Rain

Renting is Good

August, 18, 2010—(MCT)—With sweeping financial reform legislation enacted, the White House and Congress now must focus on fixing the mess created by the failed housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s a complex challenge with high stakes for taxpayers and the struggling real estate market.

On Tuesday, key administration officials conferred with about 200 industry executives, affordable housing advocates and other experts about the role the government should play in the nation’s housing finance system. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner asserted that federal involvement still was needed, but he promised “fundamental change.”

“It is not tenable to leave in place the system we have today,” he said, adding that Fannie and Freddie will change dramatically when they emerge from government control.

Pressure is growing to remake or replace the mortgage leviathans, which were seized by the government in September 2008 after huge losses from subprime mortgages put them on the brink of bankruptcy. The bailout has cost U.S taxpayers nearly $150 billion. But lawmakers must tread carefully to keep from further damaging a housing market that Fannie and Freddie almost solely are supporting. The two companies, along with the Federal Housing Administration, collectively guarantee more than 90 percent of all new U.S. home loans.

“Nobody wants to mess up the mortgage market,” said Douglas Elliott, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank. “And any transition with Fannie and Freddie is going to be fraught with some risk.”

Tuesday’s event came as the second anniversary of the government seizure of the firms approached, a bailout that left taxpayers as 80 percent owners. The administration faces a January deadline, added by lawmakers to the financial reform legislation, to make recommendations to end the expensive federal conservatorship of the firms.

Congress plans to ratchet up its involvement as well, with House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., saying his committee will begin hearings when members return next month.

That’s not fast enough for many Republicans, signaling another bitter partisan reform fight. They have been pushing the administration for more than a year to address the mounting losses at Fannie and Freddie by getting the government out of the housing finance business.

“It is past time to rid the American taxpayer of the liabilities of these financial institutions once and for all,” Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said Tuesday as he blasted the Obama administration for continuing the bailouts of Fannie and Freddie begun under President George W. Bush.

But the Obama administration has been moving slowly for fear of further harming the housing market. There was fresh evidence of problems Tuesday as Southern California home sales plunged 21.4 percent in July compared with a year earlier, according to research firm MDA DataQuick of San Diego.

“It’s much more important to get this issue right than to do it fast,” said Michael Berman, chairman-elect of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said the stakes were high not just for the financial system but also for average Americans because of the major investment in their homes.

Donovan said the federal government’s involvement in the housing market needed to be reduced. And Geithner said there was a strong case for a “carefully designed” government mortgage guarantee in the future, a point echoed by panelists at the conference.

There also appeared to be consensus among the participants that any government guarantee needed to be explicit, not murky and implicit like the guarantee that stood behind Fannie and Freddie as private, government-sponsored enterprises before they were seized.

William Gross, managing director of bond fund giant Pimco, said government guarantees were crucial to the housing market, helping keep mortgage rates low.

But there still is major debate about how to structure such a guarantee and what size mortgages it should cover.

“The challenge is to make sure that any government guarantee is priced to cover the risk of losses, and structured to minimize taxpayer exposure,” Geithner said.

Fannie and Freddie were created by Congress and later turned into private, government-sponsored enterprises mandated to expand homeownership with requirements to purchase a set amount of loans made to low- and moderate-income borrowers.

Fannie and Freddie combined hold the credit risk on about $5 trillion in mortgages, and losses from loans made during the housing boom have continued to mount. The Treasury Department has pledged it will cover an unlimited amount of losses through 2012. As of June 30, the department had pumped $144.9 billion into the two companies.

Federal officials have stressed that the losses came from loans purchased before the government seizure and said standards at Fannie and Freddie have tightened significantly since then. And as the housing market has stabilized, the losses at Fannie and Freddie have lessened. Fannie lost $1.2 billion in the second quarter, down from $11.5 billion in the first quarter. Freddie lost $4.7 billion in the second quarter, down from $6.7 billion in the first quarter.

Still, the losses meant the two firms would need an additional $3.3 billion from the Treasury Department, bringing their bailout cost to $148.2 billion.

(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.

