Be a Dem when it comes to Picking Stocks?

This is a very interesting article on the comparisons between Democratic giving and Republican giving when it comes to stocks. A "blue" stock is one that gives more money to the Dems then to the Republicans.

According to the firm's research paper, "The Blue Factor," an index of
76 companies in the S&P 500 meeting certain ethical criteria and favoring
Democrats -- "blue" stocks -- would have topped a group of about 380 Republican
"red" stocks by 15.6 percentage points annualized over the five years through
August.

In addition, the large-capitalization blue companies did 13.1
percentage points better than their S&P benchmark, the study said. Moreover,
blue S&P companies achieved this result without any representation in the
high-octane energy sector.

I have a feeling that most of the "blue" stocks happen to be tech names like GOOG and APPL while "red" stocks are mostly big oil, tobacco, etc. Also I would have a hard time comparing a list of 76 companies to a list of 380 companies. I'll hunt around for the lists to compare them better.

Lacey Rose the Author of the Forbes Jessica Simpson Article

My mom always wants to know what women that I think are good looking. I have to say that the woman that wrote this Forbes celeb piece is very good looking. She is also pretty talented as well. I think the reason why I find her attractive is because she looks like this girl Kristine that I had a crush on in high school.

Are You Sick and Tired of Jessica Simpson?

It seems that America sure is according to this article.

According to Encino, Calif.-based E-Poll Market Research, which
ranks more than 2,800 celebrities on 46 different personality attributes,
Simpson's "overexposed" score went from 17% in September 2003 to 41% in
mid-2006. (The average for most celebrities at the peak of their careers is
between 3% and 7%.) During that same period, Simpson's "talented" score
dropped from 36% to a disappointing 28%. Other stars the public would
supposedly like to see less of include Tom Cruise, Anna Nicole Smith and
both Britney Spears and her husband Kevin Federline.

That is very interesting how her overexposed score goes up while her talented
score goes down. People get so so tired of seeing her that figure out that she
just isn't very talented in the first place and has no reason for being a
celebrity at all. She then joins the ranks of Anna Nicole Smith and Paris
Hilton. You kind of forgot why she is famous in the first place.

I think Americans get the most tired of having a celeb filling up to much of mindspace.
Everytime you see them you cringe and have a feeling that they have worn out
their welcome. So every time you see them after this period you get more and
more tired of them and start to dislike them. Kind of like you feel when a guest
hangs around too long. You liked them at first but now if you never hear
anything about them forever it would be okay.

I think you can chalk this up to the tabloid treatment and the wall-to-wall entertainment press that goes on and on about a celeb. The tabs take something that almost all Americans do
like having a baby and pound it into the ground. As soon as a celeb announces
they are preggers you hguaranteedteed 9 months or more of news.

You first have endless shots of her with a big tummy. I bet the tabs love these
because they finally see a formally skinny celeb finally looking like an average
American. Then you have speculation on where she will have the baby. Will it be
in some tiny African nation or in some upscale birthing pod in Beverly Hills?
Then you have the first shots of the mother, father, and baby sold to the
Tabloids for millions. Then you have a story on how the celeb lost her baby
weight through eating tons of wheat grass and exercising like a Navy Seal.
Finally, you have some stories of the celeb raising the kid wrong by driving
around with the kid on their lap. By the time the baby is 2 years old you are as
tired of seeing them as you are of seeing the mom.

This Gitmo Report Seems Fishy

This almost seems like a hitjob by close Gitmo Operatives.

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she
met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The
woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with
them. No one was in uniform, she said.

This paralegal was sent into the area to talk to the guards at a bar and I would bet even money that she is pretty good looking. So these guys were bragging to her that they roughed up the captured terrorists possibly to make themselves look like badasses in front a good looking woman. That happens in bars all over the world.

So they could have been bragging that they were tough guys simply to impress this woman (who probably didn't tell them that she was a paralegal digging up dirt on Gitmo) to hopefully get into her pants. Also if these guys didn't have some liquor in them in a bar I would be really surprised. I would think that getting information like this would be illegal but the Inspector General is held to different standards. I guess just taking these guards aside to interview them was not getting the dirt they wanted.

