This morning I was not feeling 100% and so I skipped the very cool calisthenics class I like to take on Wednesdays for the more tender embrace of the elliptical machine.  Unfortunately, this meant that I did my silly walk while facing CNN with the sound off but closed captioning on.  It is very funny to watch report after report, rendered by CNN's botched, real time closed captioning, about how Kathleen Sebelius should resign her cabinet post because the Obamacare website hasn't worked.

There are two kinds of borrowers who default on their debts.  One type defaults because they cannot pay.  It is typical to say that they have over borrowed but it is easily as likely that some sort of catastrophe has destroyed the borrower's earnings power, perhaps permanently.  Then there are defaults of choice.  A borrower decides not to pay, even if they have the means.  Perhaps they feel that they were swindled by the lender and that the debt is thus invalid.  Or, maybe they just don't want to pay.

Posts like these generally start with a pronouncement of lapsed Catholicism on the part of the author.  I can be very atheisty.  I do not study the church.  I do not consider its views when I make any of my own decisions, be they moral, social, financial or dietary.  This means that I have something of a tin ear for the nuance of the papal utternance.

On another blog I got into a bit of a dust-up on Syria.  While not really advocating for anything, I asked the writer, some one recommended high by Princeton foreign affairs pundit Anne Marie Slaughter on Twitter, why he wasn't giving much weight to the idea the fact that American voters from both parties were mildly to intensely against military intervention in Syria.  I laid out the usual concessions to the nature of a Democratic Republic and the problems inherent in foreign policy by opinion poll but still, I insisted (and insist) the public appetite for something like this should carry