DISPATCHES FROM THE GHOST MOOSE

The last day of May....that month really flew by.  Way too much rain, and too cold.  Hopefully June will be better.  Back to work.  The fitness boot camp is still quite challenging.  We did a run that should not have been too taxing, and I am still struggling.  I used to be able to run 15 miles, now a mile is still out of my range.  No better way to get better at running than to run.  I guess one of these days I will have to start.  But, seeing a little progress.  Just getting up at 5 am to workout at 6 is progress I guess. Here's a link to an interesting story about the role Goldman Sachs played in the financial meltdown.  and still no one went to jail...and I (like many) lost over 30% of my retirement.  I continue to be fascinated by this subject only because we middle class get the shakedown from the govt for every last tax dollar, while these pantloads get billions of our tax dollars to hand out as bonuses for their thievery.  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-p

Memorial Day weekend.... for all the bs and ranting I post here, let it never be forgotten I am free to do so because of the heroic efforts of our servicemen and women.  The bravest of the brave....they do their duty and get so little in return.  I am an in between age - too young for Viet Nam, too old for the conflicts that came later.  But I have always had an admiration for those who made the commitment to the armed forces.  So, I will not taint this posting with the usual angry middle class white guy stuff... but rather thank those who have served or who are serving...(and of course, I am pretty sure there are none of them that read this blog). but if so, thanks much.  I owe you a beer.

Week one of the fitness boot camp is done.  and I made it.  If I keep it up, there can be no other outcome than  much better fitness.  I would liken it to what I have heard about those who explore the grand canyon.  If you walk down the steep trail to the bottom of the canyon, it is rather strenuous.  Many who walk down cannot make the return trip back to the top of the rim of the canyon, and the park service has to send a mule down to help those people get back to the top...and they charge them for that rescue effort....so, that situation is like letting oneself go from a health standpoint...completely abandoning all self restraint when it comes to eating, drinking and getting exercise.  Once you reach the bottom of that morass, you try to climb back up (to good health) but you need to pay to get that mule to help you back up to the top....I am at the bottom of that canyon...I sent for the mule, and made a few steps back toward the rim. I was watching Letterman on Wednesday and he b

I need to start building an ark.  Not only have we had 5 inches of rain, it was 44 degrees this morning.  I dug up a few of my tomoto plants that were under water.  My yard is now flooded for the 3rd time this spring. Check out this story about Americans and our vacation compared to the rest of the world: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/25/pf/unused_vacation_days/index.htm?hpt=T2 Basically it says what we all have known, and I have written about in the past; that Americans get significantly less vacation time than any other industrialized country.  Sure - we Amercans need to work to pay taxes so we can be the policeman for the world, and the benefactor of the world - sending billions of our tax dollars wherever they are needed (unless it is for our country) even to countries that hate us.  We need work in order to pay taxes for the military to protect the flow of oil to the rest of the world.  We need to pay taxes for the pension slobs to continue to freeload off us.  We need to sta

Well, the rain and chilly weather is back.  big surprise.  But, it is so sad to see the devastation in MO and OK.  The video of those violent storms is something else - I can't imagine seeing a tornado like that approaching. With the approach of the holiday weekend, it is puzzling that the drop in the barrel price has not reached the pump, isn't it?  and no movement of any kind on the part of our do-nothing-but-screw-the-middle-class-taxpayer administration.  Here's a quote from a story on  yahoo business regarding gas prices: Meanwhile, retail gasoline prices dropped for the 13th day to $3.814 per gallon. Oil analyst Tom Kloza said pump prices should slide by another 30 cents by June, though refining problems in Chicago could keep prices elevated in the Midwest. Have you read about any refining problems?  I haven't, and I read everything remotely indicating more screwing of the middle class.  Is the govt looking into these refining problems?  I think not.  Get use

Is there anything better than a 4 day weekend, which included 2 rounds of golf???  the only thing better would be 4 days with 3 days of golf.  Had a beautiful day yesterday, played at an outing to raise funds for the Ravinia music program.  very nice, and so odd to see where the country club set hangs out....wow.... I started a Fitness Boot Camp yesterday....as I wrote on April 14, I have let myself go...big time...when I play basketball, I can take a play off, or call for a sub...in a gym environment with a trainer and 20 other out of shape slobs, you don't take off - you do your best and hope the 40 minutes passes by as fast as possible.  but this is week 1 of 4 weeks, and I vow to give it my all to see if I can get back in any kind of shape.  It does feel good to do it, so therein lies my motivation to keep it going. back at work after a few days off....the world does not give a crap that you are off - your work will be there waiting for you.... have a good one.

