How Apple Killed My iPad 1, and Almost Made Me Pay To Replace It

About 15 months ago I bought an original iPad that worked fine until a few days ago.  Then, I connected the device to iTunes on my computer for a periodic, routine sync and check for software updates.  This time there was a new version of the operating system software, and I began the upgrade and sync process. 

Trouble ensued.  The software upgrade wouldn’t complete, and I was prompted to restore.  After a while into that process, I received an error message:  “The iPad could not be restored.  An unknown error occurred (1).”

I went through all the timely troubleshooting steps to no avail.  Finally, I called Apple support and got a very polite support guy.  After taking many steps on my desktop, we tried the upgrade on my laptop, all without success.  Then he handed me off to a “senior advisor”, who told me that “this is a common problem, a hardware issue that the engineers are looking into.”  I was told Apple would replace my device.

I then went to the Apple store.  No way Apple would let me upgrade, even for a charge, to the current iPad model 2.  Apple insisted on replacing my now obsolete iPad 1 version.  The salesman gave me a replacement iPad 1 out of a plain brown shipping box, wrapped in thin plastic and looking new; however, it was not packaged for sale and there is no indication that this is a brand new, as opposed to refurbished or previously returned, device.  The salesman told me that the store keeps a supply of replacement original iPads for this scenario. 

Worse than not allowing me to buy an upgrade to the newer, current model was the fact that, had I not purchased an extended warranty plan for $99 when I bought the device, Apple would have charged me $419 to replace my now dysfunctional iPad, despite the fact that my device was working fine until it encountered Apple’s new software.  So Apple caused my iPad to die, but would have charged me half the cost of my original to replace it. 

I bought the extended warranty for protection against hardware failure, not against active destruction by an Apple software upgrade.  What if I had not bought it?  Had I not, there would have been a disturbance in the Apple store.  Apple is effectively saying to its customers that they would be smart to buy an extended warranty to protect themselves from Apple’s own future malfeasance.   

Hubris.  Arrogance.  When I next purchase a tablet, I may think different.

RB

John Prine at 65

John Prine, the pride and joy of Maywood Illinois, nearby Chicago western suburbs, and the Proviso East High School gymnastics team, leading light, along with friend and fellow postman the late Steve Goodman, of the Chicago music scene of the 1970s, also of Muhlenberg County and Route 41, poet of loss and remembrance, collector of Souvenirs, balladeer extraordinaire of his Hometown, Old Folks, Grandpa and Grandma, and Angels from Montgomery, inter alia, turned 65 years old this month, and is still going strong.  One far away night in Chicago at the Earl of Old Town Goodman brought him up on the little stage and the two played together until my memory fades; I think they enjoyed jamming with each other more than we enjoyed listening, if that's possible.

Image is the cover of Prine's first album, "John Prine", released in 1971.  I've read an interview in which Prine says the photo was shot in San Francisco (of all places), and that he was surprised that bales of hay were brought in for the shoot.  But it all worked out. 
RB

The Lost Levant

John Derbyshire has an interesting review (link) of Lawrence Durell’s Alexandria Quartet in the October issue of The New Criterion – particularly interesting to me for the window the novels offer into the tragic decline of Egyptian society.

The novels are set both before and during WWII in Alexandria, one of the exotically multicultural cities with which the English fell in love.  The Alexandria of those years, not so long ago, was “chaotically cosmopolitan,” says Derbyshire; “Five races, five languages, and a dozen creeds,” as Durell describes it in one of the novels. 

Then it all changed.  Durell returned to the city in the late 1970s and found a different place indeed.  No longer palpably multicultural, he found the place, per Derbyshire, “a monochrome shadow” of its former self.  By then, most Westerners had left, Christians were repressed, and non-fundamentalist Muslims had fallen in line. 

Derbyshire  says that “The Levant was rather rich in these commercial, cosmopolitan cities until modern nationalisms purged them.”  But I must quibble with him here.  I think Islamic fundamentalism has done it all in -- not pan-Arab nationalism per se but the intolerant, violent anti-Western religious fervor that has taken hold of the Muslim world.  The multiculturalism that thrived under a benign and guiding British hand, in Egypt and elsewhere, was gone. In the post-war decolonization fervor, people all over the Third World thought they could do better for themselves without the Brits.  History, at least up till now, has proven them quite wrong. 

Photo is of King Farouk (ruled 1936-1952) of Egypt, a Westernized, non-fundamentalist Muslim; like the late Shah of Iran, just the kind of Muslim ruler the West thought everyone could do without.  The West was wrong.  It's been all downhill since American complicity in Farouk's overthrow and its fecklessness during the Suez crisis.

