To contact us Click HERE
On Thursday, December 6 at 7 pm, the Warren Twp Library will host Trenton attorney and former state assemblyman, John W. Hartmann who has written an engaging, humorous and most unusual memoir called “Jacket”, where he dishes out amusing anecdotes from his life in law and politics. Through Hartmann’s irreverent humor, he puts a human face on the dysfunctional New Jersey justice system. Hartmann’s self-deprecating wit and keen eye for all things absurd and ironic makes “Jacket” a compelling read for “Law and Order” fans. The prestigious Kirkus Review praised “Jacket” saying: "[Hartmann's] reflections are entertainingly scattershot, nimbly jumping from one impossibly absurd scenario to another, capturing the surreal wheels of justice in motion. A keen, lighthearted look at the human side of law".
Pre-registration is required to attend this free program. To register online please go to http://bit.ly/Q8yYDW. Patrons with further questions may call 908-754-5554 ext 64 or visit our website www.sclsnj.org. The Warren Twp Library, located at 42 Mountain Boulevard, Warren, is a branch of the Somerset County Library System. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, Manville, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Twp and Watchung.
31 Aralık 2012 Pazartesi
The Bridgewater Library presents Carol's Creative Chocolatez
To contact us Click HERE
Carol's Creative Chocolatez
Carol's Creative Chocolatez
Saturday, December 15th at 3:00 pm
Library Meeting Rooms A,B,C1 Vogt Dr
Bridgewater, NJ
908-526-4016
www.sclsnj.org
Back by popular demand and just in time for the Holidays- Be sure to sign up to learn the history of cacao and the steps needed to transform it into delicious chocolate. Enjoy lots of scrumptious samples and take a look at some of Carol's award winning edible chocolate paintings.
This program is FREE, however you must register to attend. Click on this link to sign up: http://bit.ly/VqDnFd or stop by the Adult Reference Desk or call us 908-526-4016 x 105.
Patrons with further questions can call the Bridgewater Library at (908)526-4016 or visit the website at http://www.sclsnj.org. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, Manville, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.
Fit 4 Kids @ Bridgewater Library
To contact us Click HERE
Fun and Exercise for Kids
December 13th
4:30pm
Bridgewater Library
1 Vogt Drive
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
908-526-4016 ext. 126
www.sclsnj.org
When kids think of healthy food, a single word usually comes to mind: YUCK! But, just because certain foods are good for us doesn't mean they have to taste like cardboard!
Join Muscle Mike and Soccer Sue on Thursday, December 13th at 4:30 pm as they teach us about “good foods that are good for us." We'll have a great time learning and tasting foods that taste great, fuel us up, and make us feel like a million bucks! We'll need that fuel too, as we get our heart rates going with a little light, fun exercise that children can do everyday to ensure they’re healthy for the rest of their lives!
This program is open to children (ages 3-8) and their families. You may register for this program by clicking here.
Patrons with further questions can call the Bridgewater Library at (908) 526-4016 ext. 126 or visit our website at www.sclsnj.org. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, Manville, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township, and Watchung.
Fun and Exercise for Kids
December 13th
4:30pm
Bridgewater Library
1 Vogt Drive
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
908-526-4016 ext. 126
www.sclsnj.org
When kids think of healthy food, a single word usually comes to mind: YUCK! But, just because certain foods are good for us doesn't mean they have to taste like cardboard!
Join Muscle Mike and Soccer Sue on Thursday, December 13th at 4:30 pm as they teach us about “good foods that are good for us." We'll have a great time learning and tasting foods that taste great, fuel us up, and make us feel like a million bucks! We'll need that fuel too, as we get our heart rates going with a little light, fun exercise that children can do everyday to ensure they’re healthy for the rest of their lives!
This program is open to children (ages 3-8) and their families. You may register for this program by clicking here.
Patrons with further questions can call the Bridgewater Library at (908) 526-4016 ext. 126 or visit our website at www.sclsnj.org. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, Manville, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township, and Watchung.
Hillsborough Public Library presents: Seasons - Music in the West Wing
To contact us Click HERE
Join us in the West Wing of the Hillsborough Public Library as the musical group Seasons creates an exciting fusion of Celtic, folk, and original holiday music, resulting in a sound that is truly unique!
Thursday, December 13th at 7 pm for all ages
The Hillsborough Public Library is located at 379 South Branch Road, Hillsborough, NJ
Light refreshments will be served!
This program is sponsored by the Hillsborough Library Advisory Board.
Register NOW, in person, at our website www.sclsnj.org, or call 908 369-2200 ext 12. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, Manville, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.
Join us in the West Wing of the Hillsborough Public Library as the musical group Seasons creates an exciting fusion of Celtic, folk, and original holiday music, resulting in a sound that is truly unique!
Thursday, December 13th at 7 pm for all ages
The Hillsborough Public Library is located at 379 South Branch Road, Hillsborough, NJ
Light refreshments will be served!
This program is sponsored by the Hillsborough Library Advisory Board.
Register NOW, in person, at our website www.sclsnj.org, or call 908 369-2200 ext 12. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, Manville, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.
The Bridgewater Library presents two FREE concerts
To contact us Click HERE
Bridgewater Library
1 Vogt Drive
Bridgewater, NJ
908-526-4016
www.sclsnj.org
Mree
Friday, December 28th at 7:30 pm
Mree is an emerging indie folk singer/songwriter from NJ whose music has drawn the attention of music industry professionals including Grammy Award Winning Artist Bon Iver (Justin Vernon), who recently shared one of her music videos with his fans and followers. She is a skilled multi-instrumentalist whose voice is often described as “angelic” while her lyrics portray a depth well beyond her eighteen years of age.
Kim Yarson
Friday, January 4th at 7:30 pm
Kim Yarson is a talented singer, musician and song writer who has a wonderful band to support her. She truly loves an audience that is open to originals and will even throw in a few cover songs that will get the audience singing along.
Be sure to join us for these FREE concerts, no registration necessary.
Patrons with further questions can call the Bridgewater Library at (908)526-4016 or visit the website at http://www.sclsnj.org. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, Manville, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.
The Friends Concert series continues at the Bridgewater Library. Shake off the winter chill with these local artists!
Bridgewater Library
1 Vogt Drive
Bridgewater, NJ
908-526-4016
www.sclsnj.org
Mree
Friday, December 28th at 7:30 pm
Mree is an emerging indie folk singer/songwriter from NJ whose music has drawn the attention of music industry professionals including Grammy Award Winning Artist Bon Iver (Justin Vernon), who recently shared one of her music videos with his fans and followers. She is a skilled multi-instrumentalist whose voice is often described as “angelic” while her lyrics portray a depth well beyond her eighteen years of age.
Kim Yarson
Friday, January 4th at 7:30 pm
Kim Yarson is a talented singer, musician and song writer who has a wonderful band to support her. She truly loves an audience that is open to originals and will even throw in a few cover songs that will get the audience singing along.
Be sure to join us for these FREE concerts, no registration necessary.
Patrons with further questions can call the Bridgewater Library at (908)526-4016 or visit the website at http://www.sclsnj.org. The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, Manville, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.
27 Aralık 2012 Perşembe
Ben Stein on religion and the breakdown of society!***
To contact us Click HERE
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Ben Stein provides his thoughts about religion and society in America today!
***If you are anything like me, merely seeing the name Ben Stein in the subject-line would normally move you to click delete before opening an email or never bothering to click a link to open an article.
The commentary he provides here, however, is well worth the read!
My confession:
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat...
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school... The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.. And we said okay..
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing yet?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Source: Email
Ben Stein provides his thoughts about religion and society in America today!
***If you are anything like me, merely seeing the name Ben Stein in the subject-line would normally move you to click delete before opening an email or never bothering to click a link to open an article.
The commentary he provides here, however, is well worth the read!
My confession:
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat...
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school... The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.. And we said okay..
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing yet?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Source: Email
You, me and the U.S. economy!
To contact us Click HERE
Tweet
Economically speaking, is this what the year 2013 has in store for us?
Christmas and Hanukkah 2012 are now past which means it's time to look ahead to what the year 2013 will mean for you, me and the nation's economy!
Taking a quick swipe off of the top of my head, the United States faces any number of pressing economic issues that need to be addressed in 2013.
Of course it is how these issues will be addressed by Washington lawmakers and Federal Reserve policy makers that is the trillion dollar question which may help to carve the economic (and therefore social) path for the country going forward.
Two major areas of economic concern!
One area of concern is of course is the impending Fiscal Cliff*. I had prognosticated long ago that the simple plan of Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress was to fly over the edge purely for partisan political purposes ("Presenting the Democrat plan for going over the fiscal cliff!").
While this is of course no way to govern that is where the nation now finds itself. In the grips of self-serving politicians more concerned with their reelection down the road than with the good of the nation now and far into the future.
Potentially worse than going over the cliff might be some politically palatable compromise that at the end of the day will only serve to exacerbate the fiscal condition that the country will find itself in!
The second, and what to my mind may be even a more dire fiscal flashpoint, is the level of the federal debt (now $16 trillion plus) plus $1 trillion a year budget deficits and what will occur when Ben Bernanke ultimately can no longer hold interest rates near zero.
Oh he may want to hold them down but sometimes market forces may be even greater than the power of the man behind the curtain at the Federal Reserve!
