Greg's Opinion

» WaPo: Aspiring RNC Chairmen Wonder: What Would Reagan Do?

After reading this, I think I can adequately devise a formula to calculate anyone's score for being a suitable RNC Chairman:

1. Number of times you can shoehorn in a Ronald Reagan reference into an average political speech addressing Republican-only crowds. Subtract points for Reagan mentions to broader audiences.

2. Plus, number of firearms owned (1.5x for rifles, 3x for anything automatic). Vintage (WWII or earlier), nonworking firearms only count for a quarter point, while working firearms count for thee-quarters of a point. If vintage working firearms have been used for hunting, they will count for a full point. Shooting skeet does not count. Shooting your hunting partner with any firearm gets you automaticly short-listed for the VP nomination.

3. Plus, (Facebook friends x .02) + (Twitter followers x .05) + (Twitter updates x .01). In order to keep the Ron Paul cult members out, technorati rankings will not count.

4. Extra Credit: willingness to defend Sarah Palin as fit for the Presidency (100 points).

High score wins.

Other reax: Oliver Willis, Matt Yglesias, Steve Benen

» NYT: Samuel Huntington and the Positivity of Power Thinking

A nice read on Huntington's legacy here, but there's also a point raised that I sometimes take issue with by certain writers, most recently in my excerpt from Krugman the other day.

Mr. Huntington's idea about the inevitable clash of civilizations also looks different today -- its harsh view of the world disconcertingly similar to the thinking behind the Bush administration's crusading war on political Islam, though Mr. Huntington was himself skeptical about what he called America's "imperial" mission in Iraq. Mr. Huntington got many things right -- and his theories included major insights. But in their very largeness they veered toward oversimplification.

"Perhaps," as Mr. Fukuyama wrote, "all grand theories are ultimately doomed to failure."

Why should this be? Probably because in their desire to explain so much, big thinkers tend to skip over complicating factors and counterevidence. Painting in broad and often brilliant strokes, they often miss the shadows and crevices. The very seductiveness of power thinking -- its promise that everything fits together or can be made to seem so -- is also the source of its danger. It offers something irresistible, the possibility that we can change, or at least control, our lives by means of ideas, even though those ideas are themselves abstract inventions.

Still, as long as there is private and public history, human beings will try to think their way around it. For better. And for worse.

I think that perfectly encapsulates why I love to pick apart the writing of those most guilty of broadened brushstrokes. There's a necessity of it in order to frame concepts, but at the same time there's going to be gaps in the picture that deserve to be argued over.

» NYT: The Toughest Q's Answered in the Briefest Tweets

More on the Tweeting of Middle East conflicts ...

Mr. Saranga said Tuesday's online dialogue, which was open for questions from anyone with a Twitter account, was "the first governmental press conference ever held on Twitter." And he made no apologies for using common text-messaging abbreviations -- 2 for to, 4 for for, and r for are, and other shorthand like civ for civilian -- in his answers. "I speak to every demographic in a language he understands," he said. "If someone only speaks Spanish, I speak in Spanish; if someone is using a platform like Twitter, I want to tweet."

There's certainly a fair amount of logic there - hold a press conference that anyone can join in on. My lingering question, however, is why Twitter? Why not something that better allows for fuller, richer, more meaningful discussion? The IDF did manage to answer some questions in full sentences online to the questions posed via Twitter.

» NYT: As Vacant Office Space Grows, So Does Lenders' Crisis

I'm not sure whether the photo of Houston's MainPlace construction is to be considered ominous or defiant in terms of the article. Whatever the case, I'm at least a bit hopeful that the population and foot traffic downtown are enough to keep the Books-a-Million store going. I just can't fathom another hiatus without a real downtown bookstore (and for the record, I'm considering the old Crown Books a "real" store and totally ignoring the presence of the chain store in the mall).

Just as home loans were pooled, then carved up and sold to investors as securities over the last two decades, commercial property loans were repackaged for the financial markets. In 2006 and 2007, nearly 60 percent of commercial property loans were turned into securities, according to Trepp, a research firm that tracks mortgage-backed securities.

Now that the market for those securities has dried up, borrowers cannot easily roll over the loans that are coming due.

Many commercial property owners will face a dilemma similar to that of today's homeowners who cannot easily get mortgage relief because their loans were sliced and sold to many different parties. There often is not a single entity with whom to negotiate, because investors have different interests.

By many accounts, building owners have been caught off guard by how quickly the market has deteriorated in recent weeks.

Rising vacancy rates were expected in Orange County, Calif., a center of the subprime mortgage crisis, and New York, where the now shrinking financial industry dominates office space. But vacancies are also suddenly climbing in Houston and Dallas, which had been shielded from the economic downturn until recently by skyrocketing oil prices and expanding energy businesses. In Chicago, brokers say demand has dried up just as new office towers are nearing completion.

"The economic recession is so widespread that we believe virtually every market in the country will see a rise in vacancy rates of between 2 and 5 percentage points by mid-2009," said Bill Goade, chief executive of CresaPartners, which advises corporations on leasing and buying office space.

