Throwback

I have been trying to recall where I first saw many of Donald Trump's pursed-lips face and grandiose hand gestures from last night's Republican debate in Cleveland. After much head scratching I finally brought the following historic movie clip to mind: YouTube Video.

And yes, I do believe that President Trump probably would make the trains run on time.

In Closing ...

If I had been debating on the stage in Cleveland tonight, here is what I would have said in my closing statement:

Well over six years ago this country elected a President who promised "Hope and Change." Since then we have had a series of sad disappointments. 

First, we have learned that hope is not a strategy. President Obama has allowed himself to be buffeted by inaction ... watching from the sidelines as our enemies have taken advantage of his timidity and our allies have wrung their hands in dismay. 

Secondly, we have sadly discovered that the changes that this community organizer had in mind have ran counter to most of this nation's fundamental values and commitments. He has done his best to dilute our comity, our morality, our fiscal strength, our hegemony, our unity, and our destiny. 

This political disaster cannot be repeated in 2016 with the next Democrat candidate who believes that, because she is a woman, she deserves to continue the puerile policies of her former boss. This country, born of individual liberty and sacrifice, may not survive four more years of such misguided ineptitude and moral corruption. 

Thank you ... and I ask for your support to help me fix the morass in which we now find ourselves.

Afterward: Admittedly I am playing Walter Mitty here ... pocketa, pocketa! 

Timber!!

One by one the big trees in the stock market are getting axed. First it was Alibaba, then Exxon, then Apple, then Twitter, then Disney, then Tesla, then Fitbit ... many of these high fliers after reporting stellar quarters. The only biggies who seem to have escaped this clear-cutting so far have been Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (the FANG group as christened by Jim Cramer.) What's going on? Yes China is slowing down and may, in fact, be in a recession. And yes, the Federal Reserve Bank is likely going to start raising interest rates next month. But earnings of these mentioned forest-floor timbers have still been improving and future guidance is still positive. So what is wrong?

To me the dramatic price-drops in these mostly high PER (price earnings ratio) stocks are presaging a general market sell-off sometime soon. Generally in stock market down-drafts, it is the high-flying stocks that suffer the most ... and since these stocks have been the investments of last resort as weakness permeated most other market segments (see: Where to Invest), it is now their turn in the barrel. In fact, I suspect that any real weakness in the FANG group will be the final indication that a major stock market correction is upon us.

So keep your powder dry ...

The Whip Hand

Hillary Clinton clearly has the whip hand when it comes to the Democrat Party ... witness how fuzzy and feckless is the scheduling of the Democrat presidential debates ... see: Democrat Debate Schedule. It doesn't take too many smarts to realize that this "speculative" debate schedule ... with just about everything marked "TBD" ("to be determined" for those of you in Rio Linda) ... is indicative of a great deal of control being exerted by Hillary's mob enforcers.

Why is this you ask? Clearly Hillary Clinton has a great many questions she doesn't want asked by the moderators of such debates ... or her opponents like Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley or Jim Webb. The uncertainty surrounding the dates, places and formats of these supposed six Democrat debates ... this late in the game, leads me to suspect that even these nebulous parameters are subject to change at the whim of Hillary.

And given that her news and polls keep getting worse ... and assuming that Veep Joe Biden enters the race in September ... I will not be surprised to see further deterioration of this debate scheduling... under the snapping cat-o-nine-tails of Cruella Clinton.

Validation

It's nice to see when the points I have made in a blog are validated in a national media article. I made a number of arguments in my take-down of Planned Parenthood recently ... including its misleading claims about its abortion practices and statistics ... see: Pee Pee. Now the Weekly Standard has published an article that validates most of my points in this above-reference post ... see: Weekly Standard Article. In particular these quotes comes directly from this referenced Weekly Standard piece:

PolitiFact concedes the source of this statistic is Planned Parenthood's own annual report. If you take the number of services listed in the report, exclude the ones that don't apply to women who aren't pregnant, you do indeed get a figure that showing that over 94 percent of pregnant women who go to Planned Parenthood get an abortion.

and

In fact, the stat that only three percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion is so misleading, that the editorial board of USA Today has decided it's not credible and they won't use it for the exact same reasoning PunditFact lays out here.

