Real Estate Ponderings

It was about a year ago that we were considering buying a low-end investment property to flip. Jeff had been in the real estate industry for a few years and had some decent contacts. I'd done a ton of research on the topic, binging on real estate books. Everything I'd seen over the past few years indicated that it was a solid, proven investment strategy.

The business model we decided on was pretty simple: buy significantly undervalued properties, bring them up to condition, and sell them at market value. No magic, no scheme.

Since identifying undervalued properties was essential to our plan, the most important piece of work we had to do was to learn the local real estate market, especially our "target" neighborhoods. Using a spreadsheet, some legwork, and a few simple online resources, I set out to map the asking and selling prices for neighborhoods in our city over a few months time. Some of the very first trends we spotted caused us to drop real estate as an investment idea entirely. And fast.

First, foreclosure handling (buying and selling foreclosed properties) made up roughly 25% of our local real estate activity. That seemed crazy high. High end homes, low end homes, and everything in between. Banks selling to investors, investors selling to buyers. 25%!

The second thing we noticed was that investors were buying a lot more as a group than they were actually selling. This could be seen not just in the raw numbers but also on physical inspection. One older neighborhood was notoriously popular with investors and you could spot the "flipped" homes immediately with their formulaic fixes and their shiny front door lock boxes. I say this quite literally: every other home in a 12 block radius near my dad's old office was a flipped property for sale. As a result, the pricing trend was actually going down. Not the direction a speculator plans to see his investment dollars go.

The third thing we noticed was the sheer number of investment buyers. Somewhere along the line, an amazing number of single guys, grandpas and grannies, and just plain old married couples decided to incorporate companies with quaint, folksy names like "Bob and Sally Investments" or "Jim's American Dream" and start buying properties to flip. Obviously we were very, very late to the party.

That was the moment I began to realize that the negative mumbo jumbo being uttered by a few alarmist real estate bears might actually be true (despite many bullish reassurances that it was not). It was also the moment that I began to realize that maybe the real estate bubble wasn't confined to major metro markets like San Fran, New York, Atlanta, and Boston. That maybe freakishly low interest rates and easy loans were fueling the kind of speculative buying that was creating a bubble everywhere.

This was all before the sub-prime crisis blew the lid off of the financial industry, of course. Now the whole thing has gone into a flaming death spiral.

Nouriel Roubini (who I've come to trust and who has been dead-on right about the market all along), had this to say yesterday on his blog:

Following the meltdown in new home sales - down a whopping 9% in November alone based on data published today – it is clear that this is not going to be the worst housing recession in the last 50 years as I predicted; it is rather going to be the worst housing recession since the Great Depression or, better, the worst housing recession ever in US history.

At this rate of falling sales (and they will fall much more ahead) housing starts that have already plunged over 40% from peak to a level of about 1.1 million will have to fall another 25% - to a level below 900K – to start clearing the excess supply of unsold new homes that is now at 9.3 ratio relative sales. And even a 20% fall in home prices now looks like too optimistic; the total cumulative fall in home prices may turn out to be closer to 20% with some urban areas of excess (in Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona, etc.) showing even 40% fall in prices.

Pretty scary stuff.

I'm not sure how this has affected my own home, which saw a market value appreciation of 37% over 7 years. Seemed too good to be true... now I'm fairly certain it was. It's hard for me to tell what the current market value for our home is since I haven't seen any other homes in the neighborhood on the market for while. I'm guessing most people are like us, fixing to ride it out.

What a time to be a first time buyer with good credit, though... after a long, dry spell of being priced out of the market, they finally have a little leverage.

Let's Make A Deal

I continue to get flack (off-line) for posting about astrology.

*sigh

Here's the thing: I don't care if you believe in astrological influences or not. I'm not trying to sell it to you. I'm not trying to convince you it's sound science. I'm telling you why it appeals to my mind with its cycles and archetypes.

I find astrology to be at least as interesting as, and perhaps more plausible than, the idea that God came down from heaven and physically impregnated a chosen virgin in order to give humanity a savior. Or that Noah stuffed 32 million species in a wooden arc right before God flooded the Earth by raining on it for 40 days. Or that dinosaurs roamed the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Or that Moses parted the Red Sea.

But do I, as an agnostic, tell you how crazy all that shit sounds to my simple mind? No.

So please... shhhhh. Live and let live. I promise I won't wage a war to post the signs of the Zodiac in courtrooms or insist on teaching astrology in classrooms alongside astronomy.

Dealio?

When The Dust Settles

Is anyone else having a difficult time trying to figure out what the hell is going on in Pakistan?

Normally I can kinda sorta get a read on a situation by following trends in the narrative (common truths tend to stand out, intended or otherwise, if you pay close enough attention to enough sources) but everyone is so all over the map here that I can't get a baseline.

The whole thing feels rotten to the core.

UPDATE: al-Qaeda not taking credit for acts of murder and mayhem? That's a first.

Um... No

Peggy Noonan says Hillary is "the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure" of her lifetime.

Sorry, Chickie-poo -- wrong answer. And I'm saying that as a person who can't stand Hillary.

The most polarizing, instinctively distrusted political figure of your lifetime would be Bush the Lesser, and every poll taken since the fervent glow of 9/11-trauma induced patriotism began to fade validates that statement.

There is a core contingent of Republicans who would love Bush even if he ate Snowflake Babies and made Snowflake Baby stock from their carcasses (about 30%). Except for the 25 or so people who remain ambivalent, most of the country can't stand him.

