NFL Denial Limerick Time!!!

So, I'm right on this one.  NFL fans are tuning out because of all this Kaepernick bullstein.

I don't have much to add accept a Limerick...

Roger Goodell has taken to Twitter
to say, "My ratings are all in the shitter
Not because of that dick
Washed up QB Kaepernick
but because the election is so angry and bitter."

More Bad ObamaCare Fallout That Was Predicted

Whoa, apparently there could be a "mass exodus" of doctors from the Medicare system.

Really?  No shitting me?

Gee, I think I predicted that, although it was so long ago, it's hard to remember...let me check...

OK, yup, there it is...yes, I did predict it.

Fortune 100 Co. Tripped Up In China

Back in 2013 I wrote about what I saw as 5 Pillars of the New Financial Reality.  One of them was don't get too sucked into China.

Alas, that post came too late to save Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman.  He's out and a big bet on China is most of the reason.

“Everybody was convinced that this time would be different,” said Ken Banks, who retired in 2013 as manager for Caterpillar’s electric mining shovels. “They thought the Chinese market was so hot, that commodity prices would continue to be very strong and Caterpillar would increase sales substantially.”

The year 2012 would prove to be a peak for Caterpillar. Soon after, miners began shelving equipment-buying plans as commodity prices fell. China’s growth slowed. Then oil prices fell, along with demand for related equipment.

Caterpillar now faces its fourth straight year of falling sales, the longest decline in its history. Its stock is up 29% this year—the best-performing in the Dow Jones Industrial Average— but trades 25% below its 2012 peak.

“Everybody was surprised by the size of the downturn and the length of it,” Mr. Oberhelman, 63 years old, said at a September mining trade show in Las Vegas. “I firmly believe we couldn’t have forecast that at the time” of the Bucyrus deal. The company declined to make Mr. Oberhelman available for comment for this article.

 BTW, my 5 Pillars post from 2013 holds up very well.

Reacting to the News

What to make of this?

1)  Seems interesting.  Perhaps we know more now about history and this piece of our heritage. Maybe science has brought us that much closer to the truth.  If so, it is what it is.  Either way, it's cool.

2) We must damn the Chinese retroactively for "cultural appropriation".

3) We must shout down these so-called "scientists" who are really just Western imperialist hacks looking to denigrate eastern cultural and artistic achievements because they are racist.

4)  It's George W. Bush's fault.

5)  Allow the Greeks to take back the Terracotta Warriors, much in the same way the world has clamored to have the Elgin Marbles returned.

6)  This discovery is an urgent call to action to do something about climate change.

7)  Donald Trump said "pussy"!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yahoo Just Can't Escape the Marissa Mayer Disaster

The Marissa Mayer disaster rolls on for Yahoo. 

After she failed to get the job done, the Board essentially forced a sale out from under her.  But now even that might be cratering.

Verizon's general counsel, Craig Silliman, said on Thursday the company has a "reasonable basis" to believe that Yahoo's massive data breach of at least 500 million email accounts represents a material impact that could allow Verizon to withdraw from its $4.83 billion deal to buy Yahoo.

Indian Mascot Madness

Will the idiocy at our colleges and universities ever end?  (Actually, yes*.)  Here is but one more small, sad example.

As far as Indian mascots go, I know whereof I speak.  Sometimes I can't believe that I (and many thousands before me) made it through four years with my mental well-being intact with a pernicious symbol of hate hanging over me everywhere I turned.

There is no way the folks that published this could not know that this would set the PC crowd off, which means they did it purposefully...good for them.


* If we all stop giving them money.  I don't care how much you love your alma mater, and I love mine, if you want this crap to cease...DO NOT DONATE TO ANY UNIVERSITY.

NFL Is In Denial...Big, Giant DENIAL

I wrote about this before...

Goodell & Co. are trying to convince themselves it's the election and not Kaepnernick's metastasizing bullshit.  Wrong.

