Here's another jewel from Georgia..........

I don't see how this chap got to where he is without representing some of the dumbest shits in Georgia.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg

2011 Predictions..........

Markets in precious metals, oil, commodities, stocks and bonds will rise and fall in an unpredictable fashion; The SNAP food stamp program will be expanded to include cable TV access to a new U.S. government-sponsored channel, "Bread and Circuses, and QE3 will include issuing U.S. Treasury bonds directly to households!

Herman Cain

Every presidential race attracts its share of ego-tripping attention-mongers who revel in the all-too-brief spotlight.  Boortz would make a better Commander-in-Chief than Herman Cain.   

And it's Christmas in Dixie...........

It's snowing in the pines...........Atlanta got what they were told was headed this way.

It's a white Christmas in Hotlanta!

And this was 2009 pay...........

Bank of America Corp.


Thomas Montag

2009 Total Compensation: $29,930,431

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

James Dimon

2009 Total Compensation:

$9,274,494

Citigroup Inc.

John Havens

2009 Total Compensation: $11,276,454 Morgan Stanley

Walid Chammah

2009 Total Compensation: $10,021,969

The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Lloyd Blankfein

2009 Total Compensation: $9,862,657 Wells Fargo

John Stumpf

2009 Total Compensation: $21,340,547

Let us pray...........

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

Bernanke, Blankfein, and Dimon.


Holy Trinity?

Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs?

Alpharetta WalMart theft............

The shoplifting at our local WalMart store is out of control.  I spoke with a law enforcement officer on Saturday inside the store and he spoke with honesty and humor.   They can't stop it.  The thieves don't live locally and just show up to steal at will.

I was with my son and a friend to purchase night crawlers to go fishing.  Worms.  They were all gone, stolen.  Gone.   They had left the dirt and the containers and all the worms had vanished.   I hate shopping at WalMart and having to see all of the thieving.  Recently I saw an employee stealing.

If anyone from WalMart would care to call and discuss the above feel free.  I am easy to find.

My cell is 877-772-1621.

Those punks from south Atlanta look to be having a catfish Christmas.

Dad always said to preserve the peace, prepare for war..........

A guy makes a rolling stop at a stop sign, and gets pulled over by a local policeman.  The guy hands the cop his driver's license, insurance verification, plus his concealed carry permit.

"Okay, Mr. Smith," the cop says, "I see your CCW permit. Are you carrying today?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well then, better tell me what you got."

Smith says, "Well, I got a .357 revolver in my inside coat pocket.  There's a 9mm semi-auto in the glove box. And, I've got a .22 magnum derringer in my right boot."

"Okay," the cop says. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, back in the trunk, there's an AR15 and a shotgun. That's about it."

"Mr. Smith, are you on your way to or from a gun range...?"

"Nope."

"Well then, what are you afraid of....?"

"Not a damned thing..."

A beauty from Nassim Taleb

"The opposite of success is not failure.  It's name-dropping."

This makes sense or does it?

With the domestic (and global) economy in shambles, and not foundering only due to $4+ trillion in fiscal and monetary stimuli and near-double digit unemployment, there is, however, a silver lining - Reuters reports 2010 may be the second highest bonus payout season on Wall Street ever!!!

Your debt.......mine and yours.......OURS!

With little fanfare, the November budget deficit of $150.4 billion was reported, which happened to be the worst fiscal November in the history of the US, and just out of the top 10 of worst deficit months ever, including the traditionally weak seasonal months of December, April and September (indicatively, the worst deficit month was the February 2010 $221 billion). The deficit was a major surprise to all those who had expected a pick up in income tax revenues. And as the charts below demonstrate, while there was indeed a modest pick up in tax collections, it was nowhere near enough to offset the surge in government outlays (even with interest payments still at near record low levels). What was also not broadly appreciated is that the cumulative debt issuance over deficit funding has hit a new all time high of $1,735 billion since our October 2006 starting point (4 fiscal years ago). And what is a bigger concern, is that the debt issuance continues to remain at almost exactly 50% over the deficit. Additionally we know that courtesy of Obama's latest stimulus for the wealthy (and everyone else) the latest projection for the 2011 budget deficit will hit $1.5 trillion (after it was just $1.1 trillion a few months prior). What this means is that should the US Treasury continue to issue 50% more debt than total deficit needs, by the end of fiscal 2011, the US will have issued another roughly $2.25 trillion in net debt. Granted this is a rule of thumb. But what it means is that the $900 billion in notional (not market) value of bonds to be bought back by the Fed through June will be woefully insufficient, and that as a result we expect that Ben Bernanke will be forced to monetize another $1.2 trillion in debt to continue with his course of monetizing every dollar of deficit spending, as he has been doing since the advent of QE2. It also means that unless something dramatically changes, through October 31, 2011, total US debt will be $15.9 trillion, up from the $13.9 trillion as of the end of last month, and will mean that the debt ceiling will have to be raised not only once, but likely twice in the next 12 months. We are now truly a banana republic you can believe in.

Ossabow Island, December, 2010

A Huckabee ZINGER...........

"If we want to keep our nation's secrets 'SECRET' store them where  President Obama stores his college transcripts and birth certificate."

Sounds like Governor Huckabee might also mention that they’re safely stored with Bush’s transcripts and the paper trail of his Alabama AWOL.

Like Father, Like Son

Am I the only American ......

who is royally upset about the American Taxpayer bailing out European banks?  God Almighty help us.

MONTANA, 2010

Your Government again withholding information.........

At noon today, the Fed will provide an information dump identifying recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid which it dispensed as per its interpretation of its mandate following the Lehman collapse. From Bloomberg: "The data will probably show the magnitude of central bank support to companies including Bank of America Corp. and General Electric Co. after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. spurred a surge in private borrowing costs. Lawmakers demanded disclosure after the Fed approved aid dwarfing the federal government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program." Not all data will be available, however: all important discount window information will not be included as part of this package: "Congress excluded one Fed program from disclosure, the discount window, which is the subject of a 2008 lawsuit filed by Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News, against the central bank. A group of banks is appealing to the Supreme Court over lower-court decisions ordering the Fed to identify loan recipients. The program peaked at $110.7 billion in October 2008." Since today’s information relates to aid from Dec. 1, 2007, through July 21, 2010, there will be enough information to satisfy the most detail-oriented forensic reverse engineers.

There isn't enough Irish whiskey to save them......

Since its bankruptcy and currency devaluation, Iceland's economy and stock market have surged, unbound by the shackles of a zombie monetary system and exponentially growing debt. Ireland, to the contrary, can only hope for at best a gradual decline in its economic output instead of an outright collapse now that the European Commission council is the country's new politburo. It can also, at best, hope that its pension fund will have a few penny farthings left for the aging population once it is done rescuing Europe's banks. It is precisely this option that a formerly democratic country refused to offer its citizens, and is the reason why its entire government should be tried for treason: instead of using empirical evidence that default and devaluation is the best outcome, Ireland crumbled to the interests of a few parasite plutocrats, which have just their own interests in mind, and never those of the host nation (which ends up being abused and discarded like a used condom off the side of the road).

Best Idea for 2011........

Wouldn't it be pure joy to see Congress and the Senate wear racing suits to work?  They could wear suits (fireproof & bulletproof) like the NASCAR guys do showing the American public who has paid for them via lobbying dollars.

Austerity..........yeah, sure, right.....

The teleprompter in chief will announce that he is about to freeze government salaries for two years. Of course, government workers thank him, as this means federal salaries which have exploded in the past 5 years will be stuck at all time highs for at least two years, even as nominal salaries for everyone else continue to decline.