Besides, Billy Bob Clinton would arguably out-polarize Hillary by most everyone's recollection. Still, he was mostly well liked... Clinton's approval ratings averaged favorable by 2-1 (including Fox's results), continuing to show considerable cross-party appeal even after Monica Lewinsky creatively smoked his cigar.

In all, I have to say that I find Peggy Noonan's campaign for "a reasonable person for President" about as credible as claiming Adolf Hitler was a champion of diversity.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one who questions Peggy Noonan's reasoning and credibility. Glenn Greenwald takes issue with her characterization of Edwards's poofery here, while Sadly, No! makes us laugh at Noonan's previous Bush fluffing by citing a 2004 column where Noonan does her best to single handedly dumb down America. From Peggy's brain to our eyes:

The American people arguably did not pick the more interesting man in the race. Mr. Kerry strikes me as a complicated and intelligent person, and the one time I spent any time with him he seemed to be bright, and to have an interesting range of thoughts on many issues. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, does not strike me as the most interesting man in the world. That’s one of the things I love about him. I sort of have a theory that Americans don’t necessarily desire terribly interesting men as presidents. “Interesting” tends to bring with it a whole bunch of other attributes–”complicated,” “hard to figure,” “unknowable,” “startling,” even sometimes “tortured and tragic.” A lot of us are Republicans, and we just hate tortured and tragic. […]

Priceless.

Beta Vs VHS, Part II

Remember the Beta Vs VHS war?

I missed that whole video recorder episode by matter of age and economics (by the time I lived on my own and could afford a video recorder, Betamax had been relegated to a single shelf in the video rental store). My ex-inlaws, however, gambled on Beta's superiority and lost. It wasn't like they were out $200 back then, either. That little baby set them back some serious dough.

Today we've got the whole HD-DVD Vs. Blu-ray battle going on. I've never been bleeding edge electronics (or even leading edge) so I'm content to sit back with my ancient TV and DVD player and wait until a victor emerges. I'm sure I'll catch up with the plasma, hi-def blah blah blah eventually but the slight improvement in picture quality hasn't been enough to reel me in.

Plenty of people have said the quality improvement is amazing and -- true enough -- the display setups at Best Buy look pretty compelling. But judging TV quality is, to me, kind of like judging wine quality. With wine, the taste of anything over, say, $50 bucks off the shelf, is lost on me... my palate is just not refined enough to appreciate the difference. And after a certain point, TV just looks like TV.

If I were to guess where the market is going, though, I'd say HD-DVD. Sounds like we'll know more in a year... probably around the time we're ready for a video upgrade.

Merry Christmas To All

Stay warm, travel safe, and don't forget to share the love.

xoxoxoxox

The Leo

My little Leo sent me this picture to post for some reason. Here it is (completely incongruous with anything having to do with Christmas):

The Game

Kirsten and Jeff developed a game a few years ago that (until recently) was known only to them. Mostly I still try to pretend I don't know anything about it because it offends my maternal sensibilities.

It's a very simple premise: points are scored by flipping the other person off by surprise. The only rule: nobody else can witness it or it doesn't count (which explains why I didn't know about it for so long).

Kirsten's move to Madison hasn't slowed them down at all. They might, for example, send a text message that says "*middle finger." Or they might send a picture from the cell cam similar to the one Jeff got the other night.


It makes a mother so proud.

(LOL)

Unintended Consequences

I am obsessed with the nature of consequences. They are as certain as the effect of the moon on the tide and as unpredictable as the effect of the moon on a woman. The older I get, the more I respect them... such that even when I behave badly, I do so very, very carefully.

Cause/effect... action/consequence. Surprisingly simple concepts that require the mental dexterity of a chess player to understand and anticipate.

It's also how I tend to look at most policy presentations. Since the depth of my knowledge in no way approaches omniscience, I do the best I can with what I know and whatever my research turns up. Usually it's enough to conclude that something is either worth the risk or a Very Bad Idea.

I have been accused of being in the "blame America first" club for saying that certain policies were a Very Bad Idea, or for noting their causal relationships. Of all the cute little quips employed by the right, that's the one that I find the most irritating and the most ignorant. The cop out of a jingoist mind.

But I digress.

Sometimes there are so many variables involved in an action that it's guaranteed to yield unpredictable results. i.e., It's a crap shoot. Alternatively, it could be that the little chess game you play in your mind doesn't get played far enough forward, or in enough directions, and you find yourself with unintended consequences.

It's the unintended consequences that make me crazy.

I have marveled many times, right here in this blog, that our meddling in the Middle East has routinely come back to bite us in the ass. I understand how tempting it can be... our interests are heavily invested in the region and the region itself is so unstable as to be relatively easy to manipulate.

For example, our support of the overthrow of the popular, democratic, and secular Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and subsequent support of the brutal dictator, the Shah of Iran, is generally considered to have led to the Islamic revolution.

Our financial and military support of Saddam Hussein, intended to serve as a counter-weight to Iran's power and to influence the outcome of the Iran-Iraq war, left Iraq with a brutal dictator and the world with a menacing megalomaniac.

Our financial and military support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, intended to drive back the Soviets, included the recruitment of foreign Arabs to help fight the war. One of those Arabs, Osama bin Laden, found himself a new home among the Taliban, the powerful devil spawned from the post-war mujahideen chaos.