People are actually tuned OUT of the election.  I know I am.  I have, literally, MORE leisure time because I am not closely following who said the word "pussy" or who broke our laws about government records and how each of these and many other factors are moving the polls.  Thus, I have MORE time to watch football...

And yet I'm not...PRECISELY because of this Kaepnerick stuff.  I want, in my own small, probably meaningless, way to send a message to this class of entertainers (just like Hollywood d**kheads) that I could care less about their puerile sentiments, empty gestures and overall sense of superiority whereby they need to lecture the rest of us.  My only hope, really, is to contribute my trifling non-participation into the pot where tens of thousands of others may have done the same, thus creating a "preference cascade" that results in measurable disapproval and/or sanction.

The NFL ratings decline of 2016 is a preference cascade of displeasure directly related to everything embodied by Kaepernick's empty, moronic and self-obsessed gesture.

Full stop.  Roger.

Gangster Government Under the Guise of Reform

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008/09 when a small fraction of money market funds "broke the buck", the government has insisted reform was needed.

Pshaw.

The government wanted to cripple its biggest competitor for short-term funding, the commercial paper market.  The reform's rubber has hit the road and, basically, mission accomplished.  One graph says it all.
















Cheaper funding for the government, more expensive funding for the private sector.  Feature, not a bug of "reform".

Google Still A Censor, Still Sucks

Google is a pure, unadulterated corporate authoritarian.  It is not a company dedicated to the values that we Americans (most us, still, I think) hold dear.

As said...shameful.

Worse Than Trump's Comments? Lefties On Their High Horse

I'm no Trump fan, but all this bullshit over his comments is precisely that...bullshit.

1) It was the left who sexualized the culture and who pushes the envelope on the acceptability of sexual openness/luridness - except in those rare occasions where it suits their purposes to look prudish, like now.

2) Of course there is a double standard.  You can guarantee that Bill Clinton or the Kennedy boys or any number of Democrat heroes (not just politicians but heroes) have, said thought and did much worse in their conduct towards women.  But that is suppressed because, well, because it is.

I don't like his comments as much as your average decent person, what I can't stand more than anything is lefties up on their high horse.

Media Campaign to Tarnish Brexit Continues

Many many stories of this ilk will be coming out in the months ahead. 

Be very skeptical of them.  The political left, inclusive of the media of course, took a hit with the Brexit vote and they are determined to claw back some part of that loss.  They will do so by trashing the fallout and the implementation of Brexit.  They will continue to pound Brexit as a reactionary result foisted on right-thinking people by racist rubes.

Don't buy it.  The European Union is, at bottom, a leftist project, perhaps the grandest leftist project.  Damage to the EU is damage to a major pillar of modern leftism.  The media is desperate to extract victory from the jaws of defeat.

The Brits understand free trade, and you CAN have free trade without all the other nonsense that comes with the EU version of free trade.  It is highly likely that Theresa May/Brexit vision will reflect Britain's free trade interests while keeping EU intrusions at bay.  This will be an enormous win for Britain, despite media caterwauling and sob stories over some poor Mexican living in London.

NFL Viewership Is Down...Hmm, Why Ever Could That Be?

People like to talk about bubbles.  Bubbles - as in unsustainably excessive prosperity - are fun to assess and diagnose.  Glenn Reynolds writes and talks alot about the Higher Education Bubble.  I think he's right.

An area where I have been writing about that I believe is clearly a bubble is professional sports.  But I've struggled with identifying how the bubble would burst.  Bad behavior?  Nope.  We've got all kinds of boorish behavior on the part of athletes and we keep on handing over our dollars to the sports industry by tuning in and buying merchandise.  I suspected it would be a good old-fashioned recession that would bring the sports bubble crashing down - who's gonna buy their kid another $170 jersey when you can't make the mortgage or car payment?  Well, we had a recession recently and the economy isn't racing along by any stretch but it seems the sports bubble continues to inflate.