Rising U.S. interest rates may happen for any number of reasons including the potential that the domestic economy and the employment situation improves and/or inflation becomes an issue.
Failing that, it could be something even more problematic such as the confidence of investors in the ability for the U.S. to pay waning.
Either way when you take this amount of debt (and the number is only going to increase) that has a short-term average maturity in the vicinity of 5 years or so and you bump up the interest rate just 1% the impact on the federal budget and by extension the federal deficit would be astronomical.
Imagine if the number was instead 2 or 3%.
At some point, as we have seen in nations like Greece, investor perception ultimately becomes investor reality and they will demand more of a return to compensate them for what is perceived to be, or that actually may be, greater risk.
Back on December 12 after listening to Fed Chairman Bernanke speak to the press I was moved to write an article I titled "Ben Bernanke: Snake oil salesman!"
The reason I chose this title was because the good Chairman who was raised in the well-respected Ivory Tower environs of academia seemed to be floundering.
He seemed to be at a loss for what to do beyond doing more of what he has already done. These are moves that, while providing liquidity for the stock market to rise while at the same time not improving the overall economy, are fraught with a plethora of potential unintended consequences the scope of which are not known.
And they are not known because the United States economy post-2008 has been the subject of a grand laboratory experiment whose theoretical outcomes seem to work out fine in the economic back-rooms of academia that are manned by Ph.D's, but that in the real world no one can really know for sure!
Add to all of this the potential impact of Obamacare, the EU financial crisis and the economic malaise of Japan and China and 2013 sets up to be a very interesting year.
Let's just hope that someone shows up who actually knows what they're doing!
*Infographic of the impact from going over the Fiscal Cliff here.
Economically speaking, is this what the year 2013 has in store for us?
Christmas and Hanukkah 2012 are now past which means it's time to look ahead to what the year 2013 will mean for you, me and the nation's economy!
Taking a quick swipe off of the top of my head, the United States faces any number of pressing economic issues that need to be addressed in 2013.
Of course it is how these issues will be addressed by Washington lawmakers and Federal Reserve policy makers that is the trillion dollar question which may help to carve the economic (and therefore social) path for the country going forward.
Two major areas of economic concern!
One area of concern is of course is the impending Fiscal Cliff*. I had prognosticated long ago that the simple plan of Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress was to fly over the edge purely for partisan political purposes ("Presenting the Democrat plan for going over the fiscal cliff!").
While this is of course no way to govern that is where the nation now finds itself. In the grips of self-serving politicians more concerned with their reelection down the road than with the good of the nation now and far into the future.
Potentially worse than going over the cliff might be some politically palatable compromise that at the end of the day will only serve to exacerbate the fiscal condition that the country will find itself in!
The second, and what to my mind may be even a more dire fiscal flashpoint, is the level of the federal debt (now $16 trillion plus) plus $1 trillion a year budget deficits and what will occur when Ben Bernanke ultimately can no longer hold interest rates near zero.
Oh he may want to hold them down but sometimes market forces may be even greater than the power of the man behind the curtain at the Federal Reserve!
Rising U.S. interest rates may happen for any number of reasons including the potential that the domestic economy and the employment situation improves and/or inflation becomes an issue.
Failing that, it could be something even more problematic such as the confidence of investors in the ability for the U.S. to pay waning.
Either way when you take this amount of debt (and the number is only going to increase) that has a short-term average maturity in the vicinity of 5 years or so and you bump up the interest rate just 1% the impact on the federal budget and by extension the federal deficit would be astronomical.
Imagine if the number was instead 2 or 3%.
At some point, as we have seen in nations like Greece, investor perception ultimately becomes investor reality and they will demand more of a return to compensate them for what is perceived to be, or that actually may be, greater risk.
Back on December 12 after listening to Fed Chairman Bernanke speak to the press I was moved to write an article I titled "Ben Bernanke: Snake oil salesman!"
The reason I chose this title was because the good Chairman who was raised in the well-respected Ivory Tower environs of academia seemed to be floundering.
He seemed to be at a loss for what to do beyond doing more of what he has already done. These are moves that, while providing liquidity for the stock market to rise while at the same time not improving the overall economy, are fraught with a plethora of potential unintended consequences the scope of which are not known.
And they are not known because the United States economy post-2008 has been the subject of a grand laboratory experiment whose theoretical outcomes seem to work out fine in the economic back-rooms of academia that are manned by Ph.D's, but that in the real world no one can really know for sure!
Add to all of this the potential impact of Obamacare, the EU financial crisis and the economic malaise of Japan and China and 2013 sets up to be a very interesting year.
Let's just hope that someone shows up who actually knows what they're doing!
*Infographic of the impact from going over the Fiscal Cliff here.
Watcher's Council Nominations: "The marshal calls for a faster pace of play" Edition!
To contact us Click HERE
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President Obama is being asked by the "course marshal", aka the American people, for a faster pace of play concerning the looming Fiscal Cliff!
Given the fact that Barack Obama is fiddling with one more round of golf in Hawaii today as the fuse burning towards the economic bomb otherwise known as the Fiscal Cliff moves closer and closer to ignition, a reference to a golf course marshal imploring quicker play is highly appropriate!
Because in reality the problem is that there is no sense of urgency indicated by the actions of any of the players involved in these "negotiations" that are, in effect, not taking place at all.
The President will be back in Washington some time tonight with Senators possibly tomorrow and members of the House at some point after that.
A little pathetic if you ask me but nobody really asked me!
But, I suppose that vacation is after all vacation in Washington although truth be told most Americans wouldn't know much about that these days!
Now on to...
The Watcher's Council
These are the Watcher's Council nominations for the week of December 24, 2012!
For those who may be enjoying their first Watcher's Council experience, it is a group that consists of some of the top conservative bloggers from around the world.
A group that The Political Commentator is extremely proud to have been asked to be part of!
Each week members select and submit an article of their own creation in addition to one article from a non-council blog they find to be particularly topical and important.
While you may not always agree with what you read, that alone may make the experience that much more valuable!
Once the submissions have been received at an undisclosed location hidden somewhere on the Left Coast of the United States, the Watchers Council members then individually vote for their favorites.
Those votes are protected and held by outside auditing firm Arthur Andersen until such time as they are counted and a winner named for the Grand Prize.
This Grand Prize consists of the appreciation of ones peers.
In the end though, we all win because of the range of information and important analysis received on the critical issues of the day.
In a nutshell, the Watcher's Council is the ultimate conservative blog aggregator!
So without further ado the article nominations for the week of December 24, 2012 are...?
President Obama is being asked by the "course marshal", aka the American people, for a faster pace of play concerning the looming Fiscal Cliff!
Given the fact that Barack Obama is fiddling with one more round of golf in Hawaii today as the fuse burning towards the economic bomb otherwise known as the Fiscal Cliff moves closer and closer to ignition, a reference to a golf course marshal imploring quicker play is highly appropriate!
Because in reality the problem is that there is no sense of urgency indicated by the actions of any of the players involved in these "negotiations" that are, in effect, not taking place at all.
The President will be back in Washington some time tonight with Senators possibly tomorrow and members of the House at some point after that.
A little pathetic if you ask me but nobody really asked me!
But, I suppose that vacation is after all vacation in Washington although truth be told most Americans wouldn't know much about that these days!
Now on to...
The Watcher's Council
These are the Watcher's Council nominations for the week of December 24, 2012!
For those who may be enjoying their first Watcher's Council experience, it is a group that consists of some of the top conservative bloggers from around the world.
A group that The Political Commentator is extremely proud to have been asked to be part of!
Each week members select and submit an article of their own creation in addition to one article from a non-council blog they find to be particularly topical and important.
While you may not always agree with what you read, that alone may make the experience that much more valuable!
Once the submissions have been received at an undisclosed location hidden somewhere on the Left Coast of the United States, the Watchers Council members then individually vote for their favorites.
Those votes are protected and held by outside auditing firm Arthur Andersen until such time as they are counted and a winner named for the Grand Prize.
This Grand Prize consists of the appreciation of ones peers.
In the end though, we all win because of the range of information and important analysis received on the critical issues of the day.
In a nutshell, the Watcher's Council is the ultimate conservative blog aggregator!
So without further ado the article nominations for the week of December 24, 2012 are...?
Council Submissions
- Joshuapundit-A Game Change In Syria
- The Noisy Room – Big Business and Marxist Collusion – Bourgeois Socialism
- The Political Commentator – If your employee did these 10 things, would you fire them?
- The Independent Sentinel – Gun Control Move Is Political Theater – Here’s Proof
- Simply Jews – The Guardian report on Christmas in Bethlehem
- VA Right! - Virulent ‘Pro-Choice’ Rhetoric, ADHD Drugs, Video Games to Blame for School Shootings
- The Right Planet – A Real Plan for Recovery …
- The Glittering Eye -Do We Really Want Less Work or Investment?
