The financial crisis

Well, everyone else is talking about it, why shouldn't I?

Once again I feel we are experiencing the true legacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan convinced everyone that government was the enemy, and regulations were just handcuffing the creative and entrepreneurial forces of the American people. The market was rational; bad players and corrupt practices would be weeded out by the the power of market based control.

Are we de-regulated enough yet?

I also place a lot of this on peoples unconstrained greed. Everybody thought it was great when speculative bubble after bubble arose and Wall street guys were making multi-million bonuses for doing things none of understood (derivative "swaptions" what the hell are those things).

Nobody was calling for regulation while the party was going and Joe Homeowner was refinancing his house and spending the money like it was free. Nobody was calling for corporate oversight until the market crashed and it was obvious that crooks like the guys at Enron were running the show at some major corporations.

The only way regulation can work is for people to realize that to prevent the bad times the good times have to be tempered as well. You cannot have these market run ups and esoteric financial products that appear to make you rich and expect to regulate them after the fact.

I'm not sure what people want is a more disciplined economy. I think most people want the bad stuff to go away and what they really want is another bubble.

Just like the old Texas bumper sticker: "Please God, give us just one more oil boom, and we promise not to screw it up this time".

Obama

will most probably lose this election. I am quite unhappy about this for a number of reasons.

I am a strong liberal Democrat, and I think republicans have been visiting chaos on our economy and social fabric since 1980.

However, I am just as angry about this because I am confident that if Hillary Clinton had been the nominee (my choice) then this election would be essentially over. The Palin choice would have been neutralized (probably would not have happened) and she would be fighting back like mad.

It seems like Obama is on the verge of pulling a John Kerry: failing to attack. Where are his proxies like Biden and Clinton who should be out there savaging Palin and McCain?

Karl Rove telegraphed a long time back that this election would be about personality not issues. Did Obama's people really think that the adoring crowds of Democrats who propelled him through the primaries would somehow magically win him the general election?

If the Democrats lose this election they have noone to blame but themselves. The economy is as bad as it has been in 50 years, the sitting president is profoundly unpopular, yet somehow the Republicans have been allowed to shift the momentum to the point where the press is focusing in stupid remarks and Sarah Palin's "likability".

This should be like shooting fish in a barrel. The right candidate was passed over, and if Obama loses the whole party owes Hillary the biggest apology in history. If she ever consents to running again for president, the party needs to embrace her 100%.

There is no point in blaming the media for its shallowness. The GOP learned a long time ago that the key to getting elected was to manipulate the media's power to distract people with triviality and lurid stories designed to evoke an emotional response.

Sadly, this is how elections are won. Just another indication that we are becoming a 3rd world country, both in our economic structure and our approach to democracy.

Politics

I haven't paid much attention to the RNC convention. It seems like the GOP is really in a defensive position, trying not to lose too badly. I do not think Obama is a guaranteed win, but I do think (hope?) the Democrats have enough momentum to win some of the key states up for grabs, like Ohio, maybe Florida, Colorado and New Mexico.

Just enough to win the Electoral College, but probably not a landslide. Which is disheartening in a way. With all of the fiascoes that the Republicans have presided over in the last 8 years it seems like the Democrats should just run away with the election.

My take on the Palin choice: I think the GOP did not want to waste their first string choices on an election they think they have a good chance of losing. This reminds me of when the Democrats nominated Walter Mondale to run against Reagan in 1984, knowing it would be a blowout loss. Or when the GOP ran Bob Dole against Bill Clinton in 1996; who gave him any chance at all?

I suspect that guys like Romney and Huckabee want to keep their powder dry to run against a likely Obama presidency in 2012, and again in 2016.

Vacation

I just got back from a 2 week (mostly) "staycation". We did go to Niagara Falls for one night, the Canadian side. The falls were great and we took our daughter on the Maid of the Mist, which was pretty exciting for a 6 year old. I always remembered the US side as being a tacky tourist trap, but the Canadians have really caught up. Junk stores and indoor amusements, all with blaring speakers out on the side walk. It really was stressful walking through all of that stuff, and I noticed a lot of people arguing and bitching at their kids. The next morning we walked down the stairs by the Skylon tower (another tourist trap) which was much more relaxing.

We also spent a day at Kelly's Island in Lake Erie, which was very relaxing. Long drive to the ferry in Marblehead though. We rented a golf cart and drove around to the beach and through the laid back island community. Nothing like Put-In-Bay, perhaps the most obnoxious place I have ever visited.

War in Georgia

No coincidence that Russia waited until the opening day of the Olympics to start aggressive actions in the Caucasus. The news outlets will be too busy covering the games, and we all know they can only cover one story at a time.

Seems like they might have duped the Georgians into attacking South Ossettia, and are now reatliating with an invasion. Glad that we would never do anything like that..:--)

Yahoo Stores Fiasco

A few weeks ago I signed up for a Yahoos Stores account. After a lot of thought I felt it was time to convert to this platform. My decision was based a desire to simplify my programming, improve inventory management and order tracking and to able to have more sophisticated sales, discounts and shipping options.

What a disaster this turned out to be. Getting up and running was not so hard, using the online wizards. One big problem I ran into was the Store Editor function. I downloaded a detailed 300 page PDF file that was a guide to Store Editor Version 2.0 Lots of good walkthroughs. After working with for a while I realized that I was working with Verison 3.0 of Store Editor which was considerably different. But there is no equivalent PDF guide for the new version (and 3.0 has been around since 2006). I called tech support and they told me to use the online help files, and I pointed out that these file were nowhere near as detailed as the downloadable guide. In the end I had them switch me back to using version 2.0, so at least it matched my guide.

So far so good. As I worked through the Store Editor I became more and more disillusioned with how the platform worked. To go beyond a very basic inflexible design you have to learn how to manipulate page templates with a proprietary language called RTML. The main point of trying to use Yahoo was to simplify the programming involved in maintaining the website, yet now I have to learn a new scripting language. And by the way, Yahoo provides no resources for learning RTML, instead pointing you to 3rd party developers who can build your store for you: the last thing I want.

I gave it good 2-3 days and finally called it quits. Yahoo gave me a prorated refund, so I guess it was worth the $60 to learn that for sure I do not ever want to use Yahoo stores as my ecommerce platform.

Back to PHP and MySql I guess.

July 4th

Lots of kid stuff this weekend

Friday we took our daughter to the parade at West Park. Lots of firetrucks and mostly politicians. George Voinovich (US Senator) was there. Last year Dennis Kucinich was there, but I didn't see him this time.

Later we went to the Bay Days carnival in Bay Village. My daughter loved going on the Scrambler, saying that "Mom would puke on this one" several times.

Finally, we went to the fireworks at Clague Park Friday night, which was great. The only problem, which happens every year, is the number of really small kids running around playing with sparklers. This seems really dangerous to me. What is the difference between giving your kid a white hot sparkler to wave around and giving them matches to play with?

Saturday she went to see the "Kit Kittredge", the American Girl movie. If you don't know about American Girl dolls, then you definitely do not have a girl under the age of 10 in your family.

Sunday was more laid back. My old friend Glenn was in town visiting his family. He came over for a few hours and we couldn't get over the fact that we met in college and have known each other for over 25 years now. I've seen his kids grow up and go off to college. He lives in Indiana, so I only see him every year or so.