True, True

The funny thing is that McCain's wife's fortune is based off of a Budweiser distributorship.

Feds in the Money Market

Ok, I am more interested in food, with a side of business/economics, than say, a dude like Tyler Cowen, the George Mason econ professor, with a foodie side.  But the current business/economic discourse in the media just seems so wrong that I can't just talk about food here.  

So skip this if you're looking for food pictures.

I read this USAToday Op-Ed about the benefits of small banks today.  The basic argument is that small banks (whatever that means.. though the authors allude to a George Bailey-esque bank - from A Wonderful Life - as the model) are better than big banks because they make loans that do not default.  "Better" loans makes for "better" banks.  Small banks can make such better loans because they have an "informational" advantage - they know their customers and know the good credit risk from the bad. For good measure, the Op-Ed proposes some sort of special tax on securitizations.

Wow, what a load of naive crock.   

There are no banks that serves big population centers in America that works this way.  The closest thing to a "small" bank that most of us see is our local credit union.  Credit unions are not inherently better at assessing risk than my Citibank branch - the only extra information they may have on me is the activity in my accounts. What's my savings history, my checkwriting history, etc.  But if you get a regular mortgage (as opposed to those "no-documentation" ones), you've disclosed such account history to Citibank as well.

And what's wrong with making loans to folks with higher credit risks?  If there is any failure here in this mortgage business, it is the failure to properly price risk.

Now the momentum has swung the other way.  People with money (banks and investors) are charging too much for risk. That is why the markets are stuck - no one is lending at prices that are business appropriate.  

Thankfully, the Feds are stepping in to not only issue commercial paper directly (i.e. short term loans to provide working capital to functioning businesses), it also has just set up a money market facility to buy current commercial paper from financial institutions that are seeing massive redemptions from their money market investors.

If the Feds play their cards right (i.e. pay appropriate prices for the asset purchases), they (or we, as taxpayers) can end up making a killing when markets are talked down from this pricing panic.

Of course, we're talking about the US government here, so the "we" who will end up making money will not be the taxpayers, but political cronies.  Sounds like current day Vietnam.

HPV and Vietnam

I wrote this comment on Ching's blog (Real Life Online), in reference to a post about cervical cancer.

I'm a guy and all, so take this comment in that light. But I think that women get cervical cancer because of simpler reasons - namely HPV, an STD that is very prevalent, nearly a 50% infection rate, and very infectious and people die from cervical cancer because of a lack of access to medical care (i.e. Pap smears).

Condoms do not prevent HPV infections. Because of this, in the narrowly focused, conservative political right of the U.S., the scare tactics surround HPV is used to press for ineffective abstinence only sex education.

Good thing for women these days is the progress on HPV vaccines. While it does not prevent all types of HPV infections (there are like 100 strains or something like that), Guardasil is a recently introduced vaccine that is effective against some significant HPV strains.

In the U.S., again for political reasons, it is marketed as an anti-cervical cancer vaccine instead of as an anti-HPV vaccine. Guardasil faces an uphill battle for acceptance in the U.S. marketplace. And there are enough politicians who will make sure that tax dollars will not support Guardasil vaccinations for those who would otherwise qualify (medically and economically).

Interestingly, I recently read in the Vietnamese local press that the government here will start a Guardasil vaccination program for its citizens. Of course the Vietnamese government likely cannot afford to vaccinate all young girls / young women, but they'll get to some of them and it'll be a start.

Funny that Vietnam will be more advanced on this issue of HPV infection than the U.S.

There are a lot of things that are 'backwards' in Vietnam as compared to the U.S. - ok, backwards is a harsh term.  There are a lot of things here that I'm not as comfortable with.  But one thing that strikes me is that, every once in a while, this Socialist government which at its apogee is one of technocrats, gets it right with technical policy decisions.    

Left, Right, Middle and Joe The Plumber

The other day I was invited out to drinks by Kevin and I ended up meeting some new faces as well as reconnecting with some old faces.

