TJ on Twitter

Thos_Jefferson: No, I dare say he's not. RT @TylerFlorence Sure its great to have the government so involved in my life . Thomas Jefferson is weeping today.
Thos_Jefferson: Fake Thomas Jefferson quotes are filling up the Twitterverse today. Check those about which you're unsure at http://wiki.monticello.org/
CmdrSue: @Thos_Jefferson you tell him, TJ! Need me to bite any of them? (Yes, I am your lapdog.)
Thos_Jefferson: @cmdrsue I prefer to consider you, my friend, not as a lapdog but a fellow warrior in the twilight struggle to defend the spirit of '76.
Thos_Jefferson: @cmdrsue That being said, the answer is yes. And you can start by taking a snap @glennbeck. 

Why Does Our Tea Suck?

My sister and I were discussing earlier that tea we drink that has been hand carried by loving friends from England is VASTLY superior to any 'imported' tea that we have bought here in the U.S. Why is that?

We blame the abolition of the Board of Tea Experts (aka Board of Tea Appeals).

Get on the issue, Tea Association, before we insist that another Imported Tea Act be passed.

Until we clear this up, my favorite "Earl Grey" is from California (does that technically make it Awesome Dude Grey?). Thank you, Ceylon Teas, for not sucking.

The Jungle

...the watchdog group [Project on Government Oversight] said oversight offices throughout the government have been underfunded and co-opted by political appointees with a partisan agenda. The report recommended that all organizations with oversight responsibilities--from inspectors general offices to the Defense Contract Audit Agency--be "afforded the resources, authority and incentives" to complete their missions... ~ Government Executive

No surprises there for anyone who has been paying attention. We've already seen the some "results" of this in finance. The issues with our financial systems are deeply unpleasant, but we will most likely recover from them. My fear is the long-lasting impact of the lessening of regulation and oversight in the food and drug industries and the irrevocable impact of our irresponsible environmental stewardship.

I Want to Register Silly Party

Finally, a candidate I can get behind... and then we can both walk funny to the voting booth.


Look at the adorable fuzzy thing I got for signing up for the party newsletter.

That's pretty much what I looked like today. Except my hair was a little wilder.

Prop to Pam for the link.

We Are the World

By way of the PhD Blog I discovered the Better World Club. They claim to be an eco-conscious alternative to AAA and will even give us a discount based on our fuel efficiency. Have you heard of them? Do you use them? Any opinions?

Welcome to the Party

Web comic Mike Stanfill over at The Far Left Side posted this in his "rant" section on April 2nd:

Oar Story.

You will often hear people say "There's no difference between Democrats and Republicans".

Avoid these people. They are injecting the KooL-Aid© directly into their medula oblongata with a bent turkey baster.

Here's a little anecdote I contrived to help others easily remember the difference between the two parties:

There are two ships in the harbor. One is the Democratic ship and the other is the Republican ship. Each is manned by 100 sturdy sailors, ready at their oars.

On the Democratic ship the captain stands before his men and says "We all sail this great ship of state today not as individuals, but as a collective. No matter whether weak or strong, large or small, if we all work together, if every man pitches in and gives it everything he's got, then this ship will sail fast and true. And all will benefit equally as a result of our labors."

On the Republican ship, the captain takes a moment to survey his crew before saying "Welcome, slaves!"

WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?!?!?

I'm glad that Karlo came by recently and left some breadcrumbs for me to follow because I ran across his post Vermont Gets Tough on Criminals.

Oh My

Ultimate 2008 Presidential Candidate Matcher Your Result: Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton is liberal on social issues, including support for civil unions for gays and abortion rights. She is centrist on other issues, for example on foreign policy and immigration. Clinton wants to reform healthcare, protect the social security program, and fund stem cell research.
John Edwards
Barack Obama
Dennis Kucinich
Rudy Guiliani
John McCain
Ron Paul
Mitt Romney
Ultimate 2008 Presidential Candidate Matcher Take More Quizzes

Liberal Values Defined

You may remember that one of our favorite series of posts was about Liberal Values. So I just had to share this with you when I found the Liberal Values t-shirts. Or you can get both graphics on a sticker. Thank you, Koy. We appreciate that you are paying attention and outraged. Check out her main page for even more cool stuff.

