In The Crosswalk

I Don't Have To Share My Toast

2009-12-03T10:32:00.004-06:00

For the first time in over a decade, I do not have to share my toast. I can come out of my office midmorning, wander to the kitchen, get out the bread and maybe some peanut butter, and have a piece of toast without a smiling face (or two a couple of years ago) coming in to meet me and demand a share of my repast.

Maggie, our yellow lab, was put down this past Tuesday. A battle with a cancer that ultimately put her in a position where we could no longer keep her.

The hardest part of putting an animal down, to me anyway, is not the loss I feel for myself, though I do miss her (and her sister a couple of years ago), but the feeling you get when you take them to meet their destiny...and you just can't communicate to them what is going on. It's a feeling of betraying an old friend - even if it is the right time to take them. You can't express to them the whats and wherefores of the situation. You can only get their eyes looking at you, maybe sad eyes or happy eyes or anxious eyes, but still they are the eyes that have trusted you for all these years....that is the hardest and saddest part of letting them go.

"Too Big to Fail" by Sorkin

2009-11-16T12:01:00.003-06:00

As I finish up Andrew Ross Sorkin's book, "Too Big To Fail", and also reading this article about Rodge Cohan....I can't help but wonder how much commission was offered to the writers to pen these ego boosts. A book about the largest financial scams in history and I find myself searching desperately to find the antagonist(s). Instead, Sorkin paints most of the players as heroes doing Patriotic dealing to save us (and add to their income)....yikes. Upon introduction of many of the players it is as if Sorkin asked them to "please relate an amusing and cuddly anecdote of yourself so that you appear to be a mere mortal to the taxpayers you raped".

One of the most nauseating moments (of many) of Sorkins book comes as TaxEvading Timmy was set to take a morning jog along the East River after a hellish weekend of commandeering taxpyers money to bailout AIG (so they could give it to Goldman Sachs). Young Timmy gazes out at the morning commuters wondering if he has done the right thing. Seeing us, the unwashed non-financial masses, he thinks "it is about them", "Never mind the staggering numbers. Never mind the ruthless complexity of structured finance and derivitives, nor the million-dollar bonuses of those who made bad bets. This is what saving the financial industry is really about...protecting ordinary people with ordinary jobs" (page 409). Gee whiz, thanks Tim. Thanks for being there for us!!! No matter that the guys you are bailing out cost us "ordinary" folks untold amounts of present and future wealth and earnings, and taxes.

No need for Syrup of Ipecac after a dose of that...

The Pharma Game - Sell You More

2009-10-23T12:46:00.006-05:00

Most every drug that Pharma creates has a natural counterpart that can be taken, or eaten, with little or no side effects. Natural remedies generate little profit and are not patentable and therefor of no interest to Pharma for the treatment of the people of the world. A lot has been written along these lines.

Pharma exist for the sole purpose of profiting from the patenting and sales of unique molecules claimed to have some curative powers on the human body. Mostly, our bodies do not recognize these unnatural molecules and we get some degree of "side effects"...their way of saying we are poisoning you slowly, or sometimes not so slowly.

Anyway, here are a few tidbits from some papers that I have come across. First, from Price Waterhouse Coopers publication entitled "Pharma 2020: The Vision". Ooh, sounds intriguing and insightful. I downloaded the pdf, I forget where I found it, but I imagine it is still available somewhere on the web.

Page 7

...pharma 2010 report contended that the industry's best hopes of earning higher returns lay in the development of packages of products and services targeted at patients with specific disease subtypes, if it was to make such "targeted treatments"...

So, this "vision" hinges on specific "profitable" diseases. And, packages of products...sell them more drugs at a time. Maybe that'll make us better in more of a hurry? And "targeted treatments"...is that a code word for "disease mongering"? The PLoS had an entire issue devoted to disease mongering

Page 22

"The vaccine sector is growing rapidly, then: there are 245 pure vaccins and 11 combination vaccines in clinical development, and some industry experts estimate that the market could be worth as much as $42 billion by 2015.

...includes vaccines for cocaine addiction, diabetes, hypertension, Alzheimers disease, psoriasis, food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis and nicotine withdrawal.

...there are 90 therapeutic vaccines for cancer in the pipeline"

I don't like to be a Negative Nelly, but this is undoubtedly going to offer false hopes to many people. And it is, yet again, a "give me a pill, Doc" false cure for a personal behavior issues. And, we are talking about targeting drugs and treatments for The Healthy. Pharma can't live with only treating the sick and in need...they must expand and grow. The healthy are next in line.

Page 24

"...seen from Pharmas persective, non-compliance thus represents a huge opportunity to maximize the value of its products. Indeed, Datamonitor estimates that better compliance could generate more than $30 billion a year in additional sales"

Non-compliance, meaning someone gets a prescription from the Doc and either says, I am NOT going to fill it, or take it...or maybe does fill it and does take it for a while and has side effects, etc. Pharma sees you as the enemy. They need you to take that drug, and mostly thye NEED you to get the refills. Imagine a Public-option government controlled healthcare system - where lobbyists have "sold" (actually bought) the idea to government that you can't be "cured" if you are not taking your meds, and that you can't be trusted to take them on your on. That knock on the door is your GCO (Government Compliance Officer), there to give you the pill and watch it go down the hatch. Could happen, very easily that could happen.

Next, some excerpts from a new article I came across titled "The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex: A Deadly Fairy Tale"

...two other areas America excels as a leader above all other developed nations is in being the premier breeding ground for the pharmaceutical industrial complex’s greatest profits and, second, as the world’s exemplar in medical fraud and corruption. The fairy tale of America’s health as being best served by drugs is a creation of this complex, a lullaby that brings ill citizens repeatedly to their doctors and hospitals for diagnosis and treatment, or simply to deny healthcare altogether to the uninsured.

The country is pacified by a blind belief that the drugs being prescribed to them have been proven safe because our government health agencies have our physical health and well-being in their best intentions. This is a lie, an extraordinarily deadly lie. Iatrogenesis, medically induced injury and death, is the number one cause of death in American medicine annually, since only a small percentage of these deaths are actually reported. Each year more Americans die from preventable deaths due to our medical system than all military causalities in the two world wars combined. This is tantamount to medical genocide. One of the major causes of these deaths is the overmedication of Americans in all ages. The constant need for profits has created an environment that allows the pharmaceutical industrial complex to use their enormous financial and political clout to literally make normal life experiences into new diseases, such as social anxiety disorder, in order to sell its drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has been given the authority to pathologize life, with the drugging of our children, seniors, etc. For example, the leading cause of AIDS deaths today is a result of liver failure. This is not a condition of HIV infection, but a direct result of the anti-HIV drug AZT. Is it little wonder then that we are being intimidated and frightened into believing that mandatory vaccination is being touted even though the science of efficacy and safety, even the need, for these new swine flu vaccines is patently unproven. It is perhaps one of the largest falsehoods ever perpetuated on humanity that dwarfs the sleaze on Wall Street.

and

According to OpenSecrets.org, there are 3093 lobbyists in the health field and Big Pharma now spends approximately $1.2 million daily to persuade Congress to act according to their script. An investigation conducted by Medical Verdicts & Law Weekly found that 30 key lawmakers are involved in health legislation totaling $11 million in health investments. Three of every four major health firms have at least one lobbyist who worked for a congressman. Startlingly, nine lobbyists employed by Big Pharma are former congressional staffers who are still well-connected to Capitol Hill. The conflicts of interest are everywhere. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the Obama nominee for Commerce Secretary, who withdrew because of opposition to the Administration's agenda, is a senior member of the Health Committee. He revealed that he has $254,000-$560,000 in health stocks.

and last, but certainly not least

In order to understand how we can spend 2.6 trillion this year on healthcare, but not reduce the incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, mental conditions, arthritis, etc., we must realize this is a game. With each piece of the puzzle, feeding into a single picture of a massively corrupt, unethical, and frequently illegal system controlled by relatively few corporations within the pharmaceutical complex and the health insurance industry, are the ring leaders. They in turn influence thousands of lobbyists, paid-off scientists and academicians, and policymakers, especially those who rule on important health oversight committees. Health officials and legislators in turn solicit expert witnesses, preselected by the cartels, to position their drug agendas in the most favorable manner. The pharmaceutical cartel also has direct connections with its supporting scientific advisory boards and key foundations. These foundations, supported by policy think tanks who supply the so-called independent experts, then lobby the upper echelon within the FDA, NIH, CDC, NIMH, HHS. Ideally they hire former health commissioners and legislators previously players in the game to assist those same federal agencies to see their drugs guided through the regulatory process. Public relations and advertizing firms are contracted to give the public impression that these drugs are effective and safe for the sole reason they have received official licensing. In addition, the cartel creates front organizations with consumer-friendly titles whose representatives appear at national conferences and seminars beholden to special drug interests. Finally, the drug corporations set money aside to be paid out in settlements. With the exception of class action suits, the majority of cases for injury and death are accompanied by confidentiality clauses to prevent public disclosure of data the companies wish to remain secret.

This is how the medical system is rigged and it is why we can watch 60 Minutes or read the New York Times serving as pharmaceutical shills to encourage vaccination, yet refusing to air or print the dissenting voices who have the scientific evidence to show it is a massive fraud. Therefore, the public is misled every step of the way.

My best advice...read up on healthy lifestyles, healthy foods, dietary supplements, etc. Get some exercise and sunshine. Only go to the doctor after giving it careful consideration and reconsideration.

Just say "No"...to flu shots

2009-10-19T09:56:00.004-05:00

As usual...follow the money.

They have game plans to sell us on the "need" to be vaccinated:

the Seven Step Recipe. Glen Nowak, now the Director of the CDC’s Media Relations, outlined a concise public relations template while serving as the communications spokesperson for the National Immunization Program. Speaking at the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, he presented the CDC’s seven steps. After a careful review of Nowak’s Powerpoint presentation we discover a very detailed and concerted PR and multimedia campaign that includes the following (quotes are from CDC’s materials):
To encourage the belief that influenza infection can “occur among people for whom influenza is not generally perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children, healthy adults, healthy seniors).” In other words, promote flu vaccination to those who don’t really need it.
In order to “foster the demand for flu vaccinations” the CDC should target “medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) [to] state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) – and urge influenza vaccination.”
By focusing on the message of dire health threats and human casualties upon those who don’t really need to be vaccinated, the CDC will reach its milestone of “framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as “very severe,” “more severe than last or past years,” “deadly”).”
Throughout the flu season, the campaign would continue issuing reports “from health officials and media” to emphasize that “influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people – helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.”
Of course, no marketing strategy is thorough without images. Ergo another ingredient in the recipe is to use “visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).” link

A very good new article published in The Atlantic entitled "Does the Vaccine Matter?". IT is well worth the time to read, but cutting to the chase, basically No, it doesn't matter. Healthy people don't derive much, if any benefit, and unhealthy people are not likely to develop the necessary antibodies after being vaccinated to protect them from the viruses. Here are a couple of clips from the article.

He [Cochrane Collaboration’s Tom Jefferson, who’s also an epidemiologist trained at the famed London School of Tropical Hygiene] leads an international team of researchers who have combed through hundreds of flu-vaccine studies. The vast majority of the studies were deeply flawed, says Jefferson. “Rubbish is not a scientific term, but I think it’s the term that applies.” Only four studies were properly designed to pin down the effectiveness of flu vaccine, he says, and two of those showed that it might be effective in certain groups of patients, such as school-age children with no underlying health issues like asthma. The other two showed equivocal results or no benefit.

and

The history of flu vaccination suggests other reasons to doubt claims that it dramatically reduces mortality. In 2004, for example, vaccine production fell behind, causing a 40 percent drop in immunization rates. Yet mortality did not rise. In addition, vaccine “mismatches” occurred in 1968 and 1997: in both years, the vaccine that had been produced in the summer protected against one set of viruses, but come winter, a different set was circulating. In effect, nobody was vaccinated. Yet death rates from all causes, including flu and the various illnesses it can exacerbate, did not budge. Sumit Majumdar, a physician and researcher at the University of Alberta, in Canada, offers another historical observation: rising rates of vaccination of the elderly over the past two decades have not coincided with a lower overall mortality rate. In 1989, only 15 percent of people over age 65 in the U.S. and Canada were vaccinated against flu. Today, more than 65 percent are immunized. Yet death rates among the elderly during flu season have increased rather than decreased.

All of those millions of doses of vaccine go to bottom line profits for a few pharma's, but do little for, and possible even harm, the millions getting the shots.