You know how it goes at these things: meeting new folks + beer = a dorm room style discussion of politics.  People ended up talking like they were in college, except for the fact that everyone engaged in the conversation had actual money that they made (and lost), so it was a bit more personal and vivid.

I ended up between an earnest ultra-lefty and a concerned economic libertarian.  Through the conversations, well lubricated with beer, it occurred to me that our discussion distilled the problem with the left-wing of the Democratic party.

I disagreed with both of these guys, for I'm a pragmatist occupying the soft middle politically.  It's a difficult position to hold, because you are out-flanked, and you can't rely on stock ideology as a crutch.  But it's a reasonable position to me, as life is all about shades of grey.

While I disagreed with both guys, the lefty just sounded flat out crazy - it is hard to be taken seriously when one complains about big business and demonize it all.  The percentage of Americans who want to tend to their own subsistence garden, wear burlap and live in a yurt is, shockingly (!!), small.  Very small.  You people are crazy.

The economic libertarian was of the school of absolute freedom of contract, minimal-to-no government regulations, etc.  I was enjoying the beer too much to mount much of a convincing rebuttal, but overall I can see how folks are more easily seduced by this extreme of the political spectrum.

Who doesn't want complete freedom?  It's like asking a kid whether the school should get rid of its stern principal - of course!  Recess all the time.  How cool is that?

But in the end, most so-called libertarians do not really believe in complete freedom of contract.  If they did, then they cannot ideologically object to child labor, indentured servitude, organ harvesting, among other things.  It is neat and tidy to assume and expect that the free market will, over time, resolve everything in the most efficient means possible, which is the libertarian position.  Such ideology denies the humanity in all of us - a humanity that contains faults and inefficiencies that are culturally ingrained and will not disappear over time unless there is a concerted push back against such inefficient culture.

Overall though, the far-right libertarian position is easier to accept than the far left position, because it does not sound nutso.  The pinnacle of the far right is a successful business person unencumbered by government regulations.  The pinnacle of the left is a person who is self sufficient, unencumbered by the corporation.  The choice is between being pampered and being an ascetic.  An easy choice to make.

It all goes back to Joe The Plumber - putting aside whether he's a licensed plumber, whether he's a Mccain plant, etc. etc. - his story illustrates the left's problem.  The ultra-lefty websites have had a field day mocking the idea of the guy.  One line of mockery has to do with his complaints about the Obama tax plan.

In short, the proposed Obama plan would increase taxes only to those who make over $250k.  Joe The Plumber admittedly does not make over $250k, but he expressed concerns that Obama would tax him more.

Places like DailyKos rips Joe The Plumber for this - how can you complain about taxes 'that you will not pay, and will likely never have to pay' is the line of inquiry.

What the left does not account for is the nature and ethos of America.  We are a country of strivers - we are a country of the "PreRich."   Joe is not rich today, but he plans to be rich someday.  He doesn't vote his current economic interests, he votes his aspirational economic interests.

Just like the average person thinks that they are better looking than average, the average American thinks that, someday, and soon, they will be richer than average. And so they vote this way.

Is it a bad thing that Americans are a society of PreRich?  No, because that's just one expression of our cultural optimism.  Meet other folks and you'll quickly learn that Americans are very a optimistic sort.  Perhaps socio-economic movement is as stolid in the States as it is in the UK, but the average Briton is less optimistic than the average American about their future prospects.

I've met a few folks from the UK who've expressed to me that they're in Vietnam to, in part, escape the socio-economic situation back home.  Every single American I've met here have said that being in Vietnam was about adventure and future possibilities.  Not about escaping America.    

The left will always lose in America because they do not cater to the PreRich optimism of our culture.  IMO, Bill, Hilary, and yes, Barack, are more of the pragmatic centrists type than the Kossacks want.  This is why the strident left railed against Hilary.  And I suspect that they'll turn on Barack Obama once he's in office (assuming he'll proceed on and win).   Or, if we're lucky, they'll grow up a little.  

