John Adams

He's a flibberdygibbit.

Again shocking news from Europe. Reducing spending and even raise taxes...all in the name of debt reduction. http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/22/uk.budget/?hpt=T2

To put the cleanup in perspective, 20B is a pittance compared to the 1 trillion we've spent in Iraq/Afghanistan, although we've gotten a ton of bang for the buck in that 1 trillion. (God it's hard not to be cynical. It really is.) We can B word if the taxpayers have to cough up 20B if BP goes under but it's low on my list of government-funded wastes of money. Unlike the Iraq/Afghan escapades, at least cleaning up the Gulf is worth it. (Unless you're murra, then who cares about the Gulf. )

$10 for a pack of MJ cigarettes would give the customer and the man more than their fair shares. But it would keep people out of prison so why bother?

Tax the rich and tax the smokers. Notice how at the G20, the EU is all about cutting deficits and the US is all about talking governments into stimulating their economies. WTF is this world coming to? The EU is advocating fiscal responsibility?

I am all against this admin's business populism crap but the BP 20B in escrow thing is pretty solid work. It sets aside a huge fund to insure people get paid somewhat quickly. It sets aside that money in case BP folds (possible). And all it's doing is setting it aside...not taking it away. The way I look at it, this spill is something like a wrongful death civil suit. Nothing criminal happened like a murder since BP didn't have intent...but there's some sort of negligence here and we still have a dead body. BP gets to answer for that by paying out the nose.

I liked the congresscritters pounding him during his testimony when he said he didn't know (before the spill) what was going on on the rig. The guy said something like "We have hundreds of rigs" and he got lambasted more. He's no PR genius--as "We care about the little people" shows--but he's also getting nicely railroaded in more than a "buck stops here" kind of way.

I am 100% FOR that SC dude. He doesn't know what TARP is but I have moreconfidence in him than 90% of Congress. You make no points AND are a racist. A twofer.

(1) Raiders, Redskins...ie crazy franchises that make insane moves. (2) No way.

I setup a Linux machine (actually a Linux partition in an old HP) in 1998-9 so I have no doubt it's come a long ways in 11 years. Still, I have momentum in Mac, which is conveniently compatible with several programs I'm married to. Plus, I can't think of a single complaint about my Mac besides its price, which doesn't phase me. (Maybe because I remember buying a Pentium 150 for 3 grand). I use a PC at work and would ditch it in a heartbeat given a choice. Windows has come a long way but it's still not great.

Your mom is a faceless lawyer.

See Bluefire's post. And my time isn't free. OSX requires next to zero setup and less maintenance. IF I jumped back to Linux, I'd have to learn and setup 7-8 programs that I've already got workign the way I like...and go through the entire Linux install, which is a PIA. Plus get code-intimate, which is completely unnecessary.

Case argued by Kagan interestingly.

I nouned it up with the dash because I like the way it sounds better.

Which is right but that's a faceless jibe...not a specific one.

You don't know where you're going. And as for your evil-ity, I would be so confident!

Are you here all night? Is your mic on?

You think my head's in the sand just because I enjoy jabbing at the DD's of the world who never fail to appear when there's a faint scent of disaster but wouldn't post good news if it bit them? Remember: I own GLD...not dollars. I own some black swan type funds too. That's not head in the sand. And if Taleb taught one thing, it's this: You can't predict and there are more extreme events than the bell curve predicts. If you think you can predict when the extreme events are going to happen (i.e, your "6 months of doom"), you're probably setting yourself up for a FAIL. If you bet generally THAT extreme events (good and bad) will happen, you might do OK.

Yeah, you think we're all going to hell. But not evil. It's a fine point.

Remember the flu pandemic? Man this place was hot then! What was that? Bird flu? Pig flu? Projections of a mass labor shortage for all the people that would be sick. "Where will we put the bodies?" We loves us some bad news!

My point is exactly that everything I do on the computer, I can do on any OS. Money played no factor. But who needs to be messing around with code when they don't have to? Stated another way, some people like cars they can wrench; some people like cars they never have to wrench. In the computer world, I chose the latter. I proved I could run Linux. Linux was "meh" to me. I moved on.

Baseball on TV is about as much fun as bowling to me. I find soccer great to watch, no better than the WC.

I was a Linux early guy just out of curiosity. I built an early machine and installed Red Hat on it. I didn't mind it but 10+ years later, what I use computers for is writing in word processors, photos, music, and cloud stuff. I don't need Linux. I just want a machine that works. So I own a Mac.

I tried Mozy for a bit but it was so damn slow that I dumped it. Now I have two externals.They alternate between being the one hooked to the computer and the one I store out of my house. I was also VERY VERY leery of backing up files to locations and people I don't know.