"The vaccine market is booming," says Bruce Carlson, spokesperson at market research firm Kalorama, which publishes an annual survey of the vaccine industry. "It's an enormous growth area for pharmaceuticals at a time when other areas are not doing so well," he says, noting that the pipeline for more traditional blockbuster drugs such as Lipitor and Nexium has thinned.

As always with pandemic flus, taxpayers are footing the $1.5 billion check for the 250 million swine flu vaccines that the government has ordered so far and will be distributing free to doctors, pharmacies and schools. In addition, Congress has set aside more than $10 billion this year to research flu viruses, monitor H1N1's progress and educate the public about prevention.

Drugmakers pocket most of the revenues from flu sales, with Sanofi-Pasteur, Glaxo Smith Kline and Novartis cornering most of the market. Link

And a couple of other reads....

NVIC vaccine news

and

Take Vitamin D Instead

Why Do We Believe Them At All Anymore?

2009-10-07T09:00:00.003-05:00

Another admission of feeding us a line by the government...

Mr. Barofsky’s office also says that regulators were wrong to tell the public last year that the earliest bailout recipients were all healthy.
Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., for instance, said on Oct. 14 that the banks were “healthy,” and that they accepted the money for “the good of the U.S. economy.” The banks, he said, would be better able to increase their lending to consumers and businesses.
In truth, regulators were concerned about the health of several banks that received that first bailout, the inspector general writes.
The inspector general said government officials need to be more careful when describing their actions and rationale. In a letter included with the report, the Federal Reserve concurred with Mr. Barofsky’s concern about the statements made last year, but the Treasury Department said that any review of announcements last year “must be considered in light of the unprecedented circumstances in which they were made.” Link

Ya gotta love that last line from Treasury and Tax Evading Timmy...

I guess they weren't fans of Kennedy philosophy of government truths. Oh, for the return to the days of the Honorable and Competent Government Liars.

Profiting Under Guise of Philanthropy - Another Entry

2009-09-28T12:58:00.002-05:00

I couldn't decide if this qualifies exactly as PUGP, but it seem close enough...for me. Yet another example of how those of wealth create the rules to their liking, while appearing to be doing deeds for the "common good". This example comes from an article written by economist, businessman Gary North.

Mount Desert Island, Maine, is the prototype Establishment enclave in America. There are three of them, all islands: Mt. Desert, Jeckyl (Georgia), and Jupiter (Florida). Mt. Desert Island is where a major aspect of the modern environmental movement was created: the lock-out.

In 1910, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. bought a 104-room granite mansion there, importing tiles from the Great Wall of China. [Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), p. 97.] Rockefeller then used Mount Desert Island as his first great experiment in permanently sequestering property away from the free market, which has an unappreciated tendency to develop properties aimed for sale to middle-class buyers.

Rockefeller and his elite neighbors – Edsel Ford was one of them – were concerned about "overdevelopment." [John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 199.] This is an elitist code word for "real estate sales to the upper middle class." They created an association and donated 5,000 acres to it; then they gave it to the Federal government. President Wilson used executive authority in 1916 to create a special monument; in 1919, Congress passed a law making it Lafayette National Park. Junior bought more land and donated it to the government; this is now Acadia National Park.

He and his peers repeatedly adopted the lock-out strategy, using tax-deductible money, to remove prime real estate from the market in wilderness areas surrounding elite enclaves. This raises the value of the remaining properties, and it secures an insulated social world for them. The area around Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of the prime areas where the Rockefellers own large tracts. This area has long been the focus of a Rockefeller-inspired lock-out, beginning in 1919. [Harr & Johnson, pp. 201-211.] Land values there reflect this: astronomical. But the original model was Mount Desert Island.

The Rockefeller family biographers say of Junior’s role: "Very shortly, he became a towering figure, the greatest ally the National Park Service ever had." [Ibid., p. 198.] The assistance was mutual. The National Park Service provides the authority to keep the rest of us out of these areas on a permanent basis.

This program to seal off prime wilderness areas from economic development had its origins in the special role of wilderness in the coming of age for the sons of the super-rich. It is one of the three ordeals of youth and early manhood: the wilderness summer (wealthy scion Teddy Roosevelt is the most famous exemplar); the academy (Exeter, Groton, etc.), and military service in wartime (again, Roosevelt the "Rough Rider" is most famous). [Nelson Aldrich, Jr., Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America (New York: Knopf, 1988), ch. 5: "Three Ordeals."] Mount Desert Island has been a big part of this. [Ibid., pp. 164, 166.] Nelson Aldrich, Jr., as part of the Old Money Establishment, is quite forthright about environmentalism’s social function for the Establishment: "The social religion of Nature, which began with rich kids going outdoors for their health, ends in political action against the condo developers, the shopping-mall impresarios, the army of entrepreneurs whom Old Money (and not Old Money alone) imagines despoiling Arcadia." [Ibid., p. 169.]

Well, they gave "us", the little people, a few National Parks, while they get to keep out "us", the little people, from having elbow room next door to them.

"Smart Choice" Program is a Joke

2009-09-22T09:52:00.004-05:00

You may have seen a commercial on TV recently for some Kellogg's cereal including Fruit Loops and Cocoa Krispies...indicating that these cereals were "Smart Choices" for feeding your kids for breakfast. I guess the likes of John Stossels would say, "Give me a break". Labeling on these cereals indicate that they contain up to 41% sugar content per serving - the number one ingredient on the label...followed by corn flour - a high GI food. Talk about setting your kids up to become another member of the obese metabolic syndrome crowd. Pharmaceutical companies are probably wetting themselves watching these commercials in glee.

Here is a look at the head of the program and some "thought" behind the program

Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.
She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.
“The checkmark means the food item is a ‘better for you’ product, as opposed to having an x on it saying ‘Don’t eat this,’ ” Dr. Kennedy said. “Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product. They want to have a choice. They don’t want to be told ‘You must do this.’ ”
Dr. Kennedy, who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.
“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

Wow...so it ranks as better than a donut...so let it have the appearance of being good for you? That is some sound logic? Huh?

I was watching a show on UCTV recently (University of California), a show they put on called Mini Medical School for the Public, a great show for the crowd that cares about things like their own health and well-being in a world run by idiots. Anyway, this particular show had a nutritional componenet to it, as many of them do. The lecturer showed a series of charts on some research done on kids blood glucose levels...and how they were affected by what they ate for breakfast. Kids that ate a high sugar breakfast, like Fruit Loops, had a significant spike intheir serum glucose levels as compared to kids that ate "other" foods lower in sugar. The elevated glucose continued for a few hours...but out at around 5 hours, or lunchtime, their glucose dropped to slightly below baseline, or becoming slightly hypoglycemic.

So, the kids were then offered free choice lunches. The kids that ate the sugary breakfast cereal, and became slightly hypoglycemic, ate 81% more calories at lunch than the other group....EIGHTY ONE PERCENT!! But Fruit Loops are a "Smart Choice"!!! Good Grief.

Maybe you guys on this Smart Choices Board need to get a second opinion...and get the conflicts of interest off of the board as well.

Oh, and just for your info, Smart Choices Board, since you obviously don't follow the news...in the last week or two here are a couple of things you might have missed:

A spoonful of sugar? Americans are swallowing 22 teaspoons of sugar each day, and it's time to cut way back, the American Heart Association says. link

and from the same article

Sandon said that parents can help lower that sugar intake by getting soda out of the house, looking at how much sugar is in their kids' cereal and substituting snacks like cookies with popcorn.

and Obama and friends are considering a sugary drink tax. So, why not tax sugary cereals as well?

Why we become Libertarians

2009-09-18T14:54:00.000-05:00

Saying it succinctly

I became a conservative by being around liberals and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize that there’s something distinctly in common between the two groups, the left and the right; the worst part of each of them is the moralizing. On the left, you have people who want to dictate your behavior under the guise of tolerance. Unless you disagree with them. Then the tolerance goes out the window. Which kind of negates the whole idea of tolerance. That’s the politically correct moralizing. Then when you become a conservative, the other kind of moralizing comes from religion. But if you remove both of those from the equation, what you’re left with is libertarianism.
From the right, you’ve got free markets. From the left, you have free minds. To me, that’s the only sensible direction. As you grow older, you kind of end up there. Especially if you drink and do a lot of drugs. link

Yeah, I guess that sums it up....

A Medical Skeptic Am I

2009-09-11T14:45:00.002-05:00

Voltaire said, "the art of medicine is to amuse the patient while nature cures the disease", and that was said hundreds of years ago. What has changed?

If you are in a car wreck and have bones poking out or some other acute trauma then medical doctors are a top choice, but for anything chronic...uh-uh, they haven't that much to offer as far as cures anyway.

And, an admission of the lack of power of medical "gods" to cure us, from Dr. D. M. Hegsted's and Dr. Beverly Winikof's statement presenting the "Dietary Goals for the US" in February, 1977:

There is a widespread and unfounded confidence in the ability of medical to cure or mitigate the effects of such diseases [heart disease, diabetes, etc] once they occur. Appropriate public education must emphasize the unfortunate but clear limitations of current medical practice in curing the common killing diseases. Once hypertension, diabetes, arteriosclerosis or heart disease are manifest, there is, in reality, very little that medical science can do to return a patient to normal physiological function. As awareness of this limitation increases, the importance of prevention will become all the more obvious.

...oh, and their low fat dietary guidelines were probably the root of our increasing obesity/diabetes problem, but that is the subject fro another post.

And some lighter weight stuff...a doctor joke..."the flu lasts 7 days with treatment, and one week without it".

The Spanish Minister of Health said of the H1N1 flu scare...it's "an epidemic of fear caused by a ghost illness being fought by exaggerated response".

Kennedy's death - the untold irony

2009-08-31T09:19:00.002-05:00

Ted Kennedy died of cancer. Cancers are most common in modern westernized countries and less common in the remaining un-westernized reaches of the planet. Historic records of doctors and others show that incidences of "diseases of civilization" including heart disease, cancer and diabetes were much less common prior to arrival of the foodstuffs of the European and other westerners. These foodstuffs include sugar and highly processed flour.

Beginning in the 1950's the medical establishment was becoming convinced that fats may be the root of the evil causing among other things heart disease and cancers. Investigations of the hypothesis however, failed to reliably confirm their belief.

Flash forward to the mid and late 1970's. Senator George McGovern chaired the Senate Select Committee that drafted guidelines that led to a change in the American diet that still holds in effect today. The USDA food pyramid reflects the "expert" testimonies heard by this committee and the resulting guidance. Ted Kennedy was a member of this committee.

The recommendations were for increased consumption of carbohydrates and decreased consumption of fats (bottom of the food pyramid for carbs - hence, most calories, and top of the food pyramid for fats and oils with "use sparingly" noted)....the very diet that undid the health of other populations.

So, in a very real sense, they guided the population of the US to a diet that had already proven itself to be the bane of native populations that switched from their historic local foods (generaly higher in fat and protein) to the western diet rich in processed carbs - being high sugar and flour consumption.

I do not have a clue as to how Ted Kennedy ate...maybe he ate a healthy diet. But, maybe the guidelines that he helped implement led his dining patterns since the 1970's and led to the development of the cancer that ultimately consumed him. Food for thought.

Profiting Under the Guise of Philanthropy

2009-08-27T09:55:00.003-05:00

Profiting under the guise of Philanthropy (PUGP) is a phenomenon that I have made more notice of over the last year or so. There may be, or probably is, a scholarly term for this, but I haven't run across it yet. But, the more you look for it, the more you see it.

Just this morning I was watching CNBC and they were interviewing the CEO of Toys R Us, and that corporation is beginning a program to have customers bring in a list of items such as car seats, cribs, walkers, etc that may be unsafe, had been stored incorrectly, or maybe have been recalled, or not, and the person bringing in the items would be entitled to a discount on new purchases. On the surface it seems like a reasonable program. But, is it only a manifestation of PUGP? Toys R Us is a for profit venture and only looking to expand their sales, right?

Some other examples:

1) J. D. Rockefeller and Carnegie effectively taking over the AMA and its Board of Directors, and then moving on to changing the face of the American medical establishment by getting his members on the Boards at most medical schools. He contributed huge sums of cash to the AMA and the medical schools, but to what end? He had been smacked down for his oil monopoly and had to make a living somehow, poor guy. Huge investments in pharmaceutical companies could surely use a boost by encouraging the medical schools to teach allopathic phamaceutical based medicine instead of naturopthic medicine. And the is effectively what he accomplished, driving the naturopathic schools out and taking over the allopathic schools....using philanthropy to make the US medical establishment "better"...for profit.