Overselling the Subprime Problem

These days the US Presidential race is getting down to the final days - less than a month left. As with most Presidential races, it boils down to 'the economy, stupid.' Two months ago, talking about the indifferent economy mainly dealt with oil prices, and those big, bad guys, the "oil speculators."

That was a joke of a bogeyman, and now, a few months later, when oil is down to less than $90, no one is talking about those speculators - now those folks who bought when oil was $140 are no longer evil speculators, just bad investors. Then, the mainstream business media didn't really explain how oil "speculation" could have a negative long-term impact on things.

These days, the monster under the bed is subprime mortgages. You know, those Wall Streeters and their financial engineering, their "securitizations" - my gosh, what a long word, it must be a complex and difficult to understand concept, I mean, it even has a 10-point Scrabble tile in it, it must be nefarious!

The popular understanding of securitization is some sort of fancy slice-and-dice that turns bad assets (subprime debt) into multiples of good assets, but this understanding is just wrong.

Everyone knows what a mortgage is, and most understand correctly that subprime mortgages means loans to people who, on average, will default on their loans more often than the regular ("prime") market. To offset the fact that they will default more often, you as the bank charge a higher interest rate. Makes sense, and simple enough.

Making a loan and pricing the loan (i.e. setting the level of interest to charge) is a forward looking bet. All else being equal, the price you charge for a loan depends on how likely the borrower will pay you back. So how do you predict whether the borrower will pay you back? You use things such as credit scores, and divide borrowers into subprime and prime markets.

But what if you can make a backwards looking bet? What if you can build a time machine, so you don't need to predict whether someone will pay you back (regardless of their credit score), you'll actually know if they will pay you or not?

If you can know the future, you can make money. This is what securitization tries to do.

A few decades back some financial types and lawyers (I'm assuming) got another simple idea: let's build something close to a time machine.

How do you do this?

First, let us assume that 25% of all subprime loans will default. That sounds bad, but that also means 75% will pay you.

So if you make one loan, you have a 75% chance of getting 100% of your money and a 25% chance of getting 0% of your money back (disregarding partial payments prior to default).

Second, we would quickly realize that if you make 100 loans (or 1,000 or 1M, etc.), then you know that statistically you will get 75% of your money back.

So how do I build this (imperfect) time machine with these realizations? Well, you first bundle up a lot of subprime loans to get statistics on your side (law of large numbers and everything), and then you divide up the loans into discrete packages.

So we bundle up 100 subprime loans and then divide them into four packages, each package having the rights to payments from 25 loans. And now, to sprinkle on the (imperfect) time machine dust, we say that the first package will be entitled to the first 25 loans out of the 100 that gets paid off, the second package will be entitled to the next 25, and so on.

This is the financial engineering magic - instead of having 100 random subprime loans with an expected value of 75%, we can bundle up the loans and then divide them up into smaller packages *with conditions attached* to turn the 100 loans into four packages, the first three having an expected value of 100% and the last package of 25 loans having an expected value of 0%.

If you are an investor buying package 1 or package 2, you'll feel pretty confident of getting repaid. If you are buying package 3, statistics say that you will get repaid 100% but you are a little bit uncomfortable.. so Wall Street gets an insurance company, say AIG, to guarantee that, out of those 25 loans, AIG will pay after the first 5 defaults. The expected default rate for package 3 is 0%, so AIG is comfortable in accepting an insurance premium to write this type of insurance - after all, statistically and if the assumptions hold up, it will never have to pay out on the insurance. Now, with the insurance, the investor is comfortable that it will get repaid and therefore will buy package 3 at a price that makes Wall Street money.

That, simply put, is what securitization does. The idea is that simple. And because the financial and legal types like to think of themselves as geniuses, they call these packages "tranches."  So is this creating value out of crap? Financial mumbo-jumbo, a slice-and-dice that ends up shredding investors?

