The human mind works in mysterious ways:
1) Had to hear it to believe it: On my way home, I was listening to Kudlow and Company on CNBC ("... where we still believe free market capitalism is the best path towards prosperity") and after listening to Larry and Art Laffer dish out some economic smack-down on a few perma-bears, John Kerry came on. During the interview, Senator Kerry said two things that I found truly suprising. The first, was his support for a modifiying the current Sarbanes-Oxly regulations, which of itself, was quite surprising. Even more suprising though, he pretty flatly stated that gun control is not effective and new gun control law is not prudent in the wake of the VT Massacre. I was quite surprised.
2) New Product Idea: Somebody needs to package beans in little fruit cups like they do apple-sauce and fruit cocktail. Personally, I like making quick home-made burritos as a snack, but hate opening up a whole can of beans. Even better, it would be a very healthy side item to pack in a lunch. With the same maufacturing line, you could probably package black beans, refried beans, and even humus, all of which could find a niche market. On top of that, it would be very helpful for people on vegetarian diets (not me).
3) Bad Product Idea: Single Malt Scotch Roll-Ups. The savory taste of 18 year old single malt scotch from the highlands, in the lovable form of a fruit roll-up. Perfect for the on-the-go snacker who can't take time for an eye opener to calm the morning jitters before starting the daily commute. Also great for teaching kids to enjoy the taste of anything.
4) Tick-Tock: Our troops still remain un-funded. President Bush called congressional leaders in for a conference about the issue. Speaker Pelosi sat to hist right and looked like a pissed off little school girl after being put in time-out during the photo session that was on the news. I think the strategy is, that if Speaker Pelosi can get enough camera time looking like a completely deranged bitch, then Hillary will seem amiable enough to elect. Well, at least the first part of the plan is working.
5) Supreme Court: I am not too sad to hear that the practice of ripping fetus that would have a good chance of surviving on its own out of a womans body and then crushing its skull is now illegal. Of course, there is another procedure available for late term abortion where the fetus is dismembered inside to womb.
6) The bombing continues: Almost 200 Iraqi's perished yesterday in the worst string of bombings in a long time. Based on what I read, it seems that the current terrorists are almost completely focused on attacking civilians now. They are ghouls. The press was quick to point out that some Iraqi's blame the Americans. Thanks guys, nothing gladens a soldiers heart more, than risking your very life and sanity to try to save somebody, and then actually get told you are responsible. People that supply, plan, and execute these killings are to blame. They must be stopped.
7) Economy looking better: We seem to be at a possible inflection point. Inflation indicators have eased up a bit and economic growth seems down but positive. Our exports are up and employment figures and wages improve, but housing and planned capital spending by US Companies is down. In essence, it seems a mixed bag. My advice, concentrate on megacap multi-national corportations that can profit from a weak dollar (GE, UT, CAT, XLI etc) and have good exposure to foreign markets. Hedge your holdings with energy or energy commodities (XLE or USO), and smartly get some money into foreign markets (EFA). Be careful of tech and extremely careful with any business that profits mostly from discretionary spending.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Current Events - April 2007
Nobody asked me, but...
1) Imus: Who really cares about this guy? His comments where certainly racist, but then again, Chris Rock can stand up in front of 1,000 people and cut on white people and nobody blinks an eye. I’m white, and even I don’t mind an occasional dig by Chris Rock, so I think people need thicker skins. I’m not a huge John Edwards fan, but I think he strikes the right tone with his call for forgiveness. With that being said, Imus already sucked, and I think that this issue just highlights the fact that he’s not worth the trouble. I don’t see a bright future for Mr. Imus and don’t really care. Maybe somebody can pick off Mancow next. In any event, I’m tired of the media being the news. A sure sign of arrogance and overindulgence is a person who spends all their time talking about themselves, and the American media is becoming as much of their own story as what is really happening in the world. I’m tired of seeing this kind of crap making headlines.
2) Stagflation: A good way of missing all the BS in the American media is to focus on financial news. Money talks and bullshit walks, the saying goes, so CNBC doesn’t have time to devote to crap news stories because if it doesn’t impact markets, then it’s not really news. With that being said, the economy is still slowing and the four key inflation indicators (Gold, US Dollar, Commodities, and the TIPS Spread) are all showing marked signs of increasing inflation. This is the big story that most people are missing. The Fed’s statement yesterday just confirms that. Get ready for higher interest rates.
3) Anna Nicole: Once more, who cares? What a fucking goat rope. I could care less who the daddy is. Why is something that should be buried in the gossip column making front page headlines??
