It’s tough to be unhappy when America receives an award.  But for some reason the news that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize left me miffed and a bit peeved.

Perhaps it’s now part of our culture that you get bonus points for making a good effort, kudos for just showing up, or a trophy at the end of the season not because you beat all the other teams but because someone, somewhere thought that kids need to be rewarded regardless of performance or they’ll feel like failures.

Our culture is so coddled and so sensitive to feelings that, in the end, we devalue success and achievement and prop up  the failures.

Everyone must be kept on a level playing field, you know.

There’s a bit of a misunderstanding going around on the Presidents new prize.

Sure, he was nominated for the award 12 days after taking the oath of office, but he didn’t win the award at that time.  And you can’t fault the man for being nominated alone, and you really can’t fault him for winning.  It’s not as though he threw his own name into the running.

What bothers me is that he was awarded an award for peace without really showing any accomplishment to justify the reward.

It’s as though we’ve received the grade card with straight A’s at the beginning of the year based on little Jimmy’s sincerity that he’s going to really try hard in school this year.

In my mind, you win these types of awards for achievement, not being able to talk a good game.

It all comes down to the fact that President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for talking the talk, and the unabated hope and change will leave us wondering if he can walk the walk.

Opinions are like elbows.  Everybody has one, most have two, and by reading the papers and watching the news, you’d think the media is run by double-jointed octopuses.

Take a look for yourself.  In tomorrows paper, take a yellow highlighter to the statements that are factual, not the entire sentence, just the factual statements.  You can give the author the benefit of the doubt and highlight the quotes from other sources if you wish.

Next, with a blue highlighter, highlight all the opinions.

When you’re done with the article, compare the number of yellow statements with the number of blue statements.  What do you notice?

If you’re like me, you notice that there are far more opinions in a single article than factual statements.

What happened to reporting the facts and letting the consumer form the opinion?

I believe that one of the drawbacks to living at warp speed is that we tend to leave the critical thinking to others for the sake of saving time.

Whatever, just give the facts to the guy on TV and let him tell me what the facts really mean.

Add some financial incentive and facts can be manipulated through opinion to achieve a desired outcome.

Opinions are OK, but they don’t constitute news.  To be honest, the opinion section in my local paper is only two pages by typeset only.  The opinions spill into the rest of the paper, most likely without conscious objection from the author.

I don’t mind opinion, but when reporting the news, please just stick to the facts, and let me determine what those facts really mean.

Think critically folks!  Ask for the facts and form your own opinion around them…  and turn off the TV!

The sports page records people’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.

Interesting commentary in the Washington Times on Saturday. It seems a few “facts” are surfacing about the research conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global warming.

Contributor Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute in Dallas) and made some interesting points about the IPCC’s “study of climate change”. I’ll print a few of those points here, but I encourage you to read the full article here.

In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the “hockey stick.” This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000…

However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC’s peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted. -Source

It also appears that there is a bit of conflict of interest in the scientific community. Mr. Burnett points out that many in a small group of climate specialists, nearly 43 different individuals, had coauthored papers with the head of research, the same guy who had “formulated” the so called hockey stick chart.

In the end, Mr. Wegman and his team could only conclude that:

“…the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming “cannot be supported.”"

One thing was made very clear to me in college when conducting research and running tests: eliminate any personal bias from the research you are conducting, and make sure your tests can be reproduced, eliminate as many variables as possible, and only state scientific facts. This mantra seems to have been lost in “global warming research”.

A good example of a principle clearly violated is “Make sure forecasts are independent of politics.” Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists — at least the lead scientists — who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval.

Sadly, Mr. Green and Mr. Armstrong found no evidence the IPCC was even aware of the vast literature on scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles.

The truth on the IPCC is coming out, slowly but surely. It’s interesting to note that these new developments haven’t made it to the nightly news. Until it’s foreseen that the truth will instill outrage in viewers, it won’t get the ratings, and hence won’t be broadcast.

