The 27% Candidate

This Ryan pick for VP really strikes me as desperate.  Ryan's budget, when set out in the light, won't go over well.  For the second election in a row, the Republican candidate chooses a candidate which the Republican base will like better than the candidate himself.  Meanwhile, that candidate will erode support with independent voters.  Does anybody other than the wingnut 27% believe that insurance companies will take care of old people's health care better than the government?  Do any of those people who fear the Obama death panels realize that insurance companies will profit from declining treatment to the elderly?  Are private sector death panels better for the country than the imaginary government ones?  What will an affordable insurance policy for an 85 year old look like?

Anyway, my visit to the county fair reminds me that I love the familiarity of this place, in spite of its limits.  I really feel that the folks at the county fair, while largely mocked and taken advantage of by those in power, are the only real base for the Romney/Ryan ticket.  Unfortunately, I think these folks will get hurt the worst by Republican policies.  It makes me sad and angry.  This fall, grain farmers are going to take a hit from the drought.  But the social safety net/welfare program of crop insurance will make sure that we will be able to plant next year's crop.  It is an extremely flawed program, but we are damn lucky it is available.  The crooked politicians might even throw in some disaster aid (almost certainly for livestock farmers, and very likely also for grain farmers) on top of it.  And yet, those same folks will vote overwhelmingly for the candidates who give to the rich (including rich farmers) and take from everybody else.  As far as I can tell, those voters just don't feel comfortable with the change in modern culture, and think somehow they can get back to what they consider a better time.  Unfortunately for them, that isn't happening.  Their way of life is disappearing, and with it some very good, and some very bad things.  I wish that they could impact culture in a good way without inadvertently wreaking havoc on their own lives.  But I'm afraid their partners in the process are using them against themselves. 

In a bit of a lucky accident, the selection of Ryan may mitigate the damage a little bit.  While Obama is just a nicer version of the Social Security "reform" crowd, his now more likely reelection may allow the Republican party to disintegrate and bring about the pendulum swing we need back to the center.  30 years of trickle down economics is just too much, and we need to bring things back toward the post-New Deal consensus.  This is a great nation, but its greatness is based on a strong middle class.  The only way we can get that is with a strong government which provides a social safety net, and helps protect capitalism from itself.  Right now, capitalism as practiced today is the best case against itself.  If there is a God, may He (or She or It) please truly bless this country.  We need all the help we can get.

Down At The County Fair

Our county fair this year isn't very impressive.  There are a lot of empty spaces out on the midway.  I swear this is the first time in my life that they don't have an arcade, but a couple of people told me they didn't have one last year.  I still believe there was one last year, but I can't prove it.  Anyway, when I was a kid that was the most important thing there.  Of all the money I spent at the fair, 80% went to video games.  I budgeted out to be able to eat two meals each day for $2, and the rest went in the quarter slots.  After I spent the day's money, I would hang around and check the coin return slots for lucky finds.  The best deal was when the Pole Position game said 50 cents a credit, but was giving a credit for each quarter.  My friends and I noticed this and got to play like 8 free games.  We came back later in the day, and there were 14 credits on the machine, but a little kid was playing.  We stood there like vultures and waited for him to finish.  As soon as he walked away, we pounced on the machine and played all the credits.  We were quite the class act.  Apparently, the days of the video arcade are dead.  Long live the video arcade.




Update: The arcade did show up on Saturday, so the rumors of the arcade's demise were greatly exaggerated.

So Who Decided Paul Ryan Is Smart?

Where did the media narrative in which Paul Ryan is a conservative intellectual arise?  His conservative wet dream budget just doesn't add up using non-Republican and real world arithmetic, and his plan for elimination of the social safety net has absolutely no chance of working in reality.  But because conservatives swear he's smart (the same ones who think Rush Limbaugh isn't a drug addict blowhard idiot), the media has to repeat it.  Of course, if you rule out professorial bow-tie wearing douche bags, the crowd clamoring for the title of smart Republican is pretty small.

I'm glad the Republicans have put their base on notice that if they vote for this shitty ticket they are going to get rid of Medicare.  If those old folks put their racism on hold for a minute, they might realize they are voting against themselves.  I can't tell you how many people I know who can't wait until they are 65 so they can retire.  Paul Ryan's selection as VP puts people under 55 on notice that they may never be able to retire, if their retirement plans haven't told them that already.

Bear Party Gets Wild

From Gawker:

A cabin in northern Norway was ransacked by a family of bears, according to cabin owner Even Borthen Nilsen. And they made a night of it.

They had a hell of a party in there. The cabin has the stench of a right old piss up, trash, and bears.

