Not that I have anything against consumerism, but lets try to remember what this day is all about - the greatest gift any of us can receive has already been given to us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. That being said, I'm really happy about all of the nice things that my generous friends and family gave me! :o)
Initial claims for jobless benefits jumped 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 516,000 in the week ended Nov. 8, the Labor Department said Thursday.And I'm one of them. Now if I ever get these so-called "jobless benefits" it'll suck a little less.
"These people haven't had snuggles for fifty years. So you can't be surprised if they get bitter and cling to their brussel sprouts and their liver and onions and their pickled pigs' feet. That's what my campaign is about. Teaching all the little people in this country that they can have fluffy kittens."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com
Just say NO to socialism!
Despite Monday's massive rally, many Wall Street veterans remain on the lookout for a grinding period of weakness in the global economy and stocks in the months ahead.
"The danger here is that people will be lulled into the idea that a strong bull trend is now in place rather than the idea that the market is just bouncing off a short-term oversold condition," said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners, a trading and research firm in Greenwich, Con.
They continue:
Doreen Mogavero, president and chief executive of the New York floor brokerage Mogavero Lee & Co., said she's still looking for a round of capitulation, or last-ditch selling to pave the way for a more sustained rally. While there were some hopes that Friday's intraday market low, including a nearly 700-point decline for the Dow, would mark such an event, she believes there wasn't enough volume behind the selling to confirm it as a true capitulation.
"At best, I think we're looking at a short-term bottom here," she said.
So basically, if you're one of those who couldn't stand the heat last week and jumped out of the frying pan, you may have really ended up in the fire after today's up-surge. But only time will tell where the real bottom is and when the real recovery will happen.
The stock market's collapse accelerated Thursday as bank lending remained stubbornly clogged and investors remained unwilling to hold anything except cash and government debt, no matter how tiny the returns for doing so.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined for a seventh straight day, plunging 678.91 points, or 7.3%, to 8579.19. Blue chips last dipped below the 9000 level five years ago. Thursday's fall was the Dow's third-worst all time in point terms and 11th worst in percentage terms. During its recent losing run, blue chips have fallen by a startling 20.9% and are down 39.4% from their record high, which was hit exactly one year ago. (WSJ, 9 Oct 2008)
All that basically sucks, but it doesn't look nearly as bad when you look at the (really) big picture...
Personally, even though my 401k is probably getting hammered in the rear right now, I've got long enough before I need to draw from it that this decline in prices is basically a buying opportunity. Not a pretty one, but even though my value has gone down, my buying power has increased significantly!
Also, crude oil prices fell to their lowest point in eleven months today, to under $87 a barrel, but gas prices at the pump haven't kept up the pace:
The last time oil sold for $87-per-barrel was October 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But current gas prices nationally and in Phoenix remain more than 60 cents higher than last October.
The national average stands at $3.40 per gallon, well above October 2007’s $2.77, according to AAA. Phoenix-area average prices stand at $3.27 per gallon compared to $2.65 a year ago. Current prices, however, are down from summer highs of more than $4 per gallon. (Phoenix Business Journal, 09 Oct 2008)
I don't know why that is, but I don't like it.
And further proof from the WSJ that the stock market operates purely on emotion and speculation, not hard data:
Strategist Jim Paulsen, of Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said the fear that has seized the market lately may be an unintended, self-fulfilling consequence of recent efforts in Washington to pass a $700 billion rescue of firms saddled with illiquid mortgage securities.
"To sell the bailout to the public, everyone from the President on down had to go out and tell people how bad everything was, that the world was coming to an end," said Mr. Paulsen. "Ever since, people's expectations about the economy have gotten worse and worse and worse, and their reaction to each new action to fix the problems has gotten worse and worse and worse."
Oh well. Remember, buying opportunity!
**In other news, I might have to figure out how to be Freddie Mac for Halloween. :D
Well, Congress' $700 billion tax-payer-funded "rescue" of the U.S. credit markets doesn't seem to have had the desired instantaneous positive effects that some predicted. The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a swim below 10,000 points for the first time since October of 2004 and crossed into territory that it first broke back in April of 1999 (when I was a junior in high school!).
