Talboito.com

Robert Reich advances limited praise for Bush’s new health care maneuvers:
The President’s plan to de-couple health insurance from employment merits only one cheer, though, because it’s only the first step. Two cheers for the President or any politician who comes up with a way to get health insurance to lower-income people who can’t afford it [...]

My condolences to Seema for her Grandma:
no words will ever capture the feeling i have in my heart when i think about her.
she will always have a special place in my life. she was one of the most beautiful people in my life.
i will always miss you amma ji.

The economist Kash Mansori ruminates on how a market for ethanol may affect corn prices:

As the Wall Street Journal article cited above outlines, the profitability of ethanol production depends crucially on the price of corn (as well as on the price of oil, of course). That means that whenever the price of corn is low, [...]

Michael Gerson, Bush’s former speechwriter had strong words to dismiss Jim Webb’s Democratic response:
The Democratic response by Virginia Sen. James Webb was also memorable, in a different way. Whenever a politician puts out to the media that he has thrown away the speechwriters’ draft and written the remarks himself (as Webb did), it is [...]

Apparently someone wrote a bollypunk novel.
The guy, Ian Mcdonald, wrote another novel called Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone.
Intriguing names and topics all around.
(HT boing boing)

Over at the Financial Times alphaville the writers wonder if hedge funds are even, you know, hedging.
Because a large part of hedging requires using standard measures of risk:
Half of all hedge funds don’t measure the amount of leverage they have embedded in assets such as forwards and derivatives, the report said. Further, 54 per [...]

Senator Jimm Webb ended the Democratic response to Bush’s State of the Union thus:
These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. [...]

Whoever it is they cart in to write on The Economists blog had some interesting comments about American politics:
My response, which I’d stand by this year, is that once you live in a rich democracy, it’s pretty much all gravy. The fights over income inequality, national health insurance, immigration policy, and so forth, all [...]

Words noticeably absent from Bush’s State of the Union transcript:

Katrina
hurricane
New Orleans
Gulf Coast
Mississippi

The folks at Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon agree:
I am a tightwad.
Take the survey yourself.