Surprisingly not injured

So, I continue on my floating shelf project, which to date is 200% over budget (mostly due to my adding other features to the project). I'm doing the final triple bead on the second support with my wonderful new Porter-Cable router, and

1. a clamp breaks
   
2. which causes the router to climb (go in the wrong direction)
   
3. which screws up the carefully engineered eight quarter oak I'd been working on for the past hour
4. which causes said wood to go flying around, running into the router from the wrong direction
   
5. which causes my newest, priciest, router bit (a triple bead, it was forty bucks, which is a lot for a single bit) to actually bend about 15 degrees at the shank
6. which causes the router to lurch in my hand, pulling me forward a little bit
   

Happily I maintain control of the router and remain unharmed. I wear safely goggles and ear protection, but jeez, I'm going to have to start wearing chain mail if this keeps up.

Finger Count: still 10.

Thoughts on the debate

On the whole, I think they both came out well. Obama is clearly not at his best in this forum, and does not think on his feet that well. His response to the economics questioning was stunted and halting, but largely came around during the foreign policy portion. McCain was consistent throughout. The real shocker (to me anyway) was Obama supporting Ukrainian and Georgian membership in NATO, which is truly a horrible idea. Of course, McCain seemed to support it too.

There was little I actually agreed with in most of the debates; both of them seemed to like the status quo of America the GloboCop, and neither seemed to have any meaningful problem with the Wall Street bailout, but it could have been a lot worse (for America). On the whole, it seemed like McCain was the honest authentic guy, and Obama was an honest authentic guy's attourney which is the usual pattern.

More thought later most likely.

Friday link clearing

• Sarah Silverman, Obama, and the Jewish vote - not safe for work, but worth watching
• Small Banks are doing fine it seems
• Israel asked Bush for permission to bomb Iran, and it seems Bush refused! Good. No point in throwing away all the gains in Iraq
• Making money twice - worth reading
• Who serves in the military? Well worth reading.
• Jetpacks!
• The difference between Sunni and Shia in short form
  
• And this little nugget - via Ezra Klein

  Dear American:
  
  I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
  
  I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
  
  I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
  
  This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
  
  Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
  
  Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

  
  

Thursday link roundup

• Church Sign Wars - very good
• What Russia Wants - written by my old Boss at Cato
  
• The path to citizenship - it makes illegal immigration much more understandable
• Making money twice - a very good read
• Julian Sanchez put it very well with

  we’re perpetually told the fundamental cause of the ongoing meltdown is Wall Street “greed,” as though that somehow counted as an explanation. How, pray, would we describe it if mortgage lenders had rejected many more applications from lower-income folks, on the grounds that they were poor risks? Well, greed, of course. Pretty much whatever they did, they’d be doing because they expected it to maximize their profit; the issue is their judgement, not their motives. Or put another way: The problem isn’t that people were greedy, it’s that they weren’t very good at being greedy.

• Ron Paul fades into further irrelevance
• More Bailout - Yglesias posits what is hopefully a liberal dilemma

  Simply put, if congressional Democrats manage to acquiesce in a plan that spends $700 billion on a bailout while doing nothing for average working people and giving the taxpayer virtually no upside in a way that guarantees that even electoral victory would give an Obama administration no resources with which to implement a progressive domestic agenda in 2009 then everyone’s going to have to give serious consideration to becoming a pretty hard-core libertarian.

• A nice article on Obama's community organizing days - notices the lack of anything measurable.
  

Triumph interviews Ralph Nader

Profiles in lameness

As Congress seems to be willing to give the Treasury secretary a check for 700 billion with no strings attached, where are our two main nominees? As far as I can tell they're not in the Senate doing the job they were actually elected to do. And we're expected to respect their "experience" and "judgment"?!?!

Marginal Revolution gets it right

With this photo.

One would think that it's obvious that the government doesn't get Big Looming Threats pegged too accurately, but apparently not. The fact that people still push for national health care in light of all recent evidence of government capabilities is amazing.

The IPhone ad that never aired

I could do funnier, but not bad.

A bad sign for the Democrats

From this AJC article

The Democrats’ desire to put the vice presidential candidates behind podiums grew out of the 2000 and 2004 vice presidential debates, when the candidates sat close to each other behind the same table. Cheney had the upper hand in both debates, said several Democrats involved in the debate process, in part because the setting made it difficult if not impossible for Lieberman and Edwards to go after Cheney aggressively. Whether that was because of the setting or because the two Democrats wanted to avoid confrontation is a matter still disputed by participants.

