Jack Stevison

The recipe that I brewed on May 17th is finally ready for the bottle. Actually, it’s been ready for about two weeks now, but as I said in the original post on brew day, I’ve had a habit of not giving the Wheat Beer enough time in the fermenter. Shouldn’t be a problem this time.

Also, of the other two recipes that I reference in that post on brew day, the Scottish Export and the Belgian Three Layer, only the Belgian Three Layer currently has any survivors with a little more than a six-pack left. The Export was great, and the Three Layer has been a real treat.

In about a month this wheat beer that I’m bottling today should be ready for consumption. I have a German Double Bock in the fermenter in which the yeast is still chewing on the sugars. That recipe should have a real punch to it.

So Albert, if you’re keeping score out there in northwest Kansas, I’ll be bringing six-packs of five different beers west with me on our summer vacation: Steam Beer, Scottish Export, Belgian Three Layer, German Double Bock, and a Wheat Beer. Get the steaks and corn ready.

Happy brewing.

Last night Auntie M and I hit the bridge in Melbourne, FL for our weekly long run. It’s my LSD run, which stands for long slow distance so get your mind out of the 1960s; I’m an athlete.

Anyway we went to a local watering hole afterward for some beers and a burger. The bartender was in the weeds when we got there and the place was very noisy, not what the place is usually like. So we ordered an Hawaiian burger, well done, with fries, to split between the two of us and we ordered a couple of beers to go with it.

About forty-five minutes later, after several disgusted glares at the bartender, and another beer each for the wife and me, she finally asks “to confirm our order” as she’s “going to check with the kitchen to see what the hold up is,” which is bar wench code for she got distracted the first time she was supposed to input the order on the screen and she’s going to rush it in now. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll cut you some slack since I’m enjoying my wife’s company and these ice cold beers.”

I didn’t bother telling her that I was on to her b.ravo s.ierra line about “checking with the kitchen.” You see, my sister and my mother, and I for a brief period in my past, all worked in food service at one time or another. I know what can and does happen back there, so don’t f.reaking lie to me. In this age of technology if I want to push the issue all I have to do is ask for the cook’s version of the order ticket to see what time the order was input to the computer. Yeah, the receipts are time-stamped to keep everyone honest, and honesty and humility were two concepts this bar wench was having trouble grasping.

About the time we were finishing our second beer, I had had enough waiting around for our lying bartender to finally bring the food out so I said, “It’s over. We want to pay for our beers and hit the road.” Our burger arrives as she’s running my credit card. She boxes it up and said to us that we can have the burger on her, and that she’s sorry. I was watching as she boxed the burger. It was cut in two. Remember, the wife and I were going to share it. I could see that the burger was undercooked, and it had chips with it. We said well done with fries. She messed up the order on the entry, because she got distracted and tried to cover her tracks with that b.s. line about “checking with the kitchen.” I certainly can’t blame the cook.

So word to the wise for all you food servers out there. Fess up. We know you’re busy. We know you have bad days once in awhile. We got beer while we’re waiting. We’re cool. If you blow it, forget to input the order, whatever, come on over and say,

Folks, your food should have been here by now. I think I screwed up. In all the confusion I may have forgot to input the order. If you’ll let me put it in now, I’ll either let you have a beer on me while you wait, or the burger is on me; which would you like?

Then the decision is back on us. We’re either going to get a free beer (hooray beer!) or a free burger. In either case we won’t have to drive down the road looking for a server who’ll be honest with us, and we’ll respect you in the morning. We’ll even come back for more.

As it stands now, the girl down the road is going to get our repeat business. She’ll probably have her own bad day at some point when I’m really hungry. And when that day comes I trust that she’ll be honest with me, for that is all we’re asking.

One of my favorite indicators is about to go coast to coast, again. The HILO, as I’m looking at it with my own data, is one more bad day away from going from nose bleed territory to an outright screaming buy signal upon reversal. Have a look:

For a look at the series of my posts about the HILO, just click on the subject itself, either just below the title or on the link in this sentence. Oh, and just a reminder, this is only one indicator and it’s still in a column of goose eggs.

Let’s not be in a hurry to jump out on that limb.

Happy trading.

