Jack Hardcastle

I think that I’ve turned a corner in my relationship with Natalie Portman. Is this love?

The voter registration deadline in Maryland is October 14, 2008. Make sure you’re registered.

This began as a comment on Adam’s blog, but when I realized it was too long to be fair to him, I splintered it off to stand on its own.

Let’s start by agreeing that the golden parachutes should be severed. You lead a company to failure so severely that the federal government must intervene, and your “severance package” just got invalidated. No $20 million lump for the ousted executives. I don’t particularly care if you signed a contract a decade ago, and you feel this is what you’re entitled to. You failed both in your responsibilities to your shareholders, and in your responsibility as a mover and a shaker in the global financial markets. You nuke our markets and you’re lucky to avoid jailtime; don’t give them big fat checks.

I think Adam’s blame for the origins of the crisis (which John Steele Gordon says is thankfully a financial crisis, not an economic one) is misplaced. The people who took out those subprime loans in the first place (e.g. the “poor homeowners”) should have rented their homes rather than bought them. Many could not afford the mortgage with a traditional fixed rate loan, so they turned to the subprime lenders instead. Of course, since they couldn’t afford the payments to begin with, they eventually defaulted (at unbelievably high rates) causing ripples throughout the rest of the financial world.

If you follow the default all the way up the chain then eventually you get to the investment banks and A.I.G. The I-banks dealt in bad securities which the ratings agencies gave high scores even though they didn’t fully understand them. They did so because insurance companies (what’s that I in A.I.G?) agreed to back them as well, so all of a sudden these sure-to-fail mortgages are AAA-rated, bonded securities. Oops!

You know what I don’t hear enough of? How many people would have been kicked out of their homes if these companies weren’t nationalized? If you take out a mortgage for a home you are unable to afford, I think you should get kicked back onto your rear, having learned a lesson. Pack up your stuff, and move back into an apartment where you belong. If Paulson (because honestly, there’s nobody else with both the desire and the power to step up and do it) were to walk through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a machete, chopping away bad debt like cutting back rotting vegetation in the forest, what happens to the borrowers, and what happens to the rest of the institution? The home owner suffers, and the organization recovers, right? What am I missing?

John Edwards is holding out on backing one of the two front-runners for the Democratic nomination, despite having dropped out of the race himself.

There’s a story in the Post today about how some of Edwards’s delegates are swinging towards Obama. If I understand it correctly, the pledged delegates belong to Edwards until he “gives” them to another candidate. The only reason I can come up with for why he has not already done this is a desire to be named as a running mate for whomever comes out on top.

Ignore for a second the fact that I think Obama will win the nomination. Let’s apply a little bit of game theory to this situation.

The best and worst case scenarios for each of four different outcomes: Edwards backs Obama and he wins, Obama and he loses, Hillary and she wins, Hillary and she loses.

If Edwards backs Hillary and she wins, she’s not going to make him her Veep. He doesn’t give her any boost, anywhere, and brings no political capital to the table. If he backs her and she loses, Obama probably won’t pick him.

If he backs Obama and he wins, he’s got a pretty fair chance of being named Obama’s running-mate. Say 50/50. Obama will not ask Hillary to run with him. This is a 100% guaranteeable fact. If he backs Obama and he loses, he still won’t be Hillary’s running-mate.

All that being said, Edwards has the power to give Obama another state worth of delegates (26 at current count) and he brings his “brand” onto the Obama bandwagon, giving the candidate a small but welcome boost.

What are you waiting for, man? You know the right thing to do, so do it!

Today closes with huge news out of several states across the country, as Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton two-to-one in all three states holding Democratic nomination contests today. Obama’s momentum looks as though it will carry him through the big-win states next week (including my own dear Maryland) and on to the DNC in Denver in August. True, Obama has always done better in caucus states (which perhaps suggests to a smart analyst that he is the stronger candidate, with a more devoted following and more sound logical arguments) than in primary states, but the tide has absolutely turned for the erstwhile runner-up. With superdelegates changing their minds and political pressure on many of them to back the candidate with the most popular support (and thus succeed in not creating division in the Democratic party) I am confident that the huge groundswell of support may actually push the Senator from Illinois over the top.

Across the fence, the GOP looks as though it will continue to splinter itself down incredibly stark ideological lines. Huckabee, who I must admit I thought would have been knocked out of the race a month ago, is showing strong support among the “anyone but McCain” crowd. If it ends up coming down to the wire with the Republicans, the in-fighting and public backstabbing will rise to the extreme. Arch-conservatives cannot stand McCain’s liberal stance on a majority of issues, nor can they stand his vague position on just about any topic that matters. The Flip-Flopper needs to get his story straight before his handlers let him out on stage. I must also admit that I thought his campaign was over a year ago, but I was wrong there too.

