Guard Dog

I'll take the Colts tonight. I'll do the standing and rest of my picks tomorrow. Very busy right now

I spent the entire day in my office with the door closed playing Baldur's Gate on my laptop. If anyone looked in my window, I appeared to be so hard at work that no one bothered me all day. But then, we are all just running out the clock intil next year. On that note, if you have not played Baldur's Gate with Tutu and the NPC pack, then you have not played it at all. Give it a look, you'll thank me.

Of course, we did a CFB thread before, did not last long I would be more into it if the SDSU Aztecs did not suck so hard. I'll post them up later this week. The first one is on the 19th I think.

One of my customers project managers gave me a christmas present today. It's an eight year old bottle of Bookers small batch bourbon. I'm having a little on ice right now. Very nice. Once you start drining the good stuff you never go back to the same ole same ole (namely Jack Daniels, Jim Beam et al).

Actually (my last post was a little tounge-in-cheek) I believe their (Obama admin) solution to the debt is to allow the dollar to devalutate to the point where the debt is worthless. I do hope that is not the case because it's been tried before and it did not go over so well. Look up what happened to the Weimar Republic in the late '20s. Maybe Obama thinks the US would survive the resulting turmoil, or he believes it will not be that bad. I think it would doom the country and lead to a break up, but I already believe that is going to happen at some point anyway. Hopefully not in my lifetime. As for gold investing, it's not bars but coins. Canadian Maple Leafs to be exact. But otherwise Gorth wasn't far off!

Anyone interested in doing Bowl picks? Also, Fu**ing Bucs! I can't believe i watch every week, yet I still do.

I could get through it. If we had a 1929 style crash, I am certain I will be fine. Once they started pumping non existant money (yes TARP money was "printed" so to speak) into the banks to keep them solvent I was absolutely certain an economic crash was inevitable. I'm still not convinced it's not. Think about it, the two TARP bailouts and the so called "stimulus" literally doubled the amount of US currency in existance. So now we have twice the dollars chasing the same amount of assets. Does anyone see a problem with that? No, inflation has remined steady because the bank have not been loaning any of this money out. The have been holding it. But just this week the White House held a meeting with CEOs of the six largets banks to take TARP to insist they begin loaning money again. At the same time has anyone priced out gold, silver, copper, and other real commodities lately? The dots are there, once you connect them the picture becomes clear. Thats why I divested ALL of my stocks once it became clear Obama was going to be elected. That may end up being the smartest thing I've ever done. It may not. I'm hoping for the latter. Instead I've bought Gold, Real Estate, Guns & lots of ammunition. Thats my investment portfolio these days.

Enoch won't like me saying this but I agree every time I think of John Paul Stevens. Jeez did that SOB make the most out of his "lifetime" appointment. But seriously I understand the rationale behind it. The founders wanted the judiciary to be above the fray of passions and politics of the day. You are a little off here. Bush certainly expanded the power of the executive and that is a bad thing. He was a terrible president and that is only one reason why. But he did not have the ability to fire anyone who can actually write or vote on legislation. And the executive alone can enact it once passed. If there was legislation he did not like he could have stopped it from becoming law himself. And he could not fire anyone for refusing to write or vote one something he wanted done. The only people he could fire (or hire) are Cabinet members and the people that report to them. He fired a bunch of US Attorneys for, well I don't remember why but that was his perrogative to do so. As far as how much power advisors have, that depends on the administration. Popular convention had it that Cheney and Rove had the real power and Bush was just a figurehead. But most of the books I've read, most noteably Bob Woodwards says that was not the case at all. I tend to believe that. Obama's administration appears so controlled by his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that it would almost be fair to call Obama a robot. Reagan was a strong believer in delegation. He would tell his Cabinet and staff what he wanted in general terms and then get out of their way and let them handle the details. That is actually a model of behaviour for an executive leader. Clinton, Bush 41, and Carter were control freaks. Especially Clinton. I read it was not uncommon for him to call staffers all hours of the night with ideas for tasks he set them to.

I don't know why the marines aren't their own service, except of course for the Navy having more political clout to argue their corner. Now a Marines vs Army game would be a thing to watch. There will be plenty of Marines on the field today. Midshipmen have the option of becoming Marines after their second year. If they do they go through the 16 week OCS course at Quantico then return to Annapolis. When they graduate the are comissoned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the USMC rather than an Ensign in the Navy. The US Marines were created with the concept of being a "Naval Infantry" for the purposes of capturing ships and Naval bases during boarding actions. Very much like the Royal Marines. The role just grew from there.