Richard Balsamo

Annals of Inanities -- 10/20/2011

Well, it's my job to prepare my Texas students for a Mexican future --
A Texas teacher named Reyna Santos, a Mexican native, "required her public high school students... to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class.... but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson." (link) Recital day took place on Mexico’s Independence Day.  The teacher told a father who called to object that "she loves Mexico."  Why she ever left Mexico is not disclosed in the news article.

Will this hurt our chances as lesbians to adopt more children?
A lesbian couple, in California of course, is giving their adopted pubescent boy medically risky hormone therapy to delay puberty in case he continues to want to become a girl (link), just like his two moms.  "Obviously, when two females adopt a male child, then assert that the child is not actually male, but is, instead, actually a female -- like both of them, everyone in the family should be psychologically evaluated in a comprehensive way before a step like gender reassignment is considered,” said [psychiatrist] Ablow.

As I've said before, only a racist would object to anything I do or say -- 
President Barack Obama gave a partisan-tinged speech to dedicate a new memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., likening the battle for racial equality to his political struggles in a divided Washington.

We don't care much for their culture or their laws, but their welfare is great --
Well-off Muslim residents, most of whom practice polygamy and don't even speak French, on the French colony Mayotte, an island off the coast of Africa near Madagascar, have been rioting (link) to preserve and expand their special colonial status that entitles them to generous French welfare benefits.  The death throes of Western welfare statism, now that it's run out of "other people's money", can be heard and seen everywhere, not just on the streets of lower Manhattan or Chicago's Loop. 

It's the people who have failed me --
Barack Obama has just said "all the choices we’ve made have been the right ones" (link).  Remember when George W Bush was asked whether he had made any mistakes and he was ridiculed as a fool and a jerk by the media for an admission insufficient in quantity and quality? 

Maybe one day its business model won't include actually delivering mail --
The Wall Street Journal reports (link):  Will the U.S. Postal Service start issuing driver's licenses and deer-hunting permits? Selling country-music CDs? How about strapping weather or air-quality monitors on mail trucks?  Plummeting demand for traditional mail delivery, which funds the postal service, has created a looming fiscal crisis that has Congress, postal employees and government officials weighing a venture into non-mail business as a way to stay afloat.

John M Greco

Ryerson Physical Laboratory – “The Most Beautiful University Building in the World”

I previously mentioned (link) the Kent Chemical Laboratory building at the University of Chicago, and now I get around to posting the picture of its next door neighbor and close cousin, Ryerson Physical Laboratory.  I had just one class here as an undergraduate, physics of course, and a tough one it was.  Rambling around inside and peering into the nooks and crannies of the beautiful, old, storied building was I think the most enjoyable part of that particular experience.   

The young University’s main architect Henry Ives Cobb designed the building, which opened in 1894 and was named after Chicago lumber businessman Martin Ryerson.

At its dedication, according to Jay Pridmore’s U of C architectural Campus Guide, then university President William Rainey Harper called Ryerson “the most beautiful university building in the world,” and I’m not here to dispute that.  Pridmore writes that the building “exhibits a dreamy Gothic fantasy: complicated solids and voids on the surface, with balconies, gables, and a crocketed roof line.  As usual in Cobb’s buildings, the main entrance is the most elaborate part…”  An annex was added in 1913, by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, “sympathetic” to Cobb’s design but “with noticeably richer ornamentation.”  

Pridmore tells us that “one of the earliest denizens was physicist Albert Michelson, the first Nobel laureate among many at this university,” who was honored in 1907 for his measurement of the speed of light. 

In the second post card image, the pre-annex building rear is seen from the north, with Botany Pond just to the left foreground and Hull Gate to the right, and the original Law School building in the distance.  

R Balsamo

Annals of Inanities -- 10/14/11 Edition

You mean, people like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Herman Cain?

Obama: Republicans Don't Want A Place Where People "No Matter What They Look Like" Can Succeed

Maybe if you called them beige potatoes --
Team Obama about to ban white potatoes (link) in school breakfasts in favor of green and orange foods.

But we've got so many more friends and supporters to help --
Even after the Solyndra scandal has broke, some prominent Democrats want (link) a "national infrastructure bank" to "invest" billions of tax dollars with "special interests favored by Democrats".   And, "More solar companies led by Democratic donors received federal loan guarantees."

Maybe if they bombed the Statue of Liberty and declared grievances against white America, Obama would stick up for them --
In Egypt, Obama's Muslim compatriots, whom he addressed so warmly soon after taking office, telling them "you represent the harmony between tradition and progress" (link), continue to slaughter (link) the Christian minority there.

