Thursday, April 05, 2007

Making Statements

The petty economies of the rich are just as amazing as the silly extravagances of the poor.
--William Feather

There’s no place like home for the 15 British sailors returned as an “Easter Gift” from Iran. Isn’t that like the Easter Bunny stealing your Snickers bars to give you back chocolate Easter eggs?

Nothing like a homecoming of hostages to relieve the tension in the oil markets, and boost Wall Street, too. There could be another, fashionable, dividend from the whole affair.
Prediction: Just in time for Summer, the Iranian sartorial look: He’s in a two piece suit with open collar shirt; She looks like a bag lady lost in a Where’s Waldo? cartoon.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Cars, Cranks, Kooks and Clues

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.
--Ronald Reagan

That’s a clue behind the move to remove “The Global War on Terror” from official government language. Democrat policy wonks are circulating a memo to replace the euphemistic phrase with more precise language, like “The War in Iraq” or “The War in The Horn of Africa…”

Wonder if they will next ban a similar phrase that’s making the rounds—Global Warming—and replace it with “Too Many Hydrocarbons,” “Too Many Particulates per-Million that Trap Heat in the Atmosphere,” or “Too Many Lights on in Al’s House,” and “Too much Hot Air Emanating from Washington?”


By the way, I am convinced a major contributor to alleged man-made warming of the atmosphere--at least over The District of Columbia--is the obscene settings of thermostats in government buildings. In my visit to DC last month, ALL government buildings were absolutely sweltering inside.

The 94th annual meeting of the New York Coal Trade Association was held last week, and one of the guest speakers was the founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation, Bob Murray. He's got cojones and enough starch in his shorts to challenge the militancy of the climate control movement that he believes is threatening our economic future.


Murray regards Global Warm-monger Al Gore as "the shaman of global doom and gloom," saying the ecologically hyperactive former veep is "more dangerous than his global warming." Murray believes he is speaking for hundreds of other small business owners he characterizes as "the little guy that nobody cares about."


Despite odds stacked against him, Bob Murray is forging on, and says, "Some wealthy elitists in our country, who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy."


Quoting Murray from an article published in the NY Sun: "For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."


Preach on, brother.

Storm Forecaster Bill Gray and his warren of weather researchers say there’s a 74% chance of a major hurricane hitting the US coast this season, and expects 17 named-storms—5 of them severe this year. Gray says the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should be "very active.”


Isn't that what they said last year?


First there was the million-dollar pizza in New York…now a restaurant in China has forked over $75,000 for a yellow-gold Tiger Fish, which is about three-times the going rate. The entrĂ©e will be sold for over $15,000 per kilogram--at a loss of $10,000 per kg.

The fish is known in Chinese as “Golden Cash Tiger Fish.” Sorry, Charlie.

Toyota's sales figures for March were up 11.7%... Honda ahead 7.3%...DaimlerChrysler's sales, on the other hand, were down 4%, and Ford's March sales were down 9%.

Anybody got a better idea?

Monday, April 02, 2007

By the Buy...

Buy a paper?
The going bid for the LA Times and other media outlets owned by The Tribune Company is $34/share, as offered by Los Angeles billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, which swooped in front of Sam Zell’s $33/share offer.

Zell was asked by the Tribune’s board to sweeten his offer over the weekend...he did. He won.

Buy an election?
NY Senator Hillary Clinton is the leader in the first round of fund raising by those who would be king—or queen—notching $36-million for her war chest…including a $10-million transfer from her senate campaign funds.

Buy a Beatle?
Apple
and EMI are set to make a major announcement this morning that could open the gates for downloading Beatles music through Apple’s iTunes stores without the controversial Digital Rights Management (DRM) software.

I suppose that's a big deal.
All my Beatles music is already on my iPod...recorded from my personal collection.