I got sucked in. I was watching videos over at YouTube while Auntie M is working on her comprehensive exam questions for her Ph.D. program. She’s hanging in there, thanks for asking.

Anyway, I clicked on the ad link in which John McCain is asking people to sign his petition for a “summer gas tax holiday and economic plan to help American families.”

My only question, John, is where did you get your economic training, because shipmate (I can call him that because I also served in the U.S. Navy), you got lots to learn about strategic election and economic planning. quoting from the site:

John McCain Believes We Should Institute A Summer Gas Tax Holiday. Hard-working American families are suffering from higher gasoline prices. John McCain calls on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

This is almost as bad as those chain-emails that have been going around the internets ever since oil starting climbing past $20/bbl.(1999), asking people to boycott the purchase of gasoline on a given day to show those greedy oil companies who’s boss.

Any instant relief from the high price of gasoline, whether 19 cents or 25 cents, being temporary in nature, will be as instantly painful on the back end when the tax is reinstated after Labor Day. And John, buddy, won’t the timing of that special tax hit work out just fine for you when the populous is suddenly paying 19 cents more for gasoline two months before they decide who the next President is going to be? Oh, and p.s. - if this is still your plan you’re about a month late getting that installed as Memorial Day was at the end of May. July 1 is Tuesday. Bad plan. Bad idea. Please fire the idiot economic adviser that dreamed this up for you because it is just plain stupid, and it will backfire right in your face come November.

Now to the tax plan. Ha! You thought I was going to stop at one question?

A SIMPLER TAX CODE: John McCain Will Propose An Alternative New And Simpler Tax System – And Give America A Real Choice. When this reform is enacted, all who wish to stay under the current system could still do so, but everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction. Americans do not resent paying their rightful share of taxes – what they do resent is being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands from the IRS.

You’re partially correct on this one, not only do we resent being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands from the IRS, but we also resent the fact that our tax dollars go to special interests, special projects that are not for the public good of the entire country, and programs installed without thinking about the other side of the equation (or bridge).

But now the question. What is our rightful share of taxes? And who is to decide what that number or percentage should be? And what are you going to do with it seeing as how I already asked you to stop spending it so frivolously? Oh wait, look at this:

GOVERNMENT SPENDING: John McCain Proposes A One-Year Spending Pause To Evaluate Programs. He believes that outside of essential military and veterans programs there should be a one-year discretionary spending pause that should be used for a top-to-bottom review of the effectiveness of federal programs.

Now you’re just being silly.

So the big question of the day, every day for the last week or so, is, is this it? The selling pressure is starting to resemble the movie Groundhog Day, the movie in which Bill Murray played a weatherman named Phil, “like the groundhog,” stuck in the same day over and over until he finally reached his own personal capitulation and became a good person.

In one of the mornings Phil was taping the lead-in to the big moment and the mayor of the town asked, just before pulling the groundhog out of his box, “So the question on everyone’s lips, everyone’s chapped lips, is, does Phil feel lucky?” While I think this bear market has a long, long way to go to play out and reach its eventual capitulation moment, we may now be at a point where we at least get some temporary relief.

One of the charts I look at every day is the advance-decline line and a few oscillators of that line. Have a look:

The guts of this chart is a mountain area graph of the S&P500. I’ve hidden the daily activity of the advance-decline line because it’s simply too noisy to make any sense out of it. But where I look every day is at the oscillators in the top and bottom windows of this chart. As you can see at a glance, my favorite way of viewing these, the market, as measured by the advance-decline line, may be ready for a bounce of some degree. I offer no promises though, because we could go a lot lower before said bounce arrives. It’s just a different look at our current situation.

I gave a presentation to the local Chamber of Commerce back in February, effectively telling the members that we are in fact already in recession. At the end of the economic portion I pulled up a chart of the S&P500 and said, while pointing to the top in October and an imaginary low somewhere in the distant future, “If you didn’t panic at the top, don’t panic down here.”

Happy trading.

Criminals do not obey the law. In fact that’s the definition of a criminal, a law breaker. Here’s the definition:

criminal
noun
a person who has committed a crime : these men are dangerous criminals.
adjective
of or relating to a crime : he is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage.
• Law of or relating to crime as opposed to civil matters : a criminal court.
• informal (of an action or situation) deplorable and shocking : he may never fulfill his potential, and that would be a criminal waste.
.

