cjl1618's Blog

When I went to bed over the weekend, I was pretty happy with my Etrade account. I was only down 6.5%! Citi stock had done alright after the latest bailout. I figured they were safe for a few weeks or months at least. Felt like a win to me.

By the time I got up this morning and got on to my account, I was down 23%...argghhhh

It occurred to me that my AC/DC tickets I am selling on Ebay are so far returning me 100%. Celene Dion made me a great return on my money and I can't stand the woman or her music.

Guess I should dump all my stocks and stick with Ebay.

To think I was a stock broker for awhile - I've made more money selling tickets this entire year than I have in any of my stocks.

I was watching the coverage of the Indian terrorist attacks and one of the questions that CNN had was if we were going to send troops to India - that discussion being part of how this could be  the "test" of Obama that Biden has predicted.

Several things occurred to me.

1) Thank goodness for the "religion of peace". Such profound statements in the name of peace and tolerance they have.

2) India has been hit over and over by terrorists. They can handle these people. How anyone, politician or even reporter hack could even ask about the US sending troops...dang how stupid can our media be.

3) This has nothing to do with Obama. Much as some like to think the world revolves around him and his message of change, the terrorists really don't much care.

4) I'm thinking that the Indians don't question whether these gentlemen should be treated as soldiers and handled nicely, reading them their rights and all. While we wish to accord terrorists all of the protections a US citizen has, I am glad most countries have the good sense to treat them as the animals they are.

5) I really hope all of those victims of these attacks will have the justice the all deserve.

6) I am really glad Pakistan said they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. I wonder if the timing of that statement had anything to do with their citizens killing Indians yet again. 

Ok so before today, we had ponied up about 7.4 trillion in bailouts and guarantees and the like. Today and yesterday we added another 800 billion.

Pres-Elect Obama says there will be yet another 500 billion as soon as the day he takes office for "roads, bridges, schools and other projects"

Two things beside the obvious.

1st the obvious though. We have NO money. We are issuing debt every time that someone from Washington opens their mouth. Printing money and running up more debt will do enormous damage once inflation roars and our debt rating is cut from AAA

Most of our yearly budget for the Federal Govt goes to entitlement programs

Medicare / Medicaid other mandatory  33%
Social Security  21%
Defense  20%
Non Defense Discretionary 18%
INTEREST ON THE DEBT  8%

The 8% is only INTEREST - kinda like making less than minimum payments on your credit cards. It is sure to grow with the addition of trillions more in liabilities that must have interest at least paid every year to China or the middle east. The discretionary is the part of the budget that ALL other programs and spending must fall

This is for so many reasons a house of cards that could fall at any time.


2nd..I would be willing to bet that the E-verify program that checks for a valid social security number that goes with the worker is  not only not mandated, but will probably be scaled back or eliminated. That means that all of these jobs to put "Americans" back to work, may in fact put Mexicans, Central and South Americans and people from places in Europe and Asia and Canada here illegally, back to work.

No need to actually be an American.

How many of you reading this is a road worker or bridge worker?  I don't think that giving a job to a road worker will make one lick of difference to the 50,000 being laid off from Citibank or Wamu or .... on and on.

I do think the bridges etc need work. Raise taxes on gas (NO TOLL ROADS) and pay for it all. We can't borrow and spend and borrow and spend...

3rd..The more that the Federal Govt. intervenes in banks, insurance companies, car companies, car dealers and suppliers, states, counties, cities and on and on and on, the more we lose the very essence that has made this country the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.

There is no more expectation that businesses, individuals, or even governements live within their means.  The Federal Govt will come to the rescue and bail you out. Buy more house than you can afford - no worries - have a city that spends and spends and spends - no worries, the $300 million hotel will be bailed out...

It all comes with a very steep price. With every dollar that is used to bail ANYONE out, we lose a bit of freedom. We cede to the Federal Govt. even greater power over our companies, our states our cities and ourselves.

Remember as you want a bailout for what ails you, that there is NO plan for any of this to ever go away. This affront to the constituion will come back to bite every single American that believes in what our nation was both founded on, and what made us great.