How to Distinguish Speakers

I've been scouting job options and when checking out a University I will see what sorts of things they have going on. At UNC Pembroke I noticed a link to announce their 2006-07 Distinguished Speakers Series. I have fond memories of going to see speakers at USM (Southern Miss, ya'll) when I was a teen so I immediately clicked to see what they had to offer.

CNN’s Nancy Grace and former presidential candidate and political commentator Pat Buchanan headline the 2006-07 Distinguished Speaker Series at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Ewwww.

I had the fortitude to scroll down and saw that if I were promoting their series it would have read, "Poet Nikki Giovanni and humorist Mo Rocca headline the 2006-07 Distinguished Speaker Series..." I'm going to guess this difference in emphasis means that the folks at UNC Pembroke are not my people.

Huh...

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

Review: Our Endangered ValuesAmerica's Moral CrisisIntroduction

I received a copy of Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis for Christmas and thought that while I read it I would provide commentary and the quotes that strike my fancy on the blog. The assignment I gave myself tonight was to read the introduction and tell ya'll what's in there.

To sum up, in the introduction Carter says that our nation has years of admirable achievements and a history of open debate - which is all being ruined by religious and political fundamentalists. He says a few other things, but that's his basic thesis. Hopefully in the following chapters he'll tell us how to deal with that.

Some passages that struck me:

"Powerful lobbyists, both inside and outside of government, have distorted an admirable American belief in free enterprise into the right of extremely rich citizens to accumulate and retain more and more wealth and to pass all of it on to descendants. Profits from stock trading and income from dividends are being given privileged tax status compared to the wages earned by schoolteachers and firemen. To quote a Christian friend, the new economic philosophy in Washington is that a rising tide raises all yachts."

"As a private citizen, I will deliberately mix religion and politics in this book... I realize that may readers, even those who share a similar religious and political background, will find some of my opinions to be different from their own. Quite likely, many of them do not realize what is happening in America, and it may be beneficial to raise the issues to the level of increased debate."

Next installment: Chapter One - America's Common Beliefs - And Strong Differences

Liberal Values

Since I've buried this on my sidebar I thought I'd bring it up to a post to see if I can get some more comments to put in the update.

Liberalism: A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority. [Also a] 19th-century Protestant movement that favored free intellectual inquiry, stressed the ethical and humanitarian content of Christianity, and de-emphasized dogmatic theology.

Liberal Values Part I: Natural Goodness

Liberal Values Part II: Autonomy of the Individual

Liberal Values Part III: Favoring Civil and Political Liberties

Liberal Values Part IV: Government by Law with the Consent of the Governed

Liberal Values Part V: Protection from Arbitrary Authority

Liberal Values Part VI: Free Intellectual Inquiry

Militant Pacifist

I think I found a great gift for my Dad. One of my favorite stories is from when he and my step-mom were moving in the mid-90s. There were a few things that they left for last, to be carefully moved in the car. On the last trip my Dad starts coming out of the house will all of these rifles to put in the trunk of his Caddy. My step-mom looks at him and teases, "Honey, I thought you were a pacifist!" Without batting an eyelash he gives her a long, sad look and says, "That's why you don't piss off a pacifist!"

Not only is the phrase "Militant Pacifist" great for him, I thought that the natural fiber tote bag screams "liberal" in a way that few things can.

Oh, and the rifles? They were my grandfather's and great-grandfather's from back when they lived out in the country and hunted for dinner. My grandfather was an award winning turkey hunter and we have the newspaper clippings to prove it. One of my other favorite stories about my Dad (which I heard from my Mom) was the day he sighted a deer and realized that he just couldn't kill it, never to hunt again.

Liberal DNA

I can't entirely recommend the Neuropolitics quiz since it seems a bit... intrusive in some of the questions. But Neuropolitics has an interesting idea, "understanding the biological basis of political behavior." These were my results:

• You are focused on social inequity in your daily life.
  
• You have a higher tolerance for ambiguous reality models.
  
• You are more likely to weight alpha behaviors in your social ranking analysis.
• Your moral system is highly based on greatest good or utilitarian principles.
  
• You have a lower than average desire for social interaction.
  
