Moron Potpourri, Real Estate Deflation, and Whatnot

The headline says it all:

MAN DATES GAL ON INTERNET FOR SIX MONTHS—AND IT TURNS OUT SHE’S HIS MOTHER.

And how Moronic were these Frenchies to actually tell someone what happened?

My coworkers on the PHLX used to dirty talk with anonymous girls in chatrooms. Well they assumed they were girls. That may have been the one risky gamble that I stayed away from during the bull market.



Isn’t environmentalism just another evangelical religion?

Author Michael Crichton makes the persuasive case.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Read the whole speech.



He argues that environmentalism should be reclaimed by scientists. In other words, get the politics out. I would submit that science has been hijacked by atheistic nerds. Or perhaps it has always been their bastion?

On side note, I hate the term "politics". All too often "politics" is a euphemism for TOTAL BLEEPIN' BULLSH*T.

I can’t find the poll now but I read where something like 88% of scientists voted against President Bush, far and away the most monolithic political demographic (outside of the 89% of black Americans who voted against him in 2004.)

Everybody's ken is defined and limited by their own personal experience. Teachers tend to think public education is the most important political football, Christians may think abortion is, doctors look to medical issues, scientists may elevate their field above others, and CaptiousNut thinks capitalism trumps them all.

The major distinction is that CaptiousNut is willing and able to argue his case.



Before last year’s election I weathered a 30 minute tirade from my 90 year-old grandfather on how the Iraqi War would achieve nothing because the Arabs are basically all the same – a 7th century people. Anyway, I ended his monologue and asked him, “But what about Social Security? What about economic issues?” He sighed and didn’t even try to downplay them.



(Yeah dope, "oil is bad for consumers". Consumers really hate the ability to drive cars.)

It is every American’s right to be a one-issue voter, but implicit in that is an arrogant and usually ignorant disparagement of other issues AND other people.

If someone feels that the so-called “women’s right to choose”, “global warming”, “gay marriage” or the War in Iraq is THE supremely important issue....that is completely fine with me. But all too often a little probing exposes these one-issue types as abysmally ignorant on almost every other issue.

My grandfather may be dead right about the efficacy of promoting democracy in Iraq, but how can he justifiably ignore the issue of Social Security reform? People like him should remember to weigh all issues. After all, he does have 12 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren who are inheriting the ticking entitlement bomb.



What’s really bad is the single issue people who don’t even fully comprehend their alleged specialty – like these global warming “scientists”. I have said it more than once already. These "scientists" don't comprehend the fact that the EARTH'S TEMPERATURE FLUCTUATES.

We get all of our heat from the sun which is 109 times as big and 414,375 times as massive as the Earth. So the dopes can wager on the Ford Explorers, but I will bet that any "climate change" is due to the sun.

So not only are Americans ENTITLED to cheap gasoline, rising home prices, worry-free investment returns, etc...., now apparently we are ENTITLED to a constant level of solar radiation!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I have to Marginalize this one person I overheard at a Roche Bros. supermarket in Chestnut Hill. She was talking about her sister who,

“...exposes her kids to everything….Christmas, Hanukhah, Kwanza…..so they can choose whatever they want to believe...”

There is a name for people like this – JACKASS.

Multi-cultural propaganda is bad enough in schools, the media, and at the office but this woman’s poor kids have to endure it at home. There is something wrong when people think they can concoct an a la carte cultural heritage. Who knows...perhaps stupidity is their family tradition?

CaptiousNut has been predicting a real estate slide all year. Of course I wasn’t the only one forecasting this but the real estate naysayers only constitute a very small minority these days. Two very bearish housing reports this week.

1. The number of homes for sale is now the highest since 1986.

2. New home sales in November fell 11% from October, the largest drop in 11 years.

I have been meaning to blog a bit on housing data the last few weeks but haven't gotten around to it. A lot of times the publicized data is completely propagandized or misinterpreted.

