Free Republic

My Primary Care Physician (a research/teaching internist at a leading teaching hospital) tells me, as the nation's largest employer, Walmart had a very large seat at the ObamaCare design table. 'nuff said.

The Federal Reserve, through the Resolution Trust Company (created by Congress to clear the 1990 savings and loan crisis) has purchased a 79.9% equity stake in AIG.

The RTC will sell down AIG assets such as International Lease Finance, the insurance company "Manufacturers' Life", etc. until the $85BBN loan is repaid, leaving whatever is left for the current shareholders.

You can bet the government will sell the good stuff and the shareholders will get the junk. This is not a nationalization.

BTW, the RTC actually made a $100 million profit on the $720 billion of S&L assets it took over in the 90's.

In my opinion a liquid reserves fund (money market fund) that concentrates 3% of it investments in one corporate issuer has committed a fiduciary error and should be investigated for malfeasance of fiduciary duty.

Idiobamatron

Idiobama

Quote from a very experienced investor in response to my question in 1999.

“Bubbles have a tendency to go higher and last longer than any of us expect when we first realize we are in one.”

conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Well actually, SOME well-educated (East-coast multi-degreed) persons believe that our economic interest is best served by opportunity (and concomitant risk) - the ordered meritocracy rather than hierarchy. We thrive on the uncertainty of trying. We wither under a guaranteed, but lower, reward schedule. In otgher words, our economic interest is freedom.

The challenge for the liberal mind is evident in this piece - to not be overly reliant on critical thinking and its inevitable proof of the flawed liberal hypothesis.

Cramer predicted bank of America would report massive write-downs for the 2Q08 earnings report. He said on Monday, July 14th, "You might as well call it Bank-rupt of America."

The CEO was forced to hold a news conference and declare that BoA did NOT need capital and would NOT cut the dividend.

Of course, BoA reported POSITIVE earnings of $0.41 per share the next day, maintained the dividend and did not raise capital. It subsequently rallied 40% in a week. Cramer is a despicable, irresponsible, fear-mongering ass.

Good news is that Florida appears safe. Only Rasmussen doesn’t show a McCain lead (shows a tie).

Rasmussen uses voter identification weighting that has a 90-day lag. He "re-weights" the actual poll results to reflect how voters identify their party affiliation in a separate poll.

"Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large. Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. Our baseline targets are established based upon survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews). For September, the targets are 39.7% Democrat, 32.1% Republican, and 28.2% unaffiliated (see party trends and analysis). For the month of August, the targets were 40.6% Democrat, 31.6% Republican, and 27.8% unaffiliated."

In the last two weeks the unaffiliated has dropped by 12 points, with R adding 8 of the 12.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet she was unflappable and he was, at times, caught off guard by her frankness and clarity. He seemed to be unnerved by his inability to unnerve her.

My observation precisely - he was uncomfortable - she was focused.

. . . He’s giving red meat to his base here, but they’ve already been locked in and fired up for a long time. He’s not helping himself with undecideds. Unless his staff is somehow under the impression that this “lipstick” attack will spur a tremendous turnout, it makes no sense to me.

Maybe the base isn't as firm as we think it is - maybe their internal polling is showing something we aren't seeing in the public stuff. To quote a blogger, "Maybe that sound you hear is the sound of Gucci bags clicking shut all over the country."

Or maybe he's just a poseur.

Remember Mena?

Obama will never let Hillary on the ticket - he would fear for his life.

I think it has to do with McCain's son resigning from the Board last week of a bank the FDIC is about to seize, where he was Chmn. of the Audit Committee.

Recalls the Keating Five - supposedly to be reported by Huffington Post

With the exception of Gretchen Wilson, they are clean cut and gorgeous!

. . . as the head of a major business enterprise, the focal point of a huge touring company, and a major modern media star, she has come a long way, in both her personal and artistic lives, from Pocahontas, Illinois, where she was born to a 16-year-old mother. With her father out of the picture, she got much of her grounding from her grandmother, who also introduced her to what stability the youngster knew and to the classic country of Patsy Cline, among others. Amid life's uncertainties--trailers, moving to stay ahead of rent collectors, taking care of her younger brother, bartending at 14 alongside her mother--she found release in country and rock music. She was on her own by 15, managing Big O's, a bar outside town, and singing for its rough-and-tumble patrons. She sang along to CD's for tips until she was old enough to join a cover band and sing as far down the interstate as St. Louis.

Careful - she's the kind middle-American woman Sarah appeals to!!

Pocahontas is only 60 minutes from where I live. There's nothing there but corn, and beer on Saturday nights. Gretchen Wilson Homepage

My daughter has served as a stand-in teleprompter operator for a network evening news broadcast. I have seen the machine she operated.

The operator rolls a VERY sensitive wheel that scrolls text on a 6' x 6' white-on-black screen, while listening to the speaker in headphones, hooping to keep the words being spoken next to a large arrow.

It isn't easy to master the touch - OTOH, once you mess up once you ought to be able to stop scrolling when you hear the applause.

I know CNN is so in the tank they can't quite believe the Republican Party actually has the audacity to mount a real campagn - but this is so clearly intentional it is scary.

My daughter actually works for a Big 3 network news Washington Bureau - she has (among many other things as a starting production employee) typed crawls for the national evening news.

Mistakes like that are just not made.

SEE? SEE? GLOBAL WARMING IN GOING TO CAUSE ANOTHER ICE AGE!!!

Pssst. It's called Climate Change dummy, not Global Warming.

Pretty slick- makes a political statement on the war in Iraq and the Boy Scouts of America in one selfish act.

I'll bet she's sipping a drink with a smug smile on her face.

Life Long Scouter

hold on a minute here. why are you focused on the parents? focus on the kids if you are really trying to help them. you know this student. do they truly deserve the money? can they really use it? don't hold the faults of the parents against the kids. look at the spirit of the scholarship and ask why it's there in the first place. if this kid got a full first-year ride they might not really need the money anyway. but if the student is really a good kid and could use it, just overlook that mistakes were made at all levels of this interaction. the kids mom sounds like a real piece of work. in my mind, not bringing the bounced check money was mean-spirited if done intentionally. if the kid is like the mom, keep your money. use your discretion. and if you give the money, make it clear that is was given due to the child's need and that mistakes like this will not be tolerated again.

The student doesn't need the money - the parents do. They'll figure out a way to pay for college with or without the scholarship.

If you have a small foundation, and you have rules for distributions of grants, and the trustees do not abide by those rules, you place the 501c3 tax exempt status of the association at risk should this breach cause your auditor to qualify the annual audit. Consult your attorneys and fully deny the scholarship - paying half the award is petty and shows lack of courage.

Here is a good website htat examines Greenspan's legacy.

The Mess That Greenspan Made

Friday, September 21, 2007
Now, clearly, out of control

"The man is now clearly out of control, perhaps headed for some kind of subprime meltdown of his own - former Fed chief Alan Greenspan makes some even more astonishing remarks in this story from Reuters."