It's not that America's motives were bad or unreasonable in these actions. On the last point, the Soviet Union at the time posed the greatest existential threat this country has ever known. And, arguably, it was Afghanistan that proved to be the quagmire that brought the Soviets to their knees (without the political checks and balances of Democracy that saved the US from drowning itself in Vietnam, the Soviet's stubborn refusal to withdraw bled them out both financially and militarily). It's just that our actions sometimes have unintended consequences, and those consequences have occasionally marred the objective we sought to achieve.

Sometimes it's impossible to foresee the unintended consequences. I'm sure the CIA thought bin Laden was a handy guy to have around with his money and connections before he went batshit crazy and decided the US must die.

Sometimes it's more obvious. Plenty of people predicted with alarming accuracy what the result of invading Iraq would be, from the power void in the region, to the ethnic strife, to the imperialist, years long occupation it would require in the aftermath. That anyone would have been surprised by the results required an almost willful ignorance.

Whether the consequences of our actions are within our ability to anticipate and control or not, we are none the less burdened with ownership of them. To say otherwise is childish and irresponsible. And to say that people hate us for our freedoms when, in fact, they have plenty of reason to hate us for our policies, is just plain stupid. We act in our own self-interest -- as we must -- but what's for our good is not necessarily for everyone's good. That's a cold, hard fact.

This is why I tend toward a more hands-off approach whenever possible when it comes to foreign policy in the ME (or in Latin America, where we've created many, many domino-esque consequences with our meddling). We should act when we need to but only reluctantly. What I wish most for people to understand is that sometimes taking no action is just as legitimate an option as any other. It doesn't always mean you're weak... in the long run, sometimes it just makes you smart.

Around The Intertubes

I haven't been able to spend much time cruising my favorite internet hidey holes lately but here's a few items that caught my attention.

• I loved reading this about Adam B's experience as a law student in Obama's class.

• Kargo X points out Mitt Romney's wee little fib about his father having marched with Martin Luther King. Perhaps he meant spiritually.

• John Cole rips on Hillary. Har!
  

• McCain is getting screwed again. Bush did it to him in 2000. Who's doing it this time?

• Huckabee isn't the first person to falsely claim the founding fathers were clergymen by majority. I hope he'll be the last. It's just so... lame.

• Bill O'Reilly is an idiot. (Which somehow makes this even more funny.)

• Paul Krugman is down on Obama. Policy points are one thing... there is no one-size-fits-all way to approach policy (unless you're Mitt Romney). But not partisan enough? Not angry enough? Puhlease. It's time to let go. It's time to give up this "but they started it!!" foot stomping stubbornness and move this country forward. People are tired of it. I don't think any of the Republican candidates will be able to do it, but -- thankfully -- except for Giuliani's old fashioned dirty machine politics, I don't think any of them are aligned with a GOP cabal that resembles anything like BushCo. Huckabee's religiosity is a pretty scary but the evilness that is BushCo will begin to fade away in 395 days.
  

The Down Side

The new job is still great. I'm overwhelmed and stressed out but I'm loving it. Really.

The downside is that my work schedule is intense (big project) and it's caused me to miss dinner in Chicago tonight with my friends. They just called to tell me they're on their third bottle of wine and they haven't ordered dinner yet and they miss me. Awww... thanks, guys!

Here's the awesome restaurant we picked for this month (that I'm not at).

There's hope for next month, though... my favorite trio of winosaurs have indicated they're planning to venture out this way instead of me migrating in. I'm feeling the love!

XOXOXOXOXOX

Ugh

Will this writers strike never end??

Military Expansion

Somewhere among my abandoned draft posts is something I started writing about the whole "Clinton gutted the military" meme. I found some good stuff in my research but the whole thing just disgusted me and in the end I set it aside. I'll boil it down to 5 points for you here:

1. Clinton claimed the peace dividend too quickly.
   
2. If one more person blames our current situation on the way "Clinton gutted the military" I'm going to puke. C'mon now... Bush has been in total control for seven years . Time to refocus your finger pointing.
   
3. The reason Bush hasn't done a damned thing to reverse the situation is because for most of his presidency he agreed with the Clintonian approach to downsizing. He (and the neocons) actually considered Rumsfeld a visionary for his "reformation" theories regarding a smaller, lighter, and more specialized military.
   
4. It doesn't take a Westpoint grad to know that if you're going to occupy a country, good old fashioned army boots on the ground is the best way to do it.
5. Parceling out various military functions to private outsourcers is just really fucking stupid.
   

All that said, I am delighted to see we have a new plan to expand the military. I am a firm believer in the grand American tradition of walking softly while carrying a big stick and I am mostly convinced that the more firepower you possess, the less you will be required to use it.

One might ask, however, how we're going to staff this military expansion since we haven't hit our recruitment goals for years. I suppose the one saving grace for the military might be the economy... if it tanks, the recruitment numbers should naturally start to rise.

Iraq

Instapundit does a drive by link to this post about the decrease in violence in Iraq (graphical presentation). By this measure, the surge has met its objective. You can follow the slight increase in violence at the beginning of the surge to the dramatic decline during the surge to where it now sits, somewhere around 2005 levels.

The good news: we now know the number of boots on the ground required to keep the country under some degree of control. The bad news: as we already knew, the surge is not sustainable. It was a temporary measure to buy Iraq some time for political progress (which it mostly has not made).

So what happens next?