For instance, much of the reported housing data is cited on a month-over-month basis. In other words they will compare November 2005 data to November 2004 data. This is a ridiculous way to report it because when you buy a house, you want to judge it against the prices in the preceding (and following) months. Nobody says,

“Yeah, that seemed like a good deal considering it was an October purchase....”

Also, many dopey pundits keep touting new home starts/permits as an unequivocal sign of housing strength. Sure it represents a degree of strength, but it also means there is tons of new housing supply coming onboard. So in that vein, strong housing starts data actually forebode weakness. Just be wary of the propaganda and economic illiteracy.

One last warning sign of real estate frothiness. Someone just bid $500 million for a 43 acre trailer park in Briny Breezes, Florida.



Pictured above are New Yorkers walking to work over the Brooklyn Bridge during the recent Transit Workers Union strike.

It really hasn't been a good year for unions with the TWU strike failing, Delta Airlines' bankruptcy, and General Motors' woes (see the 20 year low on the chart).



Except for Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, the silence from New York politicians during the strike was deafening. I guess Chuck Schumer, et al can't really condemn a union that lines their pockets with money.

Deranged Dog People

Alright, I have held it in long enough. This stupid commercial I just saw for doggie stairs has put me over the edge.

What is wrong with YOU PEOPLE AND YOUR DOGS?

A good friend of mine just got booted out of his housing development because his dog mauled a neighbor. Okay, he didn't get evicted, the dog was. Instead of sending the dog to the mythical "farm upstate", he has decided to move to a new home.

My sister spends about $300 a week to kennel her dogs when she goes away. That exorbitant sum includes "extra play time" and "doggie phone calls". Yes, she calls the dogs on the phone.



Another friend sends her canine to "doggie day care" five days a week because it is better "socially" for the dog than staying home alone all day.

One in-law seemingly can't send us a family picture that doesn't include their dogs. It is great to see the development of my nieces but I'm not really interested in the growth of two extremely fat pugs. And they are definitely out of place on a Christmas card.

I have friends in Charlestown, MA that are routinely called "yuppies" by the residual townies there and wonder why. Could it be from seeing them walk that 13 pound hairless, emaciated poodle everyday?



Then there are the couples that get dogs INSTEAD of getting married or having kids.

The deranged that get gourmet dog pastries and take the mutts to aromatherapy and pet "healing" centers.

Have you seen these ridiculous ergonomically raised dog dishes?



Cat people can be nuts too. One friend spend $2,000 getting a half-digested piece of string removed from her feline. I think my brother just spend $4,000 saving his cat. My wife has emphatically stated that our cat has a strict $400 "deductible" and a DNR order as well.

Another friend spent $250 to "save a cat" from a website. The site marketed the cats as on "death-row" and about to be killed if no one paid the $250. What a great business plan! Get kittens costing practically zero. Put some pics of them on a website accompanied by a death countdown and take $250 per cat from assorted Morons.

I knew a guy in Center City Philadelphia who started a pet walking business about ten years ago. He sat at the bar all day drinking martinis and bragged about how much money he was making. He had one client who paid him $600 a month to walk his dogs twice a day. Of course the bragger outsourced the walking to struggling artists and the like. But this was definitely a great business to start there at the time.



My grandmother used to regularly bake meatloaf FOR HER DOG!!!

Anyway, feel free to one-up my anecdotes as I am sure they don't do justice to the complete inanity of Deranged Dog People.

UPDATE:

The day after I posted this I went to Spring Lounge on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. Some whack-job had her pug in the bar. It wasn't long before the dog was on the table sampling everyone's pints. The bar was instantly aglow with camera flashes. Alas, my camera got stuck in my pocket and I missed the shot.

Politically Correct 'Throwback' Jerseys

I was just at Modell's Sporting Goods in Newton, Massachusetts. I was trying to quickly buy a youth football jersey for my nephew and was SHOCKED to find a $35 Tom Brady shirt padlocked to the rack.

I waited almost ten minutes trying to get an employee to unlock it for me. Finally one came and I asked him about the locks:

"Well, Modell's doesn't want to have locks on shirts in some locales but not in others......"