"Some critics have taken issue with Planned Parenthood’s measurement of "services." Performing an abortion is more involved than administering pregnancy tests or giving someone a contraception kit, for example. The share of abortions might be different if cost or hours of services were used. (However, that information is not in the 2013-14 annual report.)"

QED

Nature vs. Nurture

There is a new Singapore study out that suggests that our political leanings are predetermined by our genes ... in particular the DRD4 gene variants that control how dopamine is released in our brains ... particularly for females ... see: Physics Magazine Article. Apparently, just like sexual orientation is claimed to be determined during fertilization, one's political leanings can likewise be pre-programmed.

I am not claiming that this is junk science, but such a nature-over-nurture manifesto bothers me quite a bit. It allows people to drift through life shirking responsibility for their life decisions ... kinda like Flip Wilson's perennial excuse, "The devil made me do it." Wasn't it Aristotle who said that mankind was bestowed with "right reason" and we need not be a slave to our nature? This notion was later reinforced by Cicero and Thomas Aquinas ... see: Wikipedia Entry.

It seems to this observer that how one is raised and how one takes it upon oneself to improve oneself has a lot more to do with success in life, than winning the "lucky-sperm" contest.

Afterthought: And Milton had some thoughts on "right reason" in Paradise Lost ... see: Google Books Quote.

Pee Pee

Planned Parenthood (Pee Pee) just won a cloture vote on its federal defunding in the Senate ...with only two Democrats voting "aye" ... see: Huffington Post Article. And Hillary Clinton has now decided to take a position supporting the selling of fetal body parts by this abdominal abortion factory. Oh, I know that Planned Parenthood claims that 97% of its activities are not performing abortions. But let's analyze this possibly misleading statistic.

If Pee Pee performs 35 mammograms, 35 prophylactics give-always, 10 Pap smears, 17 family counseling services, and 3 abortions then these misleading numbers are accurate on a unit basis (which I sincerely doubt) but inaccurate on a dollar-spent basis. However, their abortion services for over 330,000 women probable still represent the by-far largest proportion of their federal funding of over $540 million per year. Apparently there seems to be more than one way to deceive the American public into ignoring their law against their tax money going toward what they decry.

And I still have one more important question that is still hanging out there ... how many of the Pee Pee aborted placentas are sold to the cosmetic industries to help our Hollywood glitterati keep their baby-smooth complexions. (I've tried to research this on Google ... but got nowhere.)

Afterthought: For 330,000 abortions per year to represent only 3% of what Pee Pee does, they must then do 100 million other female health services a year. Since they have 700 clinic locations, this means each and every location does 143,000 health services a year or about 460 services a day (assuming they are open on Saturday) ... or over 57 services an hour without a break in each and every clinic location. I find this impossible to believe ... therefore, I strongly suspect that Pee Pee is fabricating these B.S. percentages.

Soothsaying

Back in Roman times soothsayers would predict the future by examining the entrails of animals. And astrologers throughout time have relied on the placement of stars to guide people's life decisions. Ditto, numerology. All these pseudo-sciences relay on man's superstitious nature to survive ... and there are modern-day equivalents. For example, trading in stocks, commodities, etc. often is predicated on "technical analysis" ... a misnomer if there ever was one.

Technical analysis in its truest form ignores all the fundamental metrics associated with such trading entities (such as price-earnings rations, earnings growth, yield, etc. in the case of stocks) and concentrates on discerning patterns in the chart of price and volume movements (a little like animal entrails.) Such  charting terms as 200-day moving averages, reverse head-and-shoulders, triple bottoms, Fibonacci series, etc. are often used to make buy or sell decisions ... sometimes successfully.

