How many now?

Does anyone know what the current
death toll is from Iraq and why
has it been dropped as a "HOT"
button for the media?

I WANT TO BE THE STAR!

Doom and Gloom, Economic Voodoo Reporting

The following article appeared in the Yahoo News
Financial Section today (July 18, 2007) and caught
my interest.

This article is dry reading for most, will not
appeal to many, but I find it so typical of the
current 'attitude' about the reporting of stocks,
the stock market, and profits in general that I
did read it, and I'm glad I did.

Anyway, I would like to make it clear that I do not
fault the reporter for the following information. He
is reporting the typical economic news in the now
accepted manner and attitude of what is currently
considered important. It is not so much Voodoo
Economics as it is Voodoo Reporting.

The article is not complete, I have excluded some,
not all, 'opinion' paragraphs by investors and have
inserted [ ] comments.
__________________________________

YAHOO News

Financial malaise continues at Yahoo

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE,
AP Business Writer
Wed Jul 18, 2:57 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO -

The company's shareholders [at YAHOO] have paid a steep price for
the company's bumbling. Since the end of 2005, Yahoo's stock price
has plunged more than 30 percent to wipe out about $20 billion
in shareholder wealth.
_________________________________

[Poor, poor YAHOO shareholders.

I own stock in one company--a gold mine in Africa. I purchased
about 5 or 6 shares some twenty-five years ago just to experience
the process. Over a period of the next six or seven years, I received
dividend checks about every other year and none of them were over
five dollars, and then nothing has been received up to the present
time.

The point is, like other investors, I BOUGHT the SHARES as a long
term investment. It was a one time purhcase of about $60. I have
not HAD to continually pay into either the shares or the stock
broker through whom they were purchased. So, no matter what the
stock did on the market, whether it rose in value or fell in value,
it did NOT affect my initial $60. That money was gone. Period.
It was money that, should I never get it back, I would still
survive.

Now, on that $60 investment (could also be called a savings
account), it 'earned' about $2.50 a year interest/dividend. This
was over and above the initial $60. Again though, it did not affect
that initial $60.

Had it so happened that the interest/dividend that the stock paid
back, say, had been $100 per year, then over twenty years, it
would have earned $2000. Another way to look at this is to say
that once that $2000 was paid to me, deducting the original
$60, I would have profited $1940.00 from a temporary $60 pay out.
If I should sell the stock for $60, then I have profited the full
$2000 and was only temporarily out $60.
Now, assuming that I hold on to the stock for another 20 years,
and over the next 10 years the stock pays nothing, I still have
the $1940 in my pocket. I don't lose anything!
If the company doesn't turn a profit in the next 10 years and
pay out a dividend, I still have the $1940. I do not have to put
money into the company. My choice is solely in buying more of or
selling off some of the stocks, not investing in its operating
capital. I don't have to lose anything.
Even if the company goes bankrupt, I still have the $1940 and
the initial $60 is still money that I can and will live without.
I will have made a profit on a bankrupt company!

Yet, as the article reads, the shareholders are LOSING money!

No they aren't. They MADE 20 million on their investment. They
still have that. YAHOO doesn't take it back if things suddenly
start getting tight. The investors have LOST nothing. What is
happening is that COMPARED to what they have made, they are
now not making anything or are making less than what they WERE
making. That isn't losing. That is writing off what you have
spent and pocketing the profits already made from that now
written off investment.

This is Voodoo Reporting and manipulation of attitude.

This is comparing 'what was' to 'what if' and accepting the
difference as some sort of concrete stark reality.]
__________________________________


But the patience of Yahoo shareholders may be wearing thin
after listening to Semel's broken promises of an imminent
turnaround.

The residual skepticism may give Yang little time to produce
higher profits before exasperated shareholders rebel and
pressure Yahoo into considering a sale to possible suitors
like Microsoft Corp., said RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan
Rohan.

"This is growing old," Rohan said. "I would like to see more
immediate changes. Things are looking pretty bleak right now."
_____________________________

[The Macdonald syndrome--Invest at this window, pick up your
profits at the next window.]
_____________________________

Yahoo is pinning its hopes on a new advertising formula — known
as Panama — that rolled out this year, as well as partnerships
with online auctioneer eBay Inc., Comcast Corp. and more than
270 newspapers around the country.

But management offered little hope for better times this year.
After subtracting commissions paid to its advertising partners,
Yahoo expects its revenue for the full year to range between
$4.89 billion and $5.19 billion. In April, the full-year
forecast anticipated revenue from $4.95 billion to $5.45 billion.

