Long Time No See
It seems like I actually have a little time today…
The City Under the City
Sadly, I was not on the best curling team in Texas over the weekend. That’s not really a shameful statement since the level of competition was noticeably higher than it was last year… and in our loss in the third game I think we may have been the victims as asymmetrical information (one of the sets (our set) of stones had chipped runners, and I think the other team knew that, but we didn’t until afterwards). We also didn’t feel real happy thrashing a team of rookies 15-4 in our second game. To give a frame of reference on the tally, our scoreboards only go up to 10. We weren’t trying to run up the score, but to borrow from football, if you score a touchdown by running up the middle on every play, well… sometimes the defense needs to tackle you.
It too bad the season is over now since I just made some improvements in my delivery yesterday, and now I’ll have to try to hold onto them until October (if we get a team together for a bonspiel in Wisconsinin for the Halloween spiel) or until November when the regular season fires up again.
Might also go to Winter Carnival in St. Paul if we can find enough women to get two teams together (teams have to be 50/50). Well, and the money thing.
Onto more important events.
Perhaps you know my reputation. I’ve engineered some very big things.
Democratic nomination doesn’t get stupid, just stays stupid. Meanwhile, McCain let’s us know that he’d rather run against Clinton. Thanks, John… nice to know you’re paying attention to the obvious.
Putin seems to have found a way to stay near power, much to everyone’s TOTAL surprise.
Zimbabwe is still screwed, but they’re probably used to it by now.
I used to this this stuff was cool, but now I’m wondering: Guinness World Records: Stupid?
If you want fresh air, don’t look for it in this town.
Sort of business, but PEMEX (Mexico’s national oil co) needs this is the WORST possible way. PEMEX is dying trying to do stuff on its own. It doesn’t have the equipment, people, or, yes, funding (since the government takes so much money away from PEMEX for the national budget) to do what needs to be done. The national gov’t of Mexico has mismanaged this shit for so long, if they keep going it alone, they might as well just cut to the chase and shut everything down now.
Circling back to politics: Obama talks big on Chinese Yuan.
“What we need to do is just be better bargainers and say ‘Look, here’s the bottom line: You guys keep on manipulating your currency, we are going to start shutting off access to some of our markets,” he told a large crowd of unionized steelworkers in the industrial city of Pittsburgh.
Really? How much more like a typical politician can you get? Such a fraudulent statement made for the sole purpose of pandering to a crowd. Let’s gaze into my cristal bahl:
Obama: We are going to start shutting off access to some of our markets.
China: Where are you going to find replacements for all the goods we export to you?
Obama: We’ll make them ourselves.
China: Not really, since you don’t have the facilities or the workforce for that. And it would take years for your corporations to build new plants in a different country. By then you will have lost your re-election bid in the biggest landslide in US electoral history.
Obama: Well, but… it’s not fair.
China: Like how we’ve been pouring money into supporting the value of the dollar for several years now? I guess we could liquidate our hundreds of billions of dollar holdings and see what happens then. How do you plan to finance your government deficit spending without us?
Obama: Ethanol?
China: Look, I’m hungry, so why don’t you go down to the kitchen and see if my food is ready and bring it back. If you’re nice, I’ll pretend we didn’t have this conversation.
Wow, that was intense. Good job standing up to those Chinese, Obama!
