Later On

Marine life had better evolve damn fast. Les Blumenthal for McClatchy:

With the oceans absorbing more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide an hour, a National Research Council study released Thursday found that the level of acid in the oceans is increasing at an unprecedented rate and threatening to change marine ecosystems.

The council said the oceans were 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution started roughly 200 years ago, and the oceans absorb one-third of today’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Unless emissions are reined in, ocean acidity could increase by 200 percent by the end of the century and even more in the next century, said James Barry, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California and one of the study’s authors.

"Acidification is changing the chemistry of the oceans at a scale and magnitude greater than thought to occur on Earth for many millions of years and is expected to cause changes in the growth and survival of a wide variety of marine organisms, potentially leading to massive shifts in ocean ecosystems," Barry told the Senate Commerce Committee’s Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard Subcommittee on Thursday…

Continue reading.

Marian Wang at ProPublica:

The Wall Street Journal has a noteworthy investigation today, and one that I thought was worth flagging.

Essentially, it found the borrowers whose home mortgages were the underlying collateral in Goldman Sachs’ Abacus 2007-AC1 CDO deal. That’s the CDO that is now the subject of the SEC’s civil-fraud charges against Goldman Sachs.

Finding these homeowners could not have been an easy process. The Journal looked through the Abacus pitchbook and found the 90 bonds that were in the portfolio. Then it matched them with “court records, foreclosure listings, title records, and loan servicing reports” to find the 500,000 mortgages that ultimately, hedge fund manager John Paulson bet against.

But he wasn’t just betting against mortgages. He was betting specifically that those homeowners—or at least most of them—would not be able to pay their mortgages, resulting in losses significant enough to yield big profits through his credit default swap. And he turned out to be right. Many homeowners struggled to pay but couldn’t. Paulson, as a result, made $1 billion off his bet against them.

The Journal found that of the 500,000 mortgages bundled and stuffed into that one CDO, more than half of them are “now in default or foreclosed.” That’s a lot of stories bundled into one complex, failed financial product.

One of those homeowners was a 44-year-old heating and air-conditioning repairman who got into a motorcycle accident in 2006, was unable to find work, and couldn’t afford his mortgage payments. He lost the house to foreclosure in October and plans to move out of his house next week, reports the Journal. Other homeowners had risky loans with adjustable-rate mortgages, and when interest rates floated too high, borrowers couldn’t afford the payments.

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in 48 states had their homes and mortgages bundled into this financial product. The Journal’s work digs past the complexity of the CDO to show that those homeowners’ financial hardship resulted in gain for savvy financial players like Paulson. Paulson, for its part, makes no apologies for its bets, or the fact that it made a profit while others lost their homes. From the Journal:

“There’s no question we made money in these transactions,” said a Paulson spokesman in a statement. “However, all our dealings were through arms-length transactions with experienced counterparties who had opposing views based on all available information at the time. We were straightforward in our dislike of these securities but the vast majority of people in the market thought we were dead wrong and openly and aggressively purchased the securities we were selling.”

Goldman Sachs, which allowed Paulson to help select the CDO portfolio, maintains that it “did not structure a portfolio that was designed to lose money,” and argues that it “lost more than $90 million” on this particular Abacus CDO.

“We wouldn’t have put skin in the game that way if we believed there was something wrong with this transaction,” said Goldman Sachs’ general counsel, Gregory Palm, in a conference call with analysts earlier this week. But news reports point out that Goldman didn’t intend to put its “skin in the game” on this deal. Instead, it had sought buyers in order to offload its stake in the investment almost from the start.

"Profit above all" is the name of the game.

Turkey necks make excellent chili at the rate of 1 turkey neck to 1 qt chili. Today:

1 large onion, chopped

Sauté above in 2 Tbsp olive oil, 1 Tbsp habanero oil until onion begins to brown/caramelize.

Add:

5 cloves garlic, minced
meat from 3 cooked turkey necks*
1 Tbsp Mexican oregano, crushed
1.5 Tbsp Ancho chili powder
1.5 Tbsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground chipotle
Salt & pepper

(The spice measures are very approximate. I just add by sight.)

Continue to sauté for about 4-5 minutes, then add:

2 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes (one can with chipotles, one with roasted garlic)
1 15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz can dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
good dash soy sauce
good dash Worcestershire sauce
dash liquid smoke, if you like

Bring to a boil, then simmer covered over very low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

———————–

* To cook turkey necks: put in a large pot, filled with water to about 2″ above necks. Add spices—some star anise, whole allspice, whole cloves, peppercorns—and a large pinch of salt. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer for three hours. Remove necks from water and, after they have cooled, strip the meat from the bones.

