deep breath

Last summer, I ordered a terrific, hopeful T-shirt adapted from a vintage British World War II poster, advocating a stiff upper-lip and moreover to not panic.  "Keep Calm and Carry On."  I think that this Etsy entrepeneur is espousing equally good advice.  Etsy, which is a wonderful outlet for creativity and handicraft and represents those handmade gifts that are great to give and receive, is especially smart considering the sorry state of the economy and jobs market and the prospects for revival of such a monstrosity.  We should all hone up on our knitting skills.

gerrymandering

H and I just took a short trip this weekend to get out of the house and shed some of the winter detrius.  Had we been traveling during 1789 in the Holy Roman Empire, however, it's boggling to think of how many international boundries we would have crossed with city-states and peculiars of the Church and Crown.  How did so many separate jurisdictions cohabitate?  Surely it wasn't peaceable.

we won't be pwn'd again

Hoping I am not one of these merchants of gloom or persistant naysayers (though I am very quick to criticize US policy), I cannot see there was much good news for the Obama administration during this past week.  After the end of the Kennedy dynasty, the Supremes were quick to follow with another blow, relaxing campaign finance reform and reversing the goals of McCain-Feingold.  Politicians are already tools of corporate interests and their cherry-picking of candidates that will support their agendas should not be made any easier, and now the opinion of a gaggle of investors, stakeholders is on equal-footing and apparently just as sacrosanct in terms of First Amendment Bill of Rights™ protection as any individual voter.  That does not bode well for America's credibility or sincerity.  Mixed signals are abundant with the call for taxing the bohemoth banks and tripping over healthcare reform.

skimming with sharks

Overshadowed by the super-loss of their super-majority and other kinks in the process of cauterizing state-run health-care, there was a second news item (the story is no longer available) concerning nationalization of the multi-billion dollar student loan industry.  SallieMae was always a strange sort of quasi-governmental agency with a weird and shadowy sort of authority and potential to do its worse.  I wonder what it means for my Diploma Mill University, which was just re-accredited by the association of reputable accreitors, thank you very much--which I am sure were reliant on a lot of free and easy federally subsidized monies that seemed to be granted like wishes, or for those loan agencies that operated under the same federal umbrella.  I am not sure what this news could mean.