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Even This Image is Taboo

I’m no gun expert, but I do appreciate firearms. Yet the subject of guns is extremely taboo in this society, which is amazing given that we have a constitutional right just for them. Given that our new president has made it clear that he doesn’t like guns, I decided to think about and given my own interpretation to the second amendment.

  Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I have heard many opinions on this, with interpretations in each corner. Now I will give you my not so law-schooled opinion, but the opinion of someone who has great interest in the period of history surrounding this amendment.

First off, the well regulated militia. At the time in America in which this was written, we didn’t have so much of a standing army. In fact, Washington (the original G.W.) and other leaders of the continental army disarmed and went back to a more philosophical life. They didn’t believe in the standing army.

Many today argue that since we have a powerful standing Army, that it suggests that the right to bear arms is limited for that fact, given that our country has round the clock security. To them, they are wrong. First off, the ignore the fact that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period. Those words “shall not be infringed,” cannot be construed or interpretted differently.

However, more can be taken from this. Consider the line “being necessary to the security of a free State.” Many interpret this being the security of the United States, better termed as national security. However, this is not how it is put, and given one of the main driving forces of the Bill of Rights, this was intentional. Thomas Jefferson believed that a country (even a ‘free’ democracy) needed a rebellion every 20 years or so. Given the wording in the Declaration of Independence, our fore-fathers understood that once a tyrannical leader commits too many crimes against his own people, the people have the human right to rebel. (more…)

I happened to find this remarkable story on SeekingAlpha.com. And let me tell you, he brings up some very good – and valid – points.

His argument is that the stocks have been slammed hard by (greedy) hedge funds, and that most of the negative momentum is fed by that. With share prices falling, people believe the bank system is failing.

He continues onto the genius of Obama’s administration. By getting banks to drop the amount owed on mortgages, they solve many problems. A) The mark to market value of the mortgage actually increases, freeing up capital to lend, B) the bank gets to make a write-up (as opposed to write-down) and gets a tax deductible loss, C) opens back the market for purchasing the mortgage backed securities, and D) the homeowners are happy and the public thinks the banks were punished.

He also continues on with the governments move to going into common shares. He says by doing so they reduce the leverage of the hedge funds since the short sellers will have fewer buyers. The idea is shaky, since the government’s shares would be diluting the mix. So they total number of shares themselves that could be traded would be the same (for the nongovernment shares), although they would be a smaller percentage of the actual company.

The story doesn’t perfectly explain everything, but it does hit home on a number of things I stand behind. Such as that the banks are not in as bad of shape as the public thinks. Some may be – take a look at Citigroup – but I don’t think the big ones are in such dire straights as the media leads us to believe. Remember, don’t believe anything you see on TV or read in the newspaper. Same goes with blogs and experts. Hell, you need to question my opinions. And that’s my point, we need to start thinking, and then we can actually move forward.

AT&T Corporate Center

AT&T has got me wound up again. I’ve been a customer of theirs for quite sometime (since my Bellsouth Mobility DCS phone… who was acquired by Cingular, who was acquired through AT&T), and for the most part I haven’t had any complaints.

Now, between them and Wirefly, I’m hot. I upgraded my BB Pearl to a BB Curve through Wirefly a few months ago. First error was on Wirefly’s system. They signed me up for multiple services I did not request. I contacted them and they canceled them. Then when my order was canceled and reordered (my second line was not ready to be upgraded yet), they once again placed these services on my account.

I couldn’t get far with Wirefly, and finally got in touch with AT&T. They supposedly corrected it and credited me like $100 or so. Well, now my bill is all screwed up again. I think it’s Wirefly acting up, I don’t care. I don’t have the time or money to play their games.

When and if I get some resolution, I’ll let you know. But right now, I’m hotter than a $2 hooker on a Navy ship 9 months out to sea. The recession has been kicking my arse, and they want to keep playing games to collect extra money.

Those services? Free 7PM-7AM calls (don’t need em, basic free nights and weekends works for me), Push To Talk (I have no one to PTT with), TeleNav GPS (I have a Magellan GPS & Google Maps, I’m set), Roadside Assistance (AAA, check), Messaging Limited (when I am supposed to have Family unlimited, so an extra $48 on my bill).