There's a certain disconnect in trying to understand how a modest 2-5 percent rise in vacancy rates would really blow up a few more banks. But just as the case with residential mortgages, the biggest factor isn't the defaults or slowed growth ... it's the fact that the securitization of loans has been largely under-regulated (if not un-regulated). For a somewhat deeper read on the topic, there's Joe Nocera's NYT Magazine cover story from Sunday (which I still have to get around to reading in full) and a 3-parter by the Washington Post on AIG.

"You can go back to your, what do you call it, your Google, and you figure out all that."

George H. W. Bush on his son's failed Presidency.

Easily the most rewarding win I had the pleasure of being a microscopic part of during the 2008 campaign season ...

» Chron: Garcia appeals for more recruits in inaugural address

Just caught this on the Ravens-Dolphins game. I think it accurately captures what I see as problematic with today's video games:

» Statesman: Straus catches Capitol watchers by surprise
It seems like just yesterday that I was hoping Rose Spector would pull off an upset in the special election to replace Elizabeth Ames Jones. I guess "newness" is the new "electability." I also don't think we could have had much of a better option for an ABC candidate for speaker and I find myself in the entirely alien territory of agreeing with Burka. Solomons or Kuempel had something of a more traditional logic going for them. But if Straus has 76+ votes, it's a better day for schools and poor folk than it was two years ago.

» Denver Post: Bennet's rèsumè impressive, even if it doesn't fit the job
This looks like an impressive pick for the new Senator from Colorado. Hopefully the impression holds, as does Bennet's claim on the seat whenever he's up for election.

» NYT: Bigger Than Bush (Krugman)
» Democratic Strategist: Third Reconstruction? (Ed Kilgore)
I don't that it's entirely fair to juxtapose Krugman's column against Kilgore's more accurate history of southern political dynamics of the New Deal era. But they seem to fit even if Kilgore wasn't responding to Krugman's particular take. For all the Schaller agonistes, it's worth a reminder that the initial political instinct by southern pols in the Reconstruction-through-New Deal era was not entirely in line with what we know as modern conservative economic thought.

Honestly, I'd have thought that the fleeting success of someone like Mike Huckabee (and the ensuing backlash he took from GOP establishmentarians) would be a slight reminder of this point.Just for good measure, though, Kilgore reminds us of a few others that suggest the narrative doesn't really hold.

» Swampland: The Myth of the Decisive Blow (Joe Klein)
» TNR: The "Juicebox Mafia" On Gaza (Marty Peretz)
I never would have guessed that Joe Klein would have what I view as one of the best takes on Middle East conflict and Marty Peretz one of the absolute worst. That I say that as a fan of Peretz's crankiness and loathesome of Klein's ... whatever ... really compounds this.

» Vanity Fair: Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House
It's articles like this that make me wish I had more time in the day to blog. Simply put, this is required reading. I just don't have the time to give it the blog treatment it deserves. Needless to say, there are several jaw-dropping admissions that I honestly don't think were intended to serve as jaw-dropping admissions. Case in point:

Henry Paulson, secretary of the Treasury: I easily could imagine and expected there to be financial turmoil. But the extent of it, O.K., I was naïve in terms of--I knew a lot about regulation but not nearly as much as I needed to know, and I knew very little about regulatory powers and authorities. I just had not gone into it in that kind of detail. This'll be the longest we've gone in recent history without there being turmoil, and given all the innovation in the private pools of capital and the over-the-counter derivatives and the excesses around the world, we figured that when there was turmoil, and these things were tested for the first time by stress, it would be more significant than anything else.

"Sweet Jesus" indeed. Perhaps some of the folks who like to harp on what they cryptically define of "qualifications" should keep this in mind down the road. That, of course, pretends that they're really interested in qualifications. ;-)

» Chron: Longhorns bracing for Buckeyes' power game
Monday Night Football is now a pretty solid college bowl game. It's truly an odd season in that I have a hard time really gauging which team among the top tier really feels like the best in the nation to me. I'm inclined to sort it out between OU and TU and there's this nagging fact that the latter defeated the former during the regular season. Alabama looked pretty sharp, but their late losses took a lot of shine off of them. USC looks every bit like the well-oiled machine that they've been throughout the Pete Carroll era. Florida, I don't see enough to have a good read on, so I tend to think I knock them a bit too easily as a result. Heck, I was rooting for Tech to be the undisputed champs and that really has not panned out as well as it should have. Something about the old SWC underdogs that makes sports fun here in Texas. Perhaps I should just not worry about it at all and start focusing on how Case Keenum can win a Heisman next season. Whatever. Monday should be some good football on TV regardless of whether you're rooting for the Buckeyes or the wrong team. Thursday's game should be even better.

ADD-ON: Video of Joe Straus' interview with the Chronicle below. Is it just me, or does his argument sound entirely similar to Barack Obama, circa 2007? "No battle scars from previous battles" ... "No scores to settle" ... just saying. He'd be a few steps up from Craddick even knowing he'll support at least some of the more egregious policy proposals to come from the Lege next session. But his inability to establish eye contact is more than a little nagging.

I want to borrow a practice I've used over at the other blog for a while. That being an occasional clip from whatever I'm reading at the time. In this edition, it's Paul Krugman's "The Conscience of a Liberal."

