A Second Hand Conjecture

I am often asked about individual bank stocks, especially JP Morgan. Generally my answer is that Bank of America, JP Morgan and a few others look to be likely survivors, but how profitable they will be I am really unsure.
JP Morgan is a special discussion, because I point out a rather astonishing fact, they have [...]

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You know, I’m a little tired of all of the snide comparisons of Ike and Katrina, in particular the comparisons of New Orleanians to Houstonians. Why is there almost no news coverage of Ike’s aftermath vs. that of Katrina? For the same reason there’s no coverage of the aftermath of Gustav in New Orleans: in [...]

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Vox Popoli
The executive class is not, for the most part, capitalist, it can be more accurately understood as a sort of pirates union that is loosely allied in common cause against the capitalists who actually own the companies that they are systematically pillaging under the guise of “managing” them. Until this distinction between executives and [...]

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An interesting debate occurred through email over my short jab at Obama’s experience. Now, I think it’s great when we have substantive debate about important issues, but I’m not above taking pot shots at our political class. A little sarcasm can go a long way towards highlighting a particular issue.
Mudslinging - the act [...]

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I had a lesson in all three this past Friday (8/29.) As I was riding my brand new Triumph Bonneville (with 2 weeks & 650 miles on it,) to work, not more then 2 miles from my house I had a collision with a raccoon. The short story is that the bike and [...]

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I was searching for an image on my backup drive today and came across a cache of header graphics I’d thrown together for posts over the years. The diversity of subjects was kind of interesting as a gallery. Here’s a few rather random selections:
The HIV Epidemic:

Eurabia:

Slobodan Milosevic:

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American Daily
The single most important building block of any nation is her families. Destroy that and you can easily lay claim to a nation’s soul.
I agree. I think we have failed to maintain the nuclear family and lost the fundamental building block. Part of the reason so many folks are enticed by government [...]

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Belmont Club
In the words of the Economist,
“the danger is that, once Mr Musharraf has gone and it has no common hatred to
unite its disparate parts, it descends into feuding and paralysis
This would not be good news for the US and the war against the Islamists either. The aftermath of Musharraf’s resignation is difficult to [...]

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Hello to all - fellow bloggers and readers. Lance has graciously invited me to participate. I have been reading blogs for several years now (late bloomer) and have watched their influence in the media grow. I am happy to see a viable antidote to the MSM and a place to promote discussion. [...]

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(photo: 2 Dogs)
Modern China has a curious capacity to make otherwise very sensible capitalists instantly forget every experience they’ve ever had with government central planning. The Western businessman on a trip to Shanghai looks up and sees all those gleaming skyscrapers going up on the Yangtze, and he thinks massive state planning must be different [...]

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(photo: Dan Bennett)
Dick Morris writes that it’s beginning to look like McCain can win (if he follows his advice of course). Also, McCain has had an (insignificant) advantage with leaners in the Rasmussen tracking poll for two days now. That’s coupled with some peculiar pro-McCain shifts in their public trust ratings. McCain is now more [...]

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(photo: companyink)
After writing about the Ronpaulist fear mongering of Jordan Page, and then reading Lance’s splendid post on the latest contheorist pandering of Glenn Greenwald, a common insight has reoccurred to me: the absurd amount of cognitive dissonance conditional to political paranoia.
This is something Christopher Hitchens explored quite adeptly last year at the “Four Horsemen” [...]

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As a Realtor, I often am able to congratulate folks on a move to a wonderful new home.
Today, good wishes are extended to Professor Keigh Burgess-Jackson on his new abode.  The Professor won’t be cooking in his new home, and he will not need to clean out the gutters nor scrub the tub.  Nevertheless, I am certain [...]

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I understand that many find the media’s treatment of the economy under Bush biased. I agree with that. No argument from me. So I understand where Instapundit and others, including many denizens of this site, are coming from.
That being said, that does not mean the media is being too pessimistic now just because if Clinton, [...]

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(photo: William Bedzrah)
One of the traditional problems of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa is that internal African investment dollars tend to be spent outside the continent. Thus it’s interesting to see Nigerian investment in Ghana has now reached $580 million. Something that has sparked quick calls for a Nigeria-Ghana Chamber of Commerce and further liberalization [...]