Paying for the Boomers Retirement

Even Ben Bernanke is worried about when the Baby Boomers are going to retire.

Shoring up the finances of Social Security and Medicare will make for
difficult choices, Bernanke said.

For instance, if the government tried to finance projected
entitlement spending entirely by revenue increases, the taxes collected would
have to rise from about 18 percent of the total size of the economy to about 24
percent in 2030, he said.

If the government attempted a fix through spending cuts, spending
for programs other than Social Security and Medicare would need to fall sharply
-- the equivalent of "a budget cut of approximately $700 billion in
nonentitlement spending," he said.

I have a feeling that they are going to cut entitlements using some arcane method in an 11th hour session before a real crisis develops. So it is pretty much guaranteed that I won't see a dime of the money I am paying into Social Security.

Great Commentary on the N. Korean Nuke Test

I agree with this article 100%. I could see Japan either starting a nuclear program or asking the US to base some nuclear weapons just in case North Korea gets froggy. That move would put China on Red Alert. Indeed shock waves would be felt.

A test would shake up northeast Asia, sending shock waves through South
Korea and possibly inciting a regional arms race - causing Japan and even South
Korea to consider it a necessity to reverse course and develop their own nuclear
deterrents. That, experts say, would very likely mean that the international
nonproliferation regime is dead.

Findings of APPLs Stock Option Mess

We got some mea culpa from Apple and one resignation so far. It seems like it was all before 2002 though so the current team should be okay.

Apple's investigation "committee" consisting of outside directors,
together with independent counsel and accountants confirmed a clean record of
the current leadership, but revealed somewhat unexpected results. After
searching through 650,000 emails and interviews with "more than 40 current and former employees, directors and advisors," the team identified "stock option
grants made on 15 dates between 1997 and 2002 [that] appear to have grant dates that precede the approval of those grants." The most recent "irregularity" dates back to a January 2002 grant.

Checking out those 650K e-mails must have been quite a job in itself. I would have hated being on that "committee." Maybe they used some kind of filtering software that searched out every usage of the word options or something to make it less work.

North Korea to Test Nuke

This would be a good time to do it as well. The House is caught up with they Foley mess. The President is in election mode and bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can't even help out Darfur with troops even if we wanted to. Everyone is distracted so they could test the thing now and might get off with only a stern warning from the West. Or it could just be another head fake by Pyongyang:

A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity
because of the highly sensitive situation with North Korea, said the United
States is now seeing the movement of people, materials and automobiles and other activity around one possible test site. But, the official said, it could be
similar to the activity a couple of months ago. At that time, no test occurred.

Foley Scandal a Death Blow to Republicans

I think this thing is going to get worse and worse the further we go along.

Speaker Dennis Hastert's political support showed signs of cracking on Wednesday as Republicans fled the fallout from an election-year scandal spawned
by steamy computer messages from disgraced Rep. Mark Foley to teenage male
pages.

Now they are turning on Hastert because he didn't clean up this mess a year ago when it first came to light. They should be rightfully angry with him too. A year ago they should have run Foley out of there and tried him. This whole thing would have blown over and the guilty parties would have been punished.

Now it could be a spoiler that puts them all out on their butts. If they did cover up for Foley then I think they *all* deserve to be out on their ear. Also if it is true that the party leadership covered up for a scumbag like Foley then I don't want any part of their party at all.

American Eagle's Same Stores up 19%

They really knocked it out of the park.

Total sales for the year-to-date thirty-five week period ended September 30,
2006 increased 17% to $1.635 billion, compared to $1.395 billion for the
thirty-five week period ended October 1, 2005. Comparable store sales increased
11% for the year-to-date period.

Based on better-than-expected
September performance, the company is raising its third quarter earnings
guidance to $0.61 to $0.63 per share, compared to $0.47 per share last year.
Previous third quarter guidance was $0.56 to $0.58 per share. Third quarter
guidance includes stock option expense of approximately $0.01 per share. For the
year, stock option expense is expected to be approximately $0.04 to $0.05 per
share.

