7/13/2003

Zogby has moved. His new URL is: http://www.zogbyblog.com/.

PETA IS NOT A JOKE

Q: is it easier to build a bridge in four years or blow it apart in one day with dynamite charges?
Q: Is it easier to destroy Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonalds, businesses that have taken twenty years to build, or build them?

PETA's purpose is to destroy American business. The latest NRO piece on the subject spells out that their current target is Kentucky Fried Chicken and that animal welfare is the least of their concerns. Most of these Left/Liberal orgs with good sounding names are really Communist Fronts right out of Stalin's playbook.

These people hate capitalism. Capitalism, the only system that has provided good living standards for people, is what they want to destroy. In its place they want a government directed economy.

Why? Simple envy. They resent every successful business person on the planet and want to destroy these people, their companies, and the jobs within the companies. Everybody better pay attention to the real goals of these Left groups. They HATE, and hate is the only thing that lasts.

They ain't patriotic. They don't love America. And they ain't kidding.

7/12/2003

MARKETS AND ECONOMY

Yippie Ki Aye Kay Ayyy. The EU is practicing "Cowboy Economics"

It's a bull market in the USA. French and Germans are cutting taxes. Don't you just love it?. This means consumers there will have more money to spend and they will spend a little of it on American goods, so it's good for OUR economy as well as theirs. A strong Euro and a weak dollar play right into this.

EU Central Bank is in a pissing contest over interest rates with the EU over budget deficits (like Bush, they have to spend their way out of an economic slump) and won't cut rates further, already very low at 2%. Don't sweat what they do. Everyone over there is upset at the high Euro/low dollar thinking we finessed them by "pretending" we wanted a strong dollar when we really wanted, and got ,a cheap one. Like they can't read charts over there?

ECONOMY

Let's play "Good Cop-Bad Cop"

GOOD COP: The new workers entering the jobless are people who had dropped out and now feel better about the economy and are dropping back in, thereby inflating the numbers
BAD COP: Yeah, like a couple of million jobs have gone bye bye and now people are feeling good? Highest rate of unemployment for blacks since 1983. "Happy Days are Here Again?"
GOOD COP: Best news of the week is that real interest rates are rising which means that demand for money is showing up and business is expanding. Great news.
BAD COP: Yeah, homes will cost more. Great news for the rich, bad news for everyone else especially the poor slobs who build homes and may lose their jobs because housing prices will rise.
GOOD COP: Stock market, the leading indicator, is up roughly 10% on the year.
BAD COP: Waitresses, carpenters, and sweat people are jumping up and down for joy while they wait in the unemployment lines over that.
GOOD COP: Mergers are way up. This cuts down on the over capacity that has been plaguing the markets for the past three years.
BAD COP: Tell me how many truck drivers are going to lose their jobs over the merging of those two huge trucking behemoths. Why is it good news when sweat guys lose their jobs and bad news when PhDs, college professors, and executives lose theirs? Mergers cost jobs.
GOOD COP: Ad rates are rising. Radio is virtually sold out as is TV. We are seeing almost all ad slots filled by quality ads at high rates.
BAD COP: You're telling me the rising ad rates for "Sluts in New York" and "Gold Digging Slime Bitches in Hollywood" is good for the economy? Or is it just good for prostitutes?
GOOD COP: For the first time in more than two years a survey of business executives shows that seventy percent are positive on the economy and it is business spending that creates a recovery.
BAD COP: The same bunch of assholes who got us into this mess with their bullshit accounting, insane acquisitions and personal greed are now optimistic? This is "Good News"? For who exactly?
GOOD COP: Business profits are rising, commodity prices are rising, and producers can at last raise some prices. This is the best news of all.
BAD COP: Just what everybody is dying for: higher prices for everything and wage cuts for everybody.

BOTTOM LINE: Until unemployment starts to go down, we ain't got no recovery that means anything at all. This figure MUST start falling or the stock market will fall. Watch this stuff. Most of all keep your discipline. Get out of markets on your rules. This unemployment is VERY BAD news. Don't fall for the Cavuto/Cramer/everybody else bullshit about the stock market being a leading indicator. Lagging indicators can be the real numbers. Stay disciplined.