We don't think it's relevant --
Lots of liberal media coverage of scandals omit mentioning that the malfactors are major Democrat donors -- and often major beneficiaries of Democrat corruption or forbearance -- for example, George Kaiser (Solyndra) (link), Warren Buffet (huge fed income tax liabilities; link), Bernie Madoff, Raj Rajaratnam (recent conviction for insider trading; link).

How stupid -- everybody knows only Republicans can be compared to Hitler --
Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler. [Also here.] And for that his music is dropped from NFL football TV shows. Meanwhile, the NFL is considering the singer Madonna for the half-time entertainment show at the next Super Bowl; in one of her videos she compared former President GW Bush to Hitler, but he's a Republican, so it's OK.

John M Greco

Writer Jan Morris Turns 85

Jan Morris, the great Welsh-English poetic storyteller of our age, celebrates her 85^th birthday today.  What a treasure trove she has given us, writings so capturing of time and place, so atmospheric, we can close our eyes and almost feel we’ve been there.

Her works are varied and many, but her masterpiece (writing as James Morris), in the true meaning of that now-trite word, is her trilogy on the history, ethos, and meaning of the British Empire, the “Pax Britannica” trilogy: Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress (1973); Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire (1968); and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (1978).  Run don’t walk, to get copies if you have not experienced them yet.

She writes of times and places that recede in memory, but the themes are eternal.  As I wrote before (link), “sensual and rhythmic, her narrative evokes the sounds and smells of empire about you as you drift through the pages”:

"In one of the lonely cemeteries in which, buried where they died, the Anzacs lay lost among the Gallipoli ravines, the parents of one young soldier wrote their own epitaph to their son, killed so far away, so bravely we need not doubt, in so obscure a purpose: 'God Took Our Norman, It Was His Will, Forget Him, No, We Never Will' ... for all too often the sacrifices of the Great War, as its contemporaries called it, were given to a cause that was already receding into history, like those discredited grey battleships, their smoke-pall filling the sky, hull-down on the Aegean horizon."

As I wrote before:  Her narrative has all the stories, the wars (some obscure, like the British invasion of Tibet), the adventures, and of course all the characters (Curzon, once Viceroy of India, "died in 1925 after a career full of irony and vicissitude."). And humour abounds, subtle and dry” -- Writing of the Fashoda Incident and the death of “Chinese” Gordon, the ‘noblest man who ever lived', and of the subsequent invasion of Sudan by Gen. Kitchener and the last cavalry charge of the British Empire (in which Churchill took part), as James Morris she wrote:

For years the Sudan had been in a state of rebellion under a fiery Sufi mystic who called himself the Mahdi, ‘the Leader’, and who formally announced the End of  Time, a conception particularly unwelcome to the British just then.”

And don’t by any means skip the footnotes; describing a salute to Kitchener:

With live shot, there being no blank: the gunners aimed high over the river into the desert beyond, where nobody who mattered was likely to be.”

In her last book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, she writes:

“I write of exiles in Trieste, but I have generally felt myself an exile too.  For years I felt myself an exile from normality, and now I feel myself one of those exiles from time.  The past is a foreign country, but so is old age, and as you enter it you feel you are treading an unknown territory, leaving your own land behind….”

The immortal, in her native Welsh, Trefan Morys, born 85 years ago today.

R Balsamo 

Related Link:

Writer Jan Morris is 83 Years Old Today, Author of the Masterpiece Pax Britannica Trilogy

Wikipedia article - link. 

Dems Dissing Democracy

More entries for the Annals of Inanities:

Well, if you people would just stop voting for Republicans we wouldn't have to do this -- 
North Carolina Democrat governor Bev Perdue proposes to "suspend" Congressional elections until Congress improves the economy (link).  She was serious in tone and doesn't appear to have been joking (link).  The prospect of significant Republican gains in those elections has nothing, nothing to do with her thinking.  Meanwhile, "more criminal charges are expected in the investigation of Gov. Beverly Perdue’s campaign finances" (link).  Perhaps she's running a distraction campaign.

Since those damn Republicans won't go along with our plans, this country really needs "less democracy" and lots of "automatic policies" --  
Former Obama budget director Peter Orzag writes (link) that "To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic."  That's right, we need to rely more on "depoliticized commissions" and "automatic policies" because those benighted voters keep electing Republican politicians who won't go along with our plans.  I'm betting he's not thinking of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, or Rush Limbaugh for those "depoliticized commissions".  Just a guess.  Perhaps he's been talking to NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, who on occasion writes longingly of communist China's ability to get things done without all those distasteful disagreements and roadblocks that come with all this voting and democracy stuff.  Actually, no doubt many Democrat elites feel the way Orzag and Friedman do.  Remember "What's the Matter With Kansas?" -- the false consciousness theory is alive and well.