2) Al Gore donating his share of the Nobel Prize...very Philanthropic indeed. The charity getting this largesse is one that he chairs...promoting Climate Change nee global warming. Following the trail of money back in time we know of Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", an alarmist accounting of climate change meant to shock us into submission to grossly government actions. But how many are aware of Generation Investment Management, a company Gore cofounded that invests in businesses that would stand to profit with government policy implementation favoring such things as cap and trade:

GIM also owns a 10% stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), CCX in turn owns half of European Climate Exchange. This gives Al Gore a financial bias towards promoting global warming control through the issuing of carbon credits. Link and Link

So, Al's philanthropy may be based in goodness, but it is most definitely self-serving as well.

3) My local Wildlife Management Association. We received a nice sized Federal grant to do some wildlife habitat restoration. Most of the work to be done consists of prescribed burning of overgrown and neglected areas and letting the native grasses become reestablished. To that end a company that specializes in conducting the burns was hired to perform the work. The members of the association that applied for the grant asked for $100 per acre for the work and its follow up over a five year time frame. The members "assisted" the fire crew in the burns. The fire crew only charged $20-30 per acres for their services. So, where do you think all the additional funds were channeled? Because they wrote the grant and assisted with the burns...their philanthropic moment netted them a tidy sum.

4) A General One...have you noticed any type of ad that indicates "buy our product and we will donate" language. They are quite common. You buy wares and do good for some named cause, but "they" profit.

There are many more out there, the more you are aware of PUGP.

How to prepare for upcoming flu season

2009-08-19T13:49:00.003-05:00

First, I am not a doctor. Second, I read a lot about this stuff and am mostly comfortable with what I do in looking out for my own health, but, investigate this yourself and don't rely on me to give you advice. That said, there are several good ways to prepare for the possibility of a bad upcoming flu season.

1) EpiCor - an immune system enhancer. It is outstanding from everything I have read. My wife and I started taking it the last part of last winter, and will resume taking it September 1st. Read about it...you will be glad you did. I buy my supply through Vitacost.

2) Vitamin D - Read this article, it is good. We take 5000 IU of vitamin D daily during the short daylight months per Vitamin D Council's recommendation.

3) Fish Oil - take a good fish oil supplement and avoid consuming too many vegetable oils. Read about this here.

Also, limit sugar and HFCS intake as they are known to be immune system suppressors.

We also prefer to avoid the flu shots as they tend to be beneficial to very few, and have issues with side effects...especially the vaccine for the H1N1...possibly unsafe and untested.

Why I Won't Be a Cooperative Consumer

2009-08-14T13:50:00.003-05:00

Today's consumer confidence number showed a decline. We are still very wary. We are still not consuming as evidenced by the retail sector's earning reports. The obvious reason is the high unemployment and the threat of losing the jobs that are still out there.

I, on the other hand, am self-employed and derive my income from two main sources. First, being a petroleum geologist, I have (had) a fair income from natural gas production. But, being that we have been too good at finding and producing NG in unconventional sources the last several years, making for a high supply versus demand, the price of NG has fallen to where my income now suffers.

My second source of income is from interest and dividends. The FEDs zero interest rate policies have effectively driven us interest income folks to zero income. CD rates are only around one percent out to a year...and with the possibility of inflation creeping in it doesn't seem wise to tie money up for more than one year.

Other options for income drives us toward more risky investments like bonds or bond funds, or higher dividend equities or equity funds. Though some still have an attractive yield they come with the risk of loss of principal...not good for those of us intending to live off that money for a while, and not a great option on the tails of the capital losses that most of us have sustained over the last year.

So, Bernanke and Obama, etc, have bailed out the banks, and the bankers are fat and happy. They are reporting huge profits, huge salaries and raises all while offering near 0 percent interest to depositors. But, bounce a check and get hit with a huge fee that is another source of their record profits. We non-Banksters, on the other hand, have lowered confidence, lower personal income, lower property values and huge losses of jobs.

So, until you "bail out" us commoners instead of creating a gravy train for those parties largely responsible for creating this mess, I will be on the sideline making do with what I have. Wearing clothing a few extra years, driving a vehicle that is a little older, growing my own veggies and fruit, going out to eat less...and paying less in taxes to boot.

Buying Obamacare is UnAmerican

2009-08-13T08:28:00.002-05:00

Asshat Pelosi offers that those that dare to speak out against Obamacare are unAmerican, and the White House puts up a website to have citizens rat-out anyone distributing "fishy" data on Obamacare.

But it is indeed AssHat Pelosi's American way to pay people to demonstrate and carry your message?

"Work to Pass Obama's Healthcare Plan and Get Paid to Do it! $10-15 hr!"

It's a web ad on Craigslist: "You can work for change. Join motivated staff around the country working to make change happen. You can make great friends and money along the way. Earn $400-$600 a week."

The title of the article includes the word "volunteers"...ummm, volunteers don't make $10-15 per hour...these are paid shills.

Or, what about the other AssHat Pelosi American way of doing politics...buying your way into something. Obama buys the AMA's approval (though many doctors within AMA and state chapters did NOT approve of AMA's endorsement), and buys Big Pharma's vote and now, who is coming out with a multimillion dollar ad campaign?:

A new coalition on Thursday is launching $12 million in television ads to support President Barack Obama’s health-reform plan, in the opening wave of a planned tens of millions of dollars this fall.

The new group, funded largely by the pharmaceutical industry, is called Americans for Stable Quality Care. It includes some odd bedfellows: the American Medical Association, FamiliesUSA, the Federation of American Hospitals, PhRMA and SEIU, the service employees’ union. Link

Why is it like this...some endorsements of Obamacare by these strange bedfellows? Could it be, as the Dems capably do each election cycle, buying the votes? Bingo!

Obama's Big Push...Becoming Big Dud

2009-07-23T14:12:00.002-05:00

After blowing the budget bailing out the record profit earning banks, on the heels of up to 97% calls against bail outs, Obama's calls for Cap & Trade on carbon emissions and health care reform all seem to be taking their toll on the populace.

Enough!, seems to be the public's evolving sentiment. Obama's poll numbers are dropping and the reason is - what he is proposing is not economically feasible and we know this from the past programs.

Cap & Trade will only add to costs for the consumers while making MORE money for the likes of Goldman Sachs and the government. And, global warming, aka Climate Change, is becoming more exposed for what it really is...a fear-mongering tactic to grab more control and more taxes. I like what George Will had to say at the end of his recent column:

When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called upon "young Americans" to "get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon," another columnist, Mark Steyn, responded: "If you're 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you're graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade."

Which could explain why the Mall does not reverberate with youthful clamors about carbon. And why, regarding climate change, the U.S. government, rushing to impose unilateral cap-and-trade burdens on the sagging U.S. economy, looks increasingly like someone who bought a closetful of platform shoes and bell-bottom slacks just as disco was dying.

Health care reform is also being exposed...see here.

A new Gallup poll shows that Obama is starting to get the cold shoulder from the public by trying to accomplish too much...not so much for what he is trying to accomplish, but that we all know it can't possibly be paid for and work as intended without BK'ing us all.

If Obama keeps pushing, the push back may well mean defeat for the Dems in the midterms, and a public that starts demanding a more accountable President.

Wow, at last a Shovel-Ready Obama project

2009-07-22T10:40:00.003-05:00

I see president Barry is going to regale us with anecdotes about Obamacare on prime time TV.

This will be a shovel-ready project in the making....cleaning up all the bullshit he will be issuing.

Obamacare is supposed to offer a solution to the upward spiraling health care costs that most Americans face. But the truth of the matter is that. like most things the government touches, it will not work out as planned. The CBO says:

Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee that none of the bills he has seen would contain health care costs to reduce them significantly over time. This is the main argument offered by Obama and Democrats as to why Congress can spend $1 trillion and save money.

“In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount,” Elmendorf said.

“And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.” link

President Obama, that is not what you will tell us, huh?

And, he will tell us that we can keep our current employee provided plans. But, the details of the plan apparently will make the governments plan such that after about five years employer plans become to costly and will likely be scrapped leaving us in the hands of you-know-who....and further increasing the costs. This is from a WSJ piece:

So when Mr. Obama says that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what,” he’s wrong. Period. What he’s not telling the American people is that the government will so dramatically change the rules of the insurance market that employers will find it impossible to maintain their current coverage, and many will drop it altogether. The more we inspect the House bill, the more it looks to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress. Link

And, they are not projecting the costs of this behemoth out past 10 years. Undoubtedly it will be come unsustainably expensive.

And, he will tell us the AMA has endorsed the plan, but not that he bought them off with plans to INCREASE their compensation under the plan even while he decreases compensation to the already struggling hospitals. He will also, no doubt, forget to include that some states AMA chapters are not endorsing the plan.

And, I feel quite certain, he will not come forward with the ultimate truth - the one that says we are already so in debt we can't afford anything new without huge tax increases...on small businesses, on corporations and on the individual.

Get your shovels out and have them ready. There will be work for everyone after this appearance.

Obama is cover for banksters, not about jobs

2009-07-18T08:53:00.002-05:00

Let's see...Goldman Sachs gets funds under TARP.

GS just announced $3.4 Billion dollar profit for the 2Q 2009. Dong some quick math, that profit could sustain 60,000 jobs paying $50,000 annual salary, and again, that was just from three months worth of GS profits. GS has announced 33% pay and benefit increases to its employees...IOW the rich get richer.

OTOH, Obama and his campaign promise for adding jobs has done almost nothing. Aside from a few governors reporting the beginning of a highway project or two and a handful of jobs he has dropped the ball completely.

And now CIT is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and holds the card for possibly hundreds of thousands of jobs, if not millions, and the Obama Admin turns them away cold. And is is already costing jobs:

NEW YORK, July 18 (Reuters) - An Alabama hardware supplier has blamed financial woes at U.S. lender CIT Group Inc for its bankruptcy filing, in an early sign of the effect a potential CIT Group Inc bankruptcy could have on millions of small U.S. businesses.

In court documents filed in U.S. bankruptcy court in Birmingham on Friday, Moore-Handley Inc said it was forced to seek bankruptcy protection "due to difficulties accessing funds" under their financing arrangements with CIT Group. Link

And other groups are calling upon Obama to help out:

Thirty-two trade groups, in an unusual display of unity, pleaded in a letter on Friday night for the Obama administration to reverse its decision and extend aid to the beleaguered small-business lender CIT Group Inc. as the firm inches closer to a possible bankruptcy filing.

The coalition, which included the National Retail Federation, the National Cotton Council, and the Southern Textile Association, sent a letter Friday night to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urging him to help the CIT avoid collapse.

The groups said “the number of jobs that depend on the successful outcome of the CIT crisis is immeasurable.” Link

And, after the report that Obama was doing nothing to help save CIT, there are now reports of CIT seeking financing through the likes of GS. IOW, somehow GS will be further compensated by the Obama administration...they help save CIT making untold millions/billions while most likely having some tacit backstop guarantees from Tax Evader Timmy at Treasury from a wink from the head bankster thug Barry Obama.

Important People

2009-07-07T13:14:00.003-05:00

I don't even recall exactly when I heard it, but there was a local news report from a suburban business airport about a gate being left open and unattended at one end of the busy airport. The news guy said something to the effect of this being a major issue because "important people" come and go all day long from this airport. I wondered who he was talking about?

What is the definition of an "important" person? And who is a "less important" person, and of course, how about the "unimportant" person?

To me anyway, the important person has to be one who influences many of us. And, that influence must not be a coerced influence, but a voluntary person-by-person influence. The important person may or may not even realize they are important and influential. They must also be of high moral standing and one that walks the walk of their preachings or sphere of influence. They may be from any race or nationality, any social or personal wealth standing.

I think my definition would exclude most politicians. They seek to be "important" by thrusting their influence upon us through government coercion and legal threat. They are also, likely as not, ones that don't walk the walk of their talk.

Athletes and performers probably are excluded from my definition as well. Though they are no doubt, self-important, aside from helping sell us overpriced tickets to their events and, in the case of the athlete, overpriced paraphanalia for their franchises, they have little important influence on us.

So, what it all may boil down to is: Important people influence us without manipulating us. I doubt that many really important people fly from that airport.

GM Spin

2009-06-10T10:41:00.003-05:00

Have you seen the new GM commercials, advertising their trucks through the years, and how they have helped "build America"? And at the end they make a comment to the effect of "if we are going to rebuild America" that GM's trucks, by golly, will lead the way to salvation?

And, as a loyal GM owner, I received a letter from GM in the mail a couple of days ago. Instead of an admission of inept management and decades to bring forth a good reliable fuel efficient auto at a reasonable price, and instead of admitting that they were bankrupt, they offered this spin...

