the tindog coffeehouse

Forget $700,000,000,000. The real cost of the government’s TARP bailout rescue plan? $2,900,000,000,000. (That’s 2.9 trillion for my readers in Oklahoma, or more than 4 times the original figure.)

The special inspector general appointed to oversee the bailout package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said that the $700 billion does not include the additional financing and associated programs run by the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Once it is all added together, the $700 billion sum balloons to $2.9 trillion in taxpayer commitments. …

“$2.9 trillion is just short of what the entire federal government spent in fiscal year 2008,” said Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “It’s like having a second United States government budget, dedicated solely to saving the financial system. And that is truly surreal.”

Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it, if you ask me.

Previously:
$700 Billion bailout ‘letting’ the banks win?
‘Dude, where’s my $700 billion?’
Second half of bailout: How ’bout a little oversight this time?
US Bancorp CEO rips TARP, promotes faith

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller is a wonderful book. Beautifully poetic, humorous, and deeply insightful, it is composed of a series of seemingly random essays about various topics such as love, grace, and community. Miller’s book challenged me, as it should. I don’t agree with him on everything, but I followed along his journey anyway, willing to listen to what God had to say to me through it.

So when I heard that they were making a movie version of the book, my curiosity was piqued. First off, it’s not like this is a novel, but it’s not purely an autobiography either. Secondly, it’s not structured in such a way that it would easily translate to a screenplay. So I was excited to see the end result.

But after reading a review of the screenplay on Miller’s blog, my excitement has turned to concern:

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Longtime Obama supporter Patricia Jones Blessman donated $10,000 to the Presidential Inauguration Committee to ensure she would be able to attend the historic ceremony in January, but unfortunately she missed the swearing-in due to “security mayhem”.

And now she wants her money back.

Blessman says she felt treated “like nothing more than an ATM” by the inaugural committee. …

“Bereft, bittersweet disappointment does not even begin to describe the emotions we are left with on what should have been a joyous mountaintop experience. The irony is that we paid for this madness,” Blessman wrote in an email dated Jan. 22 to Julianna Smoot, a co-chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee and the national finance chair of Obama’s presidential campaign.

That’s OK, Ms. Blessman. You’re not the only one to feel disappointed and ripped off by President Obama. You’re just the only one to get a refund as a result of it.

Unlike the rest of us taxpayers.

“Jerry Falwell was a polarizing figure.”

So begins Relevant Magazine’s feature article, the last interview of Jerry Falwell, which was conducted two weeks before his death in May 2007. And I think that one statement pretty well sums up how most Americans, Christian or not, would describe him.

As anyone who has spent time in evangelicalism’s inner orbit knows, there are really two Jerry Falwells. One, of course, is the fundamentalist most Americans have seen on television, the man who once denounced homosexuality as “a vile and satanic system” and the feminist movement as “a satanic attack on the home.” This is the Jerry Falwell who not only blamed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on a long list of domestic minorities (homosexuals, feminists, pagans, abortionists, etc.), but who also tried to cash in on the public outrage over those remarks by telling his supporters in a letter signed by his son Jonathan—that he was being victimized by “a vicious smear campaign” and asking them to send “a special Vote of Confidence gift … of at least $50 or even $100.”

The other Jerry Falwell, the one I’m seeing today, is more akin to a religious Willy Wonka—a whimsical, mercurial figure who delights in unexpected acts of generosity and trickery. This is the Jerry Falwell who gives away college scholarships to kids who hit baseballs over his fence, who plays lighthearted pranks on uptight fundamentalists and speaks adoringly of his grandchildren. This Jerry Falwell has made some unlikely friends over the years, including Senator Ted Kennedy and Penthouse publisher Larry Flynt, both of whom praise Dr. Falwell as a decent human being while condemning his political views.

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Wow. The Squirrel Liberation Front has been busy this week.

First, a battle in Milwaukee between a relentless gray squirrel and a homeowner determined to defend his attic at all costs. You can probably guess who’s winning.

“Normally when you see a squirrel, it’s just a squirrel. But now it’s like I know him. He’s a very worthy adversary,” Dave said when I embedded with his forces this week. …

“Our house has lost $15K in value with the sheet metal, six holes in the side of the house, roofing being torn out, a radio with 24-hour sports talk being blared out the back window (yesterday it was Rush). And now we have a fake owl outside the window in an effort to scare him. Oh, we also have a spotlight to prevent him from chewing.”

That’s not Rush as in “Today’s Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride.” It’s Limbaugh, who’s been known to actually attract rodents.

The squirrel has chewed holes right through the eaves to get into the attic. When Dave would nail sheet metal over one hole, the squirrel would gnaw another. This required him/her to hang upside-down from the rain gutter, which it’s also been eating.

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Since being forced back to Internet Explorer on my work computer a few weeks ago, I’ve been looking forward to the release of IE8 with the expectation that anything has to be better than versions 6 and 7.

The good news: It’s better. The bad news: It’s still Internet Explorer.

I downloaded and installed it last night, a process that took much longer on my Windows XP machine than it should’ve. And of course it required a reboot, typical for IE but unheard of for any other browser.

After booting back up and logging in, I fired it up and was pleasantly suprised. The speed difference between 7 and 8 was immediately noticeable, and sites that used to be wonky under 7 such as Google Reader now seemed to work properly (imagine that).

But despite all the other new features (see here for a full list) and some relatively good reviews (Wired called it “Microsoft’s First Truly Modern Browser”), the fact remains that it’s still Internet Explorer. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.

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