Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

NO! DVFORBESLISTBLOG says we might NOT be in an era of permanent prosperity for the superrich?!?!?

P. S. Actual last two grafs:

David Kelly, who helps oversee $450 billion as chief market strategist at JPMorgan Funds, says the lack of volatility may encourage investors to put more money into the market, which is what they should do. "Stocks are cheap," he says, "and for most long-term investors, the thing they would do is bet on the tide rather than play the waves."

The bottom line: The low level of volatility the market has seen recently has often heralded periods of subpar returns.

Posted 11:57 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: And while we're at it, let's stop giving out Os-CARS® to "best" documentary shorts.

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

$60,000,000,000 / $3,834,000,000,000 = 1.564 PERCENT.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Posted 11:00 PM by Gene

Why Russia's Medvedev can't seem to deliver

Because he's Vlad's version of a customer-service rep, or Howie Hairshirt.

Posted 6:49 PM by Gene

Megan McArdle:

[I]s it somehow morally wrong for the Wisconsin legislature to change the rules under which it will bargain with its employees? It's incoherent even as a question. The legislature is the entity which is supposed to set those terms--and it's no more outrageous for the GOP to favor small businessmen and the self-employed than it was for Democrats to favor a constituency which has become (as we now see) a de facto arm of the Democratic Party.

Posted 6:36 PM by Gene

When a TV cri-TIC says a show is terrible, especially a highly rated show in the news, it must be TERRIBLE.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

Fear of 'Catastrophic' Crash Rising Despite Bull Market

THE BIGGER THEY ARE....

And the Wall Street Casino dealers want to make it REALLY big!

Overall volume has been very light in the market though, as the individual investor put more money into bonds last year than stocks in spite of the gains. Strategists said this has been one of the longer bull markets (starting in March 2009) with barely any retail participation.

TRANSLATION: ALGORITHMS AND UNCLE BEN.

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: We covered that story about OUR BLANKETY-BLANK COLLEAGUE too much because she was ONE OF OURS, which gave us permission to ignore everyone else so afflicted. (Insert customer-service-style apology here.)

I HATE NEWS HACKS!

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

Why the NASDAQ index should hit at LEAST 50,000 this year -- thanks to the IPAD:

I’ve seen a lot of crowded tech categories before, but this is comical. The makers will all build too much tablet inventory based upon their optimistic internal forecasts. That will lead to an epic glut and then a pricing bloodbath, as they try to give the stuff away. It should make for some great short-selling opportunities among the tablet component makers later this year. For now, we’re in the unbridled optimism phase for tablets.

(Via I Want Media)

Posted 11:23 AM by Gene

The con-SER-va-tive Detroit News seems upset that Michigan's new governor wants to slash the movee industry's dole in his state, burying this interesting ditty in the ninth and tenth grafs:

Proponents of the film incentives, including former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, have said the efforts have helped create an emerging industry. An estimated 7,000 jobs were created in Michigan in 2008 and 2009 and more than $300 million was spent on productions in the Great Lakes State in 2010, according to the Michigan Film Office.

A September 2010 Senate Fiscal Agency report, however, found Michigan paid nearly twice as much money in incentives as the industry brought to the state in a two-year period. The state spent $137.5 million to generate $80.6 million in revenue, and the efforts cost taxpayers more than $190,000 to create a single full-time job.

Multiply this by a million and you have our debt boondoggle.

Posted 11:14 AM by Gene

Oh, no, nothing to see here, just another Muslim preacher. Move on.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

"The Continental"..."Lullaby of Broadway"..."Cheek to Cheek"..."The Way You Look Tonight"..."I've Got You Under My Skin"..."They Can't Take That Away from Me"..."Thanks for the Memory"..."Jeepers Creepers"..."Over the Rainbow"..."Blues in the Night"....

OR:

Oscar Insiders: Why the Academy Should Kill the Best Song Category

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

Hellooooo, out there! Jeff! Somebody! Anybody! I'm available! Yoo-hoo!

Posted 10:29 PM by Gene

We have not commented on George Shearing, but Terry Teachout did, and now regret we couldn't have done the same. We confess to not having turned much to his co-op blog anymore as he doesn't seem to write much for it, but this link is as good as he gets.

Posted 9:59 PM by Gene

And the next time the obsequious truth-bending six- and seven-digit life-lucky hacks give off a steady giggle over their show-biz favorites trendily giving birth out of what used to be called wedlock, they might read something like this.