No, it's just unlocking hidden value. 100 random subprime loans can (and are) worth more when you package them into tranches. There are a lot of things in life that are worth less than the sum of its parts.  Look at a car junkyard - it's a business only because a car parted out is worth more than the whole car.  So too subprime loan, parted out through securitization, are worth more than the original loans.

There is a lot of talk about Wall Street securitizing loans, and making all these fancy and exotic investment vehicles which then turned out to be worthless, but I just don't buy it.  No matter how many packages you divide a bundle of loans into, you cannot create more than the original 100 loans, so financial engineering doesn't expand the universe of loans (i.e. doesn't expand the universe of risk), it just divides it up into smaller packages.

So the subprime collapse only happens when reality is different from assumptions. We assumed a 25% default rate. What happens when it is actually 35%? Well, tranche 1 and 2 are still the same (65 loans get repaid, and 1 and 2 "take up" only 50 loans). Tranche 4 is still the same, it's still crap (0 loans get paid).

For tranche 3, the investors expected to get fully repaid (i.e. 25 good loans), but with a 35% default, there are only 15 good loans left (65-50 = 15).  AIG, our insurer, also expected 25 good loans remaining when it insured against 5 bad loans.

With a 35% default rate, the tranche 3 investors will collect on the 15 actual good loans and the 5 insured loans from AIG, and will take a loss of 5 loans.  AIG will take a loss of 5 loans against their income from the insurance premium.

So is there a subprime problem?  Yes and no. Yes, in reality default rates have likely been higher than the assumed rates in the models used to price the tranches, but the failures are not due to problems with black magic. It's a simple error in assuming default rates by investors and insurers.

Investors and insurers only lose more money than expected when the default rates are higher than expected.  Outside of "naked" insurance policies (aka naked Credit Default Swaps), there is no expansion of risk in securitization.  AIG lost money because it did not assess the risk in providing insurance properly.

And the answer is "No" because, for all the negative press on the subprime market, it is surprisingly not that bad.  While the data is dated, as of last year the total dollar amount of outstanding subprime loans is 1.3 trillion, with a default rate of 14.5%, and the average loan amount being $180k.

That means that about $200B worth of loans is in default. So why is there a $700B bailout?

Past is Prologue

I came into work late this morning because I stayed in to watch the much anticipated Biden-Palin show off.  That, and to watch the Cubbies continue to frustrate their fans.

Anyhow, like most things political in the U.S. these days, I don't see this debate changing the landscape must.  As Denny Green said in a different context (coincidentally also in reference to a Chicago team), "they are who we thought they were." Folks' opinions are entrenched and it won't change - I thought Palin was under-qualified before and this performance just furthered that narrative in my mind.  

I'm not really a Biden fan, but I appreciated his homerun (or at least a triple) performance.  The media will latch onto things, like Palin's odd multiple winks to the nameless Americans behind the camera lens, and Biden's retort of "Past is prologue."

You'll likely hear that line quite a bit in the media analysis of things - the funny thing is, I would gather 75% of Americans don't exactly understand it.  I certainly don't.  I mean, I understood his intent given the context of the debate, and I've probably read more prologues than the average American, but such usage of the term "prologue" is wholly uncommon.  

The media will love it because most journos believe they are great writers trapped in a more pedestrian position.  To me, it just sounds like someone speaking over the average informed person's head.

On the flip, Biden spoke about his family some and paused a bit in the middle, due to the sadness in his heart, when he recounted the tragic death of his wife and two (?) children in an auto accident.  I paused a bit while listening to him.  

And yet again, I didn't know such personal history - but I sure know the background on Palin, her husband, her kids, and her in-laws.  The Dems really need to work harder at personalizing their candidates.          

Obama Eats Dog Meat

I was reading a Slate's piece about the Asian-American voting bloc, titled "Chinese Democracy: Why Don't We Ever Hear About the Asian-American Vote?

