"I want you to find more of those delegates with those unusual hats..."

Just a little quote from Wolfie the Blitzer, one of my most/least favorite characters in the world of Cable News. I have been sitting here doing a little evening time work and watching some ridiculous coverage of the Republican convention and I couldn't help tossing up a post with the amazing quote above. Wolf Blitzer was congratulating Dana Bash on finding a crazy lady delegate on the floor who had created lots of crazy crazy buttons out of cards in her hotel room and afixed them to her cow spotted cowgirl hat... I really can't do all the crazy justice, but now there's some sort of patriotic photo montage going on... god, this is all so distracting. I think I'll need to put it on mute.

Washington Is Starving the World's Poor…

…says a new article by Russell Redenbaugh & James Juliano. It doesn't cover much new ground, but it's worth thinking about. The key idea:

"Ethanol policy mandating that corn and oil become substitutes has forced these two very different supply curves to become one. The much larger global oil market expropriated the supply curve of the U.S. corn market. In short, oil markets now set food prices. This unintended consequence can be seen in global commodity markets."


No doubt Congressional supporters of our ethanol policy would tell us that it "helps American farmers and working families." More evidence, if we needed it, of the wide gulf between political rhetoric and economic reality.

What's in a Name?

I've perhaps dropped a post or two so far about how interesting I find the names Sarah and Todd Palin chose for their children to be. Today, I was pleased to learn more via People Magazine via Andrew Sullivan about the backstory on Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig:

"Sarah’s parents were coaches and the whole family was involved in track and I was an athlete in high school, so with our first-born, I was, like, ‘Track!’ Bristol is named after Bristol Bay. That’s where I grew up, that’s where we commercial fish. Willow is a community there in Alaska. And then Piper, you know, there’s just not too many Pipers out there and it’s a cool name. And Trig is a Norse name for “strength.”