I'd have probably passed this book over permanently, save fo a handful of reasons. One being that I tend to seek out something to read from Nobel-winning economists. The second main reason being that I've also dived into a subscription at BookSwim.com and this was what they threw at me in my first shipment. So I throw caution into the wind and vow to go well over my quota for reading Krugman's work in the Times.

Perhaps my most lingering gripe with Krugman's style is that he tends to paint with too broad of a brushstroke and makes some leaps of faith that may or may not be warranted in future reading, but aren't necessarily sold in the writing up to the point he makes them.

This excerpt is an example of that, coming in the chapter where he explains the concept of The Great Compression - the era of the 1950s where income inequality was at it's most recent level of flatness/acceptability. Krugman spells out two arguments, points out (I think wisely) that they aren't necessarily competing arguments. But then comes the leap of faith ... that FDR's actions "surely must have helped in the union drive." Surely! Just take Krugman's word on it.

Well, for now, at least. I don't want to offer a final ruling on the book in Chapter 3. Krugman does have a habit that tends to be even more maddening for his GOP critics - the fact that he tends to get the conclusion more accurately than he does the argument for the conclusion. Again, this excerpt offers a hint of this by spelling out that the conclusion of the economic effects of the union drive of the 1940s, which is more generally accepted economic history.

Still, I can't help but wonder as I read this: Is Krugman really prepared to suggest that what we really need today to alleviate income disparities is a couple of major wars and another economic depression? Hmmm ... might want to wait and see how things go over the next few years before slamming him on that point. Still, I'd at least like to think there'd be a better way. We'll see if Krugman gets to that later in the book.

Ch. 3 The Great Compression
(pages 49-51)

But if there's a single reason blue-collar workers did so much better in the fifties than they had in the twenties, it was the rise of unions.

At the end of the twenties, the American union movement was in retreat. Major organizing attempts failed, partly because employers successfully broke strikes, partly because the government cony came down on the side of the employers, arresting union organizers and deporting them if, as was often the case, they were foreign born. Union membership, which had surged during World War I, fell sharply thereafter. By 1930 only a bit more than 10 percent of nonagricultural workers were unionized, a number roughly comparable to the unionized share of private-sector workers today. Union membership continued to decline for the first few years of the depression, reaching a low point in 1933.

But under the New Deal unions surged in both membership and power. Union membership tripled from 1933 to 1938, then nearly doubled again by 1947. At the end of World War II more than a third of nonfarm workers were members of unions - and many others were paid wages that, explicitly or implicitly, were set either to match union wages or to keep workers happy enough to forestall union organizers.

Why did union membership surge? That's the subject of a serious debate among economists and historians.

One story about the surge in union membership gives most of the credit (or blame, depending on your perspective) to the New Deal. Until the New Deal the federal government was a reliable ally of employers seeking to suppress union organizers or crush existing unions. Under FDR it became, instead, a protector of workers' right to organize, Roosevelt's statement on signing the Fair Labor Relations Act in 1935, which established the National Labor Relations Board, couldn't have been clearer: "This act defines, as a part of our substantive law, the right of self-organization of employees in industry for the purpose of collective bargaining, and provides methods by which the government can safeguard that legal right." Not surprisingly, many historians argue that this reversal in public policy toward unions caused the great union surge.

An alternative story, however, places less emphasis on the role of government policy and more on the internal dynamic of the union movement itself. Richard Freeman, a prominent labor economist at Harvard, points out that the surge in unionization in the thirties mirrored an earlier surge between 1910 and 1920, and that there were similar surges in other Western countries in the thirties; this suggests that FDR and the New Deal may not have played a crucial role. Freeman argues that what really happened in the thirties was a two-stage process that was largely independent of government action. First the Great Depression, which led many employers to reduce wages, gave new strength to the union movement as angry workers organized to fight pay cuts. Then the rising strength of the union movement became self-reinforcing, as workers who has already joined unions provided crucial support in the form of financial aid, picketers, and so on to other workers seeking to organize.

It's not clear that we have to decide between these stories. The same factors that mobilized workers also helped provide the New Deal with the political power it needed to change federal policy. Meanwhile, even if FDR didn't single-handedly create the conditions for a powerful union movement, the government's shift from agent of the bosses to protector of the workers surely must have helped in the union drive.

Whatever the relative weight of politics, the depression, and the dynamics of organizing in the union surge, everything we know about unions says that their new power was a major factor in the creation of a middle-class society. According to a wide range of scholarly research, unions have two main effects relevant to the Great Compression. First, unions raise average wages for their membership: they also, indirectly and to a lesser extent, raise wages for similar workers, even if they aren't represented by unions, as nonunionized employers try to diminish the appeal of union drives to their workers. As a result unions tend to reduce the gap in earnings between blue-collar workers and higher-paid occupations, such as mangers. Second, unions tend to narrow income gaps among blue-collar workers, by negotiating bigger wage increases for their worst-paid members than for their best-paid members. And nonunion employers, seeking to forestall union organizer, tend to echo this effect. In other words the known effects of union s on wages are exactly what we see in the Great Compression: a rise in the wages of blue-collar workers compared with managers and professionals, and a narrowing of wage differentials among the blue-collar workers themselves.