The basic thesis is that the Asian-American "bloc" gets ignored because it doesn't really exist due to the heterogeneity of this group - apparently the diversity within the Asian-American group is as diverse as America itself.  Interestingly, Slate suggests that the only states where Asian-Americans could be swing voters are Nevada and Virginia.    

One  link out of that Slate piece was to Jeff Yang's article in the SFGate, "Could  Obama Be The First Asian American President?"

I didn't know that Obama lived for a period of his childhood in Indonesia - I guess that is one of the sources for the false Muslim accusations.  His stepfather at that time was a Muslim Indonesian.  I'm relatively in tune with the news, but, outside of his Kansas hometown / Harvard Law Review / South Side community organizer / Illinois State Rep and Senate posts, I haven't learned much about the guy from his 18 months of campaigning.  On the flip side, I've read half of Bill Clinton's book and half of Hillary's book.  Throw a sex scandal in Obama's life and I'll promise to read at least half of his autobiography as well!

Here's a shout-out to the sizeable Vietnamese-American community in Virginia - vote for Obama because he has eaten dog meat!  One of the things I share with the dude.  

  

Palin Around

So McCain announced a running mate, surprising most by picking Sarah Palin, a first term governor of Alaska.

Interesting choice, and two reactions:

One - just imagine how pissed you would be if you are Hilary Clinton right about now.  Here is a lady, Palin, that is vastly, vastly under qualified compared to Hilary, yet she got the repub VP nod while Hilary was snubbed by Obama for an older, male version of herself (who is less qualified electorally, than her).  Palin even co-opted some of Hilary's inspiring talking points in her first public speech as the VP candidate.  How much does it suck to be on the receiving end of unbridled, and undeserved hate, from one's own political party.  I mean, there are folks out there who heartily advocated for Obama because they hated Hilary and now they're undecided in an Obama-McCain matchup.  How simply repugnant is that?  Sure, Hilary supporters have to be convinced to go Obama now that she's nowhere on the ticket, but they would never have deserted her for McCain.  Makes one wonder how much of that Obama support is merely anti-Hilary, and how well that would hold up in November.    

Two - the political media are just a nasty, mean, petty bunch of SOBs.  I started to care a bit about politics once I moved into the maelstrom that is Washington D.C.  I started to pay attention more, and did more than simple cursory reading, after the 2000 election - I mean, who didn't, right?  

From 2000 till Obama, or perhaps till Dean's Scream, the views on the lefty press and the lefty blogs probably dovetailed decently with my own.  Ok, maybe not dovetailed, but perhaps friction-fit.

But once you're blessed with not agreeing with their viewpoints, you can step back and see the characters on the lefty media, and it's not a pretty picture.  I've become tired of Keith Olbermann for more than a year now and wish he would go back to SportsCenter so that I can tune into MSNBC.  I used to read the Huffington Post once in a while, less during this Obama-Clinton race, but after today's article by Jane Smiley (about Palin), I'll likely not type the url in ever again.

The early meme talking point on Palin is that she is unqualified to run as VP - and Smiley writes in this vein, offering up as criticism the fact that Palin was a beauty queen and wonders (twice!) if she is breast feeding.  That is bordering on (if not) misogyny, whether it's written by a woman or not.

It is base and unbecoming to attack her in this manner.  It should be focused on policy and process.. and this kind of attack does not endear the Obama camp with the disaffected Hilary supporters.  

Here is something from, of all places, a golf magazine, that, while coming from a totally different direction, is on point - David Feherty, from his piece, the  Hypocritical Headache:

It's tough for women to get through that glass ceiling, and if they do, they have to work with men looking up their skirts. Needless to say, the guy beside me didn't have a daughter.

Biding Time

Wow, Joe freakin' Biden.  That's totally gonna get me off my butt to jump through hoops to vote absentee.  Not.  You lost dude.  