Of course, whenever you cook meat by simmering (whether turkey necks, beef tongue, whole chicken, or whatever), it’s good to include some aromatics in the cooking liquid: onion, carrot, celery, and parsley.

Kevin Hall and Chris Adams reporting for McClatchy:

A Senate panel investigating the causes of the nation’s financial crisis on Thursday unveiled evidence that credit-ratings agencies knowingly gave inflated ratings to complex deals backed by shaky U.S. mortgages because of the fees they earned for giving such investment-grade ratings.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a detailed hearing on Friday, where its chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., will introduce email records in which executives from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service acknowledge compromising the integrity of ratings in order to win business from big Wall Street firms.

"They did it for the big fees they got," Sen. Levin told reporters on Thursday after outlining the broad strokes of what he’d pursue Friday when he puts current and former ratings agency officials on the hot seat.

The documents to be released Friday confirm what a McClatchy investigation revealed last October _ that pressure from top ratings-agency executives to retain market share and the fees that brought meant that ratings on complex deals were malleable. Some fees were as high as $1.4 million.

The agencies rate the quality of financial products such as bonds and serve as guides trusted by investors. Many bonds they rated as top-quality in the recent crisis turned out to be junk. The fallout from their rollover to Wall Street’s financial firms was a housing collapse that triggered a global financial crisis.

In one example obtained by the committee, a Moody’s employee sent an email to …

Continue reading. Of course they would lie in the ratings if it would increase their profits. Without a second thought. If any experience any qualms, they no doubt justified their actions by the thought that the free market would fix any problems.

Typical of a business: Brad Johnson reports at ThinkProgress:

Coal baron Don Blankenship’s Massey Energy has prevented miners from attending funerals of the 29 victims of the killer explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, WV. Massey has taken steps to keep up the mining in the grief-stricken community. The “threat of job loss” from Massey’s non-union mines, “be it spoken or simply understood — has created a culture of fear in some corners of Southern West Virginia, where coal is the only real industry, and Massey is king of the hill”:

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected makeshift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

“They told my husband, ‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re gonna do it,’” the wife of one Massey miner told the Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis, referring to the funerals he’s missed this month for friends who died in the blast. “What else are we gonna do?”

UPDATE: Massey’s board has hired a politically influential Texas public relations firm to manage the increasing criticism for putting coal profits above principles.

From the top:

Pils, 4.0 oz

Futur, 4.3 oz

Vision, 4.4 oz

All weights include the blade. Based on my experience, I would love the Pils with a handle the same shape and diameter as the Futur. The waist of the Futur is at the point of balance (ditto for the Vision), which makes it easy to handle. The waist also provides a good grip regardless of the direction you’re shaving (with, across, and against the grain).

Any of these would be handle to hold with soapy hands, but wet hands (unsoapy) work fine.

The Futur and Vision are, of course, adjustable and the Pils is not: no biggie. I get a terrific shave with the Pils.

UPDATE: I guess we could call these razors the “Quarter Pounders.” The better of my two Apollo Mikrons (Mikroi?) is a “heavyweight” razor, and it runs just 3.3 oz (including blade). The Progress with a metal knob replacing the plastic is 3.4 ounces (with blade) and the Gillette Fat Boy is just barely 2.9 ounces (likewise)—the scale readout kept flicking between 2.8 and 2.9.

Glenn Greenwald:

For those who believe that there are certain types of hypocrisy and double standards too blatant and shameless even for the U.S. Government to invoke, I’d like to point out how wrong you are:

The Washington Post, today:

The Pakistani military is holding thousands of suspected militants in indefinite detention, arguing that the nation’s dysfunctional civilian justice system cannot be trusted to prevent them from walking free, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. . . .

Top U.S. officials have raised concern about the detentions with Pakistani leaders, fearing that the issue could undermine American domestic and congressional support for the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency campaign in Pakistan and jeopardize billions of dollars in U.S. assistance.

Pakistani officials say that they are aware of the problem but that there is no clear solution: Pakistan has no applicable military justice system, and even civilian officials concede that their courts are not up to the task of handling such a large volume of complex terrorism cases. There is little forensic evidence in most cases, and witnesses are likely to be too scared to testify. . . .

The United States has not pushed for a specific solution but has encouraged Pakistan to begin handling the detainees within the law, U.S. officials said. . . . Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman, said the military is "extremely concerned" that the detainees will be allowed to go free if they are turned over to the civilian government. . . .

U.S. officials say they worry that the detentions will further inflame the Pakistani public at a time when the government here needs popular support for its offensives.