"As you may know, GM is using an expedited, court-supervised process to accelerate the reinvention of our company. At the core of that reinvention is a commitment that we will put the customer first in all that we do - ..."

Okay, I get it. You built lousy cars in the 70's, 80's, 90's and into the 00's and now, only through "an expedited, court-supervised process to accelerate [your] reinvention" and a gobsmacking from the Democrats that now control you, you are finally realizing something needs to be done to compete with the Japanese automakers et al.

Guess what? Keep the rest of the GM points that I have earned from my GM credit card. I will not be redeeming them. After owning, lets see...I believe the number is 11 GM made vehicles, I am not going to be loyal any longer. Good bye GM. You have gone from the creator of such greatness as the Cadillac, Corvette and my beloved 1972 Grand Prix into Toilet Motors, on your own accord, and are now controlled by the US Government. I will not buy a vehicle from a government controlled, taxpayer funded GM.

Obama deploying WMDs

2009-05-29T11:02:00.003-05:00

Yep, Oh!Bama is deploying WMD's on the world...that is, Wildly Monstrous Deficits.

In a nutshell, what he is doing is totally unsustainable, irresponsible and will lead us (more) swiftly down the road to financial oblivion. Higher taxes will not solve all the spending this administration is proposing. Social Security and Medicare are running out of money, now sooner than had been forecast.

These WMD's are going to ultimately have a wider range of effects than did Bushes concocted WMD's of Saddam in Iraq.

Be Angry At The Sun

2009-05-26T14:47:00.000-05:00

by Robinson Jeffers:

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

....published more than six decades ago, seems timeless, seems somewhat appropriate as well.

Think as I do

2009-05-22T13:50:00.002-05:00

The age of political correctness, think as I do or suffer the wrath of the opposition. Pity.

I like this:

Everywhere you look, the blight of umbrage continues to spread through our political system. The end of the campaign last year didn't slow it down. Blogs speed it up. Taking offense is your ticket to attention from the media. You can't win if you don't play. And it's not all on the left, either. Liberal columnist Joe Klein makes an ill-considered remark about conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, and every other conservative faints from the shock, awakening only to demand that the scoundrel be silenced. Can't anyone just shrug anything off anymore? Link

Speak your mind, you are entitled to your opinion. Just wear a helmet to fend off the stoning it might bring.

Oops, we made a mess, you clean it up

2009-05-14T09:47:00.002-05:00

Former Countrywide Financial Corp. boss Angelo R. Mozilo, whose embrace of exotic loans helped fuel the mortgage boom and meltdown, will face Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges unless his lawyers prevail in an eleventh-hour appeal, people familiar with the SEC's investigation said Wednesday.

Mozilo is among several former executives of the Calabasas company whom the SEC staff wants to charge in a civil case, one of these people said. He would face accusations of insider trading and failing to disclose to shareholders the risks the company was running unless the SEC's five commissioners overturn their investigators' recommendation. Link

I would like to see that smarmy weasel Mozilo doing the perp walk in a colored Federal jumpsuit, but with only civil charges against him, he will probably only be wrist-slapped rather than soundly thumped for aiding and abetting the loss of trillions of dollars around the world.

And the newest data out on housing sounds very dire indeed...

...the [word from the] National Association of Realtors today… the median home price fell 14% from the first quarter of 2008 to the first three months of 2009, to just $169,000. Of the 152 metropolitan areas surveyed by the NAR, just 18 registered annual price gains. Nearly half of all sales during the first quarter were foreclosed properties or short sales. A whopping 3.7 million previously owned homes are still on the market.

And RealtyTrac, which keeps up with the foreclosure data has this to say:

April 2009 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™, which shows foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 342,038 U.S. properties during the month, an increase of less than 1 percent from the previous month and an increase of 32 percent from April 2008. The report also shows that one in every 374 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in April, the highest monthly foreclosure rate ever posted since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.
“Total foreclosure activity in April ended up slightly above the previous month, once again hitting a record-high level,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “Much of this activity is at the initial stages of foreclosure – the default and auction stages – while bank repossessions, or REOs, were down on a monthly and annual basis to their lowest level since March 2008. This suggests that many lenders and servicers are beginning foreclosure proceedings on delinquent loans that had been delayed by legislative and industry moratoria. It’s likely that we’ll see a corresponding spike in REOs as these loans move through the foreclosure process over the next few months.” Link

Quite a mess and, no doubt, will be so for some time to come.

Heavy Handed Obama

2009-05-13T13:30:00.004-05:00

On the one hand a case can be made that Obama is easy. Money handed to banks with little stipulation to actually do anything with it...easy money.

On the other hand, Obama is starting to come across heavy handed and thuggish in some instances. The Chrysler bankruptcy is the example most in the news. Forcing secured bond holders to settle for less than what bankruptcy and contract law call for, and giving more to the UAW than what they are entitled...heavy handed.

The close relationship between the rule of law and the enforceability of contracts, especially credit contracts, was well understood by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. A primary reason they wanted it was the desire to escape the economic chaos spawned by debtor-friendly state laws during the period of the Articles of Confederation. Hence the Contracts Clause of Article V of the Constitution, which prohibited states from interfering with the obligation to pay debts. Hence also the Bankruptcy Clause of Article I, Section 8, which delegated to the federal government the sole authority to enact "uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies."

The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors -- entitled to first priority payment under the "absolute priority rule" -- have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.

The absolute priority rule is a linchpin of bankruptcy law. By preserving the substantive property and contract rights of creditors, it ensures that bankruptcy is used primarily as a procedural mechanism for the efficient resolution of financial distress. Chapter 11 promotes economic efficiency by reorganizing viable but financially distressed firms, i.e., firms that are worth more alive than dead.

Violating absolute priority undermines this commitment by introducing questions of redistribution into the process. It enables the rights of senior creditors to be plundered in order to benefit the rights of junior creditors. link to above

...and with GM Obama is calling for a possible deal in the (likely) event of a bankruptcy of something approaching the following terms:

Government Trades $27B for 50% Stake
Bondholders Trade $27B for 10% Stake
UAW Trades $20B for $10B Cash and 39% Stake

Who gets their chops busted in that deal? I suspect it is very likely payola to the UAW, and unions in general, for their support of the Dems (and why Veep Biden is out hawking this stuff).

Lets hope his policy making gains some sensibility soon or the long term unintended consequences could be profound.

Electronic Medical Records - No Thanks!

2009-05-12T15:46:00.002-05:00

Please, Oh!Bama, give up on the electronic medical records. THe majority of the doctors say they don't like it...and of course the privacy thing...

An extortion demand posted on WikiLeaks seeks $10 million to return more than 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions allegedly stolen from Virginia Department of Health Professions.
The note reads: "ATTENTION VIRGINIA I have your sh**! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :("
The note goes on to demand $10 million within seven days, presumably from the time the data was apparently seized on April 30, in exchange for the key to decrypt the encrypted backup.
"If by the end of 7 days, you decide not to pony up, I'll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid," the note says.
It's not immediately clear whether this note is genuine. The Virginia DHP hasn't responded to repeated calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.
However, a notice posted on the DHP Web site on Monday morning acknowledged that the site "is currently experiencing technical difficulties which affect computer and e-mail systems."
A spokesperson for the Virginia Attorney General's Office said the agency could neither confirm nor deny any knowledge of an extortion demand.
A note sent to the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Mail address listed in the ransom demand also has gone unanswered.
Extortion demands of this sort have become relatively common in data breach cases. Last October, for instance, Express Scripts, a prescription drug management company based in St. Louis, received a letter that threatened the release of millions of patient records. A month earlier, a man from Solana Beach, Calif., was arrested for allegedly hacking into a Maserati dealership Web site, accessing customer data, and then threatening to release the information unless the company paid him.
The attack technique -- capturing data, encrypting it, then selling access to the former owner -- has become popular enough to earn its own name: cryptoviral extortion. Link to article

Nope, it just isn't the right time. Wait till you have a budget surplus to work from...which will be, oh, never.

Equity Markets Move Today

2009-05-08T13:56:00.006-05:00

The S&P is up about 2.5% currently. There seems to be an almost frantic move into the equity markets today after yesterdays release of the banking stress tests. Maybe those that have remained on the sidelines are finally dipping a toe in, or diving in. I have opened modest long positions in a few equities over the last couple of months...PM, BTE, EPD, WIN, HD...and made quick round trip trades in those and others. I am up on all my recently opened positions.

But, with the nature of this market and potentially the majority now thinking an "all clear" was sounded by the FED, assuring us no major bank would fail, can this move sustain, or is this the last gasp of a bear market rally. This brings to mind the words of Mark Twain...

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect

I am thinking there's a little more run in this move, and then get the heck out with some profits. Let the majority wrestle for the top.

Some thoughts on Short Selling...

2009-05-07T13:43:00.002-05:00

OK, so I am not hugely knowledgeable about the pluses and minuses of selling short in the equity markets, but here are a few thoughts. Maybe they are legit, or, maybe they are lame and I need to be schooled on why I am wrong in my thinking.

Short selling is said to be beneficial because it increases liquidity in a particular equity. Liquidity is defined as the ease of conversion of an asset into cash. If I do not own a particular asset than I should not be able to convert it into cash in the first place. Simplistic logic, yes, but here I believe simple reigns.

Taking an equity position in a company is becoming an owner of the company, and getting somewhat of a say as to the leadership and hence, the direction of the company. A short selling preempts that ownership, a short seller is NOT an owner...he is the antithesis of ownership.

Who really benefits from the short selling of an equity? It appears that anti-owners and market makers are the beneficiaries. Market makers get to continue selling shares at whatever spread they can muster when otherwise daily volume in a stagnant company might decline by a significant amount.

Proponents of short selling say that it helps find the true value of a company. I say it is to a company what mark-to-market accounting has been to the banking industry of late. Banks complained that having to mark-to-market some of their assets that they had no intentions of selling impeded their ability to maintain healthy balance sheets. Hmmmm? So, if I have no intention of selling my shares of a company, why should someone else be allowed to borrow them and sell them and undermine my balance sheet? It is the exact same logic. My shares are worth to me what my cost basis is, and allowing them be be taken and revalued by a non-owner is absurd....

...what if this were allowed in say, the home real estate market. In a neighborhood a couple of houses are for sale, the vast majority are not for sale. The average price in the 'hood is 100K. The owner of one of the For Sale homes is desperate to sell and accepts an offer for 95K. Short sellers, sensing blood in the water, begin shorting the other residences...95K, then 90K, then 85K....selling homes that are still occupied by folks with no intention of moving, but now living in a home that had been revalued by someone with no ownership in the area. A manipulation of price.

Speaking of manipulation of price, that is my next beef with shorting. It is widely believed that a consorted effort, if not an orchestrated effort, by hedge funds and other large investors may have been behind the voluminous decline in the financial sector stocks. And, with no up-tick rule in place, their effort was relatively smooth with hardly a bump in the downward slide.

Currently there are hearings going on regarding short selling...

informal inquiries...are being conducted quietly over a rash of complaints by investors who say losses they've incurred are a result of deliberate shorting through unregulated hedge funds. link.

But when you've had guys like this running the SEC in the manner that he ran the SEC it is no wonder that we had the unscrupulous crowd running wild on Wall Street.

JFK Quote

2009-05-06T14:46:00.003-05:00

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is afraid of its people."
John F. Kennedy, 1962

I wonder how JFK would be regarded today espousing ideas such as the ones contained in the above quotes? Surely he would be regarded as batty, as is Rep Ron Paul for his calls for more transparency and adherence to the Constitution.

Bank Failure Friday Report

2009-05-02T09:25:00.002-05:00

For 2009, banks number 30, 31 and 32 that were not amongst the elite "too big to fail" crowd were declared insolvent and closed on May 1. The anti-greenshoots were:

Bank Name	CERT #	Closing Date	Updated Date
America West Bank, Layton, UT	35461	May 1, 2009	May 1, 2009
Citizens Community Bank, Ridgewood, NJ	57563	May 1, 2009	May 1, 2009
Silverton Bank, N.A., Atlanta, GA	26535	May 1, 2009	May 1, 2009

Link to data

The list on the FDIC site shows banks failures back to October 1, 2000. Amazing the number of failures 2008 and 2009. You'd think we were in the middle of financial turmoil or something.

Is Government Stimulus the Answer?

2009-04-30T15:42:00.004-05:00

Is the Oh!Bama spending spree going to get us out of this economic mess, or have we seen this movie before and know the ending?