This store was on the border of Needham and Newton - two extremely white (Jewish) and affluent towns outside of Boston - hardly hubs of retail theft.

Political correctness run amok.

Morons Supporting Farms

Pardon me while I play my small violin for Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears. I am sure it is exaggerated enviro-nonsense. I have news for these overly compassionate tree-humpers...

An animal species going extinct is NO BIG DEAL. It’s been happening for millions of years. Remember the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and dinosaurs? Did the world end with them?

Would PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have domesticated the carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex? Would they have made it a tofu-eating vegan too?



Someone asked me to describe PETA the other day. Here is a great summary which clarifies why it is high on every Moron list.



I was recently advised to buy my Christmas tree at the Allandale farm this year to “support it”. I asked for some elaboration and got,

"...if they make money they won’t sell the farm and build homes there..."

I told her that I bought my tree at Home Depot to which she snapped back,

“Home Depot doesn’t need the money.”

I said I support Home Depot because they employ people, are owned by pension funds, donate millions to charity, AND pay lots of taxes that can be redistributed to those who don’t contribute to society.

She has no idea how much money the farm has or needs. Normally I am all for consumer activism but this young lady is hopelessly misguided.



It’s kind of funny because this is the second time in a few months up here in the land of enviro-Commi-groupthink that I have heard “save the farm” sentiment. They recently built beautiful homes and a great golf course on the Highfields Farm in Grafton, Massachusetts. (Okay, that pic is from Naples, not Grafton)

Screw the farm. I have gotten much more utility from the golf course than I ever did from the farm. Furthermore, the poor little farm family was actually loaded to begin with. No $30 Christmas trees or cartons of milk were going to sway the Magills from developing their multi-million dollar piece of property.

Devil’s Advocate: Wait up CaptiousNut...aren’t you doing your little boycott of Big Media, e.g. Businessweek and whatnot?

Yes I am, but I don’t arrogantly think that my personal boycott is going to drive anyone out of business nor do I think any of my retail patronage will sustain any wobbly ventures. I would still buy Businessweek, in spite of its agitprop, if it was entertaining or helped me make money with my trading. Consider that I still watch CNBC for that latter reason. If the Christmas trees are cheaper at the farm…..by all means buy one there. But lose the tree-humping moral superiority.

You see how psychotic these Bostonians are? You can’t just simply buy a Christmas tree. It is a great opportunity to save the environment, bash dreaded Big Business, exaggerate your self-importance, and display your economic illiteracy.

During my Home Depot lecture I received the proverbial "kick-under-the-table" from my wife, i.e. an unequivocal shut-up request. Haha....not my style. Plus I need the blogging material.

I just don't take kindly to someone coming into my house and asserting THEIR unfounded moral superiority.

Remember, ignorance is not bliss.....it is BLIGHT. I should "support the farm"? Bullcrap. She should support the country by not fighting our engines of progress: capitalism and the laws of economics.

Economic illiteracy is so prevalent because the afflicted simply don't know how paramount economic issues are (and have been) to our prosperity.

I would bet my bottom dollar that the house she lives in was built on an old farm.

I say tear down the Allendale farm and build so-called "affordable" housing for Hurricane Katrina victims. (sarcastic jest)

Morons at Tookie's Vigil

You have to click on this link to read about and see the panoply of Morons that showed up.

Big Media has never fairly reported on demonstrations like these because

1) They agree with the causes of these Morons.

2) Obviously an accurate reporting WOULD NOT BEHOOVE their image.

In other words, this is just another example of the Big Media's systematic whitewashing of reality.

Devil's Advocate: Wait up CaptiousNut, aren't these just fringe kooks that don't accurately represent their purported causes?

Big Media is a monolithic propaganda organization. Sure these demonstraters are whack-jobs and perhaps real outliers.

But Big Media has a very fickle policy towards extreme examples.

Consider the outlier Enron. It was one of 20,000 public companies to be an accounting fraud YET Big Media wields it as a most favored talking point to bash corporate Amererica, Wall Street, and capitalism. Congress even went as far as passing that superfluous and onerous Sarbanes-Oxley law.

