BrianShelledy.com

All over the news lately we have heard about the crisis in the financial market and the need for government to act.  There has been a massive amount of fear generated about the possibility of a global depression should some of these massive financial institutions fail.  Fortunately, our government is on the job.  Recently, there was an $85 billion, billion, bailout of AIG by the Fed.  Now we’re looking at a firehouse passing of a $700 billion bailout of a number of these institutions that made poor business decisions.  Of course, the media is casting a dire but rosy picture of this whole situation, and the line is that “we don’t want to do it, but we have to”.  That’s all well and good, but there’s a few things that I think we are missing out of this picture. 

First off, let’s take a look at this $85 billion bailout of AIG.  The key here is that we spent $85 billion dollars of “taxpayer money” that… and here’s the kicker… nobody voted on.  Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke and his group basically signed this money over.  And who oversees the Fed?  Where are the checks and balances for them?  There are none.  In fact, we don’t even vote on the person who is arguably the most powerful economic figure in the United States, if not the world.  Each of the candidates made their point about whether bailing out AIG was the right thing to do, but in reality, even the real president didn’t have an official say in it.  Even if Bush wanted to bail out AIG, he’d still have to push a bill through congress to do it.  So where is the accountability for Ben Bernanke?

Second, in the bailout deal, the United States became an 80% stakeholder in a private company.  Wait a second here… doesn’t that sound dangerously close to socialism?  Some of the democrats want to trade help with bad morgages for shares in the company that uses the help.  This is supposed to be used to pay back “the taxpayer” when the crisis is over.  But what happens when a shareholder vote comes up?  Will “the taxpayer” get a vote in what happens to the company?  Who will be in charge of handling this sort of issue? 

I use the phrase “the taxpayer” in quotes because, in reality, we aren’t really paying for this bill.  In fact, all of the actual “taxpayer” dollars have already been spent.  We were facing a budget deficit before all this came around.  So where does all this money come from that we’re going to use to pay for this bill?  The answer is the same that it has always been when the government needs money.  They issue treasury bills.  And with all of America’s financial institutions in a bind, do you know who is picking up the majority of these bills?  China. 

Thanks to Democratic party roadblocks, we’re already sending $700 billion dollars a year overseas to countries that don’t like us very much for our oil needs.  Now, we’re going to borrow an extra $700 billion from one of the last bastions of communism to support the greatest socialist initiative that the United States has ever put forward.  In fact, the Chinese are already financing a large portion of our country’s national debt, the cieling for which will be raised to over $11.3 trillion dollars as part of the proposed bill.  If we wanted to foot the bill for this to the taxpayer, everyone would have to write a check for over $3000.  So how exactly are we going to be saving our economy by bailing out these irresponsible companies?  That’s right, we’re going to be shoring up investor confidence. 

Wait a second.  Investor confidence?  The reason these companies are falling on wall street is because there is no confidence in their activities.  Now, when our government steps in with a giant pile of money, we’re going to expect them to turn around and make good on it?  Basically, the government is saying that it’s OK that you made these mistakes, we’re here to bail you out.  Now, the democrats want to extend the bill to support people that are defaulting on their home loans so they are not foreclosed on.  What?  Is that not a slap in the face to every American who made the dream happen when the time was right?  Who waited until they could actually afford the house and after they bought it, actually made all their payments?   Basically, the government is again sending out positive reinforcement of a negative behavior.  And in the name of “something must be done” we all have to pay for it.  Maybe not now, but in the future we will pay dearly.

Well, our power came back on tonight, and with the tree removal service coming in tomorrow it looks like we’ll be out of this mess.  This has definitely been an educational experience.  We’ve experienced what it is like to be in a hurricane, grown closer to our neighbors, and have a few more stories to tell.  While it’s going to be one of the more expensive weeks we’ve had, I still think we ended up on top.  Anyway, as exciting as it is, I am going to sleep.  Farewell!

Well, things are going well here.  We’re still out of power, but I’m expecting it to come back up within the next 24 hours, as they have it across one of the major streets and ours is next in a logical projection I created in my imagination.  We’ll see how that works out. 

Fortunately, after the storm a cold front came through.  Initially, this created alot of rain and lightning, but now, we’re doing great because it also brought alot of cold air that’s sticking around.  Last night was comfortable for the first time in a while, and eventually I got cold.  We have not had phone service for a while because the batteries that keep it running went out.  Thus, I haven’t been able to update.  Now, however, things are back online.  As far as life without power or plans, we’ve been occuping our time by doing a puzzle and meeting with friends.  Our neighborhood has been meeting every night for dinner, just to gather around a central light and conserve everything. 

