Rally


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When I got to the rally at the Colorado Springs Civic Auditorium yesterday, the line already wrapped around the block. I waited anyway, even though I didn’t have much hope of getting a seat in the auditorium. As the woman next to me explained to her little girl: we were there to show support, even if we couldn’t get inside. They cut off the line a little in front of us, but I didn’t mind making the attempt.

I Voted!

Yesterday afternoon, Jack’s brother-in-law called and said that he was at the downtown early voting station, and there were no lines. The downtown center is just three blocks away from where I work, so I walked over and waited less than five minutes to vote. Most painless voting ever, even the time I was organized enough to get an absentee ballot. As always, I was a bit bemused to have to vote to retain judges. (Colorado requires a vote to retain judges in office, even though they are not originally elected by voters.) All the voting stations were full, and the worker who shepherded me through the process said they had been staying busy.

Brad DeLong answers the question: is 2008 our 1929?

No. It is not. The most important reason it is not is that Bernanke and Paulson are both focused like laser beams on not making the same mistakes as were made in 1929.

They are also focused, but not quite as much, on not making the mistakes made by Arthur Burns in the 1970s.

And they are also focused, but not quite as much, on not making the mistakes the Bank of Japan made in the 1990s.

They want to make their own, original, mistakes…

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.

Sticker shock

As Jack and I were driving to work this morning, I saw the first McCain bumper sticker. I’ve seen lots of Obama stickers the past few weeks. This discrepancy is especially surprising considering El Paso county consistently votes Republican. The kicker: the bumper sticker was on a car with Virginia license plates. I think McCain has a problem. (Of course, this observation is totally bogus due to selection bias, but I see lots of Bush/Cheney stickers still.)