Very hungover this morning. I took three motrin when I got up, but it was no help. I tried coffee but it did not help. I just drank three fingers of bourbon and I do feel a little better now. I must be getting old, they never hurt like this when I was younger. The Army - Navy game comes on is a little bit. My grandfather played for West Point. He kicked the winning field goal against Navy one year back in the 30s. That was his favorite story to tell. Well, I served in the Marines soooo... GO NAVY BEAT ARMY

Are you referring to the influnece of lobbyists and big money "campaign doners"? I'm not necassarily trying to spake a debate but I am curious what you're driving at. I guess I missed it. @LoF, I am not going to make the argument that the New Deal was all bad or entirely ineffective. It created many important labor laws and employee and consumer safeguards we still rely on today. It also did ease the misery to a small degree. But as a means of generating economic growth it did more harm than good by limiting business expansion and punishing succesful investing. The US has a market economy, I know your thoughts on that, but it will never change. In simplest terms if people are not buying and selling the economy shrinks, jobs are lost. WW2 put everyone to work and the war effort became the largest consumer of that. That is one of the arguments constantly trotted out by conspiracy theorists who believe FDR knowingly allowed Parl Harbor to happen. I seriously doubt that one myself. I could go into much more detail here, this era of US history is one I've always been facinated with and read a lot about but I am just not in the mood for long posts today, and I doubt you want to read them.

Without a doubt. And vice versa. My ideal US government is: House: Republican Majority by 20-30 seats Senate: Democrat Majority by 2-5 seats ( enough so the Vice President will probably never be a factor). Supreme Court: Constructionist majority by at least 5-4, 6-3 is better, but not more than that. Give me all that and I would not care who is in the White House. Remember Awesomeness, the Executive does not wield very much power. Influence yes, but not much power. The real power in the US is in Congress, the Executive was meant to be a check on them. When you get one political party running everything the results are almost always all bad.

Actually no. WW2 ended the depression, the New Deal really just extended it in an attempt to prvent it from getting worse. Some interesting (at least I thought so) reading if you ever have the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forgotten_Man As for the topic, we are stuck with that miserable statist SOB until 2012. If current polling holds the Repubs will recapture at least one house of Congress next year. That at least will mitigate the damage Obama can do to us. If the Repubs capture the house and erase the super majority the Dems have in the Senate I'll sleep a lot better at night. Divided government; the only time when everyone in America is safe. To tell the truth, as long as Congress is controlled by the other party, I don't care who is in the White House.

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Hah, that's a matter for the courts! Not to give you any ideas here, but: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9707/24/yemen.mars/

Sorry Lord of Flies, after careful consideration and reading everything you posted I have decided that Communisim is just not for me. Judging by the responses here I'd say I represent the majority opinion here (for a change). So.. sorry we could not make a deal, good bye and good luck with that whole workers paradise thing. As we say here in the US, "Better Dead than Red".

Just got out of a two hour meeting on purchasing new planar Kathrein XPol antennas for WiMax applications. I gave a 20 min presentation on the electrical properties and specs of the antenna. It was really exciting and facinating stuff, I nearly dozed off myself. That would have been a sight.

Last Weeks Results: Kelverin: 12-4 GD: 10-6 Volo: 10-6 Season Standings: Volo: 130-61 GD: 128-63 Kelverin: 128-63 Going into week 14, Volo maintains a slim lead but it's still anyones race!

Nah, it would never happen. I'm well armned and determined. The best they could do is take it over my dead twitching corpse, and as many of theirs as I can get. That's why such a thing will never happen in the US. Take LoF as an example. He is probably not willing to kill me to create a communist state here in the US. He is almost certainly not willing to give his life to create one. On the other hand I am more than willing and very able to kill him to prevent it, and would sacrifice my own life to stop it with a smile on my face.

You have to admit, it will be very funny if a private enterprise manages to return humans to the moon before any national space program does. Especially is they make a huge....PROFIT from it.

My bathtub is leaking. I spent the whole day chasing that down. Turns out the leak is in the diverter valve and it's been leaking into the wall for some time now. This will be fun to fix. What a POS this house is.

I'm curious (and I'm trying to take you seriously here) I own a house and 25 acres of land. Far more than most people do. Most American homes are on .15 - 1 acre lots, or are co-op. Now for all that I have a modest salary (for someone in my profession, Electronic Engineer) and I saved for a long time to buy this place. Now since I obviously have so much more than say a janitor can afford (since I have a college education that I paid for myself) would you consider me rich? Would someone like me exepct to have all they worked for seized by spontaneous revolutionary forces or governmnent?

Edit: Nevermind, I misread Kills post.

It's been colder than usual here. We got a few inches of snow over the weekend which is very rare. Damned global warming.

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091207/D9CED36O0.html Very cool stuff. I'd go if I had that kind of money. But the truth is, as this becomes more commonplace the prices will drop. Just think, in a few years they will begin offering orbital flights. Lunar flights my be just a decade or two away. Perhaps even industrialization on the moon which has an abundance of fissable material called tritium. The future is bright.