- The Razor – The Conscience Pangs of a Drone Pilot
- Rhymes With Right – A Silly Anti-Gunnite Argument On Second Amendment Rights That Needs Dismissing
- The Colossus of Rhodey – Dopey WNJ Letter of the Week
- The Mellow Jihadi – Suicide Strikes the Navy, SEAL Commander Down
- Bookworm Room – The Leftist delusion of a world without danger
- Gay Patriot – Larry Elder’s message to the GOP: Explain how Democratic policies hurt the poor
- GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Best Chick For The Gig
Honorable Mentions
- Right Truth – The Worst Woman of 2012
- Ask Marion – Simpler Times – A Groetzmeier Christmas
- Crazy Bald Guy – My review of “Brave”
- Wolf Howling – The 2nd Day Of Christmas
- The Pirate’s Cove – Campaign 2012: The Titan of Entitlements
Non-Council Submissions
- American Thinker/Anne Lieberman – Against Nothingness submitted by Joshuapundit
- Larry Corriea/Monster Hunter Nation –An opinion on gun control submitted by The Noisy Room
- Sultan Knish -The Perfect Prison submitted by The Political Commentator
- Victor Davis Hanson – Let the Real Fat Cats Pay Their Fair Share submitted by The Independent Sentinel
- The Socialism of Fools – The New Laocoon submitted by Simply Jews
- Marathon Pundit – Chicago Teachers Union offers class cutting strategies to members submitted by VA Right!
- Thomas Sowell – Gun Control Ignorance submitted by The Right Planet
- J.D. Tuccille/Reason.com – Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Marketssubmitted by The Glittering Eye
- The Patriot Perspective –David Gregory Violates DC Gun Law On National TV —– Update:CNN’s Don Lemon Admits To Breaking Gun Laws, Too? submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
- Seraphic Secret-Jew Without a Gun submitted by Bookworm Room
- Ann Althouse -Scenery chewing in the Theater of Outrage over Wayne LaPierre’s unremarkable news conference. submitted by Gay Patriot
- Taki’s Magazine –10 Facts About Brooklyn Natives submitted by The Razor
- Urban Grounds – Does Anybody at the Texas Tribune Even Own a Gun? submitted by Rhymes with Right
- The Delaware Libertarian – The Inquisition of Mr. Marvel submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
- Real Clear Markets/Bill Frezza – Clement Moore Revisited: Twas the Night Before Fiscliffsubmitted by The Watcher
- Boston Globe/ Michael Kranish – The Story Behind Mitt Romney’s Loss In The Presidential Campaign submitted by The Watcher
Chart of federal income taxes if we plunge off of the "Fiscal Cliff"!
To contact us Click HERE
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Congress and the President make their way back to Washington today, fresh off of their taxpayer funded vacation!
Will they begin serious work doing the peoples business or continue to play the dangerous game of partisan politics at the expense of the American people?
And is this episode of the game merely a prelude to the even more serious one that will begin in a couple of weeks when the debt ceiling discussions begin!
Unfortunately I think that we already know the answers to these questions.
Now if you've been wondering why there's so much fuss revolving around the fiscal cliff negotiations, this chart of federal tax liability if we plunge over the edge will tell you the story!
New federal tax liability on the other side of the fiscal cliff!
Source: New York Post
H/T The rightscoop
 |
| Some members of Congress photographed arriving back in Washington from Christmas vacation! |
Will they begin serious work doing the peoples business or continue to play the dangerous game of partisan politics at the expense of the American people?
And is this episode of the game merely a prelude to the even more serious one that will begin in a couple of weeks when the debt ceiling discussions begin!
Unfortunately I think that we already know the answers to these questions.
Now if you've been wondering why there's so much fuss revolving around the fiscal cliff negotiations, this chart of federal tax liability if we plunge over the edge will tell you the story!
New federal tax liability on the other side of the fiscal cliff!
Source: New York Post
H/T The rightscoop
Fiscal Cliff: Harry Reid and Democrats win the PR battle yet again! (Video)
To contact us Click HERE
Tweet
Harry Reid rushes back to the Senate to disparage, on the record, the Republicans not yet back in town!
It was a despicable flim-flam and misdirection play that was put into motion by the Senate leader this morning that had one purpose.
That was to try and sway the minds of the American people into believing that any trip taken over the edge of the fiscal cliff is 100% attributable to the GOP!
Bottom-line: While not accurate it was sheer marketing genius and further proof that the PR arm of the Republican Party tasked with winning the hearts and minds of the American people absolutely sucks! (Fiscal Cliff: "Hey Boehner, your marketing sucks!" (Poll results))
Harry Reid rushes back to the Senate to disparage, on the record, the Republicans not yet back in town!
It was a despicable flim-flam and misdirection play that was put into motion by the Senate leader this morning that had one purpose.
That was to try and sway the minds of the American people into believing that any trip taken over the edge of the fiscal cliff is 100% attributable to the GOP!
Bottom-line: While not accurate it was sheer marketing genius and further proof that the PR arm of the Republican Party tasked with winning the hearts and minds of the American people absolutely sucks! (Fiscal Cliff: "Hey Boehner, your marketing sucks!" (Poll results))
20 Aralık 2012 Perşembe
Ravi Shankar Died
To contact us Click HERE
Godfather of World Music, he is called in the headline. This world renowned artist chose lovely Encinitas as home. Just listening to the video below of Shankar and his also famous daughter, Anoushka, can transport a baby boomer back to the late 60's and early seventies.
Shankar and Harrison playing sitar in Rishikesh, India in 1968:
Shankar and Harrison playing sitar in Rishikesh, India in 1968:
And The Guardian reports:
Shankar not only transcended culture, race and geography but also had no difficulty with the generation gap and the phenomenon of class. The children of the flower-power generation turned a deaf ear to their elders but listened most intently to the stranger on the shore.
Showered with citations and awards, the Indian republic made him a Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India) and Britain made him an honorary knight. In the US he received several doctorates and was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In later years he divided his time between Encinitas, California, and Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, where the Ravi Shankar Institute of Music and the Performing Arts, fully functional by 2003, was the culmination of his lifelong dream. Housed in an elegant pink granite building, it attracts students from all over the world.
He is survived by his second wife, Sukanya, and their daughter Anoushka who, diligently tutored by her father, is a well-known sitar player. He also leaves a daughter, Norah Jones, the Emmy award-winning singer, from an earlier relationship with the concert producer Sue Jones. Shubhendra, his son from his first marriage, predeceased him.
Political Power Shifts Toward Environment
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The perfect follow-up to Bill Nye, the Science Guy's simple Climate Change 101 video earlier today is offering some solutions. We just so happen to have this in our new city mayor, deputy mayor and city council. The KPBS article and radio file spells this out this week. Mayor Teresa Barth is quoted.
The KPBS goes on to say:
The perfect follow-up to Bill Nye, the Science Guy's simple Climate Change 101 video earlier today is offering some solutions. We just so happen to have this in our new city mayor, deputy mayor and city council. The KPBS article and radio file spells this out this week. Mayor Teresa Barth is quoted.“I think that you will see us talking about more environmental issues,” she said, “more sustainability issues.”
The KPBS goes on to say:
One of the Encinitas councilmen who lost his seat was Jerome Stocks. Stocks was the city’s representative on SANDAG, San Diego’s regional planning board. Stocks served as the SANDAG chair and a spokesperson for the region’s 2050 regional transportation plan. That SANDAG plan was recently struck down in court for not meeting the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Barth said she plans to nominate political newcomer Lisa Shaffer to replace Stocks as the city's representative on the SANDAG board, and bring a more environmentally-friendly perspective to regional planning.
Shaffer, who was the top vote getter in the Encinitas City Council election, is an ethics teacher at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management and has worked with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NASA and NOAA.
Killers
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There has been yet another mass shooting, something that now seems to occur on a monthly basis. Every time another tragedy like this occurs, gun advocates make the same arguments about why we can't possibly do anything to restrict the weaponization of our culture. Here's a guide to what they'll be saying in the coming days:
1. Now isn't the time to talk about guns.
We're going to hear this over and over, and not just from gun advocates; Jay Carney said it to White House reporters today. But if we're not going to talk about it now, when are we going to talk about it? After Sandy hit the East Coast, no one said, "Now isn't the time to talk about disaster preparedness; best leave that until it doesn't seem so urgent." When there's a terrorist attack, no one says, "Now isn't the time to talk about terrorism." Now is exactly the time.
2. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Maybe, but people with guns kill many, many more people than they would if they didn't have guns, and guns designed to kill as many people as possible. We don't know if the murderer in Newtown was suffering from a suicidal depression, but many mass shooters in the past were. And guess what? People suffer from suicidal depression everywhere in the world. People get angry and upset everywhere in the world. But there aren't mass shootings every few weeks in England or Costa Rica or Japan, and the reason is that people in those places who have these impulses don't have an easy way to access lethal weapons and unlimited ammunition. But if you want to kill large numbers of people and you happen to be an American, you'll find it easy to do.
3. If only everybody around was armed, an ordinary civilian could take out a mass killer before he got too far.
If that were true, then how come it never happens? The truth is that in a chaotic situation, even highly trained police officers often kill bystanders. The idea that some accountant who spent a few hours at the range would suddenly turn into Jason Bourne and take out the killer without doing more harm than good has no basis in reality.
4. We don't need more laws, we just need to enforce the laws we have.
The people who say this are the same ones who fight to make sure that existing laws are as weak and ineffectual as possible. Our current gun laws are riddled with loopholes and allow people to amass enormous arsenals of military-style weapons with virtually no restrictions.
5. Criminals will always find a way to get guns no matter what measures we take, so what's the point?
The question isn't whether we could snap our fingers and make every gun disappear. It's whether we can make it harder for criminals to get guns, and harder for an unbalanced person with murderous intent to kill so many people. The goal is to reduce violence as much as possible. There's no other problem for which we'd say if we can't solve it completely and forever we shouldn't even try.