FDR's Treasury secretary and close friend, Henry Morganthau, conceded this fact to Congressional Democrats in May 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong ... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"* link

How about Five Myths About the Great Depression.

Could I be wrong about the Stock Market?

2009-04-30T09:01:00.002-05:00

How could I be so wrong in my thinking about where the markets should be heading? I have been bearish, awaiting a retest of the lows (and possibly lower than that) of March. I have been in and out of several individual equities with short term trades, on both the long and short side...but have held out of committing a significant amount to anything close to a "buy and hold" trade.

I mean, really, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many major banks for all practical purposes operating while insolvent, two auto makers bankrupt, massive unemployment, foreclosures on homes, the coming foreclosures on commercial real estate, health care costs rising, insurance costs rising, budget deficits with numbers to big to grasp...why would buy and hold be a good thing?

Maybe the March lows won't be retested because the fear of the financial markets meltdown has diminished. The government's involvement has backstopped that fear, and that low was caused by the panic preceding the "guarantee" that our banking system will survive.

But even with that backstop, and the rise of 30% or more off of that low, what compels this stock market to go higher. With the reasons listed above, how does this thing keep going up? Talking heads are attempting to convey optimism through the "green shoot" and "second derivative" arguments, so I can see not going DOWN, but why up more and more? The wall of worry is being climbed in the markets, but the vines they are clinging to are precarious.

For now I dabble with a few trades and make do. After suffering through the losses after the dotcom bust, and the first portion of this recession-induced decline, I continue to live by the thought, "I'd rather be out of the market wishing I was in, than in the market wishing I was out".

Goldman Sachs looking out for Number One

2009-04-28T13:10:00.002-05:00

At least Goldman Sachs admits they are out to screw the world (link):

Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar, 53, told analysts on April 14 that his firm took advantage of a reduced number of competitors to charge more for executing trades, even in some of the most liquid securities. The bank booked $6.56 billion of fixed-income trading revenue, 34 percent more than its previous record and five times Morgan Stanley’s.

and

Wall Street made money in the first quarter from traditionally unprofitable corporate loans and trades for their customers, as the gap between what banks pay to buy fixed-income securities and what they sell them for, the so-called bid-ask spread, almost doubled.

I am wondering who takes their business to GS now, and why? Bend over if you do.

RIP Pontiac

2009-04-27T10:31:00.003-05:00

With the anticipated announcement from GM, Pontiac will be no more. RIP Pontiac.

My second car was a 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix. Loved it. While it was not one of the muscle cars, like GTO or Firebird, it had plenty of power. A 400 cubic inch, 200 hp V-8 moved it along at top speeds in excess of the speedometer...bwahaha.

It was solid as a rock, had nice chrome and was a pretty classy ride for a teen.

I wish I still had it.

A couple more blasts at Government Sachs...

2009-04-21T13:24:00.003-05:00

First, a really good article entitled "The Quiet Coup", written by Simon Johnson who was former chief economist with the IMF. While not fingering GS explicitly it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to read between the lines and know who the players are in finance in the US. Here are some bits from the article:

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a “buck stops somewhere else” sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for “safety and soundness” were fast asleep at the wheel.
But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector.

and this:

the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.
One channel of influence was, of course, the flow of individuals between Wall Street and Washington. Robert Rubin, once the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, served in Washington as Treasury secretary under Clinton, and later became chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee. Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs during the long boom, became Treasury secretary under George W.Bush. John Snow, Paulson’s predecessor, left to become chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, a large private-equity firm that also counts Dan Quayle among its executives. Alan Greenspan, after leaving the Federal Reserve, became a consultant to Pimco, perhaps the biggest player in international bond markets.

These personal connections were multiplied many times over at the lower levels of the past three presidential administrations, strengthening the ties between Washington and Wall Street. It has become something of a tradition for Goldman Sachs employees to go into public service after they leave the firm. The flow of Goldman alumni—including Jon Corzine, now the governor of New Jersey, along with Rubin and Paulson—not only placed people with Wall Street’s worldview in the halls of power; it also helped create an image of Goldman (inside the Beltway, at least) as an institution that was itself almost a form of public service.

Next, from this:

You better read "The Usual Suspects," Matthew Malone's brilliant article in Portfolio magazine: He "exposed" the "Goldman Sachs 'conspiracy' to take over the U.S. financial system." Read it in this context: America's financial sector has exploded from 19% of corporate profits in 1986 to 41% today, becoming a magnet for every wannabe billionaire. They know why Wall Street must control Washington.
Malone focuses on the incestuous "conspiracy" of Goldman alumni in Treasury, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Citigroup, Washington lobbyists and politicians.

And, from the first article, how might this mess end...

The second scenario begins more bleakly, and might end that way too. But it does provide at least some hope that we’ll be shaken out of our torpor. It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and—because eastern Europe’s banks are mostly owned by western European banks—justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration’s current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy “stress scenario” that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks’ balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.

Under this kind of pressure, and faced with the prospect of a national and global collapse, minds may become more concentrated.

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

Financial stocks defying gravity

2009-04-17T12:20:00.003-05:00

Despite a huge run-up in recent weeks, and despite ample hokus-pokus behind their "earnings" numbers, and despite numerous talking-heads daily calls of tops and impending pullbacks, and despite volumes that can only be called moderate, and despite outlooks that are still bearish....

...the financial sector stocks are continuing to rise. I smell a rat, or maybe a rat pack? A Goldman Sachs lead rat pack. Apparently GS has been trading much more for its own account (principal trading) of late, and maybe after hours in lighter trading volumes. Could this continued rally in financials be self-induced, or at least perpetuated by insiders? That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Tax Day. Revolt.

2009-04-15T08:45:00.002-05:00

Tax Day 2009. Obama wants to raise taxes, local and state taxes and fees will also be rising, no doubt, due to shortcomings from property tax losses and falling sales tax numbers. I say, eff 'em all. Hide what you can, barter, trade, disguise income and pay as little as possible. The way that our government has rewarded malfeasance on Wall Street and mortgaged our grandkids futures with debt...and with no end in sight...why should we willingly contribute? We overwhelmingly told them to not bail out the banks, many had the count at 100:1 against the bailouts. Yet they did, and it sounds like they will continue to give them more and more. So, lets cut them off.

Find that income you SOB's...I may have made a few bucks, but you'll never know it.

Reading links:

Here and here

Government Sachs, errr Goldman

2009-04-14T15:33:00.003-05:00

This is covered in great detail on many other sites and blogs, but I am going to get it in here as well...it is important for everyone possible to know the degree that our government and Goldman Sachs are in bed with one another...a scandal/conspiracy IN PLAIN SIGHT.

Here are some assorted clips from other sites regarding Goldman Sachs, PIMCO, TARP, TALF PPIP and other related topics:

‘Government Sachs’ Is Back
Who's designing Geithner's rescue plan? Goldman guys, of course.

As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end: Goldman Sachs will be there.

Back in the '90s and through the mid-'00s, major figures from Goldman Sachs such as Robert Rubin, Gary Gensler and Hank Paulson stood fast against derivatives regulation (Rubin and Gensler) and lobbied successfully for higher leverage ratios so they could bet more of their capital on the market boom (Paulson). When those policies came to grief and Wall Street imploded, and the Feds scrambled to rescue stricken insurance giant AIG, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein was reportedly the only bank executive invited to an emergency meeting at the New York Federal Reserve (convened by then-Fed president Tim Geithner).

Now Treasury Secretary Geithner—a Rubin protégé, of course—has assigned two more ex-Goldman men to fix the vast mess their colleagues helped to create.

They are Steve Shafran, a former favorite of Paulson's, and Bill Dudley, Goldman's former chief economist and now the successor to Geithner as head of the New York Fed
Link to above

One on PPIP:

The PPIP is potentially a subsidy for a variety of financial institutions, many of whom have been seen in the markets buying toxic waste at 30 cents so that they may sell it to Tim Geithner’s Treasury at 80 cents. Some large bank CEOs will protest being “forced” to sell assets, but they will eventually rollover rather than be “Rick Wagonered” by Geithner et al. But the big payoff could be for the likes of our friends at PIMCO, Blackrock (NYSE:BLK) and the other asset managers who will be called upon to maintain this floating superfund site.
Link to above

How about reading Taxing grandma to pay Goldman Sachs, which includes the following:

Many retirees depend on interest from certificates of deposit. Those rates are down dramatically, and as CDs expire retirees are compelled to reinvest their savings at lower rates and live on less. They can take comfort that their sacrifices are helping pay off Wall Streets losses from the lavish bonuses paid bankers. For example, the $70.3 million Goldman doled to CEO Lloyd Blankfein in 2007.

Some other good reading on GS "earnings" for Q1 here. And a good blog to follow for this kind of stuff here. A link to a blog on Wells Fargo stress test.

Major Disconnects in Financial areas

2009-04-13T13:41:00.003-05:00

It certainly seems like there is major conflicting information in the areas of this countries financial industry's health.

On the one hand the equity markets have made large percentage gains based around a financial sector rally on positive earnings statements by Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo...made possible through taxpayer handouts and funky accounting through the shifting of their fiscal calendar. (and here as well)

On the other hand we have:

continuing rhetoric by Geithner that further bail out funds may be necessary
numerous pundits that made the originally correct calls on this mess saying that things are not okay
the talking-head rhetoric that conditions getting worse less rapidly is somehow said to be "getting better"
changes in mark-to-market accounting that will allow a shell game for banks to hide behind as far as their real financial well being
"stress tests" that will not be made public that will allow banks to hide their real financial well being
commercial real estate is still getting worse
consumer credit is not getting better

And, why would Goldman Sachs need to contemplate a stock offering to raise funds to repay debt if things as as robust as they claim? Probably still have ample cash laying around from ransacking taxpayers over AIG?

Other good reads, here, here, and especially here.

No, it doesn't add up if we have a healthy financial system...it only adds up if D.C. and Wall Street are basically one and the same.

The US Dollar In Trouble

2009-03-24T10:04:00.002-05:00

More signs for more beginnings of the end of the dollars dominance. The FED is buying US Treasuries. Whaaaa? We can create money out of thin air and buy our own debt? Then why the heck is there any trouble in our country? We can just print and buy our way out of any-old situation. Right?

Only thing is, the US debt holders aren't thrilled about this arrangement..you know, people like Japan and China that we depend on to buy our debt and fund our Social Security and wars. They start creating crazy ideas like:

SHANGHAI — In another indication that China is growing increasingly concerned about holding huge dollar reserves, the head of its central bank has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar.
In a paper released Monday, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable.

And people like Ron Paul have recognized for years the inherent flaws in our monetary system and are being proven correct.

“People will start to abandon the dollar as current and past economic policies create a steep rise in interest rates,” Mr[sic] Paul says.

“If you are in Treasuries, you will need to be watchful and nimble to time your escape.”

Unfortunately, cashing out will not protect the value of investments, he insists, because “fiat” currencies will all decline over the coming years as measures to try to haul the world economy out of recession fail. “The current stimulus measures are making things a lot worse,” says Mr[sic] Paul.

In my own investment and retirement accounts I am largely in cash and corporate bonds.
The equities that I own are energy related and pay hefty dividends and have done well, after all, they are backed by real assets.

Good Job California!

2009-02-20T08:52:00.002-06:00

Way to go. California Citizens, already faced with skyrocketing foreclosure and unemployment rates and mounting losses in 401k's and home values are rewarded by...increased taxes. From the state with the 6th highest tax load on its citizens already.

The Rat that broke the citizens back was even a "Republican". Name: Sen. Abel Maldonado.

The newly passed package includes about $13 billion in new taxes in the forms of state sales tax, personal income tax and higher fees to license your vehicles. Those will hit everyone....at least they didn't just "tax the rich".

But the Rat Maldonado claims victory through his compromise. From an AP article:

He also was able to force Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to remove a 12-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax and authorize a ballot measure asking voters to freeze lawmakers' salaries when the state runs a deficit.
"If we're going to take from the people of California, then we got to give something back," he said Thursday morning after the Senate approved the package of bills.

Well that is just peachy. That is like declaring yourself a victor over a mugger. The mugger says, "give me your wallet, your watch, your rings and your pocket change". But you declare, "let me keep a quarter to call a cab", to which the mugger says, "fair enough". Not really a victory is it?

And, if things are ever financially healthy again in California, we can assume the state will rescind these new taxes? Uh-huh.

Capitalism has Warts

2009-02-16T08:23:00.001-06:00

Maybe it is time, or far past time, for a reality check and a morality check for capitalism. Like Warren Buffet has said, something to this effect, "you can tell who is swimming naked when the tide goes out"...you might also say as "you can see all of capitalism's warts when you throw back the covers". And right now, most of capitalism is laying partially paralyzed, naked, exposed and showing many, many ugly warts.

