Quotes from a Republican President

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly."

"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves."



A. Lincoln

NY Times on "Buy or Rent?"

Double click to enlarge above image.


During the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the average rent ratio nationwide was between 10 - 14. It broke out of that historical range in 2003, hitting ~19 when the housing market peaked in 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com

Quiz : Who needs 26 toilets?

The 26 toilets triggered alarm among residents of Greenwich, Connecticut.

"Who needs that many toilets?'" asked Charles Lee, who lives across the street from where Russian millionaire Valery Kogan proposes building a 54,000-square-foot mansion. Kogan plans to raze the 20,000-foot home on the site, which he bought in 2005. Kogan and wife, Olga, seek to erect a house with two wings and extensive subterranean space, including room to park 12 cars.

"It looks like they want to duplicate the Winter Palace here in Greenwich," said Leslie McElwreath, 45, who lives one street over. "It'll be an eyesore."

How to Ruin the Economy 101

The New Yorker's James Surowiecki looks at the current debate over trade policy.

The Wisdom of Dogs

Dumb as ...

via Eddy Elfenbein

May 23, 2008 Maxine Waters Threatens to Nationalize Oil Companies

In one of the more pointed exchanges, Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, seized on the record $40.6 billion profit of Exxon Mobil in 2007. She pounded on the company’s senior vice president, J. Stephen Simon, demanding to know if gas prices would be lower if the company earned a few billion dollars less.
At another point, Ms. Waters brazenly suggested that perhaps the American oil industry should be nationalized, acknowledging that it was an “extreme step” but one that might be necessary if outsize profits and exorbitant gasoline prices continued.
I have one small correction. Last year, ExxonMobil didn't earn $40 billion, it earned $70 billion. Guess where that missing $30 billion went? I'll give you a hint: Rep. Waters' salary.

Quotes

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.
-Galbraith

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-Albert Einstein

Hope refers to a non-existent future and despair a non-existent past.
-Charles Hugh Smith

Better a miserable ending than misery without end.
-Hans-Wilhelm Voeller

Swedroe - understand the game

Mr. Swedroe was enough of an athlete to play varsity sports in college. When he moved to California, everybody played tennis. He took up the game, but he lost to guys who were ten and twenty years older who weren't particularly athletic. He took a pro lesson. The pro said Swedroe didn't understand the game he was playing.

In the pro ranks, offense, hitting winners, is important to getting ahead. In club tennis, the idea is not to make mistakes. Swedroe was trying to hit winners, a losing strategy. The pro said hit the ball deep, but safely within the lines. Once Swedroe understood the game he was playing, he beat the older guys regularly.

Swedroe says the same is true in investing. Trying to "hit winners" is a losing strategy. Avoid active investing, high expenses and trading. Actively take opportunities to keep taxes low.

Complex

By Thomas Sowell

Some people think that the reason the public misunderstands so many issues is that these issues are too "complex" for most voters. But is that really so?
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The problem is not that supply and demand is such a complex explanation. The problem is that supply and demand is not an emotionally satisfying explanation. For that, you need melodrama, heroes and villains. It is clear that many people prefer to blame President Bush. Others prefer to blame the oil companies, who have long been the favorite villains of the left.
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Now that is emotionally satisfying, which is the whole point.
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While economists are talking supply and demand, politicians are talking compassion, "change" and being on the side of the angels-- and against drilling for our own oil.
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If you want cheering crowds, don't bother to study economics. It will only hold you back. Tell people what they want to hear-- and they don't want to hear about supply and demand.
No, supply and demand is not too "complex." It is just not very emotionally satisfying.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/too_complex.html

High School Arithmetic

Your middle-class parents have a combined household income of $115,000. You receive an allowance of $20 per week. You save all your allowance for two years. How much debt will you have to finance to hostilely take over your family? How will you structure the debt?

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/5/7woodiwiss.html

Wednesday Quotes

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.
-Fran Lebowitz

If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.
- J. Paul Getty

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
- Christopher Morley

Bacon Wallet

from http://www.mcphee.com/

Put some hip into your hip pocket with a whimsical Bacon Wallet! Great for bringing home the bacon (sorry). Sleek, yet meaty. Each 4-1/4" x 3-3/4" faux leather wallet has plenty of pockets for your cold hard cash and copious cards.

Rent or Buy Real Estate?

Four free web calculators to answer the question, "Should I buy or rent?" Each calculator makes different assumptions, so result can vary.

http://www.bloomberg.com/

http://www.forbes.com

N.Y. Times site may require registration-

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.cepr.net

The Art of Dating Book

from http://www.mcphee.com/




We've updated, refreshed and reprinted a series of unintentionally funny booklets from the 1930s and 1940s! Each one is filled with tantalizing secrets, advice and wisdom from the days when "making love" meant holding hands on the porch swing. Each perfect bound paperback is 7.25" x 4.75".The Art of Dating Book

Northwest Passage Nearly Open

Northwest Passage




excerpt:

For over 500 years, Arctic explorers have sought a passage between the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Such a passage, often called the Northwest Passage, would connect Europe to Asia via shorter routes than the long voyage south around Africa. In 1497, English King Henry VII sent Italian explorer John Cabot to look for this hypothetical route and expeditions from some of the most famous explorers in the centuries that followed—Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook among them—met with failure. The combined efforts of a number of explorers eventually uncovered a winding path from the Atlantic to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans through the ice-bound islands of northern Canada. Even in modern times, navigating from the Atlantic to the Pacific through Canada’s Arctic islands has been difficult. The summer of 2007, however, melted enough sea ice in Canada’s far north to open up this long-sought passage.

