What the hell is up with white hipster Jesus, Newsweek?
– Urban agriculture discussion in Olympia.
– Too far
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
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I wonder how many posts will be made before Dave shows up and starts cutting/pasting long excerpts from his blog as thread entries?
“Trayvon like dudes” – Tell me again why racial profiling should not be considered as the motivating factor in Zimmerman’s crime of homicide and the failure to prosecute the murder in a timely fashion?
According to NewsWeek, Jesus looks like Ron Howard when he still had hair.
Trayvon. It was a murder that the cops didn’t bother to investigate because the kid was black and not politically connected, using the excuse of the Florida “Kill-At-Will” law. There was blatent racism that they don’t bother to acklowledge.
There is nothing new to be said.
Conservatives seem to support killers no matter who they are: Pinochet, the Contras, Cheney, the Abu Ghraib torturers, Zimmerman, etc. They must like killing.
Support Your Local Police (Even When They’re Wrong) Dep’t
The Extreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, decided today that cops and jailers can strip-search people even for traffic offenses, false warrants, or not paying fines. After all, Justice Kennedy wrote,
“Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was initially arrested for not having a license plate on his car and that one of the 9/11 terrorists was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93. ‘People detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals,’ the court said.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....r-offenses
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Can we assume this applies to Supreme Court justices, too? Or does Justice Kennedy get special treatment if he’s pulled over by a D.C. cop for expire tabs, speeding, or fudging a yellow light?
This is what a dangerous terrorist looks like:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/n.....nced_x.htm
Okay, so now that the conservative majority on SCOTUS equates unpaid traffic fines with blowing up buildings full of people, will they carve out an exception for vigilantes who blow away teenagers for wearing hoodies? Or, from now on, are we all potential terrorists?
I can imagine where this might go:
Employers have a right to demand your Facebook password because you might be a terrorist.
But they can’t refuse to hire you if you’re the Grand Vizier of the local Ku Klux Klan klavern, because that’s interfering with free speech.
@6
When they pulled McViegh over did he have a shiv hid up his rectum? Sounds like we might want the WA State Leg. clarify when you can do strip searches.
Personally, I think it’s a stretch for the police to equate you with Timothy McVeigh for having expired license tags, just because McVeigh drove a car without plates. I guess Kennedy’s argument is that one can lead to the other. But it seems to me that he overlooked the fact that most people who forget to renew their license tags never progress to blowing up buildings or hijacking planes.
On the other hand, if you catch your kid pulling wings off butterflies or torturing cats you should call the police and turn him in, because without early intervention, he’s likely to grow up to be a Republican.
@10 The problem is, if you try to restrict police searches through state laws, the conservative majority on SCOTUS might conclude that violates the cops’ constitutional rights.
Just so we’re clear on what the Constitution allows and doesn’t, the police can stick a finger up your ass if they suspect you ran a yellow light, but Congress can’t make ER freeloaders buy their own damn health insurance.
That would see to be the point to me.
TPM is reporting that a Planned Parenthood office was bombed in Wisconsin.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi.....ic.php?m=1
Wingnut justification in 5,4,3,2,…
re 3: Spot on observation. I guess ‘Make no graven images unto me’ is still too obscure for most folks.
Senior Citizens Owe Billions of Student Debt
The Federal Reserve says people over 60 owe more than $36 billion of student loans, about 10% of which is delinquent. Some seniors’ Social Security checks are being garnisheed to collect these debts.
Perhaps some of it is student loans that deadbeats walked away from decades ago, and it’s hard to sympathize with those people. But a lot of it is people who went back to school in middle-age when their old jobs became obsolete, or well-intentioned people who co-signed student loans for their children or grandchildren.
Republican-written bankruptcy laws say student loans can never be bankrupted, nor is there any statute of limitations on their collection. That’s ridiculous; even child support is subject to a statute of limitations, albeit a long one.
This Republican-fostered idea that debt is sacrosanct, that there is a moral obligation to repay debt no matter what, etc., is sheer nonsense.
Credit probably existed before money did. It’s essential for the most basic trade and commerce. But lending, by definition, is a risky activity. Lenders know this, and from the beginning of time, have factored a loss rate into what they charge for loans.
Making unsecured loans for educational expenses is no different from any other kind of lending. The lenders have already been paid for the risk that some of the borrowers won’t be able to repay their loans.
In virtually all instances, the bill collectors harassing these borrowers are not the original lenders; they are shrewd business people who bought defaulted loans for a few cents on the dollar with the aim of making huge profits by collecting as much as possible of 100% of the face value of a loan they may have purchased for 2% to 5% of its face value.
Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt. I’m not advocating that people who can pay, but choose not to, should be allowed to walk away from their student loans. But if businesses can use bankruptcy laws to tear up union contacts and pension obligations they agreed to, then there also ought to be bankruptcy relief available to student borrowers who can’t repay their loans for reasons beyond their control — such as unemployment in an economy that can’t provide jobs for everyone who needs a job and wants to work.
Today the bulk of personal bankruptcies — about 70% — arise from medical debt. That’s not surprising; health care has gotten so expensive that even mere millionaires struggle to afford it. But there’s a whole class of people out there struggling under another kind of increasingly onerous debt — student loans. And much of that debt has piled up because states, under pressure from Republican budget-slashers, have backed away from public funding of higher education … in an age when workers are told they can’t have access to well-paying jobs without a degree.
The purpose of bankruptcy is to give people who have experienced a financial disaster a fresh start, a second chance, so they can be productive members of society. The framers of our Constitution saw this as a reasonable and constructive social policy when they sought to outlaw debtors prisons in this country for all time.
It’s time to revise our bankruptcy laws to treat student loan debt just like any other debts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
# 17: Didn’t we have a troll here – I think it was Mark or Mark 1 or something like that – who used to argue that anyone who was unemployed or wasn’t a millionaire was someone who was just too lazy or ignorant to keep up on their skills at work and learn new technologies?
It seems like those who did try to re-train themselves were just as likely to be laid off as those who didn’t. And the right-wing insistance that the unemployed go back to school as a condition of receiving unemployment insurance benefits – which the workers had already paid for – just dug them deeper into the hole.
I know a guy who spent his entire professional life building up customer relationships and accounts in the office supply business, working hard and visiting each of his customers every week. Then he was hit in the 1990 recession when Staples (thank you, Mr. Romney!) put all of them out of business through big-box discounts and self-service ordering via Staples. He went back to school in his mid-1950’s to be re-trained, only to be unable to find anyone willing to hire him in his late late 50’s. He ended up limping along at $10.00 per hour part-time jobs until he qualified for social security and medicare benefits.
Hey, I’m a big believer in education. I think the Republican’s biggest danger is an educated and informed electorate. But the idea that we can solve our loss of manufacturing base by simply re-educating the work force, no matter what their age, is not a very well-thought out idea.
# 17: Part of the problem is that the way to enduce yawns in an audience – even among Congressional committeemen – is to try to bring up the details of bankruptcy law and technical reforms. The only people who are really interested in the outcome and who have enough influence to make things happen are those who are benefiting from the system.
If you think about it, the current priorities in bankruptcy are completely backwards. The persons with the most control are those such as banks who have a secured interest in the assets. Yet they were in the best position to protect themselves by being informed of the debtor’s condition when they made the deal. Likewise, after secured creditors come the administrative debts incurred by the bankruptcy itself – in Chapter 11 that means the banks offering post-petition financing, and the corporate officers who are in charge of forming and filing the bankruptcy plan. Those at the bottom of the food chain – the lowest priority – are those whom have the least ability to protect themselves, the unsecured creditors such as the vendors from the deli who delivered sandwhiches to the meeting where the bankruptcy petition was being drafted, to retirees wholding stocks and bonds in the corporation.
Now businesses try to use Chapter 11 to turn wage and pension claims into unsecured debt so they can get paid their high CEO salaries as “administrative debt”, and their Wall Street buddies make a killing on post-petition financing of the reorganization effort – which often takes the form of spinning of the viable parts of the business into a new corporation, similar to a corporate buy-out wich makes Baine Capital and other similar firms so much money.
Is it any wonder that the first bankruptcy laws were formulated by Congress in order to get the founder of the Republican Party, Robert Morris, out of debtor’s prison? He should have stuck with the shipping and import/export business, which he knew well, but instead thought that the best way to make a lot of money fast was speculating in real estate using both funding from both American and British partners. When a tobacco monopoly collapsed in France; and bad surveys and treaties with the Native Americans delayed the re-sell of speculative land grants to British investors, his commercial empire collapsed and he was thrown into jail.
This wasn’t too unusual at the time, a few other signers of the Declaration of Independence found themselves in a similar quandry, as did Light Horse Harry Lee (Continental general and Robert E. Lee’s father). But it was Morris’ predictament which compelled Congress to rescue him, with less prosperous and influental citizens bearing the costs of his default. It reminds one of the bank bailout required to rescue the Wall Street and Commercial Banking firms (Tarp I and II).
Seems like things never really change, doesn’t it?
Wasn’t that every single troll we ever had here? The latest one’s have me longing for Piper.