Be afraid, be very afriad.

The 2nd Amendment is soon to be under serious assault.

The supreme court recently held that the 2nd amendment to the constitution is in fact an individual right to keep and bear arms. With the almost certainty of several new Justices to be apointed by Obama, look for the right to "change".

President elect Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid all feel that ALL firearms should not only be restricted, but banned. How do they get around that pesky Constitution then you ask?

By using the language that said the state has the right to impose certain and reasonable restrictions. When state senator, Obama voted and pushed for laws that would ban gun stores within a certain distance of schools parks etc..all but about a handful of gun stores would be deemed illegal.

Chicago,  with the support of Obama when he was a state senator,  has some of the most drakonian laws in the nation concerneing the ownership of guns in the city and also has one of the highest murder rates in the country.  The criminals have guns, law abiding citizens don't - good plan.

If that doesn't work, the other parrell track is to get rid of ammunition. There are several ways that they have been trying to do this. 1) very high taxes 2) making the lead in ammuntion an enviromental hazard and banning most all ammunintion in the name of clean something or other. and 3) serialization of all ammuntion. This option would require all bullets casing and the bullet themselves to be controlled and tracked and registered. This would also make the hundreds of millions of rounds out there now illegal to own.

By the end of Feruary look for the new and improved and permanent assualt weapons ban to be in place. This will make illegal most semi-automatic weapons along with clips some sights etc.

Also look for Obama at some point to push for Federal Laws outlawing the carrying of any firearm any where in the country trampling even more states rights to issue concealed carry permits.

If none of that goes far enough, look for Obama to sign on to a UN treaty that would ban ALL citizens of signature countries from allowing ciizens to own firearms. You thnk I am kidding - that treaty has broad international support.

So why should you care? If you like to shoot, or hunt, or have the ability in the worse case to defend yourself and your family or simply care about our constitution, you should care - a lot.

Remember after Katrina one of the first moves the government made was to confiscate ALL firearms from all law abiding citizens. 

Want to see the country in flames? Ban guns and come around to confisacte them. We will be in civil war within weeks.

So why should you care?

I picked up my brand new Bushmaster AR-15 / M4 yesterday. I would strongly suggest you get one quick if you want one or think the down the road you may need one. Buy bulk ammo to save money and start stocking it.

Yeah I am fearful I guess. I have never had to even think about using a weapon for anything other then tearing up targets and hope to god I am wrong about our future path; but right now, with our Constitution in taters, a little paronaia might just be justified. 

So GM is begging for money. The CEO says he is fairly compensated and would not work for $1.00 / year while they have fed money, nor will they sell the corporate jets they flew in to DC on.

They have had in the works for several years, the car that they are banking much of their future on.

The thing is they just don't get it.

If you look at the all electric Chevy Volt - the car that people were begging them to build started off like this: 

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/MediaNav/articleI
d=119088/firstNav=Gallery/photoId=34616

and the production car looks like this:

http://gm.wieck.com/forms/gm/*query?VoltPortExterior&p
age=1&source=all

The photos of the production car have all the lighting trying to make it look like it has any of the pizzaazzz of the original car that many begged for but it is totally toned done to yuk

It looks like it is an ok sedan that will be very costly and fit the kids in the back.

This will be a dead car and that is a shame. The first year or two should have been the aggressive styling. Let the early adopters pay the higher costs, get the word out with these actually being driven and seen about town

Instead it will be sold in a few places to some rich soccer moms that want a high dollar sedan but the real car guys that could make or break this car will pass.

Way to go GM ! Give that man 25 billion to take home on his private jet. !

OK so I was watching the CEO's from GM, Ford, the UAW, and Chrysler in front of Chris Dodd' Senate committee pleading, begging for their very existence, to be saved today.

Their predictions were much like Hank Paulson's when he went to congress and said give me 700 billion or the market will crash and the world will end - oh and do it now.!  The world will end surley if any of the Big 3 go into Chap 11 and oh - we need the money right now.