At least that's not how our system works right now, but we're not through yet --
"The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written," Obama said at the National Council of La Raza's annual conference. (link)

Addendum (10/14/11)
Constitutional limits are for Republicans --
'Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., ... said that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate “states in rebellion” .... and said that Obama should “declare a national emergency” and take “extra-constitutional” action “administratively” — without the approval of Congress — to tackle unemployment.' (link)

John M Greco

New Look for the Old Colony

Chicago’s Old Colony building is looking better than it has in perhaps almost a century after a cleanup that has washed away layers of build-up soot.  It’s one of my favorites, for its curved corners, interesting design, and appealing height, and I was delighted the other day to see it cleared of scaffolding and looking bright and clean.   

Completed in 1894 by Holabird and Roche, the slender early skyscraper has a classic Chicago tripartite structure, with a distinguishable base, a plain midsection, and a defined top section, which here includes a colonnade and a projecting cornice.  The most striking and unusual feature is its curved corners, and one can also see the “Chicago windows”, characterized by a large fixed pane of glass flanked on either side by narrower windows with sliding sashes that can be raised.  The Old Colony sits at southeast corner of Van Buren and Dearborn streets in the south Loop, and forms with the Fisher, Plymouth, and Manhattan an interesting row of old, preserved classic Chicago skyscrapers running between Dearborn and Plymouth streets.

Judith Paine McBrien, in her Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture, says that the Old Colony was “built on speculation by Boston lawyer Francis Bartlett” and was “named for the first English colony in America….  The building was a successful venture, offering 600 offices that were occupied by railroad, printing, and lumber interests who sought space here in the thriving printing center of the Midwest.”  

Ira Bach says, in his Chicago’s Famous Buildings, that “the Old Colony is the last remaining Chicago downtown building with rounded projecting corner bays, a device often employed … to create highly desirable corner spaces on the interior and an interesting silhouette on the exterior…. [Also,] It was the first structure to employ a system of portal arches to brace it against wind loads, an innovative solution to a basic problem of tall skeleton-framed buildings.”  In Chicago on Foot, authors Bach and Wolfson tell us that the building has 17 stories, ... the first four [of which] are of light-blue Bedford stone [while] the upper part pressed brick and white terra cotta.”

Finis Farr in Chicago says that “the design as a whole gave an impression of dignity and power.”  Agreed.  Kudos on the rehab. 

The photo is taken from the west side of Dearborn street, northwest of the Old Colony; part of the Fisher Building is visible on the left, and the Chicago El tracks run on Van Buren Street between the two buildings.  The postcard is postmarked November 1907 to a Miss Underwood in Dayton, Ohio.  Click on an image to enlarge.  A brief Wikipedia article is here. 

R Balsamo

Annals of Inanities - Sept 20, 2011

>  Eric Holder, Obama's disastrous (link), dangerous (e.g., the Fast and Furious/Gunwalker scandal - link), and reverse-racism-obsessed Attorney General, said the other day (link) that the Obama crew still really, really, really does intend to close the Gitmo terrorist detention camp.  That "fierce moral urgency" to closing Gitmo seems to have left him sometime in early November, 2008.
  
>  Obama's rampant sexism in the way he's treated his White House staff (link; link) -- doesn't count since he's a Democrat.

>  Obama blows over half a billion dollars of taxpayer money by giving it to a company, Solyndra, run by a big money man of his, despite a mound of evidence that the company was failing and despite internal warnings by members of his own team (link) -- doesn't count since he's a Democrat.  Meanwhile, former Obama assistant at the time Rahm E's memory has failed on this one (link).

>  Obama's urgent, urgent, urgent jobs plan, that he had announced in August that he would deliver in a September speech whenever he returned from vacation, now won't be put forward by Congressional Democrats for another month at least because they have other things to do (link) -- doesn't count since they're all Democrats.   

>  The Obama stimulus gave almost $800 thousand dollars to the "National Science Foundation" to spend on ....... "interpretive dance" (link).  And now comes Obama to demand those remaining Americans not under his Rasputin-like spell join his acolytes in passing his half-billion dollar Son of Stimulus plan.  Fat chance. 

John M Greco

The Federal Reserve Continues Its Redistributionist War on Savers

Today the United States Federal Reserve, according to the Wall Street Journal (link), "signaled it plans to keep its benchmark short-term interest rate close to zero for at least another two years as it sharply downgraded its view of the U.S. economy."

Who continues to benefit from this ultra-low interest rate environment?  Bankers, big net Obama contributors in 2008, who can continue to borrow at near-zero rates and lend at 5-6% or better.  As Larry Kudlow is wont to say on his CNBC show, "even a banker can make money this way." 

