ORACULATIONS

As I posted yesterday the difference between the FBI and the CIA is that the FBI screws up domestic crime and the CIA does the same for international crime. See this NRO piece on Mr. Wilson of the latest "scandal" in Washington. The Bush Administration was derelict in sending this clown over there in the first place. He's a Bush hater. Read the piece.

Second Los Angeles Times smear Headline in two days as they now refer to Arnold as just "Actor" in the vain hope that this will sway voters. Everyone in my office, even the liberals, was laughing at this one. Who do they think they are fooling? The other day the New York Slimes put a picture of ex NYSE president Nick Grasso on the financial page with criminals in an attempt to smear him; nobody was fooled by that either.

More "Media is Full of it" in California. Well it looks like Arnold will be the first body builder since Janet Reno to mount a serious campaign for governor of a major state. It's not like all journalists had a meeting back in June to decide how to attack Republicans and Arnold. They didn't need to. They all go to UC Berkeley, Columbia, or IVY and they all have exactly the same delusions of superiority and Left Wing convictions. They regard all Conservatives as stupid. Therefore Arnold is stupid. So all the usual suspects said Arnold failed in the debate. BUT the crummy stupid voters thought he won and Arnold is now way ahead in the polls. There is not one newspaper in the State backing him, other than The San Diego Union. The two big issues? Giving driver's licenses to illegals and (believe it or not) Bustamente's ties to Indian Gaming, which isn't Indian at all. He has spent money illegally and he is dead. All he'll get is the Hispanic vote. I think it's always interesting the way us morons interpret debates and campaigns, and how the self anointed elites hate us. Me? I am secure in the conviction that if elections really could change things they would be illegal.

The Plame Affair is Big Media because only big media has the guns and money to really dig on this one. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are on it. However it looks like they are sniffing out different conclusions. WSJ would let you consider that Wilson is creating this story because he is pissed off at Karl Rove and wants him run out of town. The Post would have us think that a couple of (here's where it gets "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks") White House people leaked it; down from highly placed. Novak is denying his source was White House at all but stuff he picked up in conversations. Right now it looks like she is not "under cover" but was clearly involved in secret work. I had a Top Secret clearance overseas and I can tell you that I knew stuff that almost nobody in the Far East knew just because I was there. I was always told never to tell anybody about my clearance when off base because I'd be kidnapped. This is serious stuff.

Like I said, this is a story that only Big Media with all their sources will be able to break, IF there is a story. Wilson may have outed his own wife to get even, that is how bizarre this is getting.

White House "cooperation" with the DOJ on the CIA agent leak is worse than a joke. This is a coverup of a criminal act and I predict that it will topple the Bush Administration if it doesn't come totally clean RIGHT NOW. They can look at their own phone logs, determine who called the press and fire them RIGHT NOW. If we haven't learned over the past twenty five years that a coverup is NOT possible we will never learn. This one is not going away. The words "dirty tricks", illegal activities, and nice things like that do not cover attempted murder. I don't think Bush is in charge and the guys who did this ARE in charge. Get ready for president............(fill in the blank)

A note to all the comments on the web about people trying to figure out the "why" of the despicable White House outing of the CIA agent. Why? means nothing. It's "who" that counts. Find out "why" later. If six reporters know who was making calls there is no way we won't find out "who".

"Thank God the 49ers hired a white coach" might be the secret thoughts around the NFL today, as the SF "team" dropped to 1-3. Erickson was clearly a "white" choice over many far more qualified blacks and maybe this may end the "white boy network" in the NFL. Truth is that nobody on the planet can handle 49er all star Owens who may have played himself onto another team. Cincinatti would be the front office choice. Or maybe Frankfurt.

Surfing the web and TV AM shows one fact leaps out: We had bad CIA info on almost every level concerning Iraq. We had bad intel from the CIA and FBI before 9/11 too. I think the big item coming out of all this is that we, and Bush, trusted information from people who had already demonstrated their incompetence. Q: Would you have supported the Iraq War knowing it was going to cost $100 billion?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FBI AND THE CIA? The FBI bungles domestic crime and the CIA bungles international crime. All of us knew this, except for President Bush and both houses of Congress. Everybody believed the "intel" and endorsed the actions when we embarked on the Iraq War based on "intel". I include myself in this.

Ever hear of the Blind Doll?, you wind it up and it walks into walls? The wound up FBI had a spy in their midst for 25 years, was key in the Waco slaughter after KNOWING there was no evidence against David Koresh; together with the AFT they murdered Randy Weaver's son and wife, and then the FBI promoted the perp to Deputy Director; they nailed the career criminal Richard Jewell for the Atlanta Olympic bombing, and on and on and on. Yet both Congress, Bush, and the Defense Department relied on their information hoping that this time they weren't walking into another wall, because they had "improved". To what? Walking off the curb?

As a backup everybody, INCLUDING CONGRESS, relied on the CIA, notorious for their bungling. An old hand CIA agent is testifying before a Congressional Committee. They are astounded by his appearance. He has a fake leg, hook on one arm, and a patch over one eye. A Republican Patriot type asks him how he got hurt.

"I lost my leg after I ran from the Taliban in Afghanistan, and when they caught me they cut off my leg with a chain saw" said the agent. "I lost my hand when disguised as an Arab I reached for some food in Saddam Hussein's HQ and a Saddam henchman hacked off my hand with an axe."

"What about the patch on your eye?"

"I lost it when a pigeon shit in it," said the agent. "It was my first day with the hook."

And like the agent with the hook, or the crew that identified the Chinese Embassy in Kosovo as a target, the CIA thrashed around Iraq doing a great job of identifying targets but gouging out their eyes when it came to seeing the bad sewage system, decayed electrical system, and 1940s oil infrastructure. Everyone believed the war might cost $20 billion tops.

Why did we all believe? I don't know. We just did. Having said all this the other evidence is clear that we should have ended things for Saddam there, that we were right to do so, that the job is worth doing, and that if we succeed we will have struck a blow to radical Islam from which they may never recover and make our children's and grandchildren's lives safer and better. We can be proud.

But our system and our President are something else. Let us all look forward to a free election in Iraq where Paul Bremmer will supply the populace with the latest in punch card ballot systems.

The two best running backs you've never heard of, yet, play for trashy schools on the West Coast, not Oregon or USC who have a total of NO running backs. The first is a guy at Cal Berkeley named Adimchinobe Echemandu (this is real, he's from Africa by way of Hawthorne High in LA). Big, fast, tough and hits a hole like lightning. You may hear about Cal later on in the year. The second plays in the sticks for Oregon State, another team you won't see on TV this year, and his name is Steven Jackson (6'2", 225 lbs) who plays for Oregon State, a team with nothing else. You wonder where guys like Portus and Holmes and a few others come from, it's from the stick schools with programs you've never heard of. Cal is a stick school (not even a team website) with racial problems dating from the 60's and it's unlikely that any coach can win there for long. Every Black there thinks they are being exploited when asked to attend class, although things may be changing since Echemandu did sit out a season due to academics and didn't slink off to some Div II school where he could slide.
Clarett will "win" his case and get hurt within the first six NFL games and that will be it. Bottom line here is that Blacks think education is "white" and have no use for it, til they go on welfare and it's too late. It is amazing at this late date where African Americans WITH educations are rising to the top in many places, these people are called "Toms" and "Aunt Jemimas" precisely because they are educated and successful. That's Black Life.

MURDER BY PROXY ATTEMPT White House outing of a CIA agent is despicable and more and more it seems as if the Bush White House is unraveling and losing all control of events. As I've said many times here, most of us feared both Bush and Gore were mediocre and our choices last time were between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. One of them won. Outing a CIA or FBI agent is murder by proxy. None of us can just let this one pass. Good discussion thread at Roger Simon's place. Marshall too.

The purpose of web registrations is to gain a right to call you even if you are on a "Don't Call" list. The new demand by the New York Times simply establishes a "prior business relationship" so you can be called. Same for the totally intrusive Los Angeles Times website. All sites now seeking info for the stated purpose of allowing you to read their stuff is a ruse. Their actual purpose is the establishment of a business relationship so they can call you. Don't register with true information particularly the address, zip code, or phone number. I am registered everywhere with false info, including name. There is no reason to identify yourself other than sales.

Davis, Actor collide front page main headline quote from the LA Times today. The LA Times lie machine won't even give Schwarzenegger a name. This is only on news stand editions, not on the web. Late add in response to three emails commenting that Schwarzenegger was too long a name to include in a headline, I point out that in every print media the candidate is called "Arnold", a name that has one more letter than the word "actor". There was plenty of room for the extra letter.

PC item of the day, week, month is the University of Maryland making cheerleading a varsity sport and awarding scholarships. Meaning that real sports like men's wrestling, baseball and so on will lose scholarships. "Cheerleading is a fucking "sport"?

Things I love about women's soccer
1. Lesbians from around the world can be seen on ESPN instead of the porn channels
2. Riots by tiny crowds of lesbian fans are always a possibility
3. Living proof that there really is a sport more boring than men's soccer
4. Proof that most women look better in burkas than they do in skimpy clothes
5. Scoring three times in 90 minutes is about what most of us can do on a Friday night
6. Absolutely proves that men are superior at something that is totally stupid
7. Proves that ESPN can be forced to carry Politically Correct programming with ratings below .1---- Look for women's archery and women's marble tournaments next.
8. Proof that we lead the world in the development of lesbian athletes but China is catching up. Bush estimates it will take another $200 to keep ourselves on top.
9. Winning The World Cup of Women's Soccer is about as big as winning the trophy for third place in the Weed California Little League.

Despite the breakdown my TWO stocks are just fine and have gained this week. Why? I am a follower of William O'Neil and I select only really good stocks. I'm a small investor and with less than $50,000 you have no business being in more than three stocks. If you have been stopped out you should have been looking at others and be ready to buy on a buy signal. You should also have been stopped out with big big profits.

This bull ain't over by a long shot. We have had a huge summer rally and people will take profits. The oil scare is total bullshit. OPEC cut production to exactly match Iraq production. OPEC has lost market share over the past decade and now has only 28% of the production; non OPEC countries produce the other 72%. Lower prices are coming now with Iraq production topping a million bpd by February and 3 to 5 million by 2005.

The currency is another situation. If you will check, only the Japanese yen has risen and they were the target of the "float". The real target is China and "be careful, you might get what you wished for" is the real scare here. Any SUDDEN change is not good.

The deficit will be a problem starting in '05 but how much growth will happen because of the boom is still unknown. Factory jobs? Not coming back. Dems are now for a 27% tariff on Chinese goods which is exactly what caused the Great Depression. China will respond by flooding the world with goods produced at the lowest cost in the history of the planet. They will steal our software, our programming, and all our itellectual property. This is an insane idea.

An observation on the French "re-examination" by the usual suspects. The French elites are the French elites and they haven't changed since 1789. The constant attention to the 14,000 plus deaths in a surprise heat wave with temps not seen in one hundred years, in fact not within twenty degrees of this heat wave for a century, would wreck any country. Just count our deaths if 20 degree temps hit Los Angeles uninsulated homes for a two weeks. Or Chicago got hit with a minus 10 degrees for a month. It was a surprise. The EU is not at fault. Socialism has nothing to do with it. It was the heat, stupid.

Bush screws up again a response to the Dean accusation that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lied is simply "it isn't true." This guy is killing his own presidency, the war in Iraq, and because of his lack of response he is killing American troops and may lose the war on terror. If Wesley Clark had run in Republican Primaries he'd be giving Bush fits. I don't think Bush would win a Republican Primary if a guy like Clark stepped up to the plate. Bush is not a leader.

Wesley Clark Republican see the WSJ for details if you haven't seen it yet.