Still, unionization by itself wasn't enough to bring about the full extent of the compression. The full transformation needed the special circumstances of World War II.

Via that wonderful, newfangled source of in-depth news ... Twitter. In this case, the tweeting of a certain Congressman, John Culberson ...

Local liberal Hou Chron today "11 die in Iraq suicide bombing." Ignoring asusualgood news:WSJ: "US hands over control of Green Zone to Iraq"

asusual, indeed!

Mythology has never been big on factual underpinnings, has it?

ADD-ON: As a bonus for the day, here's some Jon Chait vs Michelle Malkin fun, with a followup post to beg the question: "Why is someone like Michelle Malkin syndicated in an allegedly liberal media?"

» WaPo: Pr. William's Mothers of Dissension (Kristen Mack)

Ever wonder what became of the former Houston Chronicle writer/columnist, Kristen Mack? She's been at the Washington Post for a while now, covering the suburban Virginia beat. Most of her work has been out of the spotlight, but this one covers an interesting storyline that goes beyond her beat ...

The months-long battle over Prince William County's crackdown on illegal immigration has largely subsided, but not before giving rise to a potent new force in local politics: stay-at-home moms.

About a dozen mothers who banded together to battle the county's hard-line position on immigration are now among the area's most civically engaged residents. They attend board meetings and influence votes. They have created an active blog and are serving on county advisory boards and commissions.

And they do much of it with children in tow. Alanna Almeda's girls practice gymnastics in the hall while she listens to county supervisors debate. Elena Schlossberg testifies with her 3-year-old, Rachel, on her hip, and her 6-year-old, Eli, hanging onto her leg.

The women say they provided a tempered, alternative voice when emotions on illegal immigration ran hot. Now they want that approach to permeate other debates on topics that interest them, such as preserving more land in the face of development.

On a Texas note, the Statesman's Laylan Copelin profiled Alexa Wesner back in June.

» Politico: Obama's paparazzi presidency

A two-fer of sorts ...

ABC's Jake Tapper predicted this week that Barack Obama will be "the Britney Spears of 2009."

Considering that Obama was deemed by some to be the Britney Spears of 2008, it wasn't much of a leap.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the cover of Us Weekly. While Obama's political opponents were able to use his star power against him during the campaign -- remember John McCain's "Celeb" ad? -- the entertainment press's fixation with the president-elect seems to be helping him as he prepares to take office.

With a faction of compliant, adulatory and skin-deep chroniclers added to the media mix, Obama has found a consistent wing of support, one that can be used to upend the traditional political media apparatus, bringing new story lines to the fore and changing the game of how a president is covered.

So People magazine chooses to put Obama on the cover at the outset of his term. Clearly, this means he's just going to use his celebrity to goad the public to enact his will. Clearly.

How every New Year's Eve should be celebrated ... as it was 20 years ago today:

(Ed. note ... Reb Beach rocks on guitar!)

And with that ... to all, have a Happy New Year!

» AP: NASA chief's wife to Obama: Don't fire my husband

This is just embarrassing ...

Late on Christmas Eve, one last wish was sent, by e-mail: Please let NASA Administrator Michael Griffin keep his job. It was from his wife.

Rebecca Griffin, who works in marketing, sent her message with the subject line "Campaign for Mike" to friends and family. It asked them to sign an online petition to President-elect Barack Obama "to consider keeping Mike Griffin on as NASA Administrator."

She wrote, "Yes, once again I am embarrassing my husband by reaching out to our friends and 'imposing' on them.... And if this is inappropriate, I'm sorry."

The petition drive, which said the President George W. Bush appointee "has brought a sense of order and purpose to the U.S. space agency," was organized by Scott "Doc" Horowitz of Park City, Utah, an ex-astronaut and former NASA associate administrator.

A cash-strapped NASA last week also sent -- by priority mail costing $6.75 a package -- copies of a new NASA book called "Leadership in Space: Selected Speeches of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, May 2005-October 2008."

Honestly, if Michael Griffin had just planned got the transition smartly and gone away quietly into the Bush administration's good night, I don't think many people would care one way or the other about his term. But the way he's closing out his time may find it's way into textbooks.

Steve Benen takes note of the graf/quote suggesting Griffin should have played this like Robert Gates and just kept quiet. I'm not sure that I agree that there's a major difference in methodology. Griffin himself has kept fairly quiet (so far as I've followed any news on the matter). Gates's method is to actually have opinion leaders make the case for his indispensable-ness. That's pretty much the same thing Mrs. Griffin is doing. Just that she's not an op-ed writer for a major national newspaper. She's the wife of a federal bureaucrat who likely realizes they'll have to uproot the family in a few short weeks unless a miracle happens.

I've said it once, I'll say it again ... anyone who craves power this badly shouldn't have it. Griffin is quickly joining the lower echelon of Bush officials with his (and his wife's) recent acts. It's not going to get any better when his replacement realizes what a dysfunctional agency they're getting thanks to his time in office. On the plus side, at least NASA won't be responsible for work in national emergencies ... they'll just threaten to drain money needlessly from the federal budget.

