What if people made their decisions as if they eventually would have a conversation with God. Isn’t that the expressed idea of Christians?

• “I gave you a wonderful Earth, why did you pollute it?”
• “How could you allow so many people to starve?”
• “Why didn’t you use the science I gave you to prevent Aids?”
• “Why did you think a church group was intended to persecute other people?”

God would have a lot of questions.

If most of those “stupid” people actually acted with the interests of the whole rather than just selfish interests, we’d all be much better off.

While stupid people are not hypothetical, the idea of my belief in God or that the bible is more than a good book is. I do try to think globally and about what would be best for all. Unfortunately, I haven’t ever taken it to an extreme, yet. I do watch TV, though less every day. I haven’t joined the peace corp, yet. I occasionally feel guilty about both. Someday, maybe I’ll leave the group for good?

Efficiency! UPS is great! I received a package this morning. I happened to check my email 30 minutes later and noticed I had received an email from UPS stating my package was delivered to my front door. The email was 28 minutes old. Basically the package delivery information and notification was instantaneous and detailed. Are you listening postal service? We live in a realtime world, join us. I am disappointed a little though. The package left Sunnyvale (about 10 miles from our home) Friday evening. It wentup to South San Francisco and spent the weekend there (vacation?). It was delivered at 1pm. That’s basically a one day delivery if you don’t count the time sitting around all weekend. I did get an email Friday evening that it would be delivered Monday, again effeciency. Now, can they work on not wasting gas (oil) on carrying a package the unnecessary extra 60 miles. Not as bad as Fedex that would probably have flown it to Kansas or somewhere to go across the street.

What is wrong with this result is that he was hung for it. for something that  is much less a hazard to society than say an armed bank rodder that may serve three years and be paroled early. That armed robber would probably serve less than a year if it was his first conviction. An arogant black man gets 15 years for his first conviction.

What about the Enron folks? how many of them really served any time and get out still rich? Their actions affected millions of people, not some criminal fence selling stolen property.

What about police thugs that assault people, finally get caught for one of their many inproprieties and then retire?

What about mortgage bankers swindling homeowners and then suffering the penanty of accepting a bailout from the government?

OJ gets to spend the rest of his life in jail for a crime similar to stealing a loaf of bread, stealing from a theif. POOR OJ! Poor us. We really need to work on our “justice’ system.

Of course Barak Obama winning is a great sign of hope for the future.

I’m really happy to see that Proposition 1A, the High Speed Rail initiative has won. As usual, California leads the way and hopefully the rest of the country will follow and rebuild our passenger rail system, a much more effective and efficient method of travel.

I’m VERY disappointed that Proposition 8 won. It is an extreme step backwards for California. It is the anti gay marriage initiative. Government should NOT support religious views as a function of government. It should maintain order, and the safety and security of ALL citizens. This measure doesn’t do that. Government should regulate marriages similar to the businesses they are. If people don’t want the government to sanction marriage for gays, it shouldn’t for straights either. Let the churches copyright the use and definition of marriage. Take all reference to marriage out of the laws and substitute civil union for all, gay and straight. It would have been a lot easier to just use marriage for all and apply it equitably instead and let the those churches that only want straights limit themselves, not others. Of course, it should have been obvious that it shouldn’t pass. No initiative modification to the constitution is ever an improvement to the original document.

I was so glad to see the old John McCain return. He’s been gone for so long now. His campaign was almost 100% negative which has worked well for too long for the Republican party. He was supposed to be a maverick but detoured into the extreme right wing during his campaign. His concession speech was gracious, unifying, and timely. His speech occurred moments after the polls in California closed when the results were obvious. It would be wonderful if he is really back on the right track and he and Obama can both show the world a unified USA.
I now have to hope that the current president, that will remain in office for another  2 1/2 months, doesn’t burn the white house and or the country as he leaves.

I’m confident that Barak Obama will hit the ground running and get the country back in proper order rather quickly!

Previously, I estimated how the election would go.  I think, at least part of that estimate has been proven true, that Barak Obama would win with about a 5% lead. We will never know if the other estimate would have been true, that if Hillary Clinton had been the candidate, she would have done better possibly sweeping about half the states that did vote red with a 10% lead and even more differential of the electoral vote. I think it also demonstrated the 5% difference in how people say they voted and the voting result which, I believe, shows the Republicans still control a 5% adjustment in the actial vote.

With the recent crash of housing prices most everywhere I was trying to put it all into perspective. My parent’s bought a house about 1940 in Bakersfield that I was raised in. It probably cost them $5,000 and included 2.5 acres. It was a nice three bedroom house with big rooms and the yard made for a nice playground. They yard was actually made much bigger because there were open oilfields adjacent to it.

In the early 60’s I remember the family went house looking and similar sized houses with a much smaller lot cost about $10,000. 20 some years and a doubling of price.

In 1974, I bought my first house in South San Jose for $23,000. To me, that seemed like a lot but other areas of town and other nearby towns had ordinary housing going for the mid 30’s. A little over 10 years and another two or three times increase in price.

In 1979 we bought our house in downtown San Jose for $75,000. Five years and the price of a house tripled. The next year, our new neighbor downtown sold his house, 1/2 the size of ours and 30 years older for $130,000. He did it by placing a sign on the main street one weekend and had three offers that weekend. I measure that as one year and a 100% increase. Do you see a problem here?