In order to promote some vaguely credible idea of austerity, instead of freezing salaries, Obama needs to be cutting.  That will never happen as it will cost him votes.

Thanksgiving, 2010

May you believe that the best is yet to come.  There is so much to be thankful for.

We are blessed and lucky that we live in the United States of America. 

America knows the answer.............

Is QE2 A Stealthy $90 Billion Gifting Scheme To The Primary Dealers?

Is a one legged duck going to swim in circles?

Is a fishes ass watertight?

For the few pessimists I know...........

Due to the economy and recent cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off.

The best example of "senseless" in history

They just kept kicking him. Bobby Tillman was 5-foot-6 and 124 pounds, not big enough to defend himself against four bigger teenagers, now charged in his death.  Nor was Tillman the sort to have started a fight. He was in a crowd of kids leaving a house party in Douglasville Saturday night. He provoked no one, and he must have been stunned when another teenager stalked across the street and hit him hard in the head. He fell to the street, his head striking the curb. Then three others were there, and they all fell upon him, police and witnesses said.  Jourdan Ferguson, 19, said she tried to stop the beating.  “It was unfair. It was pointless,” Ferguson said. She said she yelled at the teenagers, "Stop stomping him!"  Then she leaped in, tried to pull the attackers away. But she's only 5 feet tall.  She couldn't stop it.

Witnesses said the beating was over in a minute.

Sarah Palin on QE2

"I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.


The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.

And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.

We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals “clueless.” When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings."

Montana, 2010

These hunters are clients of Chippewa Partners and  we are proud to represent their interests in the financial markets.  This Montana bull was taken last week  Congratulations Jon on some fine shooting and to Scott for providing the strategic thinking to harvest this fine bull!

Dean Parisian's analysis of the 11/2 election...........

The agenda that works for the Democrats doesn't work for the country.

That's why the country fired them.

The only things I want ......

from our politicians are tax reform, immigration reform/enforcement, to discontinue the puppet wars in the Middle East, social security reform and above all, some fiscal sanity.

Asking too much?

Probably but  a man can still dream can't he?

Wisconsin voters.......

Okay, I admit it..........  they drink too much beer, they eat too much cheese, they carry their love for the beloved Packers a bit too far.   But they dam well know a political candidate when they hear one.

Congratulations to America and the State of Wisconsin for booting Feingold and putting in Mr. Johnson.

That cowboy is a winner for all of us . 

MSNBC filth..........

A finer bunch of goons on one TV set would be hard to find.

Last night the MSNBC shills were crying about potential impeachments for Obama and Bachman subpeonas for the financial criminals.

And to hear that Harry Reid outgunned the "Massive tea party" donations by a 5% margin.

What the hell is wrong with the gaming crowd in Nevada?  Oh, I get it.  No one is working and their real estate market has folded. 

Kristi Noem of South Dakota

Congratulations to Ms. Noem, her family and the fine people of South Dakota.

You are the epitome of what Tom Daschle wasn't.

Good luck with the fight ahead. 

Ms. Noem, you have the ability to do more for Indian Country in South Dakota than anyone before you.

May you hit the D.C. ground running.

Left Coast Loons............

Jerry Brown, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer.  Elected.

We know what is wrong with these people we don't know what is wrong with voters who put them in office again.

An American Veteran's Perspective..............

"I'm 63 and I'm Tired"


by Robert A. Hall

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked hard since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe , the freedom of the press of China the crime and violence of Mexico , the tolerance for Christian people of Iran , and the freedom of speech of Venezuela .

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Al lah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois.

I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but thinks that Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I #@*# sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.

I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheadedDaniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the " Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm real tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.

Robert A Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.

You just have to watch this..............

By NEIL GENZLINGER


Don’t think of it as spending six hours at the circus, a brain-numbing prospect for some grown-ups. Think of it as investing six hours in an elegant eavesdrop-on-our-family reality show that puts all the noisy, obnoxious examples of that genre to shame.

“Circus,” a six-part study of the Big Apple Circus that begins on Wednesday on PBS, has its share of aerialists, jugglers and clowns, of course, all beautifully filmed. But this quietly addictive program isn’t really about what goes on inside the Big Apple’s single ring. It’s about the people, both under the lights and behind them, who make those performances possible. And, to PBS’s credit, “Circus,” filmed over the 2008-9 season, isn’t a mere highlight reel; it takes the time to let you get to know this unusual collection of misfits and perfectionists, making their triumphs and especially their setbacks truly affecting.

For much of the first hour “Circus” doesn’t seem as if it would be worth the commitment. The initial encounters with the principal players include an awful lot of predictable, overblown blather about the wonders of the circus life. It’s every youngster’s dream to join the circus, assorted people repeat in one way or another, a cliché that hasn’t been true for a few generations. We’re all one big family, everyone says, another cliché, though more accurate.

“Six hours of this?” you’re thinking, but just then Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre, the directors, throw in a jolting combination: a nasty accident during training and an incident involving a ring-crew worker that brings the police. It’s suddenly evident that these filmmakers have been given a level of access that will get them well beyond the platitudes.

And sure enough, the subsequent hours bring romance, firings, laughs, injuries, even death. Each episode has something unexpected in it, as well as moments of honesty that make up for the overly romanticized stretches (which are many, with Part 6 getting especially drippy).

It may be news to some viewers that the Big Apple Circus, whose current incarnation in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center is the 33rd, essentially starts from scratch each year. Though some performers return — Barry Lubin, for instance, seems to have been the clown Grandma forever — others are new, and their various routines must be whipped into shape and blended into a coherent whole. The supporting crew also has to be trained.

The opening episode, “First of May,” records the beginning of this process, in Walden, N.Y., where Steve Smith, the director for the 2008-9 season, and Paul Binder, the circus’s longtime artistic director, assess what they’ve got and try to form it into a quality show. There is trouble in the ring — it’s a good thing that the horse-riding acrobats wear safety tethers and that the trapeze has a net under it — and some discomfort outside of it, as people get to know one another.

Once the circus hits the road, a couple of big-picture stories emerge. One is Mr. Binder’s announcement that the season will be his last as artistic director. Another is the economy.  “Here we are on the 29th of September 2008,” Mr. Smith is heard to say as the camera pans the tent during a performance, revealing that at least half the seats are empty. “The Dow Jones dropped 777 points today. Money is tight.”

But the real beauty of this program is in the smaller stories and in the openness with which they’re told, from Mr. Binder — his ambivalence about leaving the job couldn’t be clearer — down to the low-wage grunts who set up the tents and clean up after the animals.

“There’s a woman, prison, babies and courts, and that explains it all,” one tent rigger says by way of describing how someone comes to be doing what he’s doing. “Most people who know those four things know you end up in jobs like this.”



By season’s end, this man has gone through quite a journey, and so have the juggling brothers who barely talk to each other, the clown who takes mood-stabilizing medication, the wire walker who wants to have a baby, and just about everyone else in this well-conceived program. You probably won’t be inspired to run off and join the circus after watching “Circus”; heck, you might be left with the suspicion that economics and other forces are going to kill off this art form before too much longer. But you’ll be glad that there were people who did, and that these filmmakers captured them before time marched on.

Election Day yuck..........

Do you know what happened 160 years ago this fall... back in 1850?


California became a state.

The people had no electricity.

The state had no money.

Almost everyone spoke Spanish.

There were gunfights in the streets.

So basically nothing has changed except then the women had real boobs and the men didn't hold hands.