I suspect certain nefarious forces have been laying low during this time period and are now waiting for an opportune moment to reinsert themselves into the picture. The militias of the South, for example, and particularly the Mehdi Army, are simply biding their time. The Sunni, including their contingent of Insurgents anti-al-Qaeda Freedom Fighters, freshly re-armed by the US, are busily organizing themselves back into relevancy (and as an ethnic minority in Iraq that would seem a wise thing for them to do). The Kurds, currently preoccupied with Turkey and the PKK (that's another story), have quietly put off their big Kirkuk referendum until mid-2008. The referendum, previously due at the end of 2007, was to allow the people of Kirkuk to decide whether to shift Kirkuk to Kurdish control or whether to allow it to remain under Iraqi control. Hmmmm... I wonder how that's going to turn out.

No matter how I look at it, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: the real fireworks in Iraq are going to begin when we start trying to divide up the power and allocate control of the resources.

I don't understand why anyone would be so quick to look at the surge as a great indicator of impending victory. All we've done is correct the chaos that resulted from Rumsfeld's poor military strategerizing and Bush's political stubbornness. We have yet to prove the neocon's grand Theory of Iraq. And quite frankly, I'm not holding out hope since it never made any sense.

The GOP And The Huckabee Dilemma

It's been interesting to read the Republican reaction to Huckabee. I haven't seen any of the talking heads on TV but I have read quite a few of their op eds. John Cole does a nice round up of bloggy commentary here. I think "panic" is about the right word.

Even Ann Coulter piles on, comparing Huckabee to "a Republican Jimmy Carter."

It's always seemed weird that the more christianist the voter, the more they seem to detest Carter, who arguably exhibited the most Christ-like behavior of any president we've ever had. Oh, the trails of hypocrisy I could follow out of that one.

In fact, it got me to thinking. Let's assume we agree that Mike Huckabee is a fairly earnest Christian man. A man who truly walks the talk. A man who wasn't "born again" as a result of personal weakness ("I'm a drunk, help me Jesus!" or "I'm a cheater, help me Jesus!"). A man of true moral purpose and clarity. A man who appears intent on emulating the teachings of Christ.

Have the so-called Values Voters finally found their penultimate candidate, the one who speaks to them, the one they'll choose to speak for them?

The GOP has been playing the religious right for useful idiots since the mid-80's, promising them everything and delivering nothing. I have been both sympathetic to their plight and astounded by their stupidity. Every two years the strategists wind them up on abortion and gay marriage and then set them loose to organize themselves into a caleidoscope of church driven get-out-the-vote machines. Funny thing is, the slate of candidates on the Republican palette never seem very Christian to me. Sure they all use the right buzzwords but do they throw down some Jesus when it really counts? Not hardly.

With Huckabee now surging in the pools, a real man of God, it could signal a change in the power paradigm. Maybe the religious right is ready to claim its due.

This could be a big moment for the GOP. The alignment of the religious right with the traditional wing of the party may have given them the numbers they needed to be competitive but it's been an unholy alliance. It's worked as long as the religious hicks knew their place; it may not work so well if they start demanding some power.

At the very least it brings to the forefront a few simple questions the GOP may wish to avoid. Like, is religion really compatible with politics? Or even more pointedly, are the politics of the so-called Values Voters really aligned with Christianity? For example, Jesus might be decidedly anti-abortion but what would he say about immigration? What would he say about preemptive war? How about torture? Guns? Death penalty?

Government and politics is dirty business... and maybe it's best for religion, for whatever is left of its goodness and purity (and I'm not saying there's much), to stay out of it.

The Kite Runner

I finally got around to reading The Kite Runner by Khalid Housseini. Pretty good! Some thoughts:

• Housseini's character development is captivating. For example, I loved how our understanding of Baba is evolved through Amir's eyes. Although Baba's character itself is constant, he is unfolded to us with increasing multi-dimensionality as Amir ages from child, to petulant teen, to wounded adult, etc. Meanwhile, Amir's character is drawn as nakedly, painfully flawed... more so than most literary protagonists we're asked to invest ourselves in. I suppose my discomfort with Amir's childish character might have been an uncomfortable suspicion of similarity to my own. Not sure if that was Housseini's intent or if it's just me. :-)
  

• Through Baba and Amir, Housseini gifts us with a very honest portrayal of the parent-child relationship archetype, which is to say that for most of our lives our parents exist to us as reflections of our ourselves, our needs, our flaws, etc. It's only through our own growing self-awareness that we're able to finally separate them from ourselves. At what point in our lives this happens will vary but I think it probably occurs well into our adulthood. It only truly happened for me when I was in my mid-30's... happily, gratefully, thankfully before my dad died.
  

• I thought Amir's adult encounter with Assef and subsequent lip scar was strangely contrived (yes, Hassan had a hair lip, we get it). Was it really necessary to use use such an extreme plot device to propel the character development of Amir? I almost had the feeling of having read two separate books, so jarring was the last quarter of the book juxtaposed against the haunting, lovingly crafted prose of the first three.
  

• Time to get a little political here (but you knew I would, right?). I found it strange that the book completely ignores America's interest in Afghanistan during the time period. It soundly and rightfully thrashes the Soviets and the monster Taliban but makes no mention of our role in funding and training the "freedom fighting" mujahadeen (some, including Robert Gates in his book, "From the Shadows," say we started doing so least six months prior to the Soviet invasion). As far as unintended consequences go, this one was a doozy: the mujahadeen spawned both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. I'm not saying this needed to be central to the story but perhaps an acknowledgement, at least. As it is, I found the complete omission odd since Baba and Amir eventually flee Afghanistan to settle, gratefully, in America.
  

