Kristy's Blog

The old raising then lowering technique?

CNN Prediction

As Joe Biden settles into debate prep mode this week ahead of Thursday night’s Vice-Presidential debate in St. Louis, campaign aides are actively playing up Sarah Palin’s debating skills. Biden’s spokesman called Palin “a leviathan of forensics,” a classic example of the campaign tactic of raising the expectations of their opponent and lowering their own.

“She’s very skilled and she’ll be well-prepared,” said Barack Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod Sunday night, flying with Biden back to Delaware to help him get ready.

“As you saw at the convention she can be very good. So, I think it would be foolish to assume that this isn’t going to be a really challenging debate. We’re preparing for that, on that assumption.”

Personally, I think they’re sharpening the knives. The Saturday Night Live writing crew is probably salivating. I intend to pop popcorn to watch the debate.

There comes a point in your life when you realize

who matters,

who never did,

who won’t anymore…

and who always will.

So, don’t worry about people from your past,

there’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your future.

The Bailout package. Stem the blood flow and do fine surgery later. How more banks need to fail before action is taken???!! Quit posturing and do something!

From the Wall Street Journal:

The country has learned in recent weeks the price of financial failure. Now it will learn the price of political failure.
The collapse of the financial-rescue package in the House on Monday may well be reversed, at some point. Discouraged House leaders yesterday sounded as if they hoped the Senate could lead Congress back out of the wilderness in the next few days, giving the plan a second crack at passage.

WSJ Executive Washington Editor Jerry Seib gives his take on Monday’s House vote on the bailout and its effects on the market, saying “we’re now going to learn the consequences of political failure.” (Sept. 29)

But even if senators manage to revive the bailout plan, a great deal of damage already has been done:

American voters, who didn’t like the plan in the first place, will like even less the discovery that Washington’s response to their concerns was to collapse into genuine dysfunction. Three-quarters of Americans already think the country is on the wrong track, and the same share disapproves of the job Congress is doing. Before Monday, it seemed unlikely those numbers could go much higher. They can, and now probably will.

Beyond that, the hope that Washington had gotten the message in this campaign year that Americans were yearning for an end to gridlock and partisan warfare has been shattered. There will be plenty of blame to go around. House Republicans demanded changes in the plan last week, got some of them, and yesterday delivered just 65 votes — a third of their members — for a rescue package that their party’s president, their party’s Treasury Secretary and their party’s House and Senate leadership all called vital to the nation.

Then on Monday, it was Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s turn to hurt the effort. She chimed in with a bizarrely timed and distinctly partisan floor speech blaming Republicans for the market mess, just minutes before her party needed scores of Republican votes to make the bailout work. Whether she turned votes against the plan, or gave Republicans a convenient excuse to vote against it, was being hotly debated in the Capitol late Monday. But either way, the atmosphere is even more sour as a result.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, right, speaks on the financial bailout package Monday, which the House rejected. The vote came as representatives, including Mr. Hoyer, face coming elections.

As it happens, Democratic leaders also failed to convince 95 of their own members to back the rescue plan, showing that the splintering of support was widespread in the halls of Congress.

Now, though, the consequences of simultaneous political and economic breakdown ripple well beyond Wall Street and Washington. The effects could well be global.

The U.S. — meaning both parties and the public and private sectors — has to worry about what global investors make of the picture of disarray they now see in the U.S. That’s a crucial consideration because the U.S. now depends on foreign capital to finance both a trade deficit of more than $700 billion and a $400 billion federal budget deficit. Today, foreign lenders hold about half of America’s public debt, and the nation relies on them to finance more than 70% of its new debt, the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation estimates.

The reason foreign investors have been willing to pony up this cash has been their basic, longstanding belief that the U.S. system — financial and political — makes America the ultimate safe haven.

At what point does that basic belief start to erode? And what are the consequences of that possibly happening? The question is even more acute because of the likelihood that even more foreign capital will be needed, at least in the short term, to help the American government finance the very bailout now being debated.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, is campaigning on a strong antitax platform. That includes extending President Bush’s income-tax cuts, raising the exemption for dependents and cutting the corporate income-tax rate.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, is calling for higher taxes on high-income Americans — families making more than $250,000 a year and singles making more than $200,000. But he is also proposing tax cuts for lower- and middle-income households.

Sen. McCain stepped up his attack this week when he said that the Obama plan’s “billions of dollars in higher taxes would kill jobs.” An Obama aide responded that “Sen. McCain’s tax policy is an exercise in unprecedented fiscal recklessness” that would “explode the deficit.”

—- Original Message —-
From: Donna
Subject: FW: FW: Appeal for help!

