many eons ago i did economics, that by no means makes me a financial expert, but looking at the economy here, has me more than a little worried. and i’m fascinated, especially working in a retail environment, how people continue to spend money.
there are fundamental problems with the US economy and when the curtain is pulled back the middle class are going to paying for it yet again. people here seem to be suffering from short term memory loss, less than 25 years ago the S&L bailout cost taxpayers $125 billion and now we have ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) and NINJA (No Income, No Job, No Assets) loans which have already started defaulting and more than likely in the next 12 months are going to require a massive bailout.
for those of you haven’t been playing the home game, mortgage brokers betting on an ever expanding housing bubble started to loan money to people who weren’t actually qualified and then in turn selling this mortgages to other companies, who in turn used those as investment vehicles. if it sounds like a glorified pyramid or ponzi scheme, then you’re right, only the first set of people actually made the money at this point, everyone else is screwing the pooch. this is just limited to individual investors at this point, but large multinational and international banks that bought a lot of what is soon to be worthless paper.
what i’m wondering is how is the middle class going to afford this bailout, a lot of people got caught up in the hype and in just as much trouble as their flexible interest rates start to rise, the US$ continues to lose traction, the cost of fuel and food continues to rise and wages remain stagnant. my other questions is who benefits from the bailout? the people who are going to lose the houses the shouldn’t have qualified to buy in the first place or the companies that brokered these loans? and isn’t that taking from the not as well off to give to the worse off or in some cases the very well off?
last weekend saw the last race of the 2007 formula 1 season and it was fantastic. i’ll rarely watch sports on TV, if it’s on i’ll watch enough to keep track, otherwise i don’t generally set out to specific sporting events other than the Olympics and recently NFL football. but my one true sporting passion is formula 1. i’ve stayed up until the wee hours to watch races on the other side of the globe, i’ve been late because of qualifying and best of all, i’m made my family fans.
at the end of the 2006 season when 7 time world champion Michael Schumacher retired, i wondered what the 2007 season would bring. new drivers, new teams and a whole lot of title contenders. the 2007 season was not a disappointment, despite all the off track shenanigans, it was just amazing. at least two races decided by the weather, spectacular crashes and the drivers’ championship down to the wire, what was there not to love?
the coverage this season was lot better than the last. in the us, Formula 1 is broadcast on Speed TV, the practice sessions, the qualifying and with exception of four, all the races of the 2006 and 2007 season. in an effort to bring the sport to the masses, CBS tried in 2006 and Fox in 2007 to broadcast races on their respective networks. good idea, bad execution. both attempts boiled down to one fundamental problem, by forcing the broadcast team to explain the sport to viewers unaccustomed to it, they were alienating the core audience that knows how it works and really just want watch the race. the constant explanations, the firm grasp of the obvious was just irritating. combine that with trying to cram what is normally a three hour broadcast into two hours and broadcast times that fit network schedule and not necessarily a live broadcast, the recipe for disaster is complete.
Formula one returns to Speed TV next March (hopefully).
find the other half of the cable guys here.
when i last lived in trinidad i wrote a column, for a now defunct paper, called the cable guys. in it, my good friend and editor, mark lyndersay and myself wrote commentary on television. fast forward to now, with more than a little encouragement, the column returns but without a master and completely digital. as i understand it, we both post our weekly reviews on our respective blogs and the provide links to the other and everyone wins. for those of you that have been playing the home game all along this blog will now contain a new category; television. for those just joining us, welcome.
in the process of trying to get this column written, i’ve come to the realisation that i don’t watch that much television. this season i’m watching an all-time high of eight prime time series with regularity; csi– vegas, miami and ny, heroes, chuck, bones, pushing daisies and bionic woman. however, i’m not sure how much longer the bionic woman is going to last for me, the writing continues to deteriorate and i’ve done the hot chick reluctant hero thing before with alias.
this week i’d like to talk about one of the new shows i’ve started watching this season; pushing daisies. i love it, sadly i don’t think it’s going to last. it’s well written, it’s funny, it looks fabulous, and pretty much all of those things doom it to failure in this reality tv saturated market. pushing daisies is from the mind of bryan fuller who brought such brilliant gems as dead like me and wonderfalls, both of which feature fantastic writing, rather quirky story-lines, death and dark-haired heroines. interestingly, a pattern emerges. i loved all those shows and as sure as day follows night, they went away. dead like me lasted two seasons but i believe that’s only because it was on showtime. wonderfalls didn’t even last a full season on fox and only through the outcry of what little fans there were did the whole season become available on dvd.
looking at imdb, there are only six episodes produced thus far and as much as i’d love to see this series continues, i have my doubts. the state of network television is sad, it’s all about the recycling. take for example grey’s anatomy, the most watched show last season (i’m basing this on something i read about grey’s being the most expensive media buy on network television) is a slightly new take on the hospital drama. is there a rule that there must always be one on tv? er has started it’s 13th season and before that it was st. elsewhere and before that trapper john, mdand before that… you get the idea. some of the diseases and locations might have changed but they follow the same formula. i’ll admit to having watched all of the above series, maybe that’s what grey’s held no interest for me.
