The Klose Conclave

I’m introducing a new segment of the Conclave called “The Monday Maunder”.  These are just a few observations, funny quips, and short stories that I have discovered over the last week and thought my readers would enjoy.  I’m sure this will evolve and change as the weeks go by so please bare with me during these initial postings.

1. Autoblog recently compared the all new 2009 Ford F-150 and the all new Dodge Ram pickups. Unsurprisingly the F-150 came out on top.
2. I just watched one of the funniest Seinfeld quotes ever and it’s by Elaine.  The group is at a party and Elaine is bored with a conversation where a woman obsesses about her fiance.  Elaine replies: “Maybe the dingo ate your baby” in a fantastic Australian accent.  Classic Seinfeld.
3. I have to give props to my good friend Patrick.  He showed me a fantastic video that a guy created about the current mortgage/credit/foreclosure/bankruptcy crisis.  The author made it very interesting and explained the entire situation very clearly.  Be sure to watch part 2.
4. Royal Caribbean is currently building the world’s largest cruise ship down in Florida.  When completed it will weigh 160,000 tons, carry 6,300 passengers, and cost $1.2 billion.  Business must be good.
5. The South Dakota House on Monday passed a measure that would ban smoking in bars, video lottery casinos, and restaurants that serve liquor [Argus Leader].  I was always against these smoking bans but recently when I go downtown, my eyes water and my throat hurts from the thick haze of cigarette smoke that lingers in my favorite establishments.  Also my cloths from this past Saturday night still stink of cigarette smoke.
6. I received an advertisement from the Marines today.  Since I’m a graduate with a degree I could enroll in the Officer Candidates Course and become a Marine Corp Officer.  Every time I think about joining the military I eventually talk myself out of it.  I think I would be joining for the wrong reasons.
7. Tomorrow is Taco Tuesday at Taco Johns, you know what to do.

-DK

The last few weeks have been filled with rhetoric from the democrats in Washington claiming that the stimulus bill needed to be passed because the country was slipping into a financial crisis not seen since the Great Depression.  Not only is this incredibly inaccurate but it is also incredible irresponsible.  This past Saturday, Bradley Schiller wrote a superb column in The Wall Street Journal titled: “Obama’s Rhetoric Is the Real ‘Catastrophe’” basically calling out Barack Obama on his fear-mongering.  He believes that our current economic woes are more similar to the 1981-1982 recession.  He writes:

“In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That’s a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost — fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.  Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%.  This was reflected in unemployment rates. The latest survey pegs U.S. unemployment at 7.6%. That’s more than three percentage points below the 1982 peak (10.8%) and not even a third of the peak in 1932 (25.2%).”

He goes on to compare the GDP of this year and last year with that of the early 80′s and the Great Depression:

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That’s comparable to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%. It is nothing like 1930, when GDP fell by 9%, or 1931, when GDP contracted by another 8%, or 1932, when it fell yet another 13%.”

Mr. Schiller goes on to compare automobile sales and bank failures.  He contends and I agree that scaring people into votes and support for a ridiculous “stimulus” bill is bad politics and bad economics.

As we sit right now, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been signed into law.  It’s impossible for anyone to know at this juncture whether the bill will work or not.  President Obama has essentially bet his entire presidency on its success.  If after two years things haven’t improved, then it’s going to be a sorrowful election for the democrats come 2010.

-DK

Ahh, blog post numero uno.

It has taken me several years of internet surfing and browsing to finally understand what blogging is all about.  My first encounter with “blogging” and “bloggers” was four and half years ago during Rathergate.  I was a young student, enjoying my first year of higher education when I began hearing and reading stories about phony documents.  These documents, put forth by CBS Evening News’ Dan Rather, were challenging President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.  Put simply, they charged that he was not performing at an acceptable level and that higher-up officials may have persuaded his commanders to give Bush higher marks than what he should have gotten.  Whether these things happened or not is a moot point (interestingly enough it appears that they did), Bush won the election and now he’s outta here.

But as the documents were looked over by researchers, writers, and bloggers, there began a flurry of discussion over the authenticity of the documents.  Claims of inaccurate time lines, wrong letter heads, signatures, even the superscript “th” on the dates came into question.  It was thought that this superscript “th” was only available on recent word processing software and not manual typewriters of the 70′s.  However bloggers found typewriters made back then that did have this feature.  More blogger research discovered that the Texas Air National Guard did in fact own a few of these typewriters but just not during the time these documents were supposedly written.

Within a day, the blogging community had everyone questioning the authenticity of these documents and soon later, Dan Rather and CBS had to issue apologies for running a story over forged documents.  The original story about Bush’s guard service was never brought up again.  I was amazed that a bunch of writers and bloggers could have that kind of effect in such a short amount of time.  It’s safe to say that my view of the internet and it’s capabilities changed during that time.

I hope in future posts, to make you laugh, make you cry, make you happy, make you mad, but more importantly make you think.  I’m not trying to change the world with my writings but instead create a flurry of discussion over the authenticity of my opinions.

-DK