Message to Dems: More Respect for the People You Want to Help

This article describes in a nutshell why I dislike liberals even when nearly all of my social beliefs mirror theirs.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

Their problem is that they almost never have respect for the same people that they are trying to help. The Dems seem to look down on rural, middle class and working people as a reflex action and say they "cling" to guns and religion. It is so easy to portray them as elitist when they think of themselves as a privileged elite.

A good majority of the middle and working class are religious, enjoys outdoor sports usually with guns, and are unapologetically patriotic. So when a Dem comes up to them and says "God is a little man in the sky," we need to take away your guns, and shouts "God damn America" then they will support the GOP candidate. How can you support someone that has such contempt for your way of life?

The thing is that you can't trust an elitist party that thinks that the majority of their fellow Americans are dumb, uncouth, and are there to be pitied. Unless the Dems respect the people they are trying to help and actually get down there and understand their values and way of life they will keep losing Presidential elections.

I mean Clinton won twice because he was a populist that loved fast food, played the saxophone, and was a football fan. He was also a Rhodes Scholar and went to Yale law school but that stuff was downplayed for the most part because it is meaningless to the majority of the people that put him in power. If he wasn't a serial liar and womanizer he may have been one of the better Presidents in our history.

UAL Stock Bashed by 2002 Story

I think this reporter needs to get fired or severely reprimanded over this screw-up.

At 10:53 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time Monday, a reporter at a Florida-based investor information service did a routine Google search and found a story saying United Airlines was declaring bankruptcy.

It seemed credible: It was from the Chicago Tribune and it was posted on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a sister paper also owned by Tribune. United Airlines parent company UAL (nasdaq: UAUA - news - people ), based in Chicago, has a long history of troubled finances.

He didn't call the company, but he did write up a headline, "United Airlines: Files for Ch. 11, to cut costs by 20%" and published it, not only to subscribers of the Income Securities Advisor, but also through Bloomberg terminals, to which ISA, in the parlance of the Internet news industry, aggregates its content.

Why the hell did he not call the company when there was a news story saying that the company declared bankruptcy out of nowhere like that. All he had to do was pick up the phone and talk to someone from UALs corporate communications office and the stock would not have gone to 3 like that. Good thing I didn't have a stop on it or I would have been stopped out at a crappy price due to this person's incompetence.

All this reporter had to do was call UAL and say "This is ISA verifying a story from the S. Florida Sun Sentinel that you folks have declared Chapter 11." Then UAL would have said "Nope we didn't send out any information like. That Sun Sentinel article is a mistake." And that would have been that.

Olbermann and Matthews Out at Political Coverage at MSNBC

It seems that the liberal extremism and idiocy was just too much for the higher-ups at MSNBC.

Olbermann began to have difficulty keeping his opinions in check, or simply stopped trying.
He sarcastically dismissed GOP pundit Pat Buchanan on the air after Buchanan said the Republicans had been enlivened by the entrance of a conservative Republican.

"Those reading US Weekly with the picture of her and her youngest daughter with the word `scandal' written across it won't be so happy," Olbermann said.

Maybe NBC will start to understand that you use a reporter to report the hard news while you use a pundit to give an opinion on that news. However I agree that the reporter should be allowed to have an opinion segment but they need to mark it as such so I can change the channel. I'm all for biased journalism as long as it doesn't masquerade as being unbiased. So I can accept MSNBC as "your source for liberal news" and Fox News "your conservative news network."

However I have to say that Matthews isn't too bad but I hope Olbermann is fired at MSNBC. He is such a far left joke that he is actually hurting the channel. I can't even stand him even on Football Night in America show before the Sunday Night Football game on NBC. I keep thinking he is going to say "the 2008 Miami Dolphins are just like Bush's failed policies in Iraq and Afghanistan just with less destruction of our standing of the world." I just hope he and Tiki Barber (who is conservative) get into a shouting match and Olbermann is thrown off the show.

Scary View of Google

I read this article criticising Google and it does sound pretty scary if they really aren't so interested in your privacy as they claim.

First, a little background. Google sits at the confluence of two historic Silicon Valley philosophical streams. One, which comes from Sergey Brinn and Larry Page, the two founders, reaches back all of the way to the early days of computing and continues forward through the world of gamers, hackers, Apple, and the Web 2.0 generation. It is essentially Utopian in its belief that technology – especially the Web – will bring about a better world (hence, Google’s ‘Do No Evil’ motto). It also has absolutist (some would even say totalitarian) tendencies, in that it also believes that the empiricism of science and technology supersedes messy human institutions. It is proudly amoral, which is why it can celebrate hackers – or for that matter, Steve Jobs – as heroes, as long as they remain innovators.