If Big Media directed the same spotlight on Tookie's mourners...

....Congress would call for a full investigation of the schools these nutjobs went to, where their parents are, and would probably be passing laws to institutionalize them.

In an ideal world, journalistic ethics would compel the media to report everything accurately - allowing the public to make up their own minds on issues.

Musings on Morons and the Prior Generation

When I am on the highway, I generally set my cruise control 7 miles over the speed limit. I absolutely can’t stand it when I try to pass people at my constant speed and they decide to speed up. Drivers don’t usually do this to piss people off (except cabbies in New York), mostly it is because they subconsciously want someone else to SUGGEST a speed for them.

Oh, you want to pass me...... then I must be driving too slowly.

The same applies when someone comes flying up to your tailgate, you change lanes, and they follow you. It’s absolutely infuriating.



I am not a pizza crust eater. And if I had a nickel for every time someone stared aghast at my pile of crusts and said,

“You don’t eat the crusts?!?!?!?!?”

I always preempt the predictable "best part" declaration by screaming back,

“WHY..........IS IT THE 'BEST PART' ?!?!?!!?!?!?”

I seriously do this and more than a few people have run away thinking that I am a psycho.

I don’t like seafood either. Sure I will eat fried calamari but bird sh*t would probably be edible if deep-fried. Anyway, when offered fish and whatnot I always decline and tell people that I am allergic to it.

When I was younger and less Captious I used to say that I simply didn’t like seafood. But Morons everywhere would persistently follow up:

“Why don’t you like seafood???????”

Could there be a stupider question than that? What do they think that somehow they can persuade me to like it? Or maybe that I actually like seafood and deny myself the pleasure? MORONS!!!

Now since I started feigning the seafood allergy, it has really started to annoy my wife BUT this dollop of subterfuge consistently entertains me.

At a supermarket we walked by the deli/seafood counter and an employee was offering free samples of sushi. She eagerly approached me with the offer, I sneered at her and told her that I was allergic. Immediately she apologized and literally backpedaled. I put my angry face on and yelled:

“…MY THROAT WOULD SWELL UP AND I COULD DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The girl felt awful and it was absolutely hilarious.

Every time I trot out my allergy lie people get very apologetic and THAT is much more palatable than the insufferable “why don’t you like it?” question.



On the subject of allergies...

My mother-in-law happens to be very allergic to my cat and pretty much can’t spend any time at my house. Now I know 95% of my blog readers are thinking:

“CaptiousNut....you are one lucky bastard”,

...but that is not completely the case. I happen to love my mother-in-law (i.e. she reads my blog).

The downside to her cat allergy is that she can’t come up and babysit and that we have to go visit her more often. It pretty much puts a lot more of a travel burden on us. Except for our one year sojourn to Charlotte, it feels like we live on Intersate-95.

Forget the issue of in-laws (for the record I consider my own parents in-laws as well – they are ALL in-laws), the early 30s are probably the age when it gets most difficult to “live” with other people. By this time most people are married, have honed their own idiosyncrasies, and really start to have trouble dealing with the, let’s just say, Prior Generation.

I don’t think my wife and I can have an extended conversation with our peers, be they friends or family, without some mention of a Prior Generational inanity. A good friend probably summed it up best when she once exclaimed:

“WHAT----IS----WRONG----WITH----THOSE----PEOPLE? ? ? ?”

Sure, when you are sixteen and take driver’s ed you discover that your parents – don’t know how to drive. But it is not for another 15 years that you finally realize the full extent of their craziness. And this goes for your aunts, uncles, family friends, and pretty much the entire Prior Generation demographic.

Almost none of my older relatives read my blog anymore (perhaps because of my clutter post) but I am going to tread lightly here nonetheless.

Here is a non-exhaustive litany of "visiting" tribulations...

1) Cheap toilet paper. My butt is used to Charmin and that Scott sandpaper really chafes me. The Prior Generation all claim to “prefer” Scott...whatever cheapskates. It is like my father and uncle who won’t rent carts on a golf course because they “like to walk”. Bullsh*t. If carts were free they would ride. Why don’t people just admit they are cheap? Why the spin?

