in the newspaper

I wasn't going to write this morning, but there were some gems in the paper that I found interesting, amusing or outrageous and I just couldn't resist sharing them. Kate will tell you that Iused to send these to her regularly. Now she has to read my blog. :) I'm sure you will have already seen or heard some of these. Let's start off with the only political one - Sarah Palin's wardrobe. How in the world can anyone spend $150,000 on a wardrobe and makeover? As a woman who only buys designer clothes when they are in the thrift shops, this simply boggles my mind! If she were the Vice-President or the wife of a President (remember Jackie Kennedy?) and were spending her own money on clothes and whatever, it would be nothing too unusual. We all know that VERY RICH PEOPLE do exist and some of them are probably nice folks. I've never known any personally, so cannot speak from experience. I am sure that their values are somewhat different from mine, especially when it comes to clothes. Furthermore, this makeover had to be a mistake. Sarah Palin was supposed to represent the working class, soccer mom. Ha! I don't know very many of them who wear designer clothes, do you?


Next is about early voting. This is an experiment that some states are trying. Maryland is not one of them, as far as I know. Anyway, in Florida, lots of folks decided, for whatever reason, to try voting early. Perhaps they hoped to avoid long lines on Election Day. Boy did they make a mistake! Lines in some Florida cities were VERY long and people waited hour and hours in order to vote. The good thing about this is the enthusiasm these people have for voting. They didn't get mad and go home without voting. They waited and voted. So often, here in the US, our registered voters are indifferent and so a rather small percentage of eligible voters actually vote. Seems as if this year that may be different. I sure hope so. It's about time we Americans realized how important our right to vote is. Too many places in the world don't have that right. Power to the voters! My feeling is this - if you didn't vote, then you can't complain about what Congress or the President (or your mayor) does.


And here's something we haven't heard ever before. Alan Greenspan is admitting that perhaps he was wrong in opposing any forms of control on the derivitives market. (At least I think that's what he is saying. I'm not real sure when it comes to economics.) A week or two ago, I blogged about the one person who tried to get the 'experts' to let her agency supervise derivitives. (Brooksley Born of the CTFC). Greenspan hasn't exactly said that she was right, but he is admitting that perhaps he wasn't quite the expert that everyone thought he was. We used to think he was God in the world of economics. Now, he's just another failable human being.


On a local level - an experiment is being tried in southern Maryland with teenage drivers. Video cameras are put into the cars that the teens drive. The cameras focus both on the road and on the inside of the car. If a sudden maneuver - like braking sharply or turning very fast - is made, the device records what has happened and posts the information on a website that the parents can access. Otherwise, nothing is saved from the video. As you might imagine, some teens whose parents have put these cameras in the cars are very upset. Actually, the article only quotes two girls - one is furious with her parents, but I noticed that she still drives the car. The other says she didn't like it at first, but that she has become a better driver as a result. She has not been 'caught' by the camera doing anything wrong, but she says it makes her more conscious of how she drives. The issue that didn't come up at all in the article is this: Why do these teens think they deserve a car anyway? Have they lost the ability to walk? My daughter had a car her last two years of high school, but only because her father gave her on old one that had been her step-mother's. Kate was a good driver and at that time insurance coverage for girls was pretty cheap, so I didn't object. My son did not even have a driver's license until he graduated, because he spent several years at a military school where they were not allowed cars. I refused to pay the extra cost of insurance just so he could drive during vacations. Going further back, (I know I am being a 'dinosaur' about this) when I was a teenager (in the dark ages, otherwise known as the 1950s) almost none of my friends had cars that were actually theirs. Many of us were allowed to drive the families second car to evening activities, but never during the day to school. In fact, students had to have special permission to park a car in the school parking lots. Very few kids did so. This was even more true at the college I attended. Students just didn't have cars. Somehow we all managed to survive without them. How times have changed!


And one more item that shows just how different today's world is. Two Dutch teenage boys were convicted of theft because they forced another teenager at knifepoint to transfer virtual treasures to them - in a video game. Evidently virtual theft is real! Who knew? They got probation, not a virtual or real jail sentence.