Turn Your Head

  It appears that in some areas, we are finally seeing bits of the mainstream media questioning the socialist machinations of our government. This is a very informative and very correct view of what is going on with the Chrysler situation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=azVYi8YEXsAc&refer=home

There is also another blog I follow (that isn't mainstream by any means) that hit the nail on the proverbial head about the big automaker debacle of '09. 

http://market-ticker.org

It will be very interesting to see how these illegal activities and the situation with the New York Attorney General digging into what really happened with the Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch merger. There were some serious laws broken there...by people at the top. 

In other, much lighter news, I have been on a bit of a streak lately. I've been working to try and get more local businesses to cooperate with us and get a sort of grassroots movement going in order to have a more efficient local trade amongst businesses in the area. In this tough economic environment, getting customers any which way you can is important. We've started making flyers and communicating with our local brethren and I think everyone can do their part. 

Having said all of this, I think I'll start by promoting a friend's business because it's been on my "to do" list for some time anyway. I know my blog doesn't have a ridiculous amount of readers, but maybe there are more than I think. 

I can't say enough good things about Angie, so browse around and get something cool. She has mad skills.

http://www.moxiemae.com/

You're Damn Right!

"Obama’s goal of permanently renewing the ban appears to be a longshot"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30389664

Stupid laws are a waste of time and taxpayers' money.  Enforcing laws already on the books should be where our government spends it's time, effort, and our money. 

Great Information

   This is a blog I've been following for a few weeks now. This guy knows what he's talking about and is one of the many people on the internet that are speaking their minds about what the mainstream media doesn't report. Our government is up to no good, and people like Mr. Denninger can make a difference in making the general public aware of some of the things going on in our country. I hope something more significant comes of this before our newest administration takes even more money from us. 

Pay particularly close attention to the post "Again: Government Lawlessness". It's very enlightening. 

http://market-ticker.org/authors/2-Karl-Denninger

Here is the letter from Attorney General Cuomo to the SEC, Senate Committee on Banking, etc.;. It's a very interesting read, indeed. Quite a few illegal things going on in our government. Failure to disclose during a major bank merger? Are you kidding me? This should be a cut and dry case.

 

 http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2009/apr/pdfs/BofAmergLetter.pdf

CZ

Earth Day

Propaganda:  The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person. 

The word idea is fitting and appropriate in this definition from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. Hypothesis also comes to mind. It is Earth Day in many places across the globe today, and unfortunately, it’s also a day for media outlets to disseminate stories about something many of them refer to as “Global Warming”. This term, in the general use, is an inaccurate term. Any meteorologist worth his degree will tell you it’s impossible to get a general temperature for the world as a whole at one given point in time. You can get an average temperature for many places, over a long period of time, but who determines what places are used to get these temperatures? How many places and sources for these temperature readings would it take to get an accurate average? With a little thought, one begins to see the enormity of the problem of proving this particular hypothesis. 

To determine whether the globe is warming or cooling over a relatively short period (decades or even centuries) is a huge problem. It has been possible for years for modern scientists to study ice and sediment across the globe that shows, without a doubt, that there has been climate change. There have been long periods of very cold temperatures and very warm temperatures, generally, across the entire world. The Ice Age is a very obvious period that is known to most everyone with even a basic education. The earth has had several of these cycles and it can easily be “seen” by scientists now that study the earth and the climate on earth at given points in its history. (I encourage everyone to read that link for Ice Age.) The terms global warming and climate change have become synonymous in the minds of many people, but unfortunately, they are not the same. They’re not even close. 

Personally, I think it is the responsibility of everyone to educate themselves on what is hypothesis, theory, and fact. These are all very distinct terms in relation to our current environmental state, and to arbitrarily believe, without education or scientific process, is a failure on our part as members of the human race. Our success and survival as a people rests on our abilities to educate ourselves and make informed decisions. I think our efforts to be “green” and to think about our impacts on our planet are mostly genuine and sincere. I also think that many good things do come from our efforts to avert actions that can negatively affect our world and environment. Also, obviously good things like recycling and utilizing wind power for electricity have shown to minimize our negative impact on our environment. 

The one thing I would like to one day see is the end of the promulgation of stories and information not backed by scientific fact or processes. Stories and the compilation of information based purely on emotion is often the product of indolence. This lack of impetus to procure fact is our scourge and can, ironically, lead directly to everything that people try to avoid in the first place.

The following link is a story that's an unfortunate example of this, emblazoned on MSN.com’s front page today:

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/living-green/staticslideshowgreenchan.aspx?cp-documentid=18995580&GT1=34129

 Education is progress.. Editors at MSN would be wise to heed this.

THANK YOU!!, Mike Knuble!

  His cross-check on Brooks Orpik toward the end of the overtime gave the Pens a 5 on 3 advantage that gave Bill Guerin the opportunity to put the puck into the back of the net for the winning goal last night. Man, what an exciting game. I LOVE playoff hockey..

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09108/963857-61.stm

Good Start

There's nothing that quite comes close. Yeah, the Steelers playoff games are awesome, especially Super Bowl games, but there aren't quite enough of them. Playoff Hockey just started, and it reminds me every year how much I love it. The Penguins had their first game tonight, against the cross-state rivals and much-hated Philadelphia Flyers. It wasn't exactly a nail-biter, but it sure was pretty. The Pens prevailed 4-1 in dominant fashion. I just hope we can reel off three more just like it to take the series.