Politics or Politicians?

The great P.J. O'Rourke:

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I've got three kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be eating Fruit Loops and rotten meat.

But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that all politicians stink. Impeach George W. Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation's problems will be solved.

But the problem isn't politicians -- it's politics. Politics won't allow for the truth. And we can't blame the politicians for that. Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on today's campaign trail:

"No, I can't fix public education. The problem isn't the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment. The problem is your kids!"

Parable of the Broken Window - Bastiat

The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by a little boy. Everyone sympathizes with the man whose window was broken, but pretty soon they start to suggest that the broken window makes work for the glazier, who will then buy bread, benefiting the baker, who will then buy shoes, benefiting the cobbler, etc. Finally, the onlookers conclude that the little boy was not guilty of vandalism; instead he was a public benefactor, creating economic benefits for everyone in town.

The fallacy of the argument is only the positive benefits of purchasing a new window is considered, but the cost to the shopkeeper is ignored. The shopkeeper was forced to spend money on a new window; he obviously could not have spent it on something else. For example, the shopkeeper may have spent the money on bread and shoes for himself, but now cannot so enrich the baker and cobbler because he must fix his window.
Thus, the child did not bring any net benefit to the town. Instead, he made the town poorer by at least the value of one window, if not more.

Read more about economists "discovering" that disasters are bad.

http://mises.org/story/2959

Quotes

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
-Oscar Wilde

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
- Herbert Spencer

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
-Timothy Leary

Even Nobel Prize winners need to check the facts.

excerpt from wsj:

We Need a Science White House
By DAVID BALTIMORE and AHMED ZEWAIL

.......................

We need a president who moves science back into the White House. Today we do not have a presidential science adviser and there is no office of science in the White House.

Mr. Baltimore was awarded the Nobel Prize in biology in 1975. Mr. Zewail, was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1999.


-----------------------------------
Corrections & Amplifications

Jack Marburger is head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Bush. Mr. Marburger is head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Bush. He said, "While I had much evidence to the contrary, a Google search on "presidential science adviser" reassured me that my office and I do in fact exist in the virtual as well as in the real world."

That’s the problem: Politics as usual.

Robert Reich - Democrat and economist - on HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton):

The gas tax holiday is small potatoes relative to everything else. But it’s so economically stupid (it would increase demand for gas and cause prices to rise, eliminating any benefit to consumers while costing the Treasury more than $9 billion, and generate more pollution) and silly (even if she won, HRC won’t be president this summer) as to be worrisome. That HRC now says she doesn’t care that what economists think is even more troubling.

Carlin on Irony

A diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is a victim of an irony.

from The Big Book of Irony

Did Hillary Clinton Fail Econ 101?

by Gerald Prante

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23160.html

This presidential campaign season has produced a lot of discussion over the various candidates' supposed knowledge of economics. The sad result is that none of them — Clinton, Obama, or McCain — seems to have a grasp of basic economics. Or perhaps they really do know what they're talking about and are just pandering to those who may benefit from certain policies or those who have a limited understanding of how markets work.

Clinton and McCain are supporting a temporary repeal of the federal gas tax (18.4 cents), which is bad tax policy for a variety of reasons. But Clinton is going a step further. She must have gone to the Sonny Perdue school of economics because she not only wants the gas tax repealed, but she is essentially supporting price controls by saying that she would force the price at the pump to fall by 18.4 cents, with the Federal Trade Commission coming after noncompliant station owners. Clinton is assuming that the price elasticity of demand for gasoline is perfectly inelastic.

Yes, that's the same Clinton who says we need a cap-and-trade system (an implicit tax on energy consumption) to reduce consumption of energy. But if demand is perfectly inelastic, as she seems to be assuming in her gas tax relief proposal, then a cap-and-trade provision wouldn't save the planet at all. That's because a cap-and-trade provision assumes people respond to higher prices by reducing consumption. She assumes no response in the market for gasoline.

Overall, during the past week on the campaign trail, we've been able to see that McCain seems to care little about the deficit compared to his previous position. We've also seen Obama and Clinton argue that raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations will solve the world's problems. All three say they care about "the middle class," whom the Democrats define as those making under $250,000 (what a joke!). All three support special provisions that would make the tax code more complicated and less efficient, while paying lip service by promising to simplify the tax code. It's going to be one frustrating (and at the same time humorous) campaign season. So far, there's not much to praise.

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Keep it Simple Stupid

It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
O. Henry

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
Albert Einstein

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken

I don't think I've ever seen a piece of commercial software where the next version is simpler rather than more complex.
Walter Bender, MIT media lab.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead

Significant Other :)

Friday afternoon, the woman went with her boyfriend and
8-month-old son to Kohl's department store on East Independence Avenue
to fill out a job application.

"The boyfriend, who is the suspect, was supposed to stay in
the car and watch the child. Instead he put the child in the carrier,
walked in the store and began stealing,” said Lt. Kirk Manlove, a
spokesman for the Springfield Police Department.

Police say the 22-year-old man then left the store with the
child and stolen shirts in hand but Kohl's staff stopped him in the
parking lot. They escorted him back into the store. That's when he
dropped the infant and ran.

Kohl's employees called police, who caught up with the man
just west of the store. They arrested him on suspicion of stealing and
second-degree child endangerment.

Police said the man is not the father of the 8-month-old child, who was safely returned to his mother.