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View 545 November 17 - 23, 2008

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Monday, November 17, 2008

For news about my current activities, see yesterday's View.

For the beginning of the Mail failure story, see also yesterday's View.

Mac experts tell me that Mac Mail does not fail, and thus I must have done something wrong. I suppose that is true: what I didn't know to do was go to Mail, Preferences, Account, and discover  that me.com  had been added as a server to my list of servers. I did not add that myself. When I set the the iMac the account was mac.com.

On that page I had checked, and have had checked since April, a box that says Use Only this server. (Referring to mac.com I guess.) Unchecking that box produced instant results: my mail was working again.

Of course a smarter user would know that once Mac OS updates the system you must go to Mail Preferences Accounts and examine that; in that sense I guess the accusation that I don't use my Mac enough is valid. So the moral of the story is that if you use a Mac, you must give it a lot of attention. Or be a lot smarter than me.

[ALL RIGHT: it turns out that checking or unchecking that box had nothing to do with making the Mac Mail work, but by changing a setting in preferences it forced the Mac to refresh its DNS, and that instantly fixed the problem. I would think that an automatic refresh of such things might with some profit be built into the update, but that's just my view.]

 

==============

The Great Global Warming Swindle.

<http://www.garagetv.be/video-
galerij/blancostemrecht/
The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
_Documentary_Film.aspx

--- Roland Dobbins

Despite the inflammatory title, this is a very well reasoned report, and I recommend it to everyone here. It's a matter of some importance. It goes to primary science sources. It will take a while to watch this, but I urge you to do so.

=================

Network Reconstruction:

Vista doesn't play nice with networking, and I don't understand its various settings. Symptoms will be that XP computers vanish from  the list that Vista can see; or a Vista machine can see Orlando, the T42p ThinkPad, but attempting to connect to it gets a message that I am not authorized. Other such problems surface from time to time, all with Vista machines.

The Apple side of the network works pretty well. It went screwy for a few days as Apple updates from .mac to .me, and I suspect we are not through with the problems as Apple tries to synchronize everything by use of the cloud, but the Mac side of the network, although a bit less convenient than the Windows side, does work.

When the Windows side works, it works well. For one thing I can map drives, so that Orlando is seen by Bette the communications Core 2 Quad 6600 as O:, and I can do things like xcopy C:\winword o:\winword /e/s/d/y and it will automatically copy all and only updated documents form Bette to Orlando. I can also use that with Norton Commander, which still works with Vista; I can build batch files to synchronize different directories on various machines. I know no way to do that with a Mac, but the new .me cloud system is trying to make that happen. We will see.

I am fairly happy with the Windows kind of networking -- when it works. But every now and then, always following an Microsoft Windows update, various Vista machines can't see each other, or can't see XP machines, or can't see one of the Mac systems. This is usually remedied by shutting down both machines, restarting them, and waiting a while; but it's annoying.

As a result I am about to stand down from the Windows 2000 Server Active Directory system I am using now. Peter Glaskowsky says my network is bizarrely complicated. I don't believe that: when I take the trouble to tool up on using Active Directory it allows me to do all kinds of things rather easily, including setting permissions levels for users.  All during XP it worked just fine. Now Microsoft has "updated" the networking protocols for Vista, and the result is a lot of confusion -- and it changes each time Microsoft "updates" Vista.

Example: for most of this year I could connect to Vista machines from Imogene the iMac 20 and Khaos the MacBook Air simply by logging on as me (just using username) with my system password. That worked just fine, and once connected I could access any part of the target machine, move files back and forth, and so forth. I have yet to find a convenient to use command equivalent of XCOPY that will let me transfer all and only later files in specific directories, but I can live with that limitation. Then Microsoft Updated Vista: and now, in order to log on to a Vista system from a Mac I have to do so by typing in username@domainname.jerrypournelle.com; the previous system didn't require @ signs at all. This isn't  onerous, but it is annoying. And sometimes when Microsoft does updates I have to shut down darned near every machine in the house to get the network going properly again.

At PDC and WinHEC Microsoft was pushing Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. As it happens I acquired an HP Windows Home Server box. I have a machine that would accommodate Windows Server 2008. That same machine would also accommodate Clark Communications network management under Linux; according to Phil Tharp who runs Mac systems, Windows systems, and Virtual Windows systems on Macs, this works just fine: the network runs wonderfully. It will also serve as router and firewall. That last is not for me plus: I like the D-Link Gaming Router, and it makes my system invisible according to Gibson Research Shields Up.  I don't really want to replace a router with a Linux PC.