I HATE NEWS HACKS!

Posted 9:38 PM by Gene

Here's a piece that deserved comment spam; sadly KAPLAN, INC. seems prepared for it. This would seem proof the proprietors of our leading Web sites judge the quality of their work by how many comments it gets (Yahoo! should be high on that list); all they do is shortchange those surfers tired of the wild-goose chase and of being roundly insulted. Further proof: the article gives no comments count, forcing you to click on a "More" bar to see them all.

Proof it may not work: One small box ad in the whole thing, and not from a big advertiser.

Posted 9:18 PM by Gene

As news hacks obsessively devote themselves to the biggest winners in the lottery of life, they themselves being big winners, let us very humbly remember those who may never have a chance to play.

Posted 8:05 PM by Gene

TWO "NEWS" STORIES I'D RATHER NOT HEAR OF AGAIN: 1. Untold thousands of women are sexually assaulted each year. So why these last few days have we only heard of one? Well, because she's one of the news hacks', and in their clannishness they could cause all Judaism to convert. It's no accident that while the hacks have sent their nonstop cards and letters of condolence (and His Omnipotence's phone call was as much to the hacks too -- a symbol that he owes them untold thanks for His election) they've gone into their favorite behavior of radio silence over Egypt because that story doesn't have sex. Of course this was an awful crime. Let us not forget though The Thug brutalized Egypt. And while the reporter will recover Egypt's prognosis is not so clear. Good reporting could help Egypt recover. We wouldn't expect it. And the more "our" colleague grabs the attention the less likely assaulted women will be helped.

2. Watson proves nothing except news hacks love any story where BIGMEDIA are the center of attention, and that when IBM puts it mind to it it can rustle up consulting sales. (And far from the old wives' tale most news hacks no doubt believe, IBM isn't that much in manufacturing anymore -- witness Lenovo.) But the notion that machines can't ultimately better humans is plain wrong; it won't happen now but we'd guess it will happen with hiccups. And it will happen because man has shown too many faults, and one of them is hoping machines can rid him of his original sin.

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

Wisconsin's Democrats have thrown a statewide tantrum, which will not prevent its Republican governor from getting his way. But we wonder -- The Badger State, last we looked, was still a blue state. What's to prevent some Democratic governor from returning the status quo? What's to prevent tantrums every time there's a change of power?

We still think the ultimate purpose of such legislating is for Republicans to help their BFFs the hyperrich; but Democrats have shown today they're the BFFs of the dead hand.

Posted 3:30 PM by Gene

"Our goal is to kill or to capture Osama bin Laden," Holder said in response to a reporter's question during a news called to discuss health care fraud prosecutions. "If he were to be captured, we would--the national security team would get together and would determine where appropriately he would be held."

New York -- I guess that's out; Leavenworth -- no, can't do it there; Alcatraz, uh -- gee whiz, where can we put this guy?

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

How many of the talking heads quoted in all these reports of a HISTORICALLY BOOMING ECONOMY!!!!! have been employed in one form or another as SALESMEN?

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

In the next few years, conservatives are going to have to cut entitlements and social spending. To retain their credibility, they must apply the same standards of fiscal responsibility to agribusiness that they apply to other areas.

Good luck -- when it's business.

Posted 11:01 AM by Gene

We see from SUPERNIKKI!!!!! that PEOPLE WARNER has hired someone who looks like the winner of the Miss USA Pageant to play Wonder Woman, and all her fans are squealing WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!! (or are those PEOPLE WARNER employees?), and given this will be on CONCAST NETWORK we hope it doesn't make a full season. "Ben Silverman" indeed.

P. S. at 1:45 p. m. PEOPLE WARNER's DC COMICS PICTURES TELEVISION DIVISION uses PEOPLE INC. to use ITS NEWSRAG'S SITE to quote ITS FLAGSHIP on the story with a slightly more flattering picture. SYNERGY'S BETTER THAN EVER!



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE YEAR-THUS-FAR AWARD TO MEGAN, RICHARD "CAN ANYONE HERE EDIT THIS MAGAZINE" STENGEL, JOHN "HOOEY" HUEY AND JEFF!

P. P. S. COMMENT OF THE DAY, which appears no fewer than SIX TIMES thus far:

Lauren Jones 10:40 am

******

It's a Little off Topic but Anyone Looking for a Job
Should Check Out this Website!

