Yomiuri Giants Win The Central League

From 13.5 Games Back

The amazing part worth mentioning is that they came back from being 13.5 games behind the Hanshin Tigers and pipped them for the League's top spot on the last day.
Check out the chart:

The red squiggly line going up is the Giants, the yellow squiggly line sagging is the Tigers. As late as 8th of July, the Giants sat at 13games behind. They actually caught them once on the 21st of September, and then dueled the Tigers to the finish line.

My father is cursing this one more than the Yankee no-show for the Post-Season (or the market meltdown). The Tigers are his NPB team since childhood. I actually don't have one, which makes it hard to talk to Japanese baseball fans. I barely saw anything in Japan, and any time I'm there and I see a game, I'm struck by how different it feels to MLB.

One time slugging 3B for the Yomiuri Giants and now manager, Tatsunori Hara is the guy being thrown into the air.

I think it's worth noting that Hara was brought back several years ago to revitalise the Giants, so he has surely accomplished his initial mission. He's certainly doing a better job than the last time he was a manager.

It's the first time the Yomiuri Giants have won 2 years in a row since 1989-90. The 13 games made up is actually the second highest turn around in the history of the Central League. Another Giants team managed by Shigeo Nagashima overcame a 11.5 game deficit in 1996.

The Obama-Hate

Which End Is The Rough End Of A Pineapple?

I'm not a socialist in any real sense. I'm actually a free market capitalist. An ideal economic outcome for me is that over a million people click on those links to the right on this page and go purchase my recordings, thank-you-very-much. (and I might add, you really must!)
I'm really not all that Bolshy in the sense that I don't really care what the rich own - the means of production or even a Ferrari for show. I do care about what they do to people who aren't rich, but I'm really not into more taxation or dirty big strikes to bring down industry.

So back in my Uni days when people used to shout socialist slogans, or God-forbid Trotskist theory, I'd shrug and say, "that world doesn't include the possibility that I own a Fender Stratocaster."
The answer I got was " no, we believe it should be a world where everybody has a Fender Stratocaster."
Well, not everybody wants one. Some people want Gibsons. :)

There are US articles are popping up now about the rallies held by the McCain-Palin camp which are pandering to a lot of anger. CNN had this article.

"When you have an Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we have got to have our head examined. It's time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So, go get them," one man told Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

It's almost a cry for help, with the GOP party faithful amazed McCain could possibly be losing.

"And we're all wondering why that Obama is where he's at, how he got here. I mean, everybody in this room is stunned that we're in this position," another man said at a rally.

"I'm mad. I'm really mad. And what's going to surprise you, it's not the economy. It's the socialists taking over our country," another man said.

That's pretty scary. The point of my preamble about my non-Bolshy-ness is this: There's hardly a single candidate in my lifetime that has run for POTUS that I could classify as anywhere near socialist. The only exception I would make is Hillary Clinton's role as First Lady in the first Clinton administration where she tried to introduce universal healthcare - much like our own Medicare - and failed. That's it. The rest of the bastards from Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dole, Dukakis, Mondale, Bush I and Bush II, Reagan, Carter, and Ford did not have anything resembling what might be called a 'social conscience' necesary to be labled a socialist.

Neither has Barrak Obama said anything that makes me think that he is anything like those people I've encountered who are real socialists. He is passionate about politics, but there's nothing that makes me think he's a committed socialist. He has nothing in common with the people I used to see peddling the socialist rags on the corner of George and Park streets in the city. Nothing wrong with that, but he just ain't no socialist.

The other thing is this: if it should so happen that the United States went full-on-Socialist for 4 years, they might actually be surprised at how some things improve in that country - namely their abysmal healthcare. Instead there are fat white idiots angry at the possibility that Obama is riding into the Whitehouse with ex-terrorist friends and a socialist agenda. Give me a break.

What's truly pathetic is that the poor whites want to vote Republican because the candidate in their corner is coloured, in spite of the fact that the Republicans have diligently created the conditions of their enduring poverty in the last 8 years. They trust McCain more because he's white? That's it? What do you do with such people who want to cut off their dicks to spite their balls? And McCain and Palin are pitching their sad little 'anti-socialist' rhetoric at these people as if America really was under some threat from the brigade of nuts who sing 'Internationale'.

I'm not saying Obama is the best candidate out there, or that his candidacy is significantly better than that of McCain. It's just that the election is being fought on nothing to do with real issues and a whole lot of paranoia about socialist ghosts that are simply not there.
It's pathetic.

UPDATE:
Here's something from Saturday Night Live. Watch out for Bill Murray's profound question. :)

Financial Crisis As Strategy

Pleiades Mailbag

Here's something from the ever-trusty Pleiades mailbag.

...every major US financial panic since at least the Panic of 1835, the titans of Wall Street—most especially until 1929, the House of JP Morgan—have deliberately triggered bank panics behind the scenes in order to consolidate their grip on US banking. The private banks used the panics to control Washington policy including the exact definition of the private ownership of the new Federal Reserve in 1913, and to consolidate their control over industry such as US Steel, Caterpillar, Westinghouse and the like. They are, in short, old hands at such financial warfare to increase their power.