ZeroHedge.com

The finest web site on the planet, exposing the fraud of Wall Street on the American people.

Here they are taking on  the big banks holding your mortgage note.  Maybe you want to keep an eye on what is going on yourself.

Heard Anything?


When news broke that Wall Street had made a total mess of our mortgages, we launched a website that let homeowners ask their bank a simple question: where's my mortgage note?

By law, banks had 20 days to respond to your request. We're coming up on 20 days - can you give us a few minutes to tell us what you've heard? Click the appropriate link:

My bank sent me what they claim to be the original note.

My bank responded, but did not send me my original note.

I haven't heard back from my bank.

We've already started to hear back from some of the 200,000 homeowners that have gone to our site. So far, the responses are troubling.  Some banks claim they have no idea where the note is. Others have sent what they claim is the note, but closer inspection shows that it's a completely different document.

But, the most troubling of all is the response that many homeowners have gotten from Bank of America. They're telling customers they have no legal right to see their own note. Think about how absurd that is; your mortgage note is a contract you signed with your bank - and they're telling you that you can't see it?

Did your bank give you a similar response? Click here to alert your state attorney general: http://action.seiu.org/page/s/investigate

We aren't going to get to the bottom of Wall Street's mess overnight. But step one is alerting the authorities if your bank fails to honor your request in a way that you think is acceptable. And if there's any hint of possible fraud, it needs to be investigated immediately.

I'll send you another update once we hear back from other homeowners in the same boat as you. If we're going to keep paying thousands of dollars to these banks, we have every right to demand some shred of accountability from them.

Irish Setter boots, the Elk Tracker 880

I am really disappointed in this boot.  Always wanted a pair and got around to picking up a pair at the Sportsmans Warehouse in Chattanooga, TN.   Put about 25 miles on my first pair, oiled them and all of a sudden they just wear out my left arch with poor stitching once the boot was pliable and was fitting my foot.  There was a large knot from a leather joint that was about as hard as diamonds and it was just killing me on every step.   So, I called the GM back in TN, he had another pair, I rolled up there two weeks ago and started the process all over.  Next thing I know I have a large blister on the heel of my right foot.   I don't get it.   I have more hunting boots than Carters has liver pills and I get a couple Irish Setter duds.

I should have asked for a discount in having to drive 200 miles to pick up the last pair.    It's my last pair of Irish Setters I will ever purchase.  One pair of dud boots, your fault,  two pair of duds, well, definitely your fault,  there won't be a third time.   I have had enough.  

Here's what Irish Setter has to say about the boot.

"Constructed entirely of super premium work-grade leathers, the Elk Tracker is our “Franchise Player”. It breaks in fast and fits great from the word go. With sturdy cleats that grab hold on any terrain, this big time performer makes even seasoned hunters its #1 fan"

I have to say that is all nonsense.  Hype.  BS.

Quantitative Easin'

All my stocks are up in my 401(k)

And my random walk, is still lookin' okay

I'm even safe with AMBAC muni bonds from L.A.

Quantative easin', takes my risk away.

Stopped into my bank, to pay my loan today

Well the banker takes my fiat, and we pretend I pay

You know that leech he wants my gold, but it's all squirrelled away

Quantative easin', boosts my silver play

My real estate is down, and my mood is gray

So I will just default - it's that easy they say

I'll give the house keys back, eighteen months from today

Quantative easin', makes my rent free today

Quantative easin', where politicians play

Quantative easin', is surely here to stay

Dead wrong Wall Street analysis..............

By now everyone is aware that M&T bank acquired Wilmington Trust in today's version of Merger Monday... however this time with a twist. The company was acquired at a 40%... discount. That's right, as shareholders were happy with their WL positions at close yesterday, it appears the financial firm, and its acquirer were all too aware that the sellside pump syndicate was woefully wrong on the name, and 11 analysts had an average target on the stock of $10.31. The question then becomes if Wall Street is so very wrong in evaluating one of its own to the tune of a 40% plunge to closing price, and 60% to the target consensus, just how overvalued are all other financial firms, all of which continue to trade based on circle jerk rating boosts by one another, even as those behind the Chinese Wall (such as M&T management and WL executives) know all too well the fair value of assets is way below where the gullible public is buying the stock. Which is why we present some of the most egregious examples of sellside hubris and pumpatude disclosed by this price discovery event: below are the hall of shame analysts who missed this take under by about a mile.

At the top: SunTrust's Mac Hodgson whose latest price target on WL was $22... just over 80% where the company ended up being acquired! Going down the list we see such other wizards of financial modelling as Keefe, Bruyette's McGratty who has a $13 PT, RBC's Cassidy who recently reiterated a price target of $12, Credit Agricole's Ruthschow with $11, Morgan Stanley's Pate with $10, B Riley's Stapp with $9, and so forth. One wonders if this cadre of hall of shamers was so very wrong on WL, just how correct their other buy "calls" must be...

humor for hump day.........

I saw a Muslim extremist fall into the river last week, and being a responsible citizen, I informed the emergency services.   It's now Friday and they still haven't responded!

I'm starting to think I wasted a 44-cent stamp.

Liberal, democrat, Obama group-think.......

Dropping the mortgage tax deduction will definitely help the waning real estate market. There is nothing as effective as knowing your taxes are going up to cause people to run out and buy real estate.


Hey everybody, if you buy real estate, you get to deduct the mortgage interest. Ho-Hum.

Hey everybody, if you buy real estate, we took away that pesky tax deduction for the mortgage interest so now you don't have to mess around with reporting it and reducing your taxes! YAAAA!!!!!

BOOYAH!!!     Now I'll go out and buy some real estate after my taxes just went up!!!!!!

Don't get comfortable..........

Elizabeth Hensley will join the Obama administration as a policy adviser to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

I sure hope Ms. Hensley doesn't get too awful comfortable in D.C. with the Obama Administration.    Mr. Obama's tenure will hopefully be over by January of 2013 when a conservative, smaller-government, accountable American leader takes his place to make the hard choices, the right choices and turns the tide of socialism back to what this nation was founded upon. 

A short spelling lesson.........

The last four letters in American..........I Can


The last four letters in Republican.......I Can

The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats

End of lesson. Test to follow in November.

Remember, November is rodent extermination month.

A big swig of inflation for breakfast

Some interesting insights on how even Wal-Mart is doing its best to mask inflation by penny pinching here, there and soon, everywhere. Below is an example of 20% inflation in the span of a few weeks, which will most certainly not be captured in government statistics of food inflation.

Courtesy of Survival Blog

Carlos in the U.P. wrote: "I noted with interest that the Wal-Mart I shop at had cleared the shelves of "Great Value" brand coffee in 39 oz cans for about 2 weeks. Today the new can appeared, with the following differences: 1.) Can is now 33.9 oz, down from 39 oz. Also conspicuously missing is the conversion of 2lb, 7oz therefore no comparison in pounds is easily made. 2.) Price for this smaller can is up from $9.88 to $10.48, by my rustic math an approximate 20% increase! 3.) Contents of can are no longer 'Premium Columbian' Decaffeinated. Now labeled '100% Classic Decaf'"

John Thune

A good one-liner on Obama's "car-in-the-ditch" analogy!  I hope you enjoy working with Ms. Noem this year.  The Native Americans in South Dakota deserve your representation.
  

Dr. Tarpley's Address To Anti-Obama Rally, US Capitol, October 23, 2010

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.