"They’re treating the local population with a heavy hand, and they’re alienating them," said an Obama administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "As a result, it’s sort of a classic case going back to Vietnam; it [risks] actually creating more sympathy for the extremists."

NPR, June 26, 2009:

Ever since President Obama proposed holding terrorism detainees without trial, the debate over preventive detention has been growing. Now, NPR has the first look at a detailed legislative proposal to hold detainees indefinitely. . . . In a speech last month at the National Archives, President Obama opened the door to the possibility that some terrorism detainees will neither be tried nor released.

New York Times, May 22, 2009:

President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in "prolonged detention" inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself . . .

Mr. Obama chose to call his proposal "prolonged detention," which made it sound more reassuring than some of its more familiar names. In some countries, it is called "administrative detention," a designation with a slightly totalitarian ring. Some of its proponents call it "indefinite detention," which evokes the Bush administration’s position that Guantánamo detainees could be held until the end of the war on terror — perhaps for the rest of their lives — even if acquitted in war crimes trials.

Associated Press, February 20, 2009:

The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.  In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.

New York Times, April 10, 2009:

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.

New York Times Editorial, January 17, 2010:

We keep waiting — in vain — for the Obama administration to stop trying to block judicial scrutiny of some of the Bush administration’s most outrageous policies on the detention of prisoners.

Most recently, Neal Katyal, a deputy solicitor general, tried to persuade a three-judge federal appeals court panel to deny hearings to a group of prisoners who have been held under harsh conditions without adequate review for more than six years. Their prison — at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — is a much larger version of the Guantánamo Bay prison that President Obama has ordered closed.

The Washington Post, January 22, 2010:

A Justice Department-led task force has concluded that nearly 50 of the 196 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war, according to Obama administration officials.

The task force’s findings represent the first time that the administration has clarified how many detainees it considers too dangerous to release but unprosecutable because officials fear trials could compromise intelligence-gathering and because detainees could challenge evidence obtained through coercion.

LA Times, March 21, 2010:

The White House is considering whether to detain international terrorism suspects at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, senior U.S. officials said, an option that would lead to another prison with the same purpose as Guantanamo Bay, which it has promised to close. . . . [A]ny suspected terrorist held inside the U.S. would probably have the right to challenge his detention in federal courts. Bagram, for now, is outside the reach of U.S. courts.

Let’s teach those Pakistanis that we’re not going to tolerate their lawless and tyrannical detention of people without charges and trials.  We won’t put up with it.  Especially not when it’s "justified" with the Orwellian claim that their real civilian courts can’t handle the prosecutions and they’re "afraid" that Dangerous Terrorists might be released if they give them due process because they’re unprosecutable.  Kudos to the Obama administration for teaching them that countries that live under the Rule of Law simply don’t deny people trials based on such excuses.  It’d be one thing if they were assassinating these people without any charges or trials — that, of course, would be understandable — but not detaining them.  We’re the Leader of the Free World and we simply can’t be seen associating with or supporting regimes that would do such a thing.  Besides, unlike the U.S., it’s not like Pakistan really faces an Existential Threat from Islamic radicals or anything, so (unlike us) they really have no acceptable excuse for doing these things.

UPDATE:  In related news, The New York Times Editorial Page today excoriates those tyrannical Iranians for holding, without trials, 3 American hikers who crossed into Iran and who are accused of spying (h/t Chris Dowd).  And the NYT today also reports that U.S. officials are demanding that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki investigate a now-closed, undisclosed secret prison in Baghdad where Sunnis were held without charges and tortured; Look Backward!, we demand, and impose accountability for such heinous crimes! (h/t GlennNYC).

I wonder whether the Pakistani or Iranian government also targets individual citizens for execution without trial, just on their leader’s say-so. It would be odd indeed if the Obama Administration condemned other governments for extra-judicial executions.

Interesting interview by Tom Ricks of Geoffrey Wawro about his new book Quicksand:

A few months ago historian Geoffrey Wawro and I did a panel discussion together for a group of documentarians specializing in military history. He mentioned then that he had a new history of the American experience in the Middle East being published soon, and now it is out. It is called Quicksand.

Yesterday I interviewed him by e-mail.  

Best Defense: What are the essential facts that Americans don’t understand about the Middle East?

