Wii Fit for US!

I've been waiting patiently for the US release of Wii Fit, which looks like a lot of fun. It's been out in Japan since December but doesn't come out in the US until May. Why the delay? Well, apparently so that Nintendo can make a bigger board. No comment necessary.

Eclipse

During the break between classes tonight I had the chance to glance up and see the lunar eclipse. Perfect night for it---clear sky, great visibility. It was weird to watch the perfect arc move across the full moon. It was beautiful in a peaceful sort of way, and lots of others were out there watching it too. My earlier class had ended a little early so I had a good half hour to get into it. A well-needed injection of natural phenomena into my otherwise crammed Wednesday.

Then, I went into my Chinese history class, and the instructor mentioned how eclipses were bad omens for the ancient dynasties---they could signal distress or even the eminent collapse---one had actually happened right before the fall of the northern Song. Hmmm... considering there's been a Bush or Clinton on every ticket since the year I was born, might we be seeing the end of a dynasty here in our own land? (Well, of course, until the next dynasty eventually takes charge... History does have that nagging way of repeating itself...)

McCain Mashup

Wow, this has got to be one of the funniest little vids I've seen in forever. The fact that John McCain is looking like the front runner signals a Republican party in tatters. But we can certainly laugh along the way:

Extremism at Home

Wow. So Mike Huckabee wants to amend the constitution to adhere to "god's standards."



Scary, scary stuff. I wonder which god he means? There's thousands of 'em out there. Hopefully not Zeus. That guy was spiteful.

The Cliff

While most seem focused on the horserace or silly divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage, I'm growing incredibly concerned about the economy. Devilstower nails it.

Now or six months from now, there's little doubt that US economy has run out of steam, and unlike recent recessions, economists fear that we're going to be a long time recovering from this slump. Why? Because we've taken all the elastic out of the system.

* The conservative "shower the rich with gifts" strategy has drained the surplus and replaced it with a massive debt, while providing the middle class with no additional funds with which to build up a buffer against disaster.

* The "mystical magical invisible hand of greed will fix everything" conservative approach to the markets has allowed the housing market to devolve into a quivering mess, wrecking the investments of those who played it safe right along with those who gambled and lost.

* The "shop if you love your country" conservative philosophy has encouraged a negative savings rate, that leaves families, stores, and financial institutions all waving their arms at the brink of a cliff.

* The "preemptive strategy" of the neocons has ensured that the sands of Iraq have soaked up American dollars along with American and Iraqi blood. Funds that could be going to help US workers, are instead being spent paying mercenaries and bribing insurgents.

* The conservative "borrow against the future to satisfy my greed today" strategy has left international investors none too keen on the future of the US dollar, making our currency about as popular and stable as marks from the Weimar Republic.

With our treasury looted so completely that echoes and spider webs are all that remain, what can we do about it? Don't expect much movement from Bush. He's still busy praising the wonderful state of our economy and has nothing to propose except giving more money to the rich and rewarding the people who have screwed up the fiscal markets with less regulation.

Thanks George, for setting us up for a potential depression, not just recession. The debt-to-income ratio is higher now than it has been since the late 20s... And we all know what the late 20s led to.