"So long, and thanks for all the fish."

-- last message of the dolphins to mankind according to Douglas Adams' Hitchiker Trillogy

Many thanks to those of you who have read Central Sanity, and especially to those of you who have had kind words to say about us. We are truly grateful for you as readers, and hope you will drop in on each of us as we move on.

As for myself, You will still find the bulk of my writing at ShortWoman.com, my musings on real estate and local interest issues at BridgetMagnus.com, and now selected posts on The Moderate Voice

I've had a great time writing here, and am proud to have worked with each of my co-bloggers.

Now It's Time To Say Goodbye

Well not really goodbye as we will all be out there blogging away. I think some of us may stop back here from time to time to let you know where we all are. As for myself, I will be doing most of my posting on Election Views.

Please stop on by anytime to check us out.

As my fellow bloggers have observed, we will all still be out there, just in different places. I would like to take time to thank Pete for bringing me on board here and for all of my co-bloggers for just being excellent. And of course, a big thank you to all of our readers.

No Goodbyes

I was a reader here long before I ever started posting. I really came to appreciate how the authors on this blog were able to cut to the chase and say in a few paragraphs what it took other bloggers an essay to say. Hence when I was asked to contribute here I jumped at the chance. Central Sanity, I think, became a blogger's blog. So while it never had the readership of The Moderate Voice it became a place that many bloggers visited to test the metal of their opinions. So while some of the authors here have stopped contributing due to real life a number of authors here have moved on to bigger and more influential blogs in the centrosphere.

So ultimately what made Central Sanity great also in part lead to the circumstances that are causing it close. Central Sanity has effectively acted as a springboard to many of its contributors. So while we won't be contributing here any longer you can still read our opinions at blogs like The Moderate Voice, Donklephant, and The PoliGazette. I also occasionally post at PoliticalGrind and everything I write (most of which I don't post elsewhere) is of course available at Dyre Portents. So for the reasons I've listed I'm not going to say goodbye but instead say,"See you around."

Farewell from Carrie

Well, this will be my last post for Central Sanity. Although I was not on board for very long, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. There were many posts left unwritten, but, like Bridget says, it's time to close up shop.

I for one am happy to see the Republican Party take an admittedly slight shift towards the center, although I would be happier if they picked up the pace a bit. I am still optimistic, though, as I'm finally seeing that issues regarding the economy and other middle-class concerns are finally being addressed.

Come out and visit me at Carrie's Nation, where, almost by accident, I seem to be focuing a lot on my concerns regarding our jobs being offshored or taken over by persons with H-1B and L-1 visas. These articles are also cross-posted to Jill's Brilliant at Breakfast site. Although Jill is a died-in-the-wool Democrat to my moderate Republican label, it only proves there will always be issues that provide common ground for people from both parties. I also post articles regarding the state of Michigan, the auto industry, education, and anything else that gets my blood going. All from the viewpoint of an average person off the street, of course.

Please also visit our other Central Sanity contributors at their websites. I look forward to seeing what they'll be up to.

Good luck to everyone throughout the 2008 Presidential campaign. Although it is a daunting task to try to wade through all of the candidates and come up with a favorite, we are fortunate to live in a free country that allows us the opportunity to make this choice. We have a tremendous responsibility to choose not only a President who leads the United States, but also a President who wields an enormous amount of influence on the free world. Let your conscience be your guide in the voting booth.

Finally, thanks to Pete Abel and Bridget Magnus for bringing me over to Central Sanity. Thanks also to the other contributors for their support over the last few months. And let's not forget my thanks to our readers for their comments to our posts.

Final Curtain

Today I must bring you an announcement that is both joyous and sad all at once.

Joe Gandelman has invited me to contribute to The Moderate Voice, a site that I have known and respected for some years. In asking, he wrote that he liked my writing both here and at ShortWoman; he furthermore added "I'm five foot one and I am biased and MUST invite a short woman." TMV is a huge site with readership that dwarfs mine -- no pun intended -- and I would be foolish to pass up this opportunity.

However, there are only so many hours in a day, and something has to give.