i’m enjoying pushing daisies while it lasts with no hope for its future. it is honestly too well written and too beautiful for the reality tv swilling public to appreciate and me and the couple thousand people that have grown to love it don’t make up a large enough demographic for advertisers to make it viable.
catch pushing daisies while you can on wednesdays, 8/7c on abc.
find the other half of the cable guys here.
that is so far the truth. i’ve got so many posts running through my head, i just need to find the moment to gather my thought into something cohesive. the last couple weeks have been insane, i’ve been catching up on projects at home and dealing with new ones at work. i’m also working on getting healthier and currently involved in a wager to lose 50lbs by the day after Labor Day next year. the penalty for the loser involves pink spandex in public. i really don’t have to say more, do i?
since i last posted, i’ve been official diagnosed with sleep apnea and i have to go back in december for a CPAP test, which involves a face mask to help me breathe. and then back to the dr, to see i’m any better. the weight loss should help with that as well.
it’s hard to believe that she’s been here three weeks but she has and tomorrow afternoon she begins the first leg of her journey home. there is already a pallor over the house. the boy chick is loathe to lose his partner in crime and near constant companion and i know exactly how he feels. there was a different tone to the house over the last three weeks and i’m going to miss it.
here is a photo of us on Sunday morning after a trip down the Buffalo river and staying up late to watch the Perseid meteor show. we’re a lot more exhausted and in pain than we’re letting on.
i’m going to be even more conspicuously absent than i’ve been with the arrival of my younger daughter later today. she’s going to spend the next three weeks here and i’m looking forward to it.
there are pictures of the revised office bedroom, here. thank you and good night. remember to tip your waitress.
it’s been a while since i posted and there have been a lot of things on my mind and hopefully i can manage to get them out in some cognoscent order here. in the last week, i enjoyed a child like glee as a number of things that i desired, fortuitously came together. on sunday i got my wii and friday night i got my iphone (for free, sometimes working retail pays off in interesting ways) and then the final harry potter book. which in itself was a conundrum, do i read, then activate my phone or activate my phone and then read. i chose the latter and less than 15 minutes after i got home my phone was activated and i was on my way with The Deathly Hollows. i really enjoyed the book and i think it was a tremendous ending to a fantastic series and i will be the first to admit that i got teary at the end. as for the iphone it’s beautiful piece of hardware, of all the features, i love the phone the most, it works better than any phone i’ve ever had. on to other things besides my retail obsessions.
we took a road trip in early july, just after the holiday to des moines to see friends and i was making the blog rounds on the 4th i came across a re-posting about ‘Why I love America’ and while i didn’t agree with some of the reasons, i had no real objections until i came across this paragraph:
“I love that America was one of the very first nations in the world to put an end to slavery. The story of slavery in America was no different than anywhere else except that we stopped a lot sooner. That needs to be mentioned whenever the topic comes up.”
this was so inaccurate and untrue i felt the need to post a comment and that’s where i began my slide down the rabbit hole. i learned three valuable lessons:
1. there’s a class of people that believe that factual information is untrue when it doesn’t agree with their point of view,
2. the same class of people have a scary sense of entitlement as evidenced by this quote
“… the US MUST act on what is in our countries interest at the time. The carribean is in our back yard, so it is fair game.”
3. the reason the country is in such a mess is the inability to have open discourse without rhetoric.
then there is this administrative order, which allows the administration to ‘block bank accounts and any other financial assets that might be found in this country belonging to people, companies or groups that the United States deems are working to threaten stability in Iraq.’
i don’t know about anyone else, but with the major betrayals of trust and power abuses from this administration, you begin to wonder if you’re paranoid enough.
it’s been rather remiss of me to let the 40th anniversary of loving vs virginia go by without a comment.
on june 12, 1967, the us supreme court declared virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the racial integrity act of 1924, unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the united states. interestingly various statutes remained unenforced in some states until as recently as 2000, with alabama being the last to rescind theirs. i’m including below the statement released by mildred loving on the 40th anniversary of the announcement
Loving for All
By Mildred Loving*
Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement
When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t
to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be
married.
We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there
because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we
grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and
build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that
time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who
should marry whom.
When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no
intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and
lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what
marriage is?
Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own
bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong
kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed.
The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared:
“”Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed
them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there
would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he
did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to
suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.
We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a
cause. We were fighting for our love.
Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone.
Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and
so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the
freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the
Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized
as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free
men,” a “basic civil right.”
My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and
right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep
people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have
lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices
have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they
have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that
I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to
have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the
“wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no
matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to
marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over
others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court
case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so
many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the
freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
there is hope after all
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-eGOtBGbg