So my choices are:

1. obliterate the existing Active Directory system, put each computer into a Workgroup, and allow the D-Link Gaming Router to take over all the network management including URL assignments. This would take an afternoon's work to get familiar with setting up the router, and another afternoon reconfiguring each computer, and I admit a tiny bit of confusion as to the order of events -- if I nuke the Active Directory Server how will the individual machines be able to come up and log me in -- but I am sure that an hour's study will make the procedure clear.

2. obliterate the existing Active Directory system, buy Clark Communications Linux package, install that on the Dell, attach each of the machines to that. This has the great merit that I'll have access to an experienced user who has his system set up just as I want mine set up.

3. obliterate the existing Active Directory system, and get Eric to come over and help me set up the Dell with Windows 2008 Server, transfer the Domain to that, and with luck all will go well. Eric has experience with this stuff, and I'll learn a lot from watching and I don't mind asking him stupid questions and he doesn't mind answering them.

4. obliterate the existing Active Directory system, and install the Windows Home Server box, with or without transfer of domain. Roland tells me I'll regret this: it won't be easy or simple. He's very likely right, and I'm daunted, but I will have a look at the manual for Windows Home Server.

5. Do nothing and continue to muddle through: which isn't really an option, because everything is dependent on a very old machine that's due to fail, and which has vary small resource. I currently use a Box of Drives for backup. Not an optimum solution, and this is necessarily a temporary situation.

I've got a couple of days, and some studying to do.  Expert advice appreciated here, but please, don't bombard me with speculations and feelings, or opinions about how good Apple is and how Awful Microsoft is, or why you are prejudiced toward or against Linux, or ---  .   I have plenty of such messages, more than I can read, and just now I'm low on time. Please.

============

Mac Mail

Another setting to watch out for: the checkbox that tells the mail program that, after you have downloaded your mail successfully, the program can delete that mail from the main server.

I have had this setting change by itself to a default where it does NOT delete the mail from the server. I found this out only after my provider informed me that my server mailbox was full.

Tom Brosz

===========

As to politics, I watched 60 Minutes Obama interview last night, and I learned:

1. Neither Obama nor CBS knows the difference between President Elect and President Designate or Presumptive President Elect. Obama does not become President Elect until the Electoral College meets and casts ballots and those are opened and recorded in the Capitol.

2. Obama will close Guantanamo; and he will forbid use of waterboarding by US agents.  In an hour of interview that is all I got on specifics. Barrack Obama is good, excellent, at giving reassuring speeches without much in the way of content. I heard him on the finance issues, on military policies, on a whole bunch of stuff, and I was unable to determine what he is going to do. I also didn't get the impression that he understands what will happen when the ravenous wolves -- Democratic Committee Chairmen -- begin their pressure. (Ravenous wolves was Jimmy Carter's description of Congressional Chairmen; note that these were Democrats.) I don't think Obama will be able to resist them.

3. He has been reading Lincoln. I got the impression he was reading an autobiography, but I am not aware that one exists, so I probably got the wrong idea. Perhaps he is reading Lincoln's letters, possibly in conjunction with a biography. I'd love to know whose biography.

4. I don't think he has been reading Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man, which in my judgment is essential for understanding the Great Depression and what effects The New Deal had (and didn't have. Roosevelt was not an ideologue. He thought himself a pragmatist. Most of what he did did not work as planned; we are stuck with the remnants of many of his measures, one of which, Fannie Mae which transmogrified from the rather successful FHA into a monster that triggered the crisis.

5. Obama is good. It was a good and reassuring interview, and Obama came off as a pragmatic and charismatic leader. I can just hear him saying that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. What I don't know is what he will actually do.

=====================

Regarding fixing Mac Mail:

[ALL RIGHT: it turns out that checking or unchecking that box had nothing to do with making the Mac Mail work, but by changing a setting in preferences it forced the Mac to refresh its DNS, and that instantly fixed the problem. I would think that an automatic refresh of such things might with some profit be built into the update, but that's just my view.]

My thanks to Peter Glaskowsky who continued to tell me I was all wrong in my theories.

It's clear the local network must die. The question is what will replace it.

 

 

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008   

Slept late, did our walk late, and Roberta has an eye appointment I have to drive her to, so this will be slow. It was a good night's sleep following a midnight walk. Sable is a lot friskier at night: it's hot here in Los Angeles today. Santa Ana conditions, and still fire season. I sure wish for the November rains.