Los Angeles Sports

Colorado State Prison to Petition NBA for Franchise

Kobe Bryant just the first player on roster. More to come say prison officials. Lakers may pick up two former serial killers to make up for Bryant loss.......
Developing................

BTW, while on trivia; I just heard a song that was numbers one THRU five on the Hit Parade in 1946. Sinatra had the number two recording of the song.; Frankie Carle had the number one. ITEM #2: Atkins dieters and lactic acid; see the Lance Armstrong piece.

7/11/2003

EU "PLEASE DON'T FIGHT"ER PLANE IS NOW READY

No, it's not called The Wiener, The Whiner, or even the The Wanker.

It's called The Typhoon and it is now ready to be built. 28, that's twenty eight, of these awesome dreadnaughts will be in the hands of the gutless Germans, the cowardly French, and some of the other EU Weenie Patrol. We assume that twenty eight planes will protect Europe from sneak attacks from Angola, Mexico, and the ever menacing Tasmanians. Conveniently there won't be enough planes to do any real fighting where the real fighting may have to be done, against a nuclear Iran or North Korea.

The Welfare State stands ready to.....um....well....shit, I guess they'll stand ready to sell out.

BTW, the French troops in The Congo are exactly where I said they'd be in my post. They are sitting ducks locked in a compound in Bunia where they can be pounded with impunity. This is a typical UN deal and we are nuts to ever be involved with any UN "Peace Keeping" that has as it's only consequence the targeting of the "visiting" troops.

As for Liberia, don't let the cheering crowds fool you. They look to Uncle Sucker to feed them, clothe them, and take care of them from Day One and in one day. It's Magic Time, like in "Poof- --- Everything is OK" magic. If they ain't fat and happy on the second day of occupation they will turn their guns on us, and don't doubt it for a minute.

Suspect anything liberals support. This Liberia deal will make Mogadishu look like a camera rehersal for a Bruckheimer movie.

THE REASON LIBERTARIANISM IS BULLSHIT

This LINK to a so-called "Declaration" for Libertarians will clue you in to the "off in the clouds" philosophical bullshit espoused by this "movement" . NOBODY cares about this stuff except elites locked inside office buildings "thinking".

When you link to this pretentious literary output, touted as a major story by Glenn Reynolds, ask yourself if a person who is struggling, a poor person, a truck driver, welder, mechanic, factory worker, farmer, or anyone living a real life can relate to this crap. What we all need is a better economic life RIGHT NOW and anybody who wants to succeed in democratic politics in any country better address the RIGHT NOW or they will lose.

All politics is emotional. You have to hit the "gut". Welfare, free drugs, bad unions, criminal corporations, the price of gasoline, and so on is what counts. The Republicans need to be very careful about linking up with these esoteric omphilosophizers (don't look it up, means the study of one's own navel) on the Right.

LEFT MEDIA'S BOGUS ATTACK ON OCCUPATION

Check out a book by Max Boot called: "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power." Mr. Boot details some other occupations and what happened. I have written many times here that this occupation bears no similarity to either Germany or Japan after WWII, and not even the faintest resemblance to Viet Nam.

Mr. Boot points out that we lost one soldier per day during the occupation of Austria after WWII, this is primarily because young Nazis and Communists (supported by Stalin) were running wild, while the young had been virtually wiped off the face of the earth in both Germany and Japan.

The real similar situation is our occupation of the Philippines at the turn of the last century. There, a powerful but isolated guerilla force fought us tooth and nail. We beat them and beat them badly by using their own tactics backed by superior force. He points out that we are not using Special Forces in Iraq, and implies that it is the main army and their love affair with big weapons, big tanks (think that huge cannon they fought tooth and nail for), and large cumbersome (and needlessly exposed) fighting groups.

He has a much too short piece in the Daily Standard, but the book should be a must read for those of us really fed up with the Left Media attack on the occupation of Iraq. Also be sure to read Victor Davis Hanson's latest piece in NRO. AND THEN YOU ABSOLUTIELY MUST LINK HERE courtesy of Glenn Reynolds who caught a major story. Late Add, Sat AM Story is now the number two news item on FOX

7/10/2003

HOLLYWOOD LEFT BUSTS UNIONS, AGAIN

Media focus on homo killing while the Left rapes their own workers

It's Canada. Gathering place for the Union Busting Hollywood Left. The "story" in all media is the gory homosexual killing surrounding the movie set wherein somebody carved up his male lover into ten pieces, left the bloody pieces lying around the Winnipeg hotel bedroom tothether with a $4,000 necklace Left Wing actress Susan Sarandon had been wearing on the set. The stars of this epic include J. Lo and Richard Gere who is another Hollywood Lefty.