Corner Office Commentary

Every reader of this blog knows I’ve been skeptical about Al Gore and his man-made global warming agenda from day one. I still am, and I’m excited to see that conflicting opinions are now making it into the main stream media, slowly but surely.

As with every post on global warming, I must bring about a point of clarity. I am not disputing global warming all together, as I firmly believe that climate change goes in cycles, as evidenced by the number of ice ages our planet has been through, and these cycles have been scientifically proven and accepted world-wide. I am disputing the “consensus” that has been forced upon the general public that mankind is largely to blame for the increase in global temperatures.

I am encouraged by the change that this hysteria has brought upon our research and development of new green ways to conserve and reduce. The amount of smog and ozone that has blanketed major cities in the last few decades CAN be attributed to mankind, and it is not good for our overall health. So if this scientific farce brought on by a politically motivated former politician is stimulating these changes, so be it. But I think the scientific community owes the general public the unbiased facts about mankind’s involvement in global warming before our do-nothing politicians find a way to really screw up our economy based on bogus political conjecture.

I did a little surfing over at the Wall Street Journal, and while perusing the videos, came across a clip from on of my favorite comedians, Drew Carey. The title of the video was “The Middle Class is doing fine”, and it really touched on how bad we have it… err, how bad we think we have it… err, how bad we are led to believe we have it. Yeah, that’s it.

Our television sets force feed us stats and rhetoric about how tight our budgets have become, how fast we’re losing money, and how difficult it is to make ends meet. The truth is, we’re not that bad off, really. Especially if you compare the standard of living of today vs. 20 years ago. Heck, even 5 years ago.

Check it, out.

It seems not everyone loves Jim Cramer. It seems not everyone sees the value in his show, Mad Money.

It seems that Paul Ferrell, in particular, given a stage and a microphone, is more than willing to lob the opening volley that would not only spur an open retort from the mad man himself, but a frothy discussion on boards, blogs, and forums.

In case you missed it, Paul Ferrell’s column appeared on MarketWatch.com last week, and I really didn’t find anywhere in the piece where Ferrell held anything back. I even read between the lines…

“Last week I finally listened to the “Mad Money” show for a full hour. When channel surfing in the past I’d move on after 30 seconds. It’s about as educational as Saturday morning cartoons. What I heard was a manic distraction for addicted personalities.” -Source

While fairly pointed, Ferrell does pose some good points, but I think he ended up throwing the baby out with the bath water. He contends that if you take Cramer’s advice and spend at least an hour per week “doing your homework” on each position, the opportunity cost of doing such research does not offset any realistic gains from investing in Cramer’s stock picks. He goes on to use the following example:

If you’re following Prof. Cramer’s rules and doing your “homework” you’re watching “Mad Money” five hours a week and doing another 10 hours of “homework” on your “positions.” That’s potentially 60 hours of your valuable time each month, on top of your full-time job. Assuming you’re a professional or business executive, let’s say your time’s worth $100 per hour, probably more.

So, bottom line: Your economic “opportunity lost” for 60 hours is at least $6,000 a month or $72,000 a year, playing by “Mad Money” rules. Get it folks? Your time is valuable. If you’re worth a minimum of $100 an hour and you spend 60 hours a week on any activity, you darn well better be earning at least $72,000 a year. And to make that kind of money at, say, 15% a year you’d need more than $400,000 capital at risk. -Source

That’s a cute but rather distracting example. I suspect that the vast majority of Jim Cramer’s audience earns far less than the suggested $100 per hour at their full-time job. In fact, I would wager that the average hourly income of his viewers is less than $30 per hour. My reasoning for this is that the folks who earn $100 per hour at their job know what their time is worth, just as those who earn $20 per hour. The difference is that the guy who earns $100 per hour can most likely pay someone to manage and grow his money, and need not bother with a show like Mad Money.