Smoke and Mirrors in the Triage Room

Why stimulus isn't working
Consumers, businesses lack confidence to take advantage of cheap interest rates

August 12, 2010
BY TERRY SAVAGE

'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

How true that old saying is. And here's another along those lines:

You can stuff the banks with money, but you can't make them lend. . . . And you can lower interest rates to zero, but you can't give people and businesses the confidence to borrow.

The Dow's 265 point drop Wednesday shows that the market has it figured out -- even if the Fed and Congress don't.

All the stimulus Congress can create -- including Wednesday's promise to send an additional $3 billion of TARP funds to struggling homeowners -- won't get consumers past the fear zone. In fact, it will just prolong the housing crisis as this failed program already has done. And it will further destroy the confidence of buyers and builders.

All the money the Fed can create won't get business going again without the critical ingredient called confidence. And confidence is just what the Fed undermined with its latest promise to keep creating new credit in the banking system and keep interest rates near zero -- all in an attempt to "stimulate" the economy.

The uncertainty factor

There's actually plenty of money around -- trillions of dollars held by banks in the form of Treasury securities, plus nearly $2 trillion in cash on the balance sheets of businesses.

But there's so much uncertainty about future growth that banks don't want to take the risk of lending to businesses. They know they can pay savers close to zero percent interest and then redeposit the cash in risk-free 10-year Treasuries earning 2.5 percent.

And there's so much uncertainty about consumer demand that businesses don't want to invest their cash in new plants or stores or products -- or even in new employees. The fact that health care and financial services reform bills are layering new and uncertain costs on business is just one more reason for companies that have cash to hoard it.

And there's so much uncertainty about the future that even potential homebuyers who have good credit, and could make a down payment on a new or existing home, are scared to do so because they don't know if they'll have jobs in the future. And they figure real estate prices will go lower, or stay low longer.

So the economy is grinding to a halt -- or at least to very slow growth.
Low rates: solution or problem?

But does the Fed have the right remedy -- or is it just making things worse?

Consider this possibility: Low interest rates may actually be slowing the economy down!

Seniors who have lived on the interest they earn on their savings have had to cut back their lifestyles -- cutting into consumer spending.

Workers trying to save for retirement realize they have to spend less and save more, slowing the economy.

Pension funds must project lower returns, so the trustees of state and business pension funds have to contribute more -- diverting resources from economic growth and expansion.

The only winner

About the only winner in this "game" is the U.S. Treasury. It gets to borrow money to fund its deficits at the lowest rates in history. With two-year Treasuries yielding only about half of 1 percent, and 10-year Treasuries yielding 2.75 percent, the government saves a fortune on interest -- for now.

In fact, if rates were only at the "normal" low levels of three years ago, according to economist Brian Wesbury, the Fed would have to spend an additional $230 billion this year to borrow -- adding to the deficit.

While these low rates aren't sparking consumer or business borrowing, they are serving as an incentive for the government to keep spending and borrowing.

Consumers and businesses have learned the lessons of frugality in uncertain times all too well. What a shame the government hasn't begun to learn that lesson. We'll all pay for its mistakes. And that's The Savage Truth.

© Copyright 2010 Sun-Times Media, LLC

---

The world got drunk and wreckless.  Then came the trainwreck.  We're now in triage.  First order of priority are the governments, then the banks and banking systems and last the consumers and the unwashed masses.

They're  still working on the banks.  This may take a while.

Iraq Ponders Its Future

My guess is the Iraq will flounder around and a new strongman will appear. At best he could be a Tito, at worse another Ayatollah. Another Hussein would probably be the best of the worst cases. The dream of democracy spreading from Iraq throughout the Middle East was after all an American dream. Reality is setting and the reality in the wonderful world of Islamic politics is a theocracy or a police state. Unfortunately for the Iraqis, without American force, the turf wars will accelerate. The Iraqi military will have to step forward and not in a way that was envisioned by the American nation builders. Too bad that.


__________


August 17, 2010
Iraqi Leaders Fear for Future After Their Past Missteps
By ANTHONY SHADID NY Times

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political elite, empowered by the American invasion and entrusted with the country’s future, has begun to deliver a damning critique of itself, a grim harbinger for a country rife with fears of more crises, conflicts and even coups as the American military withdraws.

“We should be ashamed of the way we led the country,” said Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a former exile and one of the country’s most prominent politicians.

