I just worked at the Kelly Air Force Base shelter for Hurricane Katrina refugees here in San Antonio today. I don't really know what to say about everything other than that it was totally overwhelming. I have never seen so many people. I was in a huge building working "intake" which meant I was taking down personal info as people entered and issuing them a numbered wristband. Then they went inside and there were rooms full of cots for people to sleep on, an eating area, medical area, area where people could make calls, area for the kids to play, etc. The building was huge, but it was nearly full and there were people everywhere: refugees, volunteers, cops, medical personnel, military personnel, etc. They were filling up other buildings on the base as people came in. Things were surprisingly organized considering how quickly this all came together, thank God for the Red Cross. I know that people are complaining about how slowly the assistance happened, and I understand how they feel, but it really hit me today the magnitude of what has happened: a major city has been evacuated and the volume of refugees is staggering. You really have to see it to get your head around the idea of how massive the relief effort is going to to be.
I will never forget the things I saw today, but I'm glad I volunteered.

I was listening to NPR this morning (I know, I know) and they were discussing a book about the Argentinian economic collapse a few years ago; the book is called "And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)" by Paul Blustein.
One thing they mentioned was that there are many parallels between Argentina's bad policies and America's, such as high debt and the belief that foreign investors would always want to invest in their country.
However, they covered their tracks a bit by saying that the difference between the U.S. and Argentina is that the U.S. borrows in its own currency and the Argentinians borrowed in other currencies. The question that then popped in to my mind was "yeah but what if the countries that we borrowed from lost faith in the dollar and demanded that the debt be valued in their currency rather than ours?".

I was watching Nightline last night and Tom Brokaw was interviewing Warren Buffett (2nd richest man in the world, behind Bill Gates). Brokaw pointed out that Buffett's holding company Berkshire Hathaway owns a lot of insurance companies, but that none of them are going to cover any nuclear or chemical or biological terrorism if it should occur. What Buffett had to say in reply was interesting:

"We have a lot of money but we do not have enough money to pay the claims that could result from a couple of 10 KiloTon bombs or for that matter some of the chemical or biological damage that could take place."

I heard on the news the other day that inflation is going up. Later in the day I heard that the price of gold went up as well. The news reported these as seperate and unconnected events, but they are related.
Most people don't look at it this way, but gold's value is intrinsic and constant, i.e. gold in and of itself is valuable (unlike the dollar which is simply paper and only has a 'perceived value'). So when the price of gold goes 'up', it is actually because gold's value stayed the same but the dollar's value went down...in other words it now takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gold.

Last week Standard & Poors cut Ford and GM's debt ratings to 'junk' status. The last time I remember this happening to a large corporation was Enron.
There used to be a saying, "what's good for GM is good for America" (this was back when GM was the US's largest corporation). Does that mean that what's bad for GM is also bad for America?
Hopefully this isn't a sign of some kind of impending economic trouble.

Well it looks like the credit card industry's bankruptcy "reform" bill is going to sail through the House (having already done so through the Senate), and supposedly Bush is ready to sign it. As a Republican and a person who voted for Bush I am very disappointed, to say the least.
Mark my words, there will come a day in the not too distant future, when we will have a hard recession (or depression). When that happens, and enough people lose their jobs, the s@#t will hit the fan. When a person has no job and it becomes mathematically impossible to pay the sky-high interest (let alone the principal) on their credit cards, they will seek relief in the "last resort"...bankruptcy. However thanks to this new bankruptcy bill they will not be able to start over, even after bankruptcy.
Hopefully at that point enough people will get angry enough to wake up and do something...'cause Lord knows the general public isn't doing anything to protest it now.

By the way, hats off to Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law, one of the few people with the guts to speak up against this piece-of-s#@t bill.

(And yes, I DID write my senators about it, not that it did any good.)

Like many people I am paying sky-high interest on credit card balances. So naturally when the NY Times and PBS's Frontline documentary program aired an investigative piece showing the abuses of the credit card industry, I was interested.
The show talked about how credit card companies can change the terms of the agreement with the customer at any time, and can raise your interest rates even if you have always been on time with them (this is what they've done to me).
So yesterday when I heard a story on NPR about how the Senate was debating a reform of bankruptcy law, in favor of the credit card industry, I got a little upset. It's bad enough that the credit card industry is milking the consumer with super high interest rates and fees, now they want to make it impossible for consumers who have reached the end of their financial rope to escape. The Senate should be ashamed of themselves of they pass this bill. If they do pass it, I hope Bush will refuse to sign it.

