No Puns, No Humor

7/11 No humor here.  The other day I had a disagreement in a discussion with a lady about "personal responsibility." She basically claimed that all the people getting into the scammy mortgages obviously should have known better. She said that she and I would not get involved in living above our means. She actually was pretty worked up over the issue. I was merely stating the facts I knew about the mortgage sellers and what methods they used. But it was personal to her because she worked hard for what she has and others may now get houses on the cheap or through government programs. As personal as it was to her, it was more personal to these folks:
http://www2.oanow.com/news/2011/jul/10/alabama-suicide-rate-reaches-51-year-high-ar-2093142/
Despite the fact that I would probably have had difficulty in holding a conversation with a lot of these people. Let's take a moment to remember them....as the people who sold them their mortgages, knowing full well what they were doing, enjoy their bounty.

Fresh Baked

7/08  http://www.cnbc.com/id/43683875  Remember that chart where the employment was flattening out... Now how can you forget??? That was two entries ago, are you paying attention??? I just want to say that there will be a test!!  November 2012  You will be expected to be in attendance!

E. Coli

7/6 The Republicans have let it be known with a number of votes that were symbolic in nature, having no chance to be passed, like the medicare thing, that they will be undoing financial reforms as soon as they get their hands on the treasury and power in the congress. This is a signal to Wall Street to start giving money to their campaigns. Democrats have barely managed to put any regulations at all on the financial institutions, especially compared to other countries. Yet, this little amount is too much regulation for these guys. Nothing has changed. They fought regulation of their predatory lending that led us to this point. Apparently still flush with the power over our political system, banks do not want to go back to being banks. They want no controls over their greed; they want the fancy cars, yachts and incidentally the drugs and prostitutes that went along with the last time they had their hands on our money without regulation. Feel I'm being too harsh? I doubt it. These scum continue to control important offices in our government and have shown in the past that they have no remorse. They haven't lost a single financial incentive while driving the rest of us ever downward. There is book after book detailing their vice and financial crimes. I read in amazement and ponder our lack or moral outrage. Bad day for me? You could guess? :)
7/6 Murdoch's empire has serious moral problems. That's in the news but it hardly qualifies as new. If I thought that this development would harm their "journalistic" empire, I would be interested, but it's about as important as the exoneration of that lady who was accused of killing her kids. Tragedy is tragedy and distracts from the actual important stuff. At least the verdict was disappointing to the viewers peeking through the picket fence. Millions left Court TV after the OJ verdict.

In a Pickle

7/04 The U.S. Senate doesn't work.. The party set to take control of government in response to a bad economy just doesn't like jobs. Here is a very good explanation of how this all adds up:

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2324-Another-Jobs-Bill-Killed 

Here is a very good chart about how all this adds up:

(note that the red line is flattening out towards the end of its rise, this is the feared double dip or the fear that this is actually a depression rather than a recession.)

Make that Coffee Caffeine Free

6/28 A day or two ago I was traveling to work listening to CNBC. This is far more entertaining than music and for some reason I feel comfortable with the geekspeak they carry on. Everything is in code and decifering the code takes a little sting out of the message for some reason. Anyway, on this day there was a loud pundit screaming (pretty much literally screaming) about how strategic oil reserves were just that, strategic. This person was annoyingly strident as he interupted the guest who I assumed to be someone respresenting the administration. Now as many times as I have  heard financial types demanding that we use the oil reserves to effect the economy and equally stridently complaining when that didn't happen, I thought this guy to be rather humorous except for the annoying grating loudness of his voice. As I listened I gathered that the reason for using the reserves now was in an attempt to ween the economy off of QE2 infusions of money and provide that soft landing we have all been hoping for, rather than that double dip. Further this was an international agreement, and while this guy seemed to be concerned about what the Arabs would think about this, I kind of guessed they might have been consulted at least in secret. The loud guy said the oil reserves were not for getting Presidents reelected. I thought that an odd complaint, because this election more than any before it will probably hinge on how well the economy is doing, and personally, I want it to do well. The pundit also exclaimed (a word I borrow from Hardy Boy's books to point out his continued annoying tone) that the price of oil was much higher a few months ago and why would we use it now when the price was coming down, and besides "strategic" might include other things than war. Not only that but the price of oil was recovering today already. As his argument became more and more self-contradictory I arrived at work. Today, I was listening to CNBC and the folks there were talking about the seeming long term lowering of the prices of commodities, citing gold and, yep, oil. I believe gold speculation was hit by that side maneuver of demanding higher reserves for speculatiing on silver. Silver took a dive and should have been a shot across the bow for anyone speculating in other comodoties. This adminstration was going to wring out speculation. One might doubt that they could, but hey, an international agreement to use everyone's strategic oil reserves is pretty amazing. Can we get that loud guy back and make him pinkie promise not to go to Starbucks before going on the air again?