TARPLEY.net

October 23, 2010

I have been actively opposing Obama since the first days of January 2008. I saw that Obama, like Jimmy Carter before him, was a puppet of Wall Street, and specifically of the Trilateral Commission. I posted essays denouncing Obama on the Internet. My book Obama the Postmodern Coup was published before the 2008 Pennsylvania primary. My second book, Barack H. Obama the Unauthorized Biography, was published in August 2008, three months before the election. That same month, I was with Phil Berg at the Supreme Court when he filed papers for the first legal action attempting to expose Obama’s lack of qualification for the presidency.

There are many valid reasons for opposing Obama. Mine may be different from those of some of you. It is important to attack Obama for what he does, not for what he says. Obama operates through duplicity, deception, and deceit. The things he says are often lies to neutralize his base in the Democratic Party. Obama ran as a peace candidate, at least regarding Iraq. In reality, Obama is a warmonger – a bigger and more clever warmonger than any neocon. During his presidency, he has almost always had more combat troops in the field than Bush and Cheney ever did. The Iraq war goes on. The Afghan war grows more and more tragic. Obama has started a third war, a whole new war with Pakistan, a large nation with many times the population of Iraq, and which really does have nuclear weapons. Obama could order an attack on Iran at any time. There are now US military operations in Yemen, Somalia, and virtually all of the countries surrounding Iran. Obama has destroyed the peace movement that once protested these things.

Far from being a friend of organized labor, Obama is a union buster. He has extorted billions of dollars from the pension funds of the United Auto Workers which have been transferred to Wall Street in exchange for dubious Chrysler and GM stock certificates. The UAW has had to accept wages and benefits at the same level as open shops in the so-called right to work states of the South, where there is no union. Most dramatically, Obama’s Race to the Top Program aims at destroying the most important public sector unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. As usual, this is done under left cover, in this case under the slogan of reform. Teachers are being vilified, fired, denied tenure, and subjected to merit pay, even as hundreds of public schools are shut down. Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan, has been leading the charge with the unlamented Michelle Rhee. Their goal is to destroy free, universal, compulsory, quality, education as we have known it since the Northwest Ordinance and the days of Horace Mann.

Under his deceptive left cover, Obama is more of a dictator than Bush ever was. He openly claims the right to assassinate American citizens if they are outside the country. Under Obama, renditions (kidnappings), black sites, torture, and the Guantánamo concentration camp are still going strong.

Most of all, Obama has been a tool of the banks and financiers. Early in his term, Obama invited the leading zombie bankers to the White House and told them he was the only thing standing between them and the populist pitchforks of angry Americans. That is how Obama sees himself: the protector of Wall Street against mass protest. Obama has confirmed Helicopter Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve despite his colossal responsibility for the world derivatives panic of September 2008. Obama has given more power to the Federal Reserve, and fended off attempts to nationalize the Fed. Obama has supported, continued, and expanded the criminal Bush-Paulsen Wall Street bailouts to the tune of $24 trillion. Obama first delayed financial regulation, and then protected derivatives, foreclosures, adjustable rate mortgages, payday loans, car title loans, too big to fail, and all the other practices that should have been outlawed with bright line prohibitions. Right now there is a big demand in the Democratic Party to stop foreclosures — fraudclosures. But even on the verge of electoral defeat, Obama puts subservience to Wall Street first, and is actively sabotaging any attempt to protect the right of Americans to stay in their homes.

Obama’s health-care bill is clearly unconstitutional. Obama’s goal was to bail out the insolvent insurance companies which had been bankrupted by speculation in derivatives. He cynically used the 40 million uninsured as a cover for this operation. We reject Obama’s individual mandate, an invention of the Republicans Senator Grassley and Mitt Romney. We refuse to be coerced into buying shoddy insurance, astronomically overpriced, from a deregulated, for profit, rapacious and predatory private insurance industry complete with masses of kited derivatives and executives with golden parachutes. The American people want Medicare for all, and Obama is here to sabotage that demand.

So Obama is a warmonger, a union buster, and a Wall Street puppet. If you’re a Democrat, you cannot support Obama. Franklin D. Roosevelt sponsored Social Security, which Obama is planning to destroy if he can during the lame-duck session in November and December of this year. John F. Kennedy championed the moonshot and the space program. Obama has already destroyed the US manned space program. Lyndon B. Johnson passed Medicare, which has saved millions of lives. Obama has looted $500 billion from Medicare as part of his bail out for bankrupt insurance companies.

Obama has attacked and betrayed every group that ever supported him, starting with blacks, Latinos. Obama must be dumped from the Democratic ticket for 2012.

Obama has refused to produce a birth certificate, and has fought all attempts to open the files. We must conclude by now that he is unable to show where he was born. This means that he can easily be blackmailed – blackmailed by intelligence agencies, or by cliques of rich bankers, or by cabals of generals, or by other forces. This situation is by itself an intolerable threat to national security. If the president can be blackmailed, then our country becomes a helpless plaything of dark forces and enemies at home and abroad. If Obama cannot prove his qualifications, he must leave the White House for the good of the country. Nor are birthplace and citizenship the only issues. The convictions of Rezko and Blagojevich suggest that Obama can be blackmailed for past corruption. Nor should we forget the explosive allegations about Obama’s personal life which we can read about in any supermarket checkout line.

The Constitution is not a delicatessen. You cannot pick the parts you like and ignore the rest. Leftists and progressives who opposed Bush and Cheney on valid constitutional grounds cannot now pretend that the natural born citizen clause is quaint, irrelevant, or taboo. Those who raised this issue are no longer a voice crying in the wilderness. According to published reports (such as the “Ulsterman” emails), Obama’s behavior has become increasingly erratic, indicating that he may be suffering a mental breakdown as his messianic charisma dissolves with defeat at the polls. Institutional forces are reportedly considering whether Obama should be removed from office under the provisions of the 25th amendment. It is now responsibility of all of us to work for a constructive solution to the present constitutional crisis. This must start by dumping Obama.

Will the Tea Party hire WalMart management?

Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal*Mart every hour every day. This works out to $20,928 revenue every minute!

Wal*Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

Wal*Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

Wal*Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.

Wal*Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.

Wal*Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.

During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.

Wal*Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

Wal*Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.

This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal*Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)

90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal*Mart.

You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal*Mart to fix the economy.

This should be read and understood by all Americans Democrats, Republicans, EVERYONE!!

To the President and all 535 voting members of the Legislature, both parties, it is now official; you are ALL corrupt morons:

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.

The War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.

The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.

AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??

Just saying what we all know .....

The following was posted on the best financial web site on the planet, ZeroHedge.com by a contributor who goes by the name,  QevolveQ Holdings.   It was far too good not to share on a Friday.  Does the SEC or FINRA or Congress care about retail investors?  


Sent 10-21-10 to SEC Enforcement Division


To Whom It May Concern,

I have a question. Why does the SEC allow high frequency traders/co-location traders/etc., to front run retail orders every day in almost every security? When I say front run, I mean the practice of utilizing sub-penny orders whereby these so called traders step in front of real bids and offers by 1/100th of a penny to get the trade done, knowing there's a bid or offer right behind them. This has happened to me at least fifty times in the last year. It is particularly a problem on illiquid issues in which the sub-penny order that front runs my orders may be the only business done at that level. And so my order just sits there and never gets filled.

This exact scenario in fact happened again today, as I was a 700 share bid at $6.10 in PROV from 11:39am till the close. At 2:26pm 450 shares were executed at 6.1007. On 450 shares that is equivalent to just 31 cents better than my 6.10 bid. And that sub-penny trader got the order instead of me because they were able to front run me without even showing a bid in the market (i.e. the 6.1007 print just magically appears on the tape with no bid having been shown there in the Level II system). I would gladly have paid that price, but of course I'm retail and cannot use sub-penny increments.

