All Things in Moderation

10 Toys That Made Sense in Their Era and Nowhere Else.

Fully jointed, too. Hmph.

Women are a Mystery to Stephen Hawking.

The Problem With Carbon Taxes.

How Much Money Will You Spend To Look Stupid While Playing Video Games?

Bradley Cooper as Lex Luthor? That should be interesting.

All I got. Sleep well, peoples. — KW

Mark adds that Texans sometimes can almost unanimously get it right! 

Thinks he is popular in Lubbock…

For those of you who don’t like Craig James — and judging from polls and other measuring sticks, that’s pretty much everybody — his campaign for U.S. Senate has been like the 12 days of Christmas, with enough goodies left over to celebrate the eight days of Hanukkah. And the week of Kwanzaa.
Actually, there’s enough here to carry into the New Year, way past April Fool’s Day (U.S. Sen. Craig James!) and onto the Fourth of July. Maybe even into Halloween. What ridiculous costume are you going to wear? Me, I’m thinking of going as U.S. Sen. Craig James.

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Vital Statistics:

Markets are down slightly on a couple of lukewarm bond auctions in France and Hungary. This also begins pre-announcement season, where companies who are going to miss their quarterly numbers fess up. Today’s names: Tesoro, J.C. Penney, and Eli Lilly.

Initial Jobless Claims continued their 375k a week pace, lower than the 400k pace we had been accustomed to. The ADP number was way better than expected, forecasting 325k jobs being created in December, vs expectations of 178k.

The Fed released a white paper yesterday discussing the US housing market and possible policy responses to it. I have not read it yet, and I will give you my take when I have finished it. They do suggest that the GSEs relax refinancing guidelines, and that the government find a way to encourage foreclosures to be turned into rental properties. Anecdotally, here in the Northeast, I do find that banks are very reluctant to move off of their offering prices in short sale situations, which signals they know something is in the works.

Today is the first Thursday of the month, which means retailers are giving their comp sales numbers. The winners: Macy’s, The Limited, Zumiez. Losers: J.C. Penney, Target, Kohl’s, The Gap, and American Eagle. Margin pressure continues to signal that the consumer is very value conscious and that promotional activity drove sales.

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In light of Iowa, and the general tenor and direction of the GOP race for the nomination, and
for that matter the general tenor and direction of the party as a whole, the Tea Party deserves kindness and understanding and a dismissive and cruel sneer.

The Tea Party should be forgiven. Our endeavors often come to nothing
and it becomes apparent that our our efforts were ludicrous from the start. Life is like that. For that reason, the Tea Party deserves kindness and understanding. As do we all.

And after all the bluster, all the talk, after all the risible history lessons (that is to say after all the strange, crackpot accounts of historical events), after all the comical claims to have, God knows how, privileged access to the consciousnesses of “the founders” and to know all their wishes for us, their progeny, after all the nonsense about “socialism”, after all the excuses
for, confusingly, not manning the barricades when a Republican president was spending, after prattling on and on about smaller government while guarding medicare like a rabid, starving, snarling cur protecting a bone with a scrap of meat clinging to it, after all
that, the Tea Party deserves cruel smirks, mockery, and open scorn.

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