09/24/20

Accounting — That Bedeviling Black Art

I took a few accounting courses in grad school. I once knew my debits versus my credits. Knew all about original issue discounts, goodwill impairment, and other such trivia.

Knew GAAP and FASB. Just showing off now.

I ran businesses for 33 years. I needed to know more about accounting so I hired good accountants, retained good accounting firms, hired a good Chief Financial Officer, got second opinions, and I studied the subject on the mean streets of the business world.

CEOs and founders need to know some accounting — financial accounting, managerial accounting, tax accounting. What I knew saved me a lot of money.

One of my interests is the progression of ratios in a graphical manner — pick a financial ratio and graph it such that you can see the trend at the bat of an eye. That tells me something.

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09/21/20

Take The Shot, Mr. President

So, here we stand on the edge of the precipice, at a pivotal moment in the history of our Republic with the entire fate of the Nation held hostage.

Bullshit. We aren’t even close to the precipice and this supposedly pivotal moment in the history of the Republic was all figured out by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.

The only people alarmed are morons who have never read the Constitution.

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09/17/20

The Middle East — Giving Peace A Chance

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, Israel and the Arabs have been at war starting with the 1948 Arab-Israel War. There have been a series of shooting wars including the 1967 War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

In both of these wars, the Israelis emerged victorious by the skin of their teeth and acquired territory that was used to launch the underlying attacks that started these wars. [Remember the fact that Israel ended up with MORE territory when folks begin to whisper that Israel needs to return to the pre-1967 borders, meaning Israel needs to return its conquered lands.]

It is important to know that Israel was the product of the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine. This plan recommended three things:

 1. The creation of an independent Arab State;

 2. The creation of an independent Jewish State; and,

 3. The creation of an internationalized Jerusalem.

You may recognize that plan as the Two State Solution which continues to this day.

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09/13/20

How Stupid Do They Think You Are? Very Stupid

By now, you have undoubtedly heard that the Mueller team — when approached by the Department of Justice Inspector General as part of his investigation into the predicate for the creation of the original counter-intel investigation that gave rise to the Mueller Investigation — informed the IG that there were 31 phones they had used by key players, but that were devoid of any information.

Wait, what?

This moron (Princeton undergrad, Columbia Law grad, Andrew Weissmann, Mueller Senior Counsel/Prosecutor) wants you to believe he forgot his passcode twice on two different iPhones and had no alternative other than to wipe them clean rather than deliver them to the inspector General. No phone records, no texts, no emails. Twice. Do you believe him?

This happened two years ago in 2017, but just came to light. The timing is a little murky. You will recall several important things:

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09/13/20

Killing The Gig Economy

A lot of trends, suspect ideas, cultural quirks, and bad laws start in California and spread across the country.

Case in point is California Assembly Bill 5 which destroys the gig economy by imposing standards on the employer-employee relationship that prevent the gig economy from functioning in a manner as it currently does.

Lyft and Uber have both threatened to pull out of California if the law is not repealed in November.

Joe Biden supports California Assembly Bill 5 which effectively kills the gig economy and wants to pass a Federal law mirroring it. If you are a gig worker, take note.

Cal AB 5 came to life in December 2018 in response to controversy created by the employment of Lyft and Uber drivers, classic gig economy workers. These contract, independent contractor, 1099, gig workers are eliminated under the law that was passed in September 2019 and took effect in January 2020.

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09/12/20

Peace In The Middle East?

English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came home from a meeting with Hitler in Munich in September 1938 with the triumphant notion that he brought with him “peace for our times” in the form of some nonsensical agreement with a treacherous tyrant, Adolf Hitler.

Very few men were able to realize that you cannot make peace with a wolf by feeding it. When it is hungry, it will come again to the world’s door and that is exactly what happened.

Lord Hugh Cecil, an English contemporary politician would describe it like “scratching a crocodile’s head in the hope of making it purr.”

Chamberlain had a piece of paper, a set of words — nothing of substance.

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09/9/20

President Trump v The Generals — WHY?

Comes now the Generals complaining of President Trump, their Commander-in-Chief. Their complaints stem from some basic realities:

 1. When President Obama had the reins and was promoting socially-woke, petri-dish, social-engineering Generals focused on getting women through Ranger School (whose records all disappeared) and transgender battalions, he and they opined that it would take a decade to “attrit” the bums known as ISIS even though they were the Junior Varsity.

Then this draft-dodging, bone-spurious, military-high-school-grad President Trump changed the rules of engagement (ROE), sent some Marine artillery units to Iraq, demanded that bombers sortie forth with primary, secondary, and tertiary targets — do not return with bombs — and, voila, in less than two years ISIS was no longer a viable force.

Donald Trump's high-school classmates share memories - Business Insider

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09/9/20

Killing 2020

We have three and a half months left in 2020, but I am already looking forward to New Years Eve to put this miserable year in its coffin — nail it shut, push it into a fire, watch it burn — ensuring it doesn’t escape the cleansing flames — rake up the ashes, bury them in unhallowed ground, and piss on its grave.

I am reminded of Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

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