Tom Paine didn't get paid for writing "Common Sense", Jay, Hamilton, and Madison didn't get paid for writing the Federalist Papers, the Brits who wrote the Rights of Man ditto. Nobody who wrote anything worthwhile ever got paid until lately. Benjamin Franklin ground out a living as a publisher, some playwrights, and some monks got paid, but until Victor Hugo came along there was no money in it. Rich artists didn't happen. Today a stink is being raised because a man who is paid to write by employer A moonlights somewhere else using the name of his employer and himself. In the course of this moonlighting he writes things his employer finds insulting to his readership, specifically Hispanics. So he is put under control.

Oh.
My.
God.

It's called Life 101: You take their money and you do what they want. It's called a job. Plumbers have them, machinists have them, secretaries have them; everybody has them but the unemployed jerkoffs on the web. (Even I have one) Weintraub, the HERO who got blown off his web site by the Sacramento Bee, has no beef at all. If he wants to shoot off his big mouth all he has to do is quit his cushy job and blog away for no pay; like Tom Paine. Naturally the paper doesn't want their Mexican readers pissed off. They are more than fifty percent of the population up there and do most of the buying of products advertised in the paper. None of the people pissing and moaning on the so-called blogoshpere earn their living writing for a daily newspaper. Weintraub, like the millionaire "artists" in Hollywood, wants to say what he wants; in fact he wants to say things his employer will not run in the paper, and then get paid for it. He got canned. Fuck him. That's life 101, something these pampered writers want nothing to do with.

I shoot off my mouth for no pay. I can say what I want. The true price of Totally Free Speech is you ain't getting paid for it. When Reynolds gets a gig it's because he will write what the employer wants written; same for Rush Limbaugh in the WSJ; or Robert Sheer in the LA Times. Does The Nation print Laura Ingraham? Does the National Review have a column by the late Edward Said? Do any paid writers for any publication write material elsewhere that makes their parent publication look bad? Think a screenwriter writes what the producer doesn't want?

So stop the whining about Weintraub. If he wants Freedom he should get a job as a plumber and write for Free.

I saw a High School football team with an offensive line averaging 300 pounds per man as a part of my "Special Person Day" experience. I don't know what is happening in the rest of the country but the kids here in SoCal are huge. I have no idea if steroids are involved but the unbeaten Westlake California high school has one big line. A year ago Long Beach Poly had a similar line on defense, and all four play for U.S.C. now. When these huge guys hit a 175 pound running back you wonder about health and safety although nobody got hurt. When I played the chop block was legal and the only way I could handle guys like that was to hit them at the knees. Now they are safe to hit everybody knowing they can't be attacked. Personally, I say us small guys should be allowed to hit low. We are a victim group. These 300 pounders wouldn't last a day if little guys like me could block low.

As I posted a few days ago Wesley Clark is a Republican running in the Democratic primary. What we actually have is a Republican Challenger in the primary. There is nothing about this guy that is Democratic. So what is going on? I'd say blind ambition, opportunism (Clintons are his pals now), and self interest. A smart and talented guy who couldn't be a Republican president RIGHT NOW. Link 0n Drudge and Fox and MSNBC

Bush is committing political suicide by not countering the media assault on the Iraq War. All he'd have to do is read aloud one letter per day from a soldier over there. He won't do it or hasn't the moxie to do it. Those of us who looked at the last election as one between two mediocre men are fearful that we were right. It is too stupid for words to allow a Left Wing Media to destroy this presidency but it is happening before our eyes. Bush is doing nothing to stop it. And all he'd have to do is read one letter per day from the web. You tell me, is that stupid or not?

I'm going to a "Special Person" day at a school so I won't comment further today.

Stocks, and currency risk There is always a currency risk in the markets because if the dollar rises stocks are more valuable and if the dollar falls they are less so. This sell off is a result of Bush needing factory jobs to be re-elected, the driving force of every president. Bush will do whatever it takes and getting all currencies to "float" means the yen has to go up. The real target is the Chinese currency. Sooner or later the Japanese will decide that China is the real power in Asia and will join in whatever the Chinese want to do. Japan has a history of "joining" rather than playing one nation off against another. They were very early to join with Nazi Germany back in the 40's because they sensed a winner and they were with the Allies in WWI for the same reasons. They have supported their currency by buying huge amounts of Treasury Bonds and this is now a worry. Our account deficits of $1.5 billion PER DAY is not sustainable. You won't be hurt if you follow signals and have your stops already in the market.

WAY MORE ABUSE, AND WORSE THAN HAZING is shown from the same Mempham High School in Long Island, scene of the current sodomizing scandal, from 1995 when a kid was beaten so bad he almost couldn't walk. The link including pictures that you have to click to will really shock you. What is going on? Honestly, I think it's just small town insular behavior; outsiders are evil, mind your own business and leave us alone type of adult behavior. Very similar to the South in the 50's and 60's regarding Blacks and like almost all small towns today. But look at the pictures from 1995, as bad as anything you've seen. Link courtesy of badjocks.com And where is the ACLU? You don't get it? If the kid was in a huddle and a prayer was heard they'd be there in a nanosecond. And if they could find a Black victim they'd have been there yesterday. Just so you understand what hypocrites these Lefties are.

At last we are getting to the core of the real debate in this country. No, it's not whether country or rap music should be played over the penitentiary sound system or even if drug dealers should be allowed to sell stock. The real debate is between Christianity and all its values verses the secular atheist elites and their lack of same. Between their sliding scale morality, which means sodomy is OK as long as your partner is over eight years old and of the same sex and the proscription of same. The battle between Thou shalt not Kill and the seculars so-called "situational ethics", meaning I killed him because he hurt my feelings is OK but I killed him because he broke into my house is not OK. The fight between the moral relativism of the Left and the moral clarity of the Christian; meaning to the secular and the atheist everything except smoking is OK almost always if one can prove (sort of) that he or she is a "victim" of white America against the clear prohibition of murder, adultery, and lying in Christian doctrine. The purpose of sex should not be ejaculation and orgasm, but children and family is a concept rejected and scorned.

Finally people like O'Reilley, Ingraham, Savage, and now David Limbaugh together with more than a few others are paying attention. This attack on Christianity is funded by both the Ford and the MacArthur Foundations that toss hundreds of millions of tax free dollars to the tax exempt ACLU. We cannot ignore the role the ADL and other Jewish orgs are playing in this, particularly in the attack on Gibson's "Passion".

Face it. Christianity has always been dangerous. So has real democracy. It is no accident that democracy has only taken hold in Christian countries. No Muslim, Confucian, Buddhist, or African Tribal society has ever wanted it. Only Christian countries wanted it and developed it in the modern world. Successful Democracy is a Christian concept. Period.

I am not a church person. I am not real sure there is NO God. I am sure that the values of Christianity are basically better than anything else and that we are far better with Christian influences than we are without them. The Ten Commandments ARE the basis of all our morality and law. All of us better start doing some serious thinking because much of our morality is decaying before our eyes; the highest illegitimate birth rate ever, highest divorce rate, crime ditto, together with the lowest church attendance ever. We also have the best pornography in the known world, ugliest strippers, and lead the universe in "recreational" drug use and addiction. The worst CURRENT example of this "morality" can be seen HERE where you can read about an adult girls basketball coach sexually assaulting a 14 year old female student and is still on the faculty at the school. That's just for starters.

Nothing is free. Especially pussy, drugs, and divorce.

Investors Business Daily also backs my story regarding the unemployment situation. The cost of hiring employees is so high that corporations just won't do it til they are desperate. Further that the disconnect between the corporations who are called and the homes that are called show that there is a huge growth in employment in smaller companies, new start ups, and independent contractors.

Glenn Reynolds is leading a blog today about media bias on his site. But for a disgusting little piece about how the main stream media actually brag about how they hide out in cushy hotels, talk with each other, and then do "news", nothing is as low as the LA Times in a report on Friday 9/19 in their Calendar Section (That's their movie and TV plus gossip section). This gushy piece called "Letter from Baghdad by some media suckup named Carol T. Williams; subtitled

"Fear and Reporting"; "Threats abound for journalists living at the Al Hamra. But camaraderie and comforts keep them put."

and then it starts explaining how these phonies report and their "concerns". A few paragraphs to make you puke

We were told to let our Iraqi drivers start the cars before we get into them, to travel with doors locked and windows up, to change lanes while driving below an overpass so no one could drop a grenade on us and to refrain from doing any sightseeing or unessential travel. We were also encouraged to let our cars get really dirty so anyone who places a bomb underneath would leave a handprint.

For most journalists, that's too much information.

Those who have covered conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Somalia, Afghanistan or the West Bank are familiar with a laundry list of potential perils, which, if strictly avoided, would prevent us from doing our jobs.

When Los Angeles Times editors encouraged the three reporters ensconced at the Hamra to relocate, we had identical reactions: Why?

"The only thing that works around here is the Hamra," Patrick McDonnell said as he finished his chicken fingers. "I don't want to go hide out in some little hotel no one knows about."

Can you imagine these bastards? Then it is told how these stinking bums demanded the hotel protect them, all this while drunk:

"We told the hotel management they had to get their security act together or we were moving out," Josh Hammer, from Newsweek, says of the ultimatum some journalists gave Hamra's managers after the Aug. 19 U.N. bombing.

The managers responded by calling in U.S. troops for a security review and laying the two concrete beams at the entrance. In an apparently unrelated move, they repainted the beige exterior red and white, making it all the more eye-catching on the monochromatic horizon

So these bums spend our money making our soldiers protect them inside the most luxurious hotel they can find. They also wanted to stay someplace with both security and a pool. Read the whole thing. Then you'll know EXACTLY why these liars lie.

Under "What are we doing to our kids.com"" an almost endless series of high school "sports" stories about lesbian rape, drugs, fights between officials and coaches, and stuff. We all better start paying attention to what we are doing. The lesbian rape is about a former WNBA player on the job for 14 days at a high school raping a 14 year old high school girl. Bad stuff.

This just in: Wesley Clark is a Republican. There is absolutely nothing about him that is Democrat. This is a joke. No, that insults humor. This is political hypocrisy at its all time worst in a party that hits new lows every day.

Tax revenues going up??? not being reported. State revenues have already turned upward because of the surging economy. California is the first I have seen reporting this, perhaps because Davis runs everything and they are making it up, but they are reporting it. There will be less and less angst being reported as we move forward.

Back in Mexifornia, Arnold is stuck in second gear and it is basically all over. He is not "one of the guys", he is unable to communicate with ordinary people, has no programs at all, and has been stuck on 25% since he started. Politics, like talk radio, just ain't for everybody. It ain't for Arnold. I think Davis will not be recalled. Schwarzenegger's TV commercials are terrible, without warmth, humanity, or spontaneity. The same mistake his mentor, the Republican Mayor of LA Richard Riordan made when he ran for governor. Arnold can't beat an egg.

Note to Glenn Reynolds who runs a long rant against the Sacramento Bee newspaper's "caving" to Latino interests and banning a columnist. EVERY media in the state is caving to the Mexican threats. Anybody who mentions anything they don't like is threatened and they cave. EVERYBODY. MEChA didn't train all their politicos and protesters for nothing. This is a fascist group with the numbers to destroy freedom and they will do it until people stand up and fight. Don't look for the corporate cripples who run media to stand for principal any time soon.

Let's call it "community service green"Ugliest college band uniforms on the planet will be found in the Granola Head city of Eugene Oregon and are worn by the University of Oregon band. Oregon University, home of the $15 million locker room, and the $20 band uniforms. The most horrid things I've ever seen. They actually look like something people convicted of misdemeanors wear while they are cleaning roads. I call it community service green, ill fitting, ugly, and just awful. Saw the Oregon-Michigan football game over the weekend and it was the most exciting game I've ever seen in person. Autzen Stadium, home field for the Dux, is the noisiest outdoor stadium in the country. I still can't hear out of one ear. College football is really exciting. Hope you can go to a few games this year.