6. The Constitution says I have a right to own guns.
Yes it does, but for some reason gun advocates think that the right to bear arms is the only constitutional right that is virtually without limit. You have the right to practice your religion, but not if your religion involves human sacrifice. You have the right to free speech, but you can still be prosecuted for incitement or conspiracy, and you can be sued for libel. Every right is subject to limitation when it begins to threaten others, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that even though there is an individual right to gun ownership, the government can put reasonable restrictions on that right.
And we all know that if this shooter turns out to have a Muslim name, plenty of Americans, including plenty of gun owners, will be more than happy to give up all kinds of rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Have the government read my email? Have my cell phone company turn over my call records? Check which books I'm taking out of the library? Make me take my shoes off before getting on a plane, just because some idiot tried to blow up his sneakers? Sure, do what you've got to do. But don't make it harder to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition, because if we couldn't do that we'd no longer be free.
7. Widespread gun ownership is a guarantee against tyranny.
If that had anything to do with contemporary life, then mature democracies would be constantly overthrown by despots. But they aren't. We shouldn't write laws based on the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.
8. Guns are a part of American culture.
Indeed they are, but so are a lot of things, and that tells us nothing about whether they're good or bad and how we want to treat them going forward. Slavery was a part of American culture for a couple of hundred years, but eventually we decided it had to go.
9. The American people don't want more gun control.
The truth is that when public opinion polls have asked Americans about specific measures, the public is in favor of a much more restrictive gun regime than we have now. Significant majorities would like to see the assault weapons ban reinstated, mandatory licensing and training for all gun owners, significant waiting periods for purchases, and host of other restrictions (there are more details here). In many cases, gun owners themselves support more restrictions than we currently have.
10. Having movie theaters and schools full of kids periodically shot up is just a price we should be willing to pay if it means I get to play with guns and pretend I'm Wyatt Earp.
OK, that's actually an argument gun advocates don't make. But it's the truth that lies beneath all their other arguments. All that we suffer because of the proliferation of guns—these horrifying tragedies, the 30,000 Americans who are killed every year with guns—for gun advocates, it's unfortunate, but it's a price they're willing to [have others] pay. If only they'd have the guts to say it.
Postscript: The other vital conversation we should be having in this country that goes beyond guns. This is a heartbreaking story, 'I Am Adam Lanza's Mother' - Let's talk mental illness.
Update: 12:30 pm, Sunday - Add your name to ask the Obama Administration to immediately address the issue of gun control through introduction of legislation in congress.
Ten Arguments Gun Advocates Make, and Why They're Wrong
by PAUL WALDMAN 12/15/12 in The American Prospect Post (in total) A guide to the debate we'll be having, or at least we ought to have.There has been yet another mass shooting, something that now seems to occur on a monthly basis. Every time another tragedy like this occurs, gun advocates make the same arguments about why we can't possibly do anything to restrict the weaponization of our culture. Here's a guide to what they'll be saying in the coming days:
1. Now isn't the time to talk about guns.
We're going to hear this over and over, and not just from gun advocates; Jay Carney said it to White House reporters today. But if we're not going to talk about it now, when are we going to talk about it? After Sandy hit the East Coast, no one said, "Now isn't the time to talk about disaster preparedness; best leave that until it doesn't seem so urgent." When there's a terrorist attack, no one says, "Now isn't the time to talk about terrorism." Now is exactly the time.
2. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Maybe, but people with guns kill many, many more people than they would if they didn't have guns, and guns designed to kill as many people as possible. We don't know if the murderer in Newtown was suffering from a suicidal depression, but many mass shooters in the past were. And guess what? People suffer from suicidal depression everywhere in the world. People get angry and upset everywhere in the world. But there aren't mass shootings every few weeks in England or Costa Rica or Japan, and the reason is that people in those places who have these impulses don't have an easy way to access lethal weapons and unlimited ammunition. But if you want to kill large numbers of people and you happen to be an American, you'll find it easy to do.
3. If only everybody around was armed, an ordinary civilian could take out a mass killer before he got too far.
If that were true, then how come it never happens? The truth is that in a chaotic situation, even highly trained police officers often kill bystanders. The idea that some accountant who spent a few hours at the range would suddenly turn into Jason Bourne and take out the killer without doing more harm than good has no basis in reality.
4. We don't need more laws, we just need to enforce the laws we have.
The people who say this are the same ones who fight to make sure that existing laws are as weak and ineffectual as possible. Our current gun laws are riddled with loopholes and allow people to amass enormous arsenals of military-style weapons with virtually no restrictions.
5. Criminals will always find a way to get guns no matter what measures we take, so what's the point?
The question isn't whether we could snap our fingers and make every gun disappear. It's whether we can make it harder for criminals to get guns, and harder for an unbalanced person with murderous intent to kill so many people. The goal is to reduce violence as much as possible. There's no other problem for which we'd say if we can't solve it completely and forever we shouldn't even try.
6. The Constitution says I have a right to own guns.
Yes it does, but for some reason gun advocates think that the right to bear arms is the only constitutional right that is virtually without limit. You have the right to practice your religion, but not if your religion involves human sacrifice. You have the right to free speech, but you can still be prosecuted for incitement or conspiracy, and you can be sued for libel. Every right is subject to limitation when it begins to threaten others, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that even though there is an individual right to gun ownership, the government can put reasonable restrictions on that right.
And we all know that if this shooter turns out to have a Muslim name, plenty of Americans, including plenty of gun owners, will be more than happy to give up all kinds of rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Have the government read my email? Have my cell phone company turn over my call records? Check which books I'm taking out of the library? Make me take my shoes off before getting on a plane, just because some idiot tried to blow up his sneakers? Sure, do what you've got to do. But don't make it harder to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition, because if we couldn't do that we'd no longer be free.
7. Widespread gun ownership is a guarantee against tyranny.
If that had anything to do with contemporary life, then mature democracies would be constantly overthrown by despots. But they aren't. We shouldn't write laws based on the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.
8. Guns are a part of American culture.
Indeed they are, but so are a lot of things, and that tells us nothing about whether they're good or bad and how we want to treat them going forward. Slavery was a part of American culture for a couple of hundred years, but eventually we decided it had to go.
9. The American people don't want more gun control.
The truth is that when public opinion polls have asked Americans about specific measures, the public is in favor of a much more restrictive gun regime than we have now. Significant majorities would like to see the assault weapons ban reinstated, mandatory licensing and training for all gun owners, significant waiting periods for purchases, and host of other restrictions (there are more details here). In many cases, gun owners themselves support more restrictions than we currently have.
10. Having movie theaters and schools full of kids periodically shot up is just a price we should be willing to pay if it means I get to play with guns and pretend I'm Wyatt Earp.
OK, that's actually an argument gun advocates don't make. But it's the truth that lies beneath all their other arguments. All that we suffer because of the proliferation of guns—these horrifying tragedies, the 30,000 Americans who are killed every year with guns—for gun advocates, it's unfortunate, but it's a price they're willing to [have others] pay. If only they'd have the guts to say it.
Postscript: The other vital conversation we should be having in this country that goes beyond guns. This is a heartbreaking story, 'I Am Adam Lanza's Mother' - Let's talk mental illness.
Update: 12:30 pm, Sunday - Add your name to ask the Obama Administration to immediately address the issue of gun control through introduction of legislation in congress.
Fracking Comes to California
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Fracking being a real danger to water table safety and purity is becoming well known, in part due to Josh Fox's movie Gasland. But, if that isn't threat enough, the process causing earthquakes sounds extremely dangerous to this non-scientist.
Via Salon
The Federal Government auctioned off 18,000 acres of leased land in Central California.
C&L's Karoli writes of the auction this week,
Oil and Gas Industry Prepare Smear Campaign Against Matt Damon Flick "Promised Land"
But my primary reason for adding this story about a fictional place is what has the oil and gas industry giants so spooked and what our community is actively pursuing - citizen participation in decision making. This film sounds like a source of inspiration even if there are no shale fields directly under our feet. Whatever the resource or threat to climate change we must be vigilant.
Fracking being a real danger to water table safety and purity is becoming well known, in part due to Josh Fox's movie Gasland. But, if that isn't threat enough, the process causing earthquakes sounds extremely dangerous to this non-scientist.
Via Salon
The Federal Government auctioned off 18,000 acres of leased land in Central California.
"Eight different groups — including oil companies — bid for the leases involving 15 parcels of land up for auction in rural stretches of Monterey, San Benito and Fresno counties, Bureau of Land Management spokesman David Christy said. The agency plans to announce the winners within 24 hours.Via Crooks & Liars
Numerous environmental groups who saw the auction as a sign that California is next in line for an oil and gas boom protested outside the auction in Sacramento, with some activists donning hazmat suits.
The auction attracted a normal turnout of bidders, and about half the parcels went for just $2.50 an acre, much less than the typical price in nearby Kern County, an oil-rich basin along a mountain range north of Los Angeles."