# 20: You’ve got a point. Piper may have been a Conservative Republican, but at least you could talk to him on a more or less logical level. Today’s trolls just seem like they are paid to bounce on board with the day’s talking points assigned to them by Fox News.
I’ve posted this under the most recent Poll Analysis thread, but since we are several posts beyond that now I’ll repeat myself.
Weekend polling indicated Romney will win by a comfortable margin the GOP primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland, and D.C.
Wisconsin, Maryland Polls show Romney winning
Newt comes in last place, with less than 8% of the vote. This shouldn’t be too surprising since (a) Newt’s base was the south-east; (b) Newt is just about out of money; and (c) Newt has cut back campaigning to a bare minimum, pretty much “phoning it in” at this point.
So how much ego does it take for Newt to stay in the race? Does he really expect Romney and Santorum to kneel, kiss his ring, and beg him to endorse him, in return for whatever favors he deigns to grant?
At what point does he become such a joke – even within the Republican Party – that he ends up losing even the chance at a Fox News pundit contract?
Totally disagree about the troll Piper Scott. His comment history was a mania for repeating right wing talking points in somewhat ingratiating, salesy, and grammatically correct style which in any case were all too easily discredited. Where is he now? Last I looked, an appartchik for the right wing stink tank EFF in Olympia writing propaganda disguised as “investigative journalism”. He found the perfect niche for himself.
Enough said about that comment bot.
See Dave! I’m disagreeing with my fellow progressives!
Now try your “grating”, “independent moderate” act at (un)SP for a change.
This morning, I commuted to work as usual. I use a collector-distributor lane to merge onto I-5. Due to the short sight distance for traffic merging in, it’s customary for vehicles already in the collector-distributor lane to watch for merging traffic and adjust accordingly.
Except this morning. Suddenly I realized that the Lexus to my left had sped up and was vying for the same space as my vehicle as two lanes had become one. I was able to break – hard – just in time to avoid having to choose between a collission between our two cars and going into the ditch.
The Lexus driver was so determined that I not get in front of him that he was about one foot behind the car in front of him. I honked my horn in displeasure, at which point he gave the bird and an “I won” smirk.
Which led me to think about the “stand your ground” laws. He was operating a vehicle, which courts have frequently ruled are a dangerous weapon under the right conditions. Under a “stand your ground” law, did I have the right at that point to pull out my gun and let loose a few rounds at him, all in “self defense” and in protection of my right “not to retreat”? If I do so, does he also have the same right?
I guess we could turn highways into a shootout at the O.K. Corral. “Out of my way!” “Bang! Bang!”
Heh. Ann Romney defended her husband today, talking about people who think Romney seems too stiff. “We better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out.”
Too funny!
I think he passed that point a long time ago. But, the monied elite and the pundit class are so out of touch they probably don’t know that.
“Gunman Kills 7 At Small Calif. University”
“Updated at 5:45 p.m. ET: A gunman opened fire Monday morning at a small Christian university in Oakland, Calif., killing seven people and wounding three, according to the City of Oakland. Earlier reports said five had been killed.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....university
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Enough is enough. It’s time to disarm the American public. If we don’t our society will be unlivable. If it takes a constitutional amendment, so be it. As a military veteran and responsible gun owner, I’ve known for many years that guns are not a practical deterrent to crime nor a feasible way for innocent law-abiding people to protect themselves. Most of the people getting shot in America today are innocents. Most of the guns being fired are being misused by people who obviously never should have had access to guns in the first place. Our culture’s pro-gun mania not only is senseless, it’s destructive. It’s time for our citizenry to rethink our societal attitudes toward guns.
# 25: I always suspected that Romney was an alien zipped up in a human disguise.
“Roger Rabbit Commentary: Enough is enough. It’s time to disarm the American public. If we don’t our society will be unlivable…”
OK, as long as that includes the cops, the military, all the govnerment agency personnel, and anyone else in the country. No guns means no guns, regardless of who has them now.
If I’m not wearing button Levi’s, the zipper I’m usually attending to reveals….. Well never mind.
The FBI acknowledged today it is investigating whether George Martin violated Trayvon Martin’s civil rights.
“FBI agents on Monday were questioning potential witnesses in the Trayvon Martin shooting, confirming to NBC News that the agency had begun a ‘parallel investigation’ that focuses on whether the teen’s civil rights were violated.
“Agents are seeking information on George Zimmerman’s background and whether he was racially motivated when he pursued Martin after calling a 911 police dispatcher about his presence in the community, an FBI official told NBC.