Game observation from a football nut Michigan has a 1975 pass offense and that team wouldn't beat either USC, Oregon, and maybe Washington State. Big quarterback drops back into pocket, moves up in same, then throws to one of THREE receivers. Eventually this offense breaks down when a QB has to throw 55 times a game. Every passing offense in ACC, PAC 10 and SEC has multiple sets with as many as five receivers running complicated patterns. Michigan supposedly had the best rusher in the United States and they didn't have one pass to him, no quick slants, and no three wide sets. Oregon has one of the worst pass defenses in the West with corners under six feet tall and one DB is only 5'9". Michigan is just another Big Ten "we'll run it down your throats to prove who the real men are" team facing the 300 pound per man defense. Minus three yards rushing for the entire game. Notre Dame must be awful to be pushed around by these guys and Michigan can be thankful they didn't face U.S.C. with the biggest and baddest defense in the country. Real loser is Michigan recruiting because they try to recruit in the west and any kid who plays wide out, quarterback, or running back will be shown "lowlights" of this game by all recruiters to prospects thinking of going to Michigan. Trust me, this offense as shown couldn't win ACC, SEC or PAC 10.

I'm off to Eugene Oregon to see the Oregon Michigan game which I think will be like Saddam vs the Kurds, but my son is a Duck so I'm going and I'll have a good time.

Doesn't take a genius to see that growth is huge with the leading economic indicators up .4 for August (4.8 annual growth rate) and July revised to UP .6 (7.2 annual growth). Projected third quarter growth is now, get this, 6%. This is huge. Keep in mind that this is a PROFITS rally, not an economy rally. Jobs will have to be up soon or this entire thing will collapse. Stay the course, keep your stops, get out on sell signals.

Victor Davis Hanson is a must read in today's NRO I too am re-reading a Lincoln bio and Hanson's observations are right on. I blogged on Wednesday about the Democrats being like the Civil War Copperheads and Peace Democrats. Read Hanson, he is much much better than I. But false modesty is a lie too, I made some different but equally valid points in my posting as well

This post also appears on the Wall Street Journal Letters page.
Colin Powell has a "nice" editorial in the WSJ this AM Here's what I wish he would have written: Americans cannot continue to die alone FOR you. You have to take up arms and take out the remains of the Baathist and Iranian terrorists. George Bush may lose the next election in the United States. Lots of Americans don't care if you live or die, if your tongues are nailed to boards by a leader who demands you keep quiet and obey. They don't care about mass graves as long as they are not their own. Another dictator in Iraq is just fine so long as their own private lives are comfortable. You need to take the lead. American soldiers cannot continue to be you in disguise. We need to help you, not fight for you.

It is time for you to stand up and fight. Right now.

That's what I wish somebody would say.

Note to you young movie makers and parents of same. For a total breakdown on how Jones made his 73 minute movie for $150 go to this site. I made a "note" on my site Monday after seeing the movie, which I "reviewed" based only on the fact that it was shot for about $200. For all you young guys, OPPORTUNITY is right now.

Ultimate Media Total Slobber? Let's get ready for a Cubs vs Red Sox World Series. This will be the worst. Worse than the lies about Iraq, the bullshit about the latest Hurricane, even worse than the insane drooling over Women's Soccer a few years ago. Cubs? Red Sox?
Oh.
My.
God.

We're about to find out

Why Wesley Clark? Who needs him? The DNC needs him, that's who. The Clinton wing of the party absolutely HAD to pull something into the mix besides the Looney Left that Dean represents. It is an obvious political necessity. Every Democrat in the center saw the entire party headed into Socialist/isolationist Hell, a position that would damage the party for a decade or more.

The Clinton Machine is basically a media juggernaut of NYT/LAT/CNN/NBC/ABC/CBS news spinners who will mouth everything the Clinton people want said about anything, It has easily shifted into second gear now and is stomping on the gas hoping to propel this totally inexperienced general to the middle of the ticket. NOT THE TOP, because if he got to the top and won, Hillary would be toast. The same thing is wrong about Clark that is wrong about Rice and Powell. Absolutely no track record of gaining consensus for action. These are people who have grown up in public life issuing orders that better be followed, or receiving same. Really take a look at all the opposition within Republican ranks Bush has to deal with as well as Democrats. You have to know how to deal. And dealing in times of crises is an art. Read on FDR and A. Lincoln to understand how deals have to be made. One of FDRs most famous remarks, "He's an SOB but he's our SOB" let's you know how far you have to go to deal.

General Grant of Civil War fame was able to accept the fact that Lincoln had to put some political jerk offs into remote and not so remote commands because a few of them wanted to run for president and he had to park them somewhere out of the way. Grant was also able to operate a war without troops that had to be kept close to Washington D.C. so Congress would "feel secure". Grant was a general who understood both war and consensus. So was Ike, who understood that the French sell outs were necessary and kept the impossible De Gaulle around for show. Clark is like most generals: Patton, MacArthur, Sherman, etc.; nobody counts but them, and Clark has proven incapable of getting others to agree with him. Wesley Clark is the "I'm not Dean" candidate.

I don't make the mistake of regarding the Clintonistas as anything other than total professionals, 100% take no prisoners political operatives, capable of doing anything to advance their man. Look for this campaign to get very dirty very fast. "Leaks" will mysteriously appear in the media about Dean. Within weeks he will be seen as emotionally unstable, a person from a two bit state who is for giving guns to everyone, and so on.

Look at it this way: it's now Dean and Bush against the media. The media will get behind Clark all the way, he will be their guy, for a while. I question the premise of the Clark candidacy which seems to be that he is a general who would basically support the War in Iraq but handle the post war much differently. I don't think this will fly with the Dean people who may see that the Clintons are selling them out.. Their view may well be that Dean stood up when nobody else would; especially not the opportunist Clintons.

The media elite have been proven a paper tiger for fifty years. They hated Ike, loved Alger Hiss, hated Nixon, loved the Communists in Nicaragua, hated Ronnie, and so on. But "We the People" hate the media more than Saddam. Trust them less than any politician. Everyone knows the media lies. Clark's fate will be sealed if the Clinton's Hollywood pals come out of the closet for him.

The Clintonista Media Pimps may be a "dog who's huntin' days are done." But don't count on it.

O'Reilley sports watchers who caught the high school football team sodomizing show last night didn't get the entire story. Not only were broomsticks used against the boys but pine cones as well, that is why one required surgery. Everybody kept their mouths shut and refused to talk to police. School board did the right thing and cancelled the entire football season at the school. Links via Google News. So far as has been reported (3PM PDT) the kids still haven't "ratted out" anybody. Witnesses may also be charged with a crime. There is also a report of a coach SELLING booze to his high school GIRLS junior varsity soccer team. This link also on Badjocks.com.

Racism or fact? No one can deny the obvious fact that African Americans make up a large portion of college sports teams. And it follows that when a "crime" is committed by an athlete the perp is statistically likely to be Black. This item reported on sportsbybrooks when you link to his actual link is both racist and only partly factual:

KOMO-TV reports another University of Washington football player has been accused of rape.

For the second time this year, the school and the Sigma Chi fraternity have been sued by a woman who alleged she was raped by football player following an off-campus party at Sigma Chi.

This time the alleged attacker was reserve DB Eric Shyne. Earlier this year, a different 22-year-old woman sued the university and Sigma Chi, as well as former Washington Husky Jerramy Stevens, claiming Stevens raped her outside a Sigma Chi party in 2000.

The attorneys for the two women argue that the university should have known a football player was a danger to females, because "student athletes commit a disproportionate number of sexual assaults on university campuses."

So far so good. But link to the actual story and you will see that there is serious doubt as to the first accusation, that one of the "players" is not a player at all but a kick out, and this thing become racist as hell. Speaking as a man who was once falsely accused of attempted rape, it is frustrating as hell to say "I didn't do it", "Check my past", and all the rest when some bitch is crying her eyes out claiming you did it. In my case it all went away but I was damaged. Read the whole thing. "Another Washington Player Accused of Rape" is basically a lie.

A word about Dick Grasso, the deposed NYSE chief, that you may not read anywhere else. It has been talk for the last five or so years at brokerage firms that the NYSE should change its name to MGM, meaning Morgan (Stanley), Goldman (Sachs), Merrill (Lynch) because they were actually running the place for their own benefit from "upstairs" with the help of Mr. Grasso. You are going to see huge changes now.

First you will see "fills" that are better. This is the term used for the price you pay for a stock. You will find you get a price closer to what you want because the big three will no longer dominate trading. Next you will see the end of the century old "specialist" system. Those people will be replaced by electronic trading. Grasso was not a crook but he represented the "old" way of doing things. The NYSE is almost the last exchange in the world to still trade with paper and not bytes. Customers, except for those at MGM, will benefit as will the Exchange in the long run. You will see more volatility with electronic trading because nobody will be there to "interfere" with trading with the specialists gone.

"France is our enemy" trumpets the NYT's Tom Friedman and Andrew Sullivan links to it like this is some kind of news. Is there a person reading this piece right now who doesn't know that France is our enemy? Next case. The real ramification of France's actions against us must revolve around the EU itself, the EU currency, and how we are to handle this "enemy". We need to face reality and begin to disregard any and all trade agreements and act purely in our self interest. THAT is what we should be writing pieces about. And this just in: The Wall Street Journal reports that Putin is a KGB thug and Russia is not our friend. What a day for breaking insight. Next you'll read that the Portland Oregonian has reported that Saudi Arabia is Muslim.

An NBA guy who is not only a good guy but a REALLY good guy. Read all about it. Kevin Johnson has fought teachers unions especially in trying to open up a charter school on HIS DIME. A terrific story.

We have to bite the bullet and win

The Left Wing Democratic Party, literate, educated to a fault, and hateful of Bush and Republicans to their deepest souls are unconsciously returning to their anti-Civil War stances of a century and a half ago. Way back then, the "Peace Democrats" as they were called, did everything in their power to destroy Lincoln and the Republican Party, a party in power with a minority of the votes. They attacked the Emancipation Proclamation on every conceivable ground, and found constant justification for attacking the Republicans because of Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus; the right to a trial in civilian courts.

From the beginning of the Patriot Act, the Democratic Left has lied to the American Public about what it was about. They have attacked Attorney General Ashcroft as if habeas corpus had been suspended, as if everyone's library habits would be looked at, and as if the country was now under a dictatorship; the same charges the Party hurled at Lincoln in the Civil War. The only thing they lack, that they found during the Civil War, is a true martyr, a prominent figure wrongly accused. Back then they had a former Ohio Congressman named Vallandingham, who Lincoln's general in the Midwest arrested and jailed for making a speech attacking Lincoln and the Civil War. The uproar, both over the suspension of habeas corpus and the arrest of Vallandingham, caused Lincoln to back down and advanced the cause of Slavery and the Confederacy in the North. All this was happening as the War against the South was going very badly, in fact was almost lost. The casualties mounted and it appeared there was little chance for victory. The Democrats of that day tried to involve both Britain and France into mediation to stop the war, preserve slavery in the South, and kick the Republicans from office

The Bush Administration is light years away from Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus. Only the terrorists are denied trials in civilian courts. But the Democrats attack as if habeas corpus has been suspended, that "the fraudulently elected" Bush is a dictator, and that thousands of citizens have been denied trials. The Civil War Democrats wanted the Union to lose. They wanted no part of emancipation and regarded freed slaves as competition to working people in the border states.

Today, they want America to lose. They would return Iraq to a dictatorship in a nanosecond if they could, not caring if people have their tongues nailed to boards in just the same way as they didn't care if black people were in chains back in 1863. They view Iraq oil in the hands of anyone other than the French or UN as "bad".