C&L's Karoli writes of the auction this week,
There were protests, of course, but that didn't really stop anything. Similarly, the regulations around fracking are so loose that having to get an additional permit is just part of the cost of getting richer to these oil barons. Worse, fracking regulations aren't even finalized yet, and were just pushed back yet again. Until demand lessens, they're going to be able to destroy the environment and hasten climate change. This needs to be as high of a priority as Medicare and union membership. The oligarchs will not be satisfied until they have exhausted or stolen every resource on the planet.Related Story in the Cultural Environment
Oil and Gas Industry Prepare Smear Campaign Against Matt Damon Flick "Promised Land"
This is a worthy read, both for the orchestrated huge money tactics that are being rolled out by fossil fuel industry and for the story being told by this Hollywood film. (It is still difficult to believe that prisons are not filled with these fossil fuel industry decision makers, bribery agents and hucksters.)Next month Focus Features releases Matt Damon’s new movie and the oil and gas industry is worried sick about it.The movie, Promised Land , is about a Pennsylvania farm town deciding whether to go forward with shale gas drilling after a team of landmen arrives in the area.
But my primary reason for adding this story about a fictional place is what has the oil and gas industry giants so spooked and what our community is actively pursuing - citizen participation in decision making. This film sounds like a source of inspiration even if there are no shale fields directly under our feet. Whatever the resource or threat to climate change we must be vigilant.
Despite the industry's faux-outrage and attempts to stir up hype, the Damon movie is not anti-fracking or a propaganda piece. The film offers up a clear-eyed look at economic hardships faced in many rural communities.It also makes a simple point: with so much at stake, shouldn't communities have a candid, informed discussion about the risks and benefits of oil and gas drilling?
About the Sand . . .
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Hard to believe that this is indeed sand.
This week Logan Jenkins wrote a startlingly informative post on sand. Specifically he writes about Scripps scientists stake out Cardiff beach to measure sands of time. His source is Bob Guza, Scripps Institution of Oceanography professor and the tour includes Cardiff State Beach where a doctoral student (unamed by Jenkins) works in "an industrial sized container" in front of a "bank of computer terminals." Here is the best chunk of Jenkins' latest:
Hard to believe that this is indeed sand. This week Logan Jenkins wrote a startlingly informative post on sand. Specifically he writes about Scripps scientists stake out Cardiff beach to measure sands of time. His source is Bob Guza, Scripps Institution of Oceanography professor and the tour includes Cardiff State Beach where a doctoral student (unamed by Jenkins) works in "an industrial sized container" in front of a "bank of computer terminals." Here is the best chunk of Jenkins' latest:
The goal of the research project — led by Guza and one of his former star pupils, Reinhard Flick, Scripps researcher and staff oceanographer for the California Department of Boating and Waterways — is simple: Watch the sand. Carefully.This sounds so rational I can hardly believe it's real. And, it looks to me like the beach sand replenishment is yet another Stocks & Bond legacy that is being questioned.
The technology they’re using is a step up from Radio Shack: a laser scanner that collects data points multiple times a second; acoustic Doppler velocimeter; bathymetric mapping; and a bunch of other sci-fi stuff.
Guza, his love of sand gushing, says it’s insane that we spend millions on periodic beach “nourishment” while less than .01 percent of that money goes to measuring what happens to the sand once it’s dropped off.
[ . . . ] “Our beaches are changing,” Guza says. “We can either monitor them and have a good idea what they’re doing and what happens when we try to fix something, or we can not watch them and do stuff randomly and not know what works.”
16 Aralık 2012 Pazar
Sign the White House petition to help get Jon Hammar released from a Mexico prison!
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Help to get the Obama administration engaged in this process!
Read this article and then sign the petition here.
Ex-Marine Jon Hammar is facing fifteen years in a Mexican jail for bringing an antique gun with papers into Mexico. His parents are desperate to get him out before he is killed.
Jon Hammar came back from Fallujah searching for peace from the horrors of war and found it in surfing. It was that love of the surf that brought him to Mexico with his great-grandfather’s antique rifle, a glorified BB gun. He had papers for the gun and it is not the type of gun that violates Mexican law.
It didn’t matter to the Mexican authorities who lodged serious gun charges against him.
Hammar is currently chained to a bed in a Mexican prison controlled by the vicious Zeta cartel. When he first arrived at the prison and was placed in the general population, his parents received calls from extortionists demanding money for their son’s safety. U.S. diplomats intervened and he was moved into solitary confinement. The threats stopped but he remains in imminent danger.
The Hammars reached out to Washington, but met with resistance.
“The response from everyone is Mexico is a sovereign nation, and, you know, we can’t force them to do anything, which we know, but this is an outrage,” Olivia Hammar said.
His case has the attention, not of U.S. diplomats, but of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Hammars’ local representative who has vowed to help. (Full article at The Independent Sentinel here)
Read the article at The Independent Sentinel or click here to sign the petition!
Help to get the Obama administration engaged in this process!
Read this article and then sign the petition here.
Ex-Marine Jon Hammar is facing fifteen years in a Mexican jail for bringing an antique gun with papers into Mexico. His parents are desperate to get him out before he is killed.
Jon Hammar came back from Fallujah searching for peace from the horrors of war and found it in surfing. It was that love of the surf that brought him to Mexico with his great-grandfather’s antique rifle, a glorified BB gun. He had papers for the gun and it is not the type of gun that violates Mexican law.
It didn’t matter to the Mexican authorities who lodged serious gun charges against him.
Hammar is currently chained to a bed in a Mexican prison controlled by the vicious Zeta cartel. When he first arrived at the prison and was placed in the general population, his parents received calls from extortionists demanding money for their son’s safety. U.S. diplomats intervened and he was moved into solitary confinement. The threats stopped but he remains in imminent danger.
The Hammars reached out to Washington, but met with resistance.
“The response from everyone is Mexico is a sovereign nation, and, you know, we can’t force them to do anything, which we know, but this is an outrage,” Olivia Hammar said.
His case has the attention, not of U.S. diplomats, but of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Hammars’ local representative who has vowed to help. (Full article at The Independent Sentinel here)
Read the article at The Independent Sentinel or click here to sign the petition!
Fiscal Cliff: "Hey Boehner, your marketing sucks!" (Poll results)
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Fiscal Cliff negotiations: The Presidential PR machine simply works better than Boehner's PR machine!
What do you get when you take one-part presidential bully pulpit, one-part mainstream media compliance and one-part superior political party marketing skills?
You get poll results that reflect an American public focused on the only thing that's being hammered away at them in every speech given by Barack Obama or Democrat Party leadership.
That he is trying to protect the middle class, raise taxes on the rich and that the Congressional Republicans are intransigent in their positions that would ultimately hurt every demographic sector of the American people.
Except of course the rich!
While none of this is true, the truth never seems to really matter to the President or the other members of the Democrat Party.
Truth be told the Congressional Republicans have put raising taxes on the wealthy onto the table in return for some spending reforms.
The dirty little secret in all of this that the President and the Democrat Party don't want the American people to realize is that even with these proposed tax hikes on the rich, that the federal government would raise enough additional revenue to fund itself for about 9 days given the current level of federal spending, debt outstanding and of course with interest rates near 0%.
The bottom-line is that entitlement reform is absolutely necessary but not politically expedient for this President!
And when you have the bully pulpit and can hammer away at the same points that the President and Democrats hammer away on with full network coverage each and every day, you get poll results concerning American public feeling over the Republican Party and the fiscal cliff like the ones we are seeing now!
Simple analogy: One parent says yes all of the time whereas the other parent is a disciplinarian who who says no taking the child's long-term best interests to heart.
That is the Democrat versus Republican argument. One is popular masses while the other is necessary for the long-term viability of the country.
Poll source: Pew
Fiscal Cliff negotiations: The Presidential PR machine simply works better than Boehner's PR machine!What do you get when you take one-part presidential bully pulpit, one-part mainstream media compliance and one-part superior political party marketing skills?
You get poll results that reflect an American public focused on the only thing that's being hammered away at them in every speech given by Barack Obama or Democrat Party leadership.
That he is trying to protect the middle class, raise taxes on the rich and that the Congressional Republicans are intransigent in their positions that would ultimately hurt every demographic sector of the American people.
Except of course the rich!
While none of this is true, the truth never seems to really matter to the President or the other members of the Democrat Party.
Truth be told the Congressional Republicans have put raising taxes on the wealthy onto the table in return for some spending reforms.
The dirty little secret in all of this that the President and the Democrat Party don't want the American people to realize is that even with these proposed tax hikes on the rich, that the federal government would raise enough additional revenue to fund itself for about 9 days given the current level of federal spending, debt outstanding and of course with interest rates near 0%.
The bottom-line is that entitlement reform is absolutely necessary but not politically expedient for this President!
And when you have the bully pulpit and can hammer away at the same points that the President and Democrats hammer away on with full network coverage each and every day, you get poll results concerning American public feeling over the Republican Party and the fiscal cliff like the ones we are seeing now!
Simple analogy: One parent says yes all of the time whereas the other parent is a disciplinarian who who says no taking the child's long-term best interests to heart.
That is the Democrat versus Republican argument. One is popular masses while the other is necessary for the long-term viability of the country.
Poll source: Pew
A Benghazi conspiracy that would make Watergate pale by comparison!
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TweetBreaking News December 15, 12:00 Noon: This is breaking news mere hours after this article was written that questioned whether the Benghazi embassy attack had been part of some larger "October Surprise" conspiracy designed to ensure an Obama 2nd-term.
Now comes word that Hillary Clinton has suffered a concussion and will therefore not testify this week about Benghazi and what she knew and when she knew it.