I have heard the idea of technology superseding human institutions a while back in Wired. I remember that one of the futurists featured in their Year 2000 issue addressed this issue. He talked about how ones affiliation and interests will eventually trump ones nationality as a persons identity. The "Tribe" Society or something like that.

So for instance Anime Lovers around the world would form their own "virtual nation" outside of borders, language, and national boundaries. So if Google "controls the information" and people are not closely affiliated with nations as in years past then they could become a defacto world government. They will control the lifeblood of the information age, Information.

That is all well and good if you think Google is a great company that cleaves to the "Do No Evil" moniker (like I do.) The idea of all your information a few mouse clicks away in Googles vaults somewhere makes alot of people (including me) happy. However this is where the article gets scary.

For example, a couple weeks ago, in a barely noticed blog entry, reporter Clint Boulton of Computerworld recounted a conversation he’d had with a Google insider who admitted that whatever the company was saying publicly – and to Congress — about user privacy, it was indeed tracking not just user search trails, but also their identities – so-called “Deep Packet Inspection.” The entry drew few readers, and no comments, but it did attract attention from one source: a senior Google executive called the magazine to get it to back off the story.

If they are doing Deep Packet Inspection for anything other then to check for bandwidth usage and to stop spammers then we do have a problem. If they are actually recording these search trails and linking them to personal information then the problem is massive.
This will be especially bad news because they are going heavy into storage and saying "trust us with all your information."

If they do have access to all online information and are storing it somewhere then Big Brother is here. They have already freaked people out with that Chrome EULA so the cracks are starting to form. Man, I hope that all these allegations are not true because I love Google and have made quite a bit of money over the years trading their stock. I'm hoping that "Do No Evil" is not just corporate boilerplate.

Even Obama Had Reservations about Community Organizing

It seems that community organizing was not the job for him and went to law school instead:

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. Personally, he might end up like his father; politically, he would fail to improve the lot of those he was trying to help.

I guess all that time on Chicago's mean streets just made him want to enter politics instead of organizing. He is right that a politician can do the jobs of 100s of organizers with a single stroke of a pen.

I still didn't agree with some of the criticism of it that I heard at the RNC though. For the most part being an organizer and working with poor families one-on-one is a lot better job then some of other traditionally leftist jobs. I think an organizer does a lot more good then an environmental advocate, a line-sitter for IPhones, or a professional picketer. I think one lefty organizer is equal to about a 100 Code Pinkos or a 1000 Crazy Anarchist Freaks.

It Seems Fannie and Freddie Will Get Bailed Out

That is according to rumors circulating around.

The government has formulated a plan to put troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, dismiss their top executives, and use government funds to prop them up, government officials told the two companies yesterday, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

Under the plan, the federal government would place the firms in a legal state known as conservatorship, the sources said. The value of the company's common stock would be diluted but not wiped out while the holdings of other securities, including company debt and preferred shares, would be protected by the government.

At least under conservatorship you won't lose all of the value of the common stock. Also the debt and preferred need to be protected or there might be a run on the two companies and foreign nations might want out at the same time.

It still sucks if you were long the stocks looking for some kind of bounce back. My guess is they will go to maybe 5 for FNM and 3 for FRE and probably trade range there. The stocks won't be liquidated but the Treasury gets to put billions in bad debt onto their balance sheet. Doesn't sound like a good thing for the dollar but perhaps the European Slowdown will keep things leveled out.

Obama Takes His Message to the Bitter Clingers

This should be cause for concern among the Obama faithful.

Despite early optimism, Obama's strategists are mapping out an electoral plan similar to Democrat John Kerry's from 2004. Obama still is pushing into traditionally Republican and rural areas, such as this farm region along the Ohio River. But don't look for the Democratic presidential nominee in, say, undeniably GOP Idaho.

They should not be doing anything similar to John Kerry. I mean that man lost to a President that was embroiled in an unpopular war that was descending into chaos and has one of the worst approval ratings of all time. I think just about any Democrat other then John Kerry could have beaten Bush for his second term.

So Obama is going into the heart of the rust belt where everyone is "clinging to their guns and religion?" That sounds like a recipe for disaster. That area is dotted with tiny Wasilla, Alaska-like towns that have Mayors like Sarah Palin that the Dems have nothing but contempt for.

So in other words Obama is essentially saying "you bitter clingers who aren't qualified to be VP should vote for me anyway because I am mighty and you are worms!" I guess those fly-over states matter if you want to win an election.