The LA Times had a good article about Obama and his children. For myself, I wish him well as he nears the den of ravenous beasts AKA Democratic Party Congressional Leaders. So far his only decisions were predictable: closing Guantanamo and forbidding "torture" including waterboarding. He will probably regret the first decision, but the nation will survive that.

He is, wisely I think, standing back and letting Poulson and the Bush Lame Ducks flounder around trying to fix the market. If something they do actually works, he will get the credit anyway. If it doesn't he can disclaim it. Since it's clear that the current Administration has no more clue as to what to do than Roosevelt did, it's not likely that anything they do will have a noticeable effect before January 20 anyway.

The rumors about what Obama will do are terrifying, but they are only rumors; he hasn't confirmed them.

I wish him well because I wish the country well.

=========

I note that Ramesh Ponnuru and a gang that includes the egregious Frum want to reform Conservatism, and have formed a sort of Conservative Leadership Council. He's also trying to backpedal from the egregious Frum's trashing of Sarah Palin for not being an intellectual elitist. This gang of comparatively young people who think they know conservatism is very interesting, but so far I have seen little evidence that they know what being conservative means, and if their notion of good judgment is to look to the egregious Frum as an example, I do not think they will be very successful.

The fact that National Review is running this article tells us just how far that venerable institution has fallen from the days of Kirk, Buckley, Burnham, Frank Meyer, and Wilmore Kendall. Kendall and Burnham were genuine thinkers, and Buckley and Meyer were masters at bridging the gap between abstract thinking and political leadership. Kirk was the master of us all; but then I say this as a former protégé of both Kirk and Possony.

When I get back from Roberta's appointment, this will become a Day Book as I try to convert from Windows Server 2000 Active Domain to something more modern. Most of it will go into the column. This should be interesting. And now it's time to go.

===================

The Governor of California has just said that the US is the greatest polluter in the world, which is manifestly untrue on any level. Meanwhile he is acting as if there is some reason to curb CO2 emissions in the midst of a depression. This is madness.

He is also acting as if he is the new Minister of the Environment.

===============

Trying to convert from Active Directory: for some reason I cannot make contact with my router. At all. I know its address or I think I do, but no browser will display it as a web page. I suppose next I should drill into the Active Directory domain controller and see what it knows.  First though I have to get the Rage of Hephaestus proposal out. Clearly we haven't settled on a title. The proposal is in a folder called Anvil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday,  November 19, 2008

THE PROBLEM is more or less solved. Ignore what comes next except as daybook notes:

 

=====================

 

I thought my problems with Vista were over, but they are just starting. I need to be sure that I can log on to my Vista system even if it is not connected to a domain. This is in preparation to revising the network.  I go to HELP. It tells me to Click to open Microsoft Management Console. I do that. It says in the left pane  click local users and groups. There is nothing in the left pane but Console Root, and it contains nothing. I can't proceed.

Help tells me If I don't see Local Users and Groups, Click the Users Folder.  Since I don't see any such thing in Help, I go to Computer, C:, and find the USERS folder. Click on that. Help tells me to click ACTION, and then click NEW USER. There is no ACTION whether as a tab or a menu item, whether or not the USERS folder is open or closed and clicked.

I am now stumped. Now please, I don't need speculation: but if there is someone out there who KNOWS what is going on and can help me, please do so. (INDEED I DON'T NEED HELP AT ALL)

More: None of this is a problem on XP. Help directs me to various places including Computer Management in one case. That just plain works. I have verified that on my XP system there is a local administrator account and I know the password. Now if I can figure out how to do that for Vista.

==========

Well, I may be on the way to a solution. Over on the XP machine I was directed to Computer Management. There is no such menu item (at least that I can find) on Vista, but perhaps Vista Help can tell me. But no, it cannot. There is no entry for Computer Management. Then I remembered that way back in the old days I was able to get to it by asking help how to assign a drive letter to a disk. I typed in disk drive letter to help, and it instantly told me to |Click to open Computer Management".  That brings up what appears to be the old Computer Management window.

Of course: Computer Management is on the Control Panel under Administrative Tools. Administrative Tools can be put into the Startup Menu, but it usually isn't there. I've forgotten how to put it there, but it's not important.

Computer Management has a Users item, and that lists all the users.

There is an ACTION key. This window allows me to create a new user. It does not let me set the administrative properties of that user. For that I have to go to Control Panel, Users, click the new user, get properties, select the Group tab, and turn the new guy into an administrator. Now I have something I can surely log onto the system with even if the domain is dead.