I hope somebody at the SEC actually reads this. I would very much appreciate a response as well. Please tell me, why is this practice (among others) allowed for some market participants and not others? It is a complete ripoff in my opinion. Our equity market has become a total farce because such practices are allowed. I have little to no faith that I am operating on a fair and level playing field. The marketplace has become dominated by machines and those with the highest levels of capital to deploy. The average retail investor like myself is simply left to be exploited by the robots of greed. These practices are not going unnoticed, and I want to voice my opinion that this nonsense happens in the equity market every day. In my opinion, it is deplorable and likely responsible for investors' seeming lack of confidence in this rigged financial system we are forced to operate in.

Regards,

MQ

Applause Applause Ladies & Gentlemen...........

We can thank the following for their excellent hard work in yet another POMO ramp today. Please give them a round of applause. This is beginning to look a lot like the end of April...


BNP Paribas Securities Corp.

Banc of America Securities LLC

Barclays Capital Inc.

Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC

Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.

Goldman, Sachs & Co.

HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.

Jefferies & Company, Inc.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

Mizuho Securities USA Inc.

Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated

Nomura Securities International, Inc.

RBC Capital Markets Corporation

RBS Securities Inc.

UBS Securities LLC.

October 19th..........

Whattaday!!!!

October 19, 1987 was a doozy.  So is today.  In the big picture, today is a hiccup.  No, a burp.

Junior Seau making the big hit.............

Junior, keep those big hits between the goal posts.   Cliff driving is really bad for your health and keeps the auto repair folk busy.  Real busy.   Smack the opposing running backs pal and don't litter the beach! 

Junior Seau, a former pro-bowl NFL linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots, was arrested for domestic violence early Monday morning (Oct. 18) in Oceanside, CA. He subsequently drove his car off a cliff near Carlsbad, CNN is reporting.


The domestic violence incident began when police were called to Seau's house after reports of an assault. The alleged victim is Seau's live-in girlfriend, who sustained minor injuries. She claims Seau assaulted her during a verbal disagreement. Seau was not home when the police arrived, but returned home later to speak with the officers.  Seau was arrested early Monday morning and charged with spousal assault. He was released on bail. Sometime later that morning, he drive his SUV off a cliff and landed on the beach. He was taken to nearby Lo Jolla Hospital for treatment. Law enforcement is still investigating the cause of the accident.   Seau is still hospitalized. There is no word as to his condition at this time.

Jordans Ground Zero

I have never had a fear like I did Saturday.   Hoping your son will move their hands or feet on command instills a fear I had never had before.  May I never have fear like that again.

It was a tremendous collision between speed and mass.

The laws of physics were really at work.  This play ended my sons 8th Grade football season. 

Geno Collora

Email your email address as soon as possible.

A true modern-day fairy tale..............

One day, long, long ago, there lived a woman who did not whine, nag, or complain.
 

But it was a long time ago, and it was just that one day.


The End.

Eliot Spitzer...........

Anyone else have a good laugh tonite watching and listening to Eliot Spitzer on CNN covering the Chilean miners coming out of their 69-day underground "home" into the arms of their wives and girlfriends.

Almost like the guy went from hooker to hero overnight.  Par for CNN.

Never too old......

My Dads first pedicure at age 87!  He said he should have gotten one 40 years ago.

Under the lights.............

Three generations of football players, 87, 56 and 14. 

Alabama, say no more..........

Officials in 49 states have launched a joint investigation into allegations that mortgage companies mishandled documents and broke laws in foreclosing on hundreds of thousands of homeowners.

Alabama was the only state not to join the investigation.

"This group has the backing of nearly every state in the nation to get to the bottom of this foreclosure mess," Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading the probe.

Alabama is Sen. Richard Shelby's state. The self proclaimed anti-bank activist who is the biggest bank puppet after (maybe) Dodd and Frank.

Grampa Doug and Jordan, 10/2/2010

Rahm "Chicago here I come" Emanuel

The best line I have heard regarding the announcement of the resignation of the notoriously profane Rahm Emanuel:

"He looks forward to spending more time with his f**king family."

Bernankruptcy: New trading term and definition.

Bernankruptcy \Ber”nank”rupt*cy\, n.

1. The state of being actually or legally bankrupt due to Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s Fed interest rate hikes.

2. The act or process of becoming a bankrupt, due to continuous Fed interest rate increases.

3. Complete loss; — followed by of. “Bernanke’s continual Fed rate hikes destroyed my portfolio, forcing me to declare ‘Bernakruptcy’.”

Thesaurus words for “bernankruptcy”:

bouncing check, breakage, breakdown, bust, collapse, crack-up, crash, crippling, damage, defeat, destruction, detriment, dilapidation, disablement, disrepair, encroachment, failure, futility, harm, hobbling, hurt, hurting, ill success, impairment, incapacitation, infringement, injury, inroad, insolvency, insufficient funds, kited check, losing game, loss, maiming, mayhem, mischief, mutilation, no go, nonaccomplishment, nonsuccess, overdraft, overdrawn account, receivership, ruination, ruinousness, sabotage, scathe, sickening, spoiling, successlessness, unsuccess, unsuccessfulness, uselessness, weakening

The good, the bad, the ugly............

As an arbitrator for a decade with both the NYSE and NASD prior to NASD halting those who manage RIA firms from being arbitrators it was hilarious to hear attorneys call "bad" and "risky" stocks those that went down in price and "good" stocks that went up for the client.

Talk about Monday morning quarterbacking.........

Statistics............

An interesting letter in the Australian Shooter Magazine this week, which I quote:

"If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the past 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

"The firearm death rate in Washington, DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period. That means you are about 25 percent more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S., than you are in Iraq ."

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington.

Graham Summers speaks loud and clear

I look around me and I see an Empire in Decline.

The US economy is clearly in a depression… not a recession, not a recovery, but a DEPRESSION. More than 40 million Americans (12%) are on Food stamps. Nearly one in five of us are unemployed of underemployed. Folks go to Wal-Mart at 11PM waiting for their government checks to clear at midnight so they can buy baby formula, milk and other necessities.

Three out of every five Americans are overweight. One in five are obese. Indeed, there are only two areas (one state, Colorado, and Washington DC) where obesity rates are under 20%.

Nearly three in four of us don’t get enough sleep. Almost one third of us report having trouble falling asleep EVERY night. And almost half of us report that day-time sleepiness interferes with normal activities including work.

Half of marriages end in divorce. One out of ten married couples report sleeping alone. The average American watches 28 hours of TV a week (enough to qualify for a part-time job). Two thirds of us eat dinner while watching TV, preferring the fake, sensationalized lives of others to engaging with our own families.

The TV and media are filled with foul, ungodly images of sex, violence, and hate. The most watched shows of the last decade all feature ordinary folks becoming superstars in lottery-esque competitions (American Idol, Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, etc) OR crime sagas detailing the most sordid and disgusting elements of society (CSI, Law and Order, etc) OR amoral social dramas in which notions of personal responsibility, fidelity, and common decency are unknown (Desperate Housewives, the Bachelorette, etc).

Today, brain dead, vapid human beings who have contributed nothing to society are idolized and followed as though they invented the wheel. We’ve actually got two industries devoted to presenting the illusion and reality of celebrity: Hollywood shows the photo-shopped, CGI-enhanced, scripted version, while the paparazzi and weekly glossies reveal the drug-addicted, affair-crazed, family breaking, soul-less emptiness.