I have been meaning to post for about a week now, but have been pretty busy around here. I had all weekend to work on the Jeep since Karen was in Pittsburgh visiting her sister Marie. They're not twins, but they are, if that means anything. We'll see her again this summer when we go up for a week. I'm hoping to catch a Pirates game, too, in the new ball park. It's beautiful, and I can't wait to chill out and enjoy a Pirate game, a beer, and a hot dog there in the mother land.


The Jeep is coming along really well. I actually got everything but the dash and the headlights wired up while I was home by myself. I was able to get both batteries hooked up, everything else wired, and the steering shaft and column installed so that I could turn on the power. I'm really proud of myself that I managed to wire an entire vehicle by myself, especially marrying a modified harness for a fuel-injected Vortec engine from a Chevy Silverado to a chassis harness for a CJ7. It's perfect, really. One of the highlights is this dual battery setup. I have a main battery on the left there, then another battery as backup that powers a few small things and is controlled by a microprocessor solenoid mounted there behind it where the red power cables converge. If my main battery goes dead while I'm in the wilderness, far from anyone, all I do is flip a switch on the dashboard to activate the solenoid and switch over to my backup battery. I'm drooling. Finally powering up was a big moment, falling only short of actually firing up the engine. Nothing burned, melted, and there were no other catastrophic events. Just the whirring of the little electric motors cycling a few sensors. She's getting closer.

The radiator is mounted, and I even got the hoses cut and positioned. I had to cut and place both radiator hoses (they were modified original 5.3 Vortec hoses) and transmission hose for the built in cooler in the radiator. Heat kills an automatic tranny faster than anything, so I did my homework and bought the nice four core radiator with the built in trans cooler. It also has a sweet electric fan that I wrapped up mounting and wiring. I'm going to get busy with the headlights and dash this weekend.

I've also got to mount the shifter indicator down on the transmission so that I can wire that part of the dashboard. Those few things and putting the fuel tank in the rear is all that is missing. I'm hoping for an initial drive time near early summer. I think I can make it.

I've been watching closely the economic woes of our country, but it's too disheartening to constantly blog about it. If there was a good thing that came of it, it was the fact that we were able to do a streamline refinance on our mortgage. It isn't final yet, but there shouldn't be any hurdles to us closing at the end of the month. After all is said and done, we won't save any money on a monthly payment (well, $14, but who's counting), but our note was cut from the initial 30 year to 25, effectively saving us thousands. We were already on a plan to pay it off in 23 or 24 years, now that should be cut to just under 20 with diligence on our part. I'm looking forward to being house payment free in my early fifties.

CZ
CZ

Inexplicable

  Really? Let me get this right. You’re going to ask the destroyers how to fix what they destroyed. This is the unfortunate state of our country’s leadership.

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090327/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_economy

  I don’t get it. Common sense would tell most rational people that you don’t ask a mechanic how to fix a transmission if he was the mechanic that supposedly assembled it correctly right before it fragged itself on the highway, a hundred miles from help.

 Why would CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs all agree to new regulations that Timmy G has come up with to control the credit default swaps and derivatives market? The CDS market is a very large, if not THE reason, we are in this current financial mess. Timmy G thinks that we can expand government regulation and start managing these derivatives deals like stocks, options, and commodities. Well, the problem with that is that the big boys that got us into this mess won’t go for it.

  I was talking about something similar with the family at dinner Tuesday night. You see, credit default swaps and other exotic derivatives trades have been the bread and butter of the banking industry for almost twenty years now. Take Sonic as an example. Their products that make them the most money (the biggest margins) are the beverages. One 44oz. drink, in the cup, with the ice, costs them about 7 cents. Yes. $.07. They sell those drinks for anywhere from .99 to 1.79 depending on the sale they happen to be running at the time. That’s a huge margin by any business standards. This margin, and the resulting profits, make up for products with a smaller margin like the smaller and less expensive burgers.  

 The bigger banks (and insurance companies/hedge funds like AIG) all make their fattest margins on these exotic derivatives trades. It’s their Route 44 big drink, if you will. Credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, all of that buying, selling, and insuring debt produces no real tangible product. It’s all a big gambling ring. That’s basically what it all boils down to. One company is betting on either the success or failure of another to make good on their debt, with the only underlying value being the quality of their name. That’s why you have Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s. Bigger money-makers (Lehman Bros., Merrill, etc.) can call the rating companies and convince them (pay them-yes, S&P and Moody’s are paid by the very institutions they rate) to apply a certain rating to a certain debt, allowing the broker (seller of a CDS) to convince a buyer that a AAA-rated derivative is a great buy while pocketing huge money for “fees”. You can see where money could easily influence decisions on these matters. Greed eventually kills. We’re seeing it now. The market is being killed because money that we thought was there is now disappearing. Money that isn’t backed by services or tangible product will always disappear. 

  Therein lies the problem I’ve always talked about with the fiat money system. You can print all you want, but you then have to be prepared to deal with the resulting roller coaster ride of deflation and inflation. We have obviously been in a deflationary period since oil went down to $40 a barrel, but I also believe we’ll soon be the victims of inflation like nothing we’ve seen in our country's short history. With a government that is as seemingly clueless as ours, all we can do is look out for ourselves and prepare. I’m not sure how well that’s going to work out for the increasingly apathetic population that thinks they are "entitled" to everything.

CZ