Geoffrey Wawro: Americans look at the Middle East through the lens of terrorism. This is analogous to the Cold War tendency to view the Middle East as a place under perpetual threat from Communism. In fact, most Middle Eastern peoples detest terrorism, and their security services are committed to its destruction. Unfortunately, states like Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq under Saddam play a double game. Although frightened by terrorist extremism, they succor groups that they can wield tactically against their enemies, chiefly Israel. In the event of a U.S. war with Iran, those groups — like Hezbollah — would be unleashed against Americans and U.S. interests as well. What this means for Americans, is that we must proceed delicately. It is foolhardy to imagine we can "rid the world of terrorism," if only because terror attacks are an asymmetric weapon wielded by weaker states against stronger ones. Syria is certainly a "terrorist state" in the sense that it gives cover to anti-Israeli terrorist groups — which Damascus regards as no more objectionable than Israeli F-16s — but it is also a country that we can do business with, solidifying gains in Iraq, managing Lebanon and the Kurds, and fighting al-Qaeda. This complexity, with its strong odor of amorality, exasperates Americans, but is an ineradicable piece of the Middle Eastern landscape, of the "quicksand" I describe in my new book.

BD: What do you think of the Obama Administration’s handling of the Iran situation? …

Continue reading.

The problems continue to mount. As I think about it, the root cause seems (to me) to be the highly authoritarian and hierarchical structure of the Catholic church, which emphasizes unquestioning obedience—not a good direction for people to go, and noticeably absent in the original church (Jesus and his followers). Certainly Jesus was the teacher, but there seems to have been much discussion and relatively little in the way of hierarchical structure: it was Jesus as leader and teacher, but the followers were equal.

The hierarchy and the authoritarianism were probably the result of the political structures of the time, but once those things start, those who have power in the structure exert themselves continually to maintain and increase that power until you get the rigid and unyielding structure you see in the Vatican.

Modern times, with what we’ve seen in history and have learned about people and power, supports a more egalitarian structure: flatter, with fewer levels, and a lot more individual initiative and responsibility. This started with the Protestant Reformation and has continued since, with the rise of modern democracies.

Obviously, though, in any structure those who have power generally resist change (lest they lose their power) and try to gain more power, and corrective actions will always be needed. Free and honest elections are a way to introduce that change that is less disruptive than previous methods (generally: bloody revolution).

I doubt that the Catholic church will be able to embrace the change that’s needed, including less emphasis on obedience and more on thinking, and putting all people (regardless of race, height, and whether gay or straight, male or female) on the same level. For one thing, the Catholic church embraced "unchanging teachings" regardless of new developments, and that doesn’t work so well: the world is a changing place. Sometimes the church crawls down from its position (it did finally recognize that it was wrong about Galileo, though it took some hundreds of years), but generally they endure regardless—so that, for example, they still condemn the use of condoms regardless of the HIV epidemic—pretty merciless, when you think about it.

From Politifact:

I really wish the US had national single-payer healthcare that covers everyone (cf. France). Instead, we have this (as reported by Murray Waas for Reuters):

One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.

None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders — more than any other health insurance company in the United States.

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women’s specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as "rescission," for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.

But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.

The disclosures come to light after a recent investigation by Reuters showed that another health insurance company, Assurant Health, similarly targeted HIV-positive policyholders for rescission. That company was ordered by courts to pay millions of dollars in settlements.

In his push for the health care bill, President Barack Obama said the legislation would end such industry practices. Making the case for reform in a September address to Congress, Obama specifically cited the cancellation of Robin Beaton’s health insurance. Aides to the president, who requested they not be identified, told Reuters that no one in the White House knew WellPoint was systematically singling out breast cancer patients like her.

Many critics worry the new law will not lead to an end of these practices…

Continue reading. And thanks to The Eldest for the pointer.

When I blog stories like this, I always recall the commenter who said that we can simply trust businesses to do the right thing—no regulation or oversight needed.

And, of course, there are those who claim that the market will correct abuses of this sort—whereas in fact, the market supports abuses of this sort: WellPoint undoubtedly increased their profits by cancelling these policies, and without government oversight they would get away with it completely. The market loves companies that increase profits, and companies are always willing to cut corners if it will grow profits.

Via Open Culture:

Interesting post by Glenn Greenwald:

Andrew Sullivan rightly recommends this new Atlantic article by David Freed, which details how the FBI and a mindless, stenographic American media combined to destroy the life of Steven Hatfill.  Hatfill is the former U.S. Government scientist who for years was publicly depicted as the anthrax attacker and subjected to Government investigations so invasive and relentless that they forced him into almost total seclusion, paralysis and mental instability, only to have the Government years later (in 2008) acknowledge that he had nothing to do with those attacks and to pay him $5.8 million to settle the lawsuit he brought.  There are two crucial lessons that ought to be learned from this horrible — though far-from-rare — travesty:

(1) It requires an extreme level of irrationality to read what happened to Hatfill and simultaneously to have faith that the "real anthrax attacker" has now been identified as a result of the FBI’s wholly untested and uninvestigated case against Bruce Ivins.  The parallels are so overwhelming as to be self-evident.