Just how dumb do they think the American people are and just how complicit is the mainstream media in the effort to cover this story up? Unfortunately for those who seek the truth very and extremely! Read the conspiracy theory here and the follow-up story about a concussed Hillary Clinton at TPC here.
Could this story of a "October surprise" in Benghazi, Libya possibly have any truth to it? One has to think that there is NO WAY it could be true, but at the same time...
I received the following story in an email from an anonymous source.
Up until that point I had heard rumblings over the potential that within the Obama administration there had existed plans for the "manufacture" of an October election surprise.
It was a story so far-fetched that, if true, would at best be unconscionable and at worst constitute an act of treason.
And, if it were true, it is hard to believe that all of the participants involved in its prosecution would have been able to keep it secret.
That said, and for all of my dislike for Barack Obama and his administration, I cannot fathom that ANY US PRESIDENT, even this one, would ever undertake a plan like this for any reason let alone for the sole purpose of being reelected.
With that lead-in, here is the story for you to read. When you are finished you can come to your own conclusion concerning whether it is plausible or not:
According to sources in the State Department and the CIA and intercepted communications from the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama "staged" the attack in Benghazi in order to create a monumental "October Surprise" that would guarantee him re-election. Yes, you read that right, and no, I'm not making this up.
Obama, we now know is and has been working with the Muslim Brotherhood secretly to engineer the release of the "Blind Sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack. In Obama's October Surprise, he intentionally set up the consulate to have no security so that Chris Stevens could be kidnapped, and held for ransom by Al-Qaeda (and the Muslim Brotherhood).
Then, several days before the election, the plan was to trade Chris Stevens for the Blind Sheik, making himself look like a hero, and all but guaranteeing re-election. This was one of the top reasons why Obama was so insistent on the Muslim Brotherhood getting $1.2 Billion in U.S. Aid. They were to have primary role in getting Obama re-elected. That is why, even though they knew days before the attack that it was going to occur, no effort was made to bolster security. It was intended to be non-existent.
The Libyan security forces were intended to quietly slip into the night when the attack began. And they did, just as planned. That is why, even though 2 C-130U gunships, which were built SPECIFICALLY for this kind of attack, and which could have saved the lives of our people there and were a mere 45 minutes away, were never scrambled at any time during the attack.
There was to be no resistance whatsoever. That is why there were not one, but TWO armed drones flying over the consulate during the conflagration... our CIA operatives on the ground were painting targets because they knew air cover was available. That is why, even though requesting support and backup three times, their requests were NOT ignored, but were intentionally, specifically DENIED three times, and they were told to "stand down, " which basically means to "surrender." That was part of Obama's plan.
They were not to fight back. That would potentially undermine the kidnapping effort and cause unnecessary "complications." That is why, even though the CIA operatives and ex-Navy Seals were on the ground, providing real-time reports, and even though they were "lighting up" the source of the mortars attacking the compound with lasers, no gunships or support ever came.
They weren't supposed to resist. That wasn't "part of the plan." It also wasn't part of the plan for one of the CIA operatives to intentionally defy Obama's orders, and who rescued the body of Sean Smith and then stood up against orders and engaged the enemy who was attacking American soil. It was supposed to be "clean." Quick. Efficient. Kidnap the Ambassador and get out. Then Save The Day in the "nick of time."
They didn't factor in a tiny group of highly trained ex-Navy Seals/CIA operatives... American Patriots and heroes. Even though they eventually lost their lives in the firefight, they managed to employ the full measure of their skills, and took out over 80 attackers in the process... which enraged the attackers, who were led to believe that they would encounter no resistance.
THAT is why Ambassador Stevens was raped (sodomized), murdered, and dragged through the streets. In their warped minds, they believed that they had been betrayed by the U.S. yet again. They believed that Obama was their friend. They believed that they were going to get their beloved Blind Sheik back. And yet, here were 80 of their own... dead by American hands.
Obama was asked directly in an interview if he denied their request for assistance, he refused to answer, and instead droned on with a canned response promising to "bring those responsible to justice." Former CIA and State Dept. personnel are coming out now with damning evidence that indicts President Obama, and reveals the truth about what is going on.
Hillary Clinton, who is now openly laying the blame at the feet of the President, after falling on her sword in a premature show of loyalty for the Administration. The "Video" defense was carefully crafted WEEKS in advance, to explain the attack.
Believe it or not!
Now comes word that Hillary Clinton has suffered a concussion and will therefore not testify this week about Benghazi and what she knew and when she knew it.
Just how dumb do they think the American people are and just how complicit is the mainstream media in the effort to cover this story up? Unfortunately for those who seek the truth very and extremely! Read the conspiracy theory here and the follow-up story about a concussed Hillary Clinton at TPC here.
Could this story of a "October surprise" in Benghazi, Libya possibly have any truth to it? One has to think that there is NO WAY it could be true, but at the same time...
I received the following story in an email from an anonymous source.
Up until that point I had heard rumblings over the potential that within the Obama administration there had existed plans for the "manufacture" of an October election surprise.
It was a story so far-fetched that, if true, would at best be unconscionable and at worst constitute an act of treason.
And, if it were true, it is hard to believe that all of the participants involved in its prosecution would have been able to keep it secret.
That said, and for all of my dislike for Barack Obama and his administration, I cannot fathom that ANY US PRESIDENT, even this one, would ever undertake a plan like this for any reason let alone for the sole purpose of being reelected.
With that lead-in, here is the story for you to read. When you are finished you can come to your own conclusion concerning whether it is plausible or not:
According to sources in the State Department and the CIA and intercepted communications from the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama "staged" the attack in Benghazi in order to create a monumental "October Surprise" that would guarantee him re-election. Yes, you read that right, and no, I'm not making this up.
Obama, we now know is and has been working with the Muslim Brotherhood secretly to engineer the release of the "Blind Sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack. In Obama's October Surprise, he intentionally set up the consulate to have no security so that Chris Stevens could be kidnapped, and held for ransom by Al-Qaeda (and the Muslim Brotherhood).
Then, several days before the election, the plan was to trade Chris Stevens for the Blind Sheik, making himself look like a hero, and all but guaranteeing re-election. This was one of the top reasons why Obama was so insistent on the Muslim Brotherhood getting $1.2 Billion in U.S. Aid. They were to have primary role in getting Obama re-elected. That is why, even though they knew days before the attack that it was going to occur, no effort was made to bolster security. It was intended to be non-existent.
The Libyan security forces were intended to quietly slip into the night when the attack began. And they did, just as planned. That is why, even though 2 C-130U gunships, which were built SPECIFICALLY for this kind of attack, and which could have saved the lives of our people there and were a mere 45 minutes away, were never scrambled at any time during the attack.
There was to be no resistance whatsoever. That is why there were not one, but TWO armed drones flying over the consulate during the conflagration... our CIA operatives on the ground were painting targets because they knew air cover was available. That is why, even though requesting support and backup three times, their requests were NOT ignored, but were intentionally, specifically DENIED three times, and they were told to "stand down, " which basically means to "surrender." That was part of Obama's plan.
They were not to fight back. That would potentially undermine the kidnapping effort and cause unnecessary "complications." That is why, even though the CIA operatives and ex-Navy Seals were on the ground, providing real-time reports, and even though they were "lighting up" the source of the mortars attacking the compound with lasers, no gunships or support ever came.
They weren't supposed to resist. That wasn't "part of the plan." It also wasn't part of the plan for one of the CIA operatives to intentionally defy Obama's orders, and who rescued the body of Sean Smith and then stood up against orders and engaged the enemy who was attacking American soil. It was supposed to be "clean." Quick. Efficient. Kidnap the Ambassador and get out. Then Save The Day in the "nick of time."
They didn't factor in a tiny group of highly trained ex-Navy Seals/CIA operatives... American Patriots and heroes. Even though they eventually lost their lives in the firefight, they managed to employ the full measure of their skills, and took out over 80 attackers in the process... which enraged the attackers, who were led to believe that they would encounter no resistance.
THAT is why Ambassador Stevens was raped (sodomized), murdered, and dragged through the streets. In their warped minds, they believed that they had been betrayed by the U.S. yet again. They believed that Obama was their friend. They believed that they were going to get their beloved Blind Sheik back. And yet, here were 80 of their own... dead by American hands.
Obama was asked directly in an interview if he denied their request for assistance, he refused to answer, and instead droned on with a canned response promising to "bring those responsible to justice." Former CIA and State Dept. personnel are coming out now with damning evidence that indicts President Obama, and reveals the truth about what is going on.
Hillary Clinton, who is now openly laying the blame at the feet of the President, after falling on her sword in a premature show of loyalty for the Administration. The "Video" defense was carefully crafted WEEKS in advance, to explain the attack.
Believe it or not!
Breaking News: Hillary Clinton concussed and will not testify about Benghazi!
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And why is that? An alleged concussion suffered due to an alleged fainting spell due to the alleged effects of an alleged stomach flu!
This morning I posted an article regarding rumors of an administration conspiracy that led to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi.
And now, conveniently, the Secretary of State is out of commission and will not testify about what she knows about the embassy attack and when she knew it.
As the say on ESPN, "C'mon Man!"
Just how stupid and naive does the Obama administration think that the American people are? And do they really think that the mainstream media will accept this story at face value?
Very and Yes!
