Ron's blog

I'm just a dumb guy but I'm taken with Sarah Palin's Mama Grizzlies effort to empower women. Something has gone horribly wrong with our government and something needs to be done about it. The leftists (progressives, communists, socialists, Marxists, statists, collectivists) should never have been allowed to take over the DNC and BHO should never have won the nomination. Had the DNC rules and bylaws not been changed in 2007, HIllary Clinton would have won the nomination. Without the corruption and voter intimidation in the caucuses, Obama would never have won. Had Hillary won the nomination, she would be president now and the country would probably be on the right track. Obama is president, we're on the wrong track, and we're screwed. Even though Hillary is a self-professed progressive, we'd be doing far better than we are now.

(Note: I wrote this last night but the hour was late, I was tired, and forgot to post it. Today, the market fell in reaction to overseas markets which are falling due to European banking concerns. Roubini is warning that Europe faces a double-dip which could affect markets here. Dodd is talking about ending TARP early to fund financial reform. The Shanghai index is down over 4%. Last night, it looked as though we were teetering on the edge, hence the title of this post. Now, we're going over the edge but I'm hoping this is a knee jerk reaction and not the start of a longer downtrend. Consumer confidence plunged to the lowest level since March.)

Monday, June 28. These days, it's hard to know what to think about anything. The strangest things are happening and it's really hard to know what to make of them. It's hard to help feeling helpless in the face of events beyond our control. Of course, three months from the 4th of July, we get the chance to make our views known in the voting booth but a lot can happen in those months ahead.

Top 3 stories on Google tonight: Yuan, Golf, and BP. Scanning the Google News page, no mention of Israel or Iran and yet, that's the biggest news right now, if only people knew it. What's up with that? Here are some links that'll give you an idea what's going on:

Poll: Globe backs Iran strike - Israel News, Ynetnews

Eleven US warships, one Israeli vessel transit Suez Canal to Persian Gulf

Barak off to US for Iran talks

After 3 hours in the dentist's chair today, I'm out of it and sore. I tried to watch the president's speech tonight but fell asleep a few minutes into it. From what I could gather once I managed to gather some of my wits is that he isn't doing a whole lot about the situation but is seizing on the opportunity to grow government even bigger at our expense. Also, his drilling policy could cost 120,000 jobs. This cartoon seems appropriate (click for full size):

In other news, my car deal fell through. No car could be found that matched what I wanted so we'll have to wait 3 months for the new models to come out. No biggie but we're disappointed.

This is an open thread so please feel to discuss anything that's on your mind.

May 31, Memorial Day, 2010: I bought a new car. It isn't in the area so maybe I'll get it next week or maybe Flag Day. I looked at American cars and Japanese cars made in the USA but finally decided on a car that's only made in Japan, a 2010 Lexus LS 460. It'll look just like this:

I won't bore you with how awesome it is (0-60 in 5.4 sec.), just that it's roomy, very comfortable and quiet. The starfire pearl paint is like fresh fallen sparkly snow. The interior is parchment leather and polished wood.

Once in a while, something happens that makes people, governments, and media outlets show their true colors. This year, on Memorial Day, a group of 6 ships led by communists and terrorists tried to run Israel's arms blockade of Gaza. Because of all the rockets and mortar shells that have rained down on innocent Israelis since 2005, Israel will not allow any country or entity to ship goods directly to Gaza. All food and other aid is transferred to Gaza after being inspected first by Israel to eliminate an avenue of contraband. Ayers, Dohrn helped organize flotilla group | Washington Examiner. » Media Matters Covers Up Obama Ties to Hamas Ally Jodie Evans - Big Government

Just relaxing and having a nice time at the beach this week. We drove here on Thursday as the stock market was in meltdown mode but I was blissfully unaware. It was a beautiful day driving over the Chesapeake Bay and that's all I cared about. Once we got to the inn, I checked the markets with my iPhone and whoa, the correction I'd been expecting was in full swing. The market has been in decline this whole month but at the same time, the leading economic indicators have also been in decline. It's hard to tell at this point how long this trend will continue. It could be a short term correction followed by a big move up in June. There are so many risks to the economy right now, anything could send it teetering over the edge again. Could there be a double-dip recession? Sure, anything is possible.

Sayonara Specter, Sestak wins but Toomey will beat him in November. Rand Paul wins in KY. Looks like a runoff for AR. Anyone have any thoughts on how things are going and looking for November?

Some good news about the economy today but the market is down. Europe closed down sharply on fears of strict reform measures. The economy is definitely improving in the good ol' USA but the unemployment rate is moving higher as some of the long term unemployed start looking for work again. One of the last space shuttles took off this afternoon and it was a spectacular launch.