“A senior law enforcement official confirmed that one potential piece of evidence is records of Zimmerman’s prior 911 calls to police dispatchers. The call sheets show that five of seven phone calls Zimmerman had made since last August involved what he viewed as suspicious activity by young men identified as ‘black males.'”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....estigation
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’m not prejudging this situation, as are the rightwingers who — without seeing the evidence — insist that Zimmerman isn’t a racist and wasn’t racially motivated. I’ve simply posted a news report that says the FBI is looking into that. I don’t think Zimmerman should be charged with a civil rights crime unless there’s solid evidence to back it up. I do think local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities should thoroughly investigate this case from every angle to determine whether a crime was committed. The bar should be high for taking a life, with the burden on the killer to justify his actions. In a case such as this, where an unarmed individual who was where he had a right to be ended up dead, and the killer initiated the confrontation, the investigation should begin with an assumption that a crime was committed not the other way around. If the case progresses to a criminal trial, then the accused is entitled to the presumption of innocence at trial, but our laws confer no presumption of innocence at the investigatory stage.
Santorum has an “oops” moment, when he remembers he’s being recorded….
Santorum stumbles in the middle of referring to the President as “Nigg…”
Did he really start to say what it appears that he said? If so, was he just appealing to his audience, or does that reflect his real feelings about race in this country?
correction @31 First sentence should read ” … whether George Zimmerman violated Trayvon Martin’s civil rights.”
@29 Could you possibly be more specious?
@34,
Could you possibly be a more arrgant, self-centered fucking asshole?
re 35: I’m sure that between allowing citizens to own every sort of weapon — even military — and owning no guns, there is a place where reasonable people can meet and develop rules that will control the access to deadly weaponry to people who have demonstrated the ability to use them safely and correctly.
@35 You’re evading the question.
# 35:
Certainly. He could be a Republican.
@36 The gun lobby and its backers have made it clear they’re not interested in a middle ground approach.
Hey, Roger…
I’ve reduced my 401(K) contributions, I’ll keep what I already have in the 401(K), plus just enough of a contribution to earn the employer matching.
As for the remainder, I’m opening a self-directed traditional IRA (no mutual funds). So I’m looking for a bit of free advice – not as to what funds to buy, but more general questions.
(a) How much time do you spend on the market each day? How much of that is divided between general study (reading, etc.) and how much to tracking stocks?
(b) What resources do you read for general information? You’ve already mentioned The Economist, and I presume you read the Wall Street Journal. What other general resources do you suggest?
@32
Yep, that’s what he said.
Roger Rabbit, I am disappointed in you. You use to say Liberals need to arm themselves. Now you want to take the guns away from us. You know that isn’t going to happen, and now more than ever liberals need to be armed. Many of these shooting are done by right wing nut jobs. And to say that you can’t protect yourself with your own gun is not necessary right. Look at the recent home invasion in North Bend. The man of the house got his family into the master bedroom after the break in, with the armed crook telling them he was going to kill them all. The home owner told him several times to leave his house or he would kill him, the guy didn’t and the home owner killed him. If he had to wait for the cops he and his family would be dead. Last year a family in Yakima protected themselves from several armed crooks. The Sheriff Department was a half hour to an hour away. The father used his AR 15, the semi auto version of the fully auto M-16, to kill and send the crooks running without harm to his family. And you want to deny these and others the right to defend themselves. Shame on you! I consider myself a liberal with a gun like the late Mike Webb, Bartcop, and you. I served 26 years in the military. Was trained to use the 1911 Colt 45, the new military 9mm, the M-1 Grande, M-14, the M-16, Thompson submachine gun, browning semi-auto shotgun, and the 50 cal. machine gun. I know how to use guns and want to continue to have them as long as crooks and Republicans (Right wingers) have guns legally or not.
Democrat Criminals in Indiana!
http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....d-in-2008/
Look at those faces! They are criminals
43 – Maybe they’ll share the same country club jail as this Hoosier:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/2....._official/
@40 (a) I look at what the market is doing when I get out of bed, check it again at mid-morning, and again in the last hour before it closes. I typically spend 4 to 6 hours a day on investing, and 95% of it is general reading (books that I buy, library books, financial magazines, and online financial news and investing articles). I usually can evaluate a stock in under 2 minutes, but I have 30 years of experience doing this, so I know exactly what I’m looking for. I evaluate and reject 10 to 20 stocks for every one I buy. I spend a lot of time reading about general economic conditions, and I tend to concentrate on investing in industries I know a lot about.