Now that a new year is upon us, it's time for companies to hire new people, formulate new business plans, and start another new quarter.
So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Blockbuster is trying something new. What makes me mad though is how transparent it is. Blockbuster has been bombarding us for the last couple of months with TV commercials touting their new way of doing business; we see crowds of Blockbuster customers rejoicing at the idea of "no more late fees" and are led to believe that Blockbuster changed things because they decided to answer the demands of their customers.
What's obviously happening here is that Blockbuster has taken notice of Netflix and their increasing popularity. Netflix is a service that has spread quickly, mostly by word of mouth among friends. You go to their web site, select three movies, and they're mailed to you (with lightning fast speed). You can keep them as long as you want: no late fees. You pay a flat fee every month (well, they have raised their prices a few times), but the cool things is there are no late fees.
Blockbuster has clearly lost customers to Netflix, so the obvious thing to do was to simply copy their business model, and then air commercials to try to make it look like they are now doing business this way because they care about their customers.
Yeah, right.

Now that we are in Bush's second term we are hearing more and more debate between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of Social Security reform.
That there is any debate at all is sad.
I say this because I have been familiar with this issue for about 10 years now, and I am excited at the idea that we may actually own our social security accounts soon if Bush has his way. If that sentence sounds strange to you, then you probably didn't know that according to the US Supreme Court (Fleming v Nestor), we have NO RIGHT to our social security money.
If that doesn't make you mad, then you should also know something else. The money that all of us have been paying into Social Security is no longer there. It was SPENT by the government and is long gone.
This leads me to the reason why I am posting in my journal today. Last Friday (January 28, 2005) I was driving home from work and listening to two people being interviewed on NPR about the Social Security debate. At one point the host of the program asked the two guests about what happened to the money that was supposed to be in the fund. At that point, the female guest (a woman from Boston College I believe), got all huffy and said something like, "that money isn't gone, those bonds are still in there!".
At this point I got so mad I almost had to pull over. The bottom line is there aren't supposed to be bonds in the fund, there is supposed to be cash money in there! But instead what happened is Congress took the money and spent it, leaving behind I.O.U.'s (bonds)! The woman from Boston College knew this, but was engaging in something that can only be called "double speak" at best, or deception at worst.
I have heard similar misleading statements from many others on the Left regarding Social Security, and it makes me more and more angry every time I hear it. If Democrats had half a brain, they would unite with Republicans on this one issue and get some respect back from the American public. But I guess that's too much to expect.

I was watching CNN tonight (Dec. 16, 2004) and they threw out an interesting factoid:

• 76% of Americans are Christian
• 13% profess no faith
• 1.3% are Jewish
• 0.5% are Buddhists, Moslems, and Agnostics (each)

A couple of months ago Burt Rutan's team won the X-Prize by successfully sending a supersonic aircraft into space (twice).
Last night I saw a special about this endeavor on the Discovery Channel. After watching the show, I was really impressed with Burt Rutan. This guy has had a passion for flying and designing aircraft for most of his life. His design of a 'feather system' that allowed his aircraft to endure the extreme temperatures of re-entry into the atmosphere was simply amazing, and NASA should take note of Burt's success.
Thanks to Burt Rutan's amazing designs, we will probably have private space travel within the next 10 years.
Burt Rutan should be Time Magazine's Man of the Year or something. It's too bad the news media didn't pay attention to this historic feat, instead they were covering "important news" like the Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson cases.

It used to be that you could watch sports or the news if you wanted to avoid sex on TV. After last year's SuperBowl with Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfuntion' many of us wondered if the whole thing wasn't somehow planned or could have at least been foreseen by the NFL, but the NFL assured us that they didn't know this was going to happen. Now, after last week's Monday Night Football with the little clip featuring a nearly-naked Nicolette Sheridan and Terrell Owens, the truth is exposed.

Now don't get me wrong, Nicolette Sheridan is certainly easy on the eyes, but it's all about context here people. I know not to let my kids watch 'Desperate Housewives', but I certainly don't expect to see a towel-clad blonde about to get it on with a football player when I tune in to the game. After all, I assume that sports are safe.

Well, apparently not anymore.

Dan Rather and CBS News have lost just about all credibility. Going back to the horrible coverage of the 2000 Election (all the networks messed that one up), the fake documents that they used in the George Bush National Guard story, and now most recently the dubious story about missing weapons in Iraq, CBS has really turned into a cesspool of 'yellow journalism'.

I watched most of the convention coverage, here's a few things I found interesting:

~ John McCain's speech when he mentioned the "disingenuous filmmaker" (referring of course to Michael Moore) got a HUGE pop from the crowd...I mean absolutely overwhelming. It was amazing how strongly people dislike him.

~ I actually thought Elizabeth Dole was pretty darn good. I'd vote for her.

~ Arnold's speech was good, I laughed out loud for several minutes straight when he called Democrats "economic girly men".

~ Dick Cheney could have used some vocal variety in his speech. He was pretty monotone.

~ The media seemed to really be caught off guard by Governor Zell Miller's passionate denial of the Democratic party. You could tell they were really thrown for a loop by what he had to say. It brought a huge smile to my face to hear so many trembling journalists quiver about how 'troubled' they were by his speech!