Whom does this hurt?  Savers.  Retirees on fixed income who live off the interest on their lifelong savings.  Their dollars are earning a pittance.  But I don't expect AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, to protest, since it has long ago betrayed its ostensible constituents and gotten into bed with Obama and the Democrats to protect its real source of income that supports all those AARP administrative jobs -- selling insurance to seniors, now protected if not well-advantaged by its connection with Obama and the Democrats.  That is, at least for now, while Obama is in.  This may change. 

Who also benefits?  The US federal government, which at the present politically means Obama, which pays lower interest rates on its debt.

Continued ultra-low interest rates is a hidden, sneaky redistributionist tax on wealth – a tax on those who saved all their lives who now get little interest, now accompanied by the inflation which is how the federal government will resolve its big debt.  Both benefit not savers but debtors -- Obama's and his acolytes' core constituency.

John M Greco

The Obama/Democrat Spending Binge Comes Home to Roost

Markets are in turmoil in response to Standard & Poor's slight downgrading of American debt.  For over two years now the Democrat Party has gone on a national spending binge, with borrowed money, unprecedented in peacetime American history, most notably in the gargantuan special "stimulus", the bloated annual spending plans, and Obamacare.  Republicans, after going along, begrudgingly and with occasional moderate resistance, with Democrat spending for a generation, finally said enough, voted in vain almost to a person against this Democrat spending, and have refused to agree to raising taxes to feed the bloated government beast.  In response, elected Democrats, Senators representing all the citizens of their states, are throwing a tantrum -- calling those who disagree with them names like "terrorists" (link), and trying to silence them (link).  Typical fascist tactics from not very nice people.

Kurt Schlichter (link):  "The liberal dream of a perpetual social welfare state... is dying. There’s no doubt about that; the only question left is how long and hard the process will be as the hideous leviathan the utopian liberal establishment has created convulses and dies. It’s going to die hard. And ugly."

To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, American liberalism has just run out of other people's money.

John M Greco 

Not To Miss -- Why We're Headed Back into Recession -- Victor Davis Hanson Explains It All

The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson at The Corner at National Review Online explains it all to us on how Barack Obama is bringing on another recession: How to Turn a Recovery into Another Recession.

Turns out -- it's easy.  Here're excerpts on how:

1.      Ensure uncertainty in the private sector so that it continues to cut back and hoard cash….

2.      Take both real and iconic measures that scare business and question the old rules of free enterprise, perhaps by trying to shut down a new Boeing aircraft plant or reversing the order of the Chrysler creditors or absorbing a private company or two.

3.      Create a psychological climate hostile to business that either scares employers or angers them into sitting out any perceived recovery….

4.      Send a message that subsidized companies, especially in so-called green industry, are noble and need help, while profit-making corporations, especially in energy, are suspect…..

5.      Be selective in targeting capitalist enemies of the people….

6.      Run up historical deficits in ‘gorge the beast’ style that will force at some point either massive new taxes or a Greece-like crack-up [JMG: which for Democrats, per Rahm Emanuel, would be a "crisis too good to waste"] ….

 John M Greco

Related Posts:

The Obama Chrysler Confiscation – One Year Later
Economic End of the Road in the West
The Sad and Tragic End of General Motors

The Endless Run of Liberal Anti-Violence Kabuki Theater

Sitting around talking and reading, my wife turns on the TV to catch the local weather; much too early, unfortunately.  A segment comes on featuring the latest installment of the endless Kabuki theater that is the liberal approach to combating street violence in our "inner cities".

Chicago's new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, wants to "take back the streets", yada, yada, yada.  So will he combat the astounding teen pregnancy rate, which will place yet another generation of very-lightly-reared and poorly-educated young black males on the streets, exactly the demographic causing today's violence?  Will he criticize the "gangsta rap" culture, so pervasive in black neighborhoods, that glorifies and romanticizes criminal behavior and is peddled by rich liberal media executives?  Will he arrest more bad guys and pressure liberal local judges to keep them in jail longer?  Will he lay off the legions of useless extra workers at the core of the Chicago Democrat party patronage system and channel the savings to hire more police to better patrol the streets?  Uhhh ....... Nah.

Emanuel did the only thing Democrats know how to do well, their only trick, other than railing against guns, in their intellectually-exhausted playbook -- he held a street demonstration.  Through a dangerous black neighborhood he led yet one more of the innumerable "take back the streets" marches we've seen over and over again for decades.  That's their solution -- hold a demonstration, as if such will have the remotest effect on violent gang-bangers, and rail against guns, as if city kids aren't also killing each other with knives, bats, and fists, and as if white and east Asian kids across the country are also killing each other with remotely the same frequency with the guns, knives, and baseball bats to which they too have access.