(b) I’m a regular reader of Barron’s magazine. The new issue hits the public library on Saturday, and I usually read it on the weekend before the markets open on Monday. On almost a daily basis, I go to AOL’s Daily Finance, and if you type in stock symbols for individual stocks, you’ll get pages with graphs, data, and links to articles about those stocks. I’m also on a couple of e-mail mailing lists, including Seeking Alpha and AOL’s Daily Finance, so I receive links to articles on stocks I’m interested in via e-mail. I don’t read WSJ much. I do read Bloomberg Business Week occasionally. I’m a systematic user of Value Line, although you have to know how to read, interpret, and use Value Line — mainly for the financial data and narrative, don’t rely on their future predictions because Value Line tends to be wildly optimistic. I also read a lot of online articles on CNBC.
The thing you have to understand is that everyone in the financial industry is doing a selling job on the public. Nobody in that industry makes a dime unless people buy stocks. So the financial media are full of optimists and pollyannas. Don’t let yourself be snowed by this stuff. It’s harder to make money by investing than they make it sound.
Be cautious all the time, and never forget that no one ever lost money on a stock they didn’t buy.
The world is full of investing books, more than you can read in a lifetime, so how do you sort through them and decide which ones are worth your time?
The truly great investing books are timeless:
Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis
Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor
I also recommend:
Claude Rosenberg’s Stock Market Primer
Benjamin Graham et al., The Interpretation of Financial Statements
I recently bought a couple books by Jeremy Siegel; I haven’t had time to read them yet, but he has a good reputation. Another book I haven’t read yet, but which is widely touted by many investors, is Peter Lynch’s One Up On Wall Street.
For understanding bonds, whether or not you ever own any bonds (I don’t), I feel the best primer available is:
Larry Swedroe and Joseph Hempen, The Only Guide to a Winning Bond Strategy You’ll Ever Need
Please understand there is no “one” strategy to win in the investing game. There are many different strategies that will work at any given time, and no strategy that works all the time, so I’m usually trying several strategies at a time.
The market is constantly changing and you have to change with it, so don’t let your thinking get into a rut. Just because something worked for you last year doesn’t mean it’ll keep working next year. You must keep an open mind because the investing environment surrounding you is dynamic, not static, and ever-changing.
Above all, think in terms of percentages. Don’t think “I want to make $1,000 from this stock”; think “I want to make 25% total return (dividends + capital gains) from this stock.” I think that way in the grocery store, too; I also look at unit prices, and if I’m tempted to pay an extra 20% for a brand name compared to the store brand, I remind myself how hard it is to earn a 20% gain on a stock. Many people will go “so what” at the difference between $2.50 and $3.00 for a jar of pickles, but not me — anytime I can make 20% in 5 seconds I’ll take it!
I always think percentages. If I put $10,000 into Stock A and make $1,000, and put $5,000 into Stock B and make $600, I’m well aware that Stock B is the better stock — by 12% vs. 10% return, a 20% difference of return. In investing, as in the grocery store, 20% is a lot. Always, always, always think about what your percentage rate of return is going to be — and to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, annualize all the percentages. A 100% gain over 10 years is nowhere near as good as a 10% gain in eight months.
As you already know, I don’t like mutual funds or ETFs, for lots of reasons, all of which boil down to the fact they’re not very good at making money for their shareholders. I currently own 32 different stocks, no mutual funds, no ETFs, no bonds, no gold, no futures, no puts or calls.
I hope this is helpful.
What I mostly do in the stock market every day is nothing. I keep an eye on the stocks I own, and I watch stocks on my wish list. Remember, no stock no matter how good is a good buy unless the price is right. When I do make a decision to buy or sell, which happens only infrequently, it’s as much intuition as calculation. I crunch a lot of numbers in my head, but in the end, it comes down to “feel”. It’s very characteristic of me to watch a stock for months, sometimes years, and then suddenly my gut says “now” and I pick up the phone, call my broker, and spend anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 in 30 seconds. But I always know why I’m buying the stock, and what my goals are, how long I plan to own it and what my target selling price is; and I write all that down and keep it in a computer file, and refer back to it; and if, after some time has gone by, that stock isn’t performing as I hope it would, I start thinking about getting rid of it. The idea is, if you find yourself riding a slow horse, dismount and look around for a faster horse.
@42 I’m frustrated by the almost-daily massacres in our society. Drastically reducing the number of guns in circulation seems like an obvious way to rein in such incidents. If you have a better idea, let’s hear it. I don’t care how we get there, but we’ve got to come up with something that works.
@42 (continued) Most people have no clue how to defend themselves with a gun, and such people should not have guns, they should get a large dog instead.