Sex or violence are plastered on virtually every flat surface available. Even the check-out lines at the grocery store feature endless images of barely clothed women along with headlines sensationalizing gruesome behavior, right out in the open for children to see. And if the kid can actually read the headlines… God only knows what ideas this stuff is putting into their heads.

Financially, we’re all pretty much bust or going bust (except those on Wall Street).

New home sales in July were a RECORD low. Not record as in for the year, but the lowest since 1963. The talking heads are high fiving because sales improved in August, but failed to note that they were still DOWN 19% from August 2009 levels.

Americans two primary assets for retirement (stocks and their homes) have both been absolute disasters. Home prices are down 30%, stocks haven’t produced gains in over a decade. Every moron on TV talks about the Dow 10,000 like it’s a miracle. But when you adjust the Dow for inflation, (using the BLS’ ridiculous CPI measure) the Dow is SUB-500 in terms of purchasing power.

Our money system is controlled by an elite banking oligarchy fronted by academics who have never run a business, invented anything, or had any interaction with commerce aside from vying for tenure. Our currency is now worth less than 1/20th of what it was a century ago. And we are ALL in debt up to our eyeballs on a personal, corporate, local, state, and federal level.

Heck, even USA TODAY (not exactly the cutting edge in financial research) notes that in order to pay off our current liabilities, every US family would have to pay $31,000 a year… for 75 YEARS!!!

And we’re talking about an economic recovery?

According to David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff:

· Wages & salaries are still down 3.7% from the prior peak;

· Corporate profits are still down 20% from the peak;

· Real GDP is still down 1.3% from the peak;

· Industrial production is still down 7.2% from the peak;

· Employment is still down 5.5% from the peak;

· Retail sales are still down 4.5% from the peak;

· Manufacturing orders are still down 22.1% from the peak;

· Manufacturing shipments are still down 12.5% from the peak;

· Exports are still down 9.2% from the peak;

· Housing starts are still down 63.5% from the peak;

· New home sales are still down 68.9% from the peak;

· Existing home sales are still down 41.2% from the peak;

· Non-residential construction is still down 35.7% from the peak.

The American Psychological Association reports that 73% of Americans cite money as a source of significant stress. Personal bankruptcies have fallen 8% month over month from July to August. However, August 2010 bankruptcies are up 6% from August 2009… so much for the recovery.

And yet, despite all of this, assumedly intelligent people write op-ed articles and appear on TV claiming that things are swell in the US, that we’re actually OK and that the recession is over. Some of these people even have advanced degrees or have won international prizes for economics.

Let’s be honest. Forget recessions, forget even Depressions, the US is an empire in decline.

You can literally see it crumbling right in front of you. Just start looking at how people live, eat, and act on a day to day basis. Look at how our Government runs itself, how it manages our affairs, how it spends our tax Dollars. Look at how our justice system works, who it protects and who it punishes.

It’s all out there, right in the open for you to see. You don’t need an expert degree or some kind of advanced education. It’s OBVIOUS to anyone who bothers looking around.

The fact we don’t admit it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Best Regards,

Graham Summers

Once in a while we all get beat............

WalMart happenings........

Here is a stunning admission by none other than the CEO of Walmart on what modern day bread lines look like.

Profits And Baby Formula – Bloomberg picked up an eye-opening statement made by the Wal-Mart CEO last week.

"I don't need to tell you that our customer remains challenged…You need not go farther than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m. customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items – baby formula, milk, bread, eggs – and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight when government electronic benefits cards get activated, and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher."

Talk about shopping only for necessities. The mid-night trip for baby formula says it all.

Luckily the NBER said the recession ended. Hurray:

So The Recession Ended 15 Months Ago – A Bloomberg report on lagging jobs got superseded by the FOMC statement. Here’s the opening line from the Bloomberg report:

Payrolls dropped in 36 U.S. states in August, led by Michigan, indicating the labor market will take time to rebound from the worst recession since the 1930s.

A little later in the article, it was noted how broad the job weakness was:

Texas lost 34,200 jobs, and California eliminated 33,600, the Labor Department said. The number of states where payrolls dropped was the highest this year.

More job losses in more states. Thank the gods that the recession’s over.

The country is collapsing everywhere and all the leaders can do is lie to their electorate that things are great. Images of the Titanic come to mind.

Bi Bi Larry

The rats are headed off the ship. First he blew up Harvard, then the USA!

Call it what it is, mid-term election bullshit

President Teleprompter sure can tell some big lies.....he really laid out some zingers today, wow.

If the recession was over months ago why on earth are we still subsidizing the uemployed. When does this end? Here is Dean Parisians take on what "they" should do for starters.

Do drug testing on those who receive welfare. If you’re doing drugs then you lose out on the benefits. You can afford the drugs, then you can afford the food.

If you are on welfare then you will need to be on birth control. This will be your choice either be on birth control or don’t receive welfare. It should not be the governments nor the tax payers responsibility to support you having more children so you get more money.

If you are on welfare for a certain period, then the government can call on you for labor. This will decrease the governments spending.

If a large corporation moves jobs overseas, then they will need to pay higher taxes to help pay for the unemployment for the people that lost their jobs. If they move their headquarters overseas, then a tariff will be placed on the items they sell.

There will no longer be an earned income credit on taxes. Why should the Government pay those who don’t pay any taxes at all and why are we paying people to not improve themselves?

Illegal immigrants will be returned to their own country and their country will be billed for the cost of returning them. If that country does not want to pay then they will no longer receive aid. If they are letting their people come here then why are we giving them aid to help the people in their country?

The US government will now be required to purchase only Made in America items. The company does not have to be US owned, but the products must be produced in the US thus creating jobs.

Obama's town hall on CNBS........

yes, it's just more BS........

yup, sure, of course......

From the NBER: "The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met yesterday by conference call. At its meeting, the committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 18 months, which makes it the longest of any recession since World War II. Previously the longest postwar recessions were those of 1973-75 and 1981-82, both of which lasted 16 months." Somehow we think the 17% of America's labor pool that is not fully employed will beg to differ with this assessment. But at least bankers will be able to justify their 2010 record bonuses.

Georgia Lies and Liars on Loans...........

Regulators on Friday shut down three Georgia banks amid the tough economic climate and growing loan defaults.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday took over the Georgia banks: Bank of Ellijay, in Ellijay, with $168.8 million in assets; First Commerce Community Bank of Douglasville, with $248.2 million in assets; and Peoples Bank, based in Winder, with $447.2 million in assets.

Georgia, where the meltdown in the real estate market brought an avalanche of soured mortgage loans, has been one of the hardest hit states for bank collapses. The failures of the three banks Friday brought to 14 the number of Georgia banks that have fallen this year.

Thought for the weekend.......

If our government was REALLY concerned about terrorism, why are our borders as porous as Swiss cheese?

Maybe Dean Parisian should run for President........

Two Los Angeles departments have received $111 million in federal stimulus funds yet have created only 55 jobs so far, according to a pair of reports issued Thursday.

Isn't this sickening news?

This is close to what Madoff did except those who are ripped off are YOU and ME ladies and gents. Taxpayers. Bona fide revenue producers. Madoff went to jail for life, these two departments only have arrogant excuses.

May 2012 be the end of an error............

David Long

I still have hero's. In business, in life and in the hunting community. David Long, shown here on the left is a guy I have tremendous respect for. His love for hunting big muleys, in my estimation, has little equal. The smarts and work ethic he brings is truly tops. Here is his 2010 Colorado archery buck.



This is what he said about this 30-inch buck.