Only testing that gets the result that I can't log on. Perhaps the machine has to be reset first? I will reset it and try the new user account and password. Vista continues to annoy me. 

Nope. Although I did everything right to create a new user account, I am told that "The User Name or Password is incorrect."  Now it's not incorrect. I know it's not incorrect. I did all that right and I wrote everything down. Vista appears to be fundamentally unsound: I did everything right, but that did no good at all.

There's some small type on how to log on to another domain. Type EMILY/user name. I did that, EMILY/new account name. The message is "The User Name or Password is incorrect." This sucks dead bunnies. It also makes no sense.

============

I have done fooling around with Vista. I am trying to create a local account with Administrator powers that I can log in with without regard to the domain. A local administrator. I can't do it. At least I can do it, but it won't let me log in with that account. This is insanity.  And I have work to do and endlessly fooling with Vista which has gone insanely complex is not getting my work done.

==============

Of course being as compulsive as I am I had to keep fiddling with it.

If you attempt to change the Administrator (built in account) password, it tells you that you'll lose something or another. Since I had nothing to lose on Emily the Intel Extreme system I changed the password. Logged off. Attempted to log on as Administrator. Was told the account was disabled.  Log back on through the domain account. Control panel Administrative tools Users and Groups Users Administrator and LO! the this account is disabled box is checked, uncheck that, log off, and I can in fact log on as Administrator. Apparently changing the built in administrator account password disables the account, and you will need an Administrator account to go in and enable it again. This is seems like madness to me, but perhaps Microsoft has a logic I don't understand.

I need to throw up a lot of mail here then rush off and work on Mamelukes. This nonsense has used up the morning so I have not even started on rationalizing my network here.

One thing is certain. If you try to do much with Vista you  had better have someone on staff who knows more about it than I do. I had some support from users including Rick Hellewell and it took all morning. I am sure that if all goes well with Vista then all is well, but I a also sure that Vista was designed by gurus for gurus as soon as you get just a little off the beaten path. Ah well.

Now to try and do some work that will earn money. If it's time to renew your subscription here, this would be a wonderful time to do it...

=================

I have put up a lot of mail about various things. Now it's time to go get some fiction done. And it would still be a good time to subscribe or renew. Now I have told you twice.

There are piracy stories in mail. I am getting a notion about stories...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thursday,  November 20, 2008

This came in today's emails:

It happened at Pepperdine

Jerry, I think you might find this interesting, being a former Pepperdine faculty member.

http://townhall.com/Columnists/MikeSAdams/
2008/11/17/lawrence_of_eurabia?page=full 

Someone needs to ask some pointed questions on this one.

--John

The story is pretty boring: a campus republican group wanted to put up a poster linking Obama to Socialism, and was told to put it on the Freedom Wall rather than in the cafeteria. Everyone was polite. It was then revealed that Pepperdine has a Director of Intercultural Affairs, and this is an indication that Pepperdine is doomed.

Pepperdine College was founded by Western Auto founder George Pepperdine as a Christian college. Mr. Pepperdine was a fairly typical Southern Democrat of his time. I never met him but Roberta and I were familiar with his widow. Mrs. Pepperdine was proud of the institution her husband had founded, and was politically conservative in the sense that she had views that were fairly conventional for Christians of her age in that time: she rejected most of the 1960's cultural revolution. Much of the faculty at Pepperdine were fairly typical Southern Democrats who rejected racism, embraced the New Deal, and were both horrified and mystified by the 1960's. I was hired because I was a protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan Possony: the Administration wanted Pepperdine to be more than the small college George Pepperdine had founded. They brought Kirk and Possony and Buckley and others to the campus to lecture, and they hired me over the objections of much of the social science faculty, in part as a fig leaf. Roberta and I were invited to social functions where conservative potential donors like Mrs. Seaver were the guests. I would say were targets except that's too harsh a word; but the purpose of most of this was to get those people to donate a lot of money so that Pepperdine could get out of the then black area of South Central Los Angeles.

George Pepperdine had put the college -- it was not PU in those days -- in an area near light industry and other places where kids could have jobs working their way through college. It was next to Watts, which was a lower middle class neighborhood, mostly white when the college was founded. The neighborhood changed, Watts and Inglewood became black, the light industries and potential employers went away, and as the very liberal chairman of social sciences who lived in one of the neighboring houses Pepperdine owned put it to me, on Halloween there wasn't a white face knocking on his door.