A lot of people just buy a gun, load it, and throw it in an unlocked drawer. Not! That’s the height of stupidity, not to mention legally actionable negligence. It’s also a good way to put a loaded gun into the hands of an intruder — or a kid, most likely your kid, but possibly a friend of your kid or a relative’s kid.
Which points out a huge problem with the whole idea of guns for self-defense. A gun is useless unless it’s loaded and accessible; but if it’s loaded and accessible, it’s just too damned dangerous to have around. See, e.g, the 3-year-old in Tacoma who killed himself with a gun left in a car about a week ago.
Usually the first mistake people make is by walking out of the gun shoop with the wrong gun. Most people buy guns that are inadequate for self-defense. They bring home a .38, 9mm, or even worse, a .380 or .22. One of my law school classmates got herself killed by trying to shoot a burglar with a .22 pistol. I wouldn’t want to get shot by a 9mm, but I wouldn’t stake my life on a 9mm taking down an armed assailant, either. To my way of thinking, there’s only one handgun caliber that’s adequate for self-defense, and you know what it is. In almost any situation, a 12 gauge is better than any handgun. I consider the fact a 12 gauge won’t fit in a glove compartment or under a coat a bonus, not a detriment. On your person or in a car is a really lousy place to store a gun.
Using a gun successfully against an armed opponent not only requires a high degree of training, but also more self-control than most people possess. Here is where military veterans, especially those with war experience, have a big advantage — how you react under fire is a known quantity to you. For everyone else, it’s a crapshoot, and the odds are high that under life-and-death pressure you’ll turn out to be your own worst enemy.
I firmly believe that guns are nearly useless for self-defense and in virtually all situations your much better option is to pick up a phone (or cellphone) and call 9-1-1 — and keep that line open to the 9-1-1 dispatcher while the situation unfolds, because they record everything. If someone approaches me in a threatening manner, I’m going to call 9-1-1, and the potential attacker is going to hear me giving the police dispatcher an exact location, a description of the “suspicious person,” a license number if there is one, and anything else that would help the police locate and arrest that individual if he does something to me. I can’t think of a more powerful deterrent than that. I’ve been in armed confrontations, more than once, and I’ve never yet met anyone who respected a gun pointing at him. It doesn’t stop them because they just don’t believe you’re going to actually shoot them.
@43 The difference between Democrats and Republicans is we don’t make excuses for our crooks or cover up their crimes.
My guns are unloaded and locked up tight. I take them to the range our out in the woods to plink at cans for fun. Back when I lived where there was good upland bird hunting I’d shoot a few birds every fall and used to use a single action .22 revolver to hunt snow shoe hare from skis in the winter. Rog will be happy to know that shooting a bunny from skis with a handgun is hard to do and missed way more often than I hit them.
Anybody breaks into my house while I’m in it I’m running out the other door or climbing out a window. There’s no guarantee you’ll win a shoot out and pointing a gun at someone gives them a good really good reason to try and kill you first.
Republican pedophiles everywhere.
http://www.republicanoffenders.com/Pedophiles.html
Look at those faces! They are criminals.
@50 “Rog will be happy to know that shooting a bunny from skis with a handgun is hard to do and missed way more often than I hit them.”
Don’t worry about it. I’m here for ya! Anytime you need me to make more bunnies, let me know. I’m at your service. All I need is a herd of cute fluffy female bunnies.
Here’s an interesting article describing how street activists morph into Al Qaeda terrorists in the paranoid minds of the Rambos staffing the private intelligence industry.
http://truth-out.org/news/item.....g-near-you
Revision @45: Change “Nobody in that industry makes a dime unless people buy stocks.” to “Nobody in that industry makes a dime unless people buy financial products.”
For someone who has $20,000 to invest in an IRA, I’d recommend splitting the money about equally between three or four of the following stocks:
AT&T
Coca Cola
General Electric
Johnson & Johnson
Kimberly Clark
McDonalds
Procter & Gamble
All of these stocks have solid and well-managed businesses behind them, an excellent track record of regularly raising their dividends, and offer dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs). None are dirt cheap, and Coca Cola and McDonalds are expensive, but quality is worth paying for. After choosing your 3 or 4 stocks and buying them, plan to hold them in your IRA for a number of years, and sign up for their DRIPs. These stocks will reward you in at least five ways:
1) You’ll get steadily increasing income through regular dividend raises;
2) Higher dividends will pull up the share prices, so you’ll accumulate capital gains;
3) By reinvesting your dividends in more shares through the DRIP, the number of shares you own will steadily increase;
4) The higher number of shares will increase your dividend income;
5) The higher dividends, higher share count, and higher share value will exponentially compound over time.