But before everyone goes blaming President Bush and / or John McCain for this calamity, remember these two things: Barack Obama voted for this thing as well; and turning around the tight credit market is not like parking a VW Bug, it's more like U-turning an oil tanker - these things take time.
Top Clinton fundraiser backs McCain over Obama
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser threw her support behind Republican John McCain on Wednesday, saying he will lead the country in a centrist fashion and accusing the Democrats of becoming too extreme.
"I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party — and they will continue to — too far to the left," Lynn Forester de Rothschild said. "I'm not comfortable there."
In the article "Russians laud size, not fuel economy at car show," published this morning at Forbes.com, Simon Shuster (apparently not the publishing house owned by Viacom- which is spelled differently anyway) seemed to claim that General Motors ("Chevy" to you normal folk) makes both the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Ford Focus. ...visitors on press day flocked to be photographed in front of GM's Jeep Grand Cherokee...
General Motors, whose fuel-efficient Ford Focus is the best selling foreign car in Russia...[emphasis mine]
I was completely shocked when I read this headline from the London Daily Mail: "Petite, leggy women with big busts are the most sexually attractive, study reveals." I was apparently duped by our American media and Hollywood stereotypes into believing that guys liked linebackers. Lucky for me, the study revealed the hidden truth: "that women with low 'body masculinity' - who are short with long legs and a larger bust - are highly desirable to men."
For the uninitiated, Scrabulous was a direct knock-off of Hasbro's game, Scrabble, that you could play with your friends on Facebook. It was literally just like Scrabble, but on the computer, which was nice. But, surprise (not really), Hasbro filed suite against the two brothers who built Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, so they responded by removing the application from Facebook.Hasbro and Mattel’s official versions of Scrabble on Facebook continued to draw nearly universal boos. The Hasbro version continued to seize up on Sunday, letters were impossible to play and common words were not accepted.
For two 400-pound people hurt by the economy, meat is out of reach. Didn't anyone at NPR think to leave the photo of these ladies out?Here is the picture:
[They live in a] subsidized housing complex in Fostoria, Ohio...How did this happen, when "Her father worked at General Motors for 45 years before retiring. Her mother taught driver’s education. Nunez and her six siblings grew up middle class."?
Nunez, 40, has never worked and has no high school degree...
Nunez and most of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps...
The only one with a car is Irma Hernandez, Nunez’s mother...
...not long ago I was delivering a training module on conflict resolution to the staff of a large government agency. In my talk, I included the time-honored saying, "the pot calls the kettle black." Afterward, the African American woman who was the leader of the training program (a good friend of mine, incidentally), came to me in something of a dither. "Do you realize what you said?" she asked. "That is very offensive to black people." I was taken aback. I explained to her that this little saying is from Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote, one of the most famous novels of all time, and that it is the perfect metaphor to use in discussing conflict resolution, in which a principal objective is seeing the other person's point of view. She was unmoved by my explanation, saying "I don't care where it came from, this is clearly a racist remark, and I know it offended many in our audience." I said, "Look, Linda, the saying refers to a pot and a kettle hanging on hooks over a fire. That's the way they cooked in medieval times. It means that both pot and kettle become blackened by the fire. The analogy is that when you criticize someone else while ignoring your own faults, this is like the "pot calling the kettle black." Both pot and kettle are black. Of course, she simply responded that it doesn't matter what the real meaning of the saying is, it is the perception of the audience that counts.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term.
...a region of space that has so much mass concentrated in it that there is no way for a nearby object to escape its gravitational pull. ... Incidentally, the name 'black hole' was invented by John Archibald Wheeler, and seems to have stuck because it was much catchier than previous names. Before Wheeler came along, these objects were often referred to as 'frozen stars.'" (source).This seems like a pretty reasonable description to apply to an office where paperwork goes in and is never seen again. And I am pretty sure that replacing the non-catchy and less correct term "frozen stars" with "black holes" was not racially motivated.
