Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

Mr. Hope and Change, meet Mr. Reality

Posted: March 4, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Powerline hits the ball out of the park today with The Sobering voice of Mr. Market:

In the first month of Obama’s presidency, the reality principle has asserted itself most notably in the stock market. The stock market certainly pays close attention to a president’s words, but it doesn’t swoon over a president’s soothing style. Rather, it evaluates the president’s words for their likely impact on a given company’s future earnings.

Meet Mr. Market a tangible piece of reality that is reported on daily:

Since it became apparent that Barack Obama would be elected president at the end of September 2008, the stock market has steadily declined. Two weeks afer Obama’s election, Thomas Lifson first charted “The Obama market.” The decline has continued over the past three months. The stock market has dropped 25 percent since election day, but the Obama effect could be observed before then.

Back on November 20th Doug Ross talked about the wisdom of crowds and intrade. And noted that the stock market started his drop as soon as intrade broke for Obama in September.

Tom Lifson on the day my company tanked said the following:

By late September it was increasingly clear to Intrade.com bettors that Obama was going to win the election. From 9/28 to 9/29 Obama’s Intrade price went from 57 to 61, which represented a huge jump.

081120-intrade-sept

Note what happened to the stock market at nearly the exact same time. Around September 29th the market began its collapse.

081120-dow-3mo

His closing line is a stake in the heart:

What happens after Election Day speaks for itself.

Take a look at the charts. I’ll give powerline the last word:

this is certainly a rich text. Most notably, as Bill Kristol observes, “the stock market isn’t gyrating, or bobbing up and down. It’s dropping.”

The sobering voice of Mr. Market is saying that the Obama administration and its allies in Congress have done nothing to brighten the prospects of companies struggling to make a go of it in the private sector. On the contrary, they have dimmed the prospects of these companies. The dimming can be measured in the vast destruction of wealth in the stock market.

Reality is a harsh mistress.

Hey lets live with radical Islam, Blair notices the problem

Posted: March 4, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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I wasn’t going to comment on the new Newsweek Cover which is like a societal vote for Carter but Tim Blair’s line is too perfect to ignore:

“Living with” radical Islam would be a whole lot easier if it didn’t involve so much killing.

It doesn’t get better than that.

Morning Joe: Mika gets the kudos

Posted: March 4, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Stayed up late listening to some newly acquired Who’s.

6:49 a.m. Still no Obama jokes

6:52 a.m. Mika was right about that nonsense and she deserved the credit from the police family.

6:53 a.m. And how can she go to fundraisers when she has to be up at like 4 a.m. every day at least?

6:54 a.m. Gee an MSNBC show has picked up on the DNC teasing site what a surprise. I haven’t seen them report on the daily conference calls between the White House and ABC & CNN people for talking points.

7:01 a.m. Hey everyone is expecting the government to do everything for them of COURSE the lady called the police over chicken nuggets.

7:06 a.m. They are debating if Geitner is smart but not smooth in front of the camera, where they talking that way when Jindal was being discussed?

7:08 a.m. They are still playing the Rush stuff and playing the DNC mouthpiece stuff.

7:10 a.m. Since when is “Rush” that “far out”? Only someone who has never listened to his show can describe him such.

7:14 a.m. Joe point out if that the Obama people have us talking about Rush and Jim the conversation is not the problem.

7:15 a.m. Joe reminds them the White House was opened and helped with transition so they had the time, they don’t want to touch it.

7:26 a.m. It’s one thing to be patient for the long haul it’s another when the market has lost more than half of its value. It’s like if that pilot instead of landing in the Hudson decided to tell the people on the plane while it was going down that statistically flying is still the safest way to travel.

7:35 a.m. Mrs. Clinton is pressuring Israel to open the Gaza crossings, Yeah Bibi is going to agree to dead Jews to help Obama.

7:46 a.m. Oh Boy Leslie Stall chatting on Morning Joe, remind me to miss that.

7:55 a.m. The Madoff piece was first rate

7:56 a.m. And yes Larry you SHOULD apologize for the phony Michael J Fox stuff.

8:00 a.m. You know the tone of the show is really different on the radio.

8:04 a.m. Again Todd on Rush, didn’t we see this show yesterday?

8:05 a.m. Well MSNBC didn’t have time for Rush’s speech but they sure have made time for the White House’s reaction.

8:07 a.m. Now that is just disrespectful, I’d like to see if they would do this to a black democrat? Mika seems embarrassed. The problem is Steele did this to himself.

8:13 a.m. Hey they are playing Crammers response in a larger form, lets see if MSNBC can play a larger segment of Rush’s speech.

8:25 a.m. Sanford doesn’t get a Rush question and makes a joke at the end concerning it. They leave him alone.

8:36 a.m. Barnicle says buy G.E. at 6

8:41 a.m “I don’t want my president to be giving optimism.” I thought this guy was the next Kennedy/FDR?

8:46 a.m. I don’t twitter. I’m not a joiner.

8:55 a.m. Mika is dressed for Radio, she looks really good dressed for radio. I still say she is one of the most handsome women on TV.

Rush making profit for the cable networks

Posted: March 3, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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While our president’s policies manage to continue to tank the stock markets and erode confidence, Rush Limbaugh demonstrates how to generate income for a business:

Fox News and CNN each aired Limbaugh’s keynote speech to the CPAC Saturday afternoon. It was the biggest draw all weekend on cable news.

• From 4:46pm-6:20pmET Fox News averaged 511,000 A25-54 demo viewers and 2.22M Total Viewers. The network peaked at 6pm with 602,000/2.73M. FNC also produced an hour Sunday night at 9pmET with speech highlights which drew 454,000/1.66M. It was Sunday’s most-watched cable news hour.

It wasn’t known by Rush the CNN was going to carry the speech but they hit the jackpot too:

• CNN added another 222,000 demo viewers and 932,000 Total Viewers for their Limbaugh coverage from 4:47pm – 6:12pm.

And they have continued running with the story as well, it was a wise move for them.

And what about MSNBC, you know the network that only shows one 50 second clip over and over?

• MSNBC stayed with their documentary programming which, from 4pm-7pm, averaged 163,000 demo viewers and 374,000 Total Viewers.

After all what profiteth a network if it gains views for a day but angers it’s niche market? It also explains why Letterman goes on the attack but still hasn’t managed to come up with any joke critical of Obama.

P.S. If you don’t understand the line above then you need to read this post.

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