If you didn't happen to read Cursing Mama's blog entry on Sunday, please do so here. It would be good if you read the articles she links to, as well; it is good to be as well-informed as possible. Go ahead, I'll wait.
One of my favorite bits from the linked articles is this:
(from an MSNBC article discussing the problems encountered by Long Term Capital Management in 1998 when Russian credit, in which the hedge fund was heavily invested, collapsed; emphasis added by me)
Michael Greenberger served as the [Commodities Futures Trading Commission's] director of trading and markets at the time. A proponent of tougher oversight, he recalls the Greenspan-Rubin resistance as being fierce and across-the-board. "If we had prevailed, the [subprime-securitization] party would never have gotten started; the wildness wouldn't have happened," he says. "There would have been auditing requirements, capital requirements, transparency. No more operating in the shadows. Bear Stearns, Lehman, Enron, and AIG would be thriving, and spending every waking hour complaining about regulatory restraints imposed upon them."
Remember Ronald Reagan, he who was the champion of deregulation? He who is so eulogized by the rightward half of the electorate? His ideas regarding regulation are not quite so, um, unassailable now.
The problem with deregulation and self-regulation is that -- duh! -- people cheat. If enlightened self-interest is enough to ensure a well-oiled economy, why are exams proctored? Because people cheat. If self-regulation is so damned wonderful, why do we need police, huh? Because people cheat. People can be blinded by their own short-sighted self-interest, i.e., greed -- greed for what others have, greed for the profits-based bonus, greed for moremoremore.
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The other half of the equation, though, is election fraud. It is not enough that a majority of American voters cast their ballots for Obama. Their votes must be counted. If an election can be stolen (see: 2000; 2004) it will be. The early steps are already in the works -- flawed voting software with no paper or audit trail that could potentially alleviate problems; mandatory matching of a voter's every id point to existing databases, a process that has already been shown to eliminate massive numbers of legitimate voters; etc., etc., etc.
Be wary. Be aware. Vote, drive others to the polls if they need a ride, be informed.
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Enough of that. Here is a child's sweater I started a couple weeks ago with the plan that it would be done by the October 1 deadline Afghan for Afghans' latest project, sweaters for school kids aged 7 to 12.
I knit the body in about 30 seconds, then it languished in the knitting bag for a couple weeks because sleeves require So. Much. Concentration. [/whine] Maybe finishing this can be the silver lining in the broken ankle cloud.
The stripe pattern is the Fibonacci sequence, something I have wanted to work into a knit garment since I first discovered it a couple years ago. Yeah, I'm a little behind the curve on that one.
As you can deduce, the upper part of the sweater will be predominantly the pinkish-red color, although my row gauge calculations indicate that a little more blue will sneak in up near the neck. The pattern is a combination of the saddle-shoulder sweater from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns for the sizing and EZ's knit-all-in-one-piece-in-the-round, saddle-shoulder pullover from An Opinionated Knitter for everything else. The yarn is Knit Picks Wool of the Andes worsted from stash in Blue Bonnet and Cherry Red. The needles are KP US#7.
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I'd like another glass of wine, please. This one seems to have spilled...
And, what every well-dressed cast needs, to go along with the wine stains:
