Threat, Stimulation and Identity So, it is Sunday and the fourth day of autumn and the storm is ashore and the assessment of the damage has begun. It could have been worse, is the first word. The disaster of Katrina got everyone’s attention, including me. I hauled a couple cases of bottled water back to […]

T. J. Birkenmeier in his study   Secretary Paulson has a plan to get us out of this mess. He pulled an all-nighter over the wee kend, and presented a three-page paper to the Congress. He is looking for about a trillion dollars, give or take a few dozen billion, and wants emergency authority to […]

You can understand that they might have some functional problems. The markets are closed in Moscow today for “correction,”, and the system is clearly rattled to its sandy foundation. It has been spectacular of late. Russian heavy bombers have deployed to Venezuela, relations with Cuba have warmed, and Russian ships are headed for the Caribbean. […]

Instead, I heard a Hong Kong chemical tanker with 22 crewmembers was taken by=2 0pirates in the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia. That makes it an even dozen ships that have been hijacked in the pirate-infested waterway since July 20, if you are keeping count. You have to pass the gray-green mound of Great Socotra […]

I have traditionally not paid much attention to the markets, but that is where the 401k is, and I have trusted T Rowe Price to do the best in bundling my investments. I have had to watch like a hawk of late, since the Court-ordered Domestic Relations Order was signed, stripping me of more thousands […]

They had said rain today, but the storms got here early. It rained last night and the clouds are broken today with shreds of blue behind.   It is not that way with Ike slamming over Galveston, where my cousin’s place is now under water.   Here, it is gentle. There may be some T-storms […]

It is The Day, of course.   The memory of it comes and goes, but it is always lurking I always think about it as I fill up the Hubrismobile with high-test at the Quarters K gas station. I can’t help it. It is right there in front of you, even if the Pentagon’s façade […]

A shipmate recently reported on how construction is going on construction of the new JICCENT intelligence facility at McDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. The structure’s official name is the “LCDR Otis Vincent Tolbert Joint Intelligence Operations Center,” but to those who know and honor the memory of our fallen comrade, it is already known as […]

Speechless I got way sidetracked this morning and there is no likelihood of a story emanating from Big Pink this morning.  The lay-out people at the Quarterly say they need a table of contents for the Fall issue, and a filler article to cove page 47. I can do that, I think, and have located the necessary […]

George Bailey Confronts a Run of the Bank   A friend wrote me to ask my thoughts about the colossal take-over of the US mortgage market by the Federal Government that is going to be announced today. He is just getting out of college, and he may not fully realize what our generation has done […]