4) The Surge: I have family in harm’s way right now, so I sincerely want the surge to work. I am also an actively drilling member of the National Guard, so I back that up with my own personal willingness to deploy to combat again. I have been pretty pleased with the results so far, but two BIG attacks in Baghdad really concern me. One was a bomb in the Green Zone and the other was a VBIED (Car Bomb) that blew up a major bridge over the Tigris. We better get our game on better than that, because if there isn’t a marked improvement by late summer, our politicians will be falling all over themselves to see how fast we can leave. My opinion here is that the Dems want to see this fail fast, so the pull-out and bloodbath that follows are politically viewed as a final failure for George Bush and the GOP, not a sitting Democratic President. Did I mention I have family over there?? I am an independent voter, but to the politicians trying to make Iraq a failure, I offer a hearty, “fuck you.”
5) Madam Speaker: It’s pretty hard to get any lower than the likes of Ted Kennedy, who actually had links with the USSR to explore how Ronald Reagan could get defeated in his re-election campaign, but Madam Speaker Pelosi seems determined to do so. She not only visited Syria, but is now pondering the possibility of also visiting Iran. What really pisses me off, is that she could spend her political capital a lot more wisely in a way that might actually help Americans, but is instead hell bent on undermining the current administration while we are fighting a deadly counter-insurgency. My advice, “Mam, start acting more like Tip Oneil and less like George McGovern. That way, we can remember the first female speaker of the house as a woman with dignity and wisdom, not a shrill, partisan hack more interested in political advantage than the actual state of her country.” Oh, and yes, she did get submarined by Israelli PM Olmert when he called her out after her “offer of peace” with Syria. Then again, that’s why politicians shouldn’t engage in their own personal diplomacy. There is nothing sovereign about a congresswoman visiting a foreign state, which means said congresswoman takes on a lot of risk trying to do what the State Department is constitutionally empowered to do. Somebody with her tenure knows that, and the scary thing is she simply doesn’t care.
6) Rosie: Oh, yes, let’s have some more people in media talking about other people in the media. That’s great news! I always thought Rosie was a gifted comic, but when she stated something to the effect that terrorists are mommies and daddies too, I tuned her out. At this point, why bother with what she says. It’s too hard to understand anyway. She is a rabid progressive, so her job is very secure. It’s a lot easier to just vote with your personal actions and tune her out. Ellen is a much more gifted and fun lesbian comic and talk show host anyway.
7) Mrs. Edward’s gun toting republican neighbor: I find this story a bit hypocritical. If I were someone in the media, my first question to her would be, “how many armed security personnel do you normally have on duty at your home?” With a husband as a presidential contender, I can’t imagine there are no armed guards at their house. If that is the case, why is it OK for the Edwards family have armed guards, while their neighbors of lesser social accomplishment are somehow a pack of backwoods retards for wanting to defend their personal property with a gun. The gun issue aside, I sincerely hope she gets through her current bout of cancer. I might not agree with her about her neighbor (I mean c’mon, yall do live North Carolina), but she is a mother and wife that hopefully can survive her disease.
8) Duke Lax: I’m glad to see that justice seems to have prevailed over politically motivated abuse of prosecutorial power. On top of that, I watched Duke thrash Johns Hopkins pretty good last weekend, so the team itself seems to have recovered and may have pretty good odds in the national tournament this year. Lacrosse is a magical mix of speed, endurance, precision, and violence, the perfect training for young warriors (next to rugby). Arghh! Give me a double of single malt scotch, neat!
9) Hillary’s Intern: There is a video somewhere of a guy offering to be Hillary’s intern. I think that’s pretty funny. Hopefully she doesn’t have a cigar fetish like her husband, or the fellow might be in for a real shocker!
1) Imus: Who really cares about this guy? His comments where certainly racist, but then again, Chris Rock can stand up in front of 1,000 people and cut on white people and nobody blinks an eye. I’m white, and even I don’t mind an occasional dig by Chris Rock, so I think people need thicker skins. I’m not a huge John Edwards fan, but I think he strikes the right tone with his call for forgiveness. With that being said, Imus already sucked, and I think that this issue just highlights the fact that he’s not worth the trouble. I don’t see a bright future for Mr. Imus and don’t really care. Maybe somebody can pick off Mancow next. In any event, I’m tired of the media being the news. A sure sign of arrogance and overindulgence is a person who spends all their time talking about themselves, and the American media is becoming as much of their own story as what is really happening in the world. I’m tired of seeing this kind of crap making headlines.
2) Stagflation: A good way of missing all the BS in the American media is to focus on financial news. Money talks and bullshit walks, the saying goes, so CNBC doesn’t have time to devote to crap news stories because if it doesn’t impact markets, then it’s not really news. With that being said, the economy is still slowing and the four key inflation indicators (Gold, US Dollar, Commodities, and the TIPS Spread) are all showing marked signs of increasing inflation. This is the big story that most people are missing. The Fed’s statement yesterday just confirms that. Get ready for higher interest rates.