Now they must do something similar on a global scale to be able to continue to dominate global finance, the heart of the power of the American Century.

That process of using panics to centralize their private power created an extremely powerful, concentration of financial and economic power in a few private hands, the same hands which created the influential US foreign policy think-tank, the New York Council on Foreign Relations in 1919 to guide the ascent of the American Century, as Time founder Henry Luce called it in a pivotal 1941 essay.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that people like Henry Paulson, who by the way was one of the most aggressive practitioners of the ABS revolution on Wall Street before becoming Treasury Secretary, are operating on motives beyond their over-proportional sense of greed. Paulson’s own background is interesting in that context. Back in the early 1970’s Paulson started his career working for a rather notorious man named John Erlichman, Nixon’s ruthless adviser who created the Plumbers’ Unit during the Watergate era to silence opponents of the President, and was left by Nixon to ‘twist in the wind’ for it in prison.

Paulson seems to have learned from his White House mentor. As co-chairman of Goldman Sachs according to a New York Times account, in 1998 he forced out his co-chairman, Jon Corzine ‘in what amounted to a coup’ according to the Times.

Paulson, and his friends at Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, had a strategy it is becoming clear, as did the Godfather of Asset Backed Securitization and deregulated banking, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, as I have detailed in my earlier series here, Financial Tsunami, Parts I-V.

Knowing that at a certain juncture the pyramid of trillions of dollars of dubious sub-prime and other high risk home mortgage-based securities would come falling down, they apparently determined to spread the so-called ‘toxic waste’ ABS securities as globally as possible, in order to seduce the big global banks of the world, most especially of the EU, into their honey trap.

So yes, the rest goes on to argue that the current panic is part of a greater design in a strategy designed to help American Financial power grow. It might be true; but it also might be that this whole thing is just another house of cards coming down.

Too Much At A Loss
Here's another link sent in from pleiades about how there weren't enough digits on a clock in NYC.

NEW YORK - In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.

As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure - the "1" in US$10 trillion ($16.5 trillion). It's marking the US federal government's current debt at about US$10.2 trillion.

The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.

That's a lot of dough.

No More Political Discussions At iCompositions

recently, there was a thaw in the iComp stance on politics, wherein they let a free debate on politics take place on 2 threads in the forum; both of which wen upward of 30+ pages of comments. Unfortunately some of the participants were less than ethical and started to drag the debate down into the gutter. As a result the site has gone back to its original 'no political discussions' dogma.

It's quite unfortunate in that the discussions in good parts were interesting. It's sad that the forum canot be a true forum as long as there are hecklers and wowsers and idiots taking it hostage every few comments.

It's never a good day when freedom of speech is thwarted, but if there are idiots who cannot discern that freedom of speech is not freedom to vilify, then it is eminently understandable. Sometimes it is time to abandon principles and do what's right.

Project Update (of Sorts)

Life In The Weird Lane

Gra-Gra (of 'The Ownerless Mind' blog) sent in the lovely picture above. It's a metaphor for our existence. There's the fat cow of capital, with the regulated flow of milk controlled by fat capitalists squirting this stuff in tiny portions into our tiny little waiting mouths, bit by bit. Or perhaps not.

Film Projects
Got a short film coming up. Might be exciting, might not. It's a courtroom drama set deep in space on a mining colony, except it's more a Spanish Inquisition than a proper courtroom. The Corporation is big and fact and nasty and extremely exploitative so the law is a flimsy thing. The interesting thing about the project is hat it coms attached with somebody with a name, which I'll reveal at some point. It's still being fleshed out, but the script is just about ready.

'GAD' is still in limbo. We're waiting for some people with a name to do something worthy about it. Beyond which, I'm reallynot in a position to say much.

'Crashing by Design' is also in limbo because neither I nor Kendal have had time to sit down and plan the next draft. I hate it when projects lose their steam, but that's where we are, working in a vacuum while holding down day-jobs.

Recording Projects
With any luck, I'll put out a couple of more CDs by the end of the year for you all. That's right, coming soon are a couple of CDs with songs that date from my Satellite City days which either never got played with that band or were played but never recorded. These songs represent a chunk of my life that was consumed with Rock music. Yeah, capital 'R' Rock, man.

I promise it has some really cool songs - possibly the coolest songs I've ever bashed out, with none of the Zappa-esque lyrical excursions into deranged, warped, obscene human foibles that is more manifest in my recent works. Damn it, some of these are indeed love songs - love songs I wrote for women whose names, birthdays and postcodes I remember - who probably don't remember squat about me. Such is life for the errant songwriter.

The two CDs will be titled 'Escape From Satellite City' and 'Tales From Satellite City' respectively.