The reality check should, of course, include an examination of the salary and income differentials that exist. While I am no opponent of entrepreneurs and chiefs of industry making a potfull of cash, some of the differentials that exist are getting a little nutty. CEO's making 500 times the average workers pay? Is that really in the best interest of the company? From a stockholder perspective or a workers perspective I would have to say no. Actors, athletes and other performers making yearly salaries that most people won't earn in a lifetime - reality?

The reality check should also include a Wall Street mentality reevaluation. Maybe, just maybe, there should exist more socially responsible corporations that are not just worried about short term goals and this years bonuses. Maybe it is time to temper expectation of short term gains and concentrate on the long term health of a company...including products, facilities and employees. CEO's bowing to Wall Street demands have cost many jobs in this country.

Other reality checks should include: What should we really expect from our government? Shouldn't we be more forceful with demands of our government...like demanding less spending.

The morality check should examine greed. Greed, while pervasive on, though certainly not limited to Wall Street, isn't a virtue despite what might be taught at business schools and seminars. Our conspicuous consumption has led people to take risks and take on debt in the name of "having" that in no small part has gotten us into this credit mess. A nation of savers became a nation of net debtors.

And speaking of greed, another fraudulent scheme emerged today. I am not sure what the tally board total is up to right now, but it is bound to rise higher while the tide is still out.

All the above included, capitalism does have its share of warts. But, there is no system that produces as a whole, better results for more people in the long run. It justs needs some periodic tinkering with, and constant vigilance from its citizenry and elected officials. It ain't broke, but it does need a few warts removed to look a little better again.

For Screening Appointees Maybe Obama Should...

2009-02-03T13:47:00.003-06:00

For screening potential Presidential appointee's maybe Obama should ask, "OK, so to make this easier, who HAS paid your Federal Income Taxes.

Who said, "Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter."...That would be Democrat Senator Tom Daschle in 1998.

Tom Daschle...out
Nancy Killefer...out
Tim Geithner...in, but shouldn't be.

Link one
Link two

Other good reads about Daschle, and why he should never be allowed to set foot in Washington D.C. again...

Link three
Link four

At least now we know that when the Democrats say, "let's raise taxes, especially on the rich", that it is no sweat off their brows, they aren't going to pay them anyway.

Notes from Super Bowl

2009-02-02T10:12:00.004-06:00

-Enough with the Roman numeral stuff...use real people numbers...what the eff is an ecks ell eye eye eye anyway?
-Faith Hill, yes indeed, awesome.
-Who was the weathered piece of boot leather dressed in John Elway's clothes?
-Springsteen...still rocks, but not a very edgy halftime performance.
-Kurt Warner...one "do-over" from an MVP and a ring.
-Michaels and Madden are the best even though this wasn't their best.
-Commercials...liked the new take on the old Coke, Mean Joe Green ad. Careerbuilder.com...couldn't turn away from that weirdness.
-the actual game...a pretty darn good one though I was pulling for the Cards.
-the 3D ads...lame even with my freebie glasses, not much effect from where I viewed them.
-General Petraeus...a little napoleonic figure playing with the big guns?
-Who won? The Cowboys weren't there so it doesn't really matter.

Mother of 6 gives birth to 8 more

2009-01-30T08:24:00.002-06:00

A mother of six kids sought fertility treatment to have more kids. Does anyone else have an issue with this?

(CNN) -- The mother of a woman who gave birth on Monday to octuplets said her daughter already has six children at home and was undergoing fertility treatment.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that Angela Suleman said her daughter had the embryos implanted last year, resulting in the eight births.
"They all happened to take," Suleman told the Times. "I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful."
The woman declined to have the number of embryos reduced when she discovered she was carrying multiples, the Times reported. The six older siblings range from ages 7 to 2, according to the newspaper.
Suleman said she was concerned about her daughter's homecoming because her husband, a contract worker, is due to return to Iraq.

I am no great environmentalist, but, we are becoming an ever-more crowded planet facing issues because of our presence. And, in this bailout age, who is going to be paying for these kids? Does her contractor husband in Iraq pull down the income to support the six, not to mention 14 kids? So, more than likely, resources will be required from friends, family, community, commerce and government to support this brood. If so, this is a tad selfish and irresponsible on the part of this family.

HFCS, "you know what they say"...

2009-01-29T12:35:00.003-06:00

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a cheap alternative to traditional table sugar also known as sucrose. Sucrose is made of equal parts of glucose and fructose. HFCS is, as you might suspect from the name, proportionately higher in fructose, usually around 55% fructose to glucose 45%.

So why the hub-bub over HFCS. The commercials, paid for by the Corn Refiners Association, tell us, "you know what they say"...and leave it at that, only filling in the blanks with hollow and disingenuous phrases like HFCS is "nutritionally the same as sugar". While the statement may be accurate, sugar is not nutritious in the least. Take a look at the USDA nutrition database for sugar. There is NO nutrition, save calories, in sugar.

The issues associated with HFCS and, at least in my opinion with sugar, are:

"...fructose is absorbed differently than other sugars, which may have nutritional consequences. When glucose is consumed, it increases production of insulin, which enables sugar in the blood to be transported into cells where it can be used for energy. It also increases production of leptin, a hormone that helps regulate appetite and fat storage, and suppresses production of ghrelin, a hormone made by the stomach that helps regulate food intake. Because of this reaction, it has been suggested that after eating glucose, hunger declines.

Fructose, however, doesn't stimulate insulin secretion or increase leptin production or suppress production of ghrelin. Therefore, researchers suggest that consuming a lot of fructose, similar to consuming a lot of fat, may contribute to weight gain.

Additionally, fructose is converted into the chemical backbone of trigylcerides more efficiently than glucose, and elevated levels of trigylcerides are linked to an increased risk of heart disease. One study found that fructose produced significantly higher blood levels of triglycerides in men, although not in women, leading researchers to say that diets high in fructose may be undesirable, especially for men.

Further, fructose may alter the magnesium balance in the body, leading to an acceleration of bone loss, according to a USDA study.

Researchers have also examined evidence from multiple studies and concluded that large quantities of fructose from a variety of sources, such as table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, induce insulin resistance, impair glucose tolerance, produce high levels of insulin, boost a dangerous type of fat in the blood and cause high blood pressure in animals."

The above being from this link.

And now you do know what they say.

Does anyone else get the feeling....

2009-01-27T14:30:00.004-06:00

...that President Obama is using the cover of "economic stimulus" to ram through some agenda items, much as Dubya used 9/11 to wage a war on Iraq?

I mean, we all know now that Dubya and neocon Chaney had preconceptions to invade Iraq even before 9/11...that is fact. They just got an easy cover story with 9/11 and an easier sell to the public because of the terrorist attacks. Who didn't loathe Saddam Hussein at the time?

Now, Obama seems to be getting some long standing liberal agenda items brought to the forefront and quite probably rammed through as economic stimulus that have very little right being called economic stimulus. Currently in his package he is touting ..."huge increases in federal spending on education, aid to states for Medicaid costs, [and] temporary increases in unemployment benefits".

So, how are those items an economic stimulus other than being, as considered by Keynesian economists, huge government expenditures? They are only line item increases that the Democrats have sought all along anyway and that will have little, if any, effect on reviving our economy.

I fully understand that the issues of Bush using 9/11 and Obama using the economic downturn are morally night and day apart, but the tactics are definitely similar, eh?

Barack H. Obama

2009-01-20T08:17:00.002-06:00

I wonder how many words will be written about yesterday's M.L.K. celebrations and today's inauguration of Obama. They are historic days for the USA, for sure. My hopes though, are that after today I no longer hear about what color President Obama is or isn't, or any other race comments toward him or anyone else for that matter. I can understand the pride of black Americans today, and that commentators are grabbing the sensationalism of the moment and capitalizing upon it, but, after today is over lets prove we matured a little as a country and forget the race issue.

Good luck President Obama, given the current state of affairs and the high expectations thrust upon you, you will need it.

Bigger is not better

2009-01-19T12:43:00.008-06:00

Given the recent economic and credit crises I am leaning to the thought that bigger is certainly not better in corporate America.

Commercial banks and other financial firms grew through mergers, acquisitions and expansion to the point of "Too Big To Fail" status. But, by news reports of their accounting practices and financial well-being, they were never what we thought they were. They produced huge incomes for a select few at the top of the ladder, but left many exposed to their unsound business practices...both customers and debt and equity holders, the later of which include pension funds and charitable interests.

And, on an operations level these behemoth companies were cold and impersonal. My own experience includes having multiple banks bought out by larger rivals. More than once at the banks that I originally opened accounts I had a personal level relationships, sometimes even being known by name by the management. At BigFinance Bank, I was just a body walking in the door. Most times services were cut even as commercials on the TeeVee told me my new big bank gave me tons of no fee services and great rates.

And "Too Big To Fail" automakers, and too big retailers, and too big oil companies and others. Big cold, sterile corporations filled with employees that turn over much more often than in times gone by, and by management and employees that may or may not be dedicated to anything but themselves.

Maybe this age of larger Banking, Automaker, Oil and the like is just a part of the grand business cycle and smaller institutions are around the corner. Maybe personalized service and management and employees that care about their jobs and companies they work for is going to make a comeback. Maybe locally owned companies can make a comeback. I can dream that anyway...

Our Victory Garden

2009-01-14T15:33:00.008-06:00

My wife and I have started a more sincere effort at growing a good bit of our own food over the last couple of years in general, but in these tough economic times specifically, we have increased our efforts. We live in a rural area with plenty of room and have the space to expand our gardens even more. Faced with the economy the way it is, it just seems fitting to roll up the sleeves and get more dirt under the fingernails to ride out this mess by helping out ourselves....

...the only thing is, growing cheap homegrown food is pretty expensive. In our area we have a very rocky soil, and calling it soil is being nice. What we really have is rock with some limey clay around it. So, we took our garden efforts up above ground level into raised beds. The beds are nice, built of mortared stone - certainly not the cheapest way to build a bed. And, they are filled with a purchased mixture of sand and compost, hauled in by hired dump trucks. Again, not the cheapest way to grow a tomato.

Of course every good gardener needs a place to store their tools. So, we built a nice garden shed that more or less matches the appearance of our house, doing much of the work ourselves, but still adding to the cost of each little pepper grown.

Did I mention the greenhouse? If you are going to make an effort to supply your appetites with homegrown veggies and such you have to be able to get plants going early in the year, and extend the harvest throughout the winter...so a greenhouse found its way into the mix. Price a greenhouse (though we built it ourselves) and see how many sprigs of overwintered basil you need to pluck to make it cost worthy.

All told we may never realize a "profit" from growing our own foodstuffs, but it's satisfaction and reward enough watching the plants grow knowing we did it, and that we know where they came from and that no chemicals have been applied to them. And it is a downright tasty reward, too.

Economic Recovery

2009-01-14T09:24:00.004-06:00

What I am hearing and reading about proposals to save us from our current economic meltdown sounds to me like revived enthusiasm for MORE GOVERNMENT. Apparently no one stand on their own anymore. We have, as a whole, thrown up our hands and look only to government as savior.

The growth model economy has to have down times. There are no up-forever economies. Recessions are as much a part of economic history as losing big games is a part of the Cowboy's recent franchise history. This time, we are told, is different. We can't just ride out this recession and let things take there natural course. It is different because previous government meddling has created a bigger disaster. Loose monetary policy, artificially low interest rates, etc., created a monster in the credit markets. Too Big To Fail Enterprises have to be bailed out or we will all lose.

The Obama Administration is proposing stimulus packages that could total over one trillion dollars, and is talking of running deficits of over one trillion dollars out as far as the eye can see. Stimulus including tax breaks, jobs programs and spending on medical technology upgrades and more. Many experts aren't buying that this will lead to an economic recovery anytime soon.

Government failure only leads to more and bigger government. I say, get used to more government, because they are destined to fail again. We are in this recession not until Too Big To Fail makes profits again, but until the private citizens balance sheet is placed into order again, and when we start feeling like spending.

One Big Happy Fraud

2009-01-07T10:17:00.002-06:00

Churchill is credited with saying, "Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others". Whether it is an accurate quote, or even Churchill's, is debatable. Our capitalistic model is certainly flawed though. We are: One Big Happy Fraud.

