From Chart Prophet via Seeking Alpha, the 3 month relative performance of just about everything.

Last night my friend Charles G was celebrating the state of Michigan having received some 200 million dollars from the federal government to be spent on high speed rail improvements/projects around the state.

Somewhere within some series of comments attached to one of his several posts on the subject he asked, "Why do conservatives hate high speed rail?  

The answer of course being that conservatives don't hate high speed rail, they hate subsidized high speed rail.

So anyway, at 3:15 this morning, I wake up and start wondering, "Hey, how come liberals hate cars?

Here's George Wills' opinion.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends.

Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables.

Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates.

The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Seemingly in Mr Wills opinion, that "carbon footprint" thing is just an excuse.

 I say, "Let's go back to horses."

I know how to fix a horse.

There aren't so many nice stories around lately, so I grabbed more of this one than I would have otherwise, just in case you can't get behind The Wall Street Journal's paywall with the provided links which as usual is accessed by clicking the photo and/or clicking on Mr. Moffets name below.

Maybe Graciela Sees It From Heaven, This Huge Guitar Made of Trees

It's Mr. Ureta's Tribute to a Late Wife; His Girlfriend, Ms. Ponzi, Is OK With It, Too

by MATT MOFFETT

GENERAL LEVALLE, Argentina—Pilots often stare in disbelief when they make their first flight over this hamlet on the verdant pampa. There, on the monotonous plain below, is a giant guitar landscaped out of cypress and eucalyptus trees. It is more than two-thirds of a mile long.

Behind the great guitar of the pampa, and its 7,000-odd trees, is a love story that took a tragic turn.

The green guitar is the handiwork of a farmer named Pedro Martin Ureta, who is now 70. He embedded the design into his farm many years ago, and maintains it to this day, as a tribute to his late wife, Graciela Yraizoz, who died in 1977 at the age of 25.

"It's incredible to see a design that was so carefully planned, so far below," says Gabriel Pindek, a commercial pilot for Argentina's Austral Lineas Aereas. "There's nothing else like it."

Born to a ranching family with deep roots here, Mr. Ureta was something of a bohemian as a young man. He traveled to Europe and hobnobbed with artists and revolutionaries. After coming home in the late 1960s, the then-28-year old became captivated by Ms. Yraizoz, who was just 17 and dazzlingly pretty.

This one was sitting right at the top of my newsreader this morning.

I heaved a sigh of relief as I have been really, really worried about these guys.

Click anywhere below to link to the story.

Chief executives at the biggest U.S. companies saw their pay jump sharply in 2010, as boards rewarded them for strong profit and share-price growth with bigger bonuses and stock grants.

The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs of 350 major companies surged 11% to $9.3 million, according to a study of proxy statements conducted for The Wall Street Journal by management consultancy Hay Group.

Viacom CEO Philippe P. Dauman topped the list with compensation valued at $84.3 million, more than double his 2009 pay.

 "The phrase " working mother " is redundant."   Jane Sellman

"A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after."  Peter De Vries

"The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new."  Rajneesh

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."  Elizabeth Stone

"A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take."  Cardinal Mermillod

"When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.” Sophia Loren

“There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one”  Jill Churchill 

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.”  Aristotle

“Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.”  Pearl S. Buck

“An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest”  Spanish Proverb

"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process."  John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease."  Lisa Alther

From Agora Financial, publishers of The Daily Reckoning and Whiskey and Gunpowder, two of my favorites among their many titles, here are the two charts that tell me that QE3 is inevitable.

Announced or otherwise.

Both the quote, and the Peter Nicholson cartoon below were found at one of my very favorite sites, Jesse's Cafe' Americain.

If you are tired of being cannon fodder for the banks and a corrupt government, and are sincerely interested in knowing just what the hell is really happening in the world around you.

Not to mention what is being done to you specifically, Jesse has some answers.

It is not often an easy read, and you will be lost the first 7 or 10 times you pull up to this fine blog, as Jesse is a trader and like all traders, his world is monitored and then explained using all manner of charts, acronyms and shorthand phrases that you as a non trader won't readily understand.

What you need to grasp here, is that among those things that Jesse does for a living, is to trade his own account.

That is to say, he places his own money at risk either for or against some specific proposition, commodity, stock ... whatever.

The power here resides in the phrase "his own money".

You can trust me on this one when I tell you that when it's your own money, your thinking gets way sharper.

Way Sharper.

It is my sincere hope that you will spend three minutes or so a day with Jesse in the hope that you may avoid some or all of the ass kicking heading in our general direction.

This thing is far from over.

And please try to keep in mind what has happened over the past ten years.

I am utterly amazed that the US has just passed through one of the greatest financial scandals and frauds in history, and within two or three years is willing to act as though nothing had happened, that it was just some random act of God, and that everything is back to a 'new normal' again. 

Few prosecutions and shallow reforms. 

Remarkable.

House cleaning continues.

We've had this one around for so long I can no longer remember who sent it in.

It's up to a million or so hits, so maybe you've seen it, I'm thinking 15 or 18 of them are probably me.

22 people don't like it, which I can't even begin to understand.

Anyway, whoever sent this to us, email us, we'll give you the credit you so richly deserve.

Pretty neat if you ask me.

 What makes me laugh the most here is,

Can't you just here him saying it?