They failed back in 1863 when the Union finally began to win major battles. The obvious sadness and anger that gripped the Democratic Party over our initial military victory in Iraq was obvious, from the contrived "reports from the front" by so-called analysts (the ex-colonels), to the CNN/New York Times "analysis" of defeat. Now they have their big chance as the terrorist/Baathist remnants mount a juvenile gang type of "war" against our troops. During 1862 and 1863 the Democrats actively campaigned to get both France and England to "intervene" in the Civil War and broker a "peace" that would separate North and South. They didn't care that a Slave South wanted to expand slavery to Mexico, the states of the Carribean, and West to the Pacific. Today they want France and Germany to broker a "solution" and the gangster controlled UN to "take control", not caring about the Iraqi civilian population nor about what a terrorist base in any Mid East country would eventually mean for the United States.

The Democrats have returned to their home. Let's deal with it. The only way to deal with it is Victory.

I saw the future of movies tonight. A 73 minute feature film made for $150. The entire film cost $150 is 73 minutes long, and it is amazing on every level. Titled "The First Time" and made by a guy named Sherwood Jones who used all digital techniques: camera, and disks plus the new editing program that allows free edit within any format. It's in color and corrected, has music, first rate sound, and plenty of dialogue and action. Just amazing for any of you thinking about making a movie, OPPORTUNITY IS THERE RIGHT NOW.

The actors are all pros who contributed their time; stars a guy who you will hear from in the future named Don Durrell and features 42 people you have seen here and there. The real star is the cost, which again, was $150. Unbelievable. I saw it at a special screening at the Los Angeles Film School. For those of you in LA I'll try to find out if you can see it again.

Jones wrote it, directed it, edited it and made it look easy.

YOU YOUNG GUYS CAN'T SAY YOU CAN'T MAKE A MOVIE ANY MORE BECAUSE THEY COST TOO MUCH. YOU CAN MAKE IT FOR NOTHING. I have to laugh at that clown John Boorman pissing and moaning that he can't make a movie for less than $50 million (Link via Roger L Simon). Don't listen to any of these old farts. They are full of shit. Jones hasn't a website but I'll talk to him in the next few days and he will have one.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS. THE FUTURE JUST HAPPENED. Keep in mind I am not evaluating this movie on the basis of "artistic merit"; the acting, writing, editing, or direction although Durrell is excellent. I am only saying that this off the charts cheap feature film is how movies can be done right now.

The complete corruption of the Reportorial Class is being laid out in all its disgusting details today on virtually every blog on the web. Sullivan, Reynolds, Kaus, etc., etc., etc., laying out details of this continuing saga by the most "respected" (by whom nobody says) media "journalists" of our time. The Stalinistas who are dumped out of journalism schools and get jobs from their Left Wing fellows simply continues. They hate Republicans, Conservatives in general in every country, America, and any effort to combat crime (see the killing of the foreign minister in Sweden). Only those of us who surf and read the web have any chance at being well informed. The Los Angeles Times differs from the rest of the media only in that they actually cover up stories, and has the local media do the same because the local media won't initiate any coverage, preferring to steal from print stories. More and more I am coming to believe that this is not correctable. Only FOX among the daily media reports anything else. And when Roger Ailes dies? Rupert Murdock?

Let's hear it for Europe:
Late Add: 4:50PM As a Huge Whooops, the Opinion Journal has this story in much longer form. It is at Best of the Web. which I don't get til around 4PM PDT. Apparently Mark Steyn had it before all that. Same observations: gutless Swedes.
Let's hear it for Europe Vol I the Foreign Minister of Sweden gets knocked off in a store while hundreds look on, and then the killer walks out blood dripping while nobody does anything to help. Get this: nobody helped the Foreign Minister and nobody made a move to detain the killer; hundreds of people just stood around.
Vol II The Swedes have rejected the Euro Currency and thrown both France and Germany into a serious tizzy. Too bad. Both countries have basically gone to war against the rest of Europe (and the U.S.) by deciding UNILATERALLY (the French? unilaterally? NO) to violate all their agreements regarding deficits. Short the ECU. It is going down the tubes because it has nothing to back it, other than the now useless full faith of Germany and France. The Brits will not approve it, nor will any of the countries now outside already committed few.
Vol III The Cancun trade talks. Yes they formally fuck Africa, and don't think for a minute that anything else could have happened. I have reprinted my post below about farming and subsidies from long ago. It is balanced and it is fair. No country is going to allow it's farming to be wiped out by foreign competition. Ever.
Vol IV Europe West, AKA Canada, wants flavored condoms for their prisoners in jails.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Just any old condoms won't do for prison inmates in one Canadian province. Last week, the Manitoba government requested bids on 40,000 fruit-flavored condoms for prisoners in jails and youth centers.

Link courtesy of fuckfrance.com.

Honestly now, do you really really care how many African farmers starve? Do you?

I know, feeding Africa is a topic du jour on 43rd street, CNN, and the other lying media circles; the H'wood Left, the LA Times, and Yale. But remember this: the first purpose of every government is to provide cheap food to their own people. Ever since some Egyptians almost killed a Pharaoh who failed to provide, all the following Pharaohs made dam sure they had seven years supply of grain on hand, just in case. Every government since then has tried to do the same, even the stupid Communists. Cheap food is job one.

But the hard nosed politics of food is one hell of a topic. The current party line on my side of the divide is that the EU is deliberately trying to capture the African market by starving part of the continent to death. They are more interested in subsidizing French farmers, arguably the most inefficient in the history of the planet after Soviet Collectivization. They forbid EU trading with any country that grows genetically engineered food, falsely claiming the food is unsafe, unhealthy, and a menace to adjoining countries. GE food could end starvation in Africa in a single growing season. All this is true and the U.S. attacks the EU farm subsidies. Taaa Daaaa.

So how about us, the good old capitalist USA? Do we subsidize farmers? In a nutshell the answer is, "Holy Shit!!". Forgetting the individual farmer, let's just look at the money. The government sent out 22 million farm subsidy checks just last year. Starting with sugar, subsidized at twenty cents a pound while the world price is between six and eight cents. The sugar subsidy cost you and me $1.4 billion per year in higher food costs. According to the GAO study, 33 sugar farmers have received more than $1 million each in government subsidies, with one Florida family receiving $65 million in one year alone. A positive labyrinth of business and farming interests is involved in keeping the sugar program in place. ADM and Carghill who are corn processors lead the way here because they need higher sugar prices in order to force candy, soft drink, and other users of sweeteners to use expensive corn syrup, and the only way they can do this is if sugar costs more than eighteen cents a pound. Get it? This agribusiness is also behind the unnecessary corn created gasoline additive called ethanol. Ethanol costs us around two or three cents per gallon of gas. Corn subsidies are a part of the sugar deal. And it's deeper than that but you get where I could go here.

Then we have cotton, a water sucking crop with almost no equal (only rice, sugar, and coffee suck up as much) now subsidized at seventy something cents a pound while the world price is hovering around fifty cents. You have to all the way back to 1998 to see cotton briefly sell at seventy cents or higher, meaning we are guaranteeing farmers the highest price in recent history for growing it and tossing it on the world market at fifty cents. Now here's the boring capitalistic data. Hold your nose. The top 10 percent of cotton farmers got 73 percent of the handouts of $5.3 billion of total payments from 1996 through 2001. These cotton producers received an average payment over this time period of $286,007, an average of just over 55K per. However, hold your breath here, the top 1 percent, which only represents 1,858 recipients, collected nearly 25 percent of total payments of $1.7 billion with an average payment of $913,478, that's more than $120,000 per year, guaranteed. Worse, (if you need worse) this subsidy is also destroying cotton farming in Africa because those poor dopes have to sell their cotton at world market prices which we depress even further by dumping ours. Every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230. The total cotton subsidy is three times higher than the entire USAID budget for Africa's 500 million people. Capitalist enough for you?

Other crops like rice, soybeans and wheat get plenty through farmer co-ops. The data is only available for the Clinton years which shows five out of the top ten subsidies went to Arkansas farming co-operatives.. Number one was Riceland Foods in Stuttgart AR who picked up a nifty $222 million, however $220,821,863 of the total came in the last two years of the Clinton administration. Riceland is followed by Producers Ricemill also in Stuttgart that only pocketed around $70 million. Why Arkansas? It just so happens that these farmer co-ops are there. I think.

But these U.S. subsidies go even deeper, if that is possible. Farms are also owned by prison systems, jails, cities, and hospitals. They get paid off too. Jails? Yes. Cities? Yes. Why? Well they just do, they have political clout and they want more in handouts. So they get them. Haven't you ever heard of Georgia Correctional corn? Sing Sing wheat?

How about the farmer? You know, that guy who gets up at 4AM and works in the hot sun til sunset every single day. What about him? He wakes one morning in April and looks out upon nothing. Just land. Planting is coming so he has to "work" the soil, meaning he tills his acres to prepare the ground, usually plowing under a legume crop that fertilizes the soil. This costs money. Then he goes to the bank to borrow money for seed, fertilizer, and pesticide or herbicide. The bank will lend him the money IF he also buys crop insurance. This means if the weather destroys the crop the bank will be paid. The farmer will not be paid if there is no crop to deliver to the government. Now let's look at cotton. He will get 72 cents per pound IF there is a per pound to harvest. Too much rain, too little, too hot or too cold and there won't be enough per pounds to feed him and his family through the winter even at $2 per pound. The cotton farmer can't plant until the soil is the right temperature. Then he will seed it. During the growing season he has to weed it (more money), remove insects (more money), and be sure there is enough water (irrigation is more money). If things go right he harvests the cotton (more money). Rain, even one drop during pollination period of a single day will ruin the entire crop. So will not enough rain. A farm will average around 700 pounds per acre on a good year. It's the cost and grade that has to work out. 500 acres (average size of a cotton farm) may yield 350,000 pounds of cotton that cost the farmer at least $200,000 to grow not counting land taxes, maintenance on his equipment, and fields AND IF there were no weevils infesting the crop. IF the cotton grades well he may get around $.60 at current prices; much higher if bad weather hit other parts of the world or country; a hell of a lot lower if everybody in the world has a big crop. If he has to sell at market he will lose everything unless the market is at $.62 or higher. He has to pay interest on the loan to the bank and he is out the crop insurance. At sixty two cents times 350,000 he makes $17,000 out of which he has to support a family, maintain his farm, his home, etc. At the subsidized price of seventy two cents per pound he will make $52,000 before expenses. Keep in mind that a yield of 700 pounds per acre is on the very good side. If the yield is only 600 pounds per acre he is dead. It is a boom or bust existence for a farmer who works longer hours than any two men any of us know. The AVERAGE farmer is still getting screwed. He can grow other crops but cotton offers the best return if the weather is good. Without a subsidy the average cotton farmer doesn't farm, but neither does anyone else.

To sum up this state of things, every major country is subsidizing their agriculture, not a bad thing in and of itself. As I said at the beginning of this piece, the number one job of any government is to assure cheap food for their own people. The French Revolution was not caused by any yearning for democracy but because good old King Louie had refused to pay the farmers (barons and counts) a high enough price for their wheat so they refused to deliver wheat to Paris. Paris ran out of bread and Louie became toast. "Let them eat cake," still resonates today. Every country on the planet has to have cheap food or their governments are done.

Which means things ain't gunna change real soon no matter how many Africans who we really don't give a rats ass about die. Do you care? I mean really care enough to risk the day when we must have foreign food to exist because our own farmers can't possibly earn a living on $1 corn or fifty cent wheat? Think about that one.

Another polling failure, this time in Sweden where on the street polling predicted that the Euro currency would be approved by voters. I don't know if cell phones had anything to do with the failure, but clearly polling is becoming less accurate, not more, almost everywhere. I think "that's why they have elections" becomes more and more important.