And all of the things that I thought would make this a good stock a few weeks ago turned out to be right on the mark:

September sales performance was driven by a well-received fall collection,
which added freshness to stores during a key back-to-school selling period.
Stores featured fresh colors, on-trend silhouettes and strong key items.
Additionally, in early September, the company's new intimates sub-brand, aerie
by American Eagle, debuted across the chain, to a positive customer
response.

David Camerons Windmill?

This is the kind of Windmill that David Cameron is supposed to be using:

Brown/Blair War?

This is the kind of article that shows that the Brits can really write some witty stuff when it comes to politics across the pond.

Manchester this week was crawling with resourceful and aggressive political journalists who left no stone unturned to find some new casus belli with which to reignite the Blair-Brown war. So what did all these media bloodhounds bring home? An almost inaudible comment, supposedly muttered under her breath by the Prime Minister’s wife, who is not even a politician, and overheard not by some eminent BBC, Sun or Guardian pundit, but by a US wire-service reporter on her way to the loo. If this was the strongest “Blair-Brown feud” story that the best and brightest of British political journalism could come up with, then surely the Labourites have beaten their swords into ploughshares and the ultra-Brownites can now lie down with the über-Blairites.

I was reading an Economist Article about a Brownite Britian and it mostly talked about some of the other people that would come after Brown. It seems they just want to get rid of Brown already and get some energetic and charismatic, younger guy in there like David Cameron.

British opposition leader David Cameron rides a bike to work, is building a windmill on his roof, wears sneakers and likes to be called "Dave" _ all of which endear him to urban yuppies but disturb many of his fellow conservatives.

Cameron's supporters say his brand of compassionate conservatism will make him Britain's next prime minister. Critics claim the Conservative Party _ once led by Winston Churchill and "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher _ has gone soft.

Too bad he is not running for President in the US. A guy who rides a bike to work, and has a windmill on his roof is the kind of guy that I like.

Democrats "Fancy" Terrorism Cure

Great Op-Ed piece that my friend pointed out to me about what the Dems strategy in the war on terrorism.

I call this Democrat approach to geopolitics the "Fancy" strategy after a Reba McEntire hit. In the song a mortally ill and destitute mother delivers her teen aged daughter named Fancy into a life of prostitution with the advice

"just be nice to the gentlemen Fancy and they'll be nice to you."

This is pretty much what Democrats and their allies in the intelligence community are recommending to the rest of us. Of course, there is an important difference. Fancy's mother was articulating a strategy of desperation.

Democrats have inexplicably adopted a strategy of desperation as a strategy of choice, which creates a serious political problem for them. The nation's average intelligence is only average, but a clear majority is smart enough to understand that striving to be inoffensive is a losing strategy for a superpower.

Desperation is the typical appeasers cry. If we pull out of the Middle East and leave Israel in the lurch then maybe the terrorists will leave us alone. Maybe if we all convert to Islam and then pay the Jizya they will leave us alone. If we elect Mullah Omar as the next Ruler For Life of the US maybe they will leave us alone. This is why the Dems can't be trusted to fight the war on terror. They don't know what it takes to win.

Carl Icahn Boosts Holdings in Federated

This seems like a precursor to a closer tie to the FD board.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, known for challenging the management of various corporations, wants to acquire up to $500 million in additional shares of Federated Department Stores Inc., the operator of Macy's and Bloomingdale's said on Wednesday.

I wonder what Icahn is planning to do to shake up this company? Could we see spinoffs or maybe more consolidation in the department store space? In any case I just like the idea of risking my money at the same time as a billionaire investor.

What the Hewlett-Packard Spies Did

They sure did a lot of stuff to get the leak.

Documents have shown that investigators working for HP intruded into the personal lives of seven HP directors, two employees, nine reporters and family members of the targeted individuals. In addition to impersonating those targeted to procure phone records, they also spied on an HP director and his wife, sifted through their garbage, and concocted an e-mail sting to dupe reporter Dawn Kawamoto of CNet Networks Inc.'s technology news site.

It kind of sounds like what paparazzi do to stars sometimes. That going through the garbage thing especially.