What nobody mentions is that these phony scumbags are shooting a movie in Canada in order to screw the Hollywood Craft Unions out of their wages: Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, and Jennifer Lopez are shooting a Miramax movie. Miramax is owned by super liberal Democrat Harvey Weinstein. This super lib is the prime screwer of the American Workers and the American tax payers.

These Left Wing scum are only Left Wing with somebody else's business, money, or morality.

Where is the liberal left labor movement? Lying down like the dogs they really are refusing to defend their own members from this rape of their benefits, earning capacities, and lives. It's fitting that these Left Wing scum pick our friend Canada to throw their money at. The movie is bugeted at $35 million, which means that around $25 million is being given to the Canadian Labor movement, taxes to the U.S. are being dodged, and it's all OK with the Left.

The only reporting about this "movie shoot" will revolve around the gory homosexual slaying. I venture to opine that the cut up body is metaphor for the AFL-CIO, the union busting Screen Actors Guild (for the ten thousandth time), and the greedy Hollywood Left.

Just my focus, and I wish it was somebody else's too.

7/08/2003

Bill Quick is Back

And the debates are lively as ever. HERE

Markets

Last Thursday after the close I ran this post telling those of you who were stopped out to buy back in before the opening if possible.

Let's face it, at least a million people got screwed by the failure at the CBOT to monitor trades and it will be a cold day in hell before ANY futures exchange makes good on their screw ups. All of us have to be aware that things like total incompetence, earthquakes, or other acts can disrupt normal trading and be prepared to re-establish long term positions.

This is NOT a cyclical bear market. This is a bull market that will level off well under the bubble high, or let's all hope so. The one glitch that I see is that many of the same morons who were speculating in the bubble are back in buying stocks that sell at more than fifty times earnings claiming that the rest of us "don't understand".

Understand. We are shifting to a dividend driven market because of the new tax laws, something no Democrat on this planet understands. Many companies that refuse to pay dividends will be punished in this market, including potential big stocks like Microsoft unless they finally start paying their shareholders. No stock will rally past fifty times earnings without the absolute assurance that there will be a collapse of that stock.


7/07/2003

TURKISH TROOPS IN NORTHERN IRAQ

TURKEY AIN'T OUR FRIEND-----Duuuuuhhhh

The current leader of Turkey, Necmettin Erbakan, is well known as a Muslim firebrand. When he was last leading the country he did the following: signed agreements with terrorist Lybia and Iran, established a religious school system to turn out Islamic radicals, had plans to build mosques with public monies, infiltrated the government with hard line Muslim Fundamentalists, allowed the Iranian ambassador to Turkey to call on Turkish young people to take up arms against the United States; and other less odious practices.

He and his party are no friends of the United States and could well be moving Turkey from a secular state to an Islamic state. Turkey has been flexing its muscles throughout the middle east for years and was once the seat of The Ottoman Empire.

They fear the Kurds who have migrated in great numbers into many cities and are a majority in the Southern area. It can never be forgotten that the Kurds were the instruments of the Turks in the genocidal slaughter of one million Armenians in the early 20's. They don't like each other and if the Kurds ever "ratted the Turks out about the Armenian genocide" Turkey would be liable for billions in reparations.

Make no mistake about it, Turkey intended to kill Kurdish leaders and we stopped them.

This time.

Look for a lot more trouble.

HOW WE OCCUPIED GERMANY IN 1945-47

No soldier was ever allowed out alone. Constabulary corps patrolled the streets with two gunners and a driver, the gunners in back manning a 50cal. machine gun. Soldiers always went in groups of two or three, even when on passes. Everybody watched everybody's back.

These are the recollections of two emailers who served in Germany after the war. Most of these killings are the fault of our so-called leadership, none of whom seem to be able to call up people who knew what they were doing back in 1945. There may have been plenty of Nazis around but they killed nobody.