Brutal Beijing Olympics Crackdown

Oh my god, the brutal detainment!  This Reuters clip, courtesy of With Leather.  

 

 I just love it when people complain about "abuses" that they have no inkling of.  I bet you this is the first time they've been to China.  Are places like China, or Vietnam, perfect?  Of course not.  Could the government do a better job with respect to citizens' rights?  Of course it could - but all governments in the world usurp the power of the people.  It's about hitting the right balance.  Vietnam is not there, but neither is the US.

But, living here, that is hardly my concern.  I'm more affected by the economic hardships that I see daily.  The other day there was a Bentley Continental Flying Spur parked on the street - and across the street, a grandmother was laying out newspaper on the sidewalk for a kid about 4 or 5 to take a nap.  But that's not sexy enough for t-shirts and banners.  

Obama + Energy

As the political race in the States has now winnowed, the candidates are starting to spout off their ideas to energize (pun, ha!) the public behind their campaign.

One such recent tack is that taken by Obama under the CNN headline of "Obama Wants Energy Speculator Crackdown."

Reading the piece, it sounds like he wants more governmental intervention and oversight into energy commodities futures trading (but not other types of futures, let alone commodities futures, trading).  Hmm.. while regulation per se may be not all that bad, knee-jerk regulations surely are ripe for mistaken results (death of habeas, anyone?).

The Dems are smart to throw around the term 'closing the Enron loophole' in their petitioning.  I had no idea what this is, so I read up on it a bit.

First up was www.StopOilSpeculators.com - hmm, wonder where they stand:

Additionally, through the so-called "swaps loophole," financial investors can "game the markets" for pure profit by buying up positions in the energy markets,without any limitation on the size of the positions they can take.  One recent estimate suggested that they now control one third of the commodities markets, or $150 billion - a 1,000% increase in less than five years!

What exactly is wrong with taking large positions on bets that you think will go your way?  That's like saying you, as an individual investor, can buy as much Google stock as your wealth allows!  Oh, no!

Look at this May 2008 Baltimore Chron commentary, talking about the Enron Loophole:

In 2006, the "Enron loophole" allowed Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to shift its trades from the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) to the unregulated Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in Atlanta. 

 

That let Amaranth corner the natural gas market, betting that futures prices would rise. The hedge fund lost about $6 billion and imploded as natural gas prices fell to a two-year low in September 2006. 

Haha - that second 'graph is where all these Enron Loophole types are missing in their comprehension.  The spot price for oil is what people pay for it today - so higher prices hurt the buyers and help the sellers of oil.  Spot prices, for the most part, depend on demand characteristics.  

Futures trading is about bets on future price movements - you can use it to bet future prices will be up or down from today, and trade in and out of those positions before the maturity date to make money based on intra-contract price movements of the underlying asset (here, oil).  A futures trade is a contract - there are two sides of the transaction, and neither side is an actual consumer (nor producer) of oil.  It's just a bet between two people, and if you're on the wrong side of the bet, you have to pay up.  

Is this speculation?  Yes, but so is making any investment.  As from the example, just because you "corner" the futures market doesn't mean you'll make money.  It could mean you blow up spectacularly and be used as a whipping boy in hedge fund conferences.  

Complaining about things like 'energy speculation' makes Obama sound more and more like every other poltico and less about the "change" that we need.  After all, when I go out and buy a Prius, I'm an "energy speculator" too!    

Obama Clinches

Just got to the office after hanging out late in my pad watching Clinton's speech this morning - pretty decent speech, even if it didn't contain the concession that folks wanted.  But facts are facts and Obama now has the required number of delegates.  Good for him and hope he takes down McCain.  

What has struck me in this primary battle - or at least in the web 2.0 content in this battle - is how much people hate Clinton, while on the flip side non-Obama supporters are merely indifferent to the guy.  They're all politicians, they're all roughly the same, yet people hate her with passion.  I don't get that.  