Central Sanity has been a great little site, but we have had our share of troubles. We have lost several major contributors during my time here. Some have felt the need to focus on work or study or family or their home sites. One of our more notable losses was former Editor-in-Chief Pete Abel. Pete started this site and built it from nothing to what it is today. It just isn't the same without him.

It is with sadness that I announce this weekend will mark the final fresh posts for Central Sanity. I have invited each of our contributors to share their final thoughts, and let you know where they will be hanging their blogging hats.

Thank you all for reading.

Daily Three

A judge has rejected a lawsuit by supporters of Hilary Clinton to block the establishment of special voting locations at a variety of hotels in the Las Vegas area. The argument (which I tend to agree with) had been that allowing some people the ability to vote at work while denying it to others was unfair.

Time has an interesting article on the breakdown of the black votes (in particular the black female vote) in South Carolina.

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I've got another post over at Moderate Voice

Recommended Reading

Our own Dyre42 has written a brilliant item over at PoliGazette:

Imagine the President of the United States of America, with hat in hand, begging the leader of a third world country for anything. Today George HW Bush did just that.

Want to know what he's talking about? You'll have to go read it for yourself!

Daily Three

Today, "greater than expected" has a much more grim meaning on Wall Street: not only did international banking giant Merrill Lynch report greater than expected write-downs for a multi-billion dollar loss in 2007 (following in Citigroup's footsteps), but housing starts had a greater than expected decline and reached a 16 year low. It's enough to make some analysts say we shouldn't worry about inflation, as it will be crushed by the banking crisis. I politely disagree with this sentiment.

State led mandatory health insurance laws are being challenged in court under a Federal statute (ERISA) that governs employer-provided benefits. The Massachusetts plan and others like it may well end up being scrutinized by the Supreme Court.

The United Nations has said that the United States needs to do more for Katrina victims, many of whom are still displaced and/or effectively homeless.

Daily Three

The winner of yesterday's GOP primary in Michigan is Mitt Romney, showing that at this point, the nomination could go to almost anyone. Meanwhile, the top three Democratic contenders had a debate in Las Vegas, the transcript of which can be found here. Some consider this event to have been a win for Hillary Clinton.

Things in Iraq are, well, lousy. Not only has the GAO determined that rosy economic forecasts "cannot be substantiated" or are flatly "wrong", Iraq's own defense minister said they "would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018."

And on a much less serious note, Giant Rodents of the Amazon! "Scientists have discovered the remains of a rodent the size of a small car which used to forage the South American continent. The 1-ton creature is believed to have been about 3 meters in length and 1.5 meters tall." And it's not April 1.

Daily Three

The risk of a recession is growing, spurred by no only the subprime crisis -- Merrill Lynch and Citigroup are taking "drastic" steps -- but also inflation levels at a 26 year high. American stocks are down on the news. The IHT helpfully reports that Presidential front-runners differ in responses to prospect of U.S. recession. More on that topic from Mr. Krugman.

Speaking of which, Michigan primaries are today. Nevertheless, many minds have already turned to the Nevada caucuses this Saturday and the democratic debates to be held tonight. The slate of actual attendees is in flux, as a federal judge will be deciding whether NBC has the right to "disinvite" Dennis Kucinich.

Investigators are reporting that the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August was not due to deferred maintenance, but rather to a design flaw. If so, there are "465 similarly designed steel truss bridges across the country" that may theoretically be at risk.

Don't Forget

As Carrie pointed out last night, tomorrow is the primary in Michigan. Being a more-or-less regular election, Michigan voters will do their business at their local polling place.

The Nevada caucuses are this coming Saturday. Not being a regular election, they will not be held at polling places. The Republican locations can be found here and the Democratic locations can be found here.

Get out there and make your voice heard. In several key respects, the selection of candidates is even more important than the election in November.

A Pollster's Worst Nightmare

I came home from somewhere yesterday and found that Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Domino's Pizza empire, had left a message on our phone urging us to vote for Mitt Romney in Tuesday's presidential primary in Michigan. OF COURSE Tom was not sitting at his desk with an open phonebook in front of him while he called. OF COURSE it was one of those hated robocalls, which featured an even more distasteful fembot starting out the message by exhorting me to please hold while Monaghan takes the line. I guess even Robots have Secretaries these days.