The value of your IRA will seem to grow slowly at first, but as the years go by, that growth will accelerate faster and faster. It’s like watching an acorn grow into an oak tree — it takes time, but years from now, you’ll be astounded at how much money your original investment became.
There are, of course, other stocks you can use, provided they share the same characteristics: Large established businesses that are well managed and have diversified product lines, whose sales and earnings are constantly growing, which reliably pay steadily increasing dividends, and preferably offer a DRIP although the latter is not strictly necessary; and in the current economic and market environment,
I prefer stocks yielding 3% or more, or close to 3% with faster than average dividend growth.
#52. Roger Rabbit: You are an old, ugly disgusting excuse for a democrap.
I have seen you and you should be ashamed of yourself, you self-aggrandizing, piece of crap.
@56 I seem to remember you. Were you on the bottom or in the middle?
http://www.sodahead.com/entert.....zoo003.jpg
@57
RR, you’re going to get in trouble with Mrs. Rabbit if you keep that up.
I’ve mentioned here before, I once saw a dashcam video of one of those police chases. The suspect’s car stops, and the driver gets out with his hands raised. Then as the cop approaches his own front left bumper, the passenger in the suspect car jumps out, and starts shooting at the officer over the trunk of the suspect car.
The driver of the suspect car had the good sense to run off. For the next twenty seconds or so, the officer and the shooter trade shots at each other across the officer’s hood and the suspect vehicle’s trunk. When the shooter ran out of ammo, he throws his gun at the cop. The cop is out of ammo now too, so he holsters his pistol and takes off running after the shooter, eventually catching him off-camera.
What struck me about this video is that you had a trained police officer who, in the rush of adrenalin while shots are being fired in his general direction, can’t seem to get one shot on target from fifteen feet away. It’s terrible shooting, but pretty understandable when you understand the affect of adrenalin when you are under fire.
It takes a lot of work for the military to instill discipline in their troops so they take the time to find their target and shoot a hole through the center. A civilian isn’t going to come anywhere close to that, regardless of how much time he/she spends on the gun range.
That’s why if you MUST have a gun in the house for self-defense, a 12-gauge is more effective. In any average-size home you can point it in the general direction and your pattern is going to hit at least some of the target. A handgun or rifle, however, is more likely to miss it’s target, go through a couple of room’s worth of wallboard, right through the insulation and siding on the side of the house, and hit the eight-year old brushing his teeth in the adjoining bathroom.
But the more likely result is that no matter what type of gun you own, it’s more likely to be stolen from you, taken by young kids to play with, or used to shoot what you thought was an intruder but was actually your own teenager trying to sneak back into the house after spending the evening hanging out with the guys/gals.
As my scoutmaster taught me: (a) there’s no reason to own a gun unless you need to carry it with you; (b) if you carry it with you, you should be prepared to pull it out at any time; (c) you shouldn’t pull out a gun unless you are going to shoot it as soon as you can; and (d) If you shoot it, you should shoot to kill.
If you aren’t prepared and trained to do that, you shouldn’t own a gun. Too many people think that if they show burglars they have a gun the burglars will run away. But they figure if you are already pointing it at them and don’t pull the trigger, you won’t pull the trigger later. If you are going to use a gun, USE IT, don’t give the other guy the opportunity to decide when and other what conditions weapons will be used. The first thing they should know of your presence would be from your muzzle flash.
Roger; thanks for all the investing advice.
@61 Any time.
1) My Sig Sauer P229 works perfectly for me, ICE, Coast Guard, Secret Service and “other” federal agencies. SEALS use the Sig Sauer P226 9mm but I prefer my P229 with a .40 S&W round. It doesn’t have a “typical” safety so you don’t have to worry about making sure the safety’s off when/if you ever need it in. Still, it’s engineered to be a very safe handgun.
2) When seconds count, the police are just minutes away… Especially if you choose to have an actual piece of land (i.e. more than a postage stamp with all the neighbor’s houses relatively similar).
1) Good advice. I also teach that percentages are the most important thing to consider (with investments AND store purchases). I generally never buy a big ticket item for less than a 20% discount. 30% is very doable in many situations if you do your homework and are persistent. Supermarkets are another place foe big savings (especially with a nice pantry and extra freezer).
2) Calls and puts can actually be very good tools and are pretty safe unless you are “uncovered”. Selling a naked put or call is extremely dangerous so don’t do it unless you’re extremely savvy and even then you better be on top of the market continuously.
3) Bonds are also decent at times. In 2009 there were some pretty good investment opportunities in bonds as the typical relationship (prevailing interest rates go down = more interest in bonds and their prices go up/yields down) did not occur because nobody wanted to buy “anything”.
