Toyah

We always knew he would be famous.

Not long ago, not much more than a month, gas prices in my town of Hillsdale, MI were close to $3 a gallon. If memory serves, the peak price for the lowest grade of gas was $2.99. With similar or higher prices all across the country, the U.S. Senate called hearings and asked oil executives to explain why prices were so high. There was talk of a windfall tax on the oil companies.

The last time I looked at the current price in Hillsdale, it had dropped to $2.19.

Why isn't there talk of a subsidy for the oil companies, or hearings in the Senate about why the price has fallen so fast?

Michael Sessions will be sworn in tonight as Hillsdale's new mayor. I expect he'll do a least a decent job: really, all he has to do is not be a disaster. The City Manager (a post held by Tim Vagle) does the day-to-day work. And from all I've heard about Mike, he'll do a good job.

There's a rumor going around (one of many), in which Tim Vagle said something to the effect of, ""If Mike wants to be a politician, this is a great place to learn...Though I thought I was done raising teenagers." (see the LA Times, for example).

This is apparently a case of cherry-picking quotes. A friend of mine who knows Vagle asked him about that, and Vagle explained that the full context of that quote was (in paraphrase): "I thought I was done with teenagers, but when my kids were that age, I knew all their friends and had good relationships with them. It's not a problem."

Constant vigilance!

I like to give my friends support whenever possible.

Dave Damiani writes about the sports media, A-Rod, and the Yankees.

Tara Ross urges Americans to patience and perseverance when it comes to the war against terrorism in Iraq.

And Toolie continues to post on his adventures in graduate school.

The views expressed by the above individuals do not necessarily represent those of Toyah or its members, with one obvious exception.

thanksgiving is coming up, and it is far and away my favorite holiday. i like the atmosphere of family and food and fun and sports on tv, without months of hype. i was disappointed to find that our office would be open the friday following thanksgiving, however my boss told me to plan on being off that day to make up for extra hours on other days. shweeet. now i have a long weekend which i will be spending in northwest ohio. there will be family stuff on thursday and saturday, friend stuff on friday, church stuff on sunday, and football 3 of 4 days. excellent.

From the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal:

Mr. Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza and the school's principal benefactor, has announced plans to build a large Catholic university outside Naples, Fla., along with a residential community. (The ground-breaking ceremony for Ave Maria Town, as it will be called, was delayed indefinitely by the recent hurricane.) Will the law school move to Naples too, from Ann Arbor? The school's dean, Bernard Dobranski, acknowledges that the board is "open to consideration of the idea." He denies, though, that Mr. Rice is being persecuted for his views.

Mr. Monaghan certainly has every legal right to move the law school he pays for. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea. "We understood \[that\] the mission of the law school," says Terence McKeegan, a member of the school's alumni association, was "to create attorneys who were well versed in Catholic social teaching and the law, who would engage the world and not retreat from it." Ave Maria Town seems at odds with such a mission. "It sounds like this town and the university in Florida is going to be a self-contained little Catholic enclave."

A May 2004 speech by Mr. Monaghan, given at a conference on business ethics, would seem to confirm this speculation. "We'll own all commercial real estate," Mr. Monaghan declared, describing his vision. "That means we will be able to control what goes on there. You won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town."

From what I know and have heard about the Ave Maria Law School, I have a lot of respect for it. But artificially insulating people from the sinful temptations of the world hasn't been a historically sound plan. Presumably there's more to the story than this, and quite possibly there are other sides which make more sense, but as it stands, it sounds like a bad idea to me.

My college buddies (most of whom are fellow Toyah posters) and I played a lot of Risk, in our college days. Check out this guy that's made a Risk board using Google Maps. Doesn't look like you can play against the computer (yet, anyway), but you can get your friends together and play on the real world.

Of course, if you can get your friends together to play Risk on the computer, why not just get the real board out?

There were only two questions on the ballot last night. Actually, there were more, but only two contested races. One for mayor and one for the school bond. The bond failed, by 699 votes. That's too bad...our oldest school dates from somewhere around 1930.

In the mayor race, the 51-year-old incumbent was challenged by an 18-year-old. The 18-year-old won, by 34 votes. As a write-in candidate!

I didn't vote for him: I didn't know a whole lot about either candidate, to be honest, but hadn't seen any significant problems with the current mayor so saw no reason to toss him out. No idea whether Mayor Sessions will be good or bad. But he's saying good things:

"Right off, I'm not going to get their respect, they'll say: 'This kid could be my grandson,'" Sessions said of the City Council. "But it's not about bossing them around, it will be about cooperating with them."

I've been meaning to write about this, but Captain's Quarters beat me to it (no suprise there).

The day before Katrina hit, the price of gas in Hillsdale, MI, was $2.76. It rose to $2.99: I don't recall it actually going over $3.00 for the cheapest grade of gasoline. It stayed high as Rita and Wilma went through the Gulf. Today, the price is $2.29.

Whoever (whatever?) is managing gas prices is doing a good job, it seems. I also recall a lot of talk in the media and the blogosphere about "permanently higher" gas prices, or gas prices staying high for six months or more. It seems such talk was premature, which leads me to wonder about similar predictions of high natural-gas prices this winter.