"Sometimes things just seem like they are meant to be. Last year I spent 12 days pursuing this buck and only laid eyes on him five of those 12 days. Got within bow range twice, but never got a shot. This year, we nailed him on the first stalk of opening day. Go figure!"

What fence are you riding?

If you ever wondered which side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!

If a Republican doesn't like guns, he doesn’t buy one.

If a Democrat doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a Republican is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.

If a Democrat is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a Republican is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.

If a Democrat is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a Republican is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.

A Democrat wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a Republican doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.

Democrats demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a Republican is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.

A Democrat non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.

If a Republican decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it..

A Democrat demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Need Rosetta Stone?

I have finally figured out that I'm an expert in 3 distinct languages.

English.

Sarcasm.

Profanity.

Weekend humor........

One afternoon after getting off work at the local Nissan plant, two good ol' boys in a Tennessee trailer park were sitting around talking over a cold beer. After a while the 1st guy says to the 2nd, "If'n I was to sneak over to your trailer Saturday & make love to your wife while you was off huntin' and she got pregnant and had a baby, would that make us kin?"

The 2nd guy crooked his head sideways for a minute, scratched his head, and squinted his eyes thinking real hard about the question. Finally, he says, "Well, I don't know about kin, but it would make us even."

CDC Warning...........

Something George Ball would be a part of??

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members, according to records made public through a Freedom of Information request.

The amendment to Prudential’s contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts, which allow the company to withhold lump-sum payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself.

The Sept. 1, 2009, amendment to Prudential’s contract with the VA ratified another unpublicized deal that had been struck between the insurer and the government 10 years earlier -- one that was never put into writing, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue. This verbal agreement in 1999 provoked concern among top insurance officials of the agency, the documents released in the FOIA request show.

For a decade, until the contract was formally changed, Prudential wasn’t fulfilling its obligations to survivors of fallen service members, says Brendan Bridgeland, an insurance lawyer who runs the non-profit Center for Insurance Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

‘Violated Terms’

“It’s very clear they violated the original terms of the contract,” says Bridgeland, who is retained by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to represent consumers.

“Every veteran I’ve spoken with is appalled at the brazen war profiteering by Prudential,” says Paul Sullivan, who served in the 1991 Gulf War as an Army cavalry scout and is now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington. “Now vets are upset at the VA’s inability to stop Prudential’s bad behavior.”

That the VA allowed Prudential to issue retained-asset accounts for 10 years while the contract required lump-sum payouts is “more evidence that the VA was asleep at the wheel for a decade,” says Sullivan, who was a project manager and analyst at the VA from 2000 to 2006.

“When grieving families check the box that they want a lump sum, they should get it. We remain disappointed and irate at the VA’s failure to provide advocacy for veterans,” he says.

State and U.S. Probes

Since July 28, when Bloomberg Markets first reported that Prudential sent checkbooks instead of checks to survivors requesting lump-sum payouts, state and federal officials have demanded the retained-asset system be investigated and reformed. The VA itself launched a probe of its life insurance program the day the first story was published.

The next day, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched what he called a “major fraud investigation” of Prudential and other life insurers over their use of retained- asset accounts. Since then, Cuomo’s office has issued subpoenas to Prudential and at least 12 more insurance companies.

The insurance departments in Georgia and New York have also opened probes. The U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee plans to hold hearings into Prudential’s use of retained-asset accounts to pay money owed to fallen soldiers’ survivors.

‘News to Me’

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -- who was in office when the 2009 agreement was signed -- said when the VA started its probe that he had been unaware that survivors were being sent retained-asset accounts.

“Until today I actually believed that the families of our fallen heroes got a check for the full amount of their benefits,” Gates said at the time. “This came as news to me.”

As a result of the VA probe, the agency announced today that it will change its insurance program, allowing survivors to request and receive lump-sum checks.

Under Prudential’s original 1965 contract with the VA and a 2007 revised contract -- both of which were released as part of the FOIA response -- the insurer is required to send lump-sum payouts to survivors requesting them. The contract covers 6 million active service members, their families and veterans.

The checkbooks Prudential sends to survivors are tied to what the insurer calls its Alliance Account. The checkbooks are made up of drafts, or IOUs, and aren’t insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Prudential invests the survivors’ money in its general corporate account, where it can earn the insurer as much as eight times as much as it currently pays in interest to beneficiaries.

Bond Income

Prudential held $662 million of survivors’ money in its corporate general account as of June 30, according to information provided by the VA. Prudential’s general account earned 4.2 percent in 2009, mostly from bond investments, according to regulatory filings. The company has paid survivors holding Alliance Accounts 0.5 percent in 2010.

Families that were supposed to receive lump-sum payments under the terms of the contract before it was amended in 2009 may be able to successfully sue Prudential for lost interest, insurance lawyer Bridgeland says.

“Survivors would have a very strong claim for interest earned by Prudential on their money,” he says.

Prudential spokesman Bob DeFillippo says his company is following the terms of its agreement with the VA.

“Prudential is in compliance with its contract with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs,” he says.

DeFillippo declined to comment on whether Prudential was in compliance with its contract between 1999 and September 2009 or to answer any other questions. Prudential chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Strangfeld declined to comment for this story.

Useful Service

In July, DeFillippo said Prudential’s retained-asset account was a useful service for bereaved relatives of soldiers. “For some families, the account is the difference between earning interest on a large amount of money and letting it sit idle,” he said. Survivors can withdraw some or all of their money at any time, he said.

Veterans Affairs Chief of Staff John Gingrich says the agency approved use of the Alliance Account because it wanted to help survivors.

“We needed to give an option to individuals that allowed them more flexibility and time to react to the tragic family situation,” Gingrich says.

Verbal Agreement

VA spokeswoman Katie Roberts declined to say when Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in January 2009, learned of the existence of the 1999 verbal agreement and the 2009 amendment. She also declined to make Shinseki available for comment.

The VA official who verbally agreed in 1999 to allow Prudential to change the terms of the 1965 contract and begin offering retained-asset accounts was Thomas Lastowka, the VA’s director for insurance, according to Dennis Foley, a VA attorney. Prudential began sending Alliance Account kits to soldiers’ beneficiaries in June 1999.

Foley says the VA and Prudential would have been better off if they had put their 1999 agreement in writing.

“Could that have been done better?” Foley asks. “Probably. Best practice would have been to legally memorialize it at the time.”

Foley says the 1999 changes to the 1965 contract were valid, even if they weren’t in writing, because they were made by mutual agreement by people empowered to make such decisions.

“It was changed by somebody who was authorized to change it,” he says.

Contract Terms

The language of both the 1965 contract and the 2009 amendment make clear that Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential was required to adhere to the original terms until 2009, regardless of any handshake agreements in 1999, insurance lawyer Bridgeland says.

The 1965 contract says any alterations must be made in writing.

“No change in the Group Policy shall be valid unless evidenced by an amendment thereto,” it says. “No Agent is authorized to alter or amend the Group Policy.”

The VA and Prudential signed a revised contract in 2007, saying it was “amended in its entirety.” That contract, with the exact same words as the 1965 agreement, required that Prudential pay survivors with lump sums.

The 2007 revision included the same procedures in the 1965 agreement requiring any changes be made in writing. It contained no mention of the retained-asset system, or of the verbal agreement struck in 1999.

2009 Amendment

It wasn’t until Sept. 24, 2009, that the changes agreed to by VA official Lastowka and Prudential in 1999 were put into writing. The 2009 amendment allowing Prudential to hold onto death benefit payouts was made retroactive to Sept. 1, 2009, not back to 1999.