These assassinations of single soldiers is the fault of the genius patrol in the Pentagon, meaning the Joint Chiefs and Rumsfeld. Write your congressional reps and let them know.

MORALE, IT'S GETTING WORSE IN IRAQ

I have written in these pages for weeks on this subject and now troops are writing the Red Cross, their Congressional Reps, and some newspapers (not a reliable source). The women are getting knocked up and are heading home (no surprise there), and the men are being killed while buying soda pop. All the while the suits in DC say we have enough troops there sweltering in 130 degree heat, dressed in 40 pounds of gear, and that they will "study" the matter.

Study? Jesus Christ, what is to study? Been there done that and any of us who have also been there done that know exactly what is happening and what to do. My prior story is here with a link to a post before that.

Pathetic.


7/06/2003

MARKETS

The REAL employment data
Takes a while for the numbers under the numbers but here they are.
1. The JOBLESS RATE is one separate figure. The JOBLESS RATE is calculated by interviewing households. People go around to households and actually talk to people.
2. The JOBS figures comes from business payrolls.

In other words we have two separate sets of numbers. Question is, what does each mean and do they diverge?

If we are in a recovery------IF---the JOBLESS rate, meaning household surveys, will show a dramatic improvement before the JOBS rate does. The JOBLESS rate shows a huge improvement; it shows employment has risen by 1.3 million, including 281,000 in June.

BUT the JOBS data, the figure derived from business payrolls, is in the toilet because (again IF we are in a recovery) the payroll data lags by as much as a month.

611,000 people entered the work force in June, four times the usual monthly increase and this means increasing confidence by workers.

So the big IF here is: IF we are in a recovery.

We still don't know. Sorry.

FREE DRUGS FOR SENIORS A MEDIA HOAX?

To the Media, once a person turns 60 that person no longer has a brain
Just asking, but in poll after poll of seniors the drug legislation is very low on their concerns. Most seniors have very good coverage right now. All veterans are entitled under the VA to get drugs very cheaply and are required only a co-payment based on income. Almost all pensioners are similarly covered. This leaves a very small minority of extremely needy seniors composed mainly of those who have never worked or worked only at menial jobs.

The bill currently before Congress is likely to die, mainly because Republicans have read the polling data and aren't about to pass a two trillion dollar net deficit drug financing bill. All the hype seems to come from the media, which is their usual Left self arguing for something that too few need or even want.

Why is it that Left media and many politicians suppose that as soon as a person turns 60 he or she loses all ability to think? The very old "Depression Oldies", who regard the government as their savior and God, now number in an almost microscopic portion of the over 60 voting block, and probably all live in those condos in Florida a population that couldn't even read a simple ballot. We have to realize that the over 55 class is also the "New Investor Class", the retiring professional class, as well as the very well funded government employee class all of whom are very well taken care of. And who are very bright, very well educated, and politically active.

My betting is that the pols have counted numbers and that this Bill is D E A D.

7/04/2003

THE FUEL CELL GETS CLOSER---GUESS WHO DOESN'T LIKE THAT?

It will be the Left, not the Right who will oppose Fuel Cells tooth and nail

Another breakthrough today reducing the amounts of gold and platinum required by more than 90%. STORY brings an economical technology ever closer.

At first glance you'd think the oil companies would be the ones opposed. Not so. They are constructed so that oil is just a part of what they do. Fuel cells will not produce fabrics, plastics, or other things derived from oil. Exxon-Mobil to name just one oil company has 100 different other companies from retail to credit having nothing to do with oil. Their financial muscle will enable them to spread further so that by the time fuel cells become a reality they will be OK, and may even lead in fuel cell development.

Fuel cells will become affordable gradually around the world.

It's the governments that are shitting, they and the Left Wing freeloaders who live on tax dollars. Think of the tax losses. No more gas tax. No more tax on refineries. No more shipping taxes and so on. In other words the entire operation of all governments in the world are threatened by the fuel cell. Already some of the usual suspects are claiming the fuel cell will damage the ozone, step one in fighting it. Stories HERE as well as another one HERE

How to tax the fuel cell? This will be the major question facing government. And you better be prepared to be a part of it because gasoline taxes build the roads and bridges and there will have to be a substitute for these taxes.