Just as was true for the case against Hatfill, the FBI’s case against Ivins is riddled with scientific and evidentiary holes.  Much of the public case against Ivins, as was true for Hatfill, was made by subservient establishment reporters mindlessly passing on dubious claims leaked by their anonymous government sources.  So unconvincing is the case against Ivins that even the most establishment, government-trusting voices — including key members of Congress, leading scientific journals and biological weapons experts, and the editorial pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall St. Journal — have all expressed serious doubts over the FBI’s case and have called for further, independent investigations.

Yet just as was true for years with the Hatfill accusations, no independent investigations are taking place.  That’s true for three reasons.  First, the FBI drove Ivins to suicide, thus creating an unwarranted public assumption of guilt and ensuring the FBI’s case would never be subjected to the critical scrutiny of a trial — exactly what would have happened with Hatfill had he, like Ivins, succumbed to that temptation, as Freed describes: …

Continue reading.

Interesting article by Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman in the Washington Monthly:

If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.

Many people blame the great real estate bubble of recent years. The idea here is that once a bubble pops it can destroy more real-world business activity—and jobs—than it creates as it expands. There is some truth to this. But it doesn’t explain why, even when the real estate bubble was at its most inflated, so few jobs were created compared to the tech-stock bubble of the late ’90s. Between 2000 and 2007 American businesses created only seven million jobs, before the great recession destroyed more than that. In the ’90s prior to the dot-com bust, they created more than twenty-two million jobs.

Others point to the diffusion of new technologies that reduce the number of workers needed to produce and sell manufactured products like cars and services like airline reservations. But throughout economic history, even as new technologies like the assembly line and the personal computer destroyed large numbers of jobs, they also empowered people to create new and different ones, often in greater numbers. Yet others blame foreign competition and offshoring, and point to all the jobs lost to China, India, or Mexico. Here, too, there is some truth. But U.S. governments have been liberalizing our trade laws for decades; although this has radically changed the type of jobs available to American workers—shifting vast chunks of the U.S. manufacturing sector overseas, for instance—there is little evidence that this has resulted in any lasting decline in the number of jobs in America.

Moreover, recent Labor Department statistics show that the loss of jobs here at home, be it the result of sudden economic crashes or technological progress or trade liberalization, does not appear to be our main problem at all. Though few people realize it, the rate of job destruction in the private sector is now 20 percent lower than it was in the late ’90s, when managers at America’s corporations embraced outsourcing and downsizing with an often manic intensity. Rather, the lack of net job growth over the last decade is due mainly to the creation of fewer new jobs. As recent Labor Department statistics show, even during the peak years of the housing boom, job creation by existing businesses was 14 percent lower than it was in the late ’90s.

The problem of weak job creation certainly can’t be due to increased business taxes and regulation, since both were slashed during the Bush years. Nor can the explanation be insufficient consumer demand; throughout most of the last decade, consumers and the federal government engaged in a consumption binge of world-historical proportions.

Other, more plausible explanations have been floated for why the rate of job creation seems to have fallen. One is that the federal government made too few …

Continue reading.

A great breakfast: huevos rancheros at the Victorian Corner, along with much coffee and reading of books on the Kindle. In fact, while at breakfast I bought (for $0.00) a copy of Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth (a great summertime read) and downloaded it onto the Kindle.

I’ve noticed a slight change in my blogging. I am passing over a lot of political stuff. It seems obvious that the current GOP acts in bad faith (including many lies and distortions and acting in direct opposition to their claims), so it becomes less interesting to blog about them. Same with the Tea Party and Palin. I still blog politics, but fewer comments on Republican craziness.

A great lather with the Plisson Chinese Grey and Mama Bear’s Clove & Tangerine shaving soap—clove and tangerine go together very nicely.

I decided to go with the Pils again today. It’s an expensive razor, and by using it a second time, I cut the cost per use in half, a big step. I figure I can get the cost per shave of the Nils down to less than a penny a shave if I just use it for 24,500 shaves. At 6 shaves/week, that means 78.5 years of shaving. Hmm. That seems unlikely (for me), but eventually someone will have done it: this is not a razor that will wear out: no moving parts.

Once again a lovely shave. It really is a good razor. Thank God.

Three passes to perfection, a splash of Pitralon, and I think I’ll strut my shave out for breakfast at the Victorian Corner.