Another Thought I Had On Bill Henson
The press is having a field day since it was revealed that photographer scouted for talent and the principal of the school *gasp* let him. In principle it's not that different from if a talent scout for an athletic or sports organisation, or an acting/modeling/dancing agency scoped out the talent at the local Primary School but society being what it is, it has one rules for 'healthy' sport and another for 'degenerate' artists.

Of course nobody even reflects on the abject hypocrisy, instead they're focused on Henson as some kind of child-porn producer of their worst nightmares. In a sense, Henson's work sails very close to the prevailing moral winds, but at the same time, nobody with an artistic education/training has come out and said, "you know what? Bill Henson is a pornographer." That alone kind of flies in the face of the media sensationalism.

And in all this media shit-storm, Bill Henson seems largely unmoved. If it had been me I think I might have gone spare at the abject misrepresentation of my work. Even a Labor PM and his Deputy are saying how revolted, disturbed and concerned they are by this development. You'd think the principal allowed him to physically molest them (or take photos without consent), but clearly that is not what happened.

So my conclusion is this: Bill Henson is an inordinately brave artist - much braver than I; and for that fact alone is deserving of much admiration. I would never undertake his subject matter, given society's willingness to deliberately misinterpret his work as 'child porn'.

Yes, I might write songs about Pony the Orangutan prostitute or Josef Fritzl the Austrian Dungeon Dad, or David Hicks hanging out in Five Dock, but I sure as hell am not going to write songs about celebrating the nascent sexuality of a low-teen girl lest the AFP come surging through my door to confiscate my computer.
So much for my weirdness. I guess it shows I'm a pretty ordinary guy, which probably explains why my creative output is never going to change the world.

Still Freaked Out

Can't Seem To Sit In Cars

I've had the opportunity to sit in a car a couple of times since the accident, and I've noticed my stomach seems to churn every time we come to an intersection with traffic. It's like my sympathetic nervous system kicks in with the Fight-Fright-Flight and I just get tense. I see potential accidents everywhere now, and I just keep seeing the worst at any and every intersection with it actually happening - but my heart skips a beat every time some idiot takes a chance.

Years ago, a friend of mine DW had a bad accident on a motorcycle in Borneo. She almost lost her foot but somehow she avoided amputation. She's been on painkillers ever since. When she came back to Sydney she said she just couldn't handle sitting in people's cars, and it would freak the hell out of her any time something remotely like an accident might happen and she could sense it. At the time I thought, "wow, that's a little sensitive," but what do you know? I've got something much like it now.

I've been thinking about it a little and what it is, is that some kind of imprinting takes place during crises and once that happens, your white brain goes, "uh-huh, learn that shit quick so you don't end up in it again!" I swear, I see potential accidents at every crowded intersection.

Not sure how long this effect is going to last. If it keeps going I think I'm going to have to go get it diagnosed as PTSD or something. It's seriously a freak out.

News That's Fit To Punt

Bail Out Happens

In the end the House voted on the bailout.

The bipartisan legislation reversed the House rejection earlier this week that sent global stock markets plunging. The measure authorizes the government to buy troubled assets from financial institutions reeling from record home foreclosures. The bill contains $US149 billion in tax breaks and affirms regulators' power to suspend asset-valuing rules that companies blame for fueling the crisis.

``These steps represent decisive action to ease the credit crunch that is now threatening our economy,'' Bush said at the White House.

The House approved the measure 263-171, four days after rejecting an earlier version. The bill's defeat on Sept. 29 caused a 778-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, prompting dozens of lawmakers to switch their vote on the legislation, the government's largest intervention in the markets since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

``The issue is stopping the panic,'' said Adam Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. ``The plan's not perfect, but it's certainly better than doing nothing. Now Treasury has to be very aggressive about purchasing a wide range of assets very quickly.''

There are many discussions as to whether it is a bail out or a rescue package or good money after bad, but the bottom line is that without shoring up the US banks, the global role of the US economy is going to be greatly hampered.

Perhaps The American Century Is Coming To An End
Here's a great article in the SMH. I'm surprised there are still great reads in the Herald some times.

In Washington, George Bush and his top economic officer had spent hours in the White House persuading and cajoling the congressional leaders of both American political parties to endorse his rescue plan. With the burning smell of some of the biggest financial institutions in the world still fresh in their nostrils as their ruins smouldered in New York, Bush grew increasingly frustrated.

"If money isn't loosened up, this sucker could go down," he said of the US economy, marshalling the inimitable eloquence of the President who has given rise to a minor industry of books and wall calendars featuring the manglings known as Bushisms. All efforts failed.

"In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr, literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to blow it up by withdrawing her party's support for the package," The New York Times reported.

Pelosi leads the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Bush and Paulson are Republicans. Pelosi jibed: "I didn't know you were Catholic." And then, on the business at hand: "It's not me blowing this up; it's the Republicans." It was Bush's own party blocking the plan. Paulson reportedly sighed, "I know, I know."