The world by 2020 will bear almost no resemblance to the world of 2000.

WWI AND VIET NAM, TWO POISONS AND WHAT HAPPENED TO FRANCE

The Cowardice of our Liberal Elites is a curse

I just read an interesting account of why France blew WWII in spite of the fact that they had superior weaponry, a bigger army, and more time to prepare than Nazi Germany.

The thesis is that the general staff was still in such shock over the catastrophic losses of WWI that they were afraid to act. This WWI super shock also possessed the political elites from top to bottom; they compromised with Hitler for years before the invasion. The French General Staff planned a defense in which command was hundreds of miles from the front and relied on communications to lead their troops. The Germans destroyed the communications early on. The Germans did nothing that surprised the French and in fact the French were actually kicking ass in the air and on the ground, but the general staff wouldn't back them up. The Germans then struck at the only weak point in the French defense and blew the French out of the water.

We can learn from this. Our elites are in paralysis to this day about Viet Nam; everyone from the draft dodging press, the military that was on the ground, the Liberal Elites, and our "college educated" leaders. Generals rarely want to go to war anyway because they truly know what a horror war is. But we now see how badly they want to steer clear of Liberia, did not want to go into Iraq, nor did they want any part of Bosnia; all for very dam good reasons. It looks like they were browbeaten into going into Afghanistan.

The Democrats are always willing to send in our troops to "nation build" but never to (oh my God) fight. The Republicans do not want to nation build believing an army was meant to kill people and break things. Right now we are called upon to do both. And Viet Nam flash backs for people who never bothered to fight there won't do us any good at all.

My friends who watched the regular news casts on CNN etc. and read the Los Angeles or New York Times were quite surprised that we "won" the war, preferring to believe that we were losing. Now they prefer to learn from the same media that we are losing the peace in Iraq.

Bush is a tough guy and we will all have to be "tough guys" but this peace can be won. Viet Nam is past. There is no similarity between Iraq and Viet Nam except for the cowardice of our Liberal Elites.

As a post script to this, the WWI syndrome still dominates the political dialogue in "the old Europe" according to many who study Europe these days. The carnage was total. An entire generation wiped themselves out in a war everyone wanted at the time. After the war the winners behaved in such a way as to guarantee it would continue later. This trauma affects the birth rate, attitudes, and economies. The belief is that WWII was simply too big to comprehend. We cannot allow ourselves to indulge in similar introspective cowardice now.

GET READY FOR ASYMMETRIC WARFARE AND IDIOSYNCRATIC ATTACKS

YOU JUST KNEW THAT ONCE THE "INTELLEKCHEWULS" STARTED STUDYING TERRORISM THEY'D COME UP WITH A NAME CHANGE. GET READY FOR: "ASYMMETRIC WARFARE" AND "IDIOSYNCRATIC" ATTACKS.

Let me break it down for you in a way a normal person NOT on a goddam grant from the government would tell it.

1. We face Islamic Terrorism dating from the time of the Assassins 1,000 years ago (The Assassins were a Shiite radical group). Today's terrorism doesn't have the complex balance of air, land, sea, space, and large armed forces. This balance, which we do possess, is called "symmetrical". So we can launch coordinated attacks. On the other hand they have a bomb here, some dynamite there, a machine gun, and so on; this makes them "asymmetrical", no balance in an attack. And no pattern of predictability about the next attack or method. Like duh.

2. These "asymmetric" warriors use our own "off the shelf" units like busses, cars, planes, computers, and so on against us. They also use them effectively to perform their own tasks. Again like, duh. They also use our "system", meaning our democracy, to lay low for a long time before acting.

3. "Idiosyncratic" is the grant money word for an attack on sensitive places we may not realize are sensitive, until too late; the WTC being a classic example where our entire financial structure was HQ'd in a single space. Again, like duh. Give me some grant money. Recent attaks on mosques, Saudi Holy Places, and the Iraqui Police graduates fall into this category. The attacks do damage to government. The attack in Moscow ditto.

4. Terror networks use off the shelf encrypted 512 bit technology to communicate with each other and by the time we solve the encryption, the message has "timed out", meaning the damage has been done And ten or a thousand "dummy" encryptions are out there too.