The verdict by Mr. Abdul Mahdi, echoed often by his peers among the exiled opposition that followed American troops into Baghdad in 2003 and has led Iraq since, is a remarkable window on the apprehension that has seized the country today, still without leadership five months after Iraqis voted in an election meant to enshrine a new government.

As with so much here, the consequences are unpredictable. At least publicly, American officials had hoped for a power-sharing deal that would avert a more dangerous predicament, but those negotiations broke down this week. Even they have begun to worry about the implications of the impasse. “My sense is that there is impatience among the public with their politicians,” said Christopher R. Hill, the departing United States ambassador to Iraq, who had pushed for the deal before his departure last week.

For many Iraqis, especially those with memories of the four coups in the decade after the fall of the monarchy in 1958, the apprehension underlines a dangerous combination of forces here that long bedeviled the Middle East: an unpredictable, fractured military and rising popular frustration with an isolated political class that has at times seemed rudderless, even helpless.

In the end, many officials expect an eventual agreement on some sort of consensus government so inclusive as to be woefully weak, unable to assert itself and beset by stalemate over the laws necessary to shape post-American Iraq. But the failure of the elite that the United States helped to choose may serve as a lasting American legacy here, raising fundamental questions about the body politic it leaves behind as the American military departs by 2012.

“I think it’s a valid question to ask: Is this system going to work for Iraq, given its history, its peculiarities and so on?” asked Ryan C. Crocker, who preceded Mr. Hill as the American ambassador to Iraq. “I don’t have an answer. But it’s a question that’s going to need to be dealt with.”

To a remarkable degree, Iraq remains haunted by the decisions of the earliest days of the occupation in 2003, when expediency trumped foresight.

Debates still rage in Iraq over the choices the United States made: disbanding the Iraqi military, the purge of members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and the decision to occupy Iraq rather than create a transitional Iraqi government. But perhaps the most far-reaching bequest was the power the exiled opposition and Kurdish parties have held in Iraq since 2003, filling a vacuum left by Mr. Hussein’s withering assault on any dissent.

Despite expectations that a more grass-roots leadership might emerge, only the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a populist cleric, have done so. Otherwise the names in 2003, with the exception of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, remain much the same: two former prime ministers, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari; Ahmad Chalabi, an American ally turned critic; Mr. Abdul Mahdi; the Kurdish leaders; and two generations of Hakims, a prominent Shiite religious family.

Asked if the Americans bore blame for their prominence, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t think so. You can ask the question, was the whole bloody thing a mistake? I don’t spend a lot of time on that. But if not them, then who?”

Palace intrigue only begins to describe the style of the political elite here since taking power, many of the players still imbued with a sepia-tinted recollection of a Baghdad only rarely mirrored in today’s rough-and-tumble streets. Most remain friends, at least in public. But the clandestine secrecy of exile, with its endless plotting and duplicitous maneuvering, still shapes their interaction. Then, survival was the goal; in many ways, it remains the same.

“Most of them, in my understanding, are still acting as if they’re in the opposition rather than trying to build a state,” Mr. Abdul Mahdi said. “I’m not excepting myself or any other.”

Between a flurry of meetings, another leading politician called his colleagues ineffective, overly impressed with the trappings of power and so greedy as to “border on being kleptocrats.” He added, “They put the immediate above the important and tactical issues above strategic matters.”

He was reluctant to speak on the record; to do so might upset potential allies.

“The same people, coming and going,” lamented Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who served on the American-appointed Governing Council in 2003. “If someone died, he’s no longer around, but that’s it.”

As he spoke, his generator failed, plunging his house into the claustrophobic heat of a Baghdad summer. For a few hours, he suffered as does much of the rest of Baghdad, where electricity lasts for but a few hours, water is sometimes contaminated, trash piles up in the streets and the infrastructure is crumbling.

“We have failed for the past seven years,” he said.

In a hopeful irony, the very acknowledgment of that failure says something about a country still wrestling with the end of dictatorship; the ossified elite of Egypt and Syria would never do the same. Indeed, some politicians and analysts say that the political class faces an impossible task, beset by feeble and corrupt institutions, the vagaries of Mr. Hussein’s rule and a political culture that celebrates the spoils of victory.