It was on the same day, September 25, that China launched the Shenzhou 7 space mission, sending aloft three astronauts or, as the Chinese call them, taikonauts. Two days later, Colonel Zhai floated out of his module and "walked" in space for 20 minutes.

Zhai radioed back to his President and the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jintao: "The space-walk mission has been accomplished smoothly. Please set your mind at ease, Chairman Hu and the people of China. In the vastness of space, I felt proud of our motherland."

Hours after the Chinese module returned to Earth safely, the US House of Representatives rejected the Bush Administration's rescue plan to allow the Treasury to buy distressed debt so that US credit markets could start to function again. US stocks fell by 7 per cent and more than $US1 trillion in value was destroyed as investors despaired. It was one of the biggest one-day falls on Wall Street.

There's more in this thought provoking article.
The 'Coelacanth 2' album's working theme has been about The American Century, so I take great interest in discussions on this point.I have hard predictions of an end to the US hegemony and the end of the American Empire, but I am always wary of such claims. Unless the barbarians at the gate end up parading down Pennsylvania Ave with a noose around the captured POTUS's head, I don't think it's a likely 'scenario'. This is just a temporary dip in its power, mostly thanks to the ineptness of its current leadership.

That's not to say these damages by the current incumbent idiots cannot be undone.

A Note About Oil

Because the Financial Review does not have a free-to-public online edition available, I cannot reproduce the text here. Clever people, those Fin Review folks. Anyway, in it was an article last week about the crude oil market which drew my attention. OPEC has been tightening quotas in order to drive up oil prices because naturally, per unit sales helps their economies more and they know the world is hooked on to it. Iran in particularly loves it when the oil price goes up and the price rise puts a hurt on the US consumer.

What is not widely reported is that Saudi Arabia often over-produces its quota and then sells off the excess production to oil companies in order to lower the crude price.
The reason given for this was that if the world consumer moves away from their SUV to a hybrid car, them they are not coming back to the SUV market - in other words, Saudi Arabia does not want you to be weaned off its chief export. It made me laugh.
After my accident, I think I want to wean myself off cars entirely.

Damien Hirst's Big Haul

He's like some chubby rock star, really. Yet his works are worth millions.

What could be dumber than Hirst's dot paintings, painted by assistants with stencils? Or ashtrays of all sizes filled with used butts? Such pieces were sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds in last week's auction. The piece-de-resistance was his Golden Calf - a dead bull with gilded hooves and horns in a gold-rimmed tank of formaldehyde. Nothing could serve as a more pointed "up yours" to wealthy, eager buyers. It was a descendent of the effigy erected by the Israelites while Moses was conversing with his Maker on top of the mountain.

Hirst may be saying that money, or perhaps the stockmarket, is the false god of our times. Just as easily, he might be talking about himself. "Here I am," he says. "Come and worship!"

This sort of grandiose cynicism is greeted with admiration in art circles - "Ho, ho, Damien is really giving it to those rich capitalist bastards." In this scenario, Hirst becomes ever more subversive as his personal wealth increases. By this standard he must be the most subversive artist that has lived, since he is now said to be worth more than $US1 billion and employs almost 200 people in a chain of specialised art-making workshops.

Money exerts a narcotic influence on seemingly rational minds and Hirst has made the accumulation of capital his central artistic concern. In this, he has perfectly captured the temper of our times, in which cultural achievement is measured by the mass media in dollar terms. So it is hardly surprising to read in a wire service article reprinted in many papers around the world (including this one) that last year "Hirst sold a platinum skull encrusted with 8601 diamonds for £50 million, which is thought to be the world's most expensive piece of contemporary art".

In fact, as reported in The Art Newspaper and other sources, the skull was actually "sold" to a group that included Hirst, his dealer and his business manager. His record-breaking achievement must be tempered by the knowledge that Hirst was both creator and purchaser.

The auction represents an even greater triumph of publicity over probity, because we have no way of knowing who was buying all those works via the telephone. Even if the artist was not personally involved, there were enough dealers and high-end collectors who simply could not afford to see the auction fail and the value of their own investments plummet. The idea that this event represented a "gamble" on Hirst's part was sheer spin. This was one auction that never stood a chance of failure.

It's a bit mind-boggling where Contemporary Art has got to right now. The diamond encrusted skull is a little bit too 'Elton John' in its aesthetic, but what the heck. It's still a Diamond encrusted skull! Literally, it is what it is in a way that defies critical dissection.
This following bit caught my attention:

One gets the measure of Greer's shallow nihilism when she writes: "What is touching about Hughes's despair is that he thinks that artists still make things." Call me naive and sentimental but I believe that's almost the definition of an artist: someone who makes things. Those who employ hundreds of people to make saleable commodities are perhaps better known as "manufacturers".