In the three months ending in June, Yahoo earned $160.6 million,
or 11 cents per share, down from net income of $164.3 million,
or 11 cents per share, at the same time last year. [?]

Revenue for the period totaled $1.7 billion, an 8 percent
improvement from last year. But the overall online advertising
industry has been growing at a far faster clip, with Yahoo's
biggest rival, online search leader Google Inc., leading the
way.
_____________________________

[Chasing the competition instead of leading one's own parade.
And note, "Revenue for the period totaled $1.7 billion, an 8
percent improvement from last year." This is somehow tainted
as being a BAD thing according to the context.!!?? It isn't
that YAHOO isn't making money, the problem is, they aren't
making money FAST ENOUGH! And that's it! That's the gist of
the shareholders unrest!]
______________________________

Google's revenue soared by 63 percent during the first quarter
and analysts believe the Mountain View-based company will report
an increase in the same range when it announces its
second-quarter results Thursday.

The Internet ad market is on track to grow by 29 percent this
year, estimates industry research firm eMarketer Inc.

Excluding ad commissions, Yahoo said its revenue stood at $1.24
billion, an 11 percent increase from last year.
____________________________

[Uh, and this is somehow considered as not good!?!?!?]
____________________________

The earnings and revenue both matched the estimates among
analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
_____________________________

[Yep, Voodoo Reporting: A good reality is bad potential and
what's bad comparatively speaking is even a worse reality!

A good reality (an 11 percent increase)
is bad potential (everyone else grew at 29 percent) and
what's bad comparatively speaking (to what they did in past
quarters)
is even a worse reality (it's growth isn't fast enough)!]



--
If it is - illegal - for one man to kill another man,
How is it - legal - for 12 men/women to kill one man?

Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson?

There's an old saying that 'if you give a man
enough rope, he will hang himself.'

But then, that's the name of the game of running
for President. You have to say something even
if it's the wrong thing. You can always correct
it later on in the day.

An AP story by David Bauder today has Mitt Romney
criticizing an ABC story about the CIA doing its
job of manipulating intelligence. For the CIA to
just sit on its hands during the war would probably
also draw criticism from Romney.
Still, its because ABC has made public what can
be read in hundreds of books about the nature of
the CIA that he takes issue with. H-m-m-m-m-m.

The CIA is trying to affect Iran through propaganda
broadcasts, newspaper articles that may be misleading
and possibly playing around with their bank transactions
and their currency. OK. And during wartime, we expect
the job of the Central Iintelligence Agency to be .....
what, exactly?

You see, the problem is, Mitt Romney is another war
candidate that doesn't grasp exactly how war can
also endangers lives. It doesn't connect in his world.
War is an abstract term that 'happens there,' not
here, not in this household, not at this funeral
home, not at this gravesite, not to this family,
this brother, this son, this daughter. It's an
event that can he can focus on whenever there is
nothing else to do in his busy schedule of running,
running, running for office.

For Mitt Romney, it is the media who has the
responsibility to police itself, not America.

For Mitt Romney, public reports of CIA doings in
foreign countries jeopardizes national security,
invading a foreign country and promoting a civil
war doesn't.

For Mitt Romney, public reports of CIA doings in
foreign countrys endangers lives, war doesn't.

Is this really Mitt Romney or that other guy who
can't decide which theater it is he wants to star in?

GAS PRICES! What kind of Capitalism is this?

YAHOO News, May 25, 2007

Traffic up on gasoline price Web sites

By ROBERT WELLER, Associated Press Writer Fri May 25, 1:19 AM ET

DENVER - The higher gasoline prices go, the more money business
Web entrepreneur Jason Toews makes.

He started an Internet site, GasBuddy.com, in 2000 to track daily
gasoline prices using volunteers to e-mail what they find. "Hardly
anybody ever used it," Toews, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., recalled.

By 2004, 1 million people were visiting the site daily, although
the numbers dropped when prices went down.

But at the pace hits were being recorded Thursday, the site was
likely to break its record of 4 million visitors, Toews said. As
gasoline prices have risen, so have the hits on his site and another,
GasPriceWatch.com.

"We have had to buy more servers and it looks like we will need
more," he said.

GasBuddy.com offers information from 180 locations in the U.S. and
Canada, including every major city. The site said the average price
nationally in the U.S. was $3.22 for unleaded Thursday afternoon,
compared with $2.86 a year ago.