The AP reporting on McCain and Palin eating Ice Cream?

It was only a small thing but it hit me as something that you wouldn't see in the MSM report on McCain.

After their speeches, Palin and McCain ducked into The Chocolate Factory to greet customers and sign autographs. After Palin met a few people, she turned to the ice cream counter and said:

"I've got to get the moose tracks, please. Moose tracks, you know, near and dear to my heart. I can't go wrong with it." She was handed a waffle cone with a giant scoop.

Then McCain and his wife came up to order. The senator asked for a recommendation and then decided on watermelon sorbet. Cindy McCain ordered a brownie.

The woman behind the cash register, Becky Luft, 20, was flush with excitement and her friend described her as McCain's No. 1 fan. McCain came around the counter to pose for a picture with her.

They actually wrote about McCain and Palin being regular folks and not put in the generic Obama surrogate parroting the same, tired "4 more years of failed Bush policies etc" at the end of the article. This little blurb actually put a human face on the candidates the same way as all the blushing coverage of Obama's vacation did. I think it is just a momentary lapse in the AP and Terence Hunt will probably be given a severe talking to but it is nice to see.

Twilight Author Stephenie Meyer to Stop Book After Internet Leak

Now this is really a case of one person ruining things for legions of an author's fans.  In a way I hope she never finishes this last book in the saga or takes like 10 years or something to do it. She would really drive home the point that putting unauthorized previews on the Internet comes with a heavy cost.  Everyone is just too busy trying to get the scoop to worry about what the person behind the art feels.  Let this be their comeuppance.

"This has been a very upsetting experience for me, but I hope it will at least leave my fans with a better understanding of copyright and the importance of artistic control," wrote Meyer.

"I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on "Midnight Sun," and so it is on hold indefinitely."

Meyer said the draft that was released on the Internet was incomplete with messy and flawed writing but she was making this draft available to everyone to be a fair and because it added a new dimension to the "Twilight" story.

Effusive Praise from the Brits for Palin

It seems the Brits understand how well Gov. Palin did in her speech as well.  First German PM Merkel and now Gov. Palin.  If you don't like tough women in power then these must be sad times for you.

It gave her audience instant confidence in her, and in her ability to attack the enemy. The purpose of the speech was to dispel doubts about her suitability: only a bigot could have had those at the end of her performance.

She does jokes too - her line about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull ("lipstick") was unscripted, and suggests this outsider is going to be a Reaganesque presence in high politics if she becomes vice-president.

But it was all part of a rhetorical tour de force that, unlike other examples of the genre, was not about just creating an atmosphere or perpetrating a confidence trick: it was about showing the world the true Sarah Palin.

She is an astounding politician. In nearly 25 years of being paid to sit through political speeches, I struggle to think of one I have heard that was more immediately successful and that will prove to have been such a moment in history.

Palin is the New Star in the GOP

I think we might be able to look at last nights speech by Gov. Palin and say that it was similar to Ronald Reagan at the 1964 GOP convention speech.  An unknown getting up there in front of the glare of millions and giving the speech of her life.  

She was scrappy, a fighter, folksy, funny, and doesn't look like she would back down from anyone. All this talk of her going head-to-head with Putin and breaking under his ice-blue KGB gaze is just talk.  I can see her not giving an inch to Russian aggression and keeping a firm line on nukes with Iran.  

You can even hear Al-Quida and other women haters in the Middle East quaking in their boots. Palin shows that women can not only drive a car and show their faces in public but they can be next in line for the most powerful job in the world.  I actually feel sorry for Biden because I think has more then he reckoned with in the VP debate.

It seemed like one of those moments that is the culmination of everything she has done professionally up to that point.  If she failed she drags down McCain and pretty much ends her national political career.  Instead she gave one of the great convention speeches of all time and has *arrived* on the national stage. Mark my words, she won't just be the first female VP she will be the first female President as well.  

Watch out Vlady that don't call her Barracuda for nothing.

New Poll says 51% of media against Palin

It seems the media heavy hand with Gov. Palin is starting to backfire according to this poll.  Yeah I figured dragging a minor daughter through the mud due to her unplanned pregnancy is going to get the media in trouble. Sex sells but it doesn't get people to vote for Obama.

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote forRepublican presidential candidate John McCain in November.

Could there be a Market Crash? Here is the Tell

I was reading a very interesting article on Minyanville and it pointed out a few things that I will be keeping my eye on in September.

Much has been written about the $230 billion in debt that is coming due in Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) by the end of the quarter. These two troubled institutions remain elephants in the room that won’t go away. Well then again, perhaps they will. 