My wife and I have been doing some car shopping lately so we haven't been paying close attention to what's going on in politics. As with things politicians say, car specs don't always give you the whole picture.

The luxury sedan contenders:

What a day! The markets were lower on fears over what's going in in Greece, the volatility index (VIX) was creeping up when WHAM, the bottom falls out. Here's an intraday chart that compares Procter & Gamble with 3M and Apple:

That super sharp spike down was triggered by someone who clicked or typed B for billions instead of M for millions in a P&G trade. Then, 3M plunged sharply, triggering program trading that tripped a huge number of stop loss settings, sending the whole market down. As soon as the mistake was realized, it was fixed and then the market and the stocks recovered sharply, though still down somewhat for the day.

If you pay attention to the news, what's going on these days is just plain nuts. It's as if the country was being run by monkeys with keyboards. Some events with comments:

Catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Halliburton is pumping cement into a deep sea oil well and suddenly there's an explosion and fire that kills 11. Oil continues to flow and the preventer valve on the sea bed fails to activate. Robots can't close the valve. A secondary remote controlled valve isn't present. BP blames the failure of the preventer for the oil gushing into the Gulf. The rig collapses into the sea. The flow of oil can't be stopped at present. News reports hype the situation and claim that ecosystems around the Gulf and even the east coast of the US are in peril. They painted a picture of the Gulf of Mexico filling with oil with scenes of the Exxon Valdez disaster playing on the TV news shows.

With all that has been going on lately, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep a civil tongue in my head. It'd be way too easy to give in to a screaming fit of expletives. What the foul Dems are up to is so outrageous, it's next to impossible to discuss it without colorfully salty language but I'll try.

The Senate hearing today with some ex-members of Goldman Sachs on the carpet was just appalling. Senators McCaskill and Levin were so obviously out of their depth asking the dumbest questions. All good stockbrokers and traders make money in both good and bad markets. If you think the market or an equity is about to go down, you short it. If you think it's going up, you go long. Why in the world would anyone berate anyone for making money? Stockbrokers make money if their clients buy or sell a stock.

I came across a headline today:

'Celestial body' lands in Bat Yam

My perception:

 +  = 

OK, I've done my taxes but I'm frazzled and have a fried brain. My printer ran out of ink and I'm out of paper so I'll print out the state return for our records tomorrow. The check to the US Treasury goes out tonight. After going insane over one of the esoteric forms, reading the instructions 5x to my wife, neither one of us getting it, I screamed, HERE, YOU READ IT!!! and plopped the laptop in her lap. It's an annual fit of frustration that we both laugh about later. Maybe next year will be different.

After calling the people who did the schedule Ks (I'm a partner in 5 restaurants), I learned that I'll have to have a CPA do my taxes from now on. The guy on the phone was incredulous when I said I was using TurboTax and trying to do the taxes myself. We went though the estimated income for this year and it was a number I couldn't even fathom or say. Taxes are going to be huge but nothing like they'd be next year.

Today is the dawning of the age of iPad. This changes everything. Life, as we know it, will never be the same. The Internet changed everything. Now, the iPad changes how we consume all the content on the Internet.

Apple says the iPad is "A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price." Once you try one, you'll know how true that statement is. The iPad bridges the gap between the iPhone and a laptop. What can you do with an iPad? Watch TV, watch movies, read and send email, read books, play games, look at photo albums, listen to music, and browse the Internet. There are even NetFlix and Kindle apps for the iPad now, along with thousands of other apps. The latest version of iTunes has an iPad section for all the iPad-specific apps, though most of the apps for the iPhone and the iPod touch work just fine on the new iPad.

Yesterday was my mom's 87th birthday. She's doing very well now after over 6 months of ill health and two operations. My wife and I took her and her home health helper out to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. I then took them on a tour of Kenwood, an old Maryland neighborhood full of multimillion dollar mansions with very old Yoshino cherry trees lining the roads. It was a beautiful day with blue sky and a gentle breeze. We all had a wonderful time.

Monday night is the first night of Passover and the first seder. Just as last year, president Obama will hold a seder in the White house. The is the holiday that commemorates the liberation of the Jews from Egypt. We celebrate with unleavened bread, the bread of haste, because there was no time to let it rise. Every year, for the past 3,450 years since Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, Jews have been celebrating Passover or Pesach in Hebrew. The Jewish diaspora began 2,597 years ago when Israel was conquered by the Babylonians. Ever since, Jews end each seder with the words, next year in Jerusalem. One wonders if Obama will say that at his seder Monday night.

