Hammer Mill Days

One.... two.... One-two-three-four! *SMASH * Wait, hold it. Tubey, you okay? Was that your last planter? Christmas. We've got to go to the garden store, damn it. Oh, hiya. Geezus, you'd think being idle and ensconced in an abandoned hammer mill would offer endless opportunities to rehearse, jam, arrange, etc. Seems like every time we try to do it, something comes up. For instance, this week I've got custody of the mansized tuber. (Matt had him last week. Hey - that's the terms of the adoption agreement, what do you want from me?) I guess I never realized what a handful he can be. He's at a difficult age for tubers; you know, that time when they either become a full-fledged plant or get mashed up into some kind of traditional dish. I have to think that, for tubey, it's going to be the former outcome, but he doesn't seem convinced. Now he jumps at every noise. And as you might expect, rehearsal generates a lot of noises. Okay, so when he jerks to one side at t

The ongoing debate over raising the debt ceiling has dominated another week's worth of news coverage. Now Moody's has put the U.S. government "on notice" - something I thought only Stephen Colbert could do - that our debt rating may be downgraded if the current impasse continues. As I mentioned in my last rant, this is a manufactured crisis. It's a standoff not over debt yet to be incurred, but debt already booked by Congress by virtue of budget items already agreed to. There is no reason for this threatened default other than to make political points... and yet it continues, even though the downside risks are substantial. How substantial? Default - or even near-default - could cause a global financial disruption on a scale that would dwarf that of late 2008. At the very least, a downgrade of the investment rating of U.S. Treasury bonds would be not only unprecedented but extremely costly, making service on our existing debt far more costly, blowing an even bigger