So I agree with his theory on opportunity cost, however the scale he suggests is not applicable in this scenario, in my opinion, and as such is less influential in the true value of the show than Ferrell suggests.

To his credit, Jim Cramer wrote a fairly civil rebuttal.

While I felt that Farrell’s article was wildly inaccurate, I will admit that it was at least a little bit original. I have never before been criticized for telling investors to research the stocks they buy. If Farrell is to be believed, spending an hour per week researching each of the stocks you own is simply a waste of time. I am glad I didn’t listen to Farrell. I never would have made the hundreds of millions of dollars I made for myself and for my investors before I retired. And I am using the same skill sets now every night on my show. -Source

Honestly I’ve never been a big Jim Cramer fan, although one has to respect his success in the market. I never bought into the hype of the show, and while entertaining, didn’t provide as much substance as I would like.

Perhaps my time is more valuable.

The new Fox Business channel debuted a couple weeks ago, and at first I blew it off as another talking-heads show that did little for the common Joe’s Wall Street appetite.

However, the channel is starting to grow on me. Maybe it’s because it’s new, or maybe it’s because it’s just different.

I particularly like the Fox Business Happy Hour. It’s got a couple young hosts (Cody Willard and Rebecca Gomez) that a guy my age could identify with. They’re out in the open instead of being stuck behind a desk, and the show is set at what appears to be a local bar. Willard also hosts CodyWillard.com in which he writes about life, pop culture, trading, investing, technology, rock, media, getting my heart broken… sounds interesting.

I’ve never really taken to Neil Cavuto, that’s not to say I dislike him, I just never could identify with the guy.

In short, the Fox Business channel seems like a refined cross between Bloomberg and CNBC, both of which have their strong points, but when it comes time to sit down, relax, and enjoy some market discussion, Fox Business seems to fit the bill… at least during Happy Hour.

It’s been a busy last couple weeks. After spending a week away from home on business, and then recuperating and catching up with all that piled up during that week, I think I’m about back to normal. Or as close to normal as I’ve ever been.

I finally got the rent check from my tenants, it was only two weeks late, but as I suspected, the tenants didn’t account for the increase in postage last month, which landed their otherwise timely mail back on their door step.

Along those same lines, the tenants have agreed to renew their lease for an additional year, while adding a third roommate to the role. I’m still digging through the application to make sure there isn’t any bad renter baggage along with the deal…

We finally broke down and replaced my wife’s car, the subject for another post entirely.

The oil company is doing well with crude prices still at elevated levels even as Summer came into full swing last week.

My stock portfolio is fairly robust, even though the direction of the overall market is coming into question.

Not bad a bad start to the second half the year. Busy is good, unless you strive to keep your blog current…

According to the LA Times, the House voted, 284-141, to pass a bill that would make gasoline price gouging a federal offense.

If that doesn’t make you feel good about the work our government is doing in Washington, you’re not alone…

Meanwhile, the Senate is working like mad to introduce a new energy bill, the first since they took control of the Congress and promised change in the first 100 hours. A committee also held a hearing on whether oil industry mergers had contributed to higher fuel prices.

If all else fails, blame capitalism. If anything it will make you feel good inside.

“I was at a funeral Saturday, and when the monsignor greeted me, he said, ‘My God, Bart, you have to do something about these gas prices!’ ” said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chief sponsor of the anti-gouging bill.

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) told her colleagues: “I can’t go home, and I imagine none of you can, without saying we tried to do something.”-Source

What a bunch of baloney!

This worthless legislation allows the government to investigate and prosecute anyone selling fuel at a price deemed “excessive” during a Presidentially declared “energy emergency” or under the premise that the seller is taking advantage of unusual market conditions.

Let’s be vague, shall we?

First of all, define what constitutes an “energy emergency”. Then define how you will determine if someone is taking advantage of “unusual market conditions”. While you’re at it, tell the convenience store owner that he’s charging too much at his pump when the customers are fully willing to pay him for his product!