Back From Boston

I'm back from Boston without having seen Ben Affleck or Matt Damon, or even one single Kennedy. I did, however, get to see 10 inches of snow fall in the space of 5 minutes (I'm exaggerating a bit about the timeframe -- but not by much -- and I must also remark that MA is very efficient with their snow removal).

I also did an insane amount of work, drank three consecutive caipirinhas (a rare treat, I've never seen them served around here), and finally read The Kite Runner (more on that later).

The only news I saw was on CNN Headline News as I got dressed each morning.

Note to the guy I sat next to on the plane yesterday (including during the hour we remained grounded at the gate): Soap is good... try using it. A lot of it. Or Fabreeze... something... anything.

Boston

Off to Boston. Light blogging (if any)... Have a great week!

Being Wrong Feels So Right

I love this:

Obama-Oprah crowd in Iowa yesterday: 19,000

Obama-Oprah crowd in South Carolina today: 29,000

If that's a statement about the power of Oprah, I'll take it. 30,000 people at a Democratic primary event in December? Unheard of. Even if those 30,000 people showed up just to see the Grande Dame Winfrey, it's still 30,000 who are going home with a good dose of Obama.

Oh... and how did Hillary do yesterday? 100

The American Spirit

The American spirit is alive and kickin' in Iran.

Iranian students staged a new demonstration at Tehran University on Sunday, damaging the main gate to allow outsiders into the campus and denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, news agencies reported.

The protesters chanted slogans against the president and carried banners calling for the release of three fellow students who have been held since May in a high-profile case, the Fars news agency and state-run IRNA reported.

[...]

There has been a string of demonstrations at Tehran universities in past months as students protest against the replacement of liberal professors, pressure on activists by the authorities and the detention of three students.

[...]

Meanwhile, a group of Islamist students held a counter-demonstration outside the offices of the Iranian judiciary to protest against the Tehran University gathering, Fars reported.

"We condemn the demonstrations by the liberals at Tehran University, which are supported financially and morally by the opposition and the enemies," one demonstrator told the agency.

"We are astonished that this is not prevented when they are growing bolder by the day."

The righteous versus the religious... bring it!

A Word On Astrology

It's been suggested to me that my love of astrology seems incongruent to other aspects of my personality. Not so!

Allow me to explain.

The universe is an elegant network of repeating patterns. Sometimes these patterns can be viewed by us in a concrete manner, like the way the bodies of our solar system move around the sun. Sometimes the patterns occur on a scale so small that they're not immediately obvious, like the behavior of our tiniest microscopic particles. And sometimes the patterns appear on a scale so grand that they escape our recognition entirely, their individual components appearing random and meaningless.

The patterns we recognize are subsequently labeled and -- sometimes -- we're able to identify the rules that explain their behaviors and influences. If we're lucky, we learn how to use what we understand about these patterns and their rules to improve our lives.

Man has always intuitively suspected that these patterns (at least within the scope of those he's recognized in any given age) are all interconnected at some level. For lack of any better way to explain it, man has mostly articulated this interconnection as God. Albert Einstein was the first to try to explain it through science. It was his work, incidentally, that has brought science to even imagine a "theory of everything." As an aside, it often makes me smile to think that religion, which so hates science that some idiot zealots have created the Creation Museum to defy it, may someday view science as its champion.

So back to astrology. Astrology is not religion. Astrology is simply the recognition of identified patterns and a set of theories and observations about their influence. Nothing less, nothing more. Patterns and cycles... these things make sense to me. I like to think that if science ever finds the Rosetta Stone of universal patterns it may all start coming together for us like Neo in the Matrix -- God (or not), astrology (or not), genetics, the key to human nature itself.

Until then, we're resembling the story about the blind men trying to describe an elephant. Item A makes sense to me, item B makes sense to you, item C makes sense to Henry, etc. We're all just trying to piece it together as best we can.

Sounds Pretty Guilty To Me

What guilty people do when they have something to hide:

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that President Bush did not recall being told about the tapes or their destruction. But she could not rule out White House involvement in the decision to destroy the tapes, saying she had only asked the president about it, not others.

Perino refused to say whether the destruction could have been an obstruction of justice or a threat to cases against terrorism suspects. If the attorney general decides to investigate, "of course the White House would support that," she said.

In a daily press briefing dedicated almost solely to the topic of the CIA tapes, Perino responded 19 times that she didn't know or couldn't comment.

At least one White House official, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, knew about the CIA's planned destruction of videotapes in 2005 that documented the interrogation of two al-Qaida operatives, ABC news reported Friday. Three officials told ABC News that Miers urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes. White House officials declined to comment on the report.

The spy agency destroyed the tapes in November 2005, at a time when human rights groups and lawyers for detainees were clamoring for information about the agency's secret detention and interrogation program, and Congress and U.S. courts were debating where "enhanced interrogation" crossed the line into torture.

Also, is it just me or does there seem to be a phenomenal amount of critical stuff going on around the White House that Preznit Bush is conveniently unaware of?

Listen Up, Virgies

I've got super fabulous news for you, my Virgo kittens. Jupiter, planet of expansion and good fortune, lands in our 5th House of pleasure on December 18th and is set to stay for almost 13 months. This transit only happens every 12 years or so and it couldn't have come at a better time.

