JustThinking.us

The Secretariat post provoked in a small way the too soon to be deemed eternal (even though it will be) argument concerning which "Big Red" was the best, Man O' War or Secretariat.

In 1999 the Associated Press assembled "a six member panel of experts" to vote on the matter.

That panel elected Man O' War "Horse of the Century" and in so doing, settled nothing.

So, I'm sitting here minding my own business yesterday when the phone rings, and Paul T. says,  "So, Man O' War or Secretariat?"

"Mary Ann. I say, "Although occasionally, Ginger."

"C'mon." He grinds.

"Ok Ok, Man O' War on the strength of his stride." I offer ..... while ducking.

"No, No, No." he says and as expected, launches into the eight reasons why I'm wrong.

"Enough, I say, gimme the greatest horse race of all time.

Seabiscuit over War Admiral?

Or ..............

Affirmed over Alydar at the Belmont Stakes?

And while we're on the subject of impossible to resolve arguments.

Which was the greatest rivalry,

Affirmed/Alydar, Ali/Frazier, Magic/Bird, or Ginger/Mary Ann?

Argue amonst yourselves, keep me out of this.

We eulogized Smart Little Lena a month or so ago here.

As stated in that eulogy, he was among the greatest equine athletes of all time.

Below are the baby pictures of his five cloned offspring.

Four of these colts will be sold as four year olds at this year's NCHA futurity sale.

I personally like #4, Dave ..... seriously, Dave.

I don't know ............ he looks like a good guy.

They are being sold because differences of opinion regarding the ethics of the cloning and subsequent use of the cloned colts broke out within the syndicate that owned him, and landed everybody in court.

The above jpeg links to to a pay site article at Nature Biotechnology entitled Nuclear Transfer Saddles Up, that I just know for sure you are are going to want to read over and over again.

Maybe not.

These here gears here  links to an article about a cloned daughter of Docs Serendipity, another great champion cutting horse.  It offers some conversation about genetics vs. environment that's not very tough reading.

I liked it.

This little gear here  will take you to a very easy to read article which explains why these babies' white markings are all different.

I went looking around for a coherent discussion regarding the ethics of all of this ..... never found it.

Aside from the fact that all of this stuff just causes me to marvel, I really don't even know what I think about it.

“Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.”

“Your children need your presence more than your presents.”

“If you run, you might lose. If you don't run, you're guaranteed to lose.”

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

“It is time for us to turn to each other, not on each other”

“No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.”

“The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed."

You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

“Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains."

You must know, it is not your aptitude but your attitude that will determine your altitude.”

“When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.”

“When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when whites are unemployed it's called a depression.”

"There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- and then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

“Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.”

“Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.”

I like The Velvet Underground a lot.

Loaded is one of the many records I've owned in every format every invented.

I always thought of Moe Tucker as a solid professional drummer.

This week the drummer in Andy Warhol's favorite band came back for her second, maybe third fifteen minutes, in a big way.

Having been spotted at a tea party gathering earlier this summer, she gave an interview to Mike Applestein last weekend which has since gone viral.

Click anywhere on the quote below for the entire interview.

No country can provide all things for all citizens. There comes a point where it just isn't possible, and it's proven to be a failure everywhere it's been tried. I am not oblivious to the plight of the poor, but I don't see any reason/sense to the idea that everyone has to have everything, especially when the economy is so bad. I see that philosophy as merely a ploy to control.

My family was damn poor when I was growing up on Long Island. There were no food stamps, no Medicaid, no welfare. If you were poor, you were poor. You didn't have a TV, you didn't have five pairs of shoes, you didn't have Levi's, you didn't have a phone; you ate Spam, hot dogs and spaghetti. We all survived! I am not against food stamps, welfare or Medicaid, if only they would oversee these programs properly!

I am also against the government taking over the student loan program, car companies, bailouts and the White House taking control of the census (what the hell is that all about?); [about] any First Lady telling (I know, I know, "suggesting to") us what to eat, the mayor of New York City declaring "no salt" (screw you, pal!), the mayor/city commissioners of Anytown, U.S.A. declaring you can't fly a flag, can't say the Pledge of Allegiance and can't sing the National Anthem. I'm against a President dismissing any and all who dare to disagree; the water being turned off in (central) California, at [an] area where they've turned off the water because they want to save a one-inch fish -- turning that huge area of farming land into another dustbowl -- the insipid start of food supply control methinks! The government deciding what kind of lightbulbs we can use (all you "think green" people, three objections to this b.s.: 1) Those bulbs give off the light of a candle; 2) They're veryexpensive; 3) They have mercury in them - how the hell are we supposed to dispose of them?).

I am against the government now thinking about bailing out unions. The unions made the contracts which include insane pensions; the U.S. government didn't. I'm against the government closing down offshore drilling in the Gulf with one hand and with the other giving (lending?) Brazil money to help them do way deeper offshore drilling -- rather curious. I'm against a government that will not defend our borders; and on and on and on.