Continuing the shameful Los Angeles Times coverups of stories, they have covered up gang killings near schools. This coverup includes all TV outlets as well. Whenever a news outlet lies, omits, or embellishes other news you can bet it runs through the entire paper. In My Opinion the cover up of gang killings of innocents is 100 percent racial: the killers are all black or Hispanic (Mexican) and nobody here will report ANYTHING that these two racist groups will dislike. The only reason for the reporting of the latest gang shootings at school called Taft, is that the school is located in the center of a white residential area and happened at one of the busiest intersections in the area. Thousands of well connected people were there, and hundreds more were picking up their kids, so the Los Angeles Times could not cover it up. Parents had internet, cell phones, and talk radio. There is another disgusting revelation of a coverup/manufactured photo story on Glenn Reynolds. More and more it looks like our entire media is involved in fabricating the news to favor racial groups: Blacks and Mexicans, and they create or hide news to favor the Democratic Left. What other conclusion can one draw?

The way to equality? Get rid of all private schools, ban all parents from helping their kids do homework or demanding extra study, and insist every parent become an alcoholic or drug addict

Abraham Lincoln defined the Civil War in his July 1861 address to Congress as follows:...."it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men----to lift artificial weights from all shoulders----to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all--to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life."

Who's writing your material Abe? Seinfeld? Abe, baby, get serious.. "Lift artificial weights from all shoulders?" Like how do public school kids compete against the millions of private school educated kids? Abe, sweetheart, the leading object is to give our own kids an edge. A leg up. Fuck everybody else.

".....And afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life?" What the hell was Abe smoking? Did Abe ever hear of the teachers unions? The school janitors getting a hundred grand per? The ACLU keeping gangsters in schools?

Abe thought the Civil War was fought for the reasons he stated. How far from these ideals have we strayed? And are those laudable goals a part of the actual human condition? In order to have Abe's goals obtain we'd have to get rid of all private schools, ban all parents from helping their kids do homework or demanding extra study, and insist every parent become an alcoholic or drug addict so that all kids start on the same foot.

Without taking back the schools from the teachers, ACLU, and the various "equality" hustlers the "unfettered start" is impossible. Right now kids in public schools are being taught how bad our country is, how awful white people are, and once in a while how to read. The children of the wealthy or upper middle class have the "unfettered start". The rest want entitlements and think they deserve them. Abe would get lots of jeers from the Democratic Left these days.

Making money on the hurricane; and the UAW vs auto makers--- Construction will boom, employment will soar in those businesses, lumber futures, appliances, etc. because homes will have to be rebuilt. Roads and bridges will have to be repaired. Crops left in the ground will be toast, but in that part of the country the only crop left in the ground is pot. UAW Auto makers are meeting now with both sides ignoring the obvious: American cars cost too much due to the insane labor benefit packages. Ford and GM have a $1,700 worth of benefits on each car; Toyota has just $200. Unless this is fixed, and there is no way these unions will fix this, the American car manufacturing business may cease to exist. The question for the past ten years is still out there: can any company with a UAW contract make money? GM has an advantage over Ford because of their product mix but will Toyota, Honda, and Mazda stay out of the truck business? Right now trucks carry all U.S. companies. They only stay in the car business with huge rebates.

Conspicuous Consumption or Athletic Abuse? Whatever, go here for a photo of the Oregon Ducks locker room. Cost? $15 million. FOR A LOCKER ROOM. Link courtesy of Fucked Sports.com Picture doesn't show what "locker room" really contains:

Three 60-inch plasma TVs — two of which are rigged for Xbox games — at a cost of $15,000 each;Each locker has its own ventilation system , outlets for video games and the Internet, as well as a security system activated by a code that includes a player's uniform number and a scan of his thumbprint.

My reaction? Michigan, who the pampered Ducks play next weekend, by four touchdowns and a Playstation II.

NYSE's Grasso gets $140 mil + and people are pissed...... They think a regulator shouldn't be paid that much. True. A regulator who gets $140 mil per year is going to protect his cushy job and is likely to let the big fee payers slide. On the other hand if you pay a regulator $7.50 per hour minimum wage you are going to have one pissed off envious dude who will bust everybody who makes $7.51 cents an hour and up. Somewhere between $140 mil per year and $7.50 per hour there is a happy medium. Isn't there? We have to have a wage high enough to immunize a person from bribes, but not $140 mil.

Easily the most fun read on the web is Sports by Brooks. Even a casual fan dropping by once per week will read the entire page. Hot chicks, funny stories, and good sports. Where else would you find stuff like

The FT. LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL reports Don King is now calling himself "a black Bob Hope," and is working on "staging a boxing exhibition and entertainment show featuring singer Michael Jackson and dancing girls" for troops in Iraq.

Then go HERE for a picture of a sports reporter featured on Brook's site. And for the latest in coaches having sex with cheerleaders, athletes on the prowl for weed and so on, Bad Jocks is your trip. Try their "Drunken Babe of the Week

BadJocks Drunken Babe of the Week - Danielle Stanage, 22, was arrested for drunk driving after she stole a golf cart from a local course that still had TWO SETS OF CLUBS IN THE BACK and drove erratically along several country roads before pulling into a driveway and passing out.

Picture is on site. And their BadJocks Exclusive, titled: Michigan State University's Women's Soccer Team Turns Freshman Players Into Giant Tampons----I mean, how can you pass it up????

Nothing much has changed since last week. Unemployment becomes a greater worry by the month and sooner or later if this doesn't improve the market will collapse. See my cost per hire post below where I had to use data from 1999 because it was the latest available to me. The costs are higher now. These insane costs are hurting the recovery. Then there is Mexifornia, a separate world now. The state will now pay the college costs of every illegal alien in the state at God only knows what costs. Their bonds may have to be rated junk status on the road to a diliberate default by the Left Wing Mexican government there. If this should happen, the cost of borrowing for all states running a deficit will soar, further hurting any recovery. You cannot afford to trade with any future past today. If you get a sell signal, sell with the knowledge you may buy tomorrow. Your time horizons right now need to be day to day. California, the fifth largest economy in the world, has gone Mexican and their people owe money to banks in fifty states and ten countries. Keep your eye on the ball. Volume is still a slight worry. Interest rates are still very low, the Fed is pumping money into the economy so the cap costs are low. The huge deficit will come back to haunt us some day.

And if you think speculation is still rampant in this market, check this out. Want a deal? We pay interest of, get ready for this, .0057% (point zero zero five seven percent). Would you buy this stock? To prove that there is a sucker born every minute, Microsoft stock rose yesterday to over $28 on the fantastic news that they were doubling their dividend to $.16 per share (sixteen cents per share). Wall Street, home of the genius class. No thanks. Why buy this piece of shit? In the hope they will raise their payout to .0059%? The Mafia would give you a better deal. I guess you can justify this as "Waiting for Uncle Billy to die so you can Inherit his Money" kind of a buy. The landscape is filled with shit like this, still.

One Day at a Time, as they say. Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket. BTW, if you are thinking of buying the energy complex for winter check my post first: Government Doesn't Always Suck dot com.

Andrew Sullivan linked to a WaPo article whining about the evils of Pakistan and asking why we are involved with them. Jesus, this is what passes for thought these days? We got into bed with the Devil against Afghanistan because nobody else would help us. We HAD to bust the Taliban in Afghanistan. Like Duh. I guess everybody knows this but the intelligentsia.

Believe it, the California Democrats just passed this bill. Illegals will have their college educations paid for by the state. If you are thinking of moving here, don't. If you are buying a house here don't. Get out of town as fast as you can. Mexifornia? No. North Tiajuana. This is Bustamente, MEChA, and the worst welfare state you can imagine. These people are Mexicans, their culture has no similarity with our own. They are basically "Mestisos", the indian tribes people of Mexico who are anti-Christian in their own country; if you really look at Mexico today you will find the tribes supposedly exterminated by Cortez are now bigger than they ever were. These tribes now control the state of California thanks to George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Unemployment and why large corporations don't hire unless they are absolutely positive they will keep them. The cost per hire in a corporation of 10,000 to 25,000 is in excess of $15,000 per hire. Hire 150 people and you are out of pocket before you start two and a half million dollars. That is why the smaller companies lead a recovery even though their cost per hire is almost $12,000. Why so much? Regulations, benefits, training costs; benefits alone run 30% of salary added on; then there are the threats of law suits, women are a law suit waiting to happen, all kinds of weird discrimination suits and so on act to stop the hiring process til it is absolutely necessary to hire. That is why the independent contractors have become so common. We may be seeing employment growth through the 193,000 growth in this area for the last jobs report. And WORKERS COMPENSATION costs in a state like California can add $2,000 to the cost of a hire. That is why we may see a "jobless recovery" for a few more months yet.

BTW a small company hiring a low skill worker is out about $1,000; in a high worker comp fee state like California they will be out more.

The government doesn't suck dot com in lots of areas. One of them is the U.S. Weather Service which has become in the past four years the best forecaster in the world. They lean heavily on computer generated data over the past century, satellite systems, and ground/sea electronic sensors. The USWS through NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) are calling for a "normal" winter. This means that there will be enough heating oil but a slight shortage of natural gas. Keep in mind that a two or three day cold snap is not a weather spike, but a two to three week snap is. If we get a spike we'll have problems. BTW the NWS called for a pretty bad hurricane season, and they have been right about that even though most land falls have been mild.

Gasoline from energy expert Phil Flynn at Alaron. Keep in mind that he solicits business and he is telling customers to go long gasoline futures. None the less he is very good and this commentary will give you an idea of what is "wrong" out there with gasoline prices.

......"Do we have ghosts or gougers? Ever since the Clinton Administration enacted new regulations for cleaner burning fuel for the summer driving months, price spikes have been very common for all the differing special blends. And this year is no different with a call for an investigation when prices spiked again during the Labor Day holiday period. Where is this legendary gas gouger? He can't be found on any corner and we do our country a disservice always looking for this phantom gouger. Is big oil the evil menace? Many love to point fingers of blame at them. We really need a bad guy for this problem. But by diverting the public attention to big oil we neglect the real problem and the politicians know it. There are very real and serious energy troubles in the US and if our economy is to continue to grow and remain strong, these problems must seriously be addressed and solved. Gasoline demand has been rising and will continue to and we are running at or near all time demand numbers. To assume energy demand around the globe will ever decrease is wrong headed. Here in the US our ability to produce gasoline has not increased and there have been no new refineries built here in over 20 years. Yet in all those 20 years demand has done nothing but go up. Traditionally refineries must run at 75% of capacity to keep up but now they must run at 90%. We understand how desperate the situation is if even one refinery goes down.

Many believe the oil companies are the gougers because if prices are going up so are their profits. If they have all these profits, build more refineries! They'd like to! A big problem with building more is government regulation! Because of government rules, it's nearly impossible to build one anymore. It could run in to the billions of dollars to build a refinery these days even if government regulations could be satisfied. For an oil company to have that kind of money they'd need to triple their earnings to even begin to make it possible. Who wants to pay the price per gallon it would take to make it possible to build new refineries? Imagine the type of investigation that would cause!

Another reason prices are so high is many different and constantly changing government mandated types of gas that are out there. Nearly every state has it's own special blend that the government, by law, says must be sold during the summer and these blends are constantly changing. The winter blend is entirely different and refiners have to shut down and reconfigure their refineries to produce these different blends. All these blends, because of constant changes, can not be stored so inventory levels can never really be built up. And we've seen first hand what even one disruption can do to inventory levels and therefore prices. So who are the real gougers? The extreme environmentalists and the politicians that represent them. We'll need to face some hard facts in this country are continue down this uncertain and expensive energy road......"

Phil knows his shit and this commentary is basically what all the big traders and experts are saying.

Jobless claims rise again to over 400,000. The markets cannot tolerate this continuing hard evidence that companies are NOT hiring. This is just more BAD NEWS.