From Politico:
The State Department said Saturday that Secretary of StateHillary Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion, but did not specify whenthat happened or the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Clinton, 65, cancelled a trip to the Middle East and North Africaearlier this week because she had been suffering from a stomach flu.
Clinton’s fainting episode took place earlier this week,State spokesman Philippe Reines said Saturday, although he did give additionaldetails. On Thursday, asked by POLITICO during the day if she’d beenhospitalized, Reines responded only that evening that she had seen her doctorsand was home, without additional details. He said Saturday she was not andnever had been hospitalized.
Reines did not respond to questions about why Clinton’sfainting was not disclosed sooner... (Full article)
And why is that? An alleged concussion suffered due to an alleged fainting spell due to the alleged effects of an alleged stomach flu!
This morning I posted an article regarding rumors of an administration conspiracy that led to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi.
And now, conveniently, the Secretary of State is out of commission and will not testify about what she knows about the embassy attack and when she knew it.
As the say on ESPN, "C'mon Man!"
Just how stupid and naive does the Obama administration think that the American people are? And do they really think that the mainstream media will accept this story at face value?
Very and Yes!
From Politico:
The State Department said Saturday that Secretary of StateHillary Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion, but did not specify whenthat happened or the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Clinton, 65, cancelled a trip to the Middle East and North Africaearlier this week because she had been suffering from a stomach flu.
Clinton’s fainting episode took place earlier this week,State spokesman Philippe Reines said Saturday, although he did give additionaldetails. On Thursday, asked by POLITICO during the day if she’d beenhospitalized, Reines responded only that evening that she had seen her doctorsand was home, without additional details. He said Saturday she was not andnever had been hospitalized.
Reines did not respond to questions about why Clinton’sfainting was not disclosed sooner... (Full article)
Video game show: "What if a Republican had said it?"
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Imagine for a second that the first two minutes of this video from a union rally in Michigan protesting Right-to-work was instead at a Tea Party rally in Anywhere, USA!
The mainstream media would be up in arms and in open disgust (rightfully so although this type of language would likely never occur at a Tea Party rally) of the rhetoric from the speaker that was meant to incite the crowd.
Listen carefully to the tone and the language (transcript courtesy of Weekly Standard) from the Rev. Charles Williams.
"Just know one thing, Rick Snyder: You sign that bill, you won't get no rest," said Rev. Charles Williams II at the Tuesday rally in Lansing, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential. "We'll meet you on Geddes Road. We'll be at your daughter's soccer game. We'll visit you at your church. We'll be at your office."
"Because Michigan workers will not take it laying down — by any means necessary!" he said."
Then try to remember if you have heard one thing about these statements anywhere in the news.
True it is localized in Michigan but ask yourself the simple question of "What if a Republican had said it"?
In that case it could have been somewhere on the North Slope of Alaska it would still likely be national news!
H/T Mish
Imagine for a second that the first two minutes of this video from a union rally in Michigan protesting Right-to-work was instead at a Tea Party rally in Anywhere, USA!
The mainstream media would be up in arms and in open disgust (rightfully so although this type of language would likely never occur at a Tea Party rally) of the rhetoric from the speaker that was meant to incite the crowd.
Listen carefully to the tone and the language (transcript courtesy of Weekly Standard) from the Rev. Charles Williams.
"Just know one thing, Rick Snyder: You sign that bill, you won't get no rest," said Rev. Charles Williams II at the Tuesday rally in Lansing, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential. "We'll meet you on Geddes Road. We'll be at your daughter's soccer game. We'll visit you at your church. We'll be at your office."
"Because Michigan workers will not take it laying down — by any means necessary!" he said."
Then try to remember if you have heard one thing about these statements anywhere in the news.
True it is localized in Michigan but ask yourself the simple question of "What if a Republican had said it"?
In that case it could have been somewhere on the North Slope of Alaska it would still likely be national news!
H/T Mish
12 Aralık 2012 Çarşamba
The Republicans and the Democrats Are Both Responsible for Obamacare as Worker's Hours are Cut.
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Republicans keep clinging to the delusion that Obamacare is socialism and a 100% Democrat initiative. It's not. Obamacare was first proposed by Republicans.
Something for Conservatives to Think About: Obamacare Really Was a Republican Initiative
ObamaCare’s Crony Capitalism and Crooked Concealment
Cause and effect: Americans who voted for Obama now seeing weekly job hours slashed below 30 as Obamacare kicks in
Republicans keep clinging to the delusion that Obamacare is socialism and a 100% Democrat initiative. It's not. Obamacare was first proposed by Republicans.
Something for Conservatives to Think About: Obamacare Really Was a Republican Initiative
Obamacare really was hatched by the Heritage Foundation in the late 1980's, supported by Republicans during the 1990's, tested in Massachusetts by a Republican governor and finally passed as Obamacare. Newt Gingrich got rich promoting the healthcare mandate. Despite campaigning against Obamacare, Gingrich was one of the godfathers of the healthcare mandate.What precisely did the Republicans and Democrats unleash?
ObamaCare’s Crony Capitalism and Crooked Concealment
It was inevitable that a behemoth law such as ObamaCare, the result of much political wrangling and lobbying, would lead to crony capitalism. What was not inevitable, however, was that the cronyism — and a subsequent coverup — would occur so quickly; but that is the accusation leveled against the Obama administration and a major healthcare corporation by Jeffrey H. Anderson in the December 10 issue of the Weekly Standard.
ObamaCare requires that each state set up an insurance exchange where individuals can choose from a variety of health plans by January 1, 2014. A state may opt out of creating its own exchange, at which point the federal government will step in and create one for it. As of now, 17 states plus the District of Columbia have indicated that they will establish their own exchanges, and about the same number have balked.
That has put the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a bind. It now has to set up exchanges for each of the recalcitrant states (plus any that subsequently refuse to play ball), which it was clearly not anticipating; and it must do so by October 1, 2013, when open enrollment begins. HHS is, not surprisingly, behind schedule — one reason for the coverup Anderson alleges in a report based on previously published accounts and information from an anonymous “insurance industry insider.”The implementation of Obamacare is already taking its toll on the economy as worker hours are cut.
Cause and effect: Americans who voted for Obama now seeing weekly job hours slashed below 30 as Obamacare kicks in
It is the ultimate example of how you reap what you sow: Huge numbers of American workers who voted for Obama are now seeing their own jobs slashed below 30 hours a week as employers desperately try to avoid "Obamacare bankruptcy."
Obamacare mandates for businesses only apply to those working 30 hours a week or more, and while many businesses do not want to cut workers' hours, they are being forced to in order to stay afloat. This necessary action is causing businesses to lose money and become less competitive while at the same time destroying American jobs.
Some businesses are also slashing job positions in an effort to get below the 50-employee threshold above which Obamacare mandates kick in. So across the country, we're not only seeing workers lose hours thanks to Obamacare; we're also seeing workers losing their jobs.
But the Obama administration will announce these results to be a huge "job creation success!" because workers must now find two part-time jobs that usually pay less than the one full-time job they used to have. The raw job numbers, however, will be spun by the White House into a victory pronouncement of "twice as many jobs exist now!"The ravages of central planning and statism never end. It's Shock and Awe economic destruction.
Nations, Options Math for Traders
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Scott Nations, probably best known as a contributor to CNBC, is a trader and a financial engineer. Both of these skills are evident in Options Math for Traders: How to Pick the Best Option Strategies for Your Market Outlook (Wiley, 2012). I should say up front, however, that this book is not for the reader in search of lots of formulas. Even the appendix has formulas for only such basic concepts as standard deviation, realized volatility, linear interpolation, and annualizing yield. The text itself has but a single formula—the Black-Scholes pricing model. In brief, it is a book for “the rest of us.”
The primary themes of the book are volatility, skew, time decay, and the bid/ask spread. The strategies analyzed are covered calls and their synthetic equivalent selling puts, calendar spreads, risk reversal, and vertical spreads.
In this post I’m going to focus on a single chapter—vertical spreads—to illustrate how Nations brings the threads of his book together. I’m offering mere snippets out of context. If the excerpts I quote are not intelligible, it’s not the author’s fault (Nations is a clear writer) but the result of my overly aggressive scissors.
Nations uses vertical spreads to get bearish exposure to the underlying. Why bearish? Because skew works against bullish vertical spreads. As examples, he takes a 180/200 put debit spread and a 210/230 call credit spread. “In both the put spread bought and the call spread sold, skew generated a net benefit. There would certainly be other phenomena that would be helping or hurting these trades. The volatility risk premium would be helping the call spread since our trader would likely be selling the 210 strike call for more than it was worth, and that benefit would probably overwhelm the damage that the volatility risk premium would do to the profitability of the 230 strike call option bought. Time decay would also likely help the profitability of the call spread, since the daily erosion received from the call our trader is short (the 210 strike call) is going to be greater than the daily erosion paid on the option our trader is long (the 230 strike call).” (p. 219) By contrast, the profitability of the put spread will likely be hurt by the volatility risk premium and time decay.
