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“The eyes are the windows to the soul”, sure, but if you want to know how someone’s *really* feeling, watch the set of the corners of their mouth.

Happy New Year!

I’ve noted before how easy it is to cause a recession.

I’ve also noticed that the media has been continuing to bleat the horn right though the Christmas holiday, even though reading the details suggests that sales have been down only 5-8% from last year’s record levels (and Amazon.com reports having its “best holiday season ever“, with sales up 44%).

I’m beginning to suspect that as soon as Obama is inaugurated, we’ll start seeing the “Good News For The Economy” and “Economy Starting to Rebound” messages in the media.

If people will believe the recession is over and start spending again, then lo and behold! The recession *will* be over, all praise the Obama nation we’ve become!

*Here’s an idea* for a compromise between banks run afoul of their own poor lending practices and homeowners turned upside-down on their mortgages.

Say the Jones are about to default on their mortgage. They don’t. Instead, the bank takes ownership of the property and becomes the Jones’ landlord. The result is a pretty standard lessor/lessee relationship.

• The Jones’ rent would be capped at (pause to roll dice) 55 per cent of their mortgage payment– compartively, quite affordable.
• The bank would refund their paid principal, less first/last/damage deposit (the way most mortgages are set up, there usually would not be much principal to give back).
• The Jones could walk away at any time with (pause to roll dice) three months’ notice.
• The bank would not be able to cancel the lease unless the Jones failed to pay their rent (or any of the other standard protections offered to landlords).

So the Jones keep a familiar roof over their head, are spared the expense and stress of moving, and receive a somewhat smaller black mark on their financial record (which they could eliminate with (roll dice) two years of on-time rent payment.

The bank gets a money-making property complete with renter and ongoing income rather than a write-off, legal fees, and lost accounts receivable.

Sounds like a win-win scenario, doesn’t it? Am I missing anything?

I was listening to Mike Huckabee on the radio the other day, and was struck once again with his clarity of focus and his dedication to rebuilding the American dream.

If the Republican party had nominated him as their choice for President, he’d have cleaned the Democrat’s clock. Instead our country is on the way to becoming an Obama nation.

Okay, so Somalian pirates captured an oil tanker worth $100 million.

The question is, so what would they do with it? Take it to the local fence? Use it as stake in a poker game?

Despite this huge drawback, seems we’re way too close to the issue. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says, “There are no easy answers”.

I’d propose that, yes, there *are* easy answers. As in, “Hey, pirates– want a job guarding our oil tankers?”

I think I have figured out how the Universe actually works. More on that later.

If Tim Tebow were to offer tone control advice to the members in the band, would that make him an embouchure quarterback?

• The line when I voted this morning wasn’t bad at all. It was crowded, but there were plenty of open stations.

  I had had the idea of creating an “express lane” for those who had cast ballots in the previous two elections, but it turns out not to have been needed.

• Here’s one reason polls should be banned: They favor the two-party system.

  Suppose a large number of people wish to vote for a third-party candidate. If the media has skewed the polls by saying Party D has or is getting a lead (not that they would *ever* do that), then the third-party voter is likely to cast his vote for Party R, his _second_ choice, even though it wasn’t necessary to do so. Perhaps worse, Party R now has a perceived mandate.

  Eliminating election-day polls will require a self-imposed restriction by the news media, so it will never happen.

  Of course an alternative to this would be to allow people to vote *against* a candidate rather than for one. This might be surprisingly popular with the “Anybody but __________” crowd.

• Typical of the liberal “We have to win at any cost” mentatlity, there’s been a “Businesses for Obama” full-page ad in the paper the last few days. It contains a highly misleading graph showing America’s finances over the past four presidents.

  Of course Clinton comes off looking like a magician, because the way he juggled the books it looks as though we were making huge profits and reducing our national debt.

  It overlooks the facts that Reagan inherited a foreign mess from Carter but still managed to end the Cold War, that Clinton inherited the Internet boom and let it bubble and burst, and most importantly, that Clinton financed his “recovery” in large part by gutting military maintenance spending.

  Most people wouldn’t notice that vulnerability in our military preparedness. But someone did and, perceiving us to be weak, attacked. Good thinking, Bill.

  The graph then shows a huge spike in deficit spending after W. took office. This makes sense. Before he could do *anything* after 9/11, Bush had to bring the military back to full preparedness– to “pay off the Clinton credit card”, as it were.

  *That* debt doesn’t show up in the graph, though. It only shows dollars and cents.

  Point of all this is that, in the words of Twain, “there are lies, there are damn lies, then there are statistics”.

• I’ve slung stink at both candidates over the last few weeks. When the election is over, and sometime before the impeachments begin, I’ll remove at least the ones regarding the winner. Whoever ends up in the office, the position itself deserves our respect and support, and there are things you can say about a candidate that aren’t appropriate when referencing a sitting President.

  I’m not taking back anything about Garry Trudeau, though. When the day comes that our enemies have nothing to throw at us but sarcastic artists, he will be the perfect choice for leader. Until then, I wish he’d stop meddling.