But wait, there’s more. 

Financial institutions have $871 billion in debt coming due into year-end. 

If corporate America can successfully roll those obligations and buy more time, odds are we’ll see a sharp upside equity rally.

So that is $1.10 trillion dollars in debt all coming due by the end of this year? Now that is a whopper of a figure.  If FNM and FRE and those financials are able to roll over that debt and find buyers then all will be well.  But if they can't there might be an insane stock market crash that will probably eclipse the election and wipe out trillions in shareholder wealth.  Remember Black Monday was on October 19th, 1987 and the Great Crash was on October 29, 1929.  So what happens in September is very important for the rest of the year. 

So as you read along Minyanville provides a tell:

A microcosm of this looming dynamic will be the surge in September credit issuance. 

It’s critical—and I mean critical in the most profound possible way—that this debt to be absorbed by the marketplace or there will be a line outside the treasury longer than the Million Man March.

Yup, the tell is the credit markets.  If these companies have any problem getting credit or need to increase spreads to "historic levels" and there are still no takers then you better be all cash or aggressively short because there might be another "Black Market" day. 

I think every FNM and FRE debt sales in September should be watched and parsed better then Greenspan FED minutes.  If there is any indication that they won't be able to roll over that $230 billion in debt it is going to blast the market in the face.  So far so good with a 5 year debt auction on September 2nd. The next big auction of 2-10 year notes will be on September 8th.  If that one is a stinker then the fear factor of the market will go strait up.  Then you will hear FRE and FNM bailout talk start up again and the market will tank accordingly.  If things get worse going into October then look out below.

"Its Over" States Noonan

It seems that more then one Republican insider are not good with the Palin pick for McCain VP.  

Todd: Is she really the most qualified woman?

Noonan: The most qualified no. I think they went for this excuse me political bullshit about narratives..

Todd: Yeah, they went to narratives.

Noonan: Everytime Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

I think the idea of a narrative is a good one but it seems that Noonan doesn't like it.  Palin solidifies the base and provides a fresh face that could appeal to non-GOPers and Independents. She looks like a solid, salt-of-the-earth, guns, family, and anti-abortion hockey mom that voted 2 times for Bush.  

A guy like Romney is just another millionaire country-club Republican that can't relate to the swing voters. Even though Bush should have fit the same mold being a Yale Skull and Bonesman, a frat boy, CEO etc. he was still portrayed as a "cutting brush at the ranch" sort of guy.

I think Palin's speech and her debate against Biden is going to make or break her.  If she looks like a deer in the headlights or looks like a neophyte she is dead.  If she is scrappy and knows her stuff then I think Noonan will be proved wrong.  

Narratives are powerful as long as you tailor them to the person.  A frat boy, screw-off that was losing the peace in Iraq won a second term because he was portrayed as a stubborn guy that will "go get Al-Quida where ever they were hidin'."  

The other guy was an effete, windsurfer living off his wifes money, that was "against it before he was for it."  A flip-flopper that didn't respond fast enough to attacks on his war record.  I mean almost anyone could have beat Bush for his second term with things going so bad but the narrative worked against Kerry.  

Abu Dhabi To Bankroll some Movies

This writer views this move with some scepticism but I view it as a refreshing development.

The media company is planning to launch a subsidiary that will spend roughly $1 billion in the next five years to make a slate of movies in partnership with three American producers, according to the New York Times (NYT:

13.63,+0.51, +3.9%) .

The new operation, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, will oversee Abu Dhabi Media's portion of the partnership with Time Warner's Warner Bros. studio (TWX:

16.31,-0.39, -2.3%) .

This is a very perplexing deal all the way around. And at first blush, it raises more questions that it answers.

He is true that the deal is kind of a strange foray for an oil rich nation but depending on their slate of movies they may make a killing on the deal.  If they get behind some Judd Apatow, Tyler Perry or comic book movies then they will make their money back pretty quick.  

However if they try to bankroll some anti-Iraq war movies like "In the Valley of Elah" they will lose that money pretty quick. I think a few movies set in the UAE or Abu Dhabi might do well if they aren't anti-Israel or something.  I mean that is a pretty exotic part of the world so a spy thriller or an action movie might do well there.  I can see Jason Bourne or James Bond jumping off of that sail shaped hotel while fighting terrorists.

Troopergate Revealed: Gov. Palin's Side

The McCain campaign was slow to provide this information and head off the corruption charges before they were even hatched.  This stuff should have hit the wires on the same day as she was announced as VP.  Palin states that the trooper Mike Wooten was a real scumbag and still holds his job probably because of some idiotic law or something.