In 1988 we bought our house in Bakersfield for $95,000. It remained at that price for years slowly rising to about 110,000 by the late 90’s. We decided to sell in 2005 but delayed putting it on the market to do some fixup. Similar houses were now, suddenly selling in the high $300,000 having been in the mid $200,000 just the previous year. All this in a market that one has to wonder why anyone would want a house in. We tried to sell the house ourselves when we were through fixing it up but prices were now dropping. While we were holding open houses we dropped the price each week and still didn’t sell it. When our “listing” with Help-U-Sell over, we signed with an agent who sold the house in the first weekend for our asking price which was now $70,000 less than we started at. It sold for $300,000. That house now might sell for $200,000. A really significant drop in price from the boom we saw when we decided to sell. Bakersfield is typical of much of the real estate market in California, Nevada, Arizona,Texas, Florida, and probably lots of other places to some lesser but still very significant extent.

In 1989 we bought our current house in Palo Alto for $300,000. Six months previously, the people we bought from had turned down an offer of $375,00 for the same house. The market was correcting and fortunately we got in at the bottom. Houses in the neighborhood are now still selling with 7 figure prices. There hasn’t been a drop here, yet. The price increased 300-400% in 18 years.

So what’s the story here? Housing prices rise and fall but usually they drop to their real value after an unrealistic increase to an un-real value. You usually don’t loose money if you buy when it’s priced realistically.

Another thing about housing in the US. People buy too big of a house. Nobody really needs a 2000 sq ft house unless they have more than the usual 2-3 kids. First there is the waste of extra materials and then there is the waste of extra utilities like lights and heating. I think we’re in for an extended period of adjustment in housing. Too much of it, too much of the wrong size, and too much in the wrong place. This adjustment period will take a bit longer than the adjustments in the mid 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.Of course, that’s assuming we do have a soft landing and not a crash.

Aren’t we fortunate that by some miracle, congress didn’t go along with the privatization of Social Security as Bush so much wanted for his cronies. If they had, this current financial problem wouldn’t seem like such a big deal at all. Of course, they only want an unrestricted check for 700 billion dollars this time, again for the cronies, not the people. Kind of makes the savings and loan failure, and the Enron collapse seem kind of insignificant doesn’t it.

A pretty good record for Bush. Failure, failure failure. Try hard to think of something he’s accomplished of benefit to the country. Try again, there must be something. How could anyone get everything wrong.

Don’t let McCain distract you either, his actions are at the root of this failure. He’s definitely not a potential savior.

I have always believed that the economy was going down toward a day of reckoning.  Mr Bush tried to liven up the economy by allowing the loan requirements to be adjusted to allow sales of homes to expand and imply a growing economy. We have been in recession for his whole term and now it may be impossible to stop. Good job George.

We’re all in for a tough time. The next president will have a lot to do and getting us out of this hole is going to be difficult. If, by some disaster, McCain is elected, the following president will have even a deeper whole, if that’s possible, to dig us out of.

I’m a retired person but so far don’t have to worry about these financial losses, if the fall can be stopped. If we continue to fall I guess I’ll be looking for work with everyone else. These past four years of retirement have been fun, I’d hate to see them end. My belief that this was going to occur is a primary reason for my early retirement.

VOTE OBAMA PLEASE! If not for your own sake, for mine!

This case was even worse here at Kaiser because the wording of the sign wasn’t just the standard “we may have something that causes cancer around here” type of sign. They mention in their sign that the drugs they prescribe may cause cancer but the doctor considered well before prescribing the drugs. That’s comforting but is it really necessary to tell us something everyone should already be aware of. What a waste of effort! Dreaming up the wording, posting the sign, reading the sign, all a waste of time.
Someday I’m going to have to start the campaign for a law mandating PERSONAL responsibility. You’re responsible for the obvious fellow. Someday!

Sorry folks, we really need the draft, not to fuel wars but to prevent them.

1. Most have no resemblance to a journalist media.
2. Some go far beyond not providing competent news and provide disinformation instead, such as Fox news.
3. Most do not do any investigation. They just parrot what news releases have been provided or what some politician says without proofing it.

During the time approaching an election, a competent news service would listen to a politician speak. then if they don’t understand fully where the politician stands an the issues, ask questions. If the politician ducks answering the question, ask it again. Insist on an answer. If no answer is provided, make that a part of any article written.
When preparing the news report, investigate what was said and report on any discrepancies, exaggerations or lies.
Our lives as citizens are hard enough trying to make important decisions without only being supplied with inaccurate incomplete information about the issues and candidates from both candidates and the news services.
Part of the problem is there are fewer services, only one wire service now and the networks have cut their staff to almost nothing.
It seems like all the important news is now coming form the blogs, not traditional media. That’s good and bad. There is a lot of trash on the Internet. Some readers may think this blog adds to it. That’s the bad. The good is that at least, good information is available. It usually doesn’t take too much reading to realize what is probably accurate and what is trash.
What’s bad about this is that it would be much easier for everyone if we had real journalism with the appropriate standards of journalism like we’ve enjoyed in the past.
Something needs to be done to correct this.