Welcome Back! The World Needs Me…..

So I have been away for a shameful period of time.  I have been busy and content – a bad combination for a blogger.  Busy, because that’s how life goes with three kids.  Content, because I liked both of our presidential candidates and have been excited by the possibilities.  I thought, for the first time – we are actually going to have to presidential candidates that say what they mean – no twisted, half-truths designed to rally the base.  The American people asked for this.

Now – it is clear we are dealing with half-truths again.  Obama pointing out that McCain’s cheif economic architect pushed for the legislation that left the derivitve markets unregulated.  Only after the speech did we learn that two of Obama’s economy guru’s were also behind that same legislation.  Last night at the debate, McCain pointing out that Obama voted against legislation supporting deployed troops, only to find out that actually he would not support the legislation because it did not include language for troop withdrawal.  We also found out that McCain voted against legislation that supported our troops, but did include a timetable for troop withdrawal.  So apparently neither suports deployed troops?

It’s dissappointing to say the least.

Michael Savage Needs a Lesson in Diplomacy

Learning what doesn’t work.  Politics are despicably misleading.  Media is despicably biased. But polical media is about as bad as it gets.  People out to “rally the base” and in it for the ad revenues.  Does it get any less reliable?  Someone, feel free to stop me – but is there really any rational way to compare Imus’ firing to Nazi Germany?   I’m just not sure throwing the history of Nazi Germany into the same league makes any sense.   And Savage compares a lot of people to Hitler – and a lot of situations to Nazi Germany.  Don’t get on my case for picking on the “Right”.  I have a lot to say abot the likes of Robert Reiche as well.  Please climb aboard the reality that in politics and media, the truth usually lies somewhere outside of the far right and the far left…..somewhere in the middle.

Mainstream Media is Not Our Friend

Have you ever noticed that the farther we move away from public broadcasting, the more sensationalistic the media gets.  Of course this makes sense – if it isn’t interesting, you won’t watch.  If you don’t watch, they don’t sell advertising.  So, better make it scary!  

 A prime example of this could be the financial news networks.  Would you ever ride an elevator with “Soar” and “Plummet” buttons? They have been successful at convincing us that the stock market needs to be watched 24 hours per day.  100 years ago, we didn’t even talk about a stock market – there weren’t even any indexes to talk about.  Why is it that now, it requires our attention all day long?  Truth is, it doesn’t – but you wouldn’t know it with one “scare” after another. 

Weak dollar,  rising interest rates, rising energy costs, inflation, Chinese Governmental policies, deflation, sub-prime mortgage market, credit-crunch, falling interest rates, and back to inflation.  For the last 5 years, we have heard all of this time and time again, while the market has improved 50% from it’s correction lows. 

I suppose if you make claims long enough in a cyclical market your bound to be right eventually.  But for now, aren’t you glad you didn’t listen?