Brad Proctor, founder of GasPriceWatch.com in Centerville, Ohio,
said his site has added prices for ethanol, biodiesel, truck diesel
and ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Hits on his site have doubled. As many
eight people log in every second during peak periods, he said.

[-And here's the really IMPORTANT revelation: ]

Dan Gilligan, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Petroleum
Marketers Association of America, said the system is a good idea
but warned consumers to remember that if they drive more than 10
miles to save a nickel, they are losing money. He also said there's
no guarantee the price will be the same when they arrive.

"Many retailers are getting price increases twice a day. You may
have a price increase within six hours," he said.

(emphasis mine)
[-did you get that? "TWICE A DAY!" -]

Other businesses are also tying technology to drivers' increasing
efforts to find a deal.

Toews' company, GasBuddy Organization Inc., claims to monitor
900,000 stations with several hundred thousand registered
volunteers. GasPriceWatch.com says it tracks 170,000 stations.

People can send a message to gas(at)gasbuddy.com with a ZIP code
in the text area, and the site will reply with the cheapest nearby
stations.

The Web site also has a national map for those planning trips.
_____________________

Commentary:

How many trips to the supermarket do you make in a weeks
time? How many Department Stores do you visit each week?

When you're looking over the tomatoes or the cans of
soups in the grocery store, does some clerk run up and
change the price on the can, or the posted price? And
do they do this perhaps TWICE while you are shopping?

Of course they don't.

And why don't they?

Because apparently unlike the oil industry, the owners
of farms, manufacturing plants and other service industrys
know what their costs are and know how much they need to
sell of a particular product in order to make a profit.
They pay humans to project these figures and make sure
that expenses are covered no matter what happens.

The price of tomatoes do not rise twice daily just because
some government official is out in the field and notices
that one plant has a dead leaf or another sees storm
clouds on the horizon.

That coat you are looking at doesn't rise in price, as
you try it own, because that incoming shipment from
Nebraska is stalled out on Interstate 55 or it is
reported that the next shipment of coats sank in the
Gulf of Mexico due to a hurricane or the cotton field
in Guadalahela had an increase of employee layoffs due
to a virus going around the town.

Yet, these are the types of reasons being given to justify
price rises as often as TWICE DAILY at the pumps, only
substituting electronic and technological words instead
of saying it in words that reveal its whimsical causes!
One is just as valid a reason as any other. A refinery
goes down for a couple of hours, the price at the pump
goes up. A Futures bidder in New York suddenly thinks
that the swarm of locusts in Pixapan Chile may, just may,
affect that amount of oil that will be produced and
exported next year and so he bids accordingly, driving
the price of an imported barrel of oil into the
stratoshpere, and the price at the pump goes up.
But wait, there's more.

The refineries in Texas accept more and more oil from
the Arab emirates and less and less of American oil.
With less and less American crude oil being processed
there is less and less gasoline at the pumps (because its
being exported). But of course this is hidden in charts
and tables that jump around and back and forth from
thousands of BARRELS per MONTH being imported
and exported to millions of GALLONS per DAY of
refined gasoline getting to market. That's the same
as a reading a book that compares apples to pancakes
or listening to that joke that ends; 'I guess you had
to be there.'

This is not Capitalism.

And how does it work? Ask your Congressmen. It is all
compliments of your government. It is your government
that gives special concessions to the oil industry.
They are not driven by markets (regular Capitalism)
but by congressional special privileges and concessions.

Let President Bush turn all of those vacant military
compounds, posts and reserves that have been shut down
over the past 15-20 years into oil refineries. Let the
Arabs, the REALLY rich people in the world, build their
own refineries. Let the Arabs and the Oil Industry lay
in the bed they have so craftily built. Let the Queens
of Industry know that there is competition out there and
they had better get their ship in shape .... or ship
out.
Make them answer .... to you.

WHERE IS THE MUSLIM OUTCRY?

Day after day, factions of Muslims are killing people.
It doesn't seem to really matter if the people they
kill are other Muslims, if they don't like you then
you might as well paint a target on your forehead.

So, being Muslims, even though they are called by
various names such as militants or extremists
or whatever, exactly what is in the teachings of such
a religion that it is ok with non-members of the
various factions to kill other members of the very group
from which they broke off?

And what is in the teachings of the peaceful Muslims
that says that whatever someone else does in their name
is ok as long as it isn't them they want to kill or they
aren't working their neighborhood?