The student body had a very large minority element, including some bright students. I was in charge of the pre-law program, and I sent several young black students to law schools on merit, no "minorities program admission" as it was called in those days wanted or needed.

Pepperdine eventually got a lot of money, much of it from Mrs. Seaver, to move out to Malibu and became an entirely different institution. I don't know its present relationship to the Church of Christ (a Campbellite Protestant movement originating in Lubbock, Texas) but I would suppose it still exists. I don't know if they require chapel attendance on Wednesdays and forbid smoking on campus (one of the odd sights at Pepperdine was hundreds of students standing in the gutters just off campus puffing away like things possessed during every interval between classes). I would presume that Pepperdine like every other institution not explicitly conservative will become liberal. It was headed that way in my time which is why they needed a fig leaf like me. Liberals will say that they are only interested in scholarship, but once they gain control of committees scholarship is no longer a factor: they bring in their own however badly prepared rather than scholars who don't go with political correctness.

I recall a faculty meeting in which the objection was raised to changing the name to Pepperdine University on the grounds that they did not want to be part of PU. The answer to that was, of course, Princeton University: what man has done, man can aspire to. I forget which university actually has the motto "What man can aspire to, man can do," and I am long past the ability to put that into Latin, but I was sharper in the 1960's.

I wish Pepperdine well, but I have not followed its fortunes since the last of my colleagues and friends out there retired or died.

=======================

Piracy:

Surely this is a soluble problem? It requires two efforts: rounding up and sinking the motherships that harbor the speedboats that carry the pirates, and having armed parties on random ships so that piracy becomes a considerably less attractive occupation. The first task requires naval warships: the twin-hulled swift-type ships of the kind my son Phillip served on would be best; and large fixed wing radar aircraft to find the mother ships. It should not take long before the mother ships retreat to port -- those that survive.

As to having armed parties on randomly chosen cargo ships, the simplest solution is helicopter carriers who land the troops on a ship as it enters the danger zone (that way no one in port knows which ship will carry armed protection) and takes them off when the ship is out of the pirate area. None of this is all that cheap, but I would suppose that marine insurance companies would chip in to pay for some of it.

But, my morning papers tell me, although the International Law on piracy is clear, the UN is opposed to having armed parties on target ships because that would "escalate the situation" and this needs to be solved "without bloodshed."   My newspaper didn't give me a source of these UN sentiments, but they sound very like the UN bureaucracy.

Apparently the Indian Navy didn't pay that much attention to UN policy. Krishna whatever-his-name-was (India's UN guy back in Cold War days when India didn't know which side it was on) must be spinning in his grave, if he hasn't already be reincarnated as a particularly skittish dung beetle.

===========================

Obama:

Tom Daschle for Health Czar tells us all we need to know here: Obama intends Hillary-care, socialized medicine. Whether that will get through Congress is not entirely assured. There are other signs.

What will they do to organizations like Kaiser that are actually working?

=====================

Bailouts:

The original proposal was for $700 billion to buy up enough bad paper to give confidence in the rest. This wouldn't entirely remove the effects of the collapsing bubble, but it would at least let investors know where they stood. Buying up real estate in danger of default, so that the payments would continue to be made on schedule, would shore up the collateral on which the Market was based. The government could then come up with ways of disposing of the properties it had bought (and was making the payments on) by among other things coming up with a deal with the occupants so that they weren't evicted and could pay what they could afford. That latter could be done at leisure.

Meanwhile the government would be making the payments on defaulting housing, the Market would no longer be in danger, etc.

Of course that isn't what was done. The "bailout" became an enormous pork bill, and now we are talking about pumping money into the automobile industry. What's next? Publishing? The Los Angeles Times is losing money. Perhaps they can bail out the newspapers. And book publishers. Hospital emergency rooms, which are being forced out of business because they have to treat anyone who walks in, and it's better to close the emergency room. (This latter wouldn't be a "bailout" so much as simple justice, but that's another matter.)

I can think of lots of people who would love to have a bailout. Heck, I can use one. Well, if it weren't for subscriptions and renewals I would need one: Thanks to all those who recently subscribed or renewed. For those who haven't subscribed, consider doing so: save me from having to go to Barney Frank for a bailout!

And, I am told, they are going to lower the interest rates yet again to get the economy moving. Obama will raise taxes on the productive and lower them on those who don't pay taxes. The result will be inflation, which will eat the value of any savings any of us have left.

I have a German postage stamp from Weimar days: it is a 3 pfennig stamp overprinted to 3 mird millionen marks. Think on that one for a while.