I can save us 50% of whatever money congress decides to throw in the pit.

First off - the UAW is not a car company and should have NO SEAT at the table. The contracts should be scrapped and the union given the boot. If that needs to be done in Chap 11, then we would be done for the day and they can all go home early. Sorry union guys, but the unions have destroyed the ability for these companies ever to be competitive.  That's 1/4 out of 4 out - gone - no seat - get them out of there.

Second I would send Chrysler heading for the door. Chrysler in fact should not have been there at all. The CEO of Cerberus - the HEDGE FUND that OWNS Chrysler should have been there. Do you really want to give billions of dollars to a hedge fund????? NOT ME - get them out of there. If Chrysler needs money they can sell some of these other companies they own and give that money to Chrysler.These are a few of those companies. http://www.cerberuscapital.com/port_comp_pro.html

So that leaves GM and Ford with no unions to mandate that they lose money year after year. That gives them the ability to re-tool and actually build cars that people will buy at prices they can afford and give the companies a profit they can all live with. The workers? Give them some profit sharing and 401K's and a health care plan like most of us have, that they have to pay a portion of, like the rest of the nation.

I could then back loan guarantees with the proviso that the top "leadership" and the boards of these companies be thrown out in the street with nothing taken with them.

We cannot do this to company after company and industry after industry. As I have said from the start of all of this.

We need to go through what we will go through. It will be very painful and hurt most peoples plans and dreams. We cannot spend our way out of this. We are only kicking it down the road, magnifying it and making it, in the long run much much worse for us all.

I am afraid.

For the first time in my life I am really scared.

I am afraid because our leaders have begun to nationalize our country.

With a gun pointed at our heads, Paulson went to congress and said the world was about to end and it was going to take $700 billion dollars to buy up " troubled assets" from banks. It was such an emergency that to not act that week would kill our economic future.

Well as it turns out, that is not the plan. As it turns out, Paulson was given complete autonomy to do whatever he wanted to with that money. He says today that he wants to "try' to work within the intent of the law, but he does not have to.

We got into the trouble we are in by collectively and individually spending money we do not have. The plan to get out of this mess, seems to be to spend even MORE money we do not have.

Paulson is now talking about giving money to credit card companies, auto loan companies, student loan companies, insurance companies and others in any industry that would have an impact on the economy.

He is not just giving or loaning money he is buying into these companies for the federal government. It is nationalization. There is just no way of getting around that.

Barney Frank is wanting to pass legislation that would mandate that mortgage bond holders would have to give up the bond so the feds could "modify" it. That is what he is saying in his hearings today. That is taking personal property and breaking contracts - and that is totally UNCOSTITUTIONAL. There is no getting around that.

We are going down a road that I cannot see any way off of. In my opinion, we are heading to a place we have never been as a nation and don't want to go to. When everything becomes nationalized, albeit slowly and under another name, it is not a big jump to Argentina taking peoples pensions.

Can you visuallise a time that our Federal Govt. would want to nationalize the 401K system? They salivate over all of that untaxed money sitting there - trillions worth - and make no mistake, they want it.

This will all lead to hyper-inflation, 15, 20, even 25% unemployment. A complete collapse of of the life that we know. There could be riots in the streets as the money runs out and what money there is means less and less everyday. This all feeds on itself and in the end we have one of two things - marital law - or revolution - or both.

I know that this is the extreme, but someone tell me where else all of this ends. Has there ever been a government program that has ended? Once American companies are subject to the control of the current ruling party, they will never get our from under it. Salaries, pricing, contracts, company property - all being subject to government takeover or control  - THAT IS HAPPENING NOW.

I am afraid. We needed to go through what we needed to go through. People losing homes, cars and other propery they bought with money they could never repay. Companies going bankrupt because they borrowed money they could never repay. With the way things have been interfered with by the Feds, we have kicked the trouble down the road, magnified it, and given the Federal Govt the right to control it, and us, all.

Socialism? Communism? Chavez type control? Yes all of those sound far fecthed, but I wager we have less than 5 years before one of those things is real.

