TUESDAY POLITICS

This economy thing is making me nervous. For one thing, I haven’t spent much of my life studying things like interest rates and sub-prime mortgages and the stock market and such. There are lots of folks out there with more money (and some with less) than I have who do though, and they must be nervous too. Just got my year-end statements from my two tiny investments (a 403B and a tax-deferred annuity). This year they only earned about 2% each and lost money this last quarter (they’d been doing much better in previous years). That’s worse than having the money in a simple savings account at the bank. I thank my lucky stars that when I bought the one and only house of my life in 1994 I picked fixed interest rate, not variable, because that’s apparently where lots of home-owners screwed up. So I keep hearing now that Bush has some fancy big stimulus package he’s proposing, but if you think that means that in April or May you’ll get $800 in tax rebates, think again. Workload issues at the IRS would prevent the mailing of rebate checks until after the peak tax filing in late May or early June. And then it could take 8 to 10 weeks to distribute the checks so we’re talking late summer. And even then, I’m totally suspicious that this incentive plan is really about making more bucks for his rich corporate friends. Not that I won’t love to have any amount of $ he wants to send me. Maybe it will help me pay my oil bill that month (which just increased from $70/month to $129/month). Or maybe my health insurance which just increased by 37.5%. Meanwhile my pension and social security income cost-of-living increases this year amounted to a whopping $56/month between them. So I’m scrutinizing my miniature budget more than ever before and hoping this is all a bad dream I’ll wake up from. Voluntary simplicity is a grand idea, I just didn’t want to be rushed.

TUESDAY POLITICS

Wait, there’s no crying in primaries! Yesterday, I was mystified to see Hillary Clinton tear up when asked about her reasons for trying to be President. I totally had a mixed reaction. On the one hand, I could instantly imagine what delight her opponents would have with such ammunition. Major sexist attack fodder. On the other hand, for a minute she seemed like one of us, a human. I’m one of those undecided voters who is still watching and hoping for something underlined and in bold to happen that will flip my switch. I’m sure I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be, but in the meantime I’m not convinced yet – no, not even with the popular Obama and his wonderful speeches. I’m so cynical I could even imagine those tears being planned. But I hope they weren’t. I’d like to see a few on some of those male candidates’ faces, in fact. Not bloody likely though. Not in public anyway. On to South Carolina.