A lot of crazy crap happened this week. Hopefully we'll stay away from most of it and take it kind of easy.
***
 |
| The proposed cover for ASM #700. |
Scuttlebutt around the Internet is that Marvel's planning to kill Spider-Man in issue #700, and man, do I ever hope that that's not the case. First off, because whenever they do something like that, it's always just a temporary gimmick to spike sales. And secondly, because they just killed Peter Parker over in the Ultinate universe, and that one was NOT a gimmick, it's the kind of crazy alternate reality madness that the Ultimate universe exists to provide.
Recently, writer Dan Slott has given Spider-Man a really obnoxious sidekick named Alpha. I wasn't a huge fan of the idea when I read what Slott had in mind, but the execution has been really good. Instead of Peter Parker's typical "great power, great responsibility" schtick, Alpha has been more like "tremendous power, NO responsibility," thereby giving Peter a double-dose of his usual nerotic angst. I mean, it hasn't been my favorite arc or anything, but it's been working, and it's not a bad idea. But to then turn around and close the arc out by killing Peter off? What does tha prove?
I trust Dan Slott to write a good Spider-Man story, but with that said, for as much as I enjoyed the execution of he Death of Captain America, I'm still annoyed by the payoff and his ultimate resurrection. I do not in any way want the same thing for my favorite Marvel comics character, Spider-Man.
***
I don’t want to get off on too much of a rant about this, but with President Obama ahead in the polls and slowly but inexorably expanding his lead in most of the critical battleground states and with the Republican Party in general dominated by the ideas of Tea Party Libertarians—who are, in fact, from far outside the party’s base ideology—I humbly suggest that now is the time for my more Libertarian-leaning friends to go ahead and jump all the way onto the Libertarian Party’s band wagon. Because while it’s true that the Libertarian candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, has virtually no shot at winning the Presidency this November, it may also be true that now is the moment nationally for the Libertarian Party to finally find its footing as an actual, national movement. However, that kind of thing can only happen if the Libertarians themselves gain meaningful traction in a real, national-level election.
Fact is, this may be their year.
“The Libertarian Party says its nominee for president, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, will be on the ballot in 47 states. And there are court challenges pending to decide if Johnson will appear in three others: Michigan, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.
A recent CNN poll puts Johnson at just 4 percent nationally. But he’s polling at 7 percent in both Colorado and Nevada, and could be a spoiler to Mitt Romney in those two key swing states.”
No matter what your politics, I think we can all agree that the current system has gotten us nothing but heartache. Right now, we’ve got two allegedly big-tent parties purporting to speak to the needs of the entire spectrum of the electorate. In reality, however, each candidate represents a certain narrow viewpoint within his general party’s structure, and if you don’t like it, that’s just too bad. You either hold your nose and vote for the guy in your own party who you don’t really like, or you hold your nose even harder and vote for the other guy while hoping that your own party will come back to its senses at some point in the next four years. Personally, I’ve lately found myself envious of the British three-party system, which at least has real ideology behind its various parties—and hence real balance to the kind of coalition governments it builds.
In the States, we actually have something similar, though it’s not readily obvious. Thus, instead of having a choice between what really exists in three parts nationally—Liberals, Conservatives, and Tea Party Libertarians—we instead have a false choice between Liberals and Tea Party Libertarians with the base line Conservative movement essentially out on its ear. And so we have absolutely no representation on the Center-Right.
Bottom line, I want my Party back, and so I’m inviting those of you who aren’t naturally a part of it to go ahead and vote your conscience. Vote for Governor Gary Johnson and help the Libertarians build themselves a national movement. That will give us all better choice and better representation in the future.
***
Helicopter Ben went ahead with QE3 well in advance of the predicted fiscal cliff, and I’ve gotta say that I’m personally annoyed. I don’t care about the political timing, but the move itself—the Fed is going to print money in order to buy mortgage-backed securities—seems to me to be purely inflationary as well as economically counter-productive.
From The Wall Street Journal, “The Fed’s ‘brave new world’”:
“Chairman Ben Bernanke and his music men at the Fed’s Open Market Committee put on their party hats Thursday and unleashed an unlimited program of monetary easing…[I]f ‘the labor market does not improve substantially,’ as the central bankers put it, the Fed will plunge ahead and buy more assets. And if that doesn’t work, it will buy still more. And if… [ellipsis in original] The Fed statement paid lip service to pursuing its ‘dual mandate’ of controlling inflation and reducing unemployment, but no one should be fooled. The Fed has declared that it is going all-in to cut the jobless rate, no matter what it takes.”
Why is it inflationary? That part is obvious. But why is it counter-productive? Because all assets have a natural clearing price, and when the Fed intervenes in the market like that, it distorts the market mechanism that enables the market itself to correctly find that clearing price. Or, to put it another way, this move is merely going to prop the housing bubble open, forcing home prices artificially higher and ultimately making it more difficult for the housing market to clear its unsold inventory. Bottom line, all those vacant, foreclosed homes are going to stay vacant and foreclosed.
Granted, it would have been painful, but the better solution is to simply let the market clear where it will and then let prices start creeping back upwards at whatever rate is appropriate with reality.
If you are a young person with a decent job who’d like to buy your first home, right now you have a right to be pissed. Because what the Fed has done here is to prop prices up, meaning you’ll have to pay more than the nominal clearing price for your house, and that sucks hard.
***
We started a little pick’em league in my office this week for the new NFL season. Kept the stakes low. At the end of the season, the winner doesn’t have to pay when we go out for drinks.
My picks this week:
- New Orleans (+3) at Carolina. I took the Saints to cover.
- Tennessee (-6) at San Diego. I took the Chargers. The Titans are terrible, and they never travel west very well. I think they’re gonna get blown out again.
If you’re wondering, the Giants are at home against Tampa Bay. I think the Giants are gonna win, but the line was something like seven points, and I didn’t want to bet on a spread that big when Big Blue looked so crappy last week.
***
Finally, scientists have invented robot-brains for monkeys. As if competition from overseas workers weren’t enough, soon we’ll be competing with creatures that Corporate America can pay in ripe bananas.
No comments:
Post a Comment