New bed

Audrey got a new bed! We borrowed an old twin mattress from my parents and acquired a bed frame from a neighbor. Scott set it up on Saturday. I was sleeping, so I didn't witness this, but I guess she was very giggly and excited! She's slept really well in it every night.
However, she hasn't taken a nap since then. If I put her in the bed, she just gets out and plays around her room. If I put her in the crib so she can't move around, she just wails and screams bloody murder. S
o, while the crib will be available for the baby when it is born, I think things will be just like when Audrey was born. The two-year-old quits naps and I can't count on that break anymore. Oh, well. Such is life. At least she sleeps well in it at night!

Ron Paul's Answer to the President

Many of you may know that I am a great supporter of Ron Paul. He is one of the few who has been accurately predicting this mess for years. He has a sound understanding of economics. I have been against the so called 'bail out' from the beginning. The President went before the nation yesterday trying to scare the nation into supporting his plan.  This is Ron Paul's response.

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.


Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?


We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).


Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?


Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.


It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.


F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.


To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Lessons in life

Sometimes we forget to have important conversations with our children. Well, today, due to necessity, I had to have one of those with Richard that it had not occurred to me to have before.
You can only put so much toilet paper in the toilet at one time. Did you know that? Well, Richard learned that today.
I had just gotten in the shower when Richard suddenly started pounding on my locked bedroom door. He often does that. I chose to ignore him. Once I turned off the water, I heard him say, "Mommy, I need help!"
"Why?"
"I spilled in the bathroom."
"Spilled what?" I say, fearing he had peed all over the bathroom.
"Spilled water."
"Richard, you're not supposed to play in the water in the bathroom." What has he been doing? I'm thinking.
"I put too much toilet paper in the potty."
"I'll be out as soon as I have clothes on!"

So, I come out to a toilet that still is leaking water and the water is all over the bathroom floor and seeping up into the carpet. I quickly turn off the water to the toilet and then proceed to pull out as much of the pulverized toilet paper as I can. I guess I pulled out enough, because it finally flushed while I was getting out towels.
It took about 7 towels to dry all the water off the floor and the carpet is still drying.
Make sure you teach your child how much toilet paper is appropriate. Apparently it's not an obvious thing!

Richard's Birthday!

Last Friday, Richard turned 4! We did most of our celebrating on Thursday, because Scott had to be gone on Friday for a Varsity Scout camp. We went miniature golfing per Richard's request. His technique is just as spectacular as ever! We had a great time.Then, we went to Carl's Jr. for dinner.

We came home and had presents.

Here's Richard the next day with all his presents.

Then, family members came over for cake. Richard requested a white cake with white frosting and strawberries. I'm not a big fan of cakes out of a box, because I think they're too dry. So, I found a recipe for a white-chocolate cake that had raspberries. I just switched out the berries. I thought it turned out really well!

Richard had preschool the next day, which was his birthday, and they helped him celebrate. We had more presents and cake the next night when my parents were able to make it. Richard was thrilled to have two parties!

Richard is very sweet and loves to cuddle and get hugs and kisses. He loves to play games and do a preschool learning book with me. He loves preschool and loves to learn. He always has so many questions and it's amazing to me how much he remembers. Happy Birthday, Richard!

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis

This is a great article that cuts through some of the spin of the campaign trail. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama would have you believe the collapse was the fault of the Bush administration and the Republican Party. The truth paints a very different picture.

24 is back!

Canning

My mom and I can fruit together every year. She pays for the fruit. I usually pick up the fruit since I live in a more convenient location. I help do all the work involved in canning, so even though I don't monetarily pay for it, I do earn the priviledge of eating the fruit throughout the upcoming year.
However, this year is different. I bought pears last week. The next day I found out my mom was having troubles. A couple of days after that I found out how serious it was. Do you think pears care? No, no. So, last night, I started canning on my own. I was quite pleased that after all the years of helping that I finally felt competent and that I knew what I was doing. All of the jars that I did last night sealed! Yea!
Looking at the boxes, there are more ripe for tonight. Oh, what fun!

parents

You know that comfortable feeling when you're a child that your parents are invincible and nothing that serious could ever really happen to them?
Well, right now, both Scott and I are worried about his parents and my Mom. What a week!
Scott's parents live right in the track of Hurricane Ike. They avoided the brunt of Hurricane Rita when it turned off the projected track (was it last year or the year before?). So, maybe they'll luck out again this time.
My mom just suffered an infarct (death due to loss of blood flow) to the lower 2/3 of her spleen. She unluckily had a small outpouching on her artery (called an aneurysm) that released a clot for some reason early Tuesday morning. The clot blocked flow and caused all her problems. They are pretty sure that was the source of the clot and so don't feel they need to put her on medication to keep her blood from easily clotting. The damage is done and can't be undone, and they don't feel that her spleen needs to be removed. However, she is basically on bedrest except bathroom and eating priviledges until her spleen heals as much as it can. The spleen is highly vascular, and, if it ruptures, you can bleed out into your abdomen quite quickly.
At least with my Mom, we can pray for a recovery without harming anyone else. If we pray for the hurricane to change paths, other people will suffer. So, I guess you pray that things will work out the very best that they can.

Preschool

Just like many others, Richard has started preschool this year. Today was his first day. Last night when I told him he finally got to start today, he was so excited! I had to remind him that he had to go to sleep first.

This morning, we took pictures before he left. Of course, Audrey did not want to be left out.

Audrey was sad when we left Richard at school. It's not like he's never been at friend's houses before, but for some reason it was different to her this time. Richard didn't have a problem at all when I left.

When he got home, Richard showed me his projects and told me about his day. He did want to cuddle for a few minutes and asked why I left him there so long! I'm sure he'll get used to the length and get so he's excited when it's a preschool day.

I was able to excercise only pushing one child in the stroller and did not have to bug my neighbor to borrow her double stroller. It will be nice to have things a little calmer in the morning.

Labor Day

We went to my parent's cabin for Labor Day. We arrived Saturday evening and left just after dinner on Monday.

It was really quite cold on Monday. It was pouring rain when we woke and I don't think the temperature got much above 40 degrees. Plus, it was windy out. So, that took out a lot of the outdoor activities we usually do. However, my dad was super creative and came up with games for the kids to play indoors which helped keep them occupied. They made parachutes out of hospital bouffant caps and yogurt cups. They played "Mother May I," built a fire in the fire place, played ping pong, and played "Where's the Penny?"

Some ventured outside and played on the swing. I was not one of them :). I hear both Richard and Audrey had a GREAT time. We also had a treasure hunt. Richard found one clue all by himself, which he was excited about.

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing day away!