And I’m sure we’ll appoint a new “energy czar” to go around and enforce these new laws, which of course will require a new 25 cent gas tax to pay for the enforcement agency…

Some semblance of reason stood up with a bit of common sense, only to get short lipped by a (you guessed it) Democrat that seems to think that gas prices should be set by the government, and not by the free market:

During House debate, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said that if “pandemic price gouging” were going on, states with anti-gouging laws would be flooding the courts with complaints. Instead, he said, demand for oil is up. The markets were doing what markets do, he said, noting: “If you don’t have more of it, prices are going to go up.”

But Stupak told his colleagues that they had a simple choice: “Vote to stand up for consumers, your constituents, who are paying record prices, or vote to protect big oil companies’ enormous profits.” -Source

Let the street do the talking, and ask the politicians to sit down…

Paul Sankey, an energy analyst for Deutsche Bank took the stand in a congressional testimony last week in an effort to remove a few hands from the free market cookie jar. On the speculation that big oil is gouging the consumer:

“The simple fact is they don’t need to right now,” Sankey said. “Frankly, they’re making so much money just by the nature of the market that what you want to do is let the market continue to operate in its own good way to allow higher gasoline prices to moderate demand, hopefully without damaging the U.S. economy too much.”

Luckily, the President has threatened to veto the bill, which if you’re a fan of the powers of the free market, you should be having a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, our House and Senate will continue to draft worthless legislation for the sake of getting “something” done, even though the Democrats first 100 hours have long come and gone with nothing to show for it.

If that doesn’t get your vote, I don’t know what will…

Al Gore was back in D.C. today to discus his bread-and-butter topic: global warming. As I’ve mentioned before, anytime you have data that suggests that you’ve come to a scientific “consensus”, you haven’t talked to enough scientists.

Even Katie Couric is jumping on the Gore-bal Warming bandwagon:

But today it was a triumphant return, this time as a private citizen, to declare that the world faces a “planetary emergency” over climate change. And now, a lot of his skeptics agree that Gore makes a powerful point.

The scientific consensus is clear, and Gore urged Congress to listen to scientists, not special interests. He pushed for an immediate freeze on greenhouse gases, as well as cleaner power plants, more efficient cars, and stronger conservation efforts. -Source

Those general statements like “…a lot of his skeptics agree that Gore makes a powerful point” are a bunch of baloney! Unsubstantiated, unquantified statements that have snowed over the media.

With that, I found a lengthy clip on YouTube that counters everything you’ve heard Al Gore preach about. Somehow these views (and this presentation) have managed to stay away from my television…

The Great Global Warming Swindle

I’ve never been crazy about all the “global warming” hype that’s been running rampant over the last couple years.

While I don’t dispute the fact that the Earth, or at the very least the United States, is getting warmer, I think it’s still highly arguable that the root cause is mankind and the scale of the problem is related to his extravagant carbon lifestyle.

The underlying problem I have is the numerous claims that scientists have come to a “consensus” that the world is getting warmer, and humans are without a doubt responsible for the demise of life as we know it.

Call me an engineer, but if you know scientists (and I know a few) you understand that there is no such thing as a “consensus” among scientists.  If you think you’ve come to a consensus, you haven’t talked to enough scientists.

Additionally, there are groups of scientists that argue that, while yes the world is getting warmer, it is all part of a well documented 1,500 year climate cycle.  Seemingly though, those that are countering the rather public (and political) claims that we’re doomed unless we reduce our “carbon footprint” are being threatened with their lives, not to mention their research funds!  Of course, we wouldn’t hear about those views on the nightly news, would we?

Al Gore will tell you that there are no political incentives to the work he’s done on global warming research, as well as his “Inconvenient Truth” movie. 

BULL HONKEY!  There is political incentive to just about everything (and everyone) that has any working relationship with Washington DC.

I digress.