3) Anna Nicole: Once more, who cares? What a fucking goat rope. I could care less who the daddy is. Why is something that should be buried in the gossip column making front page headlines??
4) The Surge: I have family in harm’s way right now, so I sincerely want the surge to work. I am also an actively drilling member of the National Guard, so I back that up with my own personal willingness to deploy to combat again. I have been pretty pleased with the results so far, but two BIG attacks in Baghdad really concern me. One was a bomb in the Green Zone and the other was a VBIED (Car Bomb) that blew up a major bridge over the Tigris. We better get our game on better than that, because if there isn’t a marked improvement by late summer, our politicians will be falling all over themselves to see how fast we can leave. My opinion here is that the Dems want to see this fail fast, so the pull-out and bloodbath that follows are politically viewed as a final failure for George Bush and the GOP, not a sitting Democratic President. Did I mention I have family over there?? I am an independent voter, but to the politicians trying to make Iraq a failure, I offer a hearty, “fuck you.”
5) Madam Speaker: It’s pretty hard to get any lower than the likes of Ted Kennedy, who actually had links with the USSR to explore how Ronald Reagan could get defeated in his re-election campaign, but Madam Speaker Pelosi seems determined to do so. She not only visited Syria, but is now pondering the possibility of also visiting Iran. What really pisses me off, is that she could spend her political capital a lot more wisely in a way that might actually help Americans, but is instead hell bent on undermining the current administration while we are fighting a deadly counter-insurgency. My advice, “Mam, start acting more like Tip Oneil and less like George McGovern. That way, we can remember the first female speaker of the house as a woman with dignity and wisdom, not a shrill, partisan hack more interested in political advantage than the actual state of her country.” Oh, and yes, she did get submarined by Israelli PM Olmert when he called her out after her “offer of peace” with Syria. Then again, that’s why politicians shouldn’t engage in their own personal diplomacy. There is nothing sovereign about a congresswoman visiting a foreign state, which means said congresswoman takes on a lot of risk trying to do what the State Department is constitutionally empowered to do. Somebody with her tenure knows that, and the scary thing is she simply doesn’t care.
6) Rosie: Oh, yes, let’s have some more people in media talking about other people in the media. That’s great news! I always thought Rosie was a gifted comic, but when she stated something to the effect that terrorists are mommies and daddies too, I tuned her out. At this point, why bother with what she says. It’s too hard to understand anyway. She is a rabid progressive, so her job is very secure. It’s a lot easier to just vote with your personal actions and tune her out. Ellen is a much more gifted and fun lesbian comic and talk show host anyway.
7) Mrs. Edward’s gun toting republican neighbor: I find this story a bit hypocritical. If I were someone in the media, my first question to her would be, “how many armed security personnel do you normally have on duty at your home?” With a husband as a presidential contender, I can’t imagine there are no armed guards at their house. If that is the case, why is it OK for the Edwards family have armed guards, while their neighbors of lesser social accomplishment are somehow a pack of backwoods retards for wanting to defend their personal property with a gun. The gun issue aside, I sincerely hope she gets through her current bout of cancer. I might not agree with her about her neighbor (I mean c’mon, yall do live North Carolina), but she is a mother and wife that hopefully can survive her disease.
8) Duke Lax: I’m glad to see that justice seems to have prevailed over politically motivated abuse of prosecutorial power. On top of that, I watched Duke thrash Johns Hopkins pretty good last weekend, so the team itself seems to have recovered and may have pretty good odds in the national tournament this year. Lacrosse is a magical mix of speed, endurance, precision, and violence, the perfect training for young warriors (next to rugby). Arghh! Give me a double of single malt scotch, neat!
9) Hillary’s Intern: There is a video somewhere of a guy offering to be Hillary’s intern. I think that’s pretty funny. Hopefully she doesn’t have a cigar fetish like her husband, or the fellow might be in for a real shocker!
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
What's your carbon footprint?
If you answer that question with a resounding, "what the f&%$ are you talking about?," you haven't been paying enough attention to your BP commercials. On a more cheerful note, Belgian officials, in a bid to save the environment from the evil, Bushchimphitler coprorate resource marauder barbeque fans, have passed a 20 euro tax on grilling outdoors. You got that right. For all you'un Jeebus types not learned up on foreign exchange rates, that about $26 every time you cook out.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070403/62999935.html
With that being said lets do a little math. The average outdoor grilling event amounts to about 75g of CO2 emissions, cited from the article above. Conversely, burning a single gallon of gasoline releases about 8788 grams of CO2. Now, if you consider that the average Nextel Cup stock car gets about 5.5 miles per gallon fuel economy, then a car running the Daytona 500 would have to pay up about $284,000 if taxed at the same rate as our evil barbequeing Belgan friends. With that being said, I sincerely hope to see a Sierra Club lawsuit against Hendricks Motor Sports in the coming months.
