Man, That Can't be Right Pt 3

Martha tells a lie
When an ambush interview pops up, it really pays to pay attention to what you say. Martha says Sarah Palin is dangerous and her message is all over the place, and yet Martha says you couldn't pay her to listen. Clearly one or the other is true. Care to guess which side of her mouth she is not telling the truth out of?


This morning a local sports person for the Capitol Journal was making a point about the difference in points scored by teams. He was curious how a team could beat one team 60 to 13 and then turn around and lose to another team 13-55. He made the point that ISU was 6-0 when they scored more points than their opponent and 0-6 when they scored less. Now, lets discuss the dynamics of a win. When you score more than your opponent you are the winner. When you score less you lose. DUH! I wonder how many people read that line and just didn't even stop to think that it was not news, but a fact. It did not support the main point of his article.

Last night we took the kids out to eat at Famous Dave's BBQ here in Topeka. They have a 1/2 family meal that includes a portion of everything they serve. Ribs, Chicken, Brisket, fries, beans, corn on the cob and corn muffins. I think it is supposed to feed two and we fed three and had food leftover. During our meal, we discussed our good friend Mel who is moving to Texas next week. Seems like her sister got Mel to hold their family Thanksgiving at her house three days prior to moving. We turned that around by inviting everyone to our house. Barb was feeling like that four people for Thanksgiving just wasn't enough. I think we doubled that number in one move. I just doubled the size of the garlic smashed potatoes.

Kansas had one lone Democratic member of the House of Representatives. He declared that a run in the next election will be a non starter. It will be interesting to see how far the Congress moves in the next election. Unless they all get their act together and figure out a way to encourage jobs, they all should be unelected. I don't think our national goal should for us all to eat at the McDonalds inside the local Wal*Mart where we work. Man, That can't be right.

Why are we here? Some say it is to serve God. Some say it is to earn money. Some say it is to just survive. I will admit that a lot of people have forgotten that the reason they have a job is to make money or serve the customers in the job they have. A part of the problem we have is that the MBA's are telling the CEO's that people are just another tool a company invests in. They hire and fire people with the vagaries of the economy. Have you talked to the kids out there in the workforce about how many of them are working part time? If they work a person less than 40 hours, they are part time and get no benefits. Man, that can't be right! There are fewer and fewer career paths each day. Perhaps in the Wal*Mart example above I should have said as we go from our part time job at Wal*Mart to our part time job at McDonalds.

On our dash to visit Mom over the weekend, I visited with a guy that was fixing breakfast at the Hotel we stayed in. He had retired from Phillips Petroleum and now at 80 his investments have led him to the place that he has to work a job to pay his bills. He freely admitted that he must be the worst investor in the land. His real estate investment lost money. His speculation in land lost money and the final blow was the collapse of his 401(Ks). At every step along the way, he was aggressively trying to make more and more money. My thought was as I got nearer to my retirement the return of my money was more important that the return on my money. Barb and I laugh that we lost money on our GM stock (14 shares) and our Delphi stock and all the paper money that one small 401K had made. It didn't lose my money, only the paper money it had grown into. I wonder how many broke older investors are out there because they didn't get a sound education from the University they attended.

My final word for the day is RISK. Money you make on your investments is based on risk. The higher the risk, the higher the interest. The problem is with the fact that few people understand that risk means that you might not get your money back. In this day and age, we all need to pay a hell of a lot of attention to that.

MUD