2) Ten-year old 19-inch televisions with only basic cable. Upgrade the cable already. Maybe get HBO with some of that money you saved on toilet paper. Watching TV at these people’s homes feels like being in a Third World country compared to the DVRs and premium channels I have at home. Walmart sells 23-inch televisions for $88 – go buy a new one!!!

3) 5 year-old or $600 computers with dial-up internet connections, often times buried in a basement or a far off room. No elaboration needed here.

4) Heat or air conditioning cheapness. This summer we experienced more insufferable humidity in the northeast than we did in Charlotte. Invariably people up here only run their air conditioning at night, if they have any at all. And usually they have old inefficient window units. GO TO WALMART, SEE HOW CHEAP AND BETTER THE NEW UNITS ARE, AND BUY ONE!!!!

Etc, etc,....

See the theme? Most of my complaints that I am courageous enough to list involve cheapness and old technology.

But CaptiousNut is no Moron and could probably write a dissertation on Prior Generation management techniques.

Before any extended visit, I program both of my DVRs to tape just about everything I don’t want to watch on tiny rabbit-eared televisions.

I lugged my father’s two air conditioners out of his basement and installed them in AUGUST!!!!!!! Who the heck INSTALLS air conditioners that late in the summer? Why weren’t they already in the windows?

Answer: Because my parents went away for 10 days in July and figured they wouldn’t need them for the other 80 days of brutal humidity.

Same thing with the thermostat. Instead of complaining about how cold my parents house is, now I just get up in the middle of the night and raise the heat. (My wife does too but I suspect my mother gets up and lowers it soon thereafter.)

I have successfully badgered both sets of in-laws into upgrading their computers and getting broadband. Yeah, they say they were going to do it anyway, but on this blog I’ll be the one to mete out credit.


As for the toilet paper……I bring a roll of Charmin with me everywhere.

In fact I recently whipped it out at a bar in Manhattan and it was quite the stunning conversation prop.

(Hey sickos, the “Charmin roll” is the antecedent of “it”.)

Anyway, when I am teaching Pre-Cana classes, I talk about my mother-in-law's cat allergy and advise the young couples to:

1) Find out what your in-laws are allergic to and.....

2) Buy four of them.

Never let truth or propriety smother a good joke.

Market Orders = Brokerages Ripping Off Their Own Customers

Thankfully I bought some gold stocks and calls last week. They rallied and these gains offset my semi-disastrous short of Apple.

Now I have been a professional trader for 10 years and I rarely ever use market orders, but on Friday I unloaded some Newmont Mining stock via a market order.

(To the layman, this means that I wanted to sell it that instant, at whatever price I could get.)

At the time, the stock was showing multiple bids of 50.44. By multiple I mean that was the bid on the New York Stock Exchange AND on at least two other electronic exchanges for a total of several thousand shares.

Bank of America filled my order and gave me a 50.42 report.

In other words, they filled me .02 below the sizable best bid.

I looked back through the tape (list of trades) and saw that they had traded my shares on the seldom-used Boston Stock Exchange.

Basically, Bank of America has some relationship/agreement or whatever with someone on the Boston Exchange whereby they conspire to rip off the customer.

Now this was, let's just say the opposite of a surprise to me. Every time you give a broker a market order, they will penalize you this way. Thus I hardly ever use such orders.

Probably the Boston guy pays Bank of America say a half of a penny or one penny per share for the right to fill market orders. So when I send my order to BoA, they will earn a commission from me AND a kickback from the Boston guy.

They will buy my stock at 50.42 and immediately sell it at 50.44 and keep the 1 or 1.5 penny profit.

That may not seem like a lot, but if they can make an extra .01 each on 100,000 shares a day, that adds up to ....

$1000 per day or....

$250,000 per year.



That is a nice little skim job all at the expense of brokerage customers.

Brokering and trading may be the biggest conflict of interest on Wall Street but Eliot Spitzer is only interested in the more politically marketable "conflicts".