If I don’t get any final resolution, they can keep their damn service. I’ll take my hard earned money elsewhere, to a company that’ll appreciate it.

We all know what that means. In a few hours the FDIC will release the names of 1 or more banks that probably failed this weekend. The usual hoopla about customers will continue to be able to use their debit cards over the weekend, and that the bank(s) will be showing a new name come Monday.

This week was looking somewhat positive, then today the banking sector sank, and quickly. Once again a mad rush to sell the news. Citigroup shareholders have a legitimate concern with having their shares diluted, although it shows how few people really do have a one track mind. The move to other banks shows the point that the market still has a lot of fearful speculators, trying to guess the next one to tank.

We’ll be finding out over the next few hours which banks will be standing with flags half mast in the morning.

New York Stock Exchange

It’s sad that one of the key components of this downturn goes across the grain of basic, sound economic practices. CDS, or the credit default swap, is a financial instrument created by JPMorgan Chase that allows banks to offset their risks.

Without getting to technical, the premise of the CDS is simple. Banks can sell of the risk of default on a form of credit. Some investor makes payments, and if the credit it is built on defaults, then the bank pays the credit through various means. That’s the very simple explaination of it.

Why would banks do this? To offset their risks. By nature, banks tend to be risk adverse. Yet many of the bad loans out there were risky by nature, so this seems to contradict that. The banks would make these loans because others would be they would go into default. If they don’t default, the bank picks up an extra chunk of change, and if they do, then the extra money helps soften the blow. It’s a risk insurance policy of sorts.

Yet the principle’s behind the CDS don’t make much sense. They were thought to help soften the blow of a default by spreading the risk around. Even Alan Greenspan loved them.

However, just because you somehow make the cost go away for the banks, the cost has to be made up from somewhere. Instead of real cost, we end up having a societal cost involved.

In economics you can have costs that a company doesn’t have to pay, so society picks up the bill. Think about a coal power plant. An additional cost would be the pollution spewing from it, harming plants and animals, and polluting the air. That’s where pollution taxes come from, and make for a good reason for environmental enforcement. This helps shift the cost from society back to the company, who was responsible for it in the first place.

So now lets look at the CDS. Banks could now take riskier positions in regards to who to give credit too and how much.  They could then package the risk up in a CDS, and charge an appropriate amount. In their eyes, the risk was now down to that of a more credit-worthy borrower. The problem is, the risk didn’t go away.

Once the banks had shifted the risk burden from bank to society, it was only a matter of time. Without society, banks are worthless, remember that.

I’ll go back into this subject a little bit later. Some of us still have jobs, and I need to head back to mine.

If I had turned in yesterday's blogs as an assignment, this is what I would've gotten back

After reading some of the posts I wrote last night, I’m left scratching my head. Maybe it’s just me, knowing what I was trying to say. I guess writing should be treated as driving, if you are too tired then you need to stand clear.

I had a lot to blog about earlier today. The bank stocks made some good strides for the day, that was good news. A couple mixed the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with “Beverly Hillbillies” by moving from LA to the sticks of Oregon to work on a farm. A couple of nurses were fired for taking cellphone pics of an x-ray showing a “Sex toy” up someones rectum then posting it on Facebook. Some poor guy was released from jail after DNA evidence cleared him of a murder.

Yet when I get home, sit down, and get ready to put into words what these things mean to me, I’m just too tired. But I guess I’ll give it a shot.

First in bank news. Stocks for the major financial players were up for today, and although they took a dip for the final half of trading, most of them still ended up trading higher. Is this a sign of things to come? Maybe not I should presume. I think now that most people have had some time to digest the news and some of the more fearful traders have moved out, the stocks are moving back to a value that better represents their respective corporations. People are also buying into the news of the stress tests. With the governments plan somewhat in place, many are beginning to believe that the government A) won’t let these banks fail and B) won’t nationalize them. I’ll be curious to see what happens on the day the results are released; I’m sure that day will see some negative movement.