How does one determine whether a vertical spread is expensive or cheap? A reasonable way to go about this is to compare the cost of the spread to the width of the spread, taking into consideration how close it is to being at-the-money. If, for instance, a put spread costs $3.30 and the spread is $20 wide, the spread would cost 16.5% of the width of the spread. This ratio is “pretty inexpensive given that one strike is so close to at-the-money.” (p. 226)
And how good a hedge is one leg of the spread for the other? “As vertical spreads get wider each option is a less effective hedge for the other option…. As a vertical spread gets wider, the option that is closer to at-the-money starts to act more like an outright option rather than as part of a spread.” (p. 229)
A last take-away: “Skew tends to generate a much smaller benefit for short call spreads than for long put spreads; the difference in implied volatility is lower for call spreads. … The result of selling the strike price that is in the ‘trough’ of the skew curve is that every possible call spread using that strike as the short strike is worse off because of skew.” (p. 232)
If these excerpts whet your appetite, I can heartily recommend Options Math for Traders. No, it doesn’t cover straddles and strangles and wing spreads. But once you understand calls and puts and vertical spreads, you’re a long way toward grasping these other strategies. Moreover, Nations does a very good job with calendars, which I personally consider one of the toughest option spreads to trade well. It’s an “in the trenches” book and as such could be of great help to the intermediate options trader.
The primary themes of the book are volatility, skew, time decay, and the bid/ask spread. The strategies analyzed are covered calls and their synthetic equivalent selling puts, calendar spreads, risk reversal, and vertical spreads.
In this post I’m going to focus on a single chapter—vertical spreads—to illustrate how Nations brings the threads of his book together. I’m offering mere snippets out of context. If the excerpts I quote are not intelligible, it’s not the author’s fault (Nations is a clear writer) but the result of my overly aggressive scissors.
Nations uses vertical spreads to get bearish exposure to the underlying. Why bearish? Because skew works against bullish vertical spreads. As examples, he takes a 180/200 put debit spread and a 210/230 call credit spread. “In both the put spread bought and the call spread sold, skew generated a net benefit. There would certainly be other phenomena that would be helping or hurting these trades. The volatility risk premium would be helping the call spread since our trader would likely be selling the 210 strike call for more than it was worth, and that benefit would probably overwhelm the damage that the volatility risk premium would do to the profitability of the 230 strike call option bought. Time decay would also likely help the profitability of the call spread, since the daily erosion received from the call our trader is short (the 210 strike call) is going to be greater than the daily erosion paid on the option our trader is long (the 230 strike call).” (p. 219) By contrast, the profitability of the put spread will likely be hurt by the volatility risk premium and time decay.
How does one determine whether a vertical spread is expensive or cheap? A reasonable way to go about this is to compare the cost of the spread to the width of the spread, taking into consideration how close it is to being at-the-money. If, for instance, a put spread costs $3.30 and the spread is $20 wide, the spread would cost 16.5% of the width of the spread. This ratio is “pretty inexpensive given that one strike is so close to at-the-money.” (p. 226)
And how good a hedge is one leg of the spread for the other? “As vertical spreads get wider each option is a less effective hedge for the other option…. As a vertical spread gets wider, the option that is closer to at-the-money starts to act more like an outright option rather than as part of a spread.” (p. 229)
A last take-away: “Skew tends to generate a much smaller benefit for short call spreads than for long put spreads; the difference in implied volatility is lower for call spreads. … The result of selling the strike price that is in the ‘trough’ of the skew curve is that every possible call spread using that strike as the short strike is worse off because of skew.” (p. 232)
If these excerpts whet your appetite, I can heartily recommend Options Math for Traders. No, it doesn’t cover straddles and strangles and wing spreads. But once you understand calls and puts and vertical spreads, you’re a long way toward grasping these other strategies. Moreover, Nations does a very good job with calendars, which I personally consider one of the toughest option spreads to trade well. It’s an “in the trenches” book and as such could be of great help to the intermediate options trader.
Chan, The Prop Trader’s Chronicles
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Francis James Chan’s The Prop Trader’s Chronicles: Short-Term Proprietary Trading Strategies for Both Bull and Bear Markets (Wiley, 2013) is a strange little book. It is in part a memoir that, quite frankly, isn’t very interesting and that often is not even tangential to trading. Do we really care about the dinner table fights of his ex-fiancée’s family?
Fortunately, in larger part it is an account of Chan’s experiences as a novice day trader with what was then a Toronto-based prop firm, Swift Trade Securities. There he learned to throw away charts and abandon technical analysis. Swift taught and practiced the art of reading the tape and depth of market. The firm also stressed how to route trades to capture the most advantageous fee structure. Since Swift’s forte was high-volume scalping of NYSE stocks for pennies, risk management was critical. Trainees were expected to limit their losses to around two cents a share—at least on a stock like GE (then about $40), which Chan was trading.
Although Chan describes some of the basics of Swift’s program and tries to illustrate the trading process, I suspect that it is the rare reader who would come away with a viable way to emulate a non-automated, high-frequency, high-volume stock scalping game plan. Especially if the reader is a lone wolf, not part of a prop firm.
There are, however, two more general points that Chan makes that I think are worth repeating. The first is the distinction between hard and soft edges. A hard edge “is typically transient but allows traders who are equipped to exploit it to do so with minimal skill, discipline, or experience.” With soft edges “skill, discipline, and experience is a much more significant deciding factor in one’s net profitability.” (p. 75) A generation of traders at Swift exploited a weakness in dark pool algorithms. “The strategy could be summed up with its main premise: to seek out large orders resting in the dark pool systems and to play the market against the large institutions that entered those orders.” (p. 73) These traders had a hard edge. Hard edges “would actually not be illegal but are often on the very edge of the cliff of compliance. In other words, they might be outlawed or circumvented within a few years.” (p. 80)
The core strategies of most traders rely on soft edges. “Since the real mathematical advantage behind such an edge is rarely more than 1 to 5 percent above a raw 50-50 bet, a very large dose of discipline, consistency, and skill should be developed to properly exploit these soft edges.” (p. 80)
Chan believes in exploiting transient soft edges. These edges may not be statistically robust over years of data, but “money is money.” “As long as such a strategy is not overemphasized in your mind to the point where you consider it your staple trading strategy, there’s really nothing wrong with collecting short term paychecks for something that may not last much longer than a few months.” (p. 81)
Chan offers a few building blocks of trading strategies, among them layered position sizing. He writes: “Depending on the nature of your strategy, the idea of a single entry and a single exit can either be slightly inefficient or outright idiotic.” For scalpers, “splitting up your entries and exits into smaller orders makes a lot of sense simply because it’s unlikely that the stock will stand in place for long and there’s a lot more room to take extra profits by scaling in and out rather than making a flat single-entry single-exit bet.” (pp. 135-36)
For those who are thinking about hooking up with a prop shop or who are interested in tape reading, The Prop Trader’s Chronicles should probably be a core library holding. For other traders it’s a peripheral book but nonetheless worthy of a couple of hours of reading time.
Fortunately, in larger part it is an account of Chan’s experiences as a novice day trader with what was then a Toronto-based prop firm, Swift Trade Securities. There he learned to throw away charts and abandon technical analysis. Swift taught and practiced the art of reading the tape and depth of market. The firm also stressed how to route trades to capture the most advantageous fee structure. Since Swift’s forte was high-volume scalping of NYSE stocks for pennies, risk management was critical. Trainees were expected to limit their losses to around two cents a share—at least on a stock like GE (then about $40), which Chan was trading.
Although Chan describes some of the basics of Swift’s program and tries to illustrate the trading process, I suspect that it is the rare reader who would come away with a viable way to emulate a non-automated, high-frequency, high-volume stock scalping game plan. Especially if the reader is a lone wolf, not part of a prop firm.
There are, however, two more general points that Chan makes that I think are worth repeating. The first is the distinction between hard and soft edges. A hard edge “is typically transient but allows traders who are equipped to exploit it to do so with minimal skill, discipline, or experience.” With soft edges “skill, discipline, and experience is a much more significant deciding factor in one’s net profitability.” (p. 75) A generation of traders at Swift exploited a weakness in dark pool algorithms. “The strategy could be summed up with its main premise: to seek out large orders resting in the dark pool systems and to play the market against the large institutions that entered those orders.” (p. 73) These traders had a hard edge. Hard edges “would actually not be illegal but are often on the very edge of the cliff of compliance. In other words, they might be outlawed or circumvented within a few years.” (p. 80)
The core strategies of most traders rely on soft edges. “Since the real mathematical advantage behind such an edge is rarely more than 1 to 5 percent above a raw 50-50 bet, a very large dose of discipline, consistency, and skill should be developed to properly exploit these soft edges.” (p. 80)
Chan believes in exploiting transient soft edges. These edges may not be statistically robust over years of data, but “money is money.” “As long as such a strategy is not overemphasized in your mind to the point where you consider it your staple trading strategy, there’s really nothing wrong with collecting short term paychecks for something that may not last much longer than a few months.” (p. 81)
Chan offers a few building blocks of trading strategies, among them layered position sizing. He writes: “Depending on the nature of your strategy, the idea of a single entry and a single exit can either be slightly inefficient or outright idiotic.” For scalpers, “splitting up your entries and exits into smaller orders makes a lot of sense simply because it’s unlikely that the stock will stand in place for long and there’s a lot more room to take extra profits by scaling in and out rather than making a flat single-entry single-exit bet.” (pp. 135-36)
For those who are thinking about hooking up with a prop shop or who are interested in tape reading, The Prop Trader’s Chronicles should probably be a core library holding. For other traders it’s a peripheral book but nonetheless worthy of a couple of hours of reading time.