In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused trooper Mike Wooten of drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. Palin and her husband, Todd, also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father. Wooten, who hasn't returned numerous phone calls left by The Associated Press this week, was suspended over the allegations for five days in 2006 but still has his job.

In July, the legislature launched a $100,000 investigation into whether Palin abused her power in firing Monegan. The Alaska attorney general's office hired Anchorage attorney Thomas Van Flein to represent Palin and members of her staff in this investigation.

Gustav Misses: Oil Prices Go Bearish Again

I guess that quick oil price spike was easily dispelled since Gustav wasn't the "mother of all storms" as guys like Mayor Nagin feared.

Another analyst also said now that the market perceives that the storm passed without great disruption, it has very quickly returned its focus on slumping global demand. "You look at the overall fundamentals," of the oil market, "and they are bearish really," said Andrew Lebow, an energy analyst at MF Global. "Gustav was just a stopping point - a brake for the time being," until prices continue their long slide.

I agree with this assesment because European economies are just starting to show negative growth and should be cutting back on oil demand in general.  So only the Chinese and the Indians could actually drive up oil demand.  It seems the Chinese are starting to feel a little demand destruction of their own.  

Some closest to the pump say the day has already arrived, nearly two months after Beijing surprised the nation with a near-18 per cent rise in subsidised gasoline and diesel prices.

“Demand is definitely coming off after the price hike. Among the worst hit is the transportation sector, which had been operating on razor-thin margins even before the increase,” said Qi Fang, a long-time independent dealer who owns a dozen petrol stations in Hebei province, near Beijing.

“Americans were screaming at $4 per gallon petrol and they are using less now. Chinese petrol is only less than 20 per cent lower, how can we sustain these kind of prices?”, said Qi, adding that his firm’s sales since July have dropped over half versus a year ago.

So we may not see another repeat of that massive crude buildup that the Chinese did prior to the Olympics at least for the rest of this year. We may even see their economy start to sputter as the US cuts back on spending for Chinese exports.  A slower Chinese economy will slow oil demand right there.

So as I see it only OPEC would be able to prop up oil prices going forward.  It seems that they may actually cut production on September 9th in order to keep prices high.  If that move doesn't cause crude prices to spike or oil stays flat then you could say that froth has been driven out of the markets.  Then we can finally see the supply and demand dynamics of oil go back to normal again.

More Media Sexism Toward Palin

I have been seeing this stuff all over the news media and I guess you can say that Hillary was right.

Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol has been revealed as being pregnant, and that story has dominated election coverage recently. (Note to networks: Bristol isn’t running for VP; Sarah is.)

Not only are the networks trying to drag this story out, they are also saying Palin isneglecting her children by running for vice president. (Stay at home, women, preferably in the kitchen!)

I have heard liberal talking heads call Palin a bad mother because she let her daughter get pregnant.  The media really shouldn't be going after Palin's minor daughter because it is true that the daughter isn't running for anything.  However the media has gone wall-to-wall with it and made it look nice and sordid.  It seems the anti-woman wing of the news media is still very strong.

End of the World Scheduled for September 10th

It seems that Spanish science writer Luis Sancho and Professor Otto Rössler, a chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen are filing suit against the Large Hadron Collider (LHC.)  This article talks about what could go down due to these irresponsible physicists dabbling with the mysteries of the universe.  Do they think they are gods!

These LHC opponents fear that the Earth could be destroyed by vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles, microscopic black holes, or strangelets produced by the high-energy proton-proton collisions planned by CERN physicists. Vacuum bubbles have been described as a kind of "cosmic cancer." If it turns out that there is a lower energy state into which the universe could settle, then the LHC might produce "bubbles" of such a state which would then expand, ripping apart the Earth and eventually the entire universe. If magnetic monopoles were produced they might induce protons to decay and thus destroy normal matter. Microscopic black holes might grow by gobbling up the Earth. And strangelets are combinations of quarks that theoretically interact with normal matter and transform it into strange matter.

Vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles, and stranglets, Oh My!  Vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles, and stranglets, Oh My!  I guess we might have a choice of a kill-the-universe-scenerio with the vacuum bubbles, a black hole that would devour the earth, monopoles that would disintigrate normal matter or everything could turn strange.  

My money is on not finding the Higgs Boson and everyone has to get out their slide-rules and figure out ways to make up for it.  The scenerio where earth would turn into strange matter would be pretty interesting as well but it would probably wipe out humanity.  I guess the Doors song "People are Strange" would then actually apply.