But why would such dice-rolling succeed? Because there are legions of other traders who believe in such omens. Why are 50-day or 200-day moving averages important? Why not 23-day or 174-day moving averages? Well, it is only because that is what nearly all the "technicians" use ... therefore, this can be predictive of what other soothsayers are going to do ... and so early discerners of such movements can, and often do prosper. This then become a validation of such silliness ... which is why is survives.

This whole technical analysis thing is kinda like going to a gambling casino when, if you have any rationality, you will know that the cards are stacked against you ... but, somehow you still believe you can beat them at their own games.

A very few do, but most don't.

Wrecking Ball

Rush Limbaugh, when Barack Obama first took office, trumpeted that now famous challenge, "I hope he fails." Unfortunately, President Obama has succeeded beyond I think even his wildest HOPE. He has been a one-man wrecking ball to the many structures that once made the United States the leader of the free world ... and he and his Svengali, Valerie Jarrettt, unfortunately still have a year and a half left to cause even more havoc.

Without getting into the gritty details, this disaster of a chief executive has mortgaged our great-grandchildren's future, corrupted just about every executive department, continually lied to the American people, gutted our military, alienated our allies, cozied up to our enemies, set race relations back generations, pissed on our Constitution, stifled our economy, rewarded failure, punished success, created new entitlements that probably will persist forever, broken numerous laws with impunity, abetted illegal immigration, ransacked our health-care system, elevate pop-culture banality to preeminence, encouraged much of our lap-dog media to ignore these many evil transformations ... and I am sure there are more sins that we will learn about as historians sift through this two-term carnage..

But there is one positive ... as David Brooks once observed, Obama still has a sharp crease to his trousers. The question of the day is ... does Hillary also take equally good care of her pants suits?

Allah Provides

In a shocking example of nobilis oblige, Gisele Bundchen, the world's top supermodel and wife of football star Tom Brady, has used a full-body and face burqa to enter and leave France unrecognized in order to get a little nip and tuck on her chi-chi persona. And France is not happy about this deception ... see: New York Post Page Six Story ... since such full-body and face cover-ups are now illegal in France.

It takes a certain type of cynical haughtiness for this multi-millionaire twit to hide behind such a Muslim costume ... one often used by suicide bombers ... to stay incognito in Paris, a city where such drastic dress now produces much public angst.

Feet of Clay

John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog points out that in a recent CNN interview, Donald Trump's thoughts on immigration have gone through a bit of a metamorphosis and that he is now sounding very much like the Democrat that he has been most of his life ... see: Trump Goes Soft on Immigration. Has the stalwart Trump suddenly gotten feet of clay? In particular please, dear reader, explain how Trump's following stream-of-conscious quotes from this interview sound any different from what Senator Chuck Schumer or Jeb Bush might spout:

Then we have a law, right? You’re supposed to come in legally. I would get people out, and I would have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal ... We have to bring great people into this country, okay? And I want to bring — I love the idea of immigration, but it’s got to be legal immigration. Now, a lot of these people are helping us, whether it’s the grapes, or whether it’s jobs, and sometimes it’s jobs, in all fairness, I love our country, but sometimes it’s jobs that a citizen of the United States doesn’t want to do. I mean, there are jobs that a lot of people don’t want to do ... We’re going to something. I’ve been giving it so much thought, you know you have a — on a humanitarian basis, you have a lot of deep thought going into this, believe me. I actually have a big heart. … I mean, a lot of people don’t understand that, but the DREAMers, it’s a tough situation, we’re going to do something, and one of the things we’re going to do is expedite — when somebody’s terrific, we want them back here, but they have to be legally –.

