Been a while, so.... random thoughts

Some thoughts that have been swimming around: The New York Times had a front page story with one ENTIRE full page (more than the Bin Laden Raid got) inside on Ann Romney's love of the sport of "Dressage". I wrote to the Times and thanked them for turning the awesome power of their full investigative team on such a critical issue - as opposed to, say, why Michelle Obama had her law license taken away by the Illinois Courts. You can see just how wide the disparity is between Progressives and normal folks in the so called debate over JP Morgan losing $2 Billion on their internal trading last year. Lunatics like me think taking a multi billion loss is a pretty good lesson for any firm about taking excessive risk, particularly as it was with their own money. Likely, that lesson will cause them to change policies and it has already cost several people, including one of the (formerly) most respected Chief Investment strategists on Wall Street, their jobs. The Progressives think this should mean more regulation, so that the firm COULD NOT lose that money. In other words, they should be able to be as risky as they want, but with no risk. Huh? How stupid does Obama think the American Public is? (Wait, don't answer that. Since he thinks he's Plato's philosopher king, we know the answer to that). He criticizes Bain Capital, Romney's firm (and there ARE legit criticism's) at the same time one of his chief fundraisers is a partner in the firm!!!! Not to mention several of his advisers. When Undercover Boss was on network TV, I watched a few times and was frustrated b/c the boss' never seemed to apply the lessons learned universally across the whole company. Rather, dthey focused on the great human interest stories of the various employees they met. It is now on repeat on TLC, I believe, and watching more of them, the one thing that screams through is how shockingly out of touch these guys are. For example, the CEO of Waste Mgmt sets productivity requirements for his garbage truck drivers and doesn't know that his female drivers will have to pee in a cup b/c there are no bathrooms in a garbage truck and can't make special stops under the new guidelines. Nor does he realize that having supervisors following the drivers at a distance, in pickup trucks and not interacting with them at all, will come off as "spying" on them. Or that putting an across the board wage freeze without explaining why might come across as unfair. All of these guys are portrayed as brain dead. Doesn't ANYONE work themselves up from the bottom anymore? Ryder Hejdal, a Canadian, won the Giro D'Italia today. Rarely has there been a more popular winner. It must be the Canada thing, but congrats to a genuinely nice guy. Finally, and most importantly, more than 104,000 Americans are buried in cemeteries in Western Europe, having given their lives to save the French, Belgians, English, Italians, Spanish, etc. Wonder what Western Europe thinks today?