The Journal does an interesting obit on perhaps the weirdest genius of the 20th century, the Nazi loving Leni Riefenstahl. It's very hard to admit that somebody who supported the things she supported was a fucking genius, but these things happen. She invented the documentary film. If you have an interest, see the documentary on her life called "The Wonderful, Horrible Life Of Leni Riefenstahl" which starts out luring the audience into thinking you are seeing a feminist bullshit piece about women in movies but about 45 minutes into the movie you realize that this crazy old broad was still in love with Hitler. And I mean in love. Hey, Picasso was a prick with women, Ezra Pound was a fascist, and Brecht was a Communist. I guess we have to deal with this stuff. BTW many people believe that the Nurenberg Rally of 1934 was staged to accommodate her cameras and that it was not an "honest" documentary of an event. Whatever. She sure was good. Oh, and guess who was the first outside of Germany to praise her and give her an award for her Nazi movies? Was it Italy? (No, they were the second) Future ally Japan? Or could it have been that bastion of democracy and pro Jewish sentiment, France? You got it, even as far back as 1937 the Jew hating French gave "Triumph of the Will", her cinematic homage to Hitler and the Nazis, the Gold Medal in Paris. Gotta love them democracy loving French, don't cha? Hollywood snubbed her, mainly because so many in Hollywood were Jews who had escaped from Germany and knew the score.

Once again the polls are wrong AND the media is wrong Alabama tax hike falls 67-33 when the polls showed it losing 53-47 and every big paper in the state backed the tax. People supporting the tax outspent opponents $12 million to $4 million. The polls, which poll land lines only, miss all the cell phones and thus for the God Only Knows what time in the past couple of years, forecast inaccurately. The newspapers are just the LA Times and NY Times of The South, completely out of touch with their "readership", unless their readership is black; because only the black counties (other than 4) voted for the tax. The demographics are still out, but once again the people who pay no tax and are basically the recipients of ours "voted" to steal our money. BTW all the jerk off liberals from New York wrote stupid column upon stupid essay priasing the fact that the anti-tax movement was dead. Teachers (who else) were the major supporters figuring to steal as much of the tax as possible for themselves, as is usual everywhere.l

After nine days without a combat fatality we had one yesterday.

Observations on the anniversary of 9/11 I have a really tough time feeling sorry for a bunch of people who have collected millions and millions of dollars in donations from us who are now going to sue the airlines, and probably break them, and the city of New York for even more money. I just don't feel sorry for them any more. Shit happens. Period. It could happen to any of us tomorrow. Sorry, that's just the way I feel.

I still believe that we are at war and that this act was the final declaration of same and that we have to stamp out the states that sponsor terror. I don't believe that "victims" of this have the right to sue.

Welcome to the world of fake weights, fake birth certificates, cardboard pads, cheating parents, and cheating coaches


Maurice Clarett, arguably one of the top five backs in the country, will sue the NFL so he can be drafted "early"; a guy who has never played a full year of college ball because he's been hurt is now ready for the NFL where he'll be hurt again. He got into a beef with Ohio State before the Fiesta Bowl last New Year's Day over whether the university got his request to go to a friend's funeral and miss practice. This request was sent by computer, he says, by his mother and he. Then he committed a misdemeanor by lying about the amount of valuables and cash that was stolen from a car he was driving. Followed by the receipt of illegal cash and gifts. There are two full pages of additional "irregularities" against Clarett filed by the NCAA. And by the way, he cheated on a test because a teacher seeing he was failing the written test gave him unrecorded oral exam. This test was for a course in Black History or Black Studies.

What do we have? A possibly illiterate (his "mother" sent the request by computer and he couldn't pass a written test) young man attending college who steals whatever is available and lies when caught. He does this because he has been taught from his earliest playing days that he is special, the rules don't apply to him, and that mommy and coaches will always be there to bail him out.

Once again the ethics forming Youth Football season is starting in the LA area of Southern California. I only know about one league, but I assume it covers all of them. The Los Angeles Times blacks out all news of any impropriety in these leagues, going so far as to completely black out the riot at a Youth Football game last year, a riot that was video taped by a parent and shown on national TV. It's not just MEChA and good news about Iraq they black out.

Here's the League. Birth Certificates are not checked and many players are over age as reported by teachers who know them. Weights are faked before games with obviously large players weighed by either a "jump on jump off with one foot" style of weigh in or by just touching the pad with one foot. This is done by coaches. Back in the old days weigh ins were conducted by the referees away from the coaches and heavy kids had their jerseys taken from them. The corruption runs deeper. In the Pacific Youth League they have many teams in each division and there are "rules" that assure (ho ho) that teams with kids who have never played before will play teams who also have kids who have never played before. This is violated by coaches with connections who just switch teams. The uneven matches produce scores of 45-0 and worse. Injuries? Yes, but last year the worst was a broken ankle, one broken leg, and one concussion and heat exhaustion that required an ambulance and a doctor; these were in the games I saw. I don't know the body count from other games. Keep in mind that all parents, coaches, and players know about the cheating.

I am the father of a young kid who was told after his Youth Football career to come back during his sophomore year of High School and play quarterback again. He was told by coaches "not to worry" because they would weigh him in with a cardboard helmet and cardboard pads. These coaches were college grads and upper middle class. "It's only cheating if you get caught" is the slogan these kids are taught over and over again. You hear the stupid announcers at these college games say it all the time. That is the ethic. Clarett has been caught. Now he goes for the really big bucks in the NFL where rap sheets for really serious crimes are common.

Lots of luck Maurice. You'll need it.

Really listening to the Democrats last night: Sharpton is a clown and the support from Blacks is sad; like the entire race in this country can produce nothing but him. He is a walking talking lie of a man, endorsed by Black leadership. The question from a black so-called reporter to the candidates: "What is your favorite song?" tells more than I'd like to know about blacks in this country. Had I been there I'd have told her that it was a stupid question and people who expected an answer to it wanted a stupid president.

But what was really cloaking all the candidates was: "I don't know so I'll hit you with some sound bites". They have no purpose for this country. No purpose in the world, as if Terrorism is just going to go away if we rely on our pals the Germans and the French. They lack even one idea to help our economy (which is now rebounding at a 5% plus rate of growth). If you have ever been involved in sales you know that it is suicidal to knock your competition; you never get the sale when you do that. These are Democrats who won't get the sale. It's basic. The only thing they'd all DO is raise taxes and by implication spend the $87billion on welfare, "education", health care (socializing the health care system), and tax the wealthy more.

The problem is that both Lieberman and Kerry know better but neither has the cajones to stand up for what they believe in. I now have to agree with many other observers of the Democratic primary: they are pandering to their extreme Left and may lead the entire party over the cliff.

AND THEN THE QUESTION THEY HAD NO ANSWER FOR: What is our exit strategy? Today is meal day for Claudia Rosett, the lethal boa constrictor of the Right. Slithering out of the tree of reason for her bi-monthly meal she once again wraps herself around a particular liberal argument and squeezes the life out of it. It's quite a feast. On the war: (all emphasis is mine).

The answer is not pleasant. This war, in the most basic sense of a fight to defend our freedom, our society of liberty and justice, is far larger than Iraq, Afghanistan or even the entire Middle East. The real war here is the old human struggle of good versus evil, a war that is part of what we are, part of the long volatile history of mankind. Never has there been so much to celebrate; rarely has there been more peril. Among individuals, we cannot hope to eliminate entirely all cold and gloating killers, people such as al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, drunk on his dreams of destruction, threatening in recent weeks to launch "an attack that will make you forget Manhattan." There will always be someone who delights in terror and ruin, and seeks ways to inflict it. And as we all know, modern technology, along with its mighty blessings, offers arsenals so terrifying we can all have our moments of wishing to live forever suspended in that last spell of denial, the 10th of September.

That's real. That is what none of the Democrats and the "Black Caucus and their lackeys" fail to address. So we are left with people hurling insults. You don't win by knocking the other guy, you win by offering better solutions to problems. What would they DO in Iraq. What would they DO for the economy. All I heard was go to the French and Germans, raise taxes, and be nice to everybody. I still think Bush is vulnerable, but not to these guys.

Good news for those of us who support our actions in Iraq A result of a careful Zogby American Enterprise Institute poll available on line at the AEI Website. In short they (gasp, horror) like us, would rather have a government more or less like ours, and in general DO NOT WANT an Islamic state (my previous opinion is now proven wrong and those of you who think I'm a moron are now proven right, at least for today).

Natural Gas link a Canadian who writes about a complicated subject in easy to understand words. Very short piece and you will be fully informed. We are looking at serious natural gas shortages this winter and this will explain why LNG isn't available (right now the futures prices are over $5 so it would make it OK, but these prices are recent). As a bonus he also reports on the water content in Venezuelan oil that is causing high oil and gas prices. Read it, you'll be glad you did.

The outrageous anonymous Arab, Saudi, Palestinian financial endowment of the Edward Said Chair of Arab Studies inside the Federally Subsidized Middle East Department at Columbia University. There is no law the Left has to obey, no required disclosure they disclose, and no anti-American or Pro-Wahabi course that isn't taught there. No disagreement with professors is permitted. Check out the story and prepare to get pissed. Among the endowers is a foreign government. Don't look for this report in the New York Times, LA Times, or any TV media.

Another view of Iraq in the Weekly Standard that spells out something a little new. The article compares the Army and Marine occupation with the CPA, which is Paul Bremmer's centralized command structure of civilians and finds that Bremmer's centralized structure is the usual bureaucratic Washington crap. Yet this guy Bremmer is running around Washington D.C. shmoozing with all the usual liberal journalists too fucking lazy to get off their asses and actually go out there and report something; guys who are more than willing to be spoon fed their stories so they can get to the Hamptons before 6PM on Fridays. I just think that whatever we see on TV from the mouth of some aparatchik needs to be checked and re-checked before believing it. Link is courtesy of Glenn Reynolds TOO, although I get the same stuff. Long article, too long, but a good read.

Deficit spending by the Bush administration is just one more "classic" way of getting us out of recession. Hopefully Larry Kudlow is right about the 193,000 job growth figure inside the Jobs number. The deficit spending includes huge defense spending, and farm subsidies (which he has increased), more medical care (not a jobs generator), education (some new teachers), plenty of high tech and is as responsible as anything else for the latest "tech boom" in the market, an absolute ton into various areas of the "War on Terror" of which the Department of Transportation has spent billions, and so on. The major question is whether we can "grow ourselves out of this kind of deficit" or not. The only thing a Democratic Administration would have done differently is to spend on pork barrel stuff like highways, projects that take five years to get rolling and won't "quick fix" the economy. I think any president of either party if faced with the recession Bush faced would have ended up doing what he has done or lose the next election. More entitlement programs do not produce jobs. So while the usual suspects yell about the deficit nobody has come up with a better way (alternative way) to bail us out of recession; well many Democrats want to raise taxes but they haven't made the case that taking money out of the economy helps anybody.

Iraq oil pipeline blown again---As I said, the betting was three days between repair and it being blown again. This time it's not the main one. Links all over. Start HERE The pipeline will now be closed another FIVE WEEKS. Add this to the retail cost of gasoline.

Last week I noted the mysterious growth in the unemployment survey that found that the home survey showed a huge job increase. I said then that nobody could figure it out.

The household numbers show job growth of 193,000. What? This is because there are two surveys. The payroll (unemployment) is determined by phoning employers and asking the question. The household numbers are derived from calling households and asking. So which number is right? Are both right?

Larry Kudlow, who I respect enormously, has looked into the numbers and he reports that these are almost all new business start ups, and independent contractors. These are job creating forces. I haven't heard anybody with another explanation, other than that the survey is flat wrong (why this part of the survey is wrong and the other part right, they never say). I am still leery of the volume and Bush made the market feel better. Kudlow is bullish on the market, LONG TERM. He's very good but he called this bull at least six times before it started rolling. But he is much smarter than I am.