Are there signs that air might be coming out of the sports bubble?  I don't know but there is, at least, some reporting on it.  Although, this one is a curious animal (OK, not really).  Bloomberg News chronicles a surprising and rather sharp fall off in NFL viewership, and attempts to pinpoint the source.  Funny, in all those words they fail to mention the name "Kaepernick" or mention the dalliance that many players and teams had with that doofus's National Anthem protests.  I haven't watch a single NFL game this year over this Kaepernick garbage and I know several others who feel the same way, and I think this sentiment is widespread.

Is this a case of a liberal news organization missing a key cause and affect relationship because the notion would be completely outside of their worldview?  Maybe.  I doubt a typical Bloomberg News reporter could fathom not watching the NFL because of these protests.

Who knows what is going on, but here is a thought - the NFL is VERY important to the media and the NFL, from the top on down to the players, realized that this was headed down the wrong road and have moved to put a stop to it...quietly.  Everybody involved knows where their bread is butter and they have made a decision to stop shitting where they eat.  So the less said about Kaepernick and Co. the better and better to play dumb about why people are tuning out rather than remind them why they are tuning out.

Breaking News: Africa Is Still Africa

The latest two-bit backwater banana republic to attempt a fleecing of a great American company is...Chad. 

$74 billion.  That's 5x Chad's GDP and 20% of ExxonMobil's market capitalization. 

Not much news here, just fun stuff to watch.  They don't teach you how to deal with this kind of stuff in business school.  This is where the hardscrabble, internal Exxon MBA training - and a bit of Texas oil industry toughness - comes into play.

Chad will be told to pound sand.

Bubba Signals Dems: It's OK to Trash ObamaCare

Bubba is slamming ObamaCare as such an obvious mess...

...and yet for 6 years every Democrat in the land has been unflinchingly on message about ObamaCare's clear and obvious awesomeness.  It has been hailed as the greatest achievement possible in America.  It was the apotheosis of American greatness.  No criticism would be tolerated.

And now Bubba goes 180 degrees on them, which means it's OK for other Dems to finally jump ship.

What is going on here?  One, Bubba is just sticking the knife in Obama, trashing the last thin thread of a legacy that the Lightworker might have, precisely as Obama attempts mightily to convince anyone who will listen how awesome it is.  Two, he's teeing up a healthcare redo by Hillary who will want her Presidency (if) to be remembered for fixing Obama's mess.

This is how Bubba rolls.  Get the Obama administration to cover up for Hillary and when that's done, follow it up with a hearty trashing of the Obama administration.

Obama At His Most Contemptible...?

In Minnesota, state officials are allowing ObamaCare rates to increase 50% or more to save the state's exchange from collapse.

No comment is necessary, except that I was one of many voices that predicted the collapse of this idiotic scheme.  A rudimentary understanding of economics would have led any clear-thinking person to the same conclusion.

Now, on to the typically contemptible reaction of the Lightworker...and when I say contemptible I mean truly worthy of your deepest opprobrium.

President Barack Obama said his signature health-care law has “real problems” that have been exacerbated by congressional gridlock and political polarization.

“They’re eminently fixable problems in terms of strengthening the marketplace, improving the subsidies so more folks can get it, making sure everybody has Medicaid who was qualified under the original legislation, doing more on the cost containment,” Obama said in an interview published Sunday in New York Magazine. “But you hit a point where if Congress just is not willing to make any constructive modifications and it’s all political football, then you’re getting a suboptimal solution.”

There is no other reaction than 'How dare that m****f***er.' 

Dems own this sucker lock, stock and barrel.  To them, it was always and everywhere the greatest, best thing ever that would work splendidly and that Americans would love it..and they would brook no opposition to that view point.  Republicans ran screaming from Obamacare, it garnered not a single vote from any congressional Republican.  Republicans have mapped out how it would collapse and proposed alternatives.  Obama and the Dems fought it tooth and nail, choosing to die on the ObamaCare Hill.  Now it is collapsing exactly as we have said and yet it is our duty to fix it says Obama.

No.  It is not.

Your crap law.  If you can't fix it, which you can't, shut up and let someone else fix it.