• You have a right hemispheric orientation in how your regulate your behavior in society.
  
• You have elevated spatial analysis skills.
  
• You exhibit an elevation in awareness of social ranking.
  
• Your communication preferences strongly favor your auditory cortex over your visual cortex.
  
• You exhibit an independent nature and are not likely to follow social conventions.

I can't entirely agree with their conclusions since they conflict with my knowledge of myself (I am so, so, SOOO not auditory) and also with other "insightful" tests I have taken. But hey, it's fun.

Hat tip to Adam Dray for the link.
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Update 11:14pm
I got curious about this idea of linking political inclination to genetics and went googling. Apparently I missed a very important article that lit the blogosphere on fire. Maybe I was out that week. But if you would like to read more you can check out this article about John Hibbing. It makes a certain amount of sense to me. Absolutists vs. Contextualists. I'm defintely a contextualist.

Blog Against Racism

Tips of the hat to Shakespeare's Sister and Deborah Lipp for inspiring me to write about this. Kudos to Chris Clarke for the blogswarm idea.

I was born innocent of racism and managed to grow up in the South without "getting it" until I was in my 20s. Suddenly I looked back on my childhood and figured out part of why everyone thought I was weird. (Ok, the rest of it was 'cause I was a total geek.) So I've gone through about a 10 year period of self-examination of my thoughts and feelings about racism. I still don't entirely get it, but I get that it matters to other people. For instance I'm going to a birthday party tomorrow where I know the majority (if not all the rest) of the attendees will be black and the question I asked myself wasn't "will I be uncomfortable?" but "will they be uncomfortable?" Yes, there is racism in both directions. When you blithely wander around happy to talk to anyone you figure this out. I decided I don't care if any of them are racist because I adore the birthday girl and she invited me. She's also one to blithely wander around and happily talk to anyone so we get along famously and can talk for hours about racism from our different perspectives (I'm white, she's black).

I ended up facing the issue of racism in America because I assisted a Civil Rights office (from a finance perspective) at work in the mid 90s. I found their information interesting because I was innocent to the point of thinking that everyone (except the total cretins) had gotten aboard the rainbow train back in the day. Au contraire, the data said. I went home and said to myself, "Am I racist and I don't even realize it? I'm white and my husband is white. Am I insulated?" Then I thought about my group of friends and realized something that I had NEVER NOTICED BEFORE. They were diverse. One whose Mom was from Mexico City. One whose Mom was from the Philipines. One whose dad was black and Mom was from Korea. These things hadn't even hit my radar because, well, it just didn't matter to me. If you're a smart friendly geek then you and I will be friends - regardless of race, religion, or (although this is harder these days) political affiliation. We'll play roleplaying games and talk about science fiction movies.

Regarding the world at large I SEEK The Other (as Shakes Sis calls it) because I think people who are not like me are fascinating. I ask them all sorts of questions. And "not like me" means - geographically, politically, or intellectually. Sometimes that falls on race lines ("What was it like to grow up in a traditional Indian family in America?" to my buddy Sanjay), sometimes race is incidental to it ("What was it like to grow up in mainland China?" to my co-worker who was old enough to remember when her family fled the country), and sometimes it doesn't matter at all ("What was it like to live in New York City?" to my co-worker who lived my dream of going to school for writing in the Big Apple).

I always tell my friends that my dream of the future is very simple and based on an experience I had as a kid. I was watching a history documentary on America in the 1800s and in passing they showed a picture of a sign in a store window where they were looking for help that said, "No Irish Need Apply." The documentary touched on this topic very briefly and went on. I sought out my mother, the history major. "Mom! Mom! Did you KNOW that? Did you KNOW that people were prejudiced against the Irish?" She looked at me like I was a bit demented. "Yes, honey, that was a big thing. Especially when so many Irish immigrated during the famine." I was blown away. My family is primarily Irish and I didn't know that a hundred years earlier, when my great-great grandfather came across the Atlantic, that he was greated with signs like that. I didn't realize that it was a pretty big deal that my grandfather had gotten a degree in Engineering. I didn't realize that there was a time when we were categorized as shiftless, lazy drunkards. What the hell? So that's my dream. That one day in the not too distant future every kid will learn about racism not through personal experience, but through a tv show on a Saturday afternoon. That they will have to run through the house yelling, "Mom! Mom! Did you know..."