Finally a main stream publication outs MEChA---U.S. News does it. But the medai in California, including all the TV stations has blacked it out. Voters not on the web know nothing. Link via Glenn Reynolds. What disturbs me is that we have in California a news blackout every bit as pervasive as those in Nazi Germany and Commnunist Russia. In short, we have a completely corrupt media. This should be of concern to everyone everywhere. How much news are you getting? You owe it to yourselves to find out. Remember, most of your smaller papers just run articles from the New York Times or Los Angeles Times, if that is what you are getting you are getting nothing.

Some really cool stuff at the Chicago Boyz site right now. An artist who has been painting pictures of our guys in Baghdad. Cool. The artist, Mumford, has done lots of sketches about Baghdad life here with a commentary. Different because its not from a U.S. soldier.

Movies, as a business and as entertainment-- The $38 movie including date and parking is a reality. If you are married with children you are looking at $50 with a sitter. If you take three kids to see a kids movie it will be $50 including pop corn. This business is about to crash. I have seen the very last phony computerized endless fight scene, fake chase, and distorted graphic I ever want to see. I just saw "Open Range" which is an endlessly boring western with absolutely no suspense, plot twist, or fresh characters. In fact the only movies making money this year were the early release of Matrix Reloaded, and two kids movies. "Art Films" (the word "film" always tells you it will be boring) that are all Left Wing bullshit and predictable, "hot sex" lesbian, homosexual, or heterosexual naked fuck fests with nothing that cannot be better enjoyed at home viewing a porno, or so-called "documentary dramas" that are just set ups for a political lecture, are all that is being made. It could be that the form (movies) is exhausted, meaning there are no more stories to tell or ways to tell them. What is also glaringly obvious is that there are no more "Left or Liberal" stories to tell or ways to tell them. The only excitement on the horizon is Mel Gibson's "Passion" which I'm only going to see because all the usual suspects are telling me not to. Had there been no howl I doubt that anything about Jesus would have caused me to buy a ticket. The fiction novel is out of gas and non-fiction dominates my reading these days as well as the reading of everyone I know, probably because our knowledge of American History has been compromised by our teaching establishment and our knowledge of current affairs is similarly compromised by the media.

Anyway, look for the conglomerates who own movie companies to start unloading them.

Natural gas and heating oil look bad. If you live in the East and use heating oil you might want to actually go long heating oil futures if you have a decent broker. The shortfall in stocks is staggering and if the winter is even normal your heating bills are going to explode. We are short 9.5 million barrels in inventory right now. Natural gas is better but we are still short half a trillion cubic feet. Without a mild winter we will have problems. Retail gasoline is still over two dollars in SoCal (includes 36 cents of tax). Unleaded gas is up big in the futures markets this AM (9/8).

Weekly Market Commentary is HERE for those of you who couldn't log on to site over the weekend. Blogspot competence as usual.

Anti-American BIAS in media on display from CBS before millions at the U.S. Open yesterday. A disgraceful display by all commentators who over and over again shed pity on losing player Ferrero, calling him "exhausted and tired and worn out" from his "grueling match" from the day before implying that Roddick couldn't win on his own and that he'd cruised to the finals. It's Roddicks fault that he only lost three sets during the entire tournament, that he's won 19 consecutive matches - dropping just six sets -and that he had an advantage. Fact: Roddick is 21 and his opponent is 22. Each played "grueling" matches the days before. All was even. These media assholes couldn't stand the fact that a Horrible American was stomping a Holy Foreigner. Really sucked. I heard Imus say this AM that he'd have turned on the radio to hear the audio had he known it was broadcast. You saw and heard media bias in all its disgusting flower.

Bush speech delivered while the Raiders were playing the Titans. This meant that I switched back and forth through the first quarter like every other patriotic American and I may have missed some subtlties like "fuck the French" and "Saddam is Howard Dean's best friend" but I got the main points between plays. I thought it was just OK. I think he is a weak speaker. The bomb he left sitting on every American living room floor was 87 billion dollars. This is what the freeloading element in the Democratic Left , led by Ted Kennedy and others to be named later, wants for welfare, free legal help, free college education, free heroin, and all the rest. This crowd, estimated at 20 million, see every dime not directed toward their agenda as stolen FROM them. The speech will do nothing to quiet this gang. The rest of us may see that we have no choice, but once again we are fighting the fight for everyone else in the world and we should remember that when they start whining for food this winter, or anything else. France and Germany are our enemies, not our friends, allies, or anything else.

His main point, that Iraq is the center of terrorism, will be attacked by the Left because they will say Bush CREATED Iraq as the center of terrorism, that it wasn't the center before the war. They will still ask "Where are the WMDs?", something Bush didn't cover. And of course all of us are concerned about an "exit strategy". There is always the specter of a Muslim Islamic state being elected; a cinch formula for civil war.

Blogger, the method I use to post, and for you to read has been down again for the weekend and is still down Monday AM. A pathetic crew. I'm searching for other ways besides the Moveable Type, which has no customer service, as Bill Quick and others have found out to their chagrin.

SITE DISCOVERY; Dedicated to Military corruption. Here. Mainly a grunt blog but lots of stuff there. Did you know that Military lose parts of their pensions under all kinds of technicalities? For those of us who remember the "old" military with the jerk off officers, have no fear because those jerk offs are still there. Really good site.

For the small investor, 5-25K

Watch your stops, and if anything tighten them up. The things I watch show danger in the market. The worst is the volume, and secondly is the insane insider selling of stocks, the highest in at least a decade. You cannot ignore insider buying or selling because you won't be an insider for long if you are wrong. (See note at end)

Reasons? The economy is growing like crazy, so where are the jobs? There cannot be a "jobless" recovery except in the Left Wing brain. Consumers are buying stuff. Who is making the stuff? Why are people who are supposed to make the stuff we are buying being laid off? We are going to start hearing next week that it is U.S. tax policy favoring only the American rich that is growing the economies of China and India. That our profit hungry greedy capitalist corporations are "outsourcing" all manufacturing to foreign countries, particularly Asia. They will point to the "suspicious" rise in the Asian economies as proof. That is NOT proof. There is no hard data. But the Left never sleeps, and there is the possibility they are right.

This is serious stuff. Where are the jobs? You cannot afford to be a Lefty or a Righty with your investments. Pay attention to the data you are using, and as I've said many times I am a William O'Neil man and use his system exclusively, and that means you get out of markets STRICTLY on technicals (charts). You can always get back in. The name of this game is always to preserve capital, and profits are like chips on a poker table: they are yours. Profits are your capital. Keep them.

Another point: this is the first time in history we have tried to combat a recession while we are in a WORLD ECONOMY. The first time that everybody in the world owns corporations everywhere. There is a POSSIBLITY that "outsourcing" is why there is a jobless recovery, meanwhile stay the course.

Now some really interesting stuff. EU crops are a disaster with yields off twenty percent on average across the continent. Guess who has a cornucopia (French for shit load) of grains, hogs, cattle, and so on? I have lost faith in the Bush administration to play hardball with the French and Germans. I have not lost faith in our high tech farmers to play an eight man line. All of them have computers in their barns, all of them are in the futures markets, and they will close out their hedges and keep their grain for higher prices. As Russia (worst grain harvest since the 30s) squeezes our balls over energy we could let them starve. This is an opportunity to bring down energy prices for this winter. We can cut off grain to Russia unless they pump more oil. We can cut off grain to Germany and France unless they play ball on Iraq. My OPINION (and you don't trade on opinions ever), my opinion is that Bush is too gutless to use food as a weapon. Go HERE for a report in the English language that you can understand. Most of the stuff I have is in market gibberish and proprietary.

This is a golden opportunity to get GE grains to Africa and end starvation there. I think Bush doesn't have the stomach to do that either. IF you are a futures trader you are already long corn and you can get long wheat on Monday if the market doesn't gap up. If you are in stocks I told you here in July to buy things like ADM and Carghill if there were buying ops and you got out last Tuesday. You might look for a new opportunity, don't just buy them. We could easily see $3.50 corn and $4.50 wheat. Soybeans at $7 are a real possibility. Coffee is going up, the meats are going up but it's too late to chase them.. Low commodity prices were a part of the deflation fear; that fear is over.

Be careful, we could be in for a major correction. The market overall is fairly valued.

Note Insider activity is like the Commitment of Traders reports in the commodities markets. You always pay attention to what the Large Speculators are doing in commodities markets because you don't remain a Large Speculator for more than a week if you are wrong. I always tighten my stops if my trades are opposite the Large Specs. Same with Insider selling in stocks. Watch your ass.

I'm being called anti-Semitic on somebody's blog for suggesting my readers touch base with a MEChA site. Anytime you tell somebody about something different, something that might disturb preconceptions, you fall into some niche of anti-something. Quite frankly if you read MEChA stuff (and I think you should hit that aztlan.com site) you'll note that they hide their anti-white sentiments in a mostly anti-Semitic soup, followed by a healthy portion of anti-European mashed potatoes. But clever. Holocaust denial followed by a description of the camps and what was done; selecting only Jews among whites to go after and then really zeroing in on some bad stuff going on in a place like the Weisenthal Center. Their tactics seem to be to attack who you want to attack by finding something wrong with an individual or organization within a group thus smearing the whole group in a very subtle way.

We need to know what they are up to. There is very literate stuff there, it's not crude and obvious like the old time Nazis and KKK. It's more like the old time Communists, filling a lot of their stuff with good information. By reading it and "getting" their tactics we can handle it, but if we don't read it we get sandbagged. For example, if you get into a discussion with somebody and they raise the million dollar salaries at the Weisenthal Center as an example of something, you (a) can be ready and (b) become aware that this person just might be something other than what they pretend to be. I took The Forum, which is Werner Eerhardt's thing, and one of the things I really learned there was that it was always necessary to understand the other person's POV completely before getting into a debate with them; to absolutely know your competitor's product before selling your own; the same is true with political concepts. MEChA is very scary because they are so dam good.

Unemployment is down, but inside the numbers it is bad news. BUT (see below) The economy is growing like mad and producing absolutely no job growth according to the jobs report, in fact losing jobs. Why doesn't business hire? Because they are afraid. They won't hire til their backlog for orders gets so high that customers go somewhere else. This is where the rubber hits the road. If the economy grows at the rate the other numbers are showing and people remain out of work then the charge by the Democrats that all the tax cuts were for the rich will take hold. Because jobs are the only thing that matters and business thinks money is the only thing that matters, so as long as they can cruise along with a smaller work force they will do so.

This is not good news for Republicans, tax cutters, or low rates. Eventually, and I think next month, the lack of job growth will begin to bite this market. It will mean that all the policies that Bush has put into place, and they are classic policies, do not work and that Federal Spending for pork barrel projects is what does work. Period. Period. Period. There are 1.9 MILLION people who have been out of work 27 weeks. Now the BUT

The household numbers show job growth of 193,000. What? This is because there are two surveys. The payroll (unemployment) is determined by phoning employers and asking the question. The household numbers are derived from calling households and asking. So which number is right? Are both right? Unemployment is a lagging indicator, but how far can it lag?

Still not a good number. Watch the markets carefully because this number could really hit the market hard.

There is hope when J.P. Morgan looks at economic growth of 5.5% last half, BUT IT'S JOBS, STUPID. JOBS. And confiscatory taxes will be the result if big job growth doesn't follow corporate profits, which are soaring.

These numbers tell a story of a boom. There is a possibility that the market may sell off tomorrow on a very good jobs report. This is because everything is IN the market and decreasing unemployment would just verify the data. These numbers are so good that many economists are predicting a possible 7% growth rate for the fourth quarter, a virtual job creating machine. Intel reported they are astounded by their own sales, up 10%.