Namely, I’ll be interested in seeing which banks can back up their claims capitalization in comparison to the government tests. These banks all should have internal processes in place for running stress tests. That should be a part of their risk management systems. Some probably won’t work as well as others, so a standardization of it is key in giving a clear approach. Although I fear that any bank that significantly fails it will be dogged in the markets, hurting it from gaining the required private capital needed before government intervention.

Any bank that manages to pass it though should see significant forward momentum in the short term, until some of the gloomy guys return and bring it back down a little.

So who are my picks out of the top 10 banks for having enough capitlization? Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, US Bancorp. BofA is my wildcard spot, but it seems to be a in better position than many put it in.

Onto the farm: A couple moved from a 1400 sq ft apartment in Beverly Hills to a 300 sq ft Airstream travel trailer (the Silver Bullet!) on a farm. With this economy, desperate times call for desperate measures, and that is exactly what they did. I’m actually pretty proud of them. I’m a city rat myself, and after spending 6 months in the country life, I was ready to come back to the city. For those who didn’t grow up to the sounds of fire trucks and police sirens, traffic, police helicopter, etc., then you would never understand how loud silence is. Or how difficult it is to go from having a world of options for fun and leisure to, well, shoveling manure.

Apparently the husband, Ed Wright, lost his 6 figure income as a result of this crisis. Leah, his wife, still had her job, but things had gotten tight. Ed’s parents invited them to come live on their for a while to save money. So they packed up the stuff (and put it in storage), bought a trailer, and moved to the boone docks. Now they are shoveling manure, showering less than daily (there is no shower in the trailer), and learning to live off the land. I’m impress though. Leah, a city rat, is getting into the groove of things too, even talking about buying a cow and growing a vegetable garden. Wow, she dived in head first!

Maybe we need more people like them though. America has gotten soft and learned to depend on others to provide. With a cow and a garden, they can get their vegetables and milk, and not really have to really on much more (still gotta buy the meat though, don’t want to cut up bessie!). They’ve learned to roll up their sleeves and go with it, and they’ll be stronger for it when things turn around. It’s what they call building character.

Naughty nurses

Man oh man! First off, I’d probably would’ve done the same thing. A x-ray of a sex toy stuck in somebody’s ass would be too good to pass by. But seriously, are we THAT stupid to post the damn thing up on your FACEBOOK! Occupation: Nurse. Hrmmm, wonder where they got that from. Isn’t there supposed to be patients rights somewhere, the whole confidentiality of medical records. Yet they couldn’t press any state charges against them?! Get real, the DA’s office was just trying not to laugh when they said that. I hope the feds pin these nurses good for it. Not that I have anything against such a great picture, but it would be better to anonymously post it on some type of humor site. Not your facebook account.

But since I got to thinking about the topic of objects inserted into a bum, I had to google it. While I haven’t found the picture from that story – yet – I did find a rather humurous blog on the matter, including some interesting X-Rays. Check out What The Devil Is In Their Anus.

Wrongfully accused

Stories like this one really piss me off. You see, we have this whole concept of justice in America. Innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, far too often we are guilty until proven innocent. Take this poor schmoe in Colorado, Timothy Masters. He found a body of a girl who was dead in 1987. He ended up being convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison back in 1999. All of a sudden, DNA evidence shows it wasn’t him, but the victim’s ex-boyfriend.

Now he is sueing. Usually I don’t take too much time in such matters. If there was enough real evidence to convict someone, then you know, sometimes the luck isn’t with you (you’re a type II error according to statisticians). But as you read along, you start to question the original conviction. Convicted of circumstantial evidence, evidence that could clear him being withheld, refusing to listen to the facts. These men who put him behind bars sound like they really needed a conviction, and quick. Those same prosecutors are now judges. If it is shown they did in fact do these things, they should be disbarred. Period. They ruined a young man’s life. He’s in his 30′s now, trying to get by, trying to get beyond everything. Can you imagine going to a job interview? They look at your background record and see that you were cleared of 1st degree murder. But he was a suspect, and convicted, and spent 10 years behind bars. If they ask “where do you see yourself in 10 years,” all he can say is “not in that damned prison!”