Bernard Madoff recently exposed himself as a fraud. A runner of a Ponzi Scheme, relying on growth through a continual pool of new investors to keep the machine oiled and running. Tough economic times outed his scheme though, and exposed the man to us, and we were dismayed as to how something like this can happen. Many banks, GSE's and other financial institutions have likewise been exposed as fraud....cooked books, over-leveraged and holding assets that were not readily quanitifiable.

And when we look into our own mirror, we are likely face to face with someone living beyond our means, hoping a paycheck isn't missed or that unforseen financial contengencies don't derail our highlife. We are in a house that is too big and expensive, driving cars that fit out neighborhoods status level, and carry maxed-out credit cards. We too, as a citizen of this Capitalistic democracy, are mostly frauds.

We are living the Growth Model Ponzi scheme.

From local governments seeking to attract more businesses or populace, to the state level and on to the Federal level, we are only in "good times" when we have economic growth. Economic growth is largely and ultimately tied to population growth. You can have pockets of growth without population growth - from increased productivity and taking business away from someone else - but these are not sustainable and mean that somewhere, or someone, else isn't growing. The "good times" have rolled in the south and on the coasts due to population growth. See Michigan as the alternate model and what circumstances they find themselves in.

And, we can't grow population forever, it is an endgame that is destructive to us as a species and to the planet that we inhabit. We have to find "good times" that don't tie into a GDP number that is consequetively positive. We have to find sustainable economics....and for that I think we need to look backwards in time in order to move forwards. Making local economies more self-sufficient, locally produced food and products, higher utilization of local labor and talent...go backwards to the good old days knowing the Ponzi Scheme we are living is ultimately destined to fail.

If it seems to good to be true...

2008-12-15T15:39:00.002-06:00

How gullible are we anyway? Do we really believe...

-that our house can appreciate 20 or 30 or 100% a year?
-that a company with negative earnings and no hope for achieving earnings, and whose stock is $100 or $200 or more per share is a good investment?
-that a fund run secretly can achieve returns of 20% a year every year when no one else can?
-that a bank would loan us money to buy a house when we don't have a net worth and only marginal income?
-that our doctor is really up to date and knows all the best practices to attend to our health?
-that Big Pharma, and their ads, are for our best interest?
-that the government is really good at looking out for our middle class best interests?
-that the FDA looks out for us and doesn't have major conflicts of interest with Big Pharma?
-that futures traders are necessary to achieve a true "price discovery"?
-that short sellers of equities help achieve a true "price discovery"?
-that the free market is...FREE?

Where do personal property rights end?

2008-12-11T13:01:00.004-06:00

A local issue...

TCEQ approves air quality permit

BREAKING NEWS

By WHITNEY WHITE-ASHLEY
Staff Writer
news@theglenrosereporter.com

Published: Thursday, December 4, 2008 2:13 PM CST
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) notified concerned residents in Somervell County this week that the executive director completed the technical review of an air quality permit application from Slick Machines.

Tommy Davis, who owns Slick Machines, applied for the permit on July 25 in order to open a rock crushing facility on a piece of property owned by Larry Parham, which sits on the Somervell-Erath County line and contains part of Chalk Mountain.

...begs the question, when do personal property rights end and the rights of a community's begin?

A bit of background. Tommy Davis of Brownwood, Texas, runs gravel pits, aka rock crushers. He wanted to open one in the above mentioned area in a highly visible location. It was met with stiff resistance from all surrounding neighbors of the property and indeed, an entire community. Reasons for resistance ranged from NIMBY to the threatening of two federally protected species of birds - the black capped vireo and golden cheek warbler.

The TCEQ is the state organization that the permitting request runs through. The community responded by requesting public hearings with the TCEQ on the matter and hundreds of citizens showed for the meeting in support and to voice their concerns. Business owners voiced their concerns about the effects of this operation on the local economy and the tourism industry.

Basically, the TCEQ proved itself a toothless organization...a pretty name, but only a store front with nothing of substance beyond the shallow facade. They contend they can only regulate air quality in this matter and could speak nothing to the raping of the land and the citizens of the area by Tommy Davis and Larry Parham.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service was also contacted in this matter since the two endangered species of birds are documented as present in this area. While there still may be something in the works with the federal agency it appears that they too will turn a deaf ear to the citizens and the endangered species...(if not on this when DO YOU take a stand?)

Personal property rights are sacred, but affecting the lives of those around you also has a bearing in the matter. In this case the toothless, gutless Texas state agency should have found reason to deny Tommy Slick Davis this permit...after all, we all understand the Myth of the Rule of Law.

What About Obama's New Deal II?

2008-12-11T08:50:00.006-06:00

December 6th, 2008, President-elect Obama gave a partial look into his plans to get the US economy running full throttle again. His plan is basic Keynesian Economic Theory and FDR rehashed, New Deal II, with extensive public works projects proposed. From a NYT's piece on the plan:

Mr. Obama’s remarks showcased his ambition to expand the definition of traditional work programs for the middle class, like infrastructure projects to repair roads and bridges, to include new-era jobs in technology and so-called green jobs that reduce energy use and global warming emissions.

On the surface this seems like a good idea, getting the unemployed back to work, but will there be an exit strategy from this taxpayer funded program. Our national deficit is already monumental, add to that continuing war costs, financial sector bailouts and other bailouts to come, and Obama's other campaign promise programs and...where does the debt stop?

This past summer I went to Longhorn Caverns in the Texas Hill Country. A lot of the work and some of the buildings and stairs into the cavern itself were projects of the CCC from the 1930's. These stand as testament to another time of economic trouble and to the men and women that wanted work. Their labor and craftsmanship are evident in the details of one of the buildings there (shown in above photo), as well as the walkways and cavern entrance. I have also stayed in cabins in Oklahoma that were built by the CCC, they were nice, well constructed structures that stand the test of time as well. There is goodness that comes from these programs.

Wall Street has given a nod of approval to the proposal, though I am not quite sure why. The sacred halls of capitalism voting for more government intervention in the economy and more government spending...it just doesn't add up to my expectations for Wall Street mentality. Apparently Wall Streeters are greedy enough they can talk out whichever side of their mouths that they see fit to, as long as profits are to be had.

Another clip from the NYT's piece:

Mr. Obama’s plan, if enacted, would be in part a government-directed industrial policy, with lawmakers and administration officials picking winners and losers among private projects and raining large amounts of taxpayer money on them.

I guess that is what troubles me the most..."lawmakers and administration officials picking"...sounds like a recipe for cronyism, corruption and consumption of tax dollars...the new CCC's.

Regarding Bailouts of the Auto Makers

2008-12-10T12:46:00.003-06:00

I am not sure whether it is a good idea, or a bad one, to bail out the Big Three. It is a complex decision full of uncertainties and unintended consequences whichever decision be made. But my own industry - the one you love to hate - the oil and gas industry has certainly been through its own tough times and our pleadings for mercy fell on mostly deaf ears.

I graduated college in 1982, about the beginning of the end of that boom cycle. Oil price was around $40 per barrel when I entered grad school and was being projected by some to be on its way to $100. I was fortunate getting out when I did, as crude oil prices began sliding along with analysts projection of pricing, and received multiple job offers and didn't have companies renege their offerings. The price of crude oil fell for a few more years until the big layoffs began on the mid 1980's.

Question is, who was crying for the Big Oil's to get bailed out? No one cared, the price of a gallon of gasoline was good for all...all but the oil and gas producers anyway.

In Houston, Texas alone during the 1980's 212,000 jobs ere lost, of which 113,000 were directly tied to the oil and gas extraction business. I have seen numbers as high as 450,000 for total oil jobs lost during the 1980's...not to mention the fall outs in the communities where these jobs existed, the property values, the tax roll numbers, banking...

How did all of this work out in the end? Well, companies did layoff workforce. But the survivors adapted and got stronger. Companies consolidated, innovated and made better business decisions. Out of this downturn came a better industry, one with better technologies to use the budgets they had, and to get more productivity from smaller staffing through technological innovations. And, from support staff up through management and on out into rig hands the industry still compensates its employees well.

So, I don't know if letting the Big Three automakers fail is a good thing or a bad thing ultimately, but they could potentially come out better and more modernized by allowing nature to take its course. And in the end have a competitive industry with highly compensated employees making products that are best in the world.

Disease Mongering

2008-12-08T08:53:00.006-06:00

Perhaps you have heard the term Disease Mongering? It is defined as the, "practice of widening the diagnostic boundaries of illnesses, and promoting public awareness of such, in order to expand the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments, which may include pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and other professional or consumer organizations".

What this means is that we, the general public, are being made the targets of the medical establishment and in particular, Big Pharma. We have a big bull's eye on us saying "we need more medical treatment". It is up to the medical establishment to concoct a few terms for our everyday "conditions", and to expand upon the ones we already have so that they can profit from us and our insurers. Those various aches and pains, tics and quirks, etc, that we used to live with are now "diseases" and we need treatment with artificial pharmaceutical medications under a professionally trained eye...

A 2006 issue of Public Library of Science was dedicated to disease mongering. By my count it contained ten articles covering disease mongering including topics such as the expansion of ADHD, restless legs and erectile dysfunction. No doubt, they are legitimate causes, but the problem lies with the expanding diagnosis of these issues.

An example of expansion of a non-disease as a disease is found in cholesterol levels. Our measured levels of cholesterol, as defined by circulating levels of certain lipoproteins, has changed with time in regards to what is considered normal and high. Medical treatments, usually via a statin drug (HMG CoA Reductase Inhibitor) is the usual course of treatment by the medical establishment and one of the huge profit centers for Big Pharma. Therefore, declaring a certain level of a particular lipoprotein as "good", HDL, or "bad", LDL, and having a medicine (with substantial risk for side effects) that can alter those levels offers incentive and moral hazard to Big Pharma and the medical establishment to amend its recommendation as to what levels of lipoproteins we should all be sporting - despite reams of research to the contrary. Through time, what is considered as healthy levels of HDL and LDL have been changed, and of course, their medications will "fix" us to the current appropriate levels.

A new example of coming expansion in the treatment of psychological disorders was out this week. Here is a clip from one report:

A new survey suggests that young adults in the United States have stunningly high rates of psychiatric disorders, such as substance abuse, nicotine addiction, personality disorders or other mental-health conditions.

The high rates were found in people ages 18 to 24, whether or not they were college students.

The study, published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that one-half of the individuals surveyed met the criteria for a psychiatric disorder but only one-fourth of those had sought treatment.

Mental illness is certainly a legitimate illness and one not to be taken lightly, but 50% of college aged people? Having lived through those years I realize that they are a time of change, perhaps moving from one place to another, figuring out who you are out from under your parents wings, increased responsibilities...in other words facing stresses we all must face. So here they seem to be medicalizing and diagnosing mental-health conditions for what we, in the old days, would call Growing Up.

A clip from another report:

Study co-author Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute called the widespread lack of treatment particularly worrisome. He said it should alert not only "students and parents, but also deans and people who run college mental health services about the need to extend access to treatment."

"Widespread lack of treatment" makes the researcher worried. That should be a definite tip-off to disease mongering in those few words. Some of the issues that these researchers are dealing with probably do need some treatment, but some of the issues are part of college life and always have been...for example, partying - aka "substance abuse". Personality disorders are also worrisome to these guys, and not to belittle those with some legitimate manifestation of this disease, but we all have our weird personality traits and nuances, and some of us are not social butterflies loaded with charisma - but we are not all set to erupt into violence if we aren't loaded with pharmaceutical agents to calm us down either. Medical buyer beware, disease mongering is reality, think for yourselves and do not assume the guy with the MD after his name is a god.

The Bailouts, Stimulus Package(s) and Me

2008-12-05T08:25:00.004-06:00

I am trying to figure out where I fit in in this economic turbulence. If I believe the prevailing wisdom as to the root causes of this mess, I don't have a part in the blame.

I do not have a mortgage and haven't had one for some years, and even when I did have one I had a substantial equity in my house. It was real equity, not some housing bubble induced froth equity like some people at least thought they had. My equity came from a large down payment out of personal savings and from equity obtained in previous homes I owned for years and years and managed to squeeze, sometimes, small appreciations in value. So, I was not a subprime mortgage holder with no real stake in my homes.

I am not a banker and don't really have a depth of understanding of that business, but I understand debt versus income. If you loan money to people that are living on a thread, and they are buying properties that are appreciating at rates that surpass reality, than you are juggling a time bomb. Banking's answer was to package the mortgages and sell them. Pass the time bomb. Greed and moral hazard packaged pretty for the next guy to handle.

The time bomb exploded and the bailouts began. First, billions to banker and other financial establishment. Much with no strings attached, just money to keep them from failing immediately and keep hope alive. Next, more billions to anyone that can convince the government that they are a bank, but at least this round they were told to "please" lend the money and keep the system alive. We'll see.