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Taking fecklessness to new levels of embarrassment, the Libertarian Party of Kentucky is now considering rescinding its unanimous de-endorsement of genocidal fantasist Sonny Landham, and formally renominating him as its candidate for US Senate.
“We’re really stuck,” said Libertarian Party chair Ken Moellman. “We don’t necessarily want to kick him off the ballot.”
[...]
“Our goal was [...]

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(photo: Charles Roffey - Charles & Fred)
Someone once said that in Damascus you truly can get a little bit pregnant. It’s a good aphorism, because if you asked the foreign minister of almost any state in the Middle East or the Mediterranean what his government’s policy relationship was with Syria, he would automatically furrow his [...]

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Want to stay youthful?  No magic potion, pill nor surgery will deliver it to you.
But, you can follow this prescription to ward off Father Time:  keep active and working!
Thanks to my friend and very smart guy Mitch Perlstein at the Center of the American Experiment for this fine column.
You might note that Mitch cites both [...]

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What a gem. Speaking of Jims, Jim Lindgren wonders if it can be as bad as claimed by the Wall Street Journal:

In the Wall Street Journal editorial on the new housing bill is this ominous paragraph:

Likewise, the bill’s $300 billion to refinance and insure distressed loans through the Federal Housing Administration will supposedly cost just [...]

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I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve been invited to blog at QandO and I took it.
That’s right, I hopped all over that opportunity like a starving alley cat on plate of tuna fresh and a saucer of milk. And I like it. So sue me. Just remember that I’m [...]

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(photo: Mani Babbar)
After 9/11 widened Al Qaeda’s ambitious war against most of the world, Osama bin Laden described his own axis-o-evil as being composed of “Crusaders, Zionists and Hindus.” But at some point, without anyone much noticing, that seems to have changed for Hindus.

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Well, Mr. Obama has finally quit that ludicrous Chicago institution known as Trinity United Church of Christ. His membership had survived Rev. Wright, but was ultimately done in over the visiting Rev. Michael Pfleger’s bizarre self-hating white guilt trip, and radicalized political rally in sacred masquerade.
Having seen the deranged, obscenely ideological sermons of Wright and [...]

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(photo: Serguei Kovalev)
Christopher Hitchens once said that the trouble with biographers of Thomas Jefferson, is that there appears to be the collective assumption on their part that the great man was without a penis. I’m reminded of this truth in reading about the very hot water Mr. Al Franken –the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for US [...]

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If any of you were wondering how BBQ is done down in Texas, check out this Brisket Pictorial that will no doubt leave you craving some good Q. Here’s what we start with,

He messes up the cabbage a little, but it still came out alright. Finished product after the jump.

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As at least one person has said, there’s the type of slip of the tongue where one accidentally says what one really thinks.Has everyone seen by now Obama’s take on why small town Midwestern sorts cling to religion, guns, racism, and anti-illegal immigrant notions? They’re bitter.
“It’s not surprising, then, [...]

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Charlton Heston has died.
I was hesitant to put the title on this post that I did but decided that someone was going to say it so I might as well say it with profound regard and respect for the man and his message.    As an actor I knew who Charlton Heston was but I [...]

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Fantastic mania.

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Cross-posted to Registan.net
Nothing says “we’re aware of a delicate political situation” like unilateral strikes on an unstable country:
Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country’s sovereign territory are always controversial, and both U.S. and Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in the [...]

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Last week?
…but I can no longer stand idly by and watch the media and independent voters continue to throw themselves at the feet of John McCain.
Because I’m trying to remember anyone swooning over McCain and I’m not having much luck at all.
The John McCain they fell in love with in 2000 — the straight-shooting, [...]

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…am I just not impressed by YOU?
Jules Crittenden responds to a column by Susan Jacoby The Dumbing of America. She concludes…
It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality.
The short answer is… yes, we truly value intellect and rationality.
It just doesn’t look like [...]

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… people don’t want to admit to pollsters that they aren’t voting for the black candidate?
Instapundit frames it so it sounds like Susan Estrich is saying that Democrats are racist and we should assume that in a general election everyone else is even *more* racist.   I was going to dispute that baseless assumption.   (That Democrats [...]