I only pray I’m not wrong where it counts.

I saw a sneak preview of a movie based upon one of my favorite books last night. Apparently there is some controversy about it.

Religious groups gain political advantage and rally their followers by presenting themselves as embattled. Actually listening to the other side is tantamount to admitting you’re not really being persecuted.

What’s great, and Erin pointed this out, is what the religious groups are upset about. They’re not worried about the movie, because Hollywood has stripped all the controversy out of it. They’re worried that the movie will make kids go out and read the book.

This is in the same category as all of those other things that, as far as I am concerned, flow directly against the Constitution and the principles upon which this nation was founded. Free speech, open discussion, and ernest inquiry are principles, without which, we would still be in the middle ages. I’m disappointed that some groups of people, every time they are confronted by something they don’t like, shun it and avoid debate altogether. That’s not progress. That’s burying your head in the sand.

There’s an interesting (if cheesy) video on YouTube where a guy applies what is essentially Pascal’s Wager to global warming. Or human-induced climate destabilization, as “they” would have us call it.

And this is why I’m no longer a Republican. The party has been taken over by these religious ideologues in recent years. Yes, let’s ignore a drug that would eradicate a particular variant of cancer, because it might encourage more young girls to have sex. Can’t let anyone be having any sex, now can we? That’s a sin. Tsk tsk tsk.

There’s all this malarkey about plastic bags at IKEA and grocery stores. I can see why.

I went to the Giant today to resupply. I picked up a green handbasket to walk around the store because, let’s face it, I’m buying for one. I ended up, less than 10 minutes later, standing in the self-checkout line waiting for a less-than-competent customer fumble his way through a poorly-designed user interface (another post). When it was my turn, I stepped up, scanned quickly, and began the credit card procedure. When I got down to the end, I noticed that a Giant employee had stealthily bagged my goods. One green basket (plus an oversized bottle of soda in my arms) had turned into not one, not two, but seven non-biodegradable, non-recycled plastic bags. Why? I didn’t need that many bags.

What a waste.

I’m about 10 minutes from home talking to Erin on the phone. She hangs up on me abruptly saying, “House is back on.” Puzzled, I see that it’s 10:05. When she calls me back 10 minutes later, she reminds me to make sure my DVR caught the entire episode.

“Why did it run late,” I ask.

“Idol bumped it. Simon told the producers he ‘wasn’t done talking’.”

So, of course, my DVR missed the end of the episode. I went online to Fox.com to see if I could watch most of the episode on TV, and just catch the end online. Of course, Fox doesn’t post full episodes of their shows online, only a random 45-second clip from the middle.

Why a major national network like Fox is so far behind the bandwagon is beyond me. CBS, NBC, and even ABC offer their shows online. Sure, you have to pay $2 to watch back episodes of Lost (also stupid) but at least you can do it legally if you want to. Now, my only option is to download House illegally from BitTorrent (the episode was available as of 11pm) or wait until it is re-aired during repeat season this summer. Either way, I’m still going to watch it commercial free, just like everything else.

This isn’t meant as a rant against the TV industry, but rather a question: what are the networks going to do once everyone has a commercial-skipping DVR? What about pay-per-play TV? I’m already paying $50 a month for basic cable (a hundred-plus channels). Why not let me pay $50 a month for the 6 channels I want and give them to me commercial free? Yeah, you’d have to make shows longer (58 minutes instead of 42 or 44) but you’d have happier customers. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be equivalent economically.

No, my guess is within five years, some over-zealous legislator on Capitol Hill, with a network executive stuffing his back-pocket, will propose some bill outlawing commercial-skipping technology as anti-business. Forget the free market. Why bother when you can grab a choke-hold on your current business model and cajole Washington into doing your dirty work for you. Don’t bother to innovate. That’s way too hard. Some 26-year old in his basement will come up with yet another way to out-sell your product and then you’re screwed, yet again.

According to a story out today, a Bush-comissioned study on the effects of global warming reported conclusively that there is “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.” The report also says, “the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth’s average temperature in the last 50 years was the buildup of heat-trapping gases.”

Apparently there can no longer be any division on the issue, as the report is quite conclusive. Über-conservatives will have to give up the ridiculous claim that there is no global warming. It’s over folks, the “conflicting records” of climate change have been reconciled. Now, let’s start trying to fix the problem.