Abortion is possibly America’s most devisive topic. Many people have a strong opinion on the issue and are stridently Pro-Choice or Pro-Life. Living in California, most of the people I know say they are Pro-Choice. However, I find that people who say they are Pro-Choice are not pro-choice so much as being in favor of a woman’s “right” to choose to have an abortion.

To determine whether or not you are truly pro-choice, I created a little quiz. Think about how you would answer the following questions:

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We all know that America doesn’t make anything anymore. Even worse, it seems as though nobody works in those high paying manufacturing jobs. I have a good friend who makes niche shoes and he never stops talking about how everything is made overseas and how we need to put up tariffs so that Americans can have a chance to compete.

Okay, here’s a quiz. Rank these five countries by which nation produces a higher percentage of global manufactured goods. I’ll give you a hint. The top nation produces 21% of all goods manufactured globally, over 50% more than the runner-up. 

The second place country produces 13%, the third place country makes 11% of the goods manufactured, the forth place nation makes about 7%.

United States

China

Japan

Germany

India 

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Ticker tape parade

Monday is Memorial Day.  It is the day we commemorate the U.S. men and woman who died while in military service.

Remember when the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disbanded, and the United States and its allies won the Cold War? Do you also remember the huge ticker tape parades that were held in cities all throughout America? The national holiday we set up to celebrate? The televised awards ceremony where the nation’s heroes were acknowledged?

Hmm, you don’t remember all of that? Perhaps it is because it never happened.

However, odds are decent you do remember some of the dozens of protests throughout Europe and the United States when millions of people marched to voice opposition to the tactics which USSR archives show won the Cold War.

Well, history has a funny way of replicating itself. Although historians reference Korea as the “forgotten war”, I think another war has taken its place.

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Sam

The year was 1962. In a town most people would describe as being in the middle of nowhere, a businessman opened a store that was in keeping with the best traditions of America. The store owner would fight the capitalist battle by keeping costs down, purchasing inventory as cheaply as possible, and then pass on the savings to his customers. People loved the idea. The businessman, a guy named Sam, made profits, and his customers bought merchandise at prices cheaper than they could buy elsewhere.

Sam opened up a second store in 1964, and then a third store in 1965. He opened his stores in towns where there wasn’t much variety and where local merchants charged high prices. Discounting prices was controversial at the time, as manufactures and most retailers enjoyed a system that offered high prices and less item choice. Sam realized that if he was going to keep prices down, that he’d need to be innovative. In 1966 he visited an IBM school in New York and offered the smartest kid in class a job to come back to Sam’s small town headquarters and set up an inventory control computer system.

Sam was an old school guy, and believed that “individuals don’t win, team do”. By 1970 Sam owned 20 stores and the company soon went public. He offered his employees profit sharing plans, stock option plans and store discounts. While Sam wasn’t the first to offer these, he was on the cutting edge.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average is 30% higher than it was just two months ago. That is a run up of historic proportions. People ask if that means bad times are over? Investors want to know if this indicates it’s safe for them to get back into the market.  Others ask if they missed their chance?

Here is my take on why the market has run up so much the past two months, and what it means.

First off, I disagree with the whole premise that the market has had a great run up. Oh, I know, technically the DOW has gone up 2,000 points since the March 9th 2009 bottom. However, if you look at the closing levels over the past eight  months, you’ll see that the DOW has stayed between 8,000 and 9,000 except for one brief thirty day period.

Sept 2007            Dow closed at 14,000

Sept 9th 2008     Dow closed at 11,510

Oct 9th 2008      Dow closed at 8,579
Nov 9th 2008     Dow closed at 8,870
Dec 9 2008         Dow closed at 8,691
Jan 9th 2009       Dow closed at 8,599
Feb 9th 2009      Dow closed at 8,270
March 9th 2009  Dow closed at 6,547
April 9th 2009    Dow closed at 8,083
May 9th 2009     Dow closed at 8,547

Investors are saying a stock market between 8,000-9,000 reflects fair market value for the uncertain Great Recession economic circumstances we find ourselves in.

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So the headline of the May 10th Sunday LA Times boldly read:

“A Grim Look at a Key CIA Method. Memo shows Sleep Deprivation is harsher and more controversial than most realize. AND IT COULD BE USED AGAIN”.

Well, as Steve Martin used to say….Excuuuuuuuse Me. Am I to understand that terrorists with probable knowledge of the next murderous attack on Americans shouldn’t be made to lose sleep so that they can keep their heinous plans to themselves? Does the LA Times think it better that innocent citizens should be the ones losing sleep worrying when the terrorists will next kill?

Talk about 1984 and doublespeak. How and why is it that Americans charged with the life and death duty of keeping the country safe are the bad guys——and the terrorists are the victims?  Boy we’ve come a long way since the morning of September 11th, 2001.

Allow me to set some things straight from my perspective. In order to do that, we need to look at motives.

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I have a diagnosis for the Swine Flu. But first, be honest with yourself.  Are you more worried about dying from Swine Flu or being one of the 3,000 people who die each year from choking to death on their dinner?

When I said I have a diagnosis for the Swine Flu, I’m not talking about me actually having swine flu.  I’m not talking about any of my friends having it….let alone any of the 20,000 people who went to the Lakers game last night having swine flu.  No, I have a diagnosis for WHY Swine Flu has became such a huge story.

I mean, come on….Mad Cow Disease has only killed 5 people since 2005. Less than 500 people worldwide ever died from the Avian Flu. So far, only 2 people in the United States have died from Swine Flu.  Yet all of these potential “pandemics” scared people from the big cities of Asia to the small towns of Montana.

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While the bulls and bears battle it out on Wall Street, the sports teams with those names call Chicago their home.

I visited the “second city” over the weekend (The nickname earned after the Great Chicago fire of 1871) and have to say….I was very impressed.

Al Capone

What was it that impressed me? Partly it was the architecture which I perceived as clean and varied as the city center itself. The numerous hues of the tulips throughout downtown gave the city an upbeat air of optimism. The easy going polite manner in which people spoke to one another was a tribute to the great reputation the folks of the Midwest rightly deserve. The streets felt reasonably safe to walk at night, and the whiff of a gangster past gave this colorful town a sense of history.

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