Applestein - What are your feelings about the online reactions? Many people seem upset or outraged.

Maureen Tucker - I'm stunned that so many people who call themselves liberal yet are completely intolerant. I thought liberals loved everyone: the poor, the immigrant, the gays, the handicapped, the minorities, dogs, cats, all eye colors, all hair colors! Peace, love, bull! Curious they have no tolerance whatsoever for anyone who doesn't think exactly as they do. You disagree and you're immediately called a fool, a Nazi, a racist. That's pretty f%#d up!!

From one of our favorite bloggers, Professor Mark J. Perry at the University of Michigan Flint campus, at his outstanding blog,  Carpe Diem.

" ... for every 100 jobs lost by women since the start of the recession in late 2007, men have lost an astonishing 219 jobs."

Click on the chart below for the entire post.

Something about the Indy Mac video sure hit a nerve.

We were bombarded with an easy dozen video exposes and presentations on about every political, banking, housing and financial issue out there.

I'll probably will have gone through most of it by the end of the weekend.

So far, my favorite is the two minute vid offered below.

First of all, it's two minutes.

Some of the stuff out there is an hour or more per bite.

Evidently it was done by, for or endorsed by Sean Hannity in some fashion.

I had never seen it before.

Here are two clearly distinct points of view on the "big picture".

Thanks to Kathleen for sending this through.

Thanks to Dougy F. for this one.

Here's one reason you can barely do a workout.

Sometimes stuff comes to us in bunches.

Ken M. sent in this cartoon today after Dina ? sent it in last week.

We passed on posting it the first time because we couldn't find a Regan site to acknowledge.

But it's just too good to pass on twice.

If you know how to find Regan, we'd be delighted to give credit.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

“The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.”

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”

“I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.”

“It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer .”

“Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it”

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

 “Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”

“Force always attracts men of low morality.”

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest”

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity.”

 “The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.”

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”

“An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.”

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.”

“I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”

“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.”

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.”

“If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.”

“You can't blame gravity for falling in love.”

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”

“Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.”

“In my experience, the best creative work is never done when one is unhappy.”

“The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches”

“I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind”

“Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.”

“The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.”

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work”

“I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.”

“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”

Nine days after amicably parting company with The Grease Band and only eight days after being informed by his manager that he had been booked for a seven week, 52 show tour, Joe Cocker opened "The Mad Dogs and Englishmen" Tour March 20, 1970 at the Eastown Theater in Detroit, Michigan.

A former friend of mine (Donny W) was there.

40 years later the little creep is still ticking me off about it.

"Remember when your mom wouldn't let you go see Joe Cocker?"

Shut Up Donny!!!

Most likely the single greatest rock and roll carnival ever assembled.

This is Joe Cocker (frightening small children and worrying neurologists everywhere) on vocals, Leon Russell on piano and band leader, Bobby Keyes on saxaphone, Chris Stainton on organ, along with twenty or so others live at the Fillmore East performing Leon Russel's tribute to the lovely and talented Rita Coolidge.

Delta Lady.

We're guys around here.

We like big damn trucks.

Click the photo below to link up to a Business Insider photo gallery of the world's biggest machines.



Pretty cool.

In an effort to evade the truth, municipal governments have taken a lessons from the Federal Government and are cooking the books in order to cover up the extent of their promised but unfunded pension liabilities.

Cynical Roany will take this opportunity to point out that by and large, the very same people calling for transparent accounting at the corporate level are lying through their teeth via their own accounting practices at every single level of government ......... federal, state and local.

Click the chart below to catch the very simple three paragraph story that comes with this chart.

Or probably more important to you, this here little gear here will take you to another Clusterstock story which ranks the ten cities in the deepest doo-doo.

Almost nobody who visits JustThinking.us is aware of the fact that we (really I) have two pretty distinct readerships.

The first being the group that's been around either from the very beginning (chain letter days) or who know me from having done business together.

Most of those people who have been around here for a while now, know that when it comes to the economy, current events, investing and whathaveyou, for the most part, I only read the most disturbing stuff available.

They find this to be a major league hoot, but they dial in because they know I'm paying attention.

For the most part, they like the quotes, the stories, the music and the random stuff well enough, but they stop by to find out what their Uncle Roany read last Sunday morning, and what if anything, he intends to do about it.

Which is not to say that they actually follow the Roanman's lead.

Noooooooo ............ really only a paltry few even tipi-toe into those waters where Uncle Roany both routinely and gracefully demonstrates his can opener.

The other and growing group have found this site via Facebook.

They like the quotes and the fact that the Roanman's faithful servant mostly endeavors to keep it light and respectful.

These people are for the most part what I call civilians.