Iraq’s neighbors, in particular Turkey and Iran, often unhelpful, have taken to playing politics here like a parlor game. To break the deadlock, American officials were pushing for a power-sharing agreement that would keep Mr. Maliki as prime minister, and Mr. Allawi in charge of security. But, Iraqi officials say, the Iranians are opposed to Mr. Allawi, while the Turks have lingering reservations about Mr. Maliki. Syria, Jordan, plus Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf are sure to want a say.

“We should blame ourselves as politicians because we allowed such countries to have so much influence in Iraq,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a former lawmaker.

The disenchantment is so pronounced, in fact, that many leaders see less a threat in the flagging but resilient insurgency and more in something unpredictable, what Mr. Abdul Mahdi termed “an adventurer” seeking to exploit chronic crises.

A leading politician related a recent conversation he had with a top Iraqi general. The politician asked about the possibility of a coup. The general, he said, deeming the talk serious, pulled out a map of the capital and provided a disconcertingly elaborate plan to execute one: overturning trucks to block the route from the main American base to the Green Zone, seizing television stations, besieging Parliament, and so on.

“When you’re president,” he quoted the general as asking, in utter seriousness, “can you make me minister of defense?”

64.5 Million Housing Units Empty in China

ANYBODY HOME?: An apartment complex in Pudong District, Shanghai, was ready for buyers in April 2010. It's estimated that tens of millions of apartments in China are now empty as buyers hold them as investment rather than homes (CHEN FEI)


Vacant But Not for Sale
Andy Xie, an independent economist based in Shanghai, said the huge number of empty apartments foreshadows a bubble burst

BY LIU YUNYUN Beijing Review

Housing market speculation in previous years has resulted in an "empty apartment" phenomenon—houses and apartments are purchased as investments but left unoccupied. Various Chinese media outlets reported that about 64.5 million urban electricity meters read zero in the first six months of this year in empty apartments across the country. Andy Xie, an independent economist based in Shanghai, said the huge number of empty apartments foreshadows a bubble burst in an article recently published on Century Weekly.

Edited excerpts follow:
Property bubbles can be divided into two kinds—quantity bubbles (too much supply) and price bubbles (too expensive). China, however, is facing a combination of the two.

The Chinese property bubble is different from that of other countries since it has a huge supply while prices also run high.

China's urban housing stock is mainly composed of housing built by enterprises or government organizations for their employees, and some 60 million private housing units built over the past 10 years. Property developers are now building about 20 million private apartments, and local government-owned land reserves may be enough for another 20 million to 30 million.

Even if the stock of empty apartments is less than 64.5 million, the number would still be equivalent to 20 percent of the total urban housing supply, which is higher than Taiwan's vacancy rate at the peak of its bubble at the end of the 1980s. Moreover, as credit policies are loosened, the stock could rise to more than 30 percent.

In mature markets, the property price is usually twice that of a person's monthly income. In many Chinese cities, the per-square-meter property price is five to 10 times the average monthly income for local residents—a clear indicator that bubbles are forming.

A price bubble can damage the economy in three ways. First, it usually leads to a banking crisis. As the market trades at higher and higher prices, buyers borrow more against the same property. Banks that maintain the same lending cushion with, say, a 30-percent down-payment rule, suffer losses when prices fall below that level. A banking system in crisis cannot function properly, and the economy suffers collateral damage due to this dysfunctional banking.

Second, the wealth effect—increased spending due to an increase in perceived wealth—leads to excessive consumption during a bubble. The backlash weakens an economy for several years.

And third, bubble-induced demand distorts supply. When inflated industries plummet after a bubble burst, it takes time for other industries to take their place.

Unique in China

I think the vacancy rate for the country's private and commercial housing stock is between 25-30 percent, nearly double that of a normal market. But price hikes along with a high vacancy rate are inexplicable.

China's phenomenon is unique for at least four reasons.

A sustained negative real interest rate has led to a falling demand for money and a rising appetite for speculation. Inflation fears and greed are working together to form unprecedented speculative demand for property.

Second, a massive amount of "gray" income is seeking a safe haven. This "gray" income could be around 10 percent of GDP. Due to rising inflation and a depreciating dollar, a currency that used to be a traditional safe haven, the booming property market has become the place of choice to hoard money.