It seems our short term memory is getting the best of us (again).  It was just over 30 years ago that scientists were warning us of how if we didn’t do something, our climate was going to freeze over and we’d be thrown into another ice age!

Remember this article in NewsWeek?

Now we’ve got global warming debates in Washington being canceled due to blizzard warnings. 

We’ve got global warming expeditions being cut short due to frostbite and that the two expeditioners “…were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming… But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability.” 

A two month global warming expedition cut short only seven days in due to extreme cold… whoda’ thunk it!  Anyone else see the irony in this?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making efforts to reduce emissions and cut back on oil consumption, if only for the health issues that have come up within the last 20 years in places like Denver, Phoenix, and LA due to smog.  Not to mention the ability to curtail our dependency on foreign oil.

To claim that man has such a significant influence on the climate, after thousands of years of history claim otherwise, is absurd.  And to claim there are no political pretenses in this whole one-sided debate is laughable…

Dear Al Gore,

It’s a new month and your $1,300 electric bill is due on your mansion.  Please send our foundation $500 and we’ll see to it that your carbon footprint is carefully filled in and and your tracks covered…

The end of 2006 is upon us, and hopefully looking back you’ve had a good year.

The end of the fiscal year marks the deadline for any tax maneuvers you may have had in place, and stocks that you’re planning on for tax purposes must have cleared by the end of business on Friday.

As for me, I wrote myself a check for reimbursements from my oil company, which will hopefully drive down the profit I’ll have to pay taxes on.

On that note, it’s important to start gathering all your receipts, collecting mileage logs and organizing all your financial information for your tax preparer. The more organized you are, the less time your CPA will have to spend sorting out your mess. This translates into $$$ for the uninitiated!

Anyway, have a safe new years eve, and best wishes for 2007.

-Grant

After downing a cup of coffee last Thursday in an effort to counter the effects of tryptophan, I sat down to watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Denver Broncos.

During half time, I learned that my relatives half-way across the country could not enjoy the same past time. Why? Because in order to get the Thanksgiving Day football game, they had to have a subscription to NFL Network.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the Dallas Cowboys take on some low caliber team-de-jur. The only hope would be that Terrell Owens would do something dumb (again) and we’d have something to talk about at the water cooler on Monday.

But this year, the Chiefs and Broncos, a time-honored match up between two teams that truly hate each others guts when it comes to the grid iron. Mike Celizic has a great column, reflecting my ire for this little tirade.

Evidently, we’ve turned ourselves into a subscription-based society. What once was free, is now just a monthly $10.99 fee away from being mainstream.

Cable television is a prime example. My one TV with rabbit ears is going to become obsolete in the next few years, leaving me no choice but to pay for TV.

Radio? It could be on the same track. When Howard Stern made the move to broadcast from a heavenly repeater, many in his audience were forced to drop the $10.99 a month to get their fix, or drop the shock-jock all together.

Maybe it’s always been this way and I’m just now realizing it. I pay for cable TV, internet, newspaper, magazines…

I fret about what I’ll have to pay for tomorrow that I’m getting today for free. I’m a cash-flow kind of guy, and when you tell me I have to take a chunk of my cash flow and drop it in the mailbox (who am I kidding, it’s an electronic bill payment these days), I don’t take it well.

Prime example? When Comcast raised my bill to over $100 per month for internet and 75 channels of television, of which roughly 60 I don’t even watch and one other I have to be fluent in another language before I can even enjoy it.

Bleh.

There is an interesting epidemic spreading throughout our culture.  It seems that society is becoming more and more dependent on government policies for protection.

Case in point: A local push to ban smoking in all public places throughout my city.

I’m not a smoker; never have been, never will be.  However I understand that there are people that have been drawn into the habit and locked into the lifestyle choice.  Who am I to tell them how to live their lives? On the other hand, I also get annoyed when I go to a local establishment for dinner and have to strip off my smoke infested clothes before I enter my own house.  I can’t imagine what my lungs are thinking…

While I really get irritated about the atmosphere (pun intended), I understand fully that it’s my choice to frequent these establishments, and if I don’t want to get fumigated, I could very easily go elsewhere.