Rachel explains ...

I've grown to enjoy what Yammer can do for some forms of inter-office communication, so I'm not one to entirely knock the capability of Twitter to serve a useful purpose in terms of broader communication.

Still ... I'm not a fan of Twitter. Yet.

I do plug in a few TwitteRSSes into Google Reader, though. So maybe it's a matter of time. For now, I'm just torn between seeing it as the CB Radio of the internet (ie - short term fad) or being merely a niche form of communication (think IMing compared to phone calls).

What I don't see now and take some issue with is the description of Twittering as "micro-blogging." And for much the same reason that Maddow harps on. Got a thought? Organize it a little. There's a time and place for immediate, insanely-short-form writing. But I don't see the organizational benefits anywhere in Twitter for that.

SIDENOTE: Of tangential interest to this is this good read in the NYT on the hidden/unaccounted-for costs of text messaging. First rule of business is that if there's any black box that the beancounters aren't allowed to look at ... there's probably something worth looking at.

» Chron: UH tops Air Force at Armed Forces

Here's hoping the neighborhood C-store isn't out of Shiner Bock by the time I swing by ... I need to celebrate. As far as the outcomes go, it's a great end of the year for Houston-area college football. This particular game was painful to watch, though. Beall and Keenum were mostly fine and well. But this would have been a 49-21 game if we were firing on all cylinders. Instead, we end two different drives at inside the Air Force 5 - once at the end of Q2 and another resulting in a touchback due to a fumble into the endzone.

I'm not a fan of the current era of 34 bowl games (3/4 of them meaningless), but I'll take the win. I'm sure there's some measure of grace on this point that will result from fans of either Connecticut or Buffalo who feel the same after one of those teams emerges victorious from the International Bowl on January 3rd.

The grand experiment begins. My Amazon bounty and BookSwim haul are both set to arrive this week ... possibly late today. So I've got a fresh stack of eight books to see how much I can work in for what I'd like to get done in a month. And I don't really have a clue which one I want to crack open first:

» Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Eric Beinhocker)
» Metroburbia, USA (Paul Knox)
» Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God (Greg Boyd)
» Luke for Everyone (Tom Wright)
» Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Klyne Snodgrass)
» A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (Glenn Greenwald)
» Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty (Muhammad Yunus)
» The Conscience of a Liberal (Paul Krugman)

The Tom Wright book is really a study aid, so that's an ongoing thing. So really, I guess it's seven books. I'm not thrilled that BookSwim is sending me nothing from my original top picks, but they've just added a feature where you can guarantee one book out of your queue to arrive in the next batch. I'll be adapting heavily to that.

In the meantime, my decision-set for first read out of the box(es) are as follows:

Metroburbia, USA at least covers a topic I'm dying to read more on and Knox's take on the growth of modern suburbs looks like an interesting read - perhaps almost as much philosophical as it appears analytical.

Repenting of Religion is a Greg Boyd book and I'm dying to dive into something by Boyd. I'll have to take a more thorough browse of the book once in hand before determining whether or not I'm dying to dive into this particular book, though.

The Conscience of a Liberal wasn't high on my list from BookSwim, but Krugman is usually a good enough read to make quick work of this.

With a little luck, I'll get back into the habit of posting some excerpts to either echo or argue with. I don't know that that qualifies as a New Year's resolution, but it's a good practice to get into when possible.

Klyne Snodgrass's Stories with Intent is the primary interest out of this list, but it's a hefty read and I'd prefer to knock a book or two off the checklist before spending more quality time with that one.

UNBOXING UPDATE: Just got everything but a stray delivery of the Snodgrass book. BookSwim's stuff came out at what I'd probably call "library-grade" wear & tear. Not unexpected and not a huge detriment in the case of the three books in hand right now. The return setup is interesting in it's minimalism - a prepaid label and a big, sealable white bag. Who woulda guessed my experience in web retail would come in handy?

Now the challenge is to limit how much I take home tonight for a first read.

Congrats to Team Hooter on their big win in front of the equally big home crowd.

Coogs kickoff at 11am Texas Time. Thank goodness my PC's TV card lets me work and watch at the same time.

» WaPo: Humbled By Our Ignorance (Robert Samuelson)

Some good economic lessons in here. Among the highlights that I think warrant some attention is Samuelson's first point:

It was once believed that the crisis of "subprime" mortgages -- loans to weaker borrowers -- would be limited, because these loans represent only 12 percent of all home mortgages. Even better, they were widely held, diluting losses to individual banks and investors.

Wrong. Subprime mortgage losses (20 percent are delinquent) triggered a full-blown financial crisis. Confidence evaporated, because subprime loans were embedded in complex securities whose values and ownership were hard to determine. Similar doubts afflicted other bonds. Demand for all these securities shriveled. Lenders hoarded cash and favored safe U.S. Treasuries. Because investment banks and others relied on short-term debt (a.k.a. "leverage"), a loss of confidence and credit threatened failure. Lehman Brothers failed. The financial system had overborrowed and underestimated risk.