So either bears or humans with really bad personal hygiene.
And a taste for beer. The bears, allegedly an adult and three cubs, somehow finished off over 100 cans of beer. (I'm guessing there was less drinking than smashing, but even so.) The bears also gorged themselves on marshmallows, chocolate spread, and honey, because Norwegian cabins are the stuff of fairy tales.
Adding to the magic of this story: the Norwegian press has a way with words.

Nilsen explained that excrement on the outside of the cabin left him in no doubt that it was a family of bears which had taken over his cabin for night of feasting and drunken revelry.

That is a sweet story.  I'd hate to wander into that party.

Will Paul Ryan Be Romney's VP Candidate?

One can only hope.  Just for reminders, this is Paul Ryan's budget proposal:

The fact that this budget is shot through with political chickenshit is relevant because this is primarily a political document, a campaign blueprint for the Republicans this fall. (It's also an attempt to establish bargaining position in the upcoming budgetary brawl with the White House. Whether that succeeds, of course, is completely dependent on whether the White House takes any part of this bag of horrors seriously enough as an actual budget to negotiate on it.) As a plan for governing, it's yet another blueprint for economic dystopia from a man who either doesn't know, or doesn't care, what life is actually like for the people who don't buy him $4000 bottles of wine in restaurants far from the Time Out Pub in Janesville. It's a supply-sider's wet dream, in technicolor, with Jenna Jameson serving you popcorn at intermission. Food stamps and Medicaid — which loses $770 billion anyway, according to Ryan's plan — get handed back to the states in the form of block grants which, if our experience with stimulus money and the tobacco settlement are any indication, the states will then use to fund those things that get their governors re-elected, and you may have noticed that healthy poor people are rarely one of those things. There's what amounts to be a flat-tax: two basic income-tax rates, the top being 25 percent. Also the corporate tax rate gets cut to 20 percent. Because he has to pretend that he's visiting this radical restructuring of the American economy on us because of his great concern over The Deficit — and we'll get to that particular canard in a moment — Ryan proposes to close "loopholes", which means that the upper one percent loses some boutoniere money while you lose your mortgage interest deduction, but you and Steve Forbes will be paying the same flat rate, so it's all good!
And there was the usual conservative boilerplate about lazy poor people whose initiative has been blunted by government cheese or something:
"We propose welfare reform, round 2," he added, charging that aid programs were encouraging people to sponge off the government. "We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people ... into complacency and dependence."
Says a guy who got through high school and college on Social Security survivor's benefits. Can I mention right here that Paul Ryan, while not yet as colossal a dick as Rick Santorum, is working very hard at it?

Yse, indeed.  The poorest Americans have it too easy and the richest have it too hard.  Maybe in Bizarro Land.  I can only imagine seeing a guy making $20 million a year and paying a lower percentage of his income in taxes than most middle class families teaming with this toolbag to blow an election in which the incumbent, if not running against the least likable political candidate oh, wait, Romney did beat Gingrich) and the most blind to reality platform ever , would get blown out of the water.  It used to be only the Democrats who could snatch defeat from what should be an easy victory.  Now the Tea bag led Republican party can top them.

A Troubled Life Cut Short

David Simon eulogizes a drug dealer he got to know in writing his book, The Corner.  He went on to play Brother Mouzone's bodyguard,  Lamar (h/t The Dish):

At fifteen, he was selling drugs on the corners of Fayette Street, but that doesn’t begin to explain who he was.  For the boys of Franklin Square — too many of them at any rate — slinging was little more than an adolescent adventure, an inevitable rite of passage.  And whatever sinister vision you might conjure of a street corner drug trafficker, try to remember that a fifteen-year-old slinger is, well, fifteen years old.
He was funny.  He could step back from himself and mock his own stances — “hard work,” he would say when I would catch him on a drug corner, “hard work being a black man in America.”  And then he would catch my eye and laugh knowingly at his presumption.  His imitations of white-authority voices — social workers, police officers, juvenile masters, teachers, reporters — were never less than pinpoint, playful savagery.  The price of being a white man on Fayette Street and getting to know DeAndre McCullough was to have your from-the-other-America pontifications pulled and scalpeled apart by a manchild with an uncanny ear for hypocrisy and cant.
He could be generous, and loyal. I remember him rushing out before Christmas to spend his corner money on gifts for his brother, nieces and nephews — knowing that his mother wasn’t going to get it done that year. I remember the moments of quiet affection he demonstrated when his mother was at her lowest ebb, telling her gently that she was better than this, that she could rise again. And, too, I remember his stoic, certain forgiveness of his father, who moved wraith-like around those same corners, lost in an addiction he could never defeat.
“I really feel like he’s at peace now,” DeAndre said after Gary’s funeral, explaining that his father was too gentle for the corners, too delicate a soul to be out there along Fayette Street. His father was never going to be what he was. Not ever again.  DeAndre said this with no malice, in a voice that was as loving as any words I ever heard him speak.