What happened to Saturday?  got up at 4:30 yesterday, left to play golf at 5:30 (playing much better, thank you) and puttered around the housed the rest of the day/night.  Today reminds we who live in the midwest of why we choose to live here.  It can not be nicer outside day.  80 and sunny.  a far cry from the cold and snow that we endured.  my garden is starting to grow, and I have more pumpkin seeds I am trying to get to sprout.  the battle between man and squirrel rages on.  I killed 3 bees on the deck yesterday - they were the size of a big grape.  since I am allergic to bee stings, I don't want those things buzzing around. Is it me, or are the beer commercials touting the label that says when your beer is cold are the epitome of silliness?  The one has the guy telling his girlfriend he is studying for the bar exam...what is he, stupid, or mentally challenged?  I have a way to tell if my beer is cold enough....I drink it, and if it is not cold enough, I have a second beer to

Nice to have a day off to get some work done outside.  and for a change, it is not raining, so I should be able to make some progress...once I push myself away from the keyboard.  It is amazing how sitting at the computer has become an integral part of the day.  Even on days off, checking work email, checking the gossip sites, the local paper, etc.  It wasn't that long ago that all our news was about 24 hrs old, and came via the newspaper.  How times have changed.  and not necessarily for the better. I see the price of a barrel of oil is down further...but no change at the pump.  and the experts saying that gas may be below $4 a gallon by memorial day...let's see - the price per barrel has been down 20% for over 2 weeks, and it will be another week until the price of gas drops to what it should be based on recent history.  What a crock of bs. I see that Sarah Palin says she has the fire in her belly to run for president....I guess she did not have the fire in her belly to con

Still cold and rainy...really lousy weather.  one of these days, global warming will leave us... Company after company are putting the screws to Gov. Fudd Quinn and demanding concessions in order to stay in Illinois.  When he raised the corporate rate, in addition to the 66% increase in the individual state income tax, what did this genius expect?  and who will be making up the difference when he gives these concessions???  Why, us, of course.  and still, no action whatsoever taken on the $100 plus billion pension shortfall.  We have state representatives talking about giving college scholarships to illegal aliens, but no action on the issues that cost the taxpayer money.  at least we are giving Oprah a grand sendoff.  the news all abuzz with the cavalcade of stars in town to kiss the ass of celebrate the great Oprah.  I would imagine after her last show, she will be transported directly to heaven...but it will be a special heaven, one that none of us regular folks are good enough

Past the halfway point of May and charging toward June.  Maybe spring will get here by then.  time does fly. How interesting that Gov. Arnold shows in todays story what a steaming dog turd he truly is.  The story breaks that he had a child with his housekeeper 10 years ago.  and now that housekeeper is retired...gee - she must be, what - 40 or so?  and can retire on what a housekeeper makes?  Makes you wonder who knew what, and what was she given to keep quiet.  did she get services and welfare she would not have gotten if not for screwing Arnold?  anyway, just reinforces the woeful character of those who are elected to make decisions on behalf of the taxpayer.  again, what a steaming pile of dog crap this guy is.  and a liar to boot.  as I have written - we elected these turds, and deserve everything we get because of it.  in other news, the price of a barrel of oil continues to slide....the price of a gallon of gas at the pump does not.  truly mystifying.  just wait until the next

This IS May, isn't it?  38 degrees this morning.  We had a 91 degree day last week, now this.  One of these days it is bound to be spring.  This global warming is really bad. Today is the swearing in of Rahm Emanuel as the mayor of Chicago.  He is saying the right things about the need to cut spending, etc, but really, look at the mess that Daly left him to clean up.  Daly has sold off city assets and spent the money decades faster than it was projected to last.  He has layers of patronage workers with huge pension commitments.  He was in bed with the unions, and that is not likely to be undone anytime soon.  What he has left for Emanuel is akin to a homeowner that used to own his house and possessions free and clear, but mortgaged not only the house but all the furniture and tvs, and is now paying on all of that.  I firmly believe that Daly retired because he knew he had created a mess that could never be cleaned up.  Emanuel will probably realize that very quickly and will use

at the halfway point in May - and it is still 45 degrees and rainy this morning.  enough already.  I had no plans to golf today, but if I did, it would be a miserable round.  Hopefully the hot weather will be here to stay - one of these days soon. Two stories caught my eye today.  The first was our clueless Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, saying the debt ceiling would have to be raised, otherwise we would be moving into a double dip recession.  Rather than say his actions on the economy have been colossal failures so far, he is expecting the taxpaying public to accept raising the debt ceiling, a move that Obama as a senator said was a failure  of the government to run itself, to avoid further pain to the middle class...and would a double dip recession presume that we have made it out of the last recession?  this shows how out of touch these people are.  We have been in a depression, and continue to be in one.  the hope and change we were promised by Obama has been so much hot air. 