Innocent until proven guilty is great. But when you have unscrupulous prosecutors looking for a conviction, not because he is guilty but because he is there, then we have a problem. It took me back to the Duke Lacrosse scandal. When the news first broke I thought it was terrible, but the more that I heard, the more I believed that those guys were the real victims. End the end I was right. If you listen for the bullshit you can find it, and that DA (Nifong) had a pile of it. Now he’s going to be paying for it. He’s already lost his job and been disbarred, embarassed in front of the national media for being that blatently cruel and irresponsible, thoughtless in his actions, for a selfish gain. Let’s send him to jail to get gangraped like that stripper claimed happened to her. Sloppy police work too on that matter. Durham Police and the District Attorney messed things up so bad, it was the only time I have ever felt bad for Duke University (go Tarheels!)

For more info on the Masters’ case, check out this article on Reuters. And if you have no clue about the Duke Lacrosse scandal, check out this interesting Wikipedia entry.

A True Pimp

If you’ve never heard “You Can’t Pimp Me” by hip hop artist Pastor Troy, you may need to get it off of iTunes before you read this. After doing my nightly news raids, I found this interesting story on CNN. All I could do was laugh, and think about the poor 16 year old pimps who were probably losing their hoes to a couple of girl pimps. Life ain’t easy for a pimp.

Ok, maybe I’m not that bad, but the story is, well, sad. These girls were running a brothel – a whore house – where they pimped out at least 5 other teenage girls. I mean seriously, what is the world coming too. One of the girls swooned them over because of the money they could make, and that since they weren’t male pimps, they wouldn’t get beat up.

These two girls, both 16, are being tried as adults (that is why their names have been released) and facing felonies. The list of charges are:

 

“Tye is charged with one count of child prostitution and three counts of pandering, or serving as a go-between or liaison for sexual purposes, prosecutors said.

Finley faces nine counts of child prostitution; two counts of receiving earnings of a prostitute; and one count of pandering. All the charges are felonies, prosecutors said.”

 

It’s truely a shame. Normally I would have a bookful of jokes for this one, but the more I think about it, it really isn’t that funny. Two 16 year old girls are facing being convicted felons by pimping out young girls. What has the world come to?

Has the administration done its homework?

The first go around of the bank bailout has had mixed results. Things didn’t get much better, but they didn’t get much worse either for the most part. So it can be considered both a success and a failure, depending on who you ask. Instead of taking a seat and crunching who needed what, they forced the big banks to take a check, then handed out funds to the others who requested them.

Now we are in phase 2. The calamity that surrounded the first bailout has diminished – however relative – and everyone has more time to think and act. This time, the government is going to use a “stress test” on the banks to figure out who needs what and how badly. These tests are supposed to see if the banks can handle not only what the government expects will happen, but will also test to see if they can stand on the “worst case” scenario: 10% unemployment and another 20% drop in home prices.

Some thoughts on this whole bailout mess. I supported the first bailout. I knew it wasn’t perfect at the beginning, but the price for perfection was too high. America’s financial institutions were in dire straights, and needed help quickly. I was furious at the congressmen and women who were quoted as saying things like “I don’t see the need for it” or “how is this going to help main street?” Some pushed back saying that they wouldn’t support it because their constituents wouldn’t get any benefit from it. Since then we’ve learned just how much Wall Street affects main street. I’m glad it passed, I just hated it took so long. I remember just after one senator – I believe Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma (what a character) – made a comment about not seeing the need to rush things, WaMu failed and Wachovia teetered into competing suitors. These was an urgent need.

Now onto the next $350 billion. I like the concept of the stress test. Now that we have some time to breath, let’s size up the team. My only concern is the worst case scenario may be a bit optimistic. Although a number of good signs have come across throughout the markets (more in-depth studying of our recent lows find that they were not as bad as 11/20 and 11/21), there is still more than can hit the fan, and probably will. Our economy is being shaken up, and there are still more feathers to ruffle. I should hope that home prices don’t drop more than another 20%, but unemployment may hit the 10% mark. Lets hope neither happens.