This is called "Jowling." I saw this on the digital Photography School blog the other day and it looked too fun not to try out. However, a self-portrait at eight in the morning, at work, with a headache, it proved much more difficult than previously indicated.
As you can see, I just end up looking like Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel. Not attractive.
...Obama stands poised to adopt the three major elements of the Bush-administration foreign policy — staying the course in Iraq, endorsing the doctrine of preventative war and the strategic expansion of executive power to fight the war on terror.Apparently all is not so well in Obamanation.
Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.
The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.
I love the long days and short nights that summer brings. For those of us who work from early til (relatively) late, it's sooo nice to have a few hours of sunlight after you finally get home from work. It just makes everything seem so much better. Not going to work in the dark is nice, too.
I've been using the release candidates for over a month now, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone to use."...when the A.D.A. was enacted in 1992, it led to a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers."and
"...economists make the argument for 'the distinct possibility that the Endangered Species Act is actually endangering, rather than protecting, species.'"
A wide body of research shows that modern liberals are much more likely to complain about things in their lives. Conservatives are more content with their lives. When asked “How satisfied are you with life these days? Sixty-six percent of conservatives said “very satisfied” compared with only 46 percent of liberals. Conservatives are more likely to say they love their jobs (53 percent vs. 41 percent) and even enjoy their hobbies more (63 percent vs. 51 percent). When asked by the Social Capital Survey whether they were satisfied with their income, liberals were more than three times as likely to say “not at all satisfied” — even when they earned the same as conservatives.Hahaha... the truth comes out!
When it comes to something like housework, Democrats are much more likely to complain that the division of work in their home “is unfair to me” than Republicans. In fact, they are five times as likely to whine about it. Another study in The Journal of Applied Psychology found that feminist women do less housework than traditional women — but complain more about it.
The Democratic Party has devolved into a club for the illegitimately aggrieved, the self-absorbed, the self-hating and the perpetually pissed-off. It is a sanctuary where solipsistic malcontents and their disjointed causes find refuge and support. It has long ceased being an earnest gathering of broad minds where man's timeless problems are examined against the backdrop of the Constitution and solutions to them proposed based on the actual realities of the human condition. It is now the political province of the intellectually deceased...
So what does all of that have to do with the propulsion of Barack Obama to within a whisker of the Presidency? Everything.
1) Invent, inflate, and over-report bad war news. Tie all bad news to Bush and/or Republicans. At the same time, ignore or downplay good news as it relates to Bush, the Republicans or the war(s).
2) Create the illusion of widespread, honest dissent to Bush policies by giving plenty of airtime to leftwing groups and individuals historically antagonistic toward the projection of US, and only US, power. Fail to report the true agendas of those groups -- when covering antiwar, anti-Bush protests and events, make sure to meticulously portray antiwar marches as spontaneous gatherings of mainstream, mom and pop Americans.
3) Downplay, ignore and disparage American success wherever you find it.
4) Exalt in, sympathize with and mythologize America's enemies, vilify and deconstruct its protectors.
5) Downplay America's generosity and righteousness. Recast a mission that includes saving a nation from a murdering brute and his rapist, sociopath sons as a brutal occupation in the pursuit of American Empire.
6) Fill the Nation's airwaves, from sea to shining sea, with questionable and sometimes outright false tales of Bush-related misery, butchery, fraud and waste.
7) Foment as much national anxiety and hatred of the Republican leader as money and can buy. George Soros and other moneyed leftists will fund you. Give airtime and print coverage to leftist radicals and Democrats who call Bush a war criminal. Present those radicals and their crazy plans to try President Bush and Vice President Cheney for "war crimes" as worthy of consideration.
8) Provide coverage to leftwing intellectuals and scientists making anti-Bush statements. Present them as legitimate, non-partisan experts in their fields. Publicize their specious, politicized findings, present those findings as non-partisan, accurate and objective.
9) Present major news coverage of every antiwar protest you can find, whether it draws 100 people or 10,000 people, ignore all pro-US, pro-Iraq War, pro-troop rallies completely or portray their attendees as violence-prone, fringe-lunatic jingoists.