They have all kinds of interesting lives, they care about all kinds of interesting stuff, but with few exceptions, they are not the kind of dedicated street types that originally started passing around those letters that caused me to want to do this site in the first place.

As an aside, most or all or the original letters are long missing having gone to Terry D's to die.

Anyway, David N. showed up pretty early at the Facebook page for JustThinking and has been nothing but an asset, and a very pleasant contributor.

This afternoon, he made the dreadful mistake of asking what could possibly be making the Roanman crabby.

Then, he really screwed up, "Care to share? he asked.

You are about to learn a valuable lesson here David.

From Doug Casey this time at Whiskey and Gunpowder

“The national debt should be defaulted on for several reasons.

“To start with, once the U.S. government defaults on its debt, people will think twice before lending it any more money; giving politicians the ability to borrow is like giving a teenager a bottle of whisky and the keys to a Corvette. A second reason is that the debt is an albatross around the necks of the next several generations; it's criminal to make indentured servants out of people who aren't even born yet. A third reason would be to overtly punish those who have been lending money to the government, enabling it to do all the stupid and destructive things that the government does with that money.

“The debt will be defaulted on one way or another. The trouble is they're almost certainly going to default on it through inflation, by destroying the currency, which is much worse than defaulting on it overtly. That's because inflation will wipe out the relatively few people who are prudent in this country, those who are actually saving money. Because they generally save in the form of dollars, they're going to wipe them out financially.

“It's just horrible. Runaway inflation will reward the profligates who are in debt-people who've been living above their means. And punish the producers who've been saving and trying to build capital. That's in addition to the fact it will destroy millions of productive enterprises. A runaway inflation is the worst thing that can happen to a society, short of a major war. They just should default on it honestly, as it were.

“…Americans have to learn that the government isn't ‘us’. It's an entity that has its own interests, its own life, its own agenda. It views citizens as milk cows-or perhaps even beef cows- strictly as a means to its ends.

“…To pay interest on the national debt, and to pay for additional spending, all the Federal Reserve has to do is buy bonds from the U.S. government. It doesn't have to stabilize at all. The government is most unlikely to cut back on its spending, most of which has become part of the social fabric- Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits, food stamps, corporate bailouts, continuing foreign wars, domestic 'security'...These people are crazy enough that it could get like Germany in the '20s or Zimbabwe afew years ago.

“At the moment we're in an economic twilight zone or, if you wish, the eye of a hurricane. There is apparent stability in the economy. The stock market's high. The bond market's high. Only the real estate market is in visible trouble. Retail prices are level; they're not going up and maybe they're even going down in some cases. This is a temporary situation. We will inevitably-and soon-hit the other side of the storm. At some point those trillions of dollars created by the U.S. government-and many other governments around the world have created trillions of currency units-are going to have an effect. When will that be? The timing is uncertain. But I think it's going to be soon.

“If these things were perfectly predictable, it would be easier to dodge the bullet. This is an almost unique time in world economic history, and I think we're not only going to have economic consequences, but social and political consequences, and very likely military consequences. So hold on to your hat.

“…I think it will be a generation before American real estate is a solid buy again. And the world at large will likely have quite a different character then…

“As to what's going to happen over the next few years, I feel confident that we've entered upon the Greater Depression in earnest. It will be an extended period of time when most people's standard of living drops significantly…

“…The Chinese know that one of the reasons Mao took over is because the government of Chiang Kai-shek destroyed the national currency. The Chinese can see the problems with the U.S. dollar. That it could blow up in their hands. They also see the problems they're creating for themselves by creating trillions of new renminbi. So I think that they're encouraging the average guy in the street to do some saving with gold so that if things go sideways with these paper currencies, the average guy isn't left too destitute and too angry. At least he'll have some gold coins. I think they're being quite intelligent about encouraging their people to buy gold…Everybody knows that the Communist Party in China is nothing but a scam for its members to cream something off the top of everything. It's ludicrous to say China is a communist country. It's easier to do business in China than it is in the U.S.-lower taxes, less regulation, less legal hassles. In point of fact, the Chinese are reverting to the mean. For many centuries, up until the Industrial Revolution, China was much wealthier than the West. Now it's rising again.

“As far as the United States is concerned, unfortunately it's going the other way. The issue has nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is just mob rule dressed up in a sports coat. It's much overrated. The U.S. government is becoming more powerful, and the U.S. is radically departing from the economic philosophy of free markets that made it great. It's simultaneously becoming more politically repressive. The Chinese are just reverting to their traditional economic philosophy, which is not communism, it's capitalist trade and production…”

What's crabbing me out David, is that with the possible exception of a few random points, I'm absolutely certain that Mr. Casey has it right.

I would very definately prefer to be wrong about Mr. Casey being right, because .................. if he is right, a lot of good people are going to just get crushed.