It happened last in 1996 and the time before that was 1984-1985. By no coincidence, these happen to be two of the most joyous years of my life. And by joyous I mean flat-out, ridiculously fun. It's a little different for everyone but the theme should generally be the same for you. Let me tell you about my experience with this transit and see if it rings any bells for you in yours.

1984-1985
I was the most tragic geek, ever, in the history of Eisenhower Middle School. That's a role you just don't grow out of overnight so it's not like I made a big splash when I started high school. I was clique-less in sea of cliques. I had two friends. And even if my parents had allowed me to date before I was 16 there wouldn't have been any takers. Suffice to say, my freshman and sophomore years sucked profusely.

All of that changed dramatically mid- junior year when Jupiter hit the 5th (I was a late bloomer). My two friends and I joined forces with a fun group of girls and we became our own clique. Boys noticed me. I got a job and generated some income to fund fun. After that it was a cascade of parties and social outings and lots of dates and the period ended with an amazing trip to Daytona Beach for spring break. Jupiter moved on and I met my first husband a few weeks later, attracted by his tan, muscular legs like a moth to a flame. Things settled down immediately after that -- I went to community college while my friends headed out of town, I worked, I dated my future husband exclusively. Blah.

TIP: Great legs do not contribute much to an enduring relationship.

1996
Best. Year. Ever.

My first marriage finally ended -- hideously -- in March of 1995. It was a trailer park triumph of police interventions, car chases, and restraining orders. (Do you see why I take such pride in the distance between there and here?) Of course the immediately ensuing relationship was destined to be the disaster it was and by August I was settled down, vowing to straighten out my life, grow a spine, get some direction, and start making good choices. I met Jeff that December 30th (two days before Jupiter hit the 5th) and summarily dismissed him for being too young. On January 5th, 5 days into the transit, he convinced me to take him seriously.

Almost everything about that year was pure fun. Things settled down with my ex and the girls and I developed a very pleasant routine. I was independent for the first time in my life and reveling in it. I was making my first solid career accomplishments. My friends from work and I had a blast, while Jeff's very socially active group of friends adopted me in. My relationship with Jeff was light and easy and fun from the start... no drama, no angst. It was one effortless good time after another. There was always something fun happening somewhere.

I got married again under those stars on December 19th of that year, in Vegas, with a string of freakish fun and good luck that I'll save for another story. Vegas was Jupiter's last great gift before moving on in January. After that I was morning sick (did I mention that Jupiter in the 5th brings babies?). Life got a little more stressful and complicated in 1997 but I was wholly rejuvenated from a year's worth of festivity.

And so it is that I am looking forward to some serious fun in the upcoming year. The stage seems set for it with my hellish career existence finally resolved and with Kirsten establishing herself as a bright, independent young woman. KK and Ry have also reached an age where they're requiring a lighter parental hand.

After 12 years of Jupiter gracing everyone else's 5th house, Virgies, he's come back to us!

Dramz At Mom's

Normally this spot would be reserved for Friday pool blogging but we had a little drama last night. My car, Maximus, ruptured his battery while we were over at Mom's for the weekend kickoff. We discovered it after our lovely visit with Mom and Brendan, when it was time to head out to Rascals and Maximus just sat there, motionless, like a big black driveway ornament.

This wouldn't have been such a pain if we hadn't parked ahead of the crook of the curve in the driveway, in the center, effectively boxing in Mom's and Brendan's cars while leaving us stuck in a narrow alley of snow that couldn't be navigated without functional power steering.

A friend of ours was in town to fix his dad's water heater and we were supposed to meet up at Rascals afterward for drinks. As luck would have it, he was also having a craptacular evening . When we called him to let him know our situation he was still at Wal-mart with Pops, cruising for parts. He offered to pick up a battery while he was there... we took him up on it... he brought it over... and then he and Jeff did the swap in the freezing cold by candlelight (thanks Brend!).

Somewhere during the time that Max was inoperative we got a call from the kids notifying us that one of the Christmas tree lights "blew" and that the tree "went dark" and that the plug "was hot". *sigh

So the net is: No Friday night pool, Max is running fine, the ancient big bulbed Christmas tree lights I love must be replaced with LED lights (we found a really big tree this year, maybe 5 strings was one string too many), and we will spend today un-decorating and re-decorating our 8 foot tree.

For whatever the drama, we got lucky on the whole "Miller just happened to be in town at Wal-mart" thing. And I'm damn grateful we were comfy at Mom's when the battery died, with a big fire in the fireplace and a well stocked happy fridge instead of finding the car dead at midnight at Rascals. I'm also thankful that the kids were in the family room when the light blew and had the good sense to immediately unplug the string.

Hopefully our little electrical issues are over!

Blog Traffic

This blog doesn't aspire to be big and famous, nor does it apply any blog whoring techniques to try to become so. I rather enjoy my relative anonymity in this very public space, and Think, Dammit! is about as ordinary a blog as you'll find among the 70 million now comprising the blogosphere. Still, I get about 200 hits a week or so (it fluctuates) from regular readers, occasional readers, and one-time passersby.

The most popular Think, Dammit! post via Google searches is this one from people using the search phrase "if a tree falls in a forest" or something similar. I've probably gotten one or two hits a week from that one alone since I posted it back in January. Pretty funny!

Second most popular post: This one I did about plastic surgery a few weeks ago, which celebrityfox.com apparently picked up somewhere and linked to (thanks, celebrityfox!).