10) Blame a hurricane's aftermath on Bush. Give news coverage to racists and Democrat crackpots who say Bush and Cheney actually caused the hurricane and blew up levees to kill African Americans. Keep that Bush-hate buzz alive at all costs.
11) Give airtime and print coverage to groups and individuals accusing George W. Bush of having engineered and directed the 911 attacks. Remember, it is not the credibility of accusations that count in shaping public opinion now, but the seriousness and sheer volume of accusations that do.
12) To sow further strife, anxiety and confusion, continue stoking the fires of racial tension and class warfare.
13) Once the onslaught of lies, moral relativisms and crazy notions have created a self-sustaining, luciferous, widespread unhappiness and confusion, dangle a fat bait of silence and tranquility -- of Hope, Change and Progress -- crowning your deceptive achievement by hooking the same fish you made hungry.
"What changed [regarding expansion of the federal gov't] before Roosevelt [and the 'new deal'] came to power that explains the growth of government? The answer is women's suffrage."
"Still, our No. 1 bitter was an American brew, the beautifully mellow Sawtooth Ale from Left Hand, which I felt was a dead ringer for a British bitter right down to the gentle carbonation."
"Gone is the metrosexual man, now women have been demanding the return of the real men, like Indiana Jones."Enjoy!
Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.
"If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive."
--Dale Carnegie
Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007... This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years, probably associated with another episode of El Nino.into this:
Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific... But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.then I've been going about things all wrong! Who needs logic, critical thinking, and evidence?!
Google always has to be on the bleeding edge of innovation. Today they introduced a new feature that is sure to be the envy of all of the other geeky email services: Gmail Custom Time.
Barack Obama's mentor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity UCC (United Church of Christ) preaching on the notion of a black Jesus being oppressed by white people and his tirade against Hillary Clinton stating that, "Hillary ain't never been called a...."What a racist piece of trash.
...its pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. subscribes to what is called the Black Value System.While the Black Value System includes such items as commitment to God, education, and self-discipline, it refers to “our racist competitive society” and includes the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness” and a pledge of allegiance to “all black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System.” It defines “middle-classness” as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”
In sermons and interviews, Dr. Wright has equated Zionism with racism and Israel with South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. On the Sunday after 9/11, Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later, Wright suggested that the attacks were retribution for America’s racism.
“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,”...
...if Obama rejects Wright’s warped view of this country, why does he continue to attend his church, raising the question of whether Obama secretly agrees with his friend and mentor? At the least, Obama’s membership in Wright’s church suggests a lack of judgment and an insensitivity to views that are repugnant to the vast majority of white Americans who are not bigots.
"When we are dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bursting with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity."I think that this is on reason why I have such a hard time with some people and some people's decisions. I find it even more frustrating when some of my own decisions come down to this highly illogical concept. Decisions and actions, which, at the time sound good, often end up being unreasonable and sometimes contradictory to one's own big-picture.--Dale Carnegie
Don't dictate -- inspire(I love some of the quaint language that they use. "A fine reputation." Uh huh, and remind them that Herbert Hoover is no longer President.)
Don't direct -- win people to your way of thinking
Begin with praise and honest appreciation
Build morale and earn loyalty
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
Download the .exe and plunk it down in your c:\windows\system32 folder. Ctrl-Shift-Escape to launch it, then click on View and Select Columns. Then in the Process Memory tab, check Working Set Size and hit OK. Mess around with it a little. It's pretty spiffy, and now you're just a key combo away from knowing what's running, killing stubborn processes, and restarting the ones that actually need to be there.
All my configuration currently does is display the date, processor and memory use, and the current Winamp track in a little box in the lower right corner of my screen. Now I don't even have to open Process Explorer to constantly glance at my computer's resource use. (Which seams unreasonably high, but that's just another thing for me to fret about!)
William F. Buckley Jr. was the founder of conservative magazine "National Review" and one of the earliest and most influential personalities in the modern American conservative movement. He died Wednesday 27 February, 2008 at his home.