Cheers.

As previously disclosed, for many years, I've read people who have been reading Richard Russell for many years.

When what I should have been doing was reading Richard Russell.

Along with Harry Schultz and Joe Granville he clearly is one of the grand old men of the financial newsletter business.

Despite the fact that Mr. Russell is now 86 and significantly less hail than he used to be, I just dropped another $175 for a 6 month subscription to his newsletter, the Dow Theory Letter, despite the disclaimer at the bottom of the offering that reads something to the effect that, "You know Richard is 86 years old, Right?  Ain't gonna be no refund.

If it goes just one week, it will have been cheap at twice the price.

The chart below is for DBC, the commodity tracking index offered on the New York Stock exchange.

Richard pulls out some of the items that make up that index immediately below.

 Scoreboard year-to-date in percentages -- Agricultural 

Cattle (lb)....................+12.0%
Coffee (lb)...................+36.9%
Corn (bu).....................+37.3%
Cotton (lb)...................+46.7%
Lumber(1000 bd.ft.)....+32.9%
Orange Juice (lb)..........+19.7%
Soy beans (bu)..............+13.2%
Wheat (bu)....................+29.8%

 With the following commentary

"Trouble -- The poverty sector and the middle class are having trouble enough, but the chart below spells more pain. This is the Commodity chart, and it's telling us that the price of food is heading skyward. With the price of food (corn, grains) heading higher and with oil now over 83, the squeeze is on for the majority of Americans.

The US is floating in liquidity. And nobody knows what to do with it. Which is one reason why stocks have been floating higher. Should you buy farm land, housing, commodities, silver, bonds, gold, insurance, what? There's no safe return on anything."

Here's Mr. Russell's latest writing on Gold.

  Around 1999 and 2000 gold was selling at just above 260 an ounce. But more important, many well-known gold shares were selling like second-hand rain coats. These formerly much-loved gold shares were selling at such low or bargain prices that I thought one could buy thousands of shares and just "put 'em away" and forget about them. I knew gold wasn't going out of style, and it was just a matter of time before interest in gold returned, as it has in all history.

Great bull markets start with stocks selling "below known values." That's where gold mining shares were selling around 1999 and 2000. I equated gold shares in the year 2000 with the Dow in June 1999 at a time when the Dow was priced at 161. In the year 2000, I thought to myself, "Could this be the very beginning of a great bull market in gold, a bull market that could ultimately take gold above its January 1980 peak price of 850? That idea stuck in my head; in fact I became obsessed with the idea that a great bull market was beginning and very few people even suspected that was happening in gold.

Question -- OK, Russell, gold is now well above its peak price of 850 struck in 1980. So what do you expect next?

Answer -- I went through this same phenomenon in the 1960s with the stock market. We went through the correction of 1953, and we staggered through the vicious correction of 1957. In 1957 a severe recession enveloped the US economy, and almost everybody was convinced that the bull market that had started in 1949 had ended.

I learned from George Schaefer that big bull markets almost always end with a speculative explosion. We had not seen that kind of action in the bull market that started in June, 1949. I was convinced that a speculative third phase of the bull market lay somewhere ahead. For that reason I was convinced that the bull market was not over.

In fact, I was so sure of my stand that I wrote an article that was published in Barron's (December, 1958) in which I made the case for a coming final boom phase in the stock market. That article drew a great amount of interest, and it put me in business. A speculative third phase did appear in the stock market during 1956 through the early '60s.

Today I am taking the same stand regarding the gold bull market. The gold bull market will not end with a fizzle and a whimper. It will end with intense speculation and widespread interest from the funds and the public. We haven't seen that kind of activity yet, but I'm convinced that a period of wild speculation in gold lies somewhere ahead.

This is why I continue to beg my subscribers to load up with gold. As I see it, we are nearing a period of intense speculation that will be beyond anything seen before by the last three generations of Americans. Ironically, more money made in the final explosion in gold than was made during the first two phases combined.

Great bull market are seen maybe once or twice in a lifetime. The current "stealth" gold bull market has sneaked up on most Americans. The very phrase, "gold bull market" is sneered at by most analysts today. In fact, most of the comments on gold today come in the form of warnings; "Gold is too high." "Gold is in a bubble." "Gold will sink back below 1000." "Gold is a fool's play."

Nonsense. Gold is moving ever-closer to it's climactic speculative third phase. The negative comments about gold will only serve to make the gold bull market that much stronger. In this business, there is nothing more powerful than a primary bull market that has been denigrated, spat at, and held back for years.

And that's the end of my "lecture" about the fabulous gold bull market.

Below, the profile of one of history's greatest primary bull markets (and it's not finished yet).

 Either chart will link you up to Richard Russell's fine site.

Super duper way double highly recommended ......... with the previously discussed caveat.