George Bush, Rock Star

Living in the DC-Metro region, I have the pleasure (?) of listening to C-SPAN radio with much occasion. Since I am in front of a radio more often than a television, C-SPAN is my main my link to the presidential campaigns minus the spin or bias of network television.

After listening to a number of presidential campaign stump speeches, I have concluded that George Bush is a rock star on the road, whereas John Kerry sounds more like a Catholic priest brutally extolling us (Bush) for our sins. Certainly, Bush speeches are more fun to listen to. Kerry's hammering is at times painful (both in its ability to bore and the numerous contrivances he serves up to battle the flip-flop label).

Even if Bush's call for individual responsibility is mere lip service, it’s not the type of talk one typically hears out of Kerry. I like how Bush does his best to explain even his big government outlays as ways to shift decision making away from Washington, DC and back to you and I.

Bush – Kerry Debate – Where the Smart Money is Going

Futures markets were born out of a desire for businesses to hedge against the uncertainty of various factors affecting their business. As futures and derivatives have become ever more important to business stability, more and more markets have been created. It was only a matter of time before markets were created around the expected outcome of political campaigns.

Intrade.com bills itself as “the future of trading.” The genius of this site is that it is the first company that has successfully created and captured the market for political event outcomes. In effect, members of the market exchange are putting their money where their mouths are in terms of whom they expect to win the presidential election, providing quite a different perspective than any Gallup or CNN/Time Warner poll on whom the likely winner of the campaign will be.

Here is how it works. If you choose to buy one George Bush re-election contract, currently priced at 65.9 “points” and he does win the election, that contract settles at 100 points. Each point costs a dime. In other words, you can buy a contract for $6.59 and, if Bush wins, get back $10.00 for each contract purchased, creating a profit of $3.31 per contract (minus a 4 cent per contract commission). The post-debate market currently puts the odds of a Bush victory at roughly 66%.

John Kerry options are currently priced at 36.0 points and are neutral two hours after the debate. That puts the potential profit at 6.40 per contract, with the market-determined odds of a Kerry victory significantly less than his opponent. That’s a nice return, if you can get it. But there is a reason why greater risks demand greater returns.

We will soon see how accurate a gauge of political reality the market makers utilizing Intrade.com are. I suspect the pundits have new competition: options traders.

I have a friend who works for LL Bean taking phone orders from their catalogs. He personally took two calls this weekend from people who are boycotting Beans because they advertise on CBS. Supposedly his two calls were two out of hundreds fielded by Bean's employees since Rathergate. LL Bean put up a special notice telling employees to forward such calls to PR. It is an interesting fallout I did not consider. It is an amazing fall from grace, isn't it?

My friend explained how one conversation went. "We both agreed that Rather is an idiot...but there was another employee sitting beside me getting really mad because she was obviously a hippy granola type."

Germany has an astonishingly depressing political landscape. How and why should new businesses develop in such an environment? If the highly-unemployed younger generation thought they had it bad now, and if the above article is any indication of where they are headed, they haven't seen anything yet. The German people are truly on The Road to Serfdom.

Bush = Hitler = Kerry = Stalin = Huh?

In our attempt to highlight the absurdity equating President Bush with Hitler, here is our rendition of Red Kerry. He makes for a nice Stalin, does't he?

Dan Rather is an early casualty in the war over truth in reporting

There is a war under way for truth in reporting and a defiant Dan Rather is about to become one of the first foot soldiers fighting for Big Media to go down. It is quickly becoming common knowledge that Dan Rather and CBS’s 60 Minutes rushed to judgment regarding the authenticity of Texas National Guard documents potentially damaging to President Bush’s reelection campaign. Rather has unapologetically defended the report, seemingly oblivious to the magnitude of his error and the damage it is going to cause CBS. The fact that Americans are more and more concerned about the authenticity and implications of the 60 Minutes report than the content of the documents is evidence that accuracy in reporting is the big story of this election session.

Ten years ago, the 60 Minutes story most likely would have caused its political damage without challenge. Those with legitimate questions over the authenticity of the documents did not have the ability to reach a wide enough mass of people to matter. Information travels so quickly today that, thanks to Matt Drudge, millions of Americans were hours ahead of the major news networks on this story, all wondering loudly through their own outlets (blogs, websites, et al) why no one was reporting this breakthrough.

The battle lines of this very public battle are drawn and the number of casualties is striking and rapidly on the rise. On the offensive are citizens who desire truth in reporting, many of whom are only recently realizing that the media they grew up respecting may not be worthy of their trust. Entrenched and on the defensive are the Dan Rathers of the world – the media elite.

Books exploring bias in the media have repeatedly reached the tops of the charts over the past few years. Websites devoted to debunking misinformation and exposing bias are spouting up every day. The clear majority of Americans no longer trust Big Media to report the truth. Now that there are thousands upon thousands of alternative sources to read and interpret the news, Big Media’s days are numbered.

The fall from grace has been in the works for years, but is accelerating as more people come to understand the power of the Internet for news gathering and fact checking. The NY Times started crumbling under the weight of the Jayson Blair scandal and internal squabbles over the future direction of the grey lady have been embarrassingly public. USA Today has suffered material damage through the exploits of Steven Glass, while hints of deeper troubles within the nation’s most popular newspaper were exposed. The once revered Boston Globe has taken a beating for its similar penchant for publishing falsities. 60 Minutes will never again garner the audience it once enjoyed. Dan Rather is offending millions who will never believe him again. Certainly, lies and distortions have existed since people started reporting the news; but now there is a way to expose cheaters and counter-balance the damage.

In the information age, where news and data flows to tens, thousands, or potentially millions of discerning citizens at the click of a mouse, getting away with a lie is infinitely more challenging than it ever was. Cheats, liars, and media monopolies beware!

YEAH!!

This is what you call trying WAY too hard...I am starting to feel bad for him. Do his handlers actually think these photo ops present a genuine human being?

I wrote about this problem of Kerry's on March 19. What's next? Lawn mower racing?? We can only guess how he will one-up his previous contrivances.