Let me know if you know anyone who would like a cat.

—- Original Message —-
From: Kristy Welsh
Subject: FW: FW: Appeal for help!

Benny has vetoed this.

—- Original Message —-
From: Spunjawa
Subject: Re: FW: Appeal for help!
Date: Monday, September 22, 2008, 11:06 AM

I suspected this might happen so I have organized a Filibuster against Benny. Jerry Mandering is going to be there. We are confident that Benny will not receive enough backing for cloture. We have the Majority Whip on our side. Ex Officio will not help Benny this time. Benny needs to realize that even though you can put lipstick on a cat, it’s still a cat 😛

—- Original Message —-
From: Dutch
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 12:43:18 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Appeal for help!

Here Here!
I second the motion set forth by the Honorable Spunjawa!
BANISHMENT for Benny and more lipstick for CATS!

Dutch

—- Original Message —-
From: Spunjawa
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 12:51:21 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Appeal for help!
All,

I can only hope the readers of this letter are as outraged as I am at Benny. It is requisite, even in this summary sketch, to go back a few years to see how if I were to compile a list of Benny’s forays into espionage, sabotage, and subversion, it would fill an entire page and perhaps even run over onto the following one. Such a list would surely make every sane person who has passed the age of six realize that I must ask that Benny’s stooges treat the disease, not the symptoms.

I know they’ll never do that so here’s an alternate proposal: They should, at the very least, back off and quit trying to corrupt our youth. And, more important, we are at war. Don’t think we’re not just because you’re not stepping over dead cats in the streets. We’re at war with Benny’s benighted crotchets. We’re at war with his quixotic dissertations. And we’re at war with his manipulative, feline jokes.

As in any war, we ought to be aware of the fact that when Benny’s bestial utterances are translated into plain, words-mean-things English, he appears to be saying that might makes right. For me, this judgmental moonshine serves only to emphasize how with Benny so forcefully turning knuckle-draggers loose against us good citizens, things are starting to come to a head. That’s why we must make him pay for his crimes against the feline species.

To wrap up, I’ll just hit the key elements of this letter one last time.

First, we must stick to our guns and not let Benny and his goons convince us that all it takes to solve our social woes are shotgun marriages, heavy-handed divorce laws, and a return to some mythical 1950s Shangri-la.

Second, the ripples of reaction to his tirades have spread, giving rise to universal calls to make a cause célèbre out of exposing his platitudes for what they really are.

Finally, a doggie with a functioning brain does not display an irreconcilable hatred toward all kitties.
Bill

But on the other hand, I like it. There is something soothing about it.

This sounds like a winner….

I think I’m going to the next one. What to bring????

Seen on T-shirts at a Yahoo Open Hack Conference:

It’s been so long since I interviewed, but I always hate it – and I am not a good interviewer. Here’s from Tech Republic:

1. Bad non-verbal cues. I know it’s a cliché, but a firm handshake, good eye contact and sitting up straight in your chair really make a good impression. Myself, I don’t understand why someone can’t make the effort to grip my hand – it’s shows an utter lack of effort. Even women. Can’t make eye contact – what does this person have to hide? Or are they so shy that co-workers will run over them? Slumped down in the chair telegraphs disinterest in the job.

2. Talking too much or not enough. Now it’s your turn to watch the non-verbal cues of your interviewer. Watch the interviewer’s eyes. If you’re talking and the interviewer is starting to fidget or yawn, wind it up. On the other hand, if the interviewer pauses after you answer a question, then that may mean he was expecting more. If the interviewer is leaning forward towards you, this shows a lot of interest.

3. Not asking questions. I always hated the part where an interviewer asks if I have any questions. Sometimes you can’t possibly know enough just from an interview to be able to form any questions. Sometimes the interviewer has been so thorough in his descriptions of the job and company that there doesn’t seem to be any more to ask. To show you were listening to the interviewer and not just forming your next response, ask something realted to what the interviewer has said during the interview. Another source of questions is the company’s website – which implies that you did more than make a cursory glance..

Friends are such an amazing support system. I received all kinds of ideas for cheering me up. One email:

Things that make me feel better:

• I turn off the tv because nothing depresses me further.
• I take the dog for a walk and enjoy the clouds or the moon.
• I call a friend I know will make me laugh
• I put the soundtrack from Hedwig and the Angry Inch on, really loud!
• I tell myself, “Life IS a dump, stupid, most people just never notice” and that always makes me feel a little better. Perspective, and all that.

Three things that are proven NOT to make me feel better:

• Shopping.
• Chocolate.
• Tequila.

I must say, that the things that don’t make her feel better only make me feel good in the short run, so maybe I will agree that they are not good fixes.