Most major northern American cities have been run for a couple of generations by liberals, and they have made quite a mess of it.  They've earned a fat "F" in social policy, but give them credit where credit is due -- they deserve an "A" in street demonstrations, their cynically-hollow and useless gestures that can sure draw TV cameras and whip up a crowd. 

John M Greco

The Debt Ceiling Fight & Viciousness as a Liberal Tactic

The political fight over whether and how to raise the US debt ceiling has become high drama in Washington, and the supposed deadline of August 2 looms.  After a couple of years of an unprecedented, and, to me, reckless, harmful, and, wasteful Democrat spending orgy, the US federal government, we the people, that is, are in a big fiscal hole (link). 

The Democrat plan, such as it is, is to borrow lots and lots of more money to spend much more, supposedly to reduce the debt, but in reality to perpetuate ongoing and recurring fiscal instability that would create political opportunities to hoodwink more Americans into ceding more control over our lives to liberal elites.  The Republican plan, such as it is, after years of complicity as the junior partner to Democrat profligacy, is to spend less, perhaps even much less, to get us out of debt -- eventually.  I'm with them.

Both political parties are apparently taking hits in the popular polls, for whatever they're worth, especially this far out from an election.  But the inexorable decline in Obama's popularity and his eroding stature have been driving some liberals bonkers.  For years, of course, liberals have oft repeated the tired refrain that conservatives and Republicans are ... racist, selfish, stupid, extremists, etc, etc, etc.  So to keep up with the vicious side of their politics, some ultraliberals aren't missing a beat in the current crisis. 

Ultra-liberal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, winner of the increasingly left-wing Pulitzer Prize, has just referred (link) to Tea Partiers as the “Hezbollah faction” of the Republican Party; Hezbollah is, of course, a murderous terrorist group.  Another ultraliberal NY Times columnist, Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, just referred (link) to conservatives with different views on the debt crisis as "a cult that has really poisoned our political system."  Comedian and Democrat Senator Al Franken, another vicious ultra-liberal apparently of the Stalinist mode, just debased the United States Senate by displaying (link) on its floor a poster shouting "Welcome Terrorists" in reference to those whose views differ from his.  Demonize, isolate, and other moves right out of the socialist Rules for Radicals standard playbook -- for Friedman, Krugman, and Franken, just another day at the office. 

As Obama sinks further in the polls and as he increasingly looks to more and more people like an incompetent, arrogant jerk, Democrat viciousness will only increase.  It's all they have left.

Addendum:  Jonah Goldberg wraps it all up here at National Review Online.

John M Greco

Obamism as Peronism

The inimitable and enthusiastic bard of hard-nosed reality John Derbyshire, a polymath whose somewhat recent book "We Are Doomed" (link) I thoroughly enjoyed, has a great post today, arguing that the model for modern liberal politics is actually Peronism.  Derbyshire writes (link):

The more I look at the history of our national debt and federal spending, the more it seems to me that …. [t]he guiding spirit of fiscal management in the advanced world this past half century has in fact been Juan Perón, who ruled Argentina from 1946 to 1955….  From Paul Johnson’s Modern Times:  “As President, Perón gave a classic demonstration, in the name of socialism and nationalism, of how to wreck an economy….  He created Big Government and a welfare state in one bound….  [Eventually,] He fled on a Paraguayan gunboat. But his successors could never get back to the minimum government which had allowed Argentina to become wealthy. Too many vested interests had been created: a huge, parasitical state, over-powerful unions, a vast army of public employees. It is one of the dismal lessons of the twentieth century that, once a state is allowed to expand, it is almost impossible to contract it.”

Now of course the U.S.A. is not Argentina….  We have, though, followed the same trajectory as Perón’s Argentina, albeit more slowly and gently. He got from “the minimum government which had allowed Argentina to become wealthy” to “a huge, parasitical state” with “a vast army of public employees” in just five years; it has taken us five decades. The end result for our respective peoples will be the same.

JM Greco

Investing Solo – Sweet Spot for Closed End Funds

The recent Fed statement that I interpret to mean that it will not be raising the short term interest rate for the foreseeable future, coupled with the futures market projection that the first significant hike will occur in about 18 months, and a mild one at that, has led me to start raising the portion of my portfolio held in leveraged closed end funds, which can borrow at short term low rates and invest the proceeds.  I’m looking to go as high as about 15%, depending on the opportunities as they arise, from a starting point of about half that.

