since 1990- he's been a Supreme Court Justice, Attorney General, and Senator. Given all that, only 62% of Texans know enough of Cornyn to have an opinion of him. That's pretty shocking but verifies the rumors I heard earlier this year from other polls that said about a 1/3 of the state has no idea who he is. So even though Rick Noriega, like most Texas Democrats, is not well known by the general electorate yet, Sen. Cornyn does not enjoy as large of an name ID advantage as we might think.

2. Job Approval of John Cornyn

36% favorable
41% unfavorable
23% no opinion

Cornyn continues to maintain a net negative job approval rating in stark contrast to Texas' other Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison who fairs over 20% points better. While 1/4th of voters don't know enough to have an opinion, those who do clearly aren't happy with what they see. Cornyn's base of support is weak and there is a large pool of voters who seek change.

3. Re-Elect of John Cornyn

31% vote to re-elect
16% vote to replace
53% consider someone else

Texas voters are very open to replacing Cornyn as 69% want to replace or will consider replacing him. Having a 31% re-elect number is awful for Cornyn and is probably one of the most concerning results for him in this poll.

4. Approval of Bush in Texas

20% very favorable
22% favorable
16% unfavorable
37% very unfavorable

The President has lost the support of his home state with a 53% unfavorable rating to 42% favorable among Texans. Talk about a turnaround. Bush is the personification of the Texas Republican Party. If voters are rejecting him, including 37% who deeply disapprove, the Democratic nominee can count on a larger and more passionate partisan base vote in 2008. Cornyn's continued attempts to tie himself to the President will only serve to drag him down.

5. Country Right/Wrong Track

62% Country off on the wrong track
28% Country heading in right direction

Wow. Those numbers indicate that Texans think that the country has not only gone off in a wrong direction, but that's it's jumped clearly off the tracks. Cornyn's claims that we need to stay the course in Iraq, stay the course on tax cuts causing a ballooning deficit, and stay the course on a health care system that is broken are so out of touch the only course he'll be staying on is a golf course after we retire him from office in 2008.

Peace returns to the office

I have a 5:30 appointment to go to some wine tasting thing offered by a commercial lender. And, I have said I'd attend some fashion show at 8:00 p.m. that the title rep (who's smokin' hot, but less reliable than a 1986 Hyundai Excel) wanted me to meet him at.

The wine tasting thing turns out to have been at 6:30, not 5:30, and the people there were just creepy.

Thoughts from my friend David -

One of the things they are leaving out of this story about the sub-prime rate freeze is that the owners of the debt (sub-prime mortgages or anything tainted by sub-prime such as mortgage backed securities) are NO LONGER required to re-price these assets on a monthly or quarterly basis as has been the case. The balance sheets in question will no longer reflect market value. This will allow institutions to hold securities of unknown value on their books without any valuation reserve or write-down (Regulations on the freeze action have not been released). This is exactly what the Japanese banks did in the 90’s when they did not quickly clean up their balance sheets and deal with the problem, and many of them still have bad debt from the late 80’s on their books. SO, the result of this is that there will be a ticking time bomb in the banking / financial system AGAIN.



This action is too late to make any real impact on the housing problem. Real estate prices everywhere have already fallen and will continue to do so until there is something of a more normal relationship between real estate prices and their historic place in the proverbial “basket of goods”. Again, the last time real estate markets peaked in the middle of the decade was in the 1920’s (1925 to be exact) and they did not begin to level out until 1934 and not rise until the early 1940’s. Today’s action only moves off the inevitable day of dealing with these underwater loans and thereby creates a longer-term problem than would otherwise be the case. This freeze requires homeowners to have 3% equity in their property in order to qualify, as prices continue to decline this will be fewer and fewer. Unfortunately, the ball has already gone over the edge of the building



This action is very similar to the actions taken in the early part of the S&L disaster when the sick institutions were allowed to keep “goodwill” on their balance sheets and classify it as core capital… and we all remember where that mess ended up. Not dealing with real problems in the financial and banking systems always ends in disaster eventually. However, it allows those in power a quick fix and allow them to pass the problem on the next administration to deal with… Regan did it to old Bush and now little Bush is doing it to whomever…



Earnings at the financial institutions will appear to be significantly improved soon as they will not have to make any of those HUGE (billions of dollars) write-downs on their portfolios any time soon, but they will come.

This is just so delightful

Rubla Rhan
by Hunter
Wed Dec 05, 2007 at 08:51:26 PM PST

In grand New York, under Pale Male's wing
Where the subways hum, and taxis sing
There lived a man who liked his bling
And who would screw most anything.

With his wife he became bored
but yet his bald libido roared
So to the Hamptons he would soar
And charged his sex romps to the poor.

"Why not?" he cried, "I deserve to roam,
And smell the ocean's salty foam.
These funds may help the homeless, true,
But does not my d*ck need shelter too?"

Mere protocol would not deter,
the funds were easily transferred;
his mistress preened, her family purred,
and the city worked as their chauffeurs.


Courageously, he seized that day
(And other things along the way)
And his wife thought him a jerk
(And still the radios did not work.)

Still he was not happy, though:
He sought a quicker place to go,
A private place for a quick perk
Within walking distance from his work.

So a stately Terror Dome he built
On ground where previous blood was spilt
With a private room in which to snog
(And police to walk his girlfriend's dog.)

But one day thunder shook the ground;
The buildings fell, the skies profound
In tragedy, and yet in death unbound
Our Adonis soon would be renowned...


Our hero, grim, undaunted! Look!
See him rise through ash and soot!
As the city lifted voice in prayer
Rubla Rhan was quickly there.

Our hero knew, in smoke and din
That what was needed most was him
Look at him walk! He stood quite firm --
And tried to stay on past his term.

Yes, through tragedy and sordid spree
Our Romeo will always be
The inverse of a Kennedy
Who asks: What can my city do for me?

Still, there is just one more dream,
yet one more path, a greater gleam,
A place beyond the city lights
Where power peaks at lofty heights.

A place past agencies coerced,
Beyond cops and dogs and humps perverse,
And power over the city's purse
And radios, and bombs, and worse.


And so he dreams of his ascent
And thinks to himself alone, when spent,
How many more there are, content,
that I could screw as President!

No cue cards, no teleprompters, and no second takes--legendary funnyman Sid Caesar pioneered live television sketch comedy with his 1950s sitcoms Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour. This classic sketch is "Argument to Beethoven's 5th," Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray play a married couple in a argument with pantomimed action and the dialogue is classic music.Enjoy!

Normally, I wouldn't shill for another retailers, but..

My good friend Alma writes me:

I definitely know about the social security problem.

The sad fact is that the government uses it both ways: if you’re the legitimate holder of a particular SSN, they can refuse to send your payments until you prove to their satisfaction that you’re the legitimate party, while at the same time accepting payment from anyone who uses the number. It would be very easy to flag any number being used by more than one person and insist on clarification, but it’s pretty obvious why that hasn’t happened.

Right now (although the numbers are murky) I think it’s quite likely that illegals contribute more than they take out.

It’s the whole problem of what happens with their American kids and grandkids – born here, badly educated, ill-served by the medical system, and facing an economy based on labor policies that bear a sneaking resemblance to a Ponzi scheme.