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Karl Rove and George Bush and Dick Cheney will have many disastrous legacies, but one of the most despicable and enduring will be how they used fear to deeply and deliberately divide our country
I don’t think that it really does. The author is sort of famous and stuff but I prefer to ignore [...]

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This is fascinating, though the idea of destroying a female embryo to show that females could reproduce is sort of grotesque.
The researcher is applying for permission to use stem cells from bone marrow instead of embryos because it would be more practical, which leads me to wonder why it was necessary to try with [...]

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Blackfive posted a response by an editor and the author of a New York Times article about how the military turns people into killers.
Essentially the response is “that’s not what we meant.”
Taken together they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.
Yet that’s what it said. [...]

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Because baby bugs are just so cute. They even have cute names, like nymph. You can see the size of this one next to my daughter’s finger tip. To feed these little guys I had to buy fruit flies off the internet. [...]

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Clear, accurate, conscious of liberty and sensible. Hat Tip: Doug Mataconis

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Byron York has a fairly instructive anecdote from South Carolina on Fred Thompson:
Last night I talked with Cyndi Mosteller, a strong social conservative who headed the Charleston County Republican Party from 2003 to 2007 and who supports McCain. When I asked about Thompson, she said. “He was the most anticipated candidate that I [...]

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“Your sister thinks Huckabee is great.”
“Mom,” I told the phone, exasperated, “He’s not even Republican!”
My first participation in politics was a proudly worn “I (heart) DRNBGR” button that some son-of-a-Democrat defaced at a high school speech competition. (What gave him the right to wreck my property?) I went with my [...]

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This was inevitable:
Eloisa Tamez says she isn’t scared anymore, just determined. “I am not backing down,” she said.
Tamez owns three acres of land along the Texas-Mexico border where the Department of Homeland Security would like to build a border fence. The property is a remnant of a 12,000-acre grant from Spain to her family in [...]

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Hotair has video of Chris Matthews talking about Barack Obama on the Tonight Show, in which he tosses objectivity to the wind and replaces it with a kind of turbid political idolatry. He suggests to us that he wouldn’t be an honest reporter if he failed to tell us about the “spiritual experience” one supposedly [...]

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Here’s some splendid news for those of us not delighted by the prospect of a liberation theologist takeover of the Republican Party. Rasmussen is reporting their new South Carolina numbers and Mike Huckabee has lost five points and Fred Thompson gained four since last week. Thompson now stands at 16%, Huckabee at 19%, with [...]

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With the red stars back on the MiGs, criticism of the government illegal and dissident arrests again in fashion, Soviet reversion is all the rage in Russia. Jim Hill revealed a couple of days ago that apparently Disney is in for the show, having dusted off old plans for a Soviet pavilion at Epcot Center [...]

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It seems Daniel Hannan has been getting some email of the “what the heck is wrong with you?” variety over his support for Barack Obama. Today he argues that he’s thrown his support behind the rather vague candidate because of his policy vacuity and favoritism for style over substance:
Isn’t it possible to argue that we [...]

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(photo: Michael Deeble)
With heavy rains flooding Southern Africa and displacing thousands, surely saving graces must be found in parched and dying Swaziland, a country long thirsting for a drop of rain. But somewhat typically, that oppressed country’s autocrat King Mswati III, has taken the event of the rain for more than it is, and in [...]

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Here’s wishing you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving. Eat well and be merry.
From the Staff at ASHC

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Or lack thereof:

What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Midland

“You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston [...]

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Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous!
You drink everyone under the table.

Who’s Your Inner European?
 
I saw this over at McQ’s. Frankly this surprised me. While, I think it fits, the questions led me to answers I figured would send me somewhere else. Of course I used to be Irish on my mothers side, until I [...]

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Heh. Of course there is some evidence these tactics might work.

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Brian Doherty accepts the possibility of victory, however defined, and then goes on to argue that that still does not make the invasion a good idea. I have some quibbles, but for the most part he is right. While he makes some trenchant arguments against taking positive lessons from Iraq, his answer for how we [...]

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Posted alongside many other things at The Conjecturer.
Defense & The War

Barry McCaffery, who lost the drug war on two continents and failed upward to a professor’s post at West Point, is applying his strategic expertise to the Air Force. He thinks USAF needs hundreds more F-22s (at $340 million each, and still riddled with decades-old [...]

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