By putting in writing a change that was verbally adopted 10 years earlier, the VA is effectively trying to backdate the amendment, says Jeffrey Stempel, an insurance law professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who wrote ‘Stempel on Insurance Contracts’ (Aspen Publishers, 2009).

“They’re trying to reinvent history,” Stempel says. “You really can’t do that. This is a blatant giveaway by the VA with nothing for the agency or the people in uniform.”

Nine of every 10 survivors ask Prudential for lump-sum payments, the VA says. Prudential sends those families “checkbooks” instead of checks.

‘Disasters Do Happen’

Documents released in the FOIA request show some signs of concern within the VA after Prudential proposed the retained- asset accounts in 1998. Lastowka, the official who allowed Prudential to introduce the Alliance Accounts, said that the insurer’s “checkbook” system wasn’t protected by the FDIC.

“Disasters do happen,” wrote Lastowka, in an e-mail dated June 9, 1999, to Stephen Wurtz, the agency’s deputy assistant director for insurance.

Lastowka said in his e-mail that the lack of FDIC coverage could backfire on survivors.

“Who is responsible if Alliance goes belly up?” Lastowka asked. “I think we have to also be prepared to defend the use of the Alliance Account.”

Lastowka also asked whether Prudential had adequately disclosed to survivors that the Alliance Accounts weren’t covered by FDIC insurance. “Did Pru alert us to the non-FDIC fact?” he wrote to Wurtz. “Or was it in small print as the notice to beneficiaries?”

Documents turned over by the VA didn’t include a response from Wurtz.

‘Aware of Issues’

Lastowka says his e-mail shows the decision to allow Alliance Accounts was carefully considered.

“This e-mail demonstrates simply that the VA’s Insurance program was aware of issues that might be raised as we implemented the payment method and that we should be prepared to respond to inquiries,” Lastowka says. “We were confident that we were making a decision which would benefit survivors.”

The FOIA documents show that on June 10, 1998, Prudential gave a presentation to the VA. It included 10 pages of key points, saying the Alliance Accounts would benefit survivors because they would provide safety, flexibility in how and when to use their money, competitive interest rates and customer service.

In fine print, at the bottom of one of the pages, was this caveat: “Funds in the Alliance Account are direct obligations of The Prudential Insurance Company of America and are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.”

Sheila Bair

Twelve years later, the issue of the lack of FDIC protection in retained-asset accounts flared anew.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said in August that consumers could incorrectly conclude that retained-asset accounts were insured by the FDIC.

“The insurance company must take care to avoid implying in any way that these accounts are in fact FDIC-insured,” she wrote in an Aug. 5 letter to state insurance regulators.

Some families of veterans have taken their complaints to court. Five survivors filed a federal fraud lawsuit in Boston on Aug. 30 against Prudential claiming the insurer has earned as much as $500 million in profits by improperly keeping beneficiaries’ money instead of paying it out in a lump sum.

The suit, Lucey vs. Prudential Insurance Co. of America, says the insurer fraudulently claims to beneficiaries that the Alliance Account is a lump sum.

‘This Ruse’

“Initiation of this ruse does not constitute payment of anything to anyone,” the suit says. “The Alliance Account is merely a bookkeeping device used by Prudential to hold on to beneficiaries’ money.”

Prudential hasn’t yet filed a response in court. Spokesman DeFillippo says he can’t comment on the case.

“It is important to note that several federal judges have rejected claims against accounts like our Alliance Account, concluding that beneficiaries are in virtually the same position they would be in had the insurer sent them a check,” DeFillippo says. He cited the dismissal of a case against MetLife Inc. on Sept. 10.

Insurance contract professor Stempel says that regardless of the outcome of that lawsuit, it’s clear that Prudential and the VA wrongly manipulated a federal contract at the expense of military members and their relatives. “At a minimum, survivors ought to be made whole with their missed interest,” he says. “The VA really seems to have had the best interests of the insurance company at heart, instead of those of the soldiers and their families.

Never, ever forget......Milton High School

Always up early, something both Dad and Grampa Walt had in their genetic code. Probably something about the early bird getting the worm. I see it everyday in the summer when the cardinals come at first light and feed on all the bugs that are attracted to the lights over the garage. At first light I grabbed my coffee and headed to Milton High School. Just me. Alone with flags. Thank you Dr. Smith and your wonderful family for keeping this memory alive. I will never forget that Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, our nation is still under attack. Every day.

Our culture, our language and our borders. All under attack. Believe it.

Enough said...........

According to Bloomberg, for the week ended September 10, corporate insiders bought $0.5MM in shares in 4 different companies. This was offset by sales of $332MM in 72 different companies, a ratio of 651 of sellers to buyers.

Sick and sad..........

5:09 p.m. Wednesday, September 8, 2010

An unspoken code of silence seems to be preventing Atlanta police homicide detectives from charging anyone with the fatal shooting of a mother of four who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“This was a completely innocent person,” homicide detective Mark Cooper said of 28-year-old Tammy Robinson. “The only mistake she made was coming out of her house. ... That bullet wasn’t meant for Ms. Robinson.”

Two days of animosities between two groups -- neither of which lived at the Grant Park Commons in southeast Atlanta -- led to the shooting on Aug. 28. The group that was armed had come to the complex looking for their antagonists over a “minor ongoing dispute,” Cooper said Wednesday.

He declined to be specific about the reason for the dispute but said, “in most cases, this should have been handled with words.”

About 75 people were milling round outside when the first shots were fired, but nobody who was questioned admitted to witnessing the shooting.

“I know the residents of this complex saw something,” Cooper said.

Moments before the shooting, Robinson and a friend were sitting on a bench. They decided to go inside when they saw indications that trouble was coming, according to her younger sister, Tisha.

They were walking back to her apartment when Tammy Robinson was shot in the face.

“I need witnesses to come forward,” Cooper said. “The individual they were shooting at had nothing to do with the incident the night before.”

Detectives have tried to interview people who are said to have “witnessed the shooting, but they are not willing to talk. We have an idea of the individual involved.”

Two men they suspect are vaguely described as in their early 20s and both about 5 feet, 10 inches tall.

But no one is talking.

And that’s not unusual, according to Georgia State University criminal justice professor Volkan Tapalli.

“It’s pervasive and it’s something that’s common in most large cities across the United States,” Tapalli said of the no-snitch philosophy.

The unwritten rule applies to those who live in an area where a crime occurred as much as it does to the offender, he said.

There is no one reason for the resistance, he said.

“It’s breaking a code. It’s being afraid. There’s always fear of reprisal,” Tapalli told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The ethics are that you’re supposed to mind your own business and not get into the affairs of others. In some cases, it may be considered you’re preempting somebody’s ability to extract retribution on their own.”

The dead woman’s sister tried to put it in a context she hoped witnesses would understand.

"This could be your sister, your aunt,” Tisha Robinson said.

She referred to her four nephews -- the 2- and 4-year-olds who live with their grandmother and the 8- and 10-year-olds who live with her -- in pleading for someone to report what they saw.

“We lost our mother at a young age. We lost our father at a young age,” Tisha Robinson said of herself and her older sister, whom she said was a recently laid-off clerk at the Fulton County Superior Court.

But the mind-set that does not allow for cooperation with the police may be too entrenched to overcome, Topalli said.

“A lot of this comes out of a historical mistrust of the police,” Topalli said. “They probably don’t think they are making it any more dangerous for others [if they don’t help police]. They don’t think the police are capable of dealing with this. But most homicides are cleared.”