This is just another point which should erode away the myth that all of our problems were caused by a few housekeepers owning five pieces of Manhattan property before finding themselves under water. If a mere 2.5% of mortgages went belly-up, that sort of math doesn't freeze up credit markets. The securitization of those mortgages - and the relative lack of regulation to the point where nobody really knows which parts of which mortgages underlie which bonds ... now that's a problem that'll freeze up credit markets.

Wayne Slater makes what is probably just a throwaway point - that George W. Bush is still pretty popular in the Republican enclave of Highland Park, Texas.

Not that there was much doubt in my mind that Highland Park and University Park will be the last holdouts in Dallas County's continuing march to blue, but I thought I'd do a little fact-checking to see what the math was.

Basically, I've got GIS info good for three comparison points: 1994, 2004, and 2008. 1994 represents the first election Bush stood for in Texas. While 2008 doesn't exactly capture Bush's personal ranking, it's worth looking at.

1994 - Ann Richards ... 24.9%

2004 - John Kerry ..... 21.5%

2008 - Barack Obama ... 27.7%

For further analysis, it might be helpful to add in a control case. In this instance, the results of Democratic nominee, Lupe Valdez, in her 2004 and 2008 campaigns for Dallas County Sheriff.

2004 - Lupe Valdez .... 20.1%

2008 - Lupe Valdez .... 18.4%

Now we've got an interesting set of data. Highland Park's overall turnout decreased slightly in 2008 from 2004 by a modest amount. Relevant only in the context of the overall turnout rising. But also to underscore that Obama's improved performance did not come here from higher turnout. And while it might be a plausible theory to suggest that dampened turnout here might account for some of the improvement his numbers saw over Kerry, the returns for Lupe Valdez suggest that this isn't quite the case.

In short, we've either got some honest-to-goodness Bush fatigue at work here or we've got a case of suburban support for Obama (or maybe an instance of suburban disdain with Sarah Palin?). This isn't the biggest needle-moving shift in the political world, but it's a start. Even for Highland Park.

Precincts analyzed:

Fitting with the post below, this one's from the era when Satch had hair. 1988 to be precise.

Joe Satriani: "Memories"

Kuff makes note of my turn on the Hair Balls blogger roundup tour and states: "They should have asked him more questions about cheesy 80s hair bands, but you can't have everything."

I'm not sure what possible questioning there could be. The era of hard rock as witnessed in the 80s is simply the best musical artform ever. But just to satisfy the demand on this topic, here's a brief rundown of this writer's musical preference over time:

1978 ... Mom & Dad finally cave and get me a new stereo. I suddenly discover the need to hit the record store and get some LPs to play. Fortunately, Christmas also arrived with fresh copies of Nick Gilder's "City Nights" and Bonnie Tyler's "It's A Heartache." To date, both are among my favorites. Particularly Gilder ... I can put on the re-released CD and listen to it all the way through without it feeling the least bit dated.

1979ish ... Various influences evolve. The local radio station in Indianola/Sunflower, MS is WNLA. Back then, it played a mix of popular music - what I like to call the Donnie & Marie mix, a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll. For some reason, I remember a whole lot of Anne Murray songs. Whenever mom drove us kids around, it usually involved a lot of Gatlin Brothers on the 8-track player. Be happy that none of that stuck with me.

I remember begging Mom & Dad to stop at Peaches records every time that one was passed. For some reason, I also remember we visited a music store in Jackson, MS where I saw what looked like a hundred Les Paul guitars hanging from the racks. Right then and there, I registered my first request for a guitar. Mom said no. Child abuse if there ever was such a thing.

1980ish ... new wave. Take one look at Debbie Harry from this era and tell me how you can't be a fan? TBS's "Friday Night Videos" and the nascent MTV would aid and abet this interest. I remember really being into Men at Work around this time, as well as loving Synchronicity by The Police. The Ramones are critical to this period of time, too. Blame Roger Corman for that. Later in this era, I remember being big into Missing Persons. Take one look at Dale Bozzio from this era and tell me how you can't be a fan? Turns out that the band's guitarist, Warren Cuccurullo is a fantastic guitarist. I don't doubt that that had an impact on what was next.

1983 ... the US Festival. New Wave day was fun, but Heavy Metal day was better. The lesson from this show was that it's one thing to make a nice video, but it's something else entirely to put on a stage performance that's just as entertaining and has to be replicated night in, night out. The gap between bands like The Police and Quiet Riot was filled in with listening to a lot of my brother's Billy Squier, Sammy Hagar and April Wine albums as well as a natural interest in the music of Queen and Cheap Trick. After watching the video Van Halen had for Unchained, I determined to get a guitar at some point. To date, it's still one of my favorite songs to break in a guitar with on those rare moments when I pick mine up. I also believe that it's songs like that that deserve a volume knob that goes up to 11.

Interregnum ... I remember a lot of Six Flags Arlington concerts from this period. Cheap Trick was the first and Heart was somewhere in this mix, I think.

1984 ... first arena concert I went to that didn't involve me being dragged against my will. Sammy Hagar, with Krokus opening up. I loved both acts and still do. No apologies. I was so mesmerized that I ended up missing the exit back to Euless and had to call mom from somewhere in Denton for gas to get back home. I remember passing up a $15 ticket to see Ratt & Twisted Sister at the Bronco Bowl. Been kicking myself every day since.