Onwards to the Nomination.. and Defeat

Hilary won the regular folks (Kentucky) and Obama won the latte/blogger crowd (or should that be the ca phe sua da/blogger crowd :) in Oregon and the nomination fight is about to wind down.

A good show for all and lots of fun fodder to discuss.  But unless Obama picks Clinton as his running mate, or picks up either Mark Warner or Tim Kaine (ex- and current Dem governors of Virginia, respectively), my prediction of a McCain victory still stands.  For all the naive Obamabot rhetoric of a 50-state strategy, last I checked we still use the Electoral College in this country.

This in-depth Electoral College analysis piece by Paul Maslin, titled"How Will Barack Get to 270/" on Salon.com, sets the likely scenarios that Obama needs for EC victory.  To wit:

Clearly, and I'm being cautious, I think it's going to be a close race. If Obama wins the 255 votes in the states where he's favored, then to get to 270 he needs to choose from the following menu: 1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West -- Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N's (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N's and either Colorado or Virginia.

I do not think that Obama will win any of the following: Ohio (see Clinton blowout); New Mexico (Arizona's neighbor and the Hispanic problem); or Virginia (unless Warner or Kaine.. and more Warner than Kaine, because Warner is much, much more popular here).  Webb, the freshman Virginia Senator is cool and all, but he squeaked in via Maccaca and his wife is Vietnamese-American.  I am realistic enough to know that, unfortunately, in 2008 in America, your presidential ticket cannot be "too" diverse.  Sucks, but that's the truth.

Putting this up here to see if I am right in 6 months.

Obama Backs Off Wright

So I couldn't fall asleep and I turned on the tube to while away the time.  Flipped to CNN and caught them carrying a live Obama presser in NC where he's a bit down, explaining how he's now disavowing Rev. Jeremiah Wright based on the latter' comments at the National Press Club the other day.

Because I'm still wide awake, I head over to Youtube to catch the NPC presser, all 30+ minutes of it, including the question session.  

Wow, the Rev. was pretty darn middle-of-the-road and melba toast like in his comments.  I'm not an Obama-bot and am far from calling myself a Christian, but this dude made a lot of sense.  I have no idea what the controversy is all about.

For an old Reverend, he was acting a bit silly, sorta like a college jock preening in front of his frat buddies, during the question -and-answer session.  This was mostly due to the fact that the audience was filled with friends and supporters who lustily clapped for him - he was just egging on the crowd, having a bit of fun.  Also, the NPC woman was overmatched, in wit and theology, so his overenthusiastic parries of her questions, or to be fair, written questions from the assembled press that she delivered, and the ease of his deflections, only served to goad him into more mugging for the crowd.  

Wright did state that he thought the US Government is capable of having had developed the HIV virus - of course it is capable, but HIV is a shitty biological weapon if it was crafted as such - and that 9/11 was, in part, provoked by past US Government policies.  These are definite political third rails, but, at least for the latter 9/11 statement, a lot of folks would agree.  One of them happen to be named Ron Paul.  

I have no idea what the fuss is about.  That Obama is now disavowing Wright makes him look more political than principled.  But of course I would think that, because I'm for the other guy (or gal).  

Vietnam Rescinds Adoption Law with US

Saw a snippet in the local paper announcing that Vietnam will terminate their current agreement on international adoption with the United States in July of this year; afterwards, they will consider whether or not to renew (or amend, I suppose) its terms.  

Hilarity

So Hilary wins Pennsylvania by 8 points and the Obama camp will spin this as a meaningless, too-small win that was gained by rough house tactics (see NYT editorial).

Who will be the first to say that Hilary should quit the race because she didn't win by double digits?  

Hahaha.  We're not in Kansas anymore.  

I predict that  McCain will handily beat Obama in the general election, and the Obama Dems will galvanize around Hilary with hand wringing and woe is me sobs.  But it won't last long enough to push her towards 2012.