My little example is a microcosm of what happens to almost every single market order on Wall Street.

Nobody, outside of professionals, is really aware of this because they would need a professional trading platform to see this rapid-fire skimming of .02 here and .02 there.

I actually oversimplified a bit what happened to my order. There probably isn't a relationship with "some guy in Boston". More likely, BoA sells my order to some trading desk. When they got my order they no doubt used a computer to find an exchange that had no bids in Newmont as high as 50.44, they found Boston and decided to route the trade through there - actually buying the stock directly from me and simultaneously selling it .02 higher on another exchange.

In other words, they go looking for a quiet place to rip off the customer. All of this happens in a split second.

And these skimmers don't limit themselves to market orders either. Recently I put in a 4.90 bid for an obscure little Nasdaq stock and the only bid that appeared was one for 4.89. The stock traded there and they gave me a 4.90 report. Essentially they bought the stock cheaper than I was willing to pay but decided to keep the savings.

For one penny per share they put my order at risk of being filled. If I had missed that stock I would have had to take them to arbitration. (That stock hit $20 recently - unfortunately I dumped it around $9.)

So now many brokerages tout half a penny per share commissions or so (around $5 for 1000 shares), but bear in mind that it is costing you MORE than that.

Sure, the ripoffs are smaller these days with decimalization and a proliferation of ECNs (electronic exchanges) BUT.... the volume has skyrocketed AND it still isn't right for brokerages to "gouge" their own customers.

IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO BROKER AND TRADE IN THE SAME ACCOUNT.

AND IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO "OUTSOURCE" THIS CONFLICT OF INTEREST TO ANOTHER TRADING DESK.

Look at this erroneous and naive explanation of low commissions for "market orders".

A market order guarantees execution, and it often has low commissions due to the minimal work brokers need to do....

The "low commissions" have nothing to do with "minimal work" and everything to do with the lucrative rip-off that market orders facilitate.

I even saw a brokerage firm that advertised "free commissions on market orders of 5000 shares or more".

I think the firm was called Bend-Over Brokerage.

Morons Think This Is a Recession

A friend of mine asked me this weekend if we were in a recession. I almost fell out of my chair, but sadly his inquiry is quite indicative.

Big Media has successfully propagandized economic reality. All three asset classes, stocks, bonds, and real estate are booming. Yet the MSM organs incessantly contort the current prosperity into at best a mirage with dire impending consequences and at worst....a fictional "recession".

This onslaught of negative thinking is clearly having an impact. During the 2004 presidential campaign, when attacks on the economy were in full force, 36% of Americans thought we were in recession. One year later, even though unemployment has fallen from 5.5% to 5%, and real GDP has expanded by 3.7%, the number who think a recession is underway has climbed to 43%.(link)

UN-BLEEPING-BELIEVABLE.

WHAT ASTOUNDING ECONOMIC ILLITERACY.

A 5% Unemployment rate is below the average for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Devil’s Advocate: But wait a minute CaptiousNut, are you discounting this poll? That many people can’t be wrong. Maybe your metrics are wrong?



Well first of all, the fact that since 2004, MORE people think the economy is in recession than before, even though all macroeconomic statistics are better, seems to DISCREDIT the 43%. Second of all.....

A "recession" is a well defined term:

Two or more successive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product growth.

In our most recent quarter of July-September 2005, U.S GDP grew at a blistering 4.3%!!!!!

We haven’t had a single negative growth quarter in FOUR YEARS - nevermind two in a row (see pic below).

Shouldn’t a poll asking about a recession first verify that the respondents actually know what a “recession” is?

All that poll proves is that a substantial portion of the populace are MORONS.



That chart is illustrative of the perma-negative reporting. I grabbed it from perma-dour CNN so that accounts for the “SLOWER GROWTH” spin.

Of course that graph was published April 28th, 2005. At the time CNN used first quarter GDP numbers to forecast “the end”, including “stagflation” i.e. slower growth and higher prices. As usual, they were completely WRONG.