I’m interested mostly in increasing CEFs on the debt side, with the exception of those that hold MLPs. I am skittish about stocks given the poor intermediate term outlook for the economy particularly in light of the massive federal debt and the uncertain business environment created by the Obama administration, the long term lower spending by consumers as they reduce their own debt in the face of uncertainty, and the 10-year Shiller P/E that suggests that stocks are currently overvalued. There have been long periods of time where the return on stocks has been flat or negative, inflation adjusted (e.g., roughly 1965 to 1982 and the last 10-11 years or so), and there seems to be no reason the current price stagnation can’t last for many years to come. I like investing for total return, to be sure, and I think investing for current yield is generally the best way to accomplish that.

My current CEF portfolio follows. I’ve been adding to these positions as opportunities arise – dips in price and discount, and with certain uncommon special exceptions, I'm particularly attracted to those from large, reputable portfolio managers whose trailing net investment income exceeds distribution with positive undistributed net investment income. The specific funds I have, when there are others in the category and fund family, were/are determined by the various relative metrics plus relative discounts on the day of purchase.

>> Municipal Bonds: The sweetest spot of all given the recent default fear in this market segment. Taxable equivalent yields at the 35% rate are above 10% on a slew of issues. Right now I have significant holdings of only Nuveen funds: NPM; NPF; NXZ; NVG; and NEV. I was out of muni CEFs entirely at the beginning of this year when the price drop on the default scare created bargains too good to pass on, and I now have substantial capital appreciation as well as great yield. The share prices may still have room to go if higher taxes are in the offing.

>> Mixed/go anywhere: I hold three CEFs from Pimco, whose CEFs are almost in a class by themselves given the very active portfolio management, high premiums to NAV, and significant monthly under-distribution coupled with year-end specials (link). I have significant holdings of PFN and PFL, currently distributing 7+%, which hold more corporate debt than anything else, and PKO, now at 8+%, which has more of a focus on asset-backed securities. I’m contemplating paring PFL given the large run-up in premium to NAV since Bill Gross, the port manager, mentioned it in Barron’s in June, and swapping for PKO or PFN, depending on the numbers at the time.

>> Preferreds (equity pfds & debt hybrids): Distributions are 7-8%, up to about 9% TEY, and I am holding my positions in JPS and JTP (link). I’m not adding more to this sub-class right now out of concern about the rate of redemptions coupled with the run up in price in the individual securities with which funds must deal.

>> Mortgage-back securities: CEFs vary a lot in the amount of residential agency versus non-agency, and the amount of commercial and other asset-backed debt, and of course in overall credit worthiness. My largest position is FMY, currently distributing over 9%, which is IG and mostly agency. I also hold some HTR (whose management has just also taken over FMY) and a little DMO and JLS, all currently at around 8% or better.

>> Foreign debt: I have modest holdings of GDO (more toward IG) and EHI (more junk), both over 8% right now.

>> Floating rate: This category consists of funds with floating rate senior secured bank loans, plus GFY (link) which I hold as well. I have significant holdings in JFR, BHL, and TLI, distributing now 5.5 to over 6%.

>> MLPs: I like the prospects for this group -- I have a substantial allocation to KMR, the stock version of KMP. I also hold CEFs KYN, KMF, and NTG, all now yielding 6-7%.

>> Stocks: I generally disfavor CEFs as vehicles for stocks, especially since so many follow an options writing or dividend capture strategy. I have one modest holding in this category, one which uses preferred stock for funds for leverage and holds utility stocks – UTG, currently distributing almost 6%.  I also have a nominal starter set in UTF, which holds infrastructure stocks like utilities, pipelines, and toll roads, and currently yields over 8%.

>> Real Estate: I have been out of this asset class for a very long time, but on a recent dip I have just established a small starter position in the CEF IGR, whose holdings are about 45% outside the US and currently distributing about 6.5%.


Mike Parenti

All Investing Solo Posts

I’m an individual investor with no background in finance or securities, writing things down to help organize and clarify my thinking. Of course, nothing I say constitutes investment advice of any kind – merely an account of my personal observations and decisions. My core portfolio is a conservative and diversified mix of equity and debt mutual funds, ETFs, and some closed-end funds (CEFs) across investment styles, management firms, and accounts, and I invest a relatively small amount (about 10%) somewhat more aggressively in the perhaps ultimately futile pursuit of alpha.

Still Stuck in the Obama Recession

After crawling out, barely and only technically, from the Great Recession, the American economy can't seem to straighten up, let alone walk.  Today the news is that the unemployment rate has risen (link), and that's after a bunch of people have left the job market all together who aren't even counted.  Meanwhile, Obama and his allies keep bashing Republicans with references like "gun to the head", "Taliban", and "suicide bombers".  That's what passes for the new Democrat civility. 