Abe's Japan to Check China?

It seems that Shinzo Abe is going to be the next Prime Minister of Japan.



I wonder if he is going to be a thorn in Chinas side?

He has also pledged to bring more patriotism to schools, and boost Japan's military alliance with the United States — both sore points with the Chinese, who feel that Japanese textbooks gloss over Japan's wartime atrocities, and that the U.S.-Japan alliance is aimed at containing Beijing.

Those stands have raised concerns in the region.

"Abe's rhetoric is very dangerous, given China's growing clout in the region," said Hiro Katsumata, a research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

I think a Japan with a strong military will be China's worst nightmare. The US will be perfectly willing to hook up Japan with the latest military hardware in order to slow China's influence in the region.

It would also give North Korea pause the next time they fire a rocket over Japan. Instead of stern words and China watering down a Security Council resolution you might have 100s of Japanese F-22s ready and willing to take North Korea out. It will be interesting to see Japan's international stature after Abe comes into power.

Schwarzenegger Signs Bill Forbidding Sudan Investment

This seems like a nice step but it seems no one knows how much California was investing in Sudan beforehand.

Officials could not place a precise value on state investments in Sudan.

The University of California system doesn't hold any stock directly in companies doing business with Sudan, but it does have pooled investments in those companies. The amount of money involved, officials said, would be a small fraction of its $66 billion in pension and endowment funds.

The state pension system is trying to identify any Sudan investments.

It would be an interesting list to see about which US companies (if any) are directly investing in Sudan. This is a site that has a few companies doing business in Sudan to divest from. These are the companies that the site mentions:

ABB
Alcatel
Petro-China
Siemens
Tatneft

PS3 Previews in Japan

It seems like they will have quite a few games available for it at launch. It seems that the press likes the games so far.

Titles such as "Resistance: Fall of Man," "Genji: Days of the Blade" and "Ridge Racer 7" will be among the games available at the console's Japan launch on November 11 but there was also considerable interest in some of the software that is on show in an unfinished state. The show was also the first chance for most potential customers to get their hands on a console.

Here is a list of the games. I'm looking forward to Metal Gear Solid 4 myself.

The list is formated with the PS3 game followed by the game's developer.

• 6Gun 2 - BattleBorne Entertainment
• Avalon - Climax Studios
• Dark Sector - Digital Extreme
• The Darkness - Starbreeze Studios
• Devil May Cry 4 - Capcom
• EA Sports Fight Night Round 3 - EA Chicago
• Eyedentify - TBA
• Fifth Phantom Saga - Sonic Team
• Final Fantasy PS3 - Square Enix
• Formula One PS3 - SCE Studios Liverpool
• The Getaway PS3 - SCE Studios Soho
• Heavenly Sword - Ninja Theory
• I-8 - Insomniac Games
• Infraworld - Quantic Dream
• Killing Day - TBA
• Killzone PS3 - Guerilla Games
• Metal Gear Solid 4 - Kojima Productions
• Mobile Suit Gundam - TBA
• MotorStorm - Evolution Studios
• Ni-Oh - KOEI
• Omikron 2 - Quantic Dream
• Possession - Blitz Games
• Project Delta - Playlogic International
• ShadowClan - Tiger Hill Entertainment
• Tekken PS3 - Namco
• Vision GT - Polyphony Digital
• Warhawk PS3 - Incognito Entertainment

We can Bring Some Liquids on Planes Again

Finally, I can put my contact lens stuff in my carry-on bag again. It looks like they figured that you can't blow up a plane with 3 ounces of liquid.

Passengers will be able to carry lotions and gels onto airliners again after a six-week ban — but only in tiny containers of 3 ounces or less and only if they're in clear zip-top plastic bags.

Also we can buy a drink at the Airport shop and bring them on the plane. No more sucking down your soda before you have to board.

Starting Tuesday, air travelers also will be able to buy drinks or other liquids or gels at shops inside airport security checkpoints and carry them on board under partially relaxed anti-terror rules.

The Worlds Most Expensive Marmalade

This stuff is coming in at 5000 British Pounds. Too bad I prefer Raspberry jam.