Do I really need the local government to ban smoking as a city wide effort to drive smokers elsewhere?

I expect my local government to provide a clean and healthy place to live.  However, I’d hate to have the government come in and tell me that I can’t allow my customers to smoke in my establishment (especially if I owned a place like, say, a bowling ally).

It seems we’re living in a culture dependent on others to take care of us.

Bill O’reilly makes a healthy living as the person “looking out for me”.  I feel a bit insulted that he thinks I need someone looking out for me. He obviously thinks I can’t look out for myself. Of course I can’t blame him for taking advantage of the situation.  After all, look how the government let all those people in New Orleans down after a major hurricane beat the sub-sea level city into submission. 

Now the Federal Government is stepping in to regulate drugs in baseball.  Evidently baseball can’t look out for itself either.  Or maybe the government is looking out for me by protecting the influence on my (future) kid, who of course will be the next Barry Bonds.  Obviously the government thinks my parenting skills are not adequate to tell my kids that drugs are bad.

And it’s not just the government.

The Center of Science in the Public Interest has sued Kentucky Fried Chicken, seemingly on my behalf, because some KFC meals were “startlingly” high in trans fat.

The group asked the court to switch to a healthier frying oil. If that is ruled out, the group asked the court to require signs at KFC outlets saying “KFC fried chicken and certain other foods contain trans fat, which promotes heart disease.”

Obviously in my ripe old age of 27, I haven’t come to realize that anything that is fried is probably not good for me, regardless of what type of oil is used.  Do I really need a sign on the door warning me that what I’m about to eat is not good for me?

Who’s looking out for me?  I am.  And as a mature adult I don’t count on Bill to do it for me.

Who’s looking out for you?

We’re living in an interesting world. We’ve got so much information at our fingertips that unless you’re fixated on the television or computer, the rest of the world could seemingly pass you by in a matter of seconds.

But is this a good thing?

While we are bombarded with information 24/7, we can only process so much of it in any given amount of time. And then act on that little tidbit of information? Forget it, you’re too busy taking in more…

Kevin Kelly wrote a good post about the steady increase in information.  The number of emails, telephone conversations, photographs taken… they’ve all increased exponentially over time.  One person could argue that our increase in productivity is a result of this fact, but another could argue that our productivity is the cause.

The weakest link in the chain is the speed at which we as humans process information.  At some point, we will be presented with so much information that the majority of our time will be spent determining what information is garbage and which is relevant and useful.  As a result, our productivity rates will surely suffer.

Those questioning this notion need only look to the television and the internet.  Through these two mediums, we are presented with so much raw data that we can’t possibly process it all.

The hurricanes in the Gulf last year are a prime example.  Through the power of the television, viewers in far off parts of the country knew when and where the hurricane would strike. Updates came in by the minute as to the direction and strength of Hurricane Katrina, and if you wanted a live ride through the eye of the storm, you need only turn to the internet.

Hours after mother nature unleashed destruction on New Orleans, we wondered what had already been done to fix the problem.  Television shots of submerged busses infuriated viewers (with the help of subtle suggestion from your cheery news anchor) as to why they hadn’t been used to evacuate those who hadn’t yet left the scene.

However, if you’d take the time to comprehend the information you’d been presented, you would pose the question: Who in their right mind would volunteer to leave their own families behind to drive these busses?  Our basic human nature (to look after ourselves) suggests that it is not a valid solution to a deceptively simple problem.

My guess is that at some point in the future, the amount of information we are subject to will start to plateau from normally exponential growth.  The laws of supply and demand will dictate that we can not take in any more information and still remain increasingly productive.  We will spend all our time deciphering the relevance of information, and which sources are the most useful.

Then again, there are those of us who will just turn the TV off.