— Therefore, you had the best of both worlds as you could buy bonds at a discount (as hedge funds threw in the towel and many others needed to raise funds by selling bonds). It was possible to enjoy BOTH the high yields related to collecting the associated coupons, AND future appreciation! The possible rainy cloud occurs if they call your sweet yielding bond away. To be clear, I’m primarily talking about good quality bonds, not junk bonds. The thing most people get confused by with bonds is the yield vs. price and the Yield to Maturity calculations.
4) Partnership stocks can have nice returns but they also complicate taxes a little bit.
5) I don’t buy much gold/silver anymore either.
6) Another idea to think about is a counter to inflation by purchasing things like food (commodity or staple) and oil related (pipeline/storage/production) stocks. That way, when you’re paying more at the store/gas station you’re also generally making profits in those same areas.
7) One thing irt IRA’s. I don’t know rhp’s specific situation but hopefully you’ve gone through a few online calculators to compare traditional to ROTH. I have a mix of both (heavier in Roth) because nobody knows exactly what the tax codes will be in the future (i.e. higher or lower than your current rates) but “if” they end up being “higher” in the future you’ll generally be better off with a Roth.
8) A very real concern going fwd (imo) is the growth of high frequency trading which involves holding investments for as little as fractions of a second. The process often involves various arbitrage strategies and is repeated all day long with absolutely no vested interest in the actual underlying investment. Some advocate the potential liquidity improvement but it’s a slippery slope to me. Just an FYI to be aware of for this conversation.
Take Care.
((from Bible study thread…moveed here because it seems more appropriate on this thread)):
1) And…because the futures were indicating such…
2) You have to take the European debt issue into account. Most of that $3T will stay perfectly happy where it is until more clarity comes in that regard.
3) If the aforementioned European debt issue goes the wrong way the ramifications could easily cause a major correction because the “fear” factor could easily become a Columbia River-like force. That force can easily overwhelm any desire for higher returns (mentioned above) and even the efforts of Bernankie… “Fear/Exuberance” have a great impact on the lows and highs that occur in the markets (stock, housing, etc).
4) A big part of the reason for these QE’s (Tarp & other “bailouts”), IS to quell that very powerful FEAR. The kind of FEAR that was getting ready to conduct “runs on the banks” (which would have been disastrous) in 2008. If/when a European fallout bomb falls, even the baby will get tossed (along with the bathwater)…however it is true that the consumer staple stocks will tend to outperform during a collapse (meaning lose a bit less than the avg market).
Disclaimer:
Roger RabbitDave hasnoa little professional training in this shit, is not a registered investment adviser, and is known to be aleftwing propagandistrational and independent fuselage thinker, so do whatever you fucking want with this comment — that’s up to you. You are responsible for your investing decisions, so if you follow my free advice and then lose your ass, don’t come crying to me or go crying to securities regulators. What I post here about my thoughts on investing is Free Speech Under The First Amendment, no more, no less. Somebody’s gotta do the work in this country, so if you don’t wanna trust me, please feel free to work for wages while I take the FREE MONEY that Wall Street gives me. I’ma lazy sloth( <–far from that strikethrough text) and I’mtoo good to lift a paw to do any productive work( <– far from that too), so if you want to be a wage slave all your life, better you than me! That’s all I’ve got to say by way of disclaimer.((from Bible study thread…moved here because it seems more appropriate on this thread)):
1) True.
One more thing irt the Roth vs. Traditional choice:
1) If you’re one of the large number of people who’s IRA contributions are nondeductible, you really should be using a Roth. Why? Because it just makes sense. If you can’t deduct the contribution in a Traditional IRA you have to file a form 8606 (EVERY YEAR you make a contribution) and “remember” that fact at a “distant point” in the future when you go to take distributions! Why make it any more complicated than it already is???…
Just more free advice from Dave “The Independent Moderate“. You don’t have to say it…You’re Welcome
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2) P.S. Good luck to you all for a while because it’s finally “that time” (Uggg…) and I do my taxes myself. I paid a highly regarded CPA approximately $1,000 to do them 1 yr when I was in Hawaii (to see the incredible “missed” tax savings purported by people in the tax preparer community). As it turned out, she didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done so that was a waste…not to be repeated. So, off to the assembled paperwork for a jolly old time and to once again reflect on how much better the tax code could be :-)
3) I’m sure I left you enough to keep you busy for a week or so… When I come back I can help with any other questions people need help with. ;-)
Bye for now… You can have a welcome back party when I get back. I like ribs, crab legs, and Thai food the best…