Third, few people in China have experienced a property bubble. The property crash in the 1990s only touched a small segment of society, mainly foreigners and state-owned enterprises. Geographically, it was restricted to the country's developed regions including Hainan, Guangdong and Shanghai. Most people don't have a firm understanding of what a property crash is, and this ignorance has led to a lack of fear for runaway speculation.

Fourth, speculators are confident that the government won't let property prices drop. They surmise that local governments rely on property deals for revenue and do all they can to prop up prices. But their faith in the government is misplaced. The government can delay, but not deter, a bubble burst. Nevertheless, faith in the government is stronger than fears, and speculative demand will continue to grow as long as credit is available.

Government dilemma

Right now, tight credit is holding the market back, and supply is piling up. The government's tightening measures are squeezing out buyers looking for second and third homes, and transaction volumes across the country have collapsed.

When the policy is relaxed—as most expect—speculation will probably revive and lead to a doubling in the total value of speculative inventory.

In some cities, banks are loosening credit a bit. Why? Because local governments have a lot of debt—commonly five times more debt than revenue—and could find themselves in financial trouble without a decent level of property transactions.

Local governments have depended on real estate transactions for revenue and could default if the market falls too far. Thus, the Central Government may loosen its policies to help the local governments. Such a change of attitude would ease short-term government difficulties but double the trouble down the road before the property bubble bursts.

Market solutions

At this point, an interest rate hike would be the best option. Raising interest rates would cool speculative demand gradually, and at the same time avoid market disruptions. A delay in raising interest rates would only cause a surge for the stock of empty apartments.

In the long run, local governments must find ways to increase sources of non-property revenues or simply limit expenditures. The investment-led growth strategy adopted by all local governments will inevitably lead to maximized revenues from land sales, but unless limits are put on this strategy, the property market cannot function normally.

Property taxes could be a new and better source of revenue. In many countries, property taxes constitute a big proportion of local governments' revenue and finance public services. China should adopt the same model, coupled with cuts in government expenditures.

What happened to the U.S. economy now serves as a good lesson for Chinese decision makers. Policymakers should act now to alleviate the housing problem, since a crash in the real estate industry could bring down the whole economy. In my opinion, it is very likely the Chinese property market would collapse much like the United States did in 2008.

Jobs and the Economy

The United States’ bilateral trade deficit with China rose 17 percent in June, to $26.2 billion. That is the largest single month deficit in 40 months. The entire US trade deficit in June, rose to $50 billion. Meanwhile Obama and the Democrats are advancing another $10 billion to save 160,000 union teacher's jobs.

China passed Japan in GDP.

On August 10 President Barack Obama signed into law a $26 billion spending bill that will save the jobs of 300,000 teachers, police officers, and other public employees.


Where your low wages are going


BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

WWW.CREATORS.COM

Miami Herald

Where a man's purse is, there his heart will be also.

If you would know where the heart of the Obama party is today, consider. In the dog days of August, with temperatures in D.C. rising above 100, Nancy Pelosi called the House back to Washington to enact legislation that could not wait until September.

Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state, municipal and county employees whose own governments had decided they had to be let go if they were to meet their constitutional duty to balance their books.

Workers that their own governments thought expendable, Congress decided, were so essential that it borrowed another 26 thousand million dollars from China to keep them on state and local payrolls.

A nation whose national debt is approaching the size of its gross national product, that goes abroad to borrow money to keep nonessential workers on government payroll is a nation on the way down and out.

And anyone who thinks this Obama party is ever going to cull the armies of tens of millions of government workers or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put America's house in order is deluding himself. As long as this Congress and White House remain in power, a U.S. default on its national debt is inevitable. The only question is when.

Nor is this the first time the Obama administration has rushed to save workers whom their own state, city and county governments were prepared to let go. Among the reasons the $800 billion stimulus failed is that so little of it was directed to firing up the locomotive of the economy, the private sector, and so much of it was spent to ensure that government workers did not have to share in the national sacrifice.

Why Pelosi & Co. felt compelled to return to D.C., to ensure that state and local government payrolls were not pared, is not hard to understand. Which party does the American Federation of Teachers; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees usually contribute to, work for, vote for? At which of the two party conventions are teachers and government employees hugely over-represented?
Consider, too, the states deepest in debt and facing the largest cuts in employee ranks, pay and benefits: California, Illinois, New York.