Few people embrace poverty but for most artists the pleasure of making things exceeds the pleasure of making money. If it were the other way around, everyone would tailor his or her work to the most obvious commercial imperatives. Yet some artists, driven by their own wilfulness or creative compulsions, will persist with works nobody wants to buy for most of their careers

I think the art work is actually an artefact of the artistic moment. The legacy of the inspiration. The physical evidence of the Edisonian notion - the artwork itself represents the 99% of perspiration part, but signifies the 1% of genuine inspiration. This has been my personal theory for about 10 years but every time I bring it up with artists they treat me like I've gone insane or have no insight whatsoever into why they do what they do. Don't listen to me guys, but I am somebody who has translated 2 books on Contemporary Art, so I do think I have a clue.

Nonetheless, when you think about it, when you buy the finished album by say, your favorite band, you're really buying something that represents the culmination of the labor which points to the inspiration - what's this song about? - and not the artistic moment itself. It's certainly true of my songs, good and bad, that the final recorded version is merely the reflection of the moment I went "ah ha! There's a cool idea!"

All the pricing issue is a matter of how much people value the labor or materials. Sometimes a work of art is worth less than its materials - much like the copper statue that was stolen and smelted for export to China. Damien Hirst is doing alright.

I Nearly Died Tonight

Near Death Experience
I went out tonight to pick up my missus. I drove 2 blocks to a roundabout and got hit from the side by a guy trying to drive through the roundabout without slowing down. Miraculously, I wasn't injured.
The glass shattered, the door bent like tin foil, but it held enough integrity that I wasn't touched.

Seriously, I was lucky the other guy didn't hit my car hard. Had they been going another 10kph faster, it probably would've put me in hospital. If it had been 15kph more I might have been dead.
Anyway, I walked away to tell the tale. I'm one lucky son of a gun.

I'm comprehensively insured. So the financial aspects are not pleasant but not impossible. The guy was screaming "You better have insurance you bastard!" for about 3-5minutes as I sat there stunned in my car. He was pretty pissed off. I was more like "Holy shit. My legs work."
his partner came over and asked if I was alright.
Nothing hurt, so I knew I was okay but I was shaken so I said I'd tell him in 5 minutes.
He said he would call a police car. I said fine. he came back and said the police said it was a minor accident so they wouldn't come. I thought, "wow. I could've died but the NSW Police don't want to come."

After exchanging details, I drove home, hanging on to the door. I was calm in most part, but mostly in shock. Then this seething anger came... and went. I rang the police and reported the accident.
Now I'm here typing this stuff up. It's 1:15 AM. I'm wide awake and can't go to sleep.
Even after a stiff drink.

EDIT: having posted this, suddenly I'm getting a memory flooding back about Erica at my school who died in an accident after completing her exams. Erica was a nice girl who reminded me a little bit of that girl who likes Jughead in the Archies comics. Shortly after finishing her last exam, she was at a party in Strathfield sitting in a parked car when a speeding Porsche T-Boned the car she was in and that was that.
By the time I turned up to do my last exam, I was accosted by a girl called Melanie, who said, "Have you heard about Erica?"
And when she asked that question, I knew in a flash something dreadful had happened from Melanie's expression. And thinking how frail and transient life actually is - And I think that moment influenced my decision to quit med school.
And I think that could have been me tonight, except I'm longer in the tooth and I wonder if I've done anything of value since that day. Probably not, if my best songs are Dungeon Dad and Pony the Orangutan, but there you go. :)

Side Orders On The Second Bail Out Plan

Pleiades Mailbag

Here are some interesting links from our man in the info-sourcing business.

This one talks about the pork barreling to get the Bill through; in other words, little riders to help the House members go home to their electorates with something to show.

Senators attached a provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children to an historic $700 billion financial-markets rescue that passed tonight by a vote of 74-25. The provision, originally proposed by Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith, will save manufacturers such as Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon, about $200,000 a year.

It's one of dozens of tax breaks benefiting Hollywood producers, stock-car racetrack owners and Virgin Islands rum- makers included in the broader legislation in an effort to win support from House Republicans, whose defection contributed to a rejection of an earlier version of the legislation two days ago on a 228-205 vote.

``This is how Washington works,'' said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. ``A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage.''

Representatives for Wyden, a Democrat, and Smith, a Republican, didn't immediately return calls. Jerry Dishion, president of Rose City Archery, was in meetings and unavailable to comment, a receptionist at the company said.

Most of the provisions are part of a package of provisions known as ``extenders'' because they are renewed for only a few years at a time.

That's pretty handy if you're a recipient but you sort of wonder how any of this actually helps America beyond the bill. Anyway, that's how it's done in Washington. Horse-trading for all.

This one covers an energy tax break as part of this process.

The U.S. Senate approved tax cuts valued at more than $100 billion, including a host of alternative energy credits and dozens of breaks for businesses and individuals, as part of its $700 billion bank rescue bill.

The legislation, which the House likely will act on tomorrow, passed the Senate on a 74-25 vote. It would give the Treasury Department authority to buy troubled assets, chiefly mortgage- backed securities that are burdening financial institutions.

The Senate added the tax provisions to woo Republican votes in the House, where an earlier version of the bailout plan failed by 12 votes on Monday. The tax package would spare 24 million American households from a scheduled alternative minimum tax increase this year, renew credits for business research, and extend $17 billion in energy incentives.