=================

A sign of the times:

PC Magazine drops print edition.

<http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081119192919.36ul595y&show_article=1>

-- Roland Dobbins

====================

Microsoft seems to have made its msn.com page so busy that it takes a full minute to access it. Enough. I have been content to leave it as home page for when I use explorer, but I sure can't use Microsoft's default page.

 

 

 

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Friday,  November 21, 2008

The Democratic Congress has determined that the American automobile industry executives have not been sufficiently submissive and they must come grovel again.

The failure of the domestic automobile industry was assured as soon as we adopted free trade agreements. The cave-ins to the unions, with excessive pensions and complexly expensive work rules made sense in the days of high taxes (all that stuff was sort of deductible) and barriers to competition. Of course they only made sense in that context and to the auto industry; the costs could easily be transferred to consumers.

Now the US auto makers have to pay and average of $71/hour for labor (including for thousands who do not work; they are part of a "job bank" of people displaced by robots and other industrial efficiencies, and report for work then sit in a room doing crossword puzzles in theory waiting for assignment). Japanese auto makers with plants in the US pay an average of $41/hour. Given those discrepancies, US auto design and engineering and style are important: but given the price discrepancies it will be very hard to keep going; indeed, it's astonishing they sell any cars at all. 

If the government wants to help the auto industries, it could go into a partnership with the auto companies to relieve them of some of their overhead. The Obama team has some kind of plan that will do something like that; we'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is making money. Of course they do this by ruthlessly exporting any jobs and suppliers they can. The usual result continues. As Abraham Lincoln once observed, if he buys a coat from New England, he has the coat and the money remains in the United States where it can be taxed. If he buys it from England, he has the coat.

It is obvious to everyone who care to look that you cannot have strong unions, heavy work safety regulations, Americans with Disabilities Act, high pensions, and other such and still have Free Trade -- at least not without very high transportation casts, such as high oil prices, which act as a sort of tariff. If oil prices stay high enough, we will see the return of some manufacturing to Mexico (remember the giant sucking sound)? Also, recall the short-lived prosperity of some Mexican border cities, before Wal-Mart began pressuring its suppliers to work in China, not Mexico. The result was a lot more illegal immigration. Economies really are complexly related.

During the Great Depression unemployment reached 25%. Everyone assures us that this can't happen this time. Perhaps so, but the Obama plans are not encouraging. Raising taxes on anyone in a recession is never a good idea, and the rumors we hear of what Obama intends in the financial area are not good. Worse, perhaps, is the paucity of rumors: no one seems to know what he intends to do about the financial crisis other than soak the rich, whoever they are.

=============

Bob Holmes reminds me that the Indian diplomat whose name I could not remember was Krishna Mennon.

===================

And there's more on piracy suppression and a dialogue with Francis Hamit on Security Theater in mail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday,  November 22, 2008

.I did 1800 words of Mamelukes yesterday, and today I have put together the mailbag which ought to be up Monday. There still are not enough hours in the day, but I am sort of keeping up if not catching up. I have considerable mail and a number of comments on the coming times, but they'll have to wait until Monday. I think I will take tomorrow off.

I have this complaint:

Can you at least wait until he takes office?

Jerry,

I know you were for the other candidate, but this is enough, "the rumors we hear of what Obama intends in the financial area are not good. Worse, perhaps, is the paucity of rumors: no one seems to know what he intends to do about the financial crisis other than soak the rich, whoever they are."

Worrisome rumors. Worrisome LACK of rumors. You'll have plenty of time to object to what he DOES when he is in office.

Can't be worse than the last guy!

Chuck

I thought my point was clear. There are tons of rumors, many conflicting, sources unclear; and few to no statements by Obama himself. The financial world lives on certainties, and they aren't getting them. As to whether he can be worse than Bush, I would not, were I you, make large bets. Things can get a very great deal worse now. We already have Waxman as Energy Chairman. Obama is said to have swallowed the Global Warming Hypothesis whole, and himself said that his policies would bankrupt coal burning companies. Since much of our electric power comes from coal this is highly disturbing; without electricity we return to the industrial base of decades ago. Once again this cannot be comforting.

I wish Obama well, but I can't say I have high hopes. This morning's paper announces new appointments; breif commentary would not be appropriate. Alas, it does look as if Obama believes that public works will get us out of a Depression. Roosevelt thought that too. It's pretty standard Keynesian economics. Some public works are very useful, but it's still direct government supervision of where to spend money. We can wish them all well.

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