really chilly today - where is our spring weather? this blog site was down yesterday.  I was thinking the government finally noticed the 3 or 4 page reads I was getting per day, and decided I was a threat...but apparantly not, as the site is back up today. self absorbed celebrities - I saw a story that Jillian Michaels (I think that is her name) from Biggest Loser is going to adopt a child...FROM THE CONGO...  she is setting the bar yet higher for those bleeding heart celebs like Madonna, Angelina Jolie, and others who think it fashionable to adopt a child from Malawi, Laos, etc...where is the next celeb going to adopt from in order to be recognized as a true humanitarian???? Jupiter?   are there no children to be adopted from places worse than the Congo such as Detroit, Cleveland, etc???  What about Amsterdam??? what about Norway????  kind of lacks the emotional impact of adopting from the Congo, huh? enjoy this less than stellar day.

that was some storm last night. here's todays economic lesson: The BP station that had gas for $4.59 a gallon now has gas for $4.39 a gallon....let's look at the math. Assume (and all my numbers are assumptions, but can't be too far off) that of the $4.59, one dollar is tax.  so the cost of the gas itself is $3.59.  Assuming that 80% of the cost is related to the cost of a barrel of oil, and that oil is approx 25% less than it was at its peak a few weeks ago, the 25% drop should have resulted in a 72 cent decrease in the cost of a gallon of gas at the pump.  But, you say, the price has only gone down 20 cents...wtf????  where is the rest of our savings???  the rest of our savings, folks, is going into the pockets of BP, Shell, and the other oil companies who will all post record profits for the quarter, and who are defending the tax cuts they are getting today, in front of congress.  what a crock...bend over and take it, middle class.  nothing is going to change.

Finally feeling like late spring...it was 85 yesterday, and supposed to be warm today.. I saw Obama speaking/pandering to a latino group yesterday saying the immigration system needed to be fixed...seeing as there are tens of millions of illegals in the country, he is right.  and we should start fixing the system by deporting all illegals, then establishing a set of rules that future legal immigrants need to follow in order to enter America.  somewhere along the line the expectation was that since there are so many illegals in this country, the system should be amended to make them all legal...what if all legal citizens decided the tax system was broken, and we should not have to pay taxes...would the government agree, and say that we should be excused from paying taxes?  no - the middle class needs to be kept in line, right?  Illegals are given more leeway than we citizens are.  We have established sanctuary cities where illegals can live without fear of arrest.  what a crock. our t

Supposed to be 85 today.  Now is the time of year the misery of winter is forgotten, and we can now enjoy 6 month of pretty livable weather.  I love the hot weather, so can't wait for the summer.  the score is now SQUIRRELS 3  ME 0 those bastards got the pumpkin seeds I was growing in cups on the patio table, so I bought more seeds and planted them in the garden, then put chicken wire over the spot where I planted.  Went out there yesterday and saw they had dug up the seeds and ate them.  I am not quitting - I am going to replant until I have pumpkin plants growing....of couse, I should just save my money, as with what I have spent planting seeds, I could buy a big pumpkin come October.  and as soon as the pumpkin flowers start growing, the rabbits will show up to eat them.  but, once my son finds his airsoft gun, the squirrels and rabbits are in for a fight.  I heard a story on the news today that the average college student is graduating with over $25,000 of student loan deb

May 9 already...soon it will be June...and I can say that "next month I am going fishing".... Happy Mother's day, a day late... I saw an article over the weekend that Goldman Sachs said the price of oil, while temporarily down, would climb to new highs.  Now, Goldman Sachs, this is the bunch of scumbags that: - created mortgage based assets that were worthless - sold them as AAA investments - bet on them to crash in price - profited handsomely when they did crash (while the rest of us lost a third or more of our 401k) - got billions of our tax dollars to lend, which they did not lend, but rather bought T bills to make 2% off money they were given - suffered no consequence from the damage they inflicted on the economy so, why is it that this pond of low life scum is not prohibited from offering any opinion on the price trend of anything?  Have they not established themselves as an untrustworthy group of criminals? what a joke...and we, the middle class, paid for

