Now we're blaming Iraq???

Blaming Iraqis for the woeful situation disregards recent history, some experts argue. Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert and adviser to the Iraq Study Group, calculates that because of policy missteps and other errors, the United States bears about 60 percent of the blame. "You can't say, 'We did this and the Iraqis didn't rise to the occasion,' " she said. "There's enough blame to go around."

better than Google???

Have you tried the new search engine created by Microsoft?? It's www.live.com. give it a try, it's pretty good.

Extinction

It's estimated that 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct! WOW

The mind has limited energy

Research studies have demonstrated that when people's psychological resources are taxed to the limit, they make impulsive mistakes. Maintaining discipline takes psychological energy, and when you use it up, you have to rest. Just like a muscle, when you are worn out, you need to take a break and regain your strength. It's vital to consider that the mind has limited energy, and that after putting in a hard and tedious effort, you must take a rest and rejuvenate, so you can face the world with a renewed sense of vigor. This applies to trading.

5 Pillars of Aristocracy

1. Beauty
2. Well
3. Birth
4. Genius
5. Virtues
any one of the first 3 can at any time overbear any one or both of the last

Soul

according to Winston Marsalis when asked about Ed Bradley having soul and "what is soul?" he said "soul is when you have the ability to make other people feel better about being alive regardless of their condition."

Happy Thanksgiving to all and all a good turkey

Today is the quintessential American holiday . . . enjoy good feelings, food and love with you family and friends. I'm going to.

Bull Market 3rd phase . . . .

"Once a price history develops, and people hear that their neighbor made a lot of money on something, that impulse takes over, and we're seeing that in commodities and housing...Orgies tend to be wildest toward the end. It's like being Cinderella at the ball. You know that at midnight everything's going to turn back to pumpkins & mice. But you look around and say, 'one more dance,' and so does everyone else. The party does get to be more fun -- and besides, there are no clocks on the wall. And then suddenly the clock strikes 12, and everything turns back to pumpkins and mice."

Warren Buffett

FOX (Murdoch) once again prove how sleezy they are

Yes, they've agreed to not show the interview with OJ but why did it even get that far? How could something like "How I Killed My Wife" even get considered? Because Fox doesn't care about right, only ratings and so now they get to come off as "doing the right thing". Murdoch and his crew are the worst.

Household Jobs Survery

The Household Survey has become the last refuge of economic scoundrels. Whenever anyone trots out Household Employment Survey as proof of job creation, it is an admission that they are clueless hack, or a charlatan. This has been so clearly resolved that it tortures the imagination to understand WTF this is doing in the NYTimes. For posterity, I will repeat this for the umpteenth time: the Household survey IS NOT A SUPERIOR MEASURE OF JOB CREATION to the establishment survey. However, it is a reliable source of confusing data to the layperson that it can be cherry-picked by the disingenous.

What it measures is UNemployment. No less an authority than the BLS, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve have said that the Household Survey is not a good measure of job creation. It was never designed to measure new job creation. For more information on this, see BLS on Payroll vs. Household Survey, Redux: Household versus Establishment Surveys and this Household versus Establishment Surveys, part 42.

3 Reasons for Living

from an anonymous reader . . . . there are 3 reasons for living

1. To build a better world

2. To make life more interesting

3. To draw all the attention possible to oneself

Priorities of football

It's nice to see that election officials in Ohio (ahem, still questions about the 2004 election there) have their priorities on straight. A very close House seat is up for grabs, Rep. Deborah Pryce, is ahead in her central Ohio race by 3,536 votes. In the Columbus, OH area, officials are delaying the count of more than 9,000 provisional ballots by one day so it doesn't disrupt the "much vaunted" Michigan-Ohio St football game on Nov 18. oh yeah, wouldn't want to compromise an election for a football game.

Rockefeller Tree

Did you see the size of this tree they plucked out some guy's backyard to put in Rockefeller Plaza?

Did anything really big happen?

Nope, just a bunch of re arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in my view. I doubt if any meaningful change in taxation, spending or growth in goverment trends will change in the next 2 years. There will be more vengeful campaigns, lots of money tossed at demopublicans by lobbyists, the Alternative Minimum Tax will not be amended, auto fuel mileage will not be addressed, nope, not much will really change . . . . . oh wait a minute. Maybe we'll start pulling out of Iraq.

Google pays for traffic? who would have guessed?

Google actually paid for traffic - $1 billion to Dell over 3 years for a crummy toolbar on Dell PCs. The numbers may work, but it's kind of like Hugh Grant paying for something he would get anyway. There may still be someone in Sheboygen who doesn't know about Google. Is search now such a commodity that Google needs to pay money to keep growing?

Steroids

OK, I know how steroid use can be stopped right now . . . but I really don't believe anyone in control wants to stop it, they just are playing the politics but back to my solution. Punish the team, not the individual. Let's take the case of the latest guilty party . . . The San Diego Chargers. The Charger's linebacker Shawne Merriman tested positive, of course he denies it, that's the typical response. But we all know that he used steroids, heck they all do. Anyway, instead of banning him for 4 games, I say, the Chargers should have to forfeit the next 4 games. That would get some action on eliminating steroid use, wouldn't it?

don't get me wrong, I love baseball

I hope I didn't give the wrong impression yesterday. Baseball has always been my favorite "team" sport, I've played it almost all my life (from 5 to 45 . . . then my arm went out). But I gave up on professional baseball after the first strike and about the time the O'Malley's sold the Dodgers. I became difficult to know what next year's team was going to be since free agency allowed for the continual breaking up of teams.
Now here's the catch to my love hate . . . . I enjoy high school and college baseball more than ever. There you have teams!!!

Now here are some things I think which might help pro Baseball get some fans back . . . . with respect to the World Series. Have the WS at a neutral site where they have good weather! And lastly . . . there's no need for every "non-baseball minute" to be filled with hystrionics, fireworks, cheerleaders, etc. It's okay to have some down time between batters and innings . . . . puleeez?

has Baseball lost it?

Now don't get me wrong, I still love baseball but . . . .

It hasn't been that long since the World Series was decided but here are some interesting observations, people won't even watch baseball in high definition from their family room couches anymore. This year's TV ratings for the final game were the worst ever and less than half of the ratings 15 years ago. There are way too many commercials.
Remember when you used to sneak your portable radio into class; put in your desk, keep the volume low and then put your head on the desk so you could pretend you were napping and listen to the World Series game? It didn't matter who was playing it was the best teams playing on the grandest of stages.
Remember when people cared so much about the World Series that the smallest paper in the land would devote a weeks worth of rich stories about games? Last Saturday's Louisville Courier-Journal, a venerable publication in a town that is only a 4 hour drive from St Louis covered the entire championsip in one small wire service story with only 6 paragraphs on the front page!

I'll follow up on this post with another tomrrow . . . .

"Mission accomplished!" GHW Bush . . . . huh?

let's see how many days since the "mission was accomplished"? . . . . well, we're approaching 1300 days. doesn't seem like much has been accomplished.

Thinking . . . . or not

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices." William James