Are the Muslims actually jealous, deep down inside,
of the Jews because what they are doing is sort of
what the Jews did in Germany when the Nazi's began
dragging people from their homes and throwing them
in jails. The ones who didn't get arrested just sort
of shook their heads and figured that the arrested
man or family must have really done something bad.
Right.

So-called 'Peace loving' Muslims all around the world
are just turning their eyes and attention away from
the fact that Muslims are killing Muslims. But I guess
they too are ok with killing because none of them are
crying out for anything to change, for it to stop, are
they?

The Muslims may outnumber Christians in this world, but
it seems that both Christians and non-Christians are
more concerned with the Muslims killing each other than
are the Muslims! Go figure.

I'm well aware that there are other issues involved
but that doesn't absolve Muslims from tolerating Muslims
killing each other as though life is of no value.

Peace

A "big mistake" compounded

YAHOO News.
Iraq vote key for Clinton, Obama
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
Tue May 15, 4:43 AM ET


"In November, 2005, Clinton [Hillary] said an immediate U.S.
withdrawal from Iraq would be a "big mistake," and added, "I think
that would cause more problems for us in America."

In January, 2006, she said she was not advocating a "date certain"
for a troop withdrawal, and as recently as March, spoke against a
hard deadline."

__________________________

So, what is wrong with this approach?
Most likely the Senator is referring to both terrorism being exported
to the United States and to some interruption in the flow of oil due
to the say-so of the Arab Emirates or whoever.

Obviously, we do not want terrorism becoming a way of life in this
country. And just as obviously we don't want our way of life
interrupted by a lack of gas to put in our much needed street humvees.

So, is there anything wrong in this approach?
Yes, there definitely is.

What is wrong is that even with the seemingly 'even handedness' of
such a stance, it still buys into and makes acceptable the idea that
it is all right for people to kill each other, that a life should be
given to the 'greater' good, that one country has the 'right' to
invade another country (regardless of the benevolent terms used to
justify such action), and that there is some inherent 'rightness' in
one form of governing as opposed to any and all others.

The United States of America was an experiment, a trial, an escape.
It was not "founded" on the principles that it later came to adopt.
It wasn't until it was determined that this particular plot of land
was able to sustain an influx of people from all over the globe that
those people realized that they enjoyed the advantage of being like
minded enough to establish their autonomy as a nation. And even then,
like peoples everywhere today, they mostly just wanted to have their
little plot of land to grow sufficient food for themselves and their
family and to be left alone.

Still, like the country they vacated, they brought with them the idea
that those with an overabundance of material goods were subject to
having those goods taken away by force. And so today we maintain and
re-inforce that same idea. 'What's mine is mine and what's yours is
debatable.' As long as we maintain beliefs that 'we are right' and
that someone else is wrong just because we don't like the way they
do something or because they believe differently than we, then we
will always side on the thinking that it (whatever) "would be a "big
mistake" if we allow it to continue. We will forever be locked into
that thought process that concludes that maybe, just maybe, two wrongs
will someday total up to one right.

Iraq, 'Let's wait and see,' ok? OK?

YAHOO News, May 10, 2007
Bush seeks compromise on Iraq benchmarks
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

The President, in this article, is quoted as saying
about the "pending compromise"-

"Why don't we wait and see what happens," the president
said. "Let's give this plan a chance to work. Let's stop
playing politics."

AAAaaarrrgggghhhh!

Will someone yank those rose tinted glasses off of his
face? Sure, Mr. President. We (here at home) have nothing
at stake, do we? Let THEM die. Keep it OVER THERE!

That is obviously why Mr. Bush is not seeing blood,
limbs, bodies, heads, and lives strewn over the streets
of Iraq. His glasses are painting an entirely different
picture for him than for the rest of us.

"WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?"

We KNOW what is going to happen!

While the Big Boys talk, drink, smirk, posture and negotiate,
grunts die.
That's DIE, as in DEAD. Your neighbors, your friends, your
pals, your loved ones. DEAD. No more. Buried. No laughter,
no smiles, no hugs, no telephone calls. Thats whats going
to happen. And there are no Rules of War that says its going
to be someone else's son or daughter that is going to die.
It isn't written .... anywhere!

And when they finally do come home, if they are not in a
body bag, the Military-YOUR GOVERNMENT- yes, YOUR
GOVERNMENT-isn't going to help them ease back into society.
They're not as valuable as their counterparts, the Firemen
or Policemen, once they're spent. Their life is OVER! No unions
for them. No compensation if deemed a personality disorder!
They may even wind up OWING money to the Government!

But the Big Boys are OK,
and that's what counts.
Isn't it?