So today a decision was finally reached in the case of the D.C. handgun ban, and it was deemed unconstitutional. I’d like to say, “Thank Christ,” but really the thanks go to the five judges who have no problem understanding what it means to have and defend our individual rights.

What is deplorable and shocking is that the vote was so close. For a reminder of the Second Amendment and what it says, like it needs any clarification, here it is:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Not surprisingly, the four who are more than happy to see our individual liberties eroded while they sit on the bench are, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

I remember a former friend of mine commenting, with an outraged voice during the Gore/Bush fiasco in November 2000, “It’s about the supreme court. Whoever gets elected gets to nominate supreme court justices!”

Her primary concern was the woman’s right to do with her body whatever she pleases; you know, the Pro-Abortion versus Pro-Life debate. (yes, I phrased that properly)

Somehow the socialists in this country have no problem being concerned with individual rights while the right in question is the right to kill the unborn, but these very same socialists want to get rid of the death penalty and remove the right to defend ourselves.

The four who voted to uphold the D.C. handgun ban, the dissenters, were also in the majority when it came to taking away someone else’s private property in the Kelo vs. City of New London eminent domain case of 2005, which sadly was more about economic development and displacing a private owner from their property instead of what I thought eminent domain was about, government confiscation of private property in exchange for just compensation, for the public good.

Every day, and with each new socialist that rises through the ranks of the judicial system, and the socialist politicos who appoint them in hopes of seeking more and more power, and with each new attack on the constitution of our once-great country, we lose more and more of our individual freedoms.

On second thought, I am going to thank Christ for today’s vote, because I think it was divine intervention that I get to keep this one individual liberty a little while longer. I’d also like to thank James Madison* for such a clearly written amendment, even if you did have to use three commas in that sentence. It’s beautiful, man, simply beautiful.

And to those criminals who might ever get a bug up their wazoo to invade my home and attack my family, I still have the law on my side, so don’t even think about it!

* - I actually struggled with this part of the post. Was it James Madison or John Adams who drafted the actual wording? While reviewing Wikipedia for an answer, I found the Conflict and Compromise that the Second Amendment had to go through to make it into the Bill of Rights. Very interesting stuff.

Source: Justices Rule for Individual Gun Rights

First, the source for today’s rant:
Bernanke Plays ‘Dangerous Game’ Signaling Higher Rates as Growth Stagnates

And now the rant:

I read the article but it’s not a prerequisite to know what’s happening. The title alone does it for you. I’ve already predicted a particularly short tenure for this Fed Chairman. I think he will only serve one term and specifically said, “if he politically survives that term.” That said, have another look at the picture at the top of this post. It’s the picture of another academic to hold high office in our land. No, not the office of the Fed Chief, but the office of President. It’s Woodrow Wilson, the man who set the standard for future currency destruction by allowing the Federal Reserve to come into existence on his watch.

It’s fitting that the Fed would honor its founder with a picture on the largest of U.S. denominations, which, by the way, is not legal for anyone else to hold. From the Bureau of Engraving and Printing:

The $100,000 Gold Certificate was used only for official transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and was not circulated among the general public. This note cannot be legally held by currency note collectors.

I think it is only a matter of time before notes of this denomination will need to be circulated. After all a dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, that’s for sure. Anyway, Woodrow Wilson was also an academic, specifically president of Princeton University, before making his way into politics; a university expert housed in the halls of higher education who thought he knew better than the rest based on theory and dissertations instead of entrepreneurial practice.

Now we are suffering from the ramblings and exploits of today’s academic in the form of the Fed Chief, who is a self-proclaimed “expert” on the great depression. Bernanke talks too much, way too much, and as result investors, speculators, and those who have “inflation expectations” are trying their best to preserve their capital in the best way possible given the needless and useless words from the mouth of this academic.

Dear Mr. Bernanke, if we must endure your existence, please do your job quietly and in the confines of your office. We have work to do out here in the real world and your muddying up the works with chatter is not easing anyone’s expectations. You’re making it harder for us to do our jobs of preserving our purchasing power, so shut up already!