Mitt Romney *Hearts* Jesus

I finally got around to reading the text of Mitt Romney's attempt to win the fundamentalists over from Huckabee speech on religion.

Shorter Romney: Religious tolerance is important when considering whether or not to vote for a Mormon... and remember, we're on the same team -- against the secularists!

Oprabamarama

Obama can take a moment to be thankful I'm not running his campaign since it appears the whole Oprah thing is working out very well for him.

Not too shabby:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has moved a campaign rally with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to a football stadium that can hold more than 80,000 people.

The event had been scheduled for an 18,000-seat coliseum near the University of South Carolina campus, but the campaign ran out of the free tickets just two days after it began distributing them. Tickets will no longer be needed.

Also not shabby:

New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama in South Carolina’s Presidential Primary has disappeared. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the race shows Clinton with 36% of the vote while Obama is the top choice for 34% of the state’s Likely Primary Voters. A month ago, Clinton had a ten-point advantage. In September, the former First Lady was up by thirteen points.

Can I at least take credit for having called 100 South Carolinians to invite them to the big "O" event?

Blog Evolution

When I started Think, Dammit! in August of 2006 there were already 50 million blogs on the internet. By April of this year the number had jumped to 70 million blogs... with 120 thousand new blogs being created every day. Phenomenal.

There were several reasons that having a blog appealed to me. The first was because I had something to say (fortunately I didn't mind that nobody was listening except my mom because that was the only traffic I got back then). The second was because it not only forced me to coalesce my thoughts, it double dog dared me to commit them to record. The third was simply the draw of carving out a little space for myself.

Almost immediately I found it to be a really great way to vent, and politics proved to be the perfect subject matter for venting. Inner unhappiness = outer hostility = blog rant. Think, Dammit! served its purpose well.

The one thing about life is that it doesn't stand still... the living are always in motion. Sometimes its undirected motion and sometimes its unintended motion and sometimes it's even unrecognized motion until you wake up one day and realize that an evolution has begun. The person you are has started to lean toward the person you're becoming.

Looking back over the past few months I can see that my posts are becoming a little less about politics and a little more about other things. This hasn't been a conscious effort on my part so much as a natural reflection of my own changing interests. In this case it's a good thing. It hasn't been a great few years but I think finally things are coming into balance.

Maybe this will make it a little less interesting around here, I don't know. I still like to talk about politics and I'm sure I'll still be occasionally provoked into a good rant. The difference is that I'm not feeling terribly uptight at the moment... and I'm gonna go with that.

Day 3 Ends In Near Manic Happiness

This is probably starting to sound a little broken recordish but it's blowing my mind to be this happy about my job. Seriously... Wow.

Anywhoooo.... a few things have caught my eye around the internets lately.

• After seeing a vague reference by Perez Hilton and other mysterious viral clips, I finally got around to checking out the whole "2 Girls, 1 Cup" phenomenon last night. Oh. My. Gawd. I don't think the word "disgusting" does it justice... I'm still slightly blind in my right eye. I won't link it here for fear some kiddie will happen on it and be scarred for life but if you're dying of curiosity, just Google "2 Girls 1 Cup" and you'll find it easily enough. On the other hand, the string of reaction videos on Youtube showing people watching it for the first time are hysterical... I think this one summed up my reaction perfectly.
  

• Here's kind of an odd story on Huckabee. Allegedly in a fit of Clinton hatin', Huckabee personally oversaw the early parole of a guy, Wayne Dumond, convicted of raping a distant Clinton relative in Arkansas. Huckabee was even considering commuting the rapist's sentence until that idea was met with public outcry. Not sure what the real motivation was... sounds like Huckabee kind of thought Dumond got the shaft (no pun intended) when he was castrated while awaiting trial. After his release, the rapist, grateful to Huckabee for his freedom, went on to rape and kill another woman. Like I said, it's an odd story.

• I have read about -- but have not yet fully absorbed -- the proposed 5 year interest rate freeze on sub-prime mortgages. Sounds like it might a good idea in the pragmatic sense, eh? Not sure about any ideological arguments for or against.
  

• More on the Iran NIE... Time did an interesting blurb here about the Pentagon's perspective. Also, the clip below capturing Bush's subsequent press conference was pretty funny as Bush does his own take on what the meaning of "Is" is.
  
  

So This Is What It's Like To Have Zero Credibility

New job adjustment... blogging will be light for a while. Plus I'm in a really happy place for the first time in years so I don't want to ruin the buzz with political angst. But I did have to say WOW on the Iran NIE Report.

BushCo has been ratcheting up the do-or-die rhetoric on Iran in a very Iraqish way, setting the stage for some kind of military action based on Iran's nuk-u-lar weapons program and the threat of WWIII. Except according to our own intelligence estimates, Iran doesn't have a nuk-u-lar weapons program. Amazingly, Bush was aware of this even while trying to prepare the world for our preemptive strike... Zowie!

Preznit Bush -- Dude -- it's time to throw in the towel. At this point if someone had a giant, mega, Earth-destroying bomb and was ready to deploy it tomorrow, and even if you saw it with your own eyes and tried to warn the world, nobody would believe you. That's not just a problem for you... that's a problem for us.

It's still not clear to me why Iran cut its nuk-u-lar weapons program in 2003, though. Doesn't that seem odd? Instapundit is trying to infer that we scared Iran into giving it up by invading Iraq. If that were true, however, you'd think Iran would have been trying to fly under the radar on the topic instead of throwing their "right to bear nukes" in the collective world face every 5 minutes. Weird.