House adoption of the provisions would end a 10-month stalemate in Congress over how to deal with the budget impact of the tax breaks. It would also bolster the balance sheets of companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Harley-Davidson Inc. that rely on the research credit, as well as those producing energy from wind and solar sources.

It would be ``virtually impossible'' to expand solar energy without the credit, Madison Grose, a managing director at Starwood Capital Group LLC, said yesterday in an interview before the vote. ``The cost to the rate base for these types of projects is substantially higher without the investment tax credit being part of the capitalization of the projects.''

So much for that one. It's hard to see if one is meant to feel good about it at all when the whole economy might go down the gurgler but there you go.

Yankee Hotstove

The Hot Stove Begins Early
That's what happens when they don't make the play-offs. Just checking around the blog-verse, there's a certain resigned air to most of the Yankee Empire of fans. 1) it was bound to happen some day; 2) there were a lot of injuries this year; and 3) that Hughes-Kennedy-Chamberlain troika didn't quite transpire the way it was hoped.

The past few years' post-season appearances have been pretty bad, so it's only a matter of degree of disappointment that's different. 2005, 2006, 2007 were all crappy entries in the annals of Yankee Play-off appearances. They had no pitching and no mongrel in them.

The Brian Cashman Watch Begins... Again
It doesn't seem like it, but it's already been 3 years since we did this merry-go-around when Brian Cashman seemingly won a battle of wills with George Steinbrenner to run the team his way, with his vision. Since then, the 'Steinbratz' Hank and Hal have taken over where George left off and it's been anybody's guess. So here we are again, waiting to see if Cashmoney is going to stay with the organisation in which he came to prominence.

As the Yankees enter another off-season, their first priority is to re-sign Cashman, who is well liked by the Steinbrenner brothers. Hal Steinbrenner has worked closely with Cashman and Manager Joe Girardi, and Cashman said, “I have a tremendous relationship with the Steinbrenner family.”

Hank Steinbrenner has publicly promised to be aggressive in pursuing free agents this winter, and the crop will be thick. The Yankees will explore Sabathia, although they are pessimistic about his desire to play for them.

Well that's nice. He might stay then. That would be very nice. In an organisational sense, he's an in-house product, much like Mo and Jeter and Jorgie, so you'd think he'd stay to see it out.

Things I'd Rather They Didn't Do...
More from the link above:

The Yankees could let Cabrera and Brett Gardner, two strong defenders, compete for the center-field job. But they must prove they can hit. The team could also see if the Dodgers would trade center fielder Matt Kemp for Canó, who has bothered many in the organization for producing so little after being rewarded with a long-term contract. Canó could be replaced at second base by a free agent like Orlando Hudson.

The O-dog is a funny guy - he once called JP Riccardi a guy who dresses like a pimp - but I'm not sure another older player is what the Yankees want. Cano after all, did have a sucky BABIP most of the way of the season. He was down 40 points from his career norm.

Had he hit to his career norm, his line of .286/.305/.410 would have translated to
.326/.345/.501, which is roughly his 2007 line with a touch more SLG. The guy's still an excellent 2B. Matt Kemp is a very nice player, but the upside of Cano is too good to trade away at the lowest point of his value.

Things To Watch Out For...
...apart from signing Cashman.

1) Will they sign Mark Teixiera?
2) Will they sign C.C.Sabathia?
3) Whither Moose and Andy?
4) Who will they sign as the other catcher?
5) What's the bench going to look like in 2009?

Thus the hotstove begins.

UPDATE: Overnight, Cashman confirmed he would return, so that part is done.

“I consider coming off a season where we didn’t reach the playoffs for the first time since 1993 as a personal challenge,” Cashman said in a statement. “I’ve never been one to run from a challenge, and I look forward to having the chance to go after this thing again.”

New York’s shortcomings this season led many to believe that Cashman would not be back with the Yankees in 2009.

However, Cashman received a vote of confidence from Yankees co-chairmen Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, who made the decision Tuesday in an effort to jump-start what likely will be a turbulent offseason in the Bronx.

Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, the sons of Yankees principle owner George Steinbrenner, praised Cashman in a joint statement released by the team.

“Holding the position of general manager for any major league team is a challenge,” the statement said. “But to do so in the great city of New York, where baseball is passionately followed 12 months a year, you must possess a number of unique attributes.

“Brian has shown throughout his Yankees career that he has the dedication, integrity and know-how needed to perform - and succeed - in this environment. Having him in place allows us to begin an offseason of hard work, and we are pleased he will be working hand-in-hand with us to bring the New York Yankees back to the postseason.”

So that's a good sign. If I were him I'd keep going until they took the desk away from me. :)

House Rejects Bailout Package

Principled Stupidity

You have to admire people who live by the sword and then die by it. You just wish that they'd acknowledge the dying part. The House voted down the bailout package.