Just a word to the wise: be skeptical of predictions, especially in volatile (haha) markets like the oil/gas market.

Several weeks ago---possibly a month or more---I wrote to my Senators (Levin and Stabenow), suggesting that with Congress giving so much money to Katrina and Rita (Wilma hadn't happened yet), we should think about cutting money from other parts of the budget, aka "pork." I asked that what specifically they would be willing to cut from the budget.

Here is Senator Levin's response:

Dear Mr. Williams:

Thank you for sharing your views with me. I, too, am concerned about the federal budget, taxes, and the state of our economy.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters in our nation’s history. Along with the entire country, I mourn for those whose lives were lost and pray for the millions who will be dealing with the effects of this tragedy for years to come. Hundreds of thousands have lost everything they owned, and about one million people were displaced. Hurricane Katrina also caused extensive economic damage to the Gulf Coast region.

In response to this devastation, I supported the $62.3 billion in emergency supplemental aid Congress provided to assist the victims of the hurricane and to rebuild the region. As the nation continues to focus on helping these communities, it is important that we make fiscally responsible decisions. The American people must be assured that the many billons of dollars being spent on recovery activities are spent in a cost-effective manner for the purpose of rebuilding communities and restoring hope to the people of the Gulf Coast. At the same time, we must ensure any budget cuts that are made to finance this essential disaster relief do not come at the expense of those most in need of government assistance.

Our nation continues to fall deeper into a deficit ditch; the U.S. national debt reached $8 trillion in 2005. Forty-four percent of this national debt is held by foreign investors. If these investors ever decide, for economic or political reasons, to stop financing our debt, our markets could be severely impacted. This can provide other countries with greater leverage during trade or other negotiations with us. Furthermore, in the fiscal year that just ended, we spent over $350 billion to pay the interest on our national debt. That is 14% of the federal government's spending last year. That is money that doesn’t go toward important infrastructure improvements, homeland security or other priorities like healthcare, education or environmental protection. We simply cannot afford to continue building up this massive debt.

The Senate version of the reconciliation spending bill (S.1932), which is currently being considered by the full Senate, would cut funding for Medicaid, Medicare, low-income housing grants and other important programs. These cuts, along with the revenue that could be generated as a result of a shortsighted decision to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, are projected to reduce the deficit by $39.1 billion over the next five years. However, at the same time, both houses of Congress are working on separate versions of a tax reconciliation bill to extend $70 billion worth of tax cuts benefiting largely the wealthiest Americans. Instead of improving our fiscal situation, these reconciliation bills exacerbate the problem. It simply does not make sense to say we need to cut $39.1 billion out of vital programs to reduce the deficit while at the same time increasing the deficit with $70 billion in tax cuts. This budget continues an irresponsible and inequitable tax policy that adds to our deficit and recklessly spends what is left of the Social Security surplus.

Major bipartisan efforts will be needed to make true progress on the long-term fiscal problems we face. I will continue to fight for fair and fiscally responsible policies that help generate jobs and economic security from which all Americans can benefit. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this important matter.

Sincerely,
Carl Levin

No specifics, as you might notice. I immediately wrote him back and asked him to provide me with specifics, and said I'd find him some if he needed me to point them out. No word from Debbie Stabenow yet.

if anyone checks visitor statistics for this blog that title should increase the porn-related searches...

most of my new job has been pretty elementary, and thus, boring. but i like getting done at 3:30, and i like the prospect of not working any more weekends. right now i am waiting on information from others in the office...unfortunately, i have constructed my workflow for today in a way that requires me to get that info before i can move on to anything else. that has left a bit of a pile developing on my desk while i type on the blog.

good stuff: merrill lynch is also on the 'casual friday' bandwagon, so...no tie for me today.

tonite: probably bowling with other "young adults" from church.

the nba season has started. "my" lakers are 1-1. (jeremy, are you going to become a wizards fan down there?)

A conservative newspaper, The Warrior, has recently been launched at Marquette Univeristy. The paper also has a blog. Marquette, a Catholic institution, apparently has "evolved" into a hive of liberalism. The launching of the paper has been met with criticism from the hardcore left at the university.

It's nice to see a group of conservatives standing up for themselves with the numbers so heavily against them. We had it easy at the Dale. The Warrior is a step in the right direction and the liberals at Marquette are correct to fear the new conservative medium, though they have no basis on which to discredit it.

In Bentonville, AR, a man vs. buck match went on for 40 minutes:

"Goldsberry entered the bedroom to confront the deer and, after a brief struggle, emerged to tell his wife to call police. After returning to the bedroom, the fight continued. Goldsberry finally was able to grip the animal and twist its neck, killing it.">Arkansas Man Kills Deer With Bare Hands in Bedroom: "Goldsberry entered the bedroom to confront the deer and, after a brief struggle, emerged to tell his wife to call police. After returning to the bedroom, the fight continued. Goldsberry finally was able to grip the animal and twist its neck, killing it."

40+ minutes for the police to show up? For a break-in? (even if it was a deer, and not a burglar) Color me unimpressed that we should depend on the police to keep us safe.