They are Hiring People to Work from Home for $67 / hour

[Original link and URL removed -- link spam]

This Job Program has saved Our Whole Family from
the Recession!

And I Can Work from Home with my Kids !

They are 2 positions left in the Job Progam.

*******

[All SIC!!!!!!!!!!]

P. P. P. S. at 10:40 p. m. How apt on the day of one of its greatest post-Warner Communications synergies JEFF fires the head of PEOPLE INC. If he inspired this claptrap I say richly deserved, as if it weren't in other ways.

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

Of course then we'd have to give up Megan McArdle, but she could always start a blog.

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

What Palin (and Other GOP Leaders) Doesn't Get About Ronald Reagan

That he was A LIBERAL!!!!!

Your Lordship, couldn't You buy The Atlantic -- it IS "profitable" -- and put it behind Your Wall too?

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

The Lord God Pinch has kept mightily quiet about His Plans for The Wall. In light of this ad, Dear God, don't You think it's about time?



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO ITSY-BITSY ITZ!

Posted 9:11 AM by Gene

His Omnipotence once again shows that, in a crunch, other people can be presidents too, so long as it results in some mutually agreeable backscratching.

What are the odds Very Littler Jeffy runs for president in 2016?

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

The Wall Street Casino gets excited over The Lord God Steve because It is immortal, and It therefore supposes a chief supplier of Its mythical prosperity must also be immortal.

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

Another complaint against Notre Dame Football Factory. Why should it be any better than the church it nominally represents?

Posted 7:16 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



IIIII SEEEEEEEEEE youuuuuuuuuu!



$20 million on stilts!

Posted 11:10 AM by Gene

PEOPLE NEWSRAG's running more show-biz "news"!

You really think running more press releases will save your withered hag of a rag, huh JEFF?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

How heartwarming: "Dear Abby" runs the Muslim Brotherhood.

I don't think Dear Abby ever wrote, "DEATH TO JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!!"

Posted 8:45 AM by Gene

Is any profession save very-high-end medicine and engineering immune from computer replacements? Here's one reason why I think the "future" of man is half-man, half-computer, and thankfully I'll be long gone before that utopia arrives.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

So much for the notion the WUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHLD COMMUNITY can rely on bugs to stop Iran from nuking Isr -- from achieving peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

Posted 8:49 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Given that a day is still resolutely 24 hours long however many channels they add the cable oligarchs' rate raises remain price gouging.

In a reversal from previous studies, the price of expanded basic was slightly more, and the increase slightly larger, in areas where the FCC had determined there was effective competition.

So much for that fairy tale.

"Most cable customers subscribe to digital cable and other services so they are enJOOOOOOOOOOOOYing a bundled discount plus have hundreds of channels and other interactive features to choose from!!!!! When you consider that total TV viewing continues to rise year after year, consumers are clearly demonstrating that they enJOOOOOOOOOOOOY their video service!!!!!" [Enjoyable overemphasis added]

TRANSLATION: We gouge 'em multiple ways.

Posted 8:00 PM by Gene

HEY ANT! I was all ready to buy the complete Ant and the Aardvark cartoons till I learned someone beat me to it and posted all seventeen of them on YouTube, saving me from paying for nothing. They're not 720 resolution but at 360 they're pretty good for stuff ripped from a DVD. (The Seal of Valenti disconcertingly graces the credits, a wan joke.) Anything from the likes of Friz Freleng will have that Warner Bros. touch but by now it had grown so wan as to be missing, replaced by the heavy hand of bad sitcoms. (Or rather the bad fin de siecle Road Runner cartoons with dialogue; both were made on the Warner lot.) The animation's okay for TV -- and face it, they were made for TV; several bear post-theatrical laugh tracks that United Ar...MGM was too lazy to remove from the disc -- but it still cheats. Doing the same things they did far better twenty-five years before the hacks under Freleng and his producing partner David H. DePatie telegraphed their gags as baldly as Seymour Kneitel, treating their audiences much as rocks, anvils and Tabasco sauce treat the Aardvark. (They were not helped by a mickey-mouse all-star jazz band playing the theme music in ten different tempos.) They earned their reward in more wage-slavery as DePatie-Freleng became a second Hanna-Barbera. And who remembers either but cartoon buffs -- who may not want to? These moth-eaten shorts would be well nigh unwatchable less the brilliant mimicry of John Byner as Jackie Ma -- the Aardvark; I cannot regard that acidic comedian without expecting him to bellow "HEY ANT!" And what's best, Byner's funnier than Jackie Mason.