We have a horrific spending problem (link) that threatens to bring down our economy, yet the Democrats want even more government.  More taxes, more stimulus, more debt.  Their real aim is to turn America into a version of the socialist European Union, with its entitled ruling class, crushing government regulation, increasingly uncompetitive economies, and chronic high unemployment.  They're well on their way here, and today's unemployment figure is just more proof.  Obama's has been the weakest post-recession recovery, which is still ongoing, since the Great Depression.

Victor Davis Hansen in "Business Replies to Obama" (link):

The United States has tried the largest stimulus in its peacetime history, with record $5 trillion borrowing in Obama’s first three years. Yet unemployment is much higher than when he entered office. The more he talks of stimulating the economy — with subsidies to “green” industries, government take-over of private enterprise, massive annual deficits and federal hiring, cash for clunkers, etc. — the less the private sector seems to hire or invest....  Those who have saved money and in theory could invest are scared off by uncertainty over new federalized health-care costs, by massive government spending that must be paid back and will cause higher interest rates, and by all the talk of new regulation....  When a Van Jones was in charge of encouraging green job growth, the symbolism is not lost on the guy trying to keep a paving company going.  The list could go on but, in short, hundreds of thousands of employers have sized up this quite extraordinary administration and concluded that it does not ... appreciate or even know much about private employers. And thus the business community has collectively decided to sit tight, keep quiet, and store up cash until this bunch in the White House leaves....  And so now the job creating community that makes America work is replying, in its stasis, that it likes Barack Obama about as much as he likes them.

John M Greco  

Jamaicans to Britain: Please Take Us Back

For years and years liberals have argued that the solution to global poverty is more and more free money from Western countries, despite the clear results of the bazillions already spent, rather than better governance, free enterprise, and the rule of law.   More recently, some liberals mugged by reality propose such novel notions as "charter cities" in places like Haiti and Africa, paid for and administered by the "international community" (read: "The West").   Sounds like a grasp back to running colonies in the third world.  Here's a good, realistic overview of the whole mess:  The Global Poverty Paradox by Nicholas N. Eberstadt at Commentary Magazine (October 2010).

Now comes a report that the downtrodden people of Jamaica, largely the descendants of African slaves, see the return of the British colonizers as a solution to their chronic dysfunction (link):

Most Jamaicans believe they would be better off if they were still ruled by Britain, a poll shows.  In a harsh indictment of nearly 50 years of independence, 60 per cent of those surveyed hanker for the days when the country was Britain’s biggest Caribbean colony.  Only 17 per cent said the crime-ridden, poverty-stricken nation would be worse off under British rule.  The depth of feeling is particularly astonishing as generations of Jamaican leaders have portrayed the British as oppressors who subjected the Caribbean to slavery.  The Queen is still Jamaica’s head of state. Under the headline ‘Give Us The Queen!’, the Gleaner – Jamaica’s biggest newspaper – said its poll showed how much people had become ‘disillusioned’ with the violent and corrupt political gangs running the island.

Re-colonization by the Britain of 1897 would certainly benefit the Jamaicans, but that Britain disappeared during WWI, so too late for that.  Today's Britain has neither the will nor the money to run its own island well, let alone any others.  

H/t John Hinderaker at Power Line (link), who notes the wisdom of the Cayman Islanders, who voted to remain under the Brits. 

John M Greco

Related Post:
Writer Jan Morris is 83 Years Old Today, Author of the Masterpiece Pax Britannica Trilogy

Time's Up in Afghanistan; Republicans Oblivious

The continued strong support among Republican politicians and conservative opinion leaders for our now three foreign wars is their rapidly growing Achilles heel in the fight to regain the advantage over the socialistic, anti-anti-Islamist forces that have of late stormed over the domestic barricades.  Kill the Taliban -- fine and good; attempt to build a modern nation in a backward, pre-Medieval Muslim county -- doomed to failure.  Give us more time, more time, they hector and harangue, as if higher volume could convince sensible people that almost ten years of precious blood and treasure isn't time enough to train locals to protect their own people from the lethal radicals in their midst.  Adequate training is the least of their problems. 

After years of intense instruction and support by Americans and other Westerners, many of whom have died for the effort, when attacked by Islamist insurgents at Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, "one of the capital’s most fortified buildings", machine-gun wielding Afghan police ran away (link).  They ran away.  If "moderate" Muslim Afghans by now will not defend themselves from their radical element, they won't for a long, long time, if ever.  We cannot give them the will and the spine to move Afghanistan to a better place.  Time as well for us to bolt the scene.

John M Greco