Foreign reciprocity.......

A warning to people from Nigeria; if you get an email from Washington D.C asking for money, it's a scam.

The Gloved One.........

The Coroner is determining what to put on Michael Jackson's death certificate, black or white?

Thanks for the music Mr. Jackson. I hope your people did a great job in planning and providing for the welfare of your children.

Pure and patently false doo-doo............

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday said he is confident the central bank can exit its rescue programs while keeping inflation in check.

Yo, Mr. Ben, you can't have it both ways. You can't stimulate/spend and then cut back overnight on the trillions. Your lies will come back to haunt you when this inflationary spiral gets going. No one gets out of a recession by government spending. It was asswipes like Barney Frank (government employee) and Franklin Raines (quasi-government employee) that allowed the likes of Stan O'Neil of Merrill Lynch fame and Jimmy "asleep at the bridge table as to his firms risk" Cayne of Bear Stearns that helped bring this baby down.

Those fat cats and the countless thousands upon thousands of church-going citizens who inflated loan documents, lied on mortgage applications and pumped up real estate valuations at the bank along with some shady real estate agents and deals.

All in all, yet just another reason to read John Bogle's book, "Enough".

Montana wins ..............

Three cowboys were seated around the campfire out on the lonesome sagebrush prairie and with the pride for which these men were famous; it was a night of bravado, a night of tall tales.

Vern, the hand from Wyoming says, 'I must be the strongest, meanest, toughest cowboy there is. Why, just the other day, a bull got loose in the corral. It gored six men before I wrestled it to the ground by the horns with my bare hands and castrated that sucker with my teeth.'

Larry, from Colorado, couldn't stand to be bested. 'That's nothing, I was walking down the trail yesterday and a 10 foot Diamondback rattler slid out from under a rock and made a move for me. I grabbed that bastard with my bare hands, bit off its head, and sucked the poison down in one gulp and didn't even get a belly ache.'

Old grizzled-faced Dean, the cowboy from Montana, remained silent, slowly stirring the campfire coals with his pecker.

Sickness that needs reform.........

NEW YORK (June 23) -- Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

Health.........

Health care reform won't work. America doesn't want to be healthy. Look around. Look at how America eats. Look how America exercises. Look at what the youth of America do for their entertainment. Where are the incentives for making your health better? Subsidizing tobacco farmers for cigarette manufacture will make America healthier? Where are the health care providers going to come from, Mars?

Your health is your responsibility, not the governments, and for sure not mine.

Cash for Clunkers

More change, more "gubment" waste.

Capitalism is headed for the hills.

So much talk, so much money, so little truth

Listening to the President today talk about expecting his health care reform to bring down the cost of health care is very similiar to expecting the Easter Bunny to show up at the door.

Loaded.............

I was once asked by a lady visiting if I had a gun in the house. To which I said I did. She said, "Well, I certainly hope it isn't loaded!" To which I said, of course it is loaded, can't work without bullets. She then asked, "Are you that afraid of someone evil coming into your house?" My reply was, "No, not at all. I am not afraid of the house catching fire either, but I have fire extinguishers around and THEY ARE ALL LOADED."

On parental oversight............

A 6 year old and a 4 year old are upstairs in their bedroom. 'You know what?' says the 6 year old. 'I think it's about time we started cussing.

The 4 year old nods his head in approval. The 6 year old continues, 'When we go downstairs for breakfast, I'm gonna say something with hell and you say something with ass..'

The 4 year old agrees with enthusiasm. When the mother walks into the kitchen and asks the 6 year old what he wants for breakfast, he replies, 'Aw, hell, Mom, I guess I'll have some Cheerios.'

WHACK! He flies out of his chair, tumbles across the kitchen floor, gets up, and runs upstairs crying his eyes out, with his mother in hot pursuit, slapping his rear with every step. His mom locks him in his room and shouts, 'You can stay there until I let you out!'

She then comes back downstairs, looks at the 4 year old and asks with a stern voice, 'And what do YOU want for breakfast, young man?'

'I don't know', he blubbers, 'but you can bet your fat ass it won't be Cheerios!'

Beautiful, just beautiful........

If this weren't true it might be laughable. Only in the United States is there such waste.


http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7415354

Gerald Walpin

A true American. Doing the right thing for America.

A fine example of the lack of "character" found in this Administration.

Cowboy Justice, Cowboy Ethics.........

A Cowboy's View on Terrorism

Buck Lynn, a west texas working cowboy was being interviewed on a local radio station about an upcoming ranch rodeo when the radio host asked him what thought about the allegations of torture of suspected terrorists.

