Our Favorite Golfer

… is, of course, Fearless Leader himself, who is heading to Martha’s Vineyard, reports USA Today, for a week or rest and relaxation.  Hallelujah.  As you may expect, he’s being widely criticized for taking the time off.  But, around here, we take a more thoughtful view of things:  It’s more time that he won’t have to spend on coming up bad ideas, like the idea of making Larry Summers the next Fed boss.  Or delaying corporate Obamacare rules while screwing the working class.  Or, how about those tax breaks for corporations while penalizing small businesses?

Yes, make no mistake about it, president Obama is our favorite golfer at the moment with very sound reason.  Our offer to buy a round at Pine Dunes here in East Texas is always open, if it’ll help.

And speaking of golf, I don’t know how Ben Bernanke’s game is, but when he’s done with Fed’ing, I’ve got him on the “Free Golf with George” list, too.  I figure the more public more officials I can lure onto the golf course, the better off America will be.

President Eisenhower was criticized right and left for playing 88 rounds of golf while doing two terms qw President.  Barack Obama seems likely to get in two or three rounds in the upcoming vacation which would (according to the Obama Golf Counter site get him up to around 136 to 137 before the middle of August.

It’s only 176 games total…another 40 rounds or so….to double Ike’s outings.

Meantime, Ure’s truly hasn’t picked up his sticks in about six years now…such is the curse of the working class when the taxpayers aren’t picking up the greens fees.

Slim’s Pickins’

Mexico’s answer to Daddy Warbucks  – Carlos Slim – is making an unsolicited $9.6 billion offer for Dutch Royal KPN.  This is a cell play along with his Telekom Austria holdings.  He must see a brighter future for Europe than I do…so I may need to park some of my pessimism out back for a while.

Markets

…are looking to open to the downside about as much as they were up in yesterday’s action where the Dow rose 27.  They should open down that much, or more, this morning.  Asia was up a bit overnight, and Europe this morning is up modestly as well, which should leave us up a bit by the close today.  Seems to me with gold back over $1,300 we could slog along sideways into next week.

Revenue Dilution

16 workers in New Jersey share one of the three winning PowerBall tickets we didn’t hold in this week’s drawing.

So, lets see here:  one-third of $448 million is $149.33 million.

Then 1/16th of that is $9.33 mil.

Whack half off for lawyering, accounting, and IRS’s share and you’re at $4.66 million which is hardly worth getting out of bed for….  If I’m going to be delusional, trust me:  I’ll toss in several more decimal points…

More after this…

Happy Anniversary Nagasaki

This is the airplane that did it, now at the Air Force Museum in Ohio:

As you’d expect, there’s all kinds of talk about nuclear policy and so on in Japan

But we cynically note – oh please at least try to look surprised – that the mess coming out of TEPCO/Fukushima is really much worse than originally reported.  Seems destined to outdo the wartime use of nukes in terms of impacts including long-term loss of life. 

I’ve made a note to ask our consulting reactor engineer to work up a comparison on radiation released because that really would be interesting…

UFOS? Look, Up in the Sky!

UFO talk is making its way around Virginia where more than 30-lights in the sky have been seen.  So, if you feel like staying up late and snapping a few pictures, please send them along and we’ll post ‘em.  (I can grade photoshopping, too…)

Summer’s when the most sighting come in because people spend a lot more time outside…and when it’s warm on an August evening, why not?  Beats the hell out of TV, even though the plot’s a bit thin after watching for a few hours…

No Dinner in Pakistan?

Yeah, I know…you were just going to call your chief pilot and have her warm up the Gulfstream and surprise the spousal unit with a weekend of shopping in Lahore, Pakistan.  It’s a bad idea with Americans being advised to leave and 9 people were killed in Quetta and a suicide bomber was stopped trying to enter a mosque in Islamabad.

If you don’t get around to reading today’s UrbanSurvival column until you’re airborne, another good place to avoid is Iraq which is heading into the [sectarian] crapper since we left.  Which means it’s only a matter of time until another strongman government shows up and we will complete full circle.

Wait…why not fly to France instead?  Well….

Egged On

Marvelous to see how responsive the government of France is to farmer needs…so much so that the farmers have smashed 200,000 eggs in a protest over low prices.  They are rotting and causing a stink…

All of this morning’s headlines seem to gang up on make the vision of being a “jet setter” ever less appealing.  Except for the Caribbean which still has a few great dinner choices

Speaking of which, Digicel is doing away with roaming charges in Jamaica so you can cruise the Blue Mountains looking for appetite stimulation (ahem…) while calling home.  Don’t forget to say “Hi!” to the NSA…

Crim Dumbinals

Kill wife, post pictures online.  Did we, or did we not tell you the education system has failed?

Dead Dolphins

There’s a bunch of dead bottlenose dolphins showing up along the East Coast…in fact the death rate seems to be running about seven times higher than normal.

Say, you don’t think this is a knock-on effect from the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, do you?

A Fine Lesson in Fine Print

In the UK Telegraph today, there’s an article about a Russian fellow who got a bank credit card offer from a bank, altered the fine print before signing it and sending it to the bank, and now the bank’s pissed because he gave himself marvelously generous terms.

As you’d expect, the bank is claiming “Foul!” and is suing for fraud, but the fellow who altered the terms is sticking by his guns…

Oddly, we note this is happening in Russia where apparently contract law is still being enforced.  Unlike America where the weaselators have pretty well-ripped contract law to shreds and it’s now come down to “My law firm is bigger than your law firm” in many cases. He with the deepest pockets simply buys justice through horrifically expensive appeals.

Russia’s still a backward country where what’s plainly stated seems to matter.  No worries, we were once such a country, too.  And look!  We got over it, didn’t we?

Is it 5 PM yet?