Maybe YOU Should Be a Chartered Accountant

In case you read the last post and ended up wondering about the ExxonMobile financial statements (I probably just got down to about one reader pressing on past the first sentence, didn't I?), I have some links together from the 2004 Annual Report.

Balance Sheet - You can see at the top of Current Assets that Cash and Cash Equivalents have risen to $18.5 billion (yes, these statements are rounded to the million) from last year's $10.6 billion. Total shareholder's equity went up $11.8 billion or 13 percent.

Income Statement - Sales are up $54 billion or 22 percent over 2003 and if you compare 2004 to 2002 you see an increase of $90 billion or 45 percent. Of course, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, this may be because all of China decided to go out for a drive one afternoon (revenues from new markets vs. a change in prices). What points to prices being up is that costs are not keeping up with the rise in revenues (unless it is just soooo incredibly cheaper to do business in China). This has resulted in net income more than doubling from 2002 ($11 billion) to 2004 ($25 billion).

Cash Flow - Cash is the blood of a company, and how is this blood flowing? Net Cash from Operating Activities has just about doubled from 2002 ($21 billion) to 2004 ($40 billion). Investments in Additions to property, plant, and equipment has remained stable at around $12 billion per year for 2002 through 2004. Under Cash Flows from Financing Activities we find that dividends paid out to shareholders have increased much more modestly than revenues and income (from $6.2 billion in 2002 to $6.5 billion in 2003 and $6.9 billion in 2004) staying around a 5 percent increase per year. At the end of the cash flow it is revealed that the cash in hand at the end of 2002 was a little over $7 billion.

They are definitely saving for something. The question is - What?

***************************************************
My post title comes from the fact that typing all of this up made me flash back to the Monty Python skit I watched this weekend.

Counselor (Cleese): Well I now have the results here of the interviews and the aptitude tests that you took last week, and from them we've built up a pretty clear picture of the sort of person that you are. And 1 think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the ideal job for you is chartered accountancy.

Anchovy (Palin): But I am a chartered accountant!

Counselor (Cleese): Jolly good. Well back to the office with you then.

Don't Hate Us Because We're Evil

At lunch this week a friend asked me, "Do you believe what the oil industry is saying, that they need the profits they are creating because they have to reinvest it into rebuilding and oil refineries?" Although I'm not a fan of the oil and gas industry I told my friend that I couldn't make any assumptions about that until I looked at some financial statements to see what they were doing with retained earnings, etc.

So, I went to www.exxonmobile.com/corporate and among other things I found this cute flyer that included today's graphic. I just had to show you the chart because to me it is simply crying out, "Don't hate us! Look at who is eviler! LOOK AT THE BANKS! BIG PHARM! HATE THEM! HATE THEM!!"

Their opening statement on the flyer is:

"The oil and natural gas industry is probably the world's largest industry. Its revenues are large, but so are its costs of providing consumers with the energy they need. "

Hmmm, so let me see if I can use that education for which I'm still paying off student loans. You're saying that it is a high volume/low margin industry aren't you? In fact, you're bordering on whining that helping us get what we "need" is just about breaking your bank. *Sniff* Try not to notice *sniff* our executive bonuses *sniff* it's all about the children and what they neeeeeeed. (Insert picture of small child and cute puppy here. Snuggling a gas pump.)

Don't let that "high cost" (but high volume/low margin) whining get to you. You know what other high volume/low margin industry you may be familiar with? Bargain or "discount" retail. Because a few of the big boys kept it "all in the family" you see things like positions 4 through 8 on The Richest People In America (Forbes) occupied by the name Walton. Yes, 5 out of the 10 richest people in America make their money on high volume and low margins. If you go to the International list (The World's Billionaires) you get a couple of brothers who own Europe's biggest discount retail supermarket chain. The Albrechts (Karl and Theo) have slipped a bit because they used to kick the Walton's butts.