Bought a guitar around this time, picked up a copy of Ozzy Osbourne's "Blizzard of Oz" and studied it relentlessly. Got wind of the neoclassical guitar fad and bought a lot of Deep Purple material. The solo from "Highway Star" was the first one I ever learned. Eventually learned enough of the solo to Ozzy's "Crazy Train" to fudge my way through it. Went through the usual back catalog of guitar greats to figure out what style I enjoyed the most. Determined I was more of a Jeff Beck fan than, say Clapton or Hendrix.

Interregnum ... Yngwie Malmsteen. The neoclassical style would dominate my musical attention for the rest of the decade. Also met Diamond Darrell from Pantera around this time and worked with a few of his high school classmates. Just wish I'd had the chance to see them perform live just once in their glam era. Thank goodness for YouTube!

1985/86 ... a couple of false starts at putting a garage band together. Biggest audience was for a party on the eve of the 1986 Texas Jam. I remember playing Dokken tunes for some reason. For all I know, we probably played "Alone Again" a dozen times. We were not good, the audience was forgiving, and yours truly learns when you put a guitar in anyone's hands, they immediately become a lot more attractive to members of the opposite sex.

The earlier influences still linger. Jason and the Scorchers are a nice combination of several of them in one band. Similarly, John Cougar, Tom Petty are in heavy rotation. The Fixx seems like the only new wave band to survive this era. Helps to have a first-rate guitarist in the band.

College years ... pretty much the start of my decline in playing. Just didn't have the time. Being a music snob was a lot easier. The family moved back to Houston around this time, too. I remember having an offer to join a band while meeting a high school friend at the gas station we hit as we were on our way to Houston. Timing for ya!

Somehow, some way, Tiffany also made it onto my radar. Not because of the insanely cheesy videos or marketing, but probably just due to the fact that she was a redhead. Maybe it's just coincidental, but I also remember realizing that Kimmy Gibbler sure did grow up on TV around this time. They just don't make TV characters like that anymore and it's high time for an Andrea Barber comeback if you ask me. Really has nothing to do with music ... just an excuse to work in another Kimmy Gibbler mention.

The Houston Years, early edition ... became a born-again Christian around this time, so there was a great deal of Christian heavy metal added to the collection. Stryper and White Cross were favorites, but I can't admit to wanting to play a lot of their material. I was probably headed more into the instrumental stuff at this point and buying every CD from Shrapnel records. At some point, I got Steve Vai's "Flex-able" and realized I couldn't play anything off of it if I wanted to. By the time I spun Joe Satriani's "Not of This Earth" and "Surfing With the Alien," I realized there's nothing I could even think to say musically that wasn't being said right there. At this point, I start looking into plans to convert my guitar into a coffee table.

The Early 90s ... Grunge has two effects - one, to make it harder for bands I like to get an album on the market; two, to send them touring through smaller clubs rather than arenas. Quiet Riot was the first band I saw at (then) Backstage. Nearly got into a fight with a biker and loved the place ever since. Tried to get into the local acts at the time (Stride, Z-Lot-Z, Midnight Circus), but it was a stretch to really be a full-fledged fan. I remember when Britny Fox came to town multiple times after replacing their singer and putting out what was really their best CD ever. They played a few different clubs that I recall and the crowds weren't always that great. But they played the show with the same level of energy you'd imagine that they'd play for in front of 15,000. I was never a big Britny Fox fan back in the day. But at this point, I determine that the worst glam metal band is a better show than any other band. I'm rarely disappointed in this conclusion.

The Late 90s ... harder and harder to find music I liked, plus I had a crush on Trisha Yearwood. So there's some country in the catalog thanks to this era. Mostly just female vocalists and nearly all of it music that would have passed for rock back in the 70s. I remember being big into Trisha and Martina McBride, but I ended up stumbling onto Joy Lynn White from this period of time, and my interest in Carrie Underwood is probably an offshoot of it as well.

Whenever it was that The Donnas saved Rock & Roll ... I remember strolling through Borders on Westheimer/Gessner and seeing the cover of The Donnas' "Get Skintight." The obvious homage to The Ramones was not lost on me, so I spun it. About three chords into the first track, I'm seen running to the register with my newfound punk bounty and go on to uncover a lot of punk stuff that sounds remarkably similar to early-80s hard rock.

» The Philadelphia Eagles make the platyoff cut with a nice win over the Cowboys. 44-6. That, my friends, is a choke on the part of the Cowboys. Nothing less. But hats off to Donovan McNabb for responding impressively to his benching earlier in the season. I'll chalk it up to some level of success if Kevin Kolb's first Super Bowl ring comes while he's still a backup.

» The Texans actually succeeded in playing the spoiler today. That's not entirely unimpressive.

» Pennington > Favre this week. Right about now, the Jets brass have got to be doing a little soul-searching.

» The 11-5 Patriots miss the playoffs while the 8-8 Chargers make the cut. Just another divisional anomaly to chalk up to modern sports. That's a shame since it would have been nice to see what Matt Cassel could do in a playoff run.