After the tests, the government (and the banks) will be in a better position to judge their capital positions. If more capital is needed to maintain solvency, then that bank has 6 months to raise private capital before the government purchases preferred convertibles to boost it’s financial position. In theory, eventually these preferred convertibles will later be converted to common shares, increasing its health in the stock market and potentially giving the taxpayers a reward (maybe).

Will it work? That we’ll see. As a long term bailout program, it is much better than our original TARP program. Although I think the option to invest directly in the banks was better than asset recovery (which would’ve taken much longer), it was not designed to be an everlasting measure. I am hopeful that this administration used its time and political chips wisely on this one. It could still fail, but with careful planning and a little luck, it might just work.

The last post stirred up some of those feelings that originally set me going again towards aerospace (the Raptor and a prototype hypersonic jet), so I went YouTubing for some videos. Warning, don’t try any of these stunts at home.

To do your part to help preserve not only the F-22 Raptor, but the 95,000 jobs tied to its production, please visit Preserve Raptor Jobs.

Raptor hanging out with an F-16

After checking through my email, I noticed that my twitter was now being followed by RaptorJobs. I’m not going to begin to wonder how they caught my feed, but I’m thankful someone noticed.

I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for the F-22 Raptor. Aviation in general. I’m still a college student, and I plan on transferring next year for Aerospace Engineering. One day I’d like to see myself working on designing the next Raptor: the fastest, stealthiest, deadliest plane in the sky. A truely start of the art aircraft that is light years ahead of anything else that spends its time in the sky. Well, unless you believe in UFO’s, because I don’t know if we’ll advance to that in my lifetime (one can only hope).

Beyond the practical and defensive reasoning behind supporting the Raptor, there are other, pragmatic reasons as well. If we shelf the Raptor, we might not hurt only our own defensive/offensive capabilities, but we may also stunt the science behind it. America is suffering from a loss of brain power. We are educating foreign students at our schools so they can become the top in their field back in their home. Unfortunately, kids nowadays are not as interested in science as they once were.

We’ve been sufferring for a long time under an education system that only prepares kids for a standardized test. Education fails to understand the point. It’s not about getting the answer, it is about how to get it. Sure, we can teach kids to use the calculator for math. At some point though, they can’t go any farther. Because once you reach a certain level, you don’t have a pretty little formula to plug the numbers in and make it work. You have to figure that out. Kids aren’t getting that.

They only thing outside of competitive education (where some kids are going to fail) that can inspire today’s youth to become something more is by seeing the results of others inspiration. That F-22 is an inspiration. If you can’t give the kids science fairs, if they are too busy “learning” to be able to have fun with school, then please don’t take away the only hope we have of the future.

So what drove me to want to grow up and be a “rocket scientist”? Space, although far removed from the time of the Apollo missions, was still cool. The Shuttle program is only slightly older than I am. I used to look up to the stars at night. I was the nerd with the telescope and the book of constellations, trying to make them out in a city sky far too bright to make out a fraction of those crystal specks in the universe. I would build and launch model rockets, even making my own one time out of a wrapping paper tube. My first try didn’t turn out that well, but after a couple of goes I made a pretty damn good rocket.

Kids need that nowadays. And schools need to realize that standardize testing is a farse, it only hurts more than it helps. Standardized testing means we are to be standardized people, and we are not. Give the kids a hands on approach to learning, that’ll help the drop out rate. Some kids are going to fail, we can’t help that. Lowering your standards (i.e. Dallas) only makes matters worse. If a student fails a test the first time, he failed the damn test. End of story. We don’t get second chances in life, and if we raise them to think there is always a do over, then we’ve failed them.

So to Obama, if you ever read this, don’t kill the Raptor. You’ll kill the spirit.

F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter

In a final note to this though, I’m including an image of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. You will notice similarities between it and the F-22, although they are no identical twin. The F-22 is older though. See what daring breakthoughs bring you? Unfortunately, the F-35 is not a valid consideration at this time, as it is not production ready. Yet had the government scrap it’s spending on the F-22 in the first place, we would’ve never had it’s little brother.