And now comes the inevitable stimulus package, and this is where I want to know how I fit in. Numbers for a stimulus package that are being tossed around are HUGE. Five hundred billion to well over One Trillion US Dollars. Stimulus in the form of public works, tax cuts, extended unemployment benefits and such. Where do I fit in Mr. President? The exploded time bomb cost me. My investment accounts are down, substantially down. My cash is earning next to nothing in interest, and my self employment income has taken a nose dive. My property is worth less than it was, even though I have plans to move, it has mental repercussions to me, An American Consumer.

I don't see applying for a public works job. I am self employed, so no extended unemployment. I have faithfully paid my "fair share" in taxes, so I suppose a tax cut could be seen as something for me...but that doesn't have the mental effect of "giving" me anything...that is letting me keep a little more of what was already mine. A tax break isn't going to make me run out and consume.

So, unless you are offering me some cold hard cash like the corporations are getting, I assume I will get left out of this cash grab, and others, probably not of the middle class I reside within, will benefit while I lick my financial wounds having been a victim of friendly fire.

Top Ten Lists

2008-12-02T08:34:00.003-06:00

Enough with top ten lists. Does anyone really care someone elses opinion about the top ten (insert your own subject here). Apparently they do, so here is my top ten list.

Top Ten List of the Worst Top Ten Lists:

Best Dressed Actor/Actress- who cares what overpriced clothing a bunch of prima donna's are wearing?
Worst Dressed Actor/Actress- even less important than number one.
Best Places to Live - oh come on, who wants to live in some of those places. And, have they ever even considered where I live. I wouldn't trade it for their best places anytime.
Best Places to Retire - same as above, just hotter and more water. Do all old fogies need to live in the same spot?
Most Romantic Places to Visit - *yawn*
Best Fried Foods - heart attack heavens.
Most Eligible Bachelor/Bachelorette - like we have a shot at them.
Richest in the World - we love to hate them?
Highest Paid Athletes - we do love them, but that much worth?
Hillary Top Ten - OK, I DO LOVE THIS ONE!!!!

And there you have it in no particular order.

They Gave us TARP & TALF

2008-12-02T08:23:00.006-06:00

The government force fed the citizens of the US TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Plan) and then TALF (Term-Asset Backed Loan Facility) even though up to 80% of us protested the concept initially.

Who wanted to give money, in the tens of billions of dollars, to corporations that had obviously been managed in such a way as to bring their imminent demise upon themselves. Who wanted to give money to companies or GSE's that had overpaid their top executives for years and years while this web was weaved.

No, they gave us TARP's and TALF's, so far, when really I'd say we got a Taxpayers Unheard in a Representative Democracy...figure it out.

Hillary as Secretary of State - Poison for Obama

2008-12-01T14:02:00.003-06:00

President Elect Obama sir, I am certainly willing to give you the benefit of the doubt in many matters and be willing to listen and accept ideas that may be counter to my libertarian thinking, but Hillary As Secretary of State? What were you thinking? You just made a deal with the devil.

Have you forgotten who she is and what luggage she has with her? If ethics mean anything to an Obama presidency, and I would think they should based on your campaign rhetoric and based on most peoples assessment of the soon to be gone Bush administration, then why Hillary? Do her qualifications as a backstabber and machinator extraordinaire make her the obvious pick to deal with North Korea and Iran when you attempt to open dialog with them? And what about Bill? He will do you no favors by serving your best interests ahead of his own.

With all due respect, you have made some good choices for other posts, but missed the mark here by a longshot.

Good reading.

Transcendent moments

2008-12-01T12:42:00.007-06:00

Thoreau wrote, in "Walden":

...The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within,...

I believe that Thoreau is referring to transcending the normal hum-drum Sheeple thinking that we Americans tend to fall into, and thinking lofty outside-the-box thoughts. But have you every noticed the brief moments that occur upon waking, or upon falling asleep, the Genius that resides within? Those that study such subjects call this the theta state of brain activity. That brief interlude between sleep and wakefulness.

Even without having a proper name for this phenomenon I first became aware and began utilizing these moments during college. After studying long hours for tests, cramming my head full of facts and figures all becoming more muddled with each newly introduced bit, I found if I could capture this moment on waking and spend it with a brief review of my studies it became almost a photographic memory. I could see and picture notes, books and whatever other study materials I had poured through.

Runners, gardeners and those given to meditation also can capture the theta state. Being relaxed and taking part in monotonous and repetitive activities can free the mind from background clutter and let the creativity of the theta state come to the forefront. During these moments one is prone to spontaneous idea generation and pulling together concepts that may be more difficult from the scattered state of thinking we may normally find ourselves in.

Thoreau also writes in "Walden":

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

Again, I think Thoreau's meaning of awake is more of a transcendent wakefulness, one that says, "be special, think fresh and lofty things, reach for the skies", and not one of capturing the brief theta moments. But these moments whether from at the edge of sleep or from meditation or other activities can be a great launching pad to catch the notions to be Thoreau's awake.

Letter to DC

2008-11-25T08:04:00.002-06:00

Dear Congressmen, Treasury Secretary, Fed Chairman,

Could you please, as a part of your bailout package that 80% of us taxpayers opposed, include a line item for reconfiguring the display on all taxpayer calculators. My calculator will only handle up to 1oo million and I believe it would be appropriate at this time to have a calculator that would display numbers at least up to the current budget deficit levels. Therefor, I ask you to please consider calculators for all Americans that could display figures up to One Quadrillion Dollars.

Also, in regards to the reported $7.7 Trillion dollars I see reported in the news that you are considering doling out to "save us"...I hereby request that my portion be forwarded directly to me and I will dole it myself as I see fit. By my calculation (done by hand and not on my under-digited calculator) you may forward me $100,000...this is based upon 7.7 trillion divided by 300 million Americans times the 4 members of my immediate family. We promise to be "Patriotic" and spend a good portion of the funds to stimulate the economy.

Thank you and best of luck with the play money your are generating.

Will Obama Take My Guns?

2008-11-23T09:23:00.002-06:00

I am certainly not a rabid gun nut, but I do have a few guns for sport and play. I have a neat Beretta 22 target pistol, a S&W 9mm, a couple of 22 rifles for plinking things and, the gun I am most proud of, an old Winchester Model 12, 12 gauge shotgun my granddad handed down to me. I am fond of having guns around - should I be worried about a President Obama "taking my guns" from me?

The Democratic Party Platform, adopted by Obama, says (emphasis added is mine):

"Firearms
We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we
will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that
the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We can work together to enact and enforce commonsense laws and improvements – like closing the gun show loophole, improving our background check system, and reinstating the assault weapons ban, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals. Acting responsibly and with respect for differing views on this issue, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe."

So, I think the above sums up what Obama's voting record has consistently said, he is not about taking away the guns of American's but he is not about free and open anything goes gun ownership either.

It looks like we can expect to see legislation "closing the gun show loophole" whereby requiring gun show firearm sales to require participation in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NCIS). No big deal really. I bought my Beretta pistol just a few months ago. The time to fill out the papers and have the background check performed was probably less than 10 minutes. I know, we don't want more government intrusion and all, but this NCIS check already happens in every gun store in the US everyday, so expanding it to the gun show isn't a big reach intrusion.

Also, there will quite likely be an attempt to reinstate the assault weapon ban. Some may favor this ban under the thought that, "no one needs that type of gun", "those guns aren't for sport", etc. I think this could be construed as letting the camel get his nose in the tent legislation, possibly leading to further gun control if the outcry isn't imposing enough. Some studies have also indicted that not much difference was noted in crime activity and homicide rates as the result of the assault weapon ban.

It seems I recall that the last time this legislation passed in 1994, it led to the GOP gaining seats in the House and Senate in the next election. So, Obama may think twice about how badly he really wants this ban reinstated versus how badly he wants to hold the majority in Congress. We gun nuts want stand to have our guns taken away...

The Crisis Beyond This Crisis

2008-11-21T10:58:00.004-06:00

We are all shocked by the cyclonic speed at which the credit crisis sneaked up on us, right? Oh sure, home prices that had skyrocketed were certain to moderate and retrace their gains, no big surprise to anyone but the last buyers of homes on either the left or right coast of the US. But, how come we didn't know that this crisis of credit was coming. The answer is that many did know.

Financial institutions leveraged to the hilt, nontransparent financial instruments such as the CDS's being traded by the trillions of dollars like they were candy, and an American consumer equally in debt coupled with falling asset prices doesn't take a NASA scientist to figure out that trouble is coming. The data was all out there for us to examine and request changes of course, we just chose to ignore the issue. We had to worry about elections, wars and Dancing With the Stars.

What about the next crisis, the one beyond this one? What about Social Security? What about the taxes I have been paying my entire working life that I am mostly convinced I will never get a dime returned.

We pretty much ignore this coming crisis as well...and it will quite likely hit us, and we will be shocked.

This year, 2008, so-called Baby-boom folk (those born 1946 - 1961) are commencing to draw Social Security payments. That alone may raise no alarm. The other fact is a loud alarm - namely, this year expenditures for Medicare hospital insurance exceed cash income.

The year 2011 will see two more dangerous manifestations. The oldest baby-boomers will become Medicare-eligible. Simultaneously the Social Security cash surplus will commence to decline.

The next hit is projected for 2017. Payment of money to recipients, commonly referred to as “benefits,” will exceed income.

Not surprisingly, it won’t take long thereafter before the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will run dry - estimated for 2017.

In about 2026 the youngest baby-boom people, by then 65, will become eligible to draw Social Security payments.

But for how long will they or any other beneficiary draw? Five more years. In 2041 the Social Security Trust Fund will be an historical illusion - that is, penniless.

Will Obama have the courage to address this issue, and if so, will he be ruthlessly attacked by the GOP? Probably yes to both.

In a country still entrenched in wars abroad and an economic crisis at home garnering the attention and dollars to address Social Security for the next couple of years will be tough, but it needs to be done now, or it will be a much larger crisis down the road...when it sneaks up on us.

Interesting reads:

National Center for Policy Analysis

Less Government, Much Less Government

Meltdown - Wallstreet and Mainstreet

2008-11-20T11:04:00.000-06:00

I was pretty much behind President G. Dubya Bush until Hurricane Katrina ripped into New Orleans. I, like everyone else, kept waiting for a reassuring embrace from our leader. Tell us that it'll be okay, that the problem isn't too big to fix and that people will be cared for. I waited, and I waited. Geezus, ARE YOU GOING TO REASSURE US? My confidence level in the current lame (or is it lame duck?) administration waned from that point on and a critical eye was opened to His past foibles, misstatements and outright untruths.

Now, I wait again. Where the heck are you Mr. President? Mainstreet's 401K's and investment accounts are plummeting. Jobs are falling away as fast. And what has this presidential administration done to assure us? Not much. A few "free market" speeches that fall on deaf ears in the wake of anything but free market governmental actions on Freddie and Fannie and of bailouts of favorite son financial firms deemed "too big to fail". A T.A.R.P. program to get the credit markets going again, but apparently had no conditions listed to the receiving institutions to actually use the money to get us going. So, much of the many billions sits helping no one but the receiving institution.

And Wallstreet is floundering miserably. The Dow Industrial average, the S&P 500 and the other major indices from the US and around the world are tanking. The selling has moved past the capitulation stage of a bear market and into a desparation and panic stage. Some of the large stocks currently looking like their demise is imminent include F, GM, C, CIT to name but a few. Driven to the brink by bad business management, greed and short selling of their stocks by heartless souls that care not about the jobs to be lost or the 401k's wrecked. TARP or not, I am not sure there is hope to save investors confidence at this point.

I believe that the SEC should immediately reinstate the "uptick rule" to help stabilze this ruthless short selling. Further, I would like to see shares that are for sale "short" shown as short shares on Level II quotes, that way I can make a more educated determination as an investor about an equities condition. If many of the shares for sale are short, I may certainly want to rethink whether I want to be a buyer...give us more transparency since hedge funds can operate under the radar as far as transparency goes. Give the little guy a better, more level playing field to participate on.

View From The Center

2008-11-20T10:41:00.000-06:00

By almost any metric imaginable I am a moderate. Everything in moderation...eating, drinking, work, play, politics...whatever. I wish more people held this viewpoint, maybe we could work out solutions to life's problems without the wingnut mentality that drives so much of the animosity in the US today.

Anyway, this blog will look at things from mainly a centrist viewpoint...a political moderate...willing to read and consider varying viewpoints, keep an open mind and get to the bottom of where truth lies on varying issues such as health care, politics and the economy.