WASHINGTON — In a moment of historic import in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry. The vote came in stunning defiance of President Bush and Congressional leaders of both parties, who said the bailout was needed to prevent a widespread financial collapse.

The vote against the measure was 228 to 205, with 133 Republicans turning against President Bush to join 95 Democrats in opposition. The bill was backed by 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans.

Supporters vowed to try to bring the rescue package up again as soon as possible, perhaps late Wednesday or Thursday, but there were no definite plans to do so. A former Treasury Department official predicted that the administration would try to get another House vote before the end of the week, and with only “tiny tweaks” to the package, given the relative closeness of the vote.

Stock markets plunged as it appeared that the measure would go down to defeat, and kept slumping into the afternoon when that appearance became a reality. By late afternoon the Dow industrials had fallen more than 5 percent, and other indexes even more sharply. Oil prices fell steeply on fears of a global recession; investors bid up prices of Treasury securities and gold in a flight to safety.

The vote was a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who tried to muster national support for a recovery plan in a televised address last Wednesday, then lobbied wavering Republican legislators in intensely personal telephone calls on Monday morning.

“We put forth a plan that was big because we got a big problem,” the president said afterward. “And we’ll be working with members of Congress, leaders of Congress on the way forward. Our strategy is to continue to address this economic situation head on.”

I've hardly ever sided with George W. Bush on any issue, but this was a rare instance I could see the point. Even many of the Democrats saw the point. The Republicans who saw the point, knew it flew against their credo of small government and not spending up big deficits, but voted for it. That leaves the Republicans who simply said "no, it's socialism, and that's un-American".

I'd like to say, "For fuck's sake, you're playing with the worlds economy and most of the world is 'un-American' - as in not of the USA - so why let that get in the way f a good deed?"

I've been keeping a close eye on this because it augurs for the marketplace for films that I work in and this is a disaster. The last thing I need in my life now is a 'Great Depression II - The Return of the Hunger'. This is giving me the shits today, along side other aggravations in life.

Of course then these back-biting idiots start playing partisan politics with it, mostly because they ca, at other people's expense.

Immediately after the vote, many House members appeared stunned. Some Republicans blamed Ms. Pelosi for a speech before the vote that disdained President Bush’s economic policies, and did so, in the opinion of the speaker’s critics, in too partisan a way.

“Clearly, there was something lacking in the leadership here,” said Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia.

Democrats, meanwhile, blamed the Republicans for not coming up with enough support for the measure on their side of the aisle.

Members of both parties, doing a quick political post-mortem, said those who voted no had encountered too much hostility for the bill among their constituents, and were worried that a vote in favor would be political suicide.

Get that? Instead of doing what's right for the country, and by extension the world economy, they chose to sit on their meal tickets - and blamed the other side for the failure.
This is actually worse than the Yankees not making the post-season.

Lightning Strikes Dead A Teacher

Benchmark for Infrequency

There's a statistical remark, "you're more likely to be struck by lightning." It usually means the odds are so small, it may as well be insignificantly small. Then, you see a headline where somebody actually gets hit by one and you think... "Oh boy."

Winthrop Baptist College social studies teacher Gregory Crombie, 41, and 19-year-old Thomas McGuinness, died after the group was caught in an electrical storm in Khon Kaen province late yesterday.

Three Thai nationals also died after being struck by lightning, but the college says they were not with the Winthrop college student group sightseeing at the waterfall.

Mr Crombie's sister-in-law Thongsom Paggangwaesang told local media the group had been swimming at the waterfall when the storm hit at Mukdahan, 642km from Bangkok.

She said two bolts of lightning struck and several people collapsed.

So there you go. You're a perfectly healthy 41y.o. dude on a trip, and bang, a lightning strikes and you're a goner. No time for midlife crises. What is that but an 'Act of God'?

NSW is A Racist State

...According To A Study

Sometimes I sort of wonder what constitutes the baseline for racism. It's actually a hard thing to bench mark when you think about it, so you sort of wonder how much veracity there could be in any study. How do they account for cultural prejudices that precede people's lives, such as ancient enmities between peoples? How do they adjust for that context? I mean, can there be such a thing as a replacement-level racist, and if so can they be persuaded to desist?

Anyway, here's what AAP has to say:

A study into racism has found Muslims, or people from the Middle East, are most likely to encounter prejudice in Australia.

Human geography and urban studies Professor Kevin Dunn also says older Australians are more worried about this group than younger or middle aged people.

"It's an indicator of a narrow view of what constitutes Australianism," Professor Dunn said.

And .. he's found while 40 per cent of Australians believe some ethnic groups do not belong in the country .. one in 10 has outwardly racist views.

The overall figures surge to 65 per cent for people over 65 but drop to 31 per cent for those aged 18 to 34.

I think in the wake of 9/11 attacks, any Rorschach Test will reveal that we as a population has been duped into suspecting every Muslim as a potential Terrorist. What was that catchphrase? "Alert, not Alarmed"? Well, 7 years later the war on terror has eroded the tolerant, egalitarian Australia that used to exist.
Pretty damning, really - And I say that as a non-Muslim. What ever happened to the Australia of a 'fair go'?

