J. Michels Uranium Index 10/10/07

+$1,326.01 +2.49%

SITE Intelligence Group Access Blocked By Al-Quida

It seems that the intelligence agencies and maybe the White House has dropped the ball again.

The SITE Intelligence Group said it lost access that it had
covertly acquired to Al-Qaeda's communications network when the
administration of President George W. Bush let out that the company had
obtained a bin Laden video early last month ahead of its official release, the
Washington Post said.

Shouldn't SITE keep mum about things like this? Oh, lets let Al-Quida know that we lost access to their communication network. I guess their Bush Hatred Syndrome is so bad that scoring points on the White House trumps national security. They should know that you should never let your enemy know what your strengths and especially your weaknesses are. I guess all the Cold warriors have retired from groups like SITE and they just blab things that ding the White House.

I can only hope that this announcement was just a cover to throw Al-Quida off. They can say that their access was lost when actually things never changed. Now Al-Quida will stop looking to see that their stuff is being accessed and become complacent. Now that is a Cold War tactic.

Video Game Index 10/9/07

+$498.98 +1.10%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/9/07

+$1,419.00 +2.74%

Big Bang Theory is Great!

I have finally found a new show to watch this season and it is Big Bang Theory on CBS. The show is on at 7:30 in Hawaii opposite Dancing With the Stars. I was tipped off to the show by Wired magazine doing a "must watch" feature on it. I watched it and I really enjoyed it quite a bit. It has become "must see TV" for me on Mondays now.

It is really a geeks on parade type of show that I can relate to because I am a geek myself. It is about these two physics guys living together and a hot girl moves in across the way from them. The girl is a real airhead but one of the geeks falls in love with her for some reason or another. I agree with this review in saying that the airhead girl needs to be fleshed out a little more. What they should do is either make her witty or maybe street smart or something along those lines. They need to make her something other then blond girl with big boobs and nothing above the neck. Even making her do really sweet stuff for the geeks or asking them to help with her coursework would be good for the show overall.

Another thing the show needs is another geek girl that likes the main character. This could be an "Erkel-type" character that tries everything that she can to win over the Leonard character. She is also there to stymie any potential relationship that he wants to have with the airhead. She can be the enemy/comic relief character that makes the audience go why doesn't Leonard go with this girl instead of the airhead. If the airhead character is stronger then the audience cant make up their minds about who Leonard should be with.

In any case the Big Bang Theory is great and I am really looking forward to watching it every week. It is now my Monday at 7:30 staple. It should get picked up according to the ratings and hopefully it will continue to do well once Dancing With the Stars goes on hiatus.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/5/07

+$741.99 +1.66%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/5/07

+$1,302.00 +2.53%

Some Sobering Thoughts on Citigroup

This is some interesting findings about Citigroup coming clean about the effects of the credit mess on their bottom line earlier in the week. This is in regards to them boosting their credit card loss reserves just in case the consumer credit market goes to hell. If credit card delinquencies start to get really bad we may see some serious pain out there form the retailers on down.

While I will readily accept that Citigroup and others in the industry
have come clean on the earnings impacts of August’s credit market
“thunderstorm”, I firmly believe that the deterioration in consumer credit is
just beginning. And when you combine that with the heightened leverage and “hot
money” funding that most of the major financial institutions have come to rely
on, I find it difficult, based on Citigroup’s own words, to believe that the
whole storm has passed.

RIMM has great quarter

People are snapping up those Blackberrys one after another.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM added about 1.45 million BlackBerry
subscriber accounts in the quarter and shipped more than 3 million devices. The
total BlackBerry subscriber account base at the end of the second quarter was
10.5 million.

It seems that after-hours traders were looking for even better numbers or maybe a higher guidance or something.

In after-hours trading, RIM shares fell $1.94 to $98.60. Earlier, they
rose $4.26, or 4.4 percent, to end regular trading at $100.54.

It looks like most of the options action was to the Call side so it will be interesting to see what the stock does tomorrow.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/4/07

+$183.75 +0.41%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/4/07

+$44.00 +0.09%

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/3/07

-$460.89 -1.02%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/3/07

-$1,481.00 -2.80%

Hillary's Laugh and Giuliani's Cell Phone

I guess these are the kinds of stories you get when you start the Presidential campaigns a year early.

It has become so frequent that Frank Rich, a liberal columnist for The
New York Times, said the laugh seemed to be the Clinton campaign's method of
heeding complaints that she is "too calculating and controlled" and compared it
to Democrat Al Gore's long kiss with his wife Tipper during the Democratic
National Convention in 2000.

"Now Mrs. Clinton is erupting in a laugh with all the spontaneity
of an alarm clock buzzer," Rich wrote.

Yes, the MSM is now debating whether Hillary's laugh is genuine or not. Now that is a sad commentary about how Hillary is portrayed. She is even getting derided for faking her laughter. I guess talking about her Health Care plan or her Iraq strategy is just too boring for words when people are rehashing her laughs.

Israel Admits that it Bombed Syria

Now this is a pretty odd development for the Israelis. If you think about it Syria could claim this as a Casus Belli and attack Israel if they felt froggy enough. And the reason that they gave for it is pretty weird as well.

Israel lifted its ban on reporting that the attack took place after
Syrian President Bashar Assad told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Israeli
jets had hit an "unused military building." But Israeli officials refused to say
anything about the attack, and almost no one who'd be expected to know— from
government officials to former intelligence officers— is talking.

So the Israelis flew deep into Syrian airspace and attacked an "unused military building" and Syria doesn't seem a bit peeved at all. You would think that they would be rattling the saber and calling for the UN to step in etc. etc. Syria could very well roll tanks if they wanted to because they were secretly attacked. But they do nothing. Very strange stuff going down in the Middle East.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/2/07

+$553.13 +1.25%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/2/07

-$1,410.00 -2.59%

Dems Propose a Reasonable Bill and an Idiodic One

It seems the Dems can actually put up some meaningful Iraq legislation once in a while.

The bill would require the administration to report to Congress on the
status of redeployment plans in 60 days. Follow up reports would be required
every 90 days thereafter.

The latest bill doesn't set any timetable for a withdrawal and
Republican leaders have said they will not oppose it.

This seems like a reasonable request that the Congress gets a briefing on what redeployment plans are in the works every 60 days. That way the generals can show that due to the reduction in violence we will be able to withdraw a certain amount of troops. Or if the violence gets worse they can show that they need to keep in a certain amount troops. I trust General Petraeus assessment of how many troops he needs to fight the war far more then Harry Reids.

Then immediately the Dems look like they are playing politics with the war with another very shortsighted bill.

The plan, unveiled by Reps. David Obey, D-Wis., John Murtha, D-Pa., and
Jim McGovern, D-Mass., would require low- and middle-income taxpayers to add 2 percent to their tax bill. Wealthier people would add a 12 to 15 percent
surcharge, Obey said.

Yup that is the Dems plans for everything, raise taxes and soak the rich instead of trying to give us concrete plans for success in Iraq. They know that this surcharge will bring in billions or perhaps trillions more then they would need for Iraq but they still want to press this stuff forward. Sometimes the Dems show that they just simply hate to see American citizens holding onto their money instead of the government.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/1/07

+$547.01 +1.25%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/1/07

+$1,620.00 +3.07%