5. They also use "embedded pixel" technology which is basically impossible to find and decode. In this technology a single pixel on a single frame of computer communication (picture, news item, etc.) has a message. This is another "off the shelf" technology.

6. Spamming, hacking, and other "off the shelf" tech can be used to paralyze servers etc.

So what? Who doesn't know this? Do we need a guy on a grant to tell everyone this stuff? How do these intellectuals propose to fight an "asymmetrical" opponent? Do we use asymmetrical or idiosyncratic methods ourselves? Murder their leadership? No. String up the people we catch on the public square so everyone can see what happens to a terrorist? No. What we have to do is get better on the ground intel, have our intel services work together, and train our troops better.

So there you have it. 16 pages of bullshit boiled down into a few paragraphs.

I'd only add here that our intel has gone down hill since Carter back in ?‘76 and until 2001 nobody has worked to build it. We aren't going to fix this in one year or even five. We have nobody on the ground in places like Liberia, The Congo, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and so on. So we are now developing these sources.

But do you think they will remain in place if Hillary Clinton looks like she MIGHT win in 2008? I doubt it. It was the Clintons who supplied the coup de gras to our Intel Network allowing many spies to be murdered. Nobody will trust her not to do the same.


7/03/2003

MARKETS

Yeah, they fucked you again
Today's error at the CBOT Dow Mini electronically traded futures contract is bad. Technically everyone hit should get damages, but the big boys never pay damages they just inflict them. This "glitch" which allowed a trade of 10,000 contracts to go through when the actual order had been to sell 100 was a bombshell. This contract is lightly traded. Total open interest was only 22,000 contracts and an order for more than half the outstanding contracts on the exchange could never have been placed on the floor. This contract is basically a joke because the volume has never matched expectations. Open interest on the S&P is over 600,000 contracts for the same month. This was bullshit. No computer program should have allowed this trade. Most of us know that "open outcry" is the best, and for this very reason as well as many others some of which will be deliberate tampering. If you were "stopped" out today you might want to re-insert a buy order at the exit point.

Gold and Currencies The dollar rally and big gold sell off has more to do with the attractiveness of the U.S. Stock Market than anything else. Gold is a piece of shit that pays no dividends and needs a price rise in order for the holder to make money. The dollar is being bid higher because foreigners are buying U.S. stocks and need dollars to do it. We will see if the currency doesn't turn one more time. I'm a dollar buyer or a Euro seller on the next move after a big pullback.

Unemployment numbers These numbers ain't good, but it will be the numbers "under the numbers" that we have to look at and they are terrible:

The economy has shed more than three million private-sector jobs since the start of 2001. The number of initial claims for unemployment benefits, moreover, has remained above 400,000 for 20 consecutive weeks. Economists regard any number above 400,000 as suggestive of a deteriorating jobs market. SmartMoney.com
This better turn around soon or a lot of us will be bailing. The government has done everything it can; lower rates, lower taxes, defense spending, and huge budget deficits but nothing has worked, yet. The stock market is a leading indicator and unemployment is a lagging indicator but we are getting to crunch time.

7/02/2003

GOOD GRADES DON'T WORK, IT'S BAD GRADES THAT COUNT

MICHIGAN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DECISION IS RACIST TO THE BONE

If anybody REALLY cared about minority rights as opposed to special rights for only Blacks and Hispanics, this decision could not have happened. Let's look at two minority groups: Asians and Indians (including Pakistanis).

Asians score at the top of every list and are being systematically frozen out of Berkeley, Stanford, and Michigan. Blacks and Hispanics score so far below these two groups that nobody dares compare them, but they get preference over all other groups. People whose recent families were placed in internment camps, were hounded out of countries by genocide or political incorrectness, and just flat ran away from poverty are told that good grades don't matter. It's bad grades that count.

The same is true for Indian/Pakistani. They also score high, have also fled recent terror and poverty and get nothing for working hard and getting good grades.

Diversity means that people with no ability associate with those who demonstrate ability; people who refuse to study mix with those that do; people of the big voting lack of competence class get preference over everyone else.

Just tell me what you will think when a Black surgeon shows up to do your cancer operation or a Hispanic is your defense attorney in a major case.