Here's some more mathematical reasoning. If you consider that the Nextel Cup runs 37 events a year, along with the pre-Daytona shoot-outs, qualifying, happy hour practice with 43 cars racing and about 50 trying to qualify, you can see that the entire series burns about 115,000 gals of gas a year (not counting moving driver RV's, trucking cars & tools to the race, testing, fans driving to races etc.) which amounts to a staggering 989 MILLION GRAMS OF CO2. This also doesn't consider the thousands of innocent racing slicks that are cruelly used up during the season and the effect their manufacture has on our fragile Gaia. With 989 MILLION GRAMS of CO2, poor Europeans could grill out 13 million times, which could be a major boon to the faux meat industry. On an even more ominous note, misguided NASCAR crew chiefs routinely DEFLATE TIRE PRESSURE when their set-ups become "too loose" (think latent homosexual innuendo), and any serious Earth lover has to be seriously concerned with a sport that condones running tires at less than their manufacturer recomended pressure, a major source fuel inefficiency. Who can even fathom what putting in a "half turn of wedge" or "adding a spring rubber" might do if taken seriously by the misguided NASCAR viewing audience in their every day driving? To top it all off, the pandering, profiteering money-whores known as NASCAR team owners even prostitute the very sides of their cars to the likes of Kingsford Charcoal, which exacerbates the effects of latent penis envy NASCAR male insecurity outdoor cooking on our precious environment.
The bottom line people, Stop grilling. Stop your support for silly corporate American race car races. Trade in your Dale Jr hat or your Calvin peeing on "48" sticker for new lease on life, green style. Once everyone in America becomes a pompous, pacifist, metrosexual patron of the modern arts and worshipper of the divine earth mother, the rest of the world will come to truly respect our inner beauty and wish to be at peace with us. We can all live in a world with reduced carbon emissions and red state cultural influence.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070403/62999935.html
With that being said lets do a little math. The average outdoor grilling event amounts to about 75g of CO2 emissions, cited from the article above. Conversely, burning a single gallon of gasoline releases about 8788 grams of CO2. Now, if you consider that the average Nextel Cup stock car gets about 5.5 miles per gallon fuel economy, then a car running the Daytona 500 would have to pay up about $284,000 if taxed at the same rate as our evil barbequeing Belgan friends. With that being said, I sincerely hope to see a Sierra Club lawsuit against Hendricks Motor Sports in the coming months.
Here's some more mathematical reasoning. If you consider that the Nextel Cup runs 37 events a year, along with the pre-Daytona shoot-outs, qualifying, happy hour practice with 43 cars racing and about 50 trying to qualify, you can see that the entire series burns about 115,000 gals of gas a year (not counting moving driver RV's, trucking cars & tools to the race, testing, fans driving to races etc.) which amounts to a staggering 989 MILLION GRAMS OF CO2. This also doesn't consider the thousands of innocent racing slicks that are cruelly used up during the season and the effect their manufacture has on our fragile Gaia. With 989 MILLION GRAMS of CO2, poor Europeans could grill out 13 million times, which could be a major boon to the faux meat industry. On an even more ominous note, misguided NASCAR crew chiefs routinely DEFLATE TIRE PRESSURE when their set-ups become "too loose" (think latent homosexual innuendo), and any serious Earth lover has to be seriously concerned with a sport that condones running tires at less than their manufacturer recomended pressure, a major source fuel inefficiency. Who can even fathom what putting in a "half turn of wedge" or "adding a spring rubber" might do if taken seriously by the misguided NASCAR viewing audience in their every day driving? To top it all off, the pandering, profiteering money-whores known as NASCAR team owners even prostitute the very sides of their cars to the likes of Kingsford Charcoal, which exacerbates the effects of latent penis envy NASCAR male insecurity outdoor cooking on our precious environment.
The bottom line people, Stop grilling. Stop your support for silly corporate American race car races. Trade in your Dale Jr hat or your Calvin peeing on "48" sticker for new lease on life, green style. Once everyone in America becomes a pompous, pacifist, metrosexual patron of the modern arts and worshipper of the divine earth mother, the rest of the world will come to truly respect our inner beauty and wish to be at peace with us. We can all live in a world with reduced carbon emissions and red state cultural influence.
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