But even he can't save the fourth remake of some wood shavings off Termite Terrace; the cartoons are still bad free or not, but at least I have an excuse not to collect any more dust with my video library than I have to.

Confession: I own an unopened five-disc box of Pink Panthers because Oldies.com sold it for $30, and I don't expect much pleasure from them either.

P. S. I originally posted this yesterday with the unforced error that only the Aardvark's head and neck were animated to save DePatie and Freleng money; but then look how the lack of humor was animated.

P. P. S. on 2/20/2011 at 3:15 p. m. The great non-sequitur Friz never thought of: How many ants live in the whole world -- and why must the Aardvark pick on one ant?

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Sorry if this is in bad taste but one must ask -- isn't a little late for a fallout shelter? (It's in Hiroshima.)



This is the Scottish Parliament. It won a prize. So did the Lockerbie bomber.

No wonder they let him go.



$10 million on stilts!



A Swiss-cheese museum!



The world's largest in-box of black paper!

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

BEN AT WORK:

By early next year, the U.S. banking industry will have too much capital, rather than too little, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said Tuesday during an investor presentation.

“I’m worried about how much capital is going to build up in the system in the U.S.,” Dimon said. “In 12 months we’re looking at a lot of capital we can’t use. That may make people do stupid things.”

DO THEM! We know you can.

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

We would feel sorry for Billy Ray but he and his daughter are in show-biz, the kind of usually undeserved luck that doesn't happen to very many. And it's all well and good to have regrets but they don't smell so perfumey after such a long hot run.

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

"Sequels aren't the same as they used to be," says Don Harris, distribution executive for Paramount Pictures, whose big sequels include July 1's Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third installment of the blast-happy franchise. "It's not pandering to just fans. If you're just in the business of making sequels, you'll be out of business."

Look Donny baby, we know ya gotta shine SUMNER's shoes but do you have to shine them so bright we can see his reflection hundreds of miles away?

Wouldn't "THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED!" have been more honest?

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

OooooOOOOOoooooh, the President "punted" -- and he can't even play football!

Posted 10:30 PM by Gene

Just now we have come across something we have not seen in ages, which we found here: the main and end titles of David Wolper's NBC documentary series Hollywood and the Stars. I can still recall the open forty-six years later: the camera dollying back through the depressingly lit soundstage, empty but for a rudimentary set, the cameras, the spotlights (which really should be off to match the mood), the boom mike, a ladder and a director's chair, and forever searing my memory Elmer Bernstein's painfully eloquent music. This was a eulogy to Hollywood, to an industry whose best days even in 1964 were in the increasingly distant past. We think of this now that Grate.com has run an annoying piece about how, in no small way guided by the hacks who CRITICALLY ACCLAIM, ac-TORS have become SFX, indistinguishable in their histrionics from CGI because the movees are nothing but. We cannot console ourselves that the nineteenth-century stage surely burst with the overripest smelliest half-baked ham acting because better techniques did come along, techniques that in time allowed the stage and film to become a pathway to the truth; and now here is a bankrupt business returning to the worst excesses of the days before the glove salesmen because it has trained its diminishing audience to expect more of it while delivering ever less. As we said the other day, this industry's attendance decline, with luck, is permanent.

Cue the music, Elmer.

P. S. on 8/29/2011 at 10:35 p. m. We can now see on that sofa on the set somebody's sitting there -- and appropriately enough, he isn't moving.

I hope to soon post an edited version of the theme using the main and end titles. Bernstein's theme appears at least twice else on the Web -- in a biography on Al Jolson and a vastly overproduced modern version with a lot of extraneous matter, from an Elmer Bernstein tribute CD set.

Posted 4:54 PM by Gene

Marriot to split in 2

It already has!

Posted 1:32 PM by Gene

Con-SERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-va-tives -- be VERY ANGRY:

Obama budget ends tax cuts on wealthy

Posted 1:25 PM by Gene

If this is more than idle GanNETtoid chat this means USAOKAY!!!!! becomes a strictly sports and entertainment paper (as if it isn't already) to "appeal" to the masses they think it appeals to. I can't see GanNETt folding OKAY!!!!! because it would strike at its own identity and be a mortal blow to the rag's founder SOB. But God knows it deserves it. The Life analogy inspires hope.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

What would Gomer Pyle say?