Best Overall Car Sales Since Oct 2001

Projected car sales of 19.1 million units This is incredible. Problem lies with GM and Ford; everybody else is making a killing. Big Q out there is still: Can anybody with a UAW contract make any money? The rest of the data:

Non mfg employment index up big
August new orders index up huge
Factory Orders up 1.6
Factory Orders,Ex-Defense up 1.9
Factory Orders,Ex-Trans up 2.1
Durable Goods Orders up 1.0
Non-Durable Goods Orders up 2.4
Machinery orders up 1.5
Computers and Electronics up 1.5
Factory Shipments up 2.5
CONSUMER GOODS UP A STAGGERING 3.7%

The road goes on forever and the party never ends BUT

OIL & ENERGY seem to change each day. New supply is ready to come on line out of the Atlantic basin and elsewhere and, coupled with rising capacity within OPEC, could exert severe downward pressure on prices. This means the poorer nations in OPEC like Nigeria cannot live for long with the reduced pumping. All cartels collapse eventually and this one, even with the addition of the Russians, may fail, again. BUT....AND THIS IS BAD

OPEC combining with the Russians for just this winter could wreck our recovery. OPEC will not increase production, preferring to keep oil prices above $30. This not only means high gasoline prices, which are not that big a deal to most of us, but ruiously high heating oil and natural gas prices. The natural gas problem is of our own creation because drilling should be going on right now but environmentalists have blocked it.

October crude is below $29 and cash OPEC is close to $27. Gasoline is down as well so there will be a little relief at the pump starting this weekend. However, the back months: November December etc. prices are way up. back months are now down. They are rising out in April. Natural gas is moving higher on all winter contracts starting with December, roughtly 2-1/2 times normal. And Bush is on vacation. Late add @1:30PDT API reports a slight build in crude and no change in gasoline stocks, mainly because bad weather curtailed Labor Day Weekend driving. Good for gasoline prices which are 2.03 low end in LA today (36 cent tax added here).

There is a trading opportunity here in the energy complex for traders

Watch what the White House says today because they get the unemployment data 24 hours before it is released.

Let us hope I am very discouraged about Iraq and what is going on. Whenever I feel this way I usually go back to something I've read before. Last night I reread a Lincoln biography. I picked up a few quotes:

"The pilots on our Western rivers steer from point to point as they call it ---- setting the course of the boat no farther than they can see; and that is all I propose to myself in this great problem."----
---Abraham Lincoln----

That was Lincoln's reply when asked what he had in mind for Reconstruction after the Civil War. I don't think Bush is Abraham Lincoln, although most Lincoln biographers state that Lincoln was the least prepared and least qualified man to ever become president, Bush is not showing leadership. And I'd point out Lincoln did not go on vacation for a month in the middle of the Civil War.

And Lincoln was also famous for the following, which he uttered again and again

"My policy is to have no policy"

This drove everybody around him nuts. Biographers opine that this "motto" of his allowed him to try again and again til something worked. Lincoln was very patient. He did not give up after one failure.

But that was Lincoln. We have Bush.

I'm a cynic A sad tale by one Barbara Woodman of Concord who told John Kerry how she was battling to educate her children after being laid off from a publishing company caused poor old John to cry. Like in boo hoo. WaPo link via Drudge.

I'd just like to check this broad out. It sounds too perfect. Too much like a set up. Washington Post is carrying it as is Rueters.

The Friday unemployment following all the up beat economic data might not be so big now. People will just think it's a matter of time. Even manufacturing is way up, but that might change because the dollar is on one of the all time tears in currency trading, up from 1.19 in March to 1.08 (ECU) today; the high was .86. This is because the European economies are in the toilet and everybody is looking for Uncle Sucker to bail them out. Don't forget this currency surge means that everybody who bought Euro Stocks is getting royally screwed and as they see the currency run up they are frantically selling their currency to buy dollars so they can jump into U.S. stocks.

Energy Iraq oil is now flowing with no fanfare and no announcement, probably because nobody wants to brag before the next pipeline blow up. This oil flows from the northern fields around Mosul to Turkey. The totally ruined and ancient infrastructure around Basra that our brilliant CIA failed to notice will keep Iraq production down for another three months. Gasoline prices "eased" to $2.09 all over LA this AM; second highest price over a sustained period of time ever. One station was selling at $2.07. Don't look for a big break anytime soon unless OPEC loosens up. However, the Labor Day horrid weather patterns cut down driving greatly which drove futures prices down twelve cents per gallon; look for that showing up at the pump very soon. This means supplies are now OK. However the good old Russians are cooking a deal with the Saudis to control oil prices and drill for natural gas; they are the numbers one and two producers. They couldn't cook this deal up if it weren't for our environmentalists killing natural gas drilling here. The upside here is that there is a lot of non-OPEC oil about to come on line (two to six months) and prices could get better; also the vaunted world economic recovery doesn't include Europe so that demand is gone from the market.

CA election of interest only to Californians a piece in NRO today about the effects of absentee ballots on the outcome. Take a read.

Bush on saving manufacturing jobs It's real easy for those of us who earn our livings in offices or on the highway of ideas to look down our noses at the needs of the people who earn their livings at the sweat jobs in steel mills, auto plants, making the things we use like washing machines and refrigerators. I have a much different take than most of the blog and intellectual community and it is this: it is the responsibility of our government and our society to have as many ways to earn a GOOD living as possible. The guys on the sweat lines were the guys I went to high school with, served in the armed forces with, and even went to jail with one time (no biggie, but I met some interesting people).

I have often felt that we need an international "Board of Equalization" to insure that everyone operates on the same playing field. This can't happen, and the loss of most smoke stack jobs is directly caused by our environmental laws, laws that cleaned up Pittsburgh (so bad you cannot imagine what it was like), LA (Pittsburgh with movie stars), and Houston, to name just a few. Keep in mind the river in Cleveland actually caught on fire one time, the Hudson had no fish south of West Point, and the Great Lakes now a sport fishing Mecca had no fish at all. So these laws have helped many of us while destroying lives of many. Third World countries don't give a shit about the environment, they care about feeding their populations, as we did in the early 1900's. What Bush is trying to do is worthy of respect and I hope he finds a way to succeed in this. I think that a tool and die maker has as much of a right to earn a living as some PhD. at a TAX SUPPORTED university; in fact more of a right.

Andrew Sullivan is back from vacation and he has a very good series of observations on Bush and the War. He is not as disenchanted with Bush as I am, but even he is sensing a lack of leadership there. Read him today, he's good.

If you still think Bush is anything but a horrible president just check out the reports in the Washington Post Reuters, and a ton of other reports regarding the fact that we will only have 45,000 troops left to guard Iraq after March. I have been saying for months that Bush was in trouble and this really nails it. This is so serious that you can't be happy. This is a bad administration and has been for years: Minetta at Trans, The CIA, The FBI, Everybody that has anything to do with immigration; the SEC (finally changed after scandal); etc., etc., etc. The only one who was fired was the general who correctly called that at least 250,000 troops would be needed in post war Iraq. Bush may not win re-nomination. Talk about Dean leading the Democrats over the cliff; I think Bush is leading the Republican Party over with the terrible deficit and now these reports. Google News has more but they all say the same thing.

Get ready for a shock. This is a recommendation to read some stuff from a MEChA site I went to the site called Aztlan dot net and read many of their articles. Yes, they don't like Jews. They don't like the current Democratic Party and a ton of corrupt officials of same. They are angry at Clinton and Pardongate, and some white vigilante who shot up a town in AZ. (Link supplied by Roger L Simon in the comments section, but I drew far different conclusions from reading it than Simon does)

As an actor I worked part time at the B'Nai Brith selling subs to their papers. I want to tell you that they are as corrupt as can be. The overt racism toward non-Jews, their sales pitches to non-Jews to advertise (telling them that Jews would not buy from them if they didn't advertise), and the huge commissions earned by all for a newspaper with very limited circulation was disgusting. This is not printed in the LA Times.

"Aztlan dot net" exposes the disgusting salary structure at the Simon Wiesenthal Center where one family pulls down over a million dollars in "salaries" in a non-profit corporation. This should be of concern to every Jew and gentile. This is also not in the LA Times. They also cover state of California contributions to this center; keep in mind Jews are in the forefront of the separation of Church and State but have no problem taking money from same; makes you think it might be separation of Christian Church and state is all they are really interested in.
.

Arnold Schwarzenegger contributed $750,000 to the Wiesenthal Center and then asked them to "investigate" his father. You have to be kidding.

Schwarsenegger connection to Nazi party is only worth examining if you consider the "friendship" between he and Austrian Kurt Waldheim, inviting him to his wedding AFTER it became public knowledge that Waldheim was a Nazi. On that site, NOT in the LA Times.

My brother in law used to work for J Walter Thompson selling advertising on a low level before hitting the big time. The section on the "Kosher Nostra" at Aztlan is not far off from what he told me about the ads for Kosher foods in New York City.

They also hit some good points regarding many sell outs by people like Cisneros and the scumbag mayoral candidate for LA, Villagarosa.

Yes, they are racist, meaning they select targets on a racial basis or what they feel is a policy that hurts Mexicans. They also tell a lot of truth that a hell of a lot of us don't want to deal with. No matter what our associations there is a lot of corruption; the Catholic Church being the most stunning and horrifying of recent note. The business scandals being another.

I think http://aztlan.net/ should be read by a lot of us at least once.

CA election joke of the day Under California election law, virtually anybody can run for governor, except, of course, smokers.
-- Dave Barry

CA joke of the day: President Bush is supporting Arnold, but a lot of Republicans are not, because he is actually quite liberal. Karl Rove said if his father wasn't a Nazi, he wouldn't have any credibility with conservatives at all. -- Bill Maher--- BTW under the Arnold opinon, we have the absolutely intellectually honest Bill Kristol, a Libertarian and editor of Weekly Standard. He shut down the entire panel at "FOX News Sunday" yesterday when he said: "Schwarzenegger is a body builder and an actor. He has no qualification at all to be governor." All grinned, said nothing, and Tony Snow moved on to Iraq. Then we have the ultimate Dave Letterman POV: "Bustamente for governor of California? That's insane. He hasn't even done ONE movie."

Always check on customer service before doing anything having to do with computers. Bill Quick has been completely down for several days because his system, one that uses a program called "Moveable Type", went down. I was going to switch to Moveable Type myself but when I tried to get their "customer service" or anything resembling same I either got no response at all or an email of gibberish. I stopped all consideration. Those of us who use Symantech get emails referring us to sites that tell us nothing too. Bad or non customer service should always be a warning. Bill says he may never have his entire site back up. He will still be current and is on line again now.

Health: 'During the doctors' strike in the 1970s, death rates fell' This from a UK report out of The Telgraph.

It is a standing joke among cardiologists that death rates fall during their conferences because fewer of them are out there attempting to cure moribund patients by doing dangerous surgery. The treatment can be worse than the disease.

Interesting stats.

"If you gave these blacks a country to run, they would run it down the tubes," Schwarzenegger allegedly said. This via Drudge. Well I've said exactly the same thing like 500 times. So is this a racist remark or a factual remark? Name one successful Black country? How about a successful Black run city in this country? Washington D.C. (the vote for convicted dope dealers and crooks) and New York under Dinkins? Racist or factual? Will it hurt Schwarzenegger? Blacks won't vote Republican anyway and it might pick him up some Hispanic votes.

Before you get carried away here: Atlanta under Andrew Young was supposedly run well. Los Angeles under Tom Bradley did fine for sixteen years and Detroit was a white disaster long before any black arrived. Ditto Cleveland. It can be said here that whites fucked up places so bad it's insane and nobody is saying "turn whites loose on a place and it will go right down the tubes". So while the remark may be racist, applied to countries it is the truth.