Is Trump getting squishy and back-peddling on his previous diatribe against illegal Mexican criminal immigrants? Perhaps as with most controversies, The Donald likes to stake claims on both sides of the issue. And he says he is not a politician ...

reddit Gallery CCCXVI -- NSFW

Not suitable for work. Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Sensuality in Clay - Benjamin Victor

Patriot

Boys Will Be Boys

Tron

Liz Olsen in Paris

Income Inequality

In what industry do women earn much more money than men? Not surprisingly, it is the pornography industry ... see: Daily Mail Story. I suppose this has something to do with naked women having more commercial appeal than naked men. This article also points out that many of the actors in this medium, who perform as male homosexuals, are surprisingly heterosexuals. I have never ventured into this male-only cinema genre, but I have suspected that this is indeed the case with "gay" females ... not that there is anything wrong with that.

Can we also extrapolate this income differential into the high-fashion modeling business?  I suspect that this is also true. The top female model, Gisele Bundchen, certainly makes a pile more lucre than even her famous sports-star husband, Tom Brady ... see: ESPN Story. So, can we then say that income inequality is "relative?"

And there are at least 15 other industry sectors where women out-earn men ... see: Forbes Article. Can we now expect Mika Brzezinski to modify her periodic Morning Joe mouth-foaming rants against income inequality? I kinda doubt it ... for I suspect this has more to do with what Joe Scarborough earns next to what she makes.

Topsy-Turvy

I am once again befuddled by our topsy-turvy popular culture. Jimmy Kimmel sheds an on-air tear because a lion I never heard of was shot and killed by a bow and arrow and the nimrod who took this hunting trophy is now receiving death threats ... see: Hollywood Reporter Story. Yet ISIS, Boko Haram and other radicalized Muslim organizations are enslaving and brutally murdering thousands of innocent humans each week and the national media (including Jimmy Kimmel) has devolved into a ho-hum mindset ... see: Question.

Not that I don't care about this particular lord of the jungle's demise ... but, come on people, there are clearly priorities in how seriously we should lament over world events ... and, as noble Cecil the Lion was, his death is still way down my list of caring priorities.

Afterward: I have also noticed that other bloggers and talk show hosts are contrasting this lion's killing with the main-stream media indifference shown to the numerous murders inside the United States committed by illegal immigrants ... or any of the myriad of innocent lives terminated by Planned Parenthood in the process of harvesting their tiny organs.

Comparing Notes

Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby

Then I told her, " You better put some ice on that ..."

Bold-Faced

In keeping with a trend of doctored government statistics, it seems no accident that most NOAA's climatologists are located in Boulder, CO ... for this U.S. government agency has perpetuated a gigantic bold-faced fraud on the American people ... adjusting down past temperature data to make it appear that the United States is warming up when, in fact, it is in a long-term cooling cycle. To understand the extent of this ruse, pay particular attention to the charts in this article: Real Science Story.

I have in the past written about this data slight-of-hand on the part of these NOAA scientists anxious to keep their lucrative sinecures ... even at the expense of the truth ... see: Global Smarming and The Heavy Hand of Government. But these latest revelations are far more extensive and damning than older discovered "adjustments."

I am truly aghast at how self-serving and mendacious these government scientists have become. Perhaps we might perform equivalent downward adjustments on their salaries, pensions and bonuses?

Afterward: See also Daily Mail article: 5,000 Hacked E-mails/

People I Could Do Without

Mitch McConnell

Flo

The Donald

Linda Dunham

Debbie Wasserman-Shultz

Vladimir Putin

Adam Sandler

Pope Francis

Ayatollah Khamenei

Rush Limbaugh

Question

The following headline is on the cover of this Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "Christians in the Middle East are being forced out of their homes, enslaved and killed. Why is no one coming to their aid?" (See: New York Times Story.)

Obvious answer: Because Pope Francis, President Obama, and much of the rest of the Christian world all seem to be preoccupied with global warming, income inequality, and the evils of war.

When They Were Young #8

The following early-life pictures come to you courtesy of reddit/Pics. Enjoy!

Rachel Maddow

Mel Brooks

Julie Andrews

Martha Stewart

Newt Gingrich

Obama

In Kenya ... are they trying to imply something?