Matt Taibbi has a way with words. We may not agree on a lot of issues, but I'm glad he's in our corner when it comes to Iraq and the line of bullshit that Bush is feeding us with his "Strategery for Vict'ry in Iraq". I hope that the outrage he says permeates the White House press room spills over into their reporting.

Conspiracy theories. Most of them are shite, but once in a while, one rolls around that seems to have legs. The revelations about Diebold are making me think there may be something to the allegations that the Ohio results in 2004 were faked, and maybe the ones in Florida too. Crazy.

This post has the 5 top signs that the Real Estate boom is busting.

More bad news on the Real Estate front. Unsold inventory is at a 19 year high, and sales have slowed considerably.

Great article about the End of the Real Estate Boom. I've been selling real estate for 5 years, and I can sense the party is over. When something like the housing bubble, like the Tech Bubble, starts making headlines in the local papers, the hangover is beginning. I expect that the bad news will continue to come in as 2006 begins, and that by spring a lot of the shape of this thing will be identifiable. Interest rates continue to edge upward, gold steadily climbs, foreclosures begin to be noticeable, bank loans become more stringent, signs reading "for sale" signs begin to vastly outnumber ones with "sold" on them, the price of new construction stagnates or declines, so on and so forth. In my opinion, the picture is pretty grim.

Here's a post from datalounge dealing with secession and how precariously close we are to losing our liberty totally. I posted my thoughts as Salvadore Dada.

The tragic story of Cory Maye is so infuriating that one would have to be somewhat obtuse not to see the direct connection between it and the damage caused by the "War on Drugs". It appears that the prosecutor originally involved in the case is acting as his attorney in his appeals. I have to suspect that this prosecutor had a crisis of conscience after sending a man he knew in his gut was innocent to die.

A friend from my childhood was in this weekend, and after 15 years in the military (with a great retirement plan at the 20 year mark) he is seriously considering retiring rather than return to Iraq. He got a kick out of my bumper sticker of Bush with the text "International Terrorist" beneath it. He's sick of Bush too, but can't express it most of the time for fear of repercussions.

I used to buy a lot of comic books, and I still read some Trades and follow the industry. I was thinking about the first Crisis on Infinite Earths and how it hooked me on comics, and how at $3 a pop it was hard to become a comic freak today, in spite of The Infinite Crisis and the hype around it.

Then it dawned on me- I paid about .75 cents an issue for stuff coming out around that time, and since a dollar is only worth .25 cents in today's dollars that means that the books today actually cost the same, but are vastly superior to the product of 25 years ago- better paper, sharper art, more compelling writing, more diversity.

So, in spite of all the government has done to wreck us financially, we get a better product for a quality-adjusted lower price. Imagine how great it would be if we had NO INFLATION!?!

I just noted my post from 22 September. $500 an oz. gold is a memory now. Will it hit $550 before 2006?

I've been thinking about songs that provide a soundtrack for my life, and I've decided to list them here. For posterity.

I'll start with "Irish Blood, English Heart" by Morrissey.

And closing piece has to be the old bluegrass tune "Satisfied Mind" as sung by the sublime Jeff Buckley.

Yes, I have a thing for broody dark-haired geniuses.

Should Tookie Williams die? I don't think ANYONE should die at the incompetent hands of The State.

Get Fuzzy on December 12 2005 has been edited in my local paper. The punchline, a play on the euphemism for a man's testicles, has been replaced with a nonsense edit of the word "sack", replacing it with "case". Huh?

I suck at keeping this updated.