In these states, public employees earn at least $10,000 per year more in pay and benefits than the average America worker, who is bailing them out. Hence, we have a situation where private-sector workers in Middle America are being taxed, their children being driven ever deeper into debt to China, so government employees who have greater job security than they do and earn more in pay and benefits than they will ever earn, can stay in Fat City.

And folks wonder why so many Americans detest government.

Nor is this all Obama's doing. For most of the fat years of the federal workforce came while Washington was being run by a Congress of Big-Government Conservatives and a White House of Bush-Cheney Republicans. No wonder the tea party is targeting both parties.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe that the Obamaites, who intervened twice and massively with bailouts to prevent minor layoffs of local and state government employees, have the stomach to do the major surgery needed to cut the federal monolith down to size. For the vast majority of the tens of millions of government workers vote Democratic, as do the vast majority of the scores of millions of beneficiaries of federal, state and local programs.
What Pelosi & Co. were saying with that $26 billion bailout is, ``We are going to protect our own.'' Which is why either Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. go, or we are gone.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/16/1777730/where-your-low-wages-are-going.html#ixzz0wl7fiQgN

Dear Steve Jobs

How about using your cash to manufacture in the USA?

Hey there. You don't know me but I know a bit about you and have supported your company since I paid $4,000 for an SE-30 in the early 80's. I gave up my Osborne for your computer, and have enjoyed and suffered through everything and every system since then. I estimate to have purchased fifty computers for me and my businesses.

I bought your stock at $5 per share and every model of laptop. I am typing this post on my 17" MacBook Pro.

This weekend, there are a lot of articles about what Apple is going to do with its your cash.

It is said that Apple Computer has $46 Billion in cash and cash equivalents. Its market share keeps expanding and its designs and products are outstanding. It is missing one thing: Made In USA

Apple has made great strides in bringing new technology to its products. You are a great innovator and a political progressive and I understand that you are concerned about social issues. I have a suggestion and a challenge:

Why not develop US factories that can be built on brown fields and be the most efficient users of technology, materials and American labor?


Put state of-the- art manufacturing facilities in Detroit, Philadelphia, Patterson, New Jersey and other US cities.

You could design them so that labor unit costs are minimal while using well paid and well trained American workers. The cost of labor could become irrelevant to the production capacity. You can do it and you should. It would be a great legacy.

There is no charge for the logo change.

Your friend and customer,

Deuce

Here are the Board of Directors:

• Bill Campbell, Chairman and former CEO, Intuit Corp.

Corporate Headquarters

2632 Marine Way
Mountain View, CA 94043
650-944-6000

• Millard Drexler, Chairman and CEO, J. Crew

BY EMAIL

contactus@jcrew.com

• Albert Gore Jr., Former Vice President of the United States

Honorable Al Gore

2100 West End Ave.

Suite 620 Nashville, TN 37203

Fax: 615-327-1323

Phone: 615-327-2227

• Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

Apple

1 Infinite Loop

Cupertino, CA 95014

408.996.1010

• Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO, Avon Products

Avon Shareholder Relations

Avon Products, Inc.
1345 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10105-0196
(212) 282-5623
individual.investor@avon.com

• Arthur D. Levinson, Ph. D., Chairman, Genentech

Corporate Headquarters
South San Francisco, CA
(800) 626-3553

Please contact the directors and have your friends and associates do the same. Pass this post along. Encourage Apple to make the move.

Some peaceful morning music

Last night Rufus Quirk recommended some rocking Bruce Springsteen for this morning,  judging by the late night crowd, I think something quiet might be more in order.

MeLoDy said...

Shots of vodka all night and yuengling since 12:00. The only problem I had was the hot tub shut down and after I got it to work there must have been a short some where because when I put my hand in the water to see if the temperature was rising the fucking thing electrocuted me.
Sun Aug 15, 02:10:00 AM EDT

MeLoDy said...

Oh and I also lost my nose ring which might be in the ice cream cake Chele smashed in my face tonight. It's just an inconvenience to go out tomorrow and buy a new one.
Sun Aug 15, 02:47:00 AM EDT