Instapundit summarizes the MSM's perma-negativity:

I suspect this reflects the bad economic conditions at newspapers, rather than in the nation as a whole. Workers at GM, Ford, and other uncompetitive companies probably have an unrealistically negative view of the economy, too.

Surely this is partly true, but remember as I have detailed many times, Big Media is essentially a socialist institution that would be harping on illusury negatives even if their businesses were doing better.

Bloggers and alternative media in general have effectively counteracted the more outrageous transgressions of Big Media, yet with the smaller issues the socialists remain supremely influential.

43% think we are in a recession....

That is one MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE FAILURE.

The Inseparable Trio - Morons, Oil, and Massachusetts.

Massachusetts strikes a heating oil deal with Venezuelan Communist and Terrorist Dictator Hugo Chavez.

"Why would it matter where it comes from?" said Bridget Durkin, 70, who lives alone in Quincy and relies on fuel assistance. "Venezuela is doing a good thing for people."

WAIT!!!!!!!!!

I thought they cared where oil comes from? Remember, evil oil companies are not to even disturb the caribou in Alaska, crustacea in the Caribbean, and they are definitely not to subsidize terrorism.



People are starving in Venezuela with a poverty rate conservatively estimated at 35% (USA TODAY said it was 50% in that link above). Why help the rich United States? Maybe they should send pics of warm and cozy southeastern Massachusetts residents to the millions of cardboard box denizens in Hugo’s Venezuelan utopia.

Do the Massachusetts Morons want cheap oil or not? The parent of the Boston Globe editorializes in favor of $3 per gallon gasoline. They are all over the map on this one. Companies shouldn't drill for oil if it upsets birds and whatnot, BUT discounted heating oil can be taken from terrorism-sponsoring dictators.

And from the other side of there mouths comes warnings of “risky foreign indebtedness” and how oil subsidizes terrorism.

Is it illegal for states to conduct foreign policy? By all means yes. But the larger picture is the vast irony and hypocrisy the whole escapade illuminates.

We already buy oil from Venezuela and other dictatorships BUT they are brokered by private individuals and companies – not politicians. It is a distinction with a huge difference. Imagine rogue politicians trying to negotiate separate peaces during wartime.

What is the proper response? The whole thing was a ruse to get President Bush to preclude or at least condemn it. It's nothing more than an unsophisticated attempt to make him look unsympathetic and in the pocket of big evil US Oil. Bush did the smart thing and brushed it aside. There is now $24 million less in Hugo's war chest and I guess that is one way to spin it positively.

So where did this illegal heating oil deal come from?

As always, follow the money. It was brokered by a sham non-profit run by Joe Kennedy. I know....it's shocking to see a Kennedy involved in Massachusetts BS.

I say it is a sham because Joe Kennedy makes dough (400k in 2003) from these transactions. He will undoubtedly mark up the heating oil, masked as delivery fees no doubt, and skim a good chunk of change for himself. It's funny how much "non-profits" can line one's pockets.


Click here to learn who Hugo Chavez really is.

So we have to fret over China’s human rights violations and stop out-sourcing but the blueboods in Massacusetts don’t care one iota about Hugo’s crimes against his own citizenry?

IT IS ALL ABOUT PUSHING A STEALTH SOCIALIST AGENDA.



Again, the whole thing is a political stunt. THE POOR ALREADY get heat assistance, as explained on every single heating bill. Moronic Attorney General Reilly even tells the freezing destitute residents of Massachusetts that you don’t have to pay your bills at all. All the poor has to do is stop eating the Alpo for a second and log onto his website to find out how.

From a prior post:

Utilities and Phone Service
Q: I’m 65, live by myself, and can’t keep up with my electricity bill. I have electric heat and I’m worried that they will shut off my service. What can I do?

A: In Massachusetts the utility company cannot terminate your service if everyone in the household is over 65. There is also a winter moratorium in place every year from November 15 to March 15. During those months, gas and electric companies cannot shut off your service if you are unable to pay. You may also be eligible for home heating assistance, to help pay your bills.