Open Mic Night

Wow, is that really Todd Snider?

Vice Presidential Candidate Follies II

Hmm, maybe the Obama Campaign should go with the ‘No Press Conferences’ idea.

Vice Presidential Candidate Follies

Well, now we know why they don’t want her to have a press conference.

And this isn’t Tina Fey on SNL. This is really Sarah Palin.

Open Mic Night

In honor of the late Richard Wright.

25 Days

The gestation period for both ducks and mice is approximately 25 days.

This is also how long it has been since John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.  Since then, she has not held a single press conference with the national media.

I’m with Andrew Sullivan.  If this is allowed to continue, we are no longer a working democracy.

However, there are others out there who probably disagree. If so, please let me know why you think this is allowable.

The Banking Crises

“Welcome to History”, an easy to understand explanation of the meltdown in the financial markets.

Quote:

This is what Paulson and Bernanke are trying to manage. They have done three big things in the past couple of days:

1. Proposed a huge RTC-like government “bad bank” that banks can dump all their bad loans into. (Apparently, though, unlike the case with the RTC, they will not need to declare bankruptcy to do it.)

2. Provided a federal guarantee on money-market accounts.

3. Promulgated a temporary ban on naked shortselling for about 800 financial stocks (in related news, the new recommended medical practice when you discover that you have a fever is to smash the thermometer against the wall, since this makes the problem go away).

I had never heard of this site (The American Scene) until today.  I skimmed through a few of the postings and at first glance, it looks like something I’ll want to check out regularly.

Open Mic Night

Speaking of Potatoe

Just for the fun of it, one of the defining moments of the 1988 presidential race

(confession: I was a Dan Quayle apologist.  I’m a loyal Hoosier and I had very little knowledge of politics. Yes, I even agreed when he <gulp> took on Murphy Brown)

Energy Expert

I was going to make some clever joke about her answer.  But I can’t do it because the whole thing is so depressing.

Seriously? This is what passes for competent politicians now days?  Has anyone asked her to spell potatoe?

Bad Beer

I had a batch of beer go bad.  I’ve been brewing off and on for 15 years (mainly off) and this was the first batch that went bad.

Actually, it wasn’t the entire batch.  I brewed somewhere around 8.5 gallons (I was shooting for 10) and it was sitting in two 5 gallon carboys waiting to be kegged. It was my first attempt at all-grain brewing, a nice, light, hoppy IPA, perfect for late summer.

Well, either I didn’t properly sanitize the carboy or the racking hose because when we got home from our honeymoon, I found a secondary fermenter with 5 gallons of beer and about 4 ounces of cottage cheese growing in it.  Manny thinks we should have at least tried it before pouring it out but I’m not that brave.

It was a real bummer to pour it out but it was actually a good reminder of the importance of properly sanitizing our beer gear.  We’ve made a lot of beer in the past year and a half with no problems and I think I was probably getting a little lax when cleaning up.  I mean, why go to all the trouble of sanitizing every single surface!  The beer always seems to be fine.

Well, now I know.  It is not always fine.