Feeling Festive

It was a great first day.

:-)

Girlie Stuff

(Sorry guys, not that kind of girlie stuff. Feel free to skip this post in favor of more something more testosteronely, like here. -- Editor)

My recent skincare discovery...
For most of my life I've paid absolutely zero attention to my skin. For example, I once went to a Mary Kay Cosmetics party where the seller of skin care products asked, "What do you use to take off your makeup at night?" Without even thinking about it, I said "My pillow." Everyone laughed because they thought I was making a joke... had they known it was the truth I'm sure there would have been horrified facial elitist gasps around the room.

Around age 37 I became vaguely aware that I could not evade the effects of time forever so I bought an expensive daily moisturizer from a department store counter and mostly remembered to wear it.

When I hit 40 I became acutely aware that I could not evade the effects of time forever so I began frantically searching for magical potions to ward off wrinkles and spots and other proof that I am prone to acting way too young for my age. I would be embarrassed to tell you what I've spent on expensive products from Clinique, Lancome, Clarins, Estee Lauder, etc. What I will tell you is that I've concluded they're all the same goo packaged in different jars and tubes... kind of like how all Taco Bell items are the same 4 ingredients arranged differently in a wrapper.

Unwilling to make any more trips to the mall for the latest wonder goo, I set about researching products on the internet. My findings? Oil of Olay, used by my mother back when I was a kid, available even at the grocery store, is the best stuff on the market. They've come a long way from the simple creamy stuff of my youth, though. Their new products have a little chemistry behind them.

The Olay Regenerist line is the one I like the best and (I think) my skin looks better than it has in years. There are a ton of products in this line and if I could figure out how to fit them all into a single skin care regimen I would buy every single last one of them. As it is, I highly recommend the Daily Regenerating Serum, the Regenerist Night Recovery Moisturizing Treatment, and the Regenerist Microdermabrasion and Peel System. I wish I had discovered this stuff when I was in my 30's.

My recent hair color discovery...
I have a few gray hairs coming in at the temples that do nothing to make me look like wise or distinguished. These little suckers were getting covered up automagically when I was highlighting my hair to a lighter caramel-imbued brunette. Now that I've reverted to my natural dark color, though, they stand out in a very annoying way when I tie my hair back. Last week I decided to do something about it so I picked up some Loreal Excellence Creme in #4 Dark Brown.

Now, I am very skittish about hair color since twice I've had colorists at fancypantsy spas insist on lowlighting my highlights with a blackish color, making me look like a cross between Johnny Cash and Cruella de Vil (I have dark hair but it's not anywhere near black -- what the hell?). Somehow little novice haircolorist me managed to find a $6 color product from Loreal that matched perfectly, allowing me to just paint a little color on my temples and be done with it in 30 minutes. What a great product... highly recommended.

My recent makeup discovery...
I am not really girlie enough to do makeup as well as some of my gorgeous friends (and you know who you are! xoxoxoxox). Every once in a while I get inspired to give myself a makeover but usually decide I look too painted and take it off. Last month, however, I took advantage of one of those "special offers" Estee Lauder does to push their perfume and "gifted myself" with one of their makeup kits. This stuff is really really nice. The colors are subtle and the powders blend perfectly and the brushes are designed for precision. Plus -- and this is sad, I know -- it comes with a little guide that tells you which color combinations work best for an even more naturally beautiful you. Love.It.

My mid-life crisis transformation continues. :-)

Weekend Pool Blogging

I was... um... celebrating my new job on Friday so did not pay much attention to my game (although I'm at least 90% sure I played). But we did meet up with a few of our favorite people at the bar and had a most excellent time.

Here are the young lovebirds, Matt and Kristen (the latter of whom shares my birthday so her fabulousness speaks for itself).

This is Double D.

And here is Steve (the bar's very sweet resident manwhore) with Kristen.

Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians

The internets are a wonderful place for finding people who are experts on stuff you've never even thought of.

Here, for example, is a blog dedicated to men who look like old lesbians.

John Davidson, what happened to you? Et tu, Joe Piscipo? And Bruce Jenner rated an entire page (deservedly so, in our opinion).

My inner giggling schoolgirl is laughing out loud.

Obama-rama in Iowa

Whoot whoot!

THE NUMBERS — DEMOCRATS:

Barack Obama, 28 percent

Hillary Rodham Clinton, 25 percent

John Edwards, 23 percent

Bill Richardson, 9 percent

Joe Biden, 6 percent

Still statistically too close to call between Obama, Clinton, and Edwards but I'll take it. This really surprised me, though:

THE NUMBERS — REPUBLICANS:

Mike Huckabee, 29 percent

Mitt Romney, 24 percent

Rudy Giuliani, 13 percent

Fred Thompson, 9 percent

John McCain, 7 percent

Ron Paul, 7 percent

Tom Tancredo, 6 percent

Giuliani is getting trounced. And why is McCain so low in the polls, even behind Thompson? Ouch. I think he probably blew it with his refusal to endorse torture. Republicans seem to enjoy Jack Bauer-esque fantasies about ticking time bomb torture scenarios and McCain keeps trying to remind them that such things are, you know... fiction. Torture reality is more like what McCain actually experienced. But who is he to burst their bubble?

Mental note: I think I need to do a little investigating on Huckabee if he's gonna be a playah.