School is out for me for the rest of the week, and apparently my brother’s building at UH had part of the roof blown off… his classes are cancelled “until further notice”.

Just to give some of you who are looking at this website some information about how things are going with us, I’m not sure what they are showing on the national news.  We have the local news streaming to us over the internet.  Ironically, our cable is out but the internet is still working! Anyway, we still do not have power yet, and according to the local authorities, our power company has suffered a catastrophic failure which will prevent us from getting power for 2-4 weeks.  This morning, another thunderstorm came through as a result of a cold front, unrelated to the hurricane.  This woke all of us up with some heavy lightning, thunder, and rain.  Fortunately for us, this did not cause us any extra problems, however there is some more significant flooding closer to the cost for our fellow Houstonians. 

Our family is still doing well.  The generator that we were able to purchase is providing us some comfort, and we shared some of that with our neighbors yesterday as we had a sort of hurricane party.   It was good to get together with them and have a outlet for some of the stress associated with some of the damage we sustained.  We also had alot to celebrate as our neighborhood escaped without any injury. 

For now, we’re just taking some time to relax for a little bit, and soon we will get ready to begin cleaning things up.  We have alot of supplies here and we hear that the grocery stores will be opening again soon.  Again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for thinking about us and praying for us.  We believe that we have been truly blessed to escape alot of the damage that our fellow Houstonians and neighbors have experienced.

Tree down in my Front Yard

EDIT: Pictures

EDIT: More Pictures 6:45 PM 9/13/08

Well, if you’ve been paying attention to the news, Hurricane Ike came through the Houston area this weekend.  I have lived here for some years, and I’ve never had a storm this bad. Of course, the only other hurricane we’ve been through was Rita, but we didn’t have any damage then.  As you can see from the picture, though, we have some damage this time.  The tree in the picture used to stand in our front yard, but now it’s fallen down across our driveway.  We had our cars parked in the driveway, and fortunately saw that the tree was going to come down.  We took the risk and moved our cars into the street, and made it ok.  5 minutes later, the tree came down.  While we were outside, we saw that there were a number of trees down on our street.  Also, we have a tree down in our backyard that looks like it crashed through our fence.

The power is out right now, but our recent generator purchase is allowing us access to power, internet, TV and coffee.  It’s been a long night, but it looks like we’re all going to be ok now.  I’ll try and post more pictures as I get them, and post more information as I find it out.

UPDATE: Read more »

This is just Ridiculous.

Today I was looking at the transcripts for various segments of the Rush Limbaugh show - I listen to him in the mornings but usually can only get the first hour before I have to go to class - and I came across an interesting segment on how George Bush and Batman had alot in common.  After seeing the Dark Knight, I look back at the movie and there’s alot of truth to it, in my humble opinion.  As far as whether it was deliberate or not, I leave that to you.  But for your reading pleasure, here’s a couple links for you:

Conservatism and the Dark Knight - Rush

What Bush and Batman Have in Common - Referenced Wall Street Journal Article

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.6, as well as upgrading some of the underlying apps.  Let me know if you run into any issues.

EDIT: I also changed themes. Hope you like it.

Well, what a political race it’s been so far… I thought it’s about time that I weigh in on what I think about what’s going on here.  This is probably the least excited I’ve ever been about an election, not that I’ve been able to participate in that many.  However, looking at this from a conservative point of view, I don’t really see a big win in either candidate.  However, I sill have to vote for McCain I think, because I am frankly scared of what could happen if Obama gets elected. 

As it stands, there are a number of problems with him as a Candidate.  First off, he has no experience.  He has not produced any significant legislation.  As we’ve seen him come up through the ranks of the Democratic party, I think that it’s easy to see how everyone was so easily swayed.  He definitely has a charisma that we haven’t really had much of for a while.  I’ll admit, though Bush does have a few highlights, his speeches are more ridiculed then any president in my lifetime.  However, if you see Obama speaking without a prepared speech and teleprompter, then you might be surprised to find his speaking skills are not what they’ve been said to be.  Read more »

One of the big issues currently on the Democratic Campaign trail is weather or not the votes in the Florida and Michigan state primaries should be counted towards the presidential nomination.  Right now there is a lot of press going back and forth on the issue.  Some people don’t want them to count because the votes were not taken seriously, and in Michigan’s case, Senator Obama was not even on the ballot.  The other side of the ticket is that we shouldn’t disenfranchise Florida and Michigan voters by not counting them. 

Read more »