His reply prompted a standing ovation from those in the audience with numerous people calling in to agree.

HIS STATEMENT:

'If hooking up one rag-head terrorist prisoner's testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camelshagger will save just one American life, then I have only three things to say,'

"Red is positive, black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet."

Another reason for mandatory gun ownership

Remember the average response time to a 911 call is over 4 minutes.

The average response time of a .357 magnum is 1400 FPS.

Reasons to Fire Your Stockbroker

Your stock broker is not a fiduciary. Their best interests are not your best interests. They are employees of brokerage firms who work for the benefit of their brokerage firm, not your financial outcome.

Your stockbroker’s fancy title is not awarded for achieving above average investment results for clients’, it is for charging clients big fees and commissions no matter how well your portfolio performed.

Do you think it’s responsible and prudent to trust your “financial life” in retirement and your portfolio and serious money to a salesman rather than a fiduciary like the investment management firm of Chippewa Partners?

Stockbrokers worry about generating income for themselves, before worrying about your results. If they don’t, they lose their job even if market conditions warrant doing nothing with your portfolio. They still need to churn your assets.

Last time we checked, stockbrokers who call themselves financial planners are usually far more concerned with planning their commissions and fees from your portfolio rather than planning your financial future.

When was the last time your broker made any serious money for you or any money at all? Brokers are not trained to trade stocks, they are trained to gather assets and sell investment products. Few brokers have made themselves serious money in the stock market.

A stockbroker's goals are based on "gross production sales credits" which are the fees and commissions charged to clients and not the performance of their client’s investments.

If your brokers are so successful at investing, why are they still working for a brokerage firm and not independently or better yet, why are they still working to generate commissions instead of working at a money management firm on a performance basis?

An area of investing where huge fees are still “hidden” is in annuities. If your stockbroker wants your assets in annuities you better think again. Remember, studies show that most brokerage firm clients think their broker is “free” because he never sends them a bill.

A financial advisor compensated via commissions is really a salesman with huge conflicts of interest with the client and it is in his best interests to keep his client ignorant.

High Quality Stocks...........

Day after day, year after year I hear the mavens on financial TV tout how they only buy "high quality" stocks and stay away from "low quality" stocks.

Let me be very clear on the amount of risk one should incur in owning either high or low quality cars, wives, bonds, guns, boats or stocks.

Risk should be the amount of money you are willing to lose on the trade before you exit the trade. To that end one must only trade in a "liquid" market. As a matter of full disclosure wives are not liquid.

When high quality stocks go down as much as low quality stocks in normal market corrections and when low quality stocks go up faster in the next up-leg of the market who decides what is high and what is low. Isn't high quality what goes up and low quality what doesn't go up or goes down?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. They all are risky. Control the risk. Decide how much you can stomach to lose on paper before you exit the trade. Simple.

Fathers Day gift ideas.........

SEATTLE, Jun 12, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- With Father's Day rapidly approaching, Lard Butt LLC (), an apparel and lifestyle company for below-average athletes and weekend warriors, today announced that it has published its 'Ten WORST Father's Day Gift Ideas' on its popular LardBlog () discussion forum. Lard Butt also announced a Father's Day promotion in which it will include a free 'Lard Butt Golf' shirt with any and all orders made on its site prior to midnight Pacific Time on Father's Day: Sunday, June 21. Among Lard Butt's 'Ten WORST Father's Day Gift Ideas' are: -- Any lawnmower lacking a comfortable seat and beverage holder -- A Tupperware Party -- To-do Lists.

Lard Butt is an apparel and lifestyle company dedicated to below-average athletes, providing 'athletic apparel for the rest of us,' along with an online hub for Lard Butts everywhere to exchange stories, photos, and more. In an era when overpaid professional athletes are making headlines for steroid use, fistfights, and pouting over $5 million-per-year salaries, Lard Butt celebrates those of us who just want to get into the game -- even if we get severely winded getting TO the game! We don't need steroids to have fun; mostly, we just need something to eat!

This is not education

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Thursday, June 11, 2009

A principal has resigned and an assistant principal is under investigation at a DeKalb County school implicated by the state in a possible test cheating probe.

Former Atherton Elementary School Principal James Berry and Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander now face accusations of cheating from system officials.

“Atherton is a great school. It’s got great students. It’s got great teachers,” DeKalb chief deputy superintendent Robert Moseley said in an interview Thursday afternoon.

Moseley said no student and “no teacher has been implicated in this mess. It’s all the principal and assistant principal. Cheating? Yes, and that is an understatement. It’s the students who were cheated by the administrators.”