Mussina Wins No.20

He'll Make The HOF Now

Moose won no.20. It makes me very happy.

In a season with little to celebrate, his teammates gave him a rousing welcome—one he had waited his entire 18-year career to receive. Mussina had just become the oldest pitcher to win 20 games in a season for the first time as the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 6-2 Sunday in the opener of a rain-delayed day-night doubleheader.

“This is one of those things that I think will take a while to sink in,” said Mussina, who has won at least 18 games five other times.

The playoff-bound Red Sox won the second game 4-3 on Jonathan Van Every’s bases-loaded single with two outs in the 10th.

Less than three months before his 40th birthday, Mussina (20-9) gave up three hits in six shutout innings in his final start of the season. He returned to the field to bring out the lineup card for the second game.

Last year he had the highest ERA of his career (5.15). This season, it was 3.37 after he allowed one earned run in 16 innings over his last three starts.

“I’m proud of myself to be able to do this after last year,” he said.

Previously, the oldest first-time 20-game winner was Jamie Moyer, who was 38 when he went 20-6 for Seattle in 2001. Mussina, who hasn’t committed to playing next season, could be the first pitcher to retire following a 20-win season since Sandy Koufax.

“I just had a lot of fun playing this year,” Mussina said. “I don’t know what the future holds. When you’ve got 18 seasons in, it could always be your last year.”

Mussina is 269-153 with a 3.69 ERA in his career. and his previous high for wins came in 1995 and 1996, when he won 19 games each year for Baltimore. Mussina went 0-2 in his last four starts in 1996, leaving his final one with a 2-1 lead after eight innings only to watch Armando Benitez allow a tying homer to Toronto’s Ed Sprague in the ninth.

I know, the highlights for the end of season coming to this is a bit sad, but you have to be happy for a guy who has won 18games in a season 5 times and yet has never won 20 until now. Why 20? I dunno - because we are into the decimal system I guess. 270 wins is a lot of games to win in this day and age of setup-men and closers taking the ball out of the starting pitchers' hands sooner. Not only did he have to pitch well, he had to pitch for a lot of good teams. When he came into this season, even No. 251 looked dicey given how poorly he pitched last year. More significantly, he finished with an ERA of 3.37, with a 5:1 K:BB ratio. More amazingly, he did it in front of an unforgiving defense:

Check out the poor BABIP numbers last year and this year. It's almost unfair. So it's no fluke of the bounce of the ball that netted him his scintillating 3.37 ERA. Looking at those numbers, there's an argument to be made that he pitched astoundingly well this year and more than deserved his 20 wins.

Anyway, it's all on his resume now. Those pesky writers won't be able to deny him the Hall of Fame on account of never having been a 20-game winner now. Best of all, he did it against Boston.

Paul Newman Passes Away (1925-2008)

Goodbye Cool Hand Luke

Paul Newman passed away at age 83.

The 10-time Academy Award nominee died Friday at age 83, surrounded by family and close friends at his Westport farmhouse following a long battle with cancer, publicist Jeff Sanderson said Saturday.

In May, Newman dropped plans to direct a fall production of "Of Mice and Men" at Connecticut's Westport Country Playhouse, citing unspecified health issues. The following month, a friend disclosed that he was being treated for cancer and Martha Stewart, also a friend, posted photos on her Web site of Newman looking gaunt at a charity luncheon.

At 83, you can't say he was too young to die, yet my mind is filled with the way he as in all his movies so I'm a little surprised. Even in Road to Perdition, he seemed spry and full of beans. He seems to have been around forever.

My earliest memory of Newman is as Butch Cassidy; in particular the scene where he is challenged by one of the underlings. He then says he's going to explain the rules and kicks the guy in the nuts saying there are no rules. As a kid I found that incredibly funny. Then there was his turn as the con man in 'The Sting' that I marveled at. He was so smooth end eloquent when putting one over Robert Shaw.

He was a wonderful actor.

Schwarzenegger's Global Warming Conference

Go Arnie!

Here's some news from California...

The governor said he will invite officials from Europe, as well as from Australia, China, India and other countries, in the hope of forming an international alliance of community and regional leaders.

He is planning the conference for November, a month before the United Nations holds its next round of international climate talks in Poland. Governors from all 50 states also will be invited.

"The real action for any new ideas is always on the local level," Schwarzenegger told a gathering of the Commonwealth Club of California, a nonpartisan educational organization. "This is how we can push the agenda."

Schwarzenegger has been at odds with the Bush administration over environmental policy, criticizing what he calls a failure of leadership on global warming and other matters.

People quibble too much about this guy's merits. Okay, so he's not Einstein or Jesus Christ or a Democrat, but he is doing the right thing, taking on the battle to save the planet. That plus sticking it to President GW Bush. So, yes, go Arnie!