We played golf this morning - played better than 2 weeks ago, but still not very good.  it is no nice to be out walking the course at 6:30 in the morning - birds chirping, nice and cool, not too many players that time of day.  of course, I am ready to take a nap now.  getting up at 5 am has an impact on me.  I don't have the go power I once did.... was talking to my friend about why Arthur Andersen was essentially shut down by the government after their Enron issues, but when Goldman Sachs created toxic investments, sold them to their investors then bet their value would plummet (which it did) and profited handsomely, we gave them our tax dollars to hand out as bonuses.  How does that make sense?  I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers during the Andersen/Enron issue, and that also affected the practice I worked for.  But in the case of Goldman, no one went to jail, they paid a small fine (with money from the taxpayers) and still to this day are ripping off those who pay them to mana

TGIF....LOL...LMAO.... I love text speak.  every time I see a new one I go to urbandictionary to see what it means.  $4.59 per gallon....NFW....the BP station I pass on the way to work has gas for $4.59 per gallon...but wait, you say....haven't oil prices gone done 20% in the last 2 days????  and would one not surmise that the price of gas would fall to some degree???   well, as we have been brainwashed into believing read in the media, the price of a gallon of gas is not directly tied to the price of a barrel of oil....sure...and each of the oil companies will post record profits next quarter... I remember during Katrina, I was driving to my son's football game at 9:00 on a Saturday morning as the rainstorm raged.....I passed a station and gas was $3.99 a gallon.  two hours later, driving past the same station, gas was now $4.27 per gallon.  Now, no truck had come by and delivered more costly gas....no - the oil company knew it could use the lame justification that there was

Cinco De Mayo...a day where we celebrate the millions of illegals in this country and the inability, or unwillingness of  our government to enforce established immigration law...a day that we ponder our unaffordable tax bills and realize how much of our tax money goes to support illegals, when we, as citizens, are getting no benefit from our government.... the gas station I passed yesterday stil has gas at $4.59....but wait, you ask....isn't oil $7 less per barrel than it was a week ago??   yes, but as we have been brainwashed told from the media, the cost of gas is not directly connected to the cost of oil....what a crock.  where is the outrage?? interesting how the stories about the killing of Bin Laden continue to change and show inconsistencies...like so many other things, we will never know the real truth. so - a sunny spring day.  go fill up your car with expensive gas and drive to the grocery store so you can see runaway inflation at its best. I had to update this post

$4.59....I saw gas for $4.59 at the station by work.  incredible.  the price of a barrel is down 3 bucks, but as we have been bamboozled into believing told by recent stories, the price of a barrel of oil is not closely connected to the price of a gallon of gas...sure - we have all seen dozens, if not hundreds, of times where oil has gone up, but gas has gone down...NOT... what bs....makes me think this whole bin laden story is just another diversion tactic so we don't realize just how bad things are.  the business pages talk about the risk of of a double dip recession.....how about we never got out of the depression from 2008.  things have not gotten better.  Our national debt is now so large it cannot be comprehended...our Illinois income tax was raised by 50%, Illinois has a $78 billion pension debt it cannot begin to pay, inflation is out of control.. what a mess.  and no one has a plan to fix any of it.  but, we got bin laden.  Instead of killing him, we should have put him

Day 2 of the post Osama world.  funny that we are now given all kinds of warnings on potential retribution and attack on major cities....I thought al queda had sworn to kill us all anyway.  regardless of osama or not.  I guess we Americans can expect a more thorough shakedown at the security lines at airports.  one of these days I will write of the shakedown my 2 fishing buddies and I got at the US/Canada border pre-9/11.  What's that??  You want to hear of it now????? okay.  In August of 2001, we were crossing back into the US from Ontario.  We got a very aggressive US border guard who gave us the third degree about what we bought, didn't buy, did we have fish, etc...finally, with a great deal of disdain, she waves us through.  Four weeks later, the 9/11 hijackers cross from Canada to the US - their names on the "do not let in" list....but, since we cannot afford to offend anyone, we let them in the country to get on a plane and fly it into the twin towers.  the bor

Nice weekend.  worked outside a lot, and a lot more to do.  I noticed a few of the plants I put in the ground last fall have begun to sprout, so there's a start.  I went to Home Depot yesterday - the garden section was mobbed, and the rest of the store was empty.  Since the Sox are so terrible, I guess I will have to find other things to do than watch bad baseball on tv. Was nice to hear Bin Laden had been killed, finally.  although it was far too long coming, he is gone (or is he).  the stories in the business sections of some web pages say that stocks will open higher, and oil prices will go down....if that is the case, the US should have a list of other people that, if killed, will result in the market going up, and oil prices going down.  Of course, as we have been brainwashed led to believe, the price of a barrel of oil does not relate to the price of a gallon of gas.  sure...... have a good Monday.