And may I just say that when you read the opening paragraph on that Billionaire's link, "The collective net worth of the world's 691 billionaires is $2.2 trillion, up $300 billion from the combined net worths of the 587 people listed last year," don't you have to ask yourself.... Why is there world hunger again?? I can think of a lot of useful things to do with $2.2 trillion dollars, how about you?

Where was I? Oh, right, oil industry. Reinvestment. So I reviewed the ExxonMobil 2004 financial statements on the theory that they were most of the industy and a good place to start. It's been a couple of hectic days since then but what I recall is that their earnings more than doubled from 2002 to 2004, as did their retained earnings and dividends. They do retain earnings and their payout of dividends agains earnings per share is something like 1.69 against 3.84 (but don't quote me) and they reflect reinvesting earnings in the statements.

What are they spending that money ON? Well, that's a good question now, isn't it? From what I could see I think that they redistribute overhead against the business functions so I couldn't easily see how to tease out things like EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION. I'm sure that multi-million dollar bonuses for the CEO can get lost in the "noise" of a multi-billion statement. Except that for me it doesn't. I have the same rule for business that I do for government - I don't mind paying for your service so long as you are prudent with the money. A lack of prudence puts my panties in a wad.

So what about executive compensation? According to this site:

ExxonMobil CEO Received $38 Million in Bonuses, Despite Soaring Oil Prices. According to the Associated Press, "Buoyed by high oil prices, Exxon Mobil Corp. had a record-breaking year in 2004 and chairman and chief executive Lee R. Raymond shared in the company's success with a $38 million compensation package Exxon said that Raymond, 66, was paid $7.5 million in salary and bonus plus restricted stock worth $28 million and nearly $2.6 million more in other compensation and incentives, according to Exxon's proxy filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission." (AP, 4/13/05)

Although we see all these numbers flashing by all the time - millions, billions, trillions - let me point out that $38 million is equivalent to every man, woman and child in America sending him about 12 cents. Let's just round and say it's two-bits per four-person family. What in the hell did he do for me that was worth a nickel, much less two-bits? Can I fire him? Vote him off the island? Have the Three Ghosts visit him and scare him straight?

What I told my friend at lunch is that I have no problem with a company seeking rational profit. To me rational profit is that win-win balance of a symbiotic relationship between company and community. Basically nobody gets too screwed. Any year when two of the big headlines focus on (1) amazing profits for what is essentially a utility industry, and, (2) amazing increases in poverty, there is obviously something amiss. I think we have ventured into the land of irrational profit.
*********************
Update 11/25/05
For more oil industry info check out Schroeder's post Bush petting session with Saudi prince.

Opening Presents on Election Eve...

Direct from Blondesense:

Monday, November 7
I don't care wherea person's compass may point them. But, it does bother me when someone is a hypocrite in the political arena.

The executive officer of the National Rifle Association, Wayne Lapierre, is currently endorsing Jerry Kilgore for governor of Virginia in media ads saying Kilgore stands for the same family values that Wayne had as a child growing up in Roanoke.

Well, while Wayne Lapierre was in high school in Roanoke (Patrick Henry High School class of '67) he was my brother's lover. Their affair lasted past graduation and on during the anti Vietnam war protest marches they attended in 1969.

Not only is Wayne Lapierre gay (not that there's anything wrong with that) but he marched in protest to the Vietnam war.

Now he's touting his high ground morality and family values. That I have a problem with.

Posted by BlondeSense Liz | 9:19 AM

Thanks Liz! (Contact Blondesense Liz if you want verification - you can find her contact info in the original post linked to above.)

Which Way Did He Go, George?

7/7/07 Update: I get a lot of traffic from Google searches, so I bet you came here to find the "Which Way Did He Go, George?" wav file. If so, you can get it here from these guys. I think that this link will also get you to a YouTube video. Don't say I never gave you anything. :)

If you like our helpfulness, consider sticking around and becoming a fan of the Thoughts.

Original post:
Do you get the feeling that having some Looney Tunes cartoon characters in charge of relief efforts would perhaps improve the situation? I'm beginning to wonder. All you hear about is red tape, confusion, and frustration. We would be just as well of with this guy, even if his plans do tend to, uh, go awry. I'm sure he'd still get a Medal of Freedom though.

Update 9pm: Don't miss this CNN.com article "A disturbing view from inside FEMA."