According to state and local officials, preliminary audit results by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement reveal that someone at Atherton and three other Georgia schools deliberately changed students’ answers last summer on fifth-grade standardized math retests.

At Atherton, half of the DeKalb school’s fifth-graders failed a yearly state test in the spring. When the 32 students took retests, not only did every one of them pass — 26 scored at the highest level.

Economic Reality..............

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.

Depression is when you lose yours.

Recovery is when Obama and his administration leave the White House.

Ken Lewis

Today's interrogation of Ken Lewis by the esteemed panel of Congressional misfits deserves it's place in the YouTube Hall of Fame.

This much is clear. The lack of clarity and "smarts" in the analysis of economic reality shows just how little the guys at the top understand.

Only the lobbyists know. Or those on sabbatical from Goldman Sachs.

The White House tooth fairy................

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had a Republican Congress allocate 5.6 Billion dollars for a civilian volunteer security force, as strong and well equipped as the regular Army and under his personal authority, would you have been concerned?

If George W. Bush had proposed doubling the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed doubling the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had promised detailed tracking of the spending from a $785 Billion Stimulus Bill and then postponed that oversight until 2010, would you approve or would you think something "smelled fishy"? If Bush had promised 48 hour advance posting of the same bill on the internet and only released it two hours before congressional approval, would you wonder what was being hidden from the public?

If Bush's White House Staff had spent over $300,000 flying Airforce One low over New York (for a publicity photo flyby with the Statue of Liberty) frightening the city, wouldn't you have expected Bush to make the pictures public? Would you have approved? Obama won't give them up, but he will release the secret "torture memos".

If George W. Bush had been "addicted" to using a TelePrompTer, and was afraid to give a speech without having one, would you have approved ? Would you think he was intelligent?

If George W. Bush had pre-approved/pre-picked the list of reporters allowed to ask questions at his press conferences and refused to call on the correspondent from MSNBC (FOX with Obama), would you have approved? Is that a Fair and Balanced news conference?

If George W. Bush and a Republican Congress had given hundreds of millions of dollars to a group (the right-wing equivalent of ACORN) after its members had been convicted of voter registration fraud, would you approve of them to doing the 2010 Census, which will determine congressional districts for 10 years? Will you trust ACORN in 2010?

Would you have approved of George W. Bush moving the Census from the Dept. of Commerce into the White House and putting his Chief of Staff in control of the counting?

He's done all this in 14 weeks -- so we still have three years and eight-and-a-half months full of surprises.

Sure, yea, right......

"be conscious of God and speak only the truth".........

What a line. If only he would.

The proposed economic summit will be about what the government can "own and operate".

My late grandfather, Walter Marquart would have called it "a bunch of gibberish".

Common sense.........

coming out of Washington is lacking, no, non-existent. The lobbyists who spend a billion dollars a day, repeat, a billion dollars a day, (say that 5 times without smiling) must be having a field day lobbying for their check-writing clients!

The world is for sale at a price.

I wonder when the media and public will turn against the community activist at 1600 Pennsylvania? The hostile take-over of the auto industry, the banks, healthcare will need to run its course. Giving GM a cool $50 billion of taxpayer dollars prior to a bankruptcy filing smacks with good old fashioned Chicago politics, well, Detroit politics, well UAW politics, well just paying off Obama for all the votes.

Speaking of common sense, I finished William Cohan's "House of Cards" this morning with the birds awakening and a fresh cup of Green Mountain Coffee. A great read and another travesty for 10,000 wonderful people who didn't have a thing to do with the madness, lies and greed. Twenty years ago this coming week the locks were changed and the LaJolla offices of Drexel Burnham Lambert where I worked were slammed shut forever. Common sense is always needed, many fail to see the need up close and personal.

Summer.........

Every quarter I usually have a need for some cheap labor so I head up to the county line and look for some of the guys who have worked for me previous. If they don't appear in the crowd that gathers, and be sure to lock your rig and shut the windows when you drive up, the one question you should ask is, "who speaks English" if you are not fluent in Spanish, which I am not.

I always ask the workers how and where they came into the U.S. and they usually say in Texas and a couple of days on foot.

They are happy to be here and have a great work ethic. And every one, always, has buckled their seat belt right away.

Obama Motor Company

General Motors says that the consumer will drive the "new" company to profitability this year. With $50 billion of taxpayer money one would think they could be profitable within the decade. Politicians are NOT managers of businesses. It should be very easy to for non-government owned car companies to compete against government owned car companies. Can anyone say "slam-dunk"?

In another twist of "change" in government Congress and the Senate won't put their personal spending stipends on the internet (in electronic form) for American taxpayers to digest. So much for transparency. The beat goes on.