There's been a lot of chatter about how the pollsters were unable to predict the outcomes of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries. Here in Michigan, I've been reading conflicting reports on whether John McCain is ahead of Mitt Romney in the Republican primary, while everyone is showing that Mike Huckabee is running a respectable third. Hillary Clinton leads by a comfortable margin, which is understandable seeing as how she's the only serious Democratic candidate to throw her hat into our state.

This is the most wide-open presidential race that I can remember. I don't like having such an early primary in Michigan because I like to wait until a lot more candidates have dropped out before I have to cast any ballots. Since all of this homework is giving me a headache, I decided to use one of those presidential calculators at http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html. I'm sure it did a wonderful job of matching me up with a candidate, but it was not much of a practical help since it picked out Senator Joe Biden as my top choice, followed by four other Democrats. So much for my Moderate Republican label.

No wonder pollsters are having such problems picking out the primary winners. If every voter was like me, they'd have to qualify all of their poll results with a margin of error of plus or minus 50 percentage points! I hope I'm a typical voter, but I have no way of knowing. For better or worse, this is how I pick my candidates.

First, I focus on my personal hot-button issues. (I recognize that what is important to me might not be the most important issue facing the nation, but I figure what I feel in my heart should count for at least a little something.) After I identify my hot-button issues, I identify the candidates who agree with my positions, then find out these people are total crooks whom I would not even vote into office as city dogcatchers. Then I have to leave my heart behind and identify what I think are the most important issues facing our nation. When I find the candidates who share my views on these important issues, I find that I cannot picture them on the world scene, or I cannot imagine them being able to lead the nation during any sort of time of crisis.

My next elimination round leaves me trying to match myself with a candidate who even agrees with me on what constitutes an important issue. It's too bad that by this time I've found a candidate in whom I disagree with about 85% of his or her beliefs.

Finally, I have to evaluate if I'm voting FOR a candidate or voting AGAINST a candidate. I don't like to play games like this, and I think it's unpatriotic to do something like purposefully vote for a bad candidate just to mess up the other political party. When the time comes, we need to search our consciences and vote for whoever we believe is the best person for the job.

Any pollster who contacts me will have no way of knowing where I'm at in this candidate-picking process. I shudder to think that whatever ephemeral thought I'm thinking at a particular moment supposedly represents a thousand other voters. As I'm typing this, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee representatives robocalled me and asked me who I was voting for in the primaries. Being annoyed, since A) I hate robocalls and B) I especially hate being interrupted by robots three times during a 30-minute period, I chose the two lamest candidates I could think of as my top presidential choices.

I'm afraid I will not divulge who I'm leaning towards right now. Tuesday is still a long ways off, and I can change my mind a million times before then. But I will say that if even a fraction of the voters have the same doubts I have, no one could possibly predict a primary winner until the exit polls begin.

Word of the Day

Hubris
Overbearing pride or presumption.

For example:

"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool," - a "Clinton adviser" to Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland.

x-posted

Bank of America To Buy Countrywide

In the ongoing home mortgage saga it has been announced than Bank of America will buy Countrywide mortgage for $ 4 billion. B of A had previously invested another $ 2 billion and got the right of first refusal in a buyout for their money.

It will be interesting to see how B of A changes things, if at all, in terms of operations and attitudes on foreclosure. As a bankruptcy attorney I have seen Countrywide on a lot of my filings and often have wondered why they would not want to work out a deal with customers.

If the client goes Chapter 7 all they get is another house to try and sell. If they work out a deal and lower rates, they at least have a chance to get most of their money back.

But I long ago gave up trying to understand how banks/credit card companies/etc think.

Daily Three

As I previously noted we had a few political announcements come down yesterday. Bill Richardson announced he is dropping his big for the Democratic nomination. He did not endorse anyone. I am sorry to see him go as he was a pretty good candidate. Also corrupt congressman John Doolittle retired, much to the relief of the GOP.

President Bush is in the Middle East and while many remain skeptical we can all hope that he will find some success. Obviously it is tough to avoid politics in an election year and certainly Bush is working for a legacy, it is still a good goal. We can hope that the Bush haters will try to look for the best.

Finally, the man who conquered Mt. Everest has died as has skater Christopher Bowman.