Altogether, this looks like an odd playoff field for me to find a rooting interest. The default is probably the Eagles, but it might be sorta fun to see Kurt Warner get another trophy and the Ravens defense is always impressive to watch.

» BOR: Dallas Mayor Considers U.S. Senate Run (David Mauro)

While I'm in a Leppert frame of mind:

Personally, I do not think at this point Leppert is a very viable Republican candidate. It would be wise to complete at least one term as mayor before looking statewide.

» DemStrat: Are Politico's headlines written by Republicans? -"We Report, You Decide."

James Vega does the homework so I don't have to and puts together a masterful bit of headline score-keeping that demonstrates what would certainly be called "bias" if the party labels were reversed.

And just for funsies, why not a "reverse score-keeping" example. I think Evan's Christmas Eve post takes the prize:

Is it fair to say that the Dallas news media is not a fan of Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert?

In this case, the entirety of the "Dallas news media" is, in actuality, a Dallas Morning News City Hall beat writer posting on the paper's blog and merely tracks Leppert's similar coyness in his run for Mayor of Dallas ... a race which *ahem* the paper endorsed his campaign.

UPDATE: A recent Politico rant warrants an addition to the mockery ...

The media glare, the constant security appendage and the sheer production that has become a morning jog or a hankering for an ice cream cone - it's been closing in on Barack Obama for some time.

Now the president-elect appears increasingly conscious of the confines of his new position, bristling at the routine demands of press coverage and beginning to chafe at boundaries that are only going to get smaller.

Obama even took the unusual step Friday morning of leaving behind the pool of reporters assigned to follow him, taking his daughters to a nearby water park without them. It was a breach of longstanding protocol between presidents (or presidents-elect) and the media, that a gaggle of reporters representing television, print and wire services is with his motorcade at all times.

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear this was ghost-written by the NYT's Patrick Healy. Except Healy would have added a graf to quote the person manning the bird cages just to show Obama he can get a source with proximity.

» WSJ: Sen. Reid Hits the Ground Running in Uphill Re-Election Bid (T.W. Farnam)

Oh noes! Harry Reid is a dead man walking ... depending on your definition of "uphill" that is.

Sen. Harry Reid will command the biggest party majority of any Senate leader in a quarter century when the new Congress convenes in January. But the Nevada Democrat is already worried about his own re-election fight in 2010.

Sen. Reid, perhaps the most-vulnerable Democrat who will face re-election in a midterm race that is likely to favor his party once again, began interviewing campaign managers last week. The Senate majority leader also recently stepped up fund-raising.

Errrr, coupla problems. The only announced opponent has been indicted for "suspect accounting practices during his time as state treasurer." The other possible candidate just lost his Congressional seat in the 2008 elections and trails Reid in head-to-head polling by six points.

If this is the path some GOP bloggers see back to 50, their time in the wilderness might be a lengthier stay.

» DMN: Editorial: Craig Watkins is the 2008 Texan of the Year

A pretty good pick if you ask me. Even if there are others who may have had a broader impact throughout the state (T. Boone Pickens, for instance, was one of the paper's five finalists), Watkins is worth the writeup given here.

Funny stuff via the Chron's David Barron ...

A Georgia family equipped with one of Arbitron's portable people meters apparently spent a lot of time listening to New York station WBLS during a recent visit to the Big Apple. Accordingly, given that Arbitron weights the listening habits of a few listeners to reflect the entire market, WBLS was credited with a weekly cumulative audience of 30,600 listeners in Atlanta.

"The fact four people can represent 30,000 and a station thousands of miles away ... shows the thinness of the ice on which the entire industry is skating," Cox Radio CEO Bob Neil, a longtime critic of PPM, told Inside Radio. "It's embarrassing to our industry and an insult to the intelligence of any advertiser that cares about accountability."

Arbitron did not reply to Inside Radio's request for a comment.

I've seen some good and not-so-good arguments for the rating method. In general, this problem doesn't sound like the primary fault is the method, so much as the size of the rating universe. If the pool of individuals doing the rating were double, this wouldn't be as noticable of a problem. Granted, this raises the question of whether the Arbitron business model can support a doubling of raters and it may be just as easy to limit the devices within a certain geographic range that would have allowed the family in question to have their New York listening habits measure toward the New York market. I've got GPS in my google phone, so I'm not thinking this would be terribly difficult.

Another interesting bit of numbers to satisfy the marketing junkie within ...

ESPN averaged 8.67 million households and 11.9 million viewers for Monday Night Football, making it the top-rated series on cable TV this year. ABC's Saturday night college football games averaged 5.6 million households and eight million viewers, up 22 percent and 24 percent, respectively, from a year ago. Texas-Texas Tech averaged 8.59 million households and was the top-rated game of the year. ...

That UT-Tech game was just before Election Day. I'm still not sure whether the KTRK ad sales guy was being truthful when I was told there were absolutely no last-minute spots to get anything on ABC, let alone that game.

I believe this is the first time my sidebar has been credited with anything. What next? I guess I can always aspire to having my Facebook page break news.

» Hair Balls: Blog on Blog: Greg's Opinion's Greg Wythe

And just like that ... 15 nanoseconds off of my fame clock are gone.