I wonder how the endorsement of the good Minister Louis Farrakhan will end up playing out down the road. Think he, and his Nation of Islam group will get consideration and the ear of our soon to be new President?

Just a bit of what the group espouses. Might be fun seeing all those shotgun toting body guards trying to get by the secret service.

"While the Nation has espoused black nationalism and self-reliance since it was founded in the 1930s, in recent years members have reached out to other groups. For instance, the Nation has a Latino liaison and has become involved in immigrant rights rallies and marches. Also, the Minister Ishmael Muhammad, a top assisting minister at the mosque and widely thought to be a potential successor to Farrakhan, has talked about unity between all people, at times speaking in Spanish.

Farrakhan, 75, has haltingly tried to move the Nation toward traditional Islam, which considers the American movement heretical because of its view of Elijah Muhammad as a prophet — among other novel teachings. Orthodox Islam teaches that there has been no prophet after Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

He's also played down some of the group's more controversial beliefs. The Nation of Islam has taught that whites are descended from the devil and that blacks are the chosen people of Allah."

Infidel, devil, racist; the list of names that gets applied to me just keeps on growing. I like Infidel myself - kinds sums up my feelings pretty darn good. 

I knew I was an Infidel, and McCain and others think I am a racist since I am totally AGAINST illegals getting any kind of anything that would give them the right to stay in my country, but I never knew the part of being descended from the devil. My mama will sure be shocked.

For those tired of the 2 party debate, check this out - hear the only conservative in this race live.

The Democrat and Republican parties decide who can be heard, and even who can be on the ballot in many states, limiting your Presidential choices between that guy that will harm this country, and that guy that will attempt to destroy this country - anything and anyone as long as the parties maintain their money and power.

In what could be one of the most contested (after the vote) contests that we have ever had, you owe it to yourself to open your minds just a tad.  Listen to what a fiscal and social conservative sounds like - live in tonights debate!

There are options that someday "we the people" will need to use if we are ever to regain this experiment of a great republic that our founders left to us. We are giving it away under our very noses - and are not doing a thing about it.




"Through the miracle of modern technology, voters will finally have a chance to compare Bob Barr with Barack Obama and John McCain.

Starting this evening at 9:00 PM EDT, live and concurrent with the broadcast of the closed debate between the Republican and Democratic nominees, you will be able to see where Bob differs with his opponents.  Using digital video recording technology, Bob's responses to the moderator's questions will be spliced in in real time for viewing at the campaign's website at www.bobbarr2008.com/counterdebate   Bob will be broadcasting from Newport News, Virginia on the campus of Christopher Newport University before a live audience.

I encourage you to watch and I ask a favor of you.  Would you please forward this message to your friends who may be interested?  This is their chance to learn that there's not a dime's worth of difference between McCain and Obama - and that Bob Barr offers hope for real change in Washington.?

So McCain wants to call you up and buy you out of your mortgage and Obama never saw a program he doesn't want to spend yet more money we don't have on.

They have to stop. The National Debt Clock is out of digits. That should mean something, but I think they will just stick another couple of digits on it so we can go from 10 trillion to 100 trillion in debt.

Go Figure - if you are sick of all this debt piling up and the government now the proud owner of mortgage companies,  insurance companies and soon banks, we will be fully socialist by the end of Obama's first year in office, and we are letting it happen.

Take a look at Bob Barr - the former Republican is the only conservative in this Presidential race and he is the only one that is not advocating socialism as our future.

October 9, 2008, 11:18 am Sign of the Times: National Debt Clock Runs Out of Digits

The clock has run out on the national debt.

The National Debt Clock. (Associated Press)

The national debt clock, the unofficial tracker of the federal deficit maintained by the Durst Organization in New York, has reached its limits. Last month, as the national debt exceeded $10 trillion for the first time, the clock ran out of digits to record the number.

The dollar sign in the clock had to be deleted and replaced with a one to record the massive number. The clock’s owners say a new model — with space for two extra digits — will be in place early next year.

