Busy (Sorta)

Good traffic in the office this morning; I even managed to eek out the daily goal (still way behind on cumulative). I also had a chance to try my hand at the various ways people can get a refund these days, which I had not been able to do up to this point. Things seems to be clicking along, although not as quickly as the boss man anticipated. We're also getting schedules hammered out and Debbie and I are trying to figure out how to share a car while working in two different states. The answer, unfortunately, is that for a couple weeks, one of us is going to be doing a lot of "hanging around." Still beats owning two cars, and it's only for a couple weeks in February, then the last week of tax season in April. Then we'll be back to one income until I can land the next gig.

Our warm spell continues with temps well above freezing most of the day, and a lot more sun than we ever saw in Michigan during January. I'm sure it won't last and we'll get dumped on with 100 feet of snow and -20 temps and 60 mph winds at some point in the next 60 days or so. Then driving all over creation will get veeeery interesting.

Remember the Simpson's episode where Homer finds his long-lost brother (voiced by Danny DiVito) who owns a car company and lets Homer design the ultimate car? And it's so bad that his brother's car company instantly goes bankrupt as soon as the car is shown in public? Well, for some odd reason, Mountain Dew's crowd-sourced product development scheme instantly reminded me of that episode.

One good thing about all the cap-and-trade nonsense is that the longer we delay doing it, the greater our competitive advantage vis-a-vis nations who voluntarily kneecap themselves economically. Go France! The best part is the economic illiteracy front and center:

Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said he would propose plans to preserve most of the earlier bill, vowing not to hit families and key sectors hard, while seeking an agreement on how to tax heavy industry by July.

Simple Econ101 fact: you cannot "tax heavy industry" and not "hit families." Who do you think buys the products that "heavy industry" makes? French and a putz. One wonders where poor Jean-Louis finds the will to live.

Now Obama wants to nationalize student loans because the greedy banks make too much money and Obama is all jealous and wants the federal government to make all that money instead. And we all know it will work because of the glowing record the federal government has in running train service, health care for the elderly, education, the space program, or any of the thousands of other things it does. Badly. But this time will be different; it will work for sure! But just in case, lets raise the debt ceiling another couple trillion.

People used to think that a person's true character was revealed by the company he kept. I hope no one does that anymore.

And just to round things out before I totter off to bed, John Greer has some interesting thoughts on community and fraternal societies.

Good night.