Cuban government and union officials are acknowledging for the first time that a drive to fire half a million unneeded state workers has gotten off to a slow start, due to a lack of communication within the Labor Ministry and incompetence among the thousands of commissions set up to decide who gets the ax.

SurPRAHSE, surPRAHSE, surPRAHSE!

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

With a $670 BILLION defense budget how do we know what we need and what we don't?

Then add the rest of our budget and our government looks like a MORASS.

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

Stability isn't the army's only concern: money matters too. Egypt's half-million-strong armed forces receive $1.3 billion a year from the U.S., and they maintain significant investments in the national economy. Soldiers staff military-owned companies that produce everything from olive oil to washing machines, televisions, cement and even the ubiquitous Safi brand of bottled water. The military owns land, operates hotels and runs construction companies. Retired generals are often offered lucrative positions on the boards of private companies. "It's not exactly the military-industrial complex in the American sense," says Carapico, "but it's close."

I guess that means we're stuck with giving for a while, sighhhhhhhhhh.

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

DVFORBESLISTBLOG gets excited over a publicity stunt:

The press is all over this Jeopardy! Challenge, and rightfully so. Such HOLY-CRAP!!!!! innovation from an American company is just what we need at a time when everyone is concerned about America falling behind China and its ilk. Jeopardy! may seem like a silly application for such an expensive effort by one of the world’s largest technology companies, but IBM is testing a system that opens frontiers in software intelligence. [Holy emphasis added]

First off, one could strongly argue IBM is not an American company. Second building gee-whiz devices will not help the unemployed. Third we won't get out of our funk building an economy that's gee-whiz geniuses and everybody else.

And we can see why this guy lost to Watson. He says JEOPARDY!!!!!'s "on ABC". What is "syndication"?

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

See, as the news hacks told us in 2008, we don't need a foreign policy president, we need one who can fix the economy.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

The next time a ROCK mus-SICK cri-TICK tells us POP MUSIC IS BETTER THAN EVER!!!!!, all I have to do is recall the last time I visited a newsstand, and how skinny the papers looked, and then I'll think, there is a God.

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

Cotton for March delivery rose 3.9% to settle at $1.8758 a pound on ICE Futures U.S., just shy of the $1.89 record hit during the Civil War. Prices surged the exchange-permitted daily limit of seven cents a pound.

The run-up was largely attributed to speculative buying, not the textile industry.

"I cannot say this clearly enough: this is not mill buying," said Sharon Johnson, a senior cotton analyst at Penson Futures. "Mills cannot buy at these prices. The vast majority has already done what they need to do."

REMEMBER, John Stossel, the speculator is YOUR FRIEND!

Posted 8:18 AM by Gene

“It’s just a bad version of a newspaper in electronic form with a very condescending view of the audience.”

And since when have you, JAKE, thought of your audience as anything above IDIOTS?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

The last time that con-SER-va-tive conference endorsed RON!!!!! PAUL!!!!!!!!!! we paid it no mind, but consider: It presaged SARAH!!!!! and the Tea Party. The rank and file wish to be heard, whatever their impolite noises.

2010, IDIOT! I just had a DAVID GURGLE moment.

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

RELIEF!!!!! BOX OFFICE UP 32%!!!!!!!!!! (Relieving overemphasis added)

Sorry, maybe from last week, but even David "NON" Germain had to admit (in the ninth graf, natch) that B. O. was DOWN 27 PERCENT FROM LAST YEAR. We can't expect this to continue forever; the summer's crowded with TENTPOLES. But no excuses over KING JIM and the WEATHER can quite obscure this notion that maybe disgust toward the movee excretion biz has finally assumed enough traction that even the hard-core true believers don't find its bowel movements an effective emetic anymore, and that many of their numbers are abandoning the medium permanently. We will not go again into the why -- we've done that altogether too much -- but given how the movee biz' collapse parallels the video game biz' -- both appeal to excessively fickle and mentally...challenged youth and emit the same kind of stench -- makes us think so many are so fed up with spoon-fed "entertainment" it cannot be undone. Movees encompass too many inconveniences to justify the time and trouble to see them, only to greet the fans with insults. This medium cannot hit the skids quickly enough, nor can it skid fast enough for us. We fear next year we will be forced to endure PAUL DRECK speaking again of RECORDS!!!!!!!!!! We hope not.