That is a story I just can't imagine.  As Simon lists off all the people he got to know who died from the street, I just don't understand how he could do what he did.  It just seems too agonizing to me.

Markets Rise On Eve Of Crop Report

CattleNetwork:

A Reuters poll of 21 analysts this week pegged the U.S. corn yield at 127 bushels per acre, the lowest since 1997, with production at a six-year low.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) August crop report, to be released at 7:30 a.m. CDT (1230 GMT) on Friday, has taken on extra importance since the department's estimates will be based on surveys of farmers and its own experts inspecting fields for the first time since the drought began to rally prices in mid-June.

New-crop December corn futures rose to $8.29-3/4 per bushel, the highest price ever for a Chicago Board of Trade corn futures contract and above the previous record of $8.28-3/4 that was set by the spot September contract three weeks ago.

There were several bullish inputs to the markets.

Traders were moving or rolling long holdings in front-month September corn into the December and other new-crop contracts, preparing for a bullish government crop report and in step with the periodic rolling of positions undertaken by a Goldman Sachs index fund.

"The Goldman roll started Tuesday, you have that going on and the report is tomorrow. Everyone is expecting the corn number to be pretty friendly," a CBOT trader said.

Also, "there's talk China bought 3 to 4 cargoes of beans and looking for more, so there's a lot going on," he said.

Soybeans soared 3 percent as the drought kept trimming U.S. crop prospects, as China surfaced this week buying U.S. soybeans and as traders banked on further demand from the world's largest buyer of the oilseed.

"Beans continue to be driven higher by more new-crop sales to China," Cekander said.

The U.S. government on Thursday said China bought 165,000 tonnes of U.S. soybeans, boosting China's total purchases for the week to 271,000 tonnes. Each cargo of soybeans holds 55,000 tonnes.

Wheat rose in step with the gains in corn and soybeans, and on worries about weather stress in Russia's lush Black Sea wheat growing region.

Things will very likely be crazy for the next couple of trading sessions, but you never quite know what might happen.  I can't imagine how expensive livestock feed is going to be next year.

Dickey Bounces Back For Win

After losing two of his last three decisions, R.A. Dickey pitched a complete game five-hitter to capture his 15th win of the season:

Dickey pitched a complete game for his 15th victory, stopping Jose Reyes' 26-game hitting streak in the process and helping the New York Mets end their nine-game home skid with a 6-1 win Thursday over the Miami Marlins.
"That nine-game streak that was stopped today is more important than the 15 wins," said Dickey, who allowed five hits and struck out 10.Dickey (15-3) turned in his third straight stellar outing -- he allowed only two earned runs combined in his previous two starts -- after going through a monthlong rough patch. He was 12-1 at the All-Star break but just 2-2 in six starts afterward. That leveling off coincided with the Mets' fall from the NL wild card race.Pitching in 89-degree heat, perfect weather for his fluttery pitch, Dickey threw his fourth complete game of the year and eighth of his career."He's got the feel for it back, again," manager Terry Collins said. "All I can tell you is I hope the next eight starts are like this one."

Dickey is scheduled to start next Wednesday in Cincinnati.  I would be attending, but I'm getting sent out to Illinois and Iowa for work, instead.  Bummer.

Is The Ag Boom Almost Over?

USA Today, via Big Picture Agriculture:

Ag-related college majors appeal to both the heart and mind of a student, university officials say, as a booming agriculture industry and practical skills taught at the colleges can help develop a career that addresses issues such as global hunger and obesity in the U.S.

"There's a better understanding that when we use the term agriculture, it's not all plows and cows. It's clearly looking at the real intricacies of science and innovation," said Ian Maw, vice president for food, agriculture and natural resources at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in Washington, D.C.

At traditional agriculture powerhouses such as Penn State, where enrollment is up more than 40% since 2004, career preparation can include cutting-edge research in areas such as plant breeding or genomics. Schools in more urban regions draw students interested in local foods and healthy eating.

Farmland prices have tripled in the U.S. in the past decade, and corn prices have doubled since mid-2010. The high-paying jobs that follow are catching students' attention in a down economy, Maw said.

Iowa State University, where the agriculture college this fall expects to surpass an enrollment record set 35 years ago, is straining to meet industry demand for its graduates, said Wendy Wintersteen, the agriculture college dean.

Anthony Lackore, 24, graduated from Iowa State in 2010 and works as a production agronomist raising soybean seeds for DuPont Pioneer, a company that produces hybrid seeds. He had the job lined up by the fall of his senior year.

OK, 35 years ago was in 1977, the last golden age of agriculture.  By 1983, there was serious trouble in the Midwest.  Hopefully things don't end up like that again, but a peak in agriculture college enrollment could be a contrary indicator.

The Chinese Ponzi Market

Via Ritholtz, the Financial Times reports on the Chinese banks.  Scary.