Now the debt clock will be able to reach the quadrillions. Hopefully, that’s not a level that will be breached any time soon. –Phil Izzo

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imes-2/trackback/ Save & Share: Share on Facebook | Del.icio.us The national debt clock, the unofficial tracker of the federal deficit maintained by the Durst Organization in New York, has reached its limits.

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I saw Mark Cuban a few days ago on CNBC right after the close of the markets.

They were talking about the banking system and Mark said that he thought that some things were really overblown (I agree). He said he was in fact bullish on some banks. He also said that he had just bought 2 million shares of Wacovia.

That is putting your money where your mouth is. I would like to thank him for such good advice.

I bought options on Wacovia first thing the next moring and sold 2/3'rds of my position today with a better than 284% return.

While he made millions so far on his purchase, I made less (way way way way) less, I didn't even make what would to him be a rounding error but I'll take it.

I just figure you can't go wrong when the local billionaire gives you his stock picks.

So thank you Mr. Cuban.

Feel free to leave more timely picks here. 

I am also saddened by the passage of the 2008 Perpetual Debt Socialism of the United States of America Act that so many republicans got bought off to vote for.

Kudos to Congressman Kenny Marchant of the 24th District for standing up for this nation.

Both of our Senators, Cornyn and Hutchison sold the people out. It takes guts to go against all the special interests that own your party, and do the right thing, and these two did not have those guts. 

So thanks again to Mark Cuban and Congressman Marchant. Two winners this week if I ever saw one.

Cornyn is up for election in a month. Show him the door to the private sector.

Hutchison wants to be Governor of Texas. Don't let her. We have had it bad enough with Perry. We need special interest / lobbyist  free people to represent us.

There must be bunches of dead news crews this morning. After all, anyone that stayed on Galveston faced CERTAIN DEATH. Many were down by the sea wall last night till wee hours of the morning and others out moving around.

With headlines like those it is no wonder that people don't leave.

They are still making it out that way.

"The largest search and rescue in the history of Texas going on right now".

Oh Please...save the money and stop driving people all over the state every time we have a storm.

Ok - so I have been thinking that with a 9 + trillion debt and a 2009 deficeit that could approach 1 trillion, that we might slow down spending yet more money that we don't have.

NOT SO - I am happy to say I must be wrong. I mean if we are really so far in debt would be give away yet more cash?

"As the U.S. economy teeters on the brink of recession, Democratic leaders are revisiting an idea born of the Great Depression: gas stamps to help Americans cope with high fuel prices.

Democratic lawmakers and their leaders say they are serious about including it in a second economic stimulus package expected to move this month. Meanwhile, Republicans ridicule the idea as a return to welfare-state politics, which they say characterized the Democratic Party before Bill Clinton.

“It’s certainly under consideration,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told The Hill on Thursday afternoon. “It would be like food stamps for those people who need help.”

Gas stamps would work like traditional food stamps, which some Americans have collected since the 1930s. They would be used, however, to pay for regular unleaded instead of meat and potatoes.

Under one version of the proposal, a person earning up to $31,200 or a family of four earning up to $63,600 could receive government payments totaling $500 for gas."


So - is this food stamps? So the real question for you all is:

Do families that make just shy of $64,000 a year need food stamps?

Would you be embarrassed to take welfare, money from other taxpayers, money from your grand kids and great grand kids so you can have $500 worth of free gas?

Will it make you more likely or less likely to vote for a presidential candidate that "gives:" you more of other taxpayers money?

If Russia uses nukes against Poland like they have threatened, will the resulting nuclear winter (even localized) mean that the environmental folks would be happy?

Takes care of global warming for a bit I should think.

I'm just saying

For the party of change, there sure are a lot of old time names in the line up.

So far, these good people are speaking at the Dem Convention in prime time slots.

Hillary Clinton
Bill Clinton
Al Gore

(and I heard John Kerry too, but not sure if that one is real)


Now if the country ever wanted change, it was sure change AWAY from those people.

Oh well, I never could figure out what "change" means anyway,