Not a Big Truck

The current issue of Conde Nast Portfolio has a must-read article by Liar’s Poker and Moneyball author MIchael Lewis: “The End of Wall Street’s Boom.”  It’s a window into a world I haven’t known much about and offers one of the best explanations of the financial crisis I have read to date.

Two of my friends, one a Princeton grad and one a Berkeley grad, have lost their jobs in the last three weeks.  Neither of them worked on Wall Street.  These are the worst economic times that I can remember.  I have wondered what a full-fledged depression would be like if the current downturn worsens.  Today the Boston Globe takes a stab at answering that question.

Unlike the 1930s, when food and clothing were far more expensive, today we spend much of our money on healthcare, child care, and education, and we’d see uncomfortable changes in those parts of our lives. The lines wouldn’t be outside soup kitchens but at emergency rooms, and rather than itinerant farmers we could see waves of laid-off office workers leaving homes to foreclosure and heading for areas of the country where there’s more work — or just a relative with a free room over the garage. Already hollowed-out manufacturing cities could be all but deserted, and suburban neighborhoods left checkerboarded, with abandoned houses next to overcrowded ones.

I don’t have a good sense of how prescient these predictions are but the rest of the article is an interesting read nevertheless.

Looks like it has gone for Obama.  Congrats to WashingtonRocks for being the only one in our pool to predict it.

Wolf Blitzer suffers from an affliction that my high school English teacher would’ve called “diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.” He has no insights to share, so he repeats obvious and vacuous statements and sprinkles in unnecessary narration of on-screen graphics, seldom pausing to organize his verbal mayhem into sentences but instead using “um” and “uh” to keep the stream of shit flowing without interruption.

Here he is during the seconds leading up to the polls closing on the West Coast last Tuesday night.

Transcript of his remarks:

So in a few seconds, those states will be closing their polls and uh, presumably we’ll be able to, uh, see what’s going on and uh, make uh, perhaps a major projection at that point, uh, this is a moment that a lot of people have been waiting for.  This is a moment that potentially could be rather historic.

“Potentially could be rather historic.” What a dolt.

It’s truly amazing how much better McCain looks as he is giving his concession speech than he ever did during the campaign.  Physically, his face looks relaxed; he isn’t grimacing and he looks comfortable.  He isn’t making Frankenstein faces and herky-jerky motions and he appears to be at peace.  He looks more like the John McCain we all used to know.

Read for yourself.

Looks like my previous prediction was right: Elizabeth Dole’s “Godless” attack ad against Kay Hagan and Hagan’s effective response have all but ensured a Democratic victory in the Senate race.

From the Public Policy Polling blog:

It is pretty clear to me based on our polling this weekend that Kay Hagan will be headed to the US Senate unless something very bizarre happens in the next 72 hours. While numbers in the races for President and Governor are basically unchanged from last week there has been clear movement away from Elizabeth Dole, a sign that her ‘Godless Americans’ ad is blowing up in her face.

Hopefully the promise of a strong showing by Hagan bodes well for Obama’s chances in North Carolina.

As Obama continues to hold onto his leads in national and swing state polling and expands the playing field into what were expected to be solid GOP states, the emails from the Obama campaign pleading for money are starting to make me chuckle. See this bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping email from yesterday evening:

Our spending plans have been stretched by John McCain’s negative attacks and the overwhelming resources of the Republican National Committee. … [J]ust this week, we’re facing new and unexpected spending against us in Montana and West Virginia.

Oh no!  The Republicans are having to defend Montana and West Virginia, states that the Democrats never expected to have much of a chance of winning!  I’m surprised they didn’t mention that McCain is having to spend money on robocalls in Arizona now.

This ad from Democratic challenger Kay Hagan responds to Dole’s recent attack ad that implied that Hagan was an atheist and featured a female voice in the background screaming “There is no God!”  Hagan’s response is, I think, devastating to Dole and my immediate reaction to watching it was that it is strong enough to push Hagan over the top in North Carolina.