Today, it looks like the Middle East is on the brink of another war or intifada. Apparently, the Arabs still want the Jews out of their own ancient homeland which has been the modern country of Israel for over 60 years. The capitol of Israel is Jerusalem which has always been the capitol of the land of the Jews for millennia.

Today was the first day of Spring and it was a glorious day. A month ago, there was 3 feet of snow on the ground. A few dozen daffodils and crocuses bloomed in the front yard so I snapped a couple of shots with my iPhone:

The crocuses are blooming through thick mondo grass.

We went to a little park today and watched the birds. There were bluejays, robins, juncos, a red-headed woodpecker and a flicker. Squirrels were eating black walnuts from last fall.

It was nice to get away from things for a few moments and listen to all the birds. As the sun went down, we headed over to a diner for filet mignon shish kebab.

We'll be visiting my mom on Sunday. She's doing much better and just started to drive again. She says she can't tell if her foot is on the gas pedal or the brake. These days, maybe it doesn't matter. She drives a Lexus. She'll be 87 at the end of the month.

As I'm writing this, president Obama is arriving at the US Capitol building for a final pep talk to the Democratic caucus. He's a half hour late, evidently waited until most of the tea party crowd dispersed. News is coming fast and furious in these final hours before Sunday's healthcare vote. The deem & pass rule is dead. There will be a straight up or down vote on the Senate bill. It remains to be seen if that bill is passed before or after the "fix" bill. Negotiations are ongoing but it might be passed before the Senate bill. Is that even legal?

We still don't know what will end up in that fix bill. Only 2 hours of debate have been allocated. The Democratic leadership seems confident they will have enough votes to pass the Senate bill.

Today's tea party rally on the west lawn of the Capitol:

The CBO came out with a preliminary score on the latest version of the healthcare bill and it managed to sway a few Dem votes to the yes column. It also persuaded others on the fence to vote no. Surprisingly, both the New York Times and the Washington Post say that the CBO's preliminary report doesn't pass the smell test. YID With LID: NY Times and Wash Post Say CBO Numbers Don't Pass Smell Test

Congressional Budget Office's sunny forecast carries big uncertainties - washingtonpost.com

As most of you know, my mom has had some serious health issues since August. She had her gallbladder out a couple of weeks ago, recovered in a nursing home for two weeks, and is now very happy to be home. She hated the food in the nursing home so she really enjoyed the Chinese food we brought her tonight.

We talked about the HC summit, Obama, the HC bill, and the takeover of the DNC by the far left. Since my mom has been in very poor health and in and out of hospitals and nursing homes for nearly 7 months, there's a lot she's unaware of but she did see the summit. Her take on things is the opposite of mine but her bias is based on a fundamental lack of knowledge. She thinks the Washington Post is the same as it was prior to 1999 and that the Democratic party is still the bastion of Kennedy-era liberals. She doesn't know what a progressive is. She doesn't understand why the HC bill is bad or that the majority of the country is against it. Tonight, my wife and I did our best to bring her up to speed.

When the Continental Congress of 1787 concluded in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was seen exiting Independence Hall. A woman asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?" He answered, "A republic, if you can keep it." We are privileged to have such a rare and precious government but it's something that we, the people, need to preserve. We can't rely on judges or elected officials to maintain it. It's our responsibility to educate ourselves so that we can make the right choices on election day.

Unfortunately, it's far too easy for us to be led astray by lying politicians who say they have our best interests at heart when they really only have theirs. We need to forget about labels like left or right, Democrat or Republican, progressive or conservative. What we really need to look out for are the things that will lead to more or less government which equates to less or more freedom.

There's an inverse relationship between the amount of government and freedom, as shown in this little graphic I made:

Happy Valentine's Day!

Despite the weather, this is a great time to treat yourself and your loved ones

It's the middle of February and the middle of winter. Days are short and there isn't much sunshine. Some people suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) but that can be fixed with light and a good diet. This is the time of year when you hear about the benefits of chocolate but they usually don't tell you that only dark chocolate has what you need.

We finally got out today after paying some guys to dig us out of the snowdrifts. Our friendly neighborhood Safeway was mostly fully stocked. We called first just to make sure. We even got flowers and a balloon for Valentine's Day and to help us celebrate the anniversary of meeting each other for the first time at a free university class in 1971. Here's how our front yard looked this morning.

Pictured in the center is my wife's car. The little black spot is her side-view mirror.

Some items gathered from around the Web today:

Snow dalek attacks! Boing Boing

Yesterday was Glenn Beck's birthday and today is Sarah Palin's (2/11). Happy Birthday to them!