I Asked for Cheddar, not American

6/26 Gosh, they need to stop changing their news around so much. Last blog, I commented on what is called the "original post" in this artcle:
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/06/22/donald_trump_nbc_deal_network_signs_on_for_two_more_years_of_cel.html?from=rss/&wpisrc=newsletter_slatest

Now I usually trust Slate but I failed here to see that they were quoting from Ruppert Murdoch's Washington Post. Now the Fox News owner's biggest enemy is NBC and of course whoever is the enemy of Ruppert Murdoch is fair game for yellow journalism. Heck as far as that goes everything is fair game for yellow journalism for these guys. But I just could not see... I just could not see.

I feel bitter enough to not trust Slate anymore but..... as I have asked before in my blogs, just who are we to trust? We have nothing but the mainstream media except for a few non-journalistic bloggers and possibly BBC or PBS, but those too seem slanted. At least Slate has corrected their story, and my views of Ruppert Murdoch remain accurate, I guess, because I had prejudged :) him correctly long ago based on David Letterman's assessment that it was all publicity and no substance. David wasn't going to let a racist on the show. Maybe an ex-racist?  At any rate I haven't watched Letterman in months. Maybe that's why I am so sour. :)

I'll Trade You My Green Beans for Your Roll

6/22  http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/06/22/donald_trump_nbc_deal_network_signs_on_for_two_more_years_of_cel.html?from=rss/&wpisrc=newsletter_slatest

Trump would have had to give up this show had he actually run for President. Remember when he told us how proud he was after his racist treatment of our President forcing him to come up with more proof than any other Hawaiian citizen has or will ever have that he was indeed American by birth? Now to cash in on the publicity. Pride indeed. Really, money is just sickening in these large amounts.

6/22 Another humorous moment from CNBC radio. I don't know half the time who is talking because this is the television show broadcast on radio and I can't see the subheadings. And I'll have to paraphrase this as well. The gist of the discussion was that economies were growing but more in the "tradable" area and this area is not known for job creation. "Tradable" here must mean trade that is unlike the trade in which Walmart engages - plenty of jobs there. It was I guess a euphemism for the financial sector, because it rings true that the "financials" are doing quite well, taking bailouts, buying stocks and gold and commodities and then there are still those money making risk spreading derivatives. With all that activity there is still no money for small businesses or job creation. No wonder he wanted to use a euphemism for this crappy area of the economic activity which he himself was a part of. Then this pundit started to talk about jobs but just could not come up with the words to describe what he needed to say. Showing that jobs was obviously not his area of expertise, he bumbled around with the the terms "training" and "skills" sounding incoherent enough that another panelist had to throw out the term "innovation" to help the pundit sound like he had at least a high school education. "Yes, yes, innovation and stuff like that." It was embarrassing to listen to. We still need those job thingies before we can have a recovery and begin stashing away even more "tradable" profits, darn it to heck.

He reminded me a bit of the man who was lacking basic computer skills and while fumbling over saving his resume to his email blurted out in frustration that usually his secretarial staff did this kind of work for him. He realized later just what he had said and thanked me nicely for my help. He was really a very nice gentleman. But I have to admit before he became nice to me I was indeed thinking that his secretarial staff would probably be finding it easier to get new jobs with their skill set and the patience they must have had.  :)