If they're already grinding their excuses to that fine level of detail then they're already expecting bad things.

Random Thoughts:
The real question is - will McCain have the nerve to run a commercial saying "isn't it awesome when we have divided government? Do you really want Nancy Pelosi to have total control over everything?

Will the 527 groups have the nerve to run an ad like that? Come to think of it, where are the 527 groups this year?

Another from MR

From Marginal Revolution comes this adage

It is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a curse.

The post of the day

From Marginal Revolution

Thanks goodness we bailed out Bear Stearns back in March if we hadn't we might have lost Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and who knows what else. Oh wait...

Thursday link roundup

• This Agitator post illustrates in perfect detail why it's not even worth trying anymore. Short version, a noble citizen does soemthing that would save the fovernment 2.2 million dollars and deliver a higher quality. The feds refuse, and take years in doing so. Your tax dollars at sloth.
• Putin's Rise to Power
• MaoPost.com - really cool
• Oil Econ 101 - and oldie but a goodie
• This little nugget from Marginal Revolution

  In Brazil, they segregate their prisons according to gang membership. No exceptions. Not even for individuals who in fact are not members of any gang.
  
  How does that work? Easy. Upon being admitted to the prison system, unaffiliated prisoners are required to join a gang.
  

Obama equals Bush III

Check out this clip of Obama (accurately) decrying the false umbrage over some "lipstick on a pig" comment, and longing for a return to "issues". Think of the implications. The McCain campaign is fighting the war they're in, while Obama campaign fighting the war they wish they were fighting. It's quite similar to most of the Bush presidency, and by extension saying that your enemies hate you for your "virtues".

Just imagine what the debate would be like if the candidates had clear, consistent ideologies (a la Wilson, Reagan (sort of clear) or Polk) or clear records of achievement, like Bill Gates, David Petraeus, or Andrew Carnegie. Instead it's a desperate attempt to convince the electorate that if elected they'll pull off five consecutive miracles when they can't even do simple card tricks.

In reading over this, I realize that the above paragraphs aren't particularly clear, but I'm in a rush.

An anaology I intend to steal

From this post about abortion on the primary feminist site; it captures my feelings on the political matter more or less

Not to beat this horse to death, but let’s use the 1st Amendment as an analogy. Everyone would agree it’s none of the government’s business if I choose to practice Islam. So what would you say if the government, while keeping it legal to practice Islam, nevertheless decided there were too many Muslims in this country and therefore decided to spend taxpayers’ dollars educating people on religions other than Islam. I assume you would find that completely unacceptable. I don’t see the difference between this and abortion. If it’s none of the government’s business whether women have abortion, then the government shouldn’t be in the business of discouraging abortions. What am I missing?

David Friedman speaks at Google!

About his new book, Future Imperfect. Here is the video. All of my tech nerd readers should watch this, for the global warming moment alone if nothing else.

Laughing out loud

From Overcoming Bias

"As for the little green men... they don't want us to know about them, so they refrain from making contact... then they do silly aerobatics displays within radar range of military bases... with their exterior lights on... if that's extraterrestrial intelligence, I'm not sure I want to know what extraterrestrial stupidity looks like."
-- Russell Wallace

Speaking of biases

From this diavlog about expectations and biases

Kleiman: There's actually a psychological term for people with accurate self perceptions.
McCardle: Mentally depressed?
Kleiman: Yes.

Perfectly put

From Col. Lang

Tom Brokaw made a reference on MSNBC today to the "commander in chief of the United States."

NO!

The president is commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States, not of the country. We have no emperor. To think of the president of the United States as commander in chief of the country is to make this person the sovereign and we his subjects.

Palin the tethered goat

It seems to me that the McCain campaign is using Sarah Palin to draw out the worst of the democratic leaning population, which will cause the not that interested voter to associate the Obama campaign with the Move-On/Cindy Sheehan crowd, and hence be turned to Obama. Pretty clever.

On another note, isn't Palin a wonderful blank canvas on which people can project their hopes and desires? She's the equal of Obama in that regard.

Seldom mentioned Obama fact

He went to prep school. That's neither here nor there, but I don't think I've seen it mentioned before.

Back in the world

I've been fighting tech problems non-stop the past two days, but they're all up and going now! Yay, hosanna.