The long-awaited backlash begins; will Rove go down?

I was in Vegas at a trade show with my manager as the last presidential election occurred. Both of us were stunned when it became apparent that. in spite of all logic, the US populace was granting another 4-year term to the worst president either of us had seen in our lifetimes. My manager was sullen. I was incredulous.

I actually feel sorry for GW. I think he honestly believes that he is making appropriate sacrifices on behalf of the country. I, for one, do not believe that he is concsciously evil, only that he lacks every possible qualification for his job. He is, however, owned by a cabal of evil individuals, embodied by trusted advisor, Karl Rove. George is too clueless and prideful to do anything about it. I find it pretty tragic, actually, for him as well as for us normal folks.

As we approach a moment where Karl Rove is possibly indicted and morale is at an all time low within the white house, I take no satisfaction in knowing that I was right and all those red states were really wrong (OK, maybe just a little but I don't like to acknowledge it too much).

If you're wondering, this is the article that got me started on this subject.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102002321.html

Whatever happens in the next election, a change better occur. I cannot suffer 4 more years of insulated neocon rule - a bunch of people reinforcing each other's beliefs. We need a government which reflects a broader diversity of opinion.

Evangelicals need to start thinking a bit with their heads instead of being misled by their hearts. George Bush is not a true Christian and the person actually running the country, Karl Rove, is about as far away from it as you can get. Now I've said it. Sorry if I offend. There's a reason we need to separate church and state and this regime is a most palpable example. We have a president who knowingly picked a fight with Iraq very early on in his tenure and started the PR machine with the singular purpose of driving towards this false war. He has lied repeatedly to the American people and been caught outright - how Christian is that? We should demand better.

I think people running for political office should not be allowed to talk about their faith. That might help this problem.

Investment Club Notes - October 2005

Investment Club Notes - October 2005

This is going to be a pretty dry first post but I want to just check this service out and see if I like it more than my other blog. ---

My good friend Jeff Taylor came into town from Portland last night for our investment club meeting. Scott Howard also attended his first meeting and indicated that he and Tam would like to join.

The meeting was pretty valuable and centered around being more rigorous with trading methodologies - specifically using trailing stops to protect gains. Almost every stock we've owned, with the notable exception of BRK.B, has been up significantly at some point in our holding period. Unfortunately, our failure to protect on the downside has been hampering our overall performance. WHI and ZQK both have been up significantly while we held them and now we've seen them tumble to the negative. That sucks. If we had just protected downside on those two stocks, we would literally have amplpified our group gains by 100%.

The idea next meeting is to spend a few minutes revisiting all of our stocks and figure out the trailing stop-loss strategy for each. We might start with something simple like 25% trailing stop-loss on each and then track it more going forward.

I also want to take a deeper look at potentially adding more to our smallest port position (which is in CSTR). We're up 20% on the position since February 2003 and CSTR seems to be pluggin along towards some lucrative changes. The Amazon.com gift card pilot program looks especially appealing. Note to self: take all my change to QFC and get an Amazon gift card while still an Amazon Prime member.