Viet-Justice

An Iranian cleric said that earthquakes are caused by promiscuous and immodestly dressed women.  To test this out, feminist and all American girl Jen McCreight organized boobquake.  Harnessing the power of social media Jen organized a Twitter and Facebook experiment to see if he was right.  The objective was for women to dress immodestly on the same day and see if there was an earthquake.  Over 185,000 people said they would participate in the Facebook event.

How did it turn out?  There was a very small earthquake in Taiwan which was because Asian women are so awesome.  No, the world didn’t shake apart and apparently the cleric was wrong.

Now our favorite cleric says that it is all part of God’s plan that nothing happened.

Sedighi notes that some might ask why there aren’t more earthquakes and storms striking Western nations that are “up to their necks” in immorality.

He says the answer is that God allows some of those who “provoke His wrath” to continue sinning “so that they (eventually) go to the bottom of Hell.”

You have to wonder who would want to take sides with a god that will send you to hell for being straight?  This further adds evidence to my hypothesis that Allah is a gay man or a drag queen who is jealous of hot western women.  That has to be why he tells his followers to cover their women in a burka.  He doesn’t want to be compared to real women when he goes on Ru Paul’s Drag Races.

So many Islamic clerics proclaim western society and values are Satanic.  Is that such a bad thing?

Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires
- be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also
sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex-life, so long as it involves no
one who does not wish to be involved.

Satanism does not encourage orgiastic activity or extramarital affairs for those to whom they
do not come naturally. For many, it would be very unnatural and detrimental to be unfaithful
to their chosen mates.

Once again the clerics have demonstrated that Satanic western culture is far more desirable than following their vengeful, dragqueen, god.

Americans are finally starting to get a sense of humor.

After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

Time to get out the Photoshop and Illustrator.  We can all have fatwas now!

Sometimes you have to wonder why people hate the police. So the cops decided to arrest the VP of Island Def Jam Records because he wouldn’t send out a tweet.

An Associated Press feed reads:

Police arrested a vice president from Bieber’s record label, Island Def Jam Records, saying he wasn’t cooperating with attempts to disperse the crowd. James Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., was charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration.

“We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message,” said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. “By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”

Now what group of teenagers is going to follow some VP at Def Jam on Twitter?  Note that the police didn’t ask Justin Bieber, the celebrity at the mall to send the tweet.  This shows that the police are getting out of control in Nassau County.  They could have just tasered Roppo like most cops do, but instead they decide to arrest him.

The GOP has unveiled a new website in an attempt to look hip and appealing to more people.  The GOP has moved to a red banner with some stars faintly placed near the top center.  Even while squinting (we Asians do that often) I could not see any stripes by the stars, which leads me to believe that the GOP is actually flying the Chinese flag.  They are also The People’s Party as mentioned in their Who we are section in big red letters.  The Republicans are doing what they can to be on the good side of the real People’s Party when they come to repo America.  You can thank Geithner and crew for your new Chinese landlords.  It gets even better now that the Chinese will get another $122B of America.  If someone asks if you like Chairman Mao you should probably say Yes.

Get in shape or pay a price.

That’s a message more Americans could hear if the health care reform bills passed by the Senate Finance and Health committees become law.

This is CHANGE we can believe in.  The Senate is proposing that not everyone is equal in the health care debate.  Pressure will be on the workers to live a healthy lifestyle, or their employer can raise their insurance rate.  That’s right people it’s time to lose weight, stop smoking, and lower your cholesterol.

The proposal is backed by the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.  Opposition includes unions, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Diabetes Association.  No surprise that the unions are against the proposal.  Have you seen all the fat GM workers that were on television when the bail out was at its peak?

The incentives could attack a national epidemic of obesity. They also cut to a philosophical core of the health care debate. Should health insurance be like auto insurance, in which good drivers earn discounts and reckless ones pay a price, thereby encouraging better habits? Or should it be a safety net in which the young and healthy support the old and sick with the understanding that youth and good health are transitory?

Health insurance should definitely be like auto insurance.  It is a hedge against a potential bad outcome. If you are doing all the right things then you should be rewarded.    Instituting a system where those who are contributing to society and not over consuming are rewarded will make for a better world.

Valeo is a company that has some good ideas with regard to implementation of health standards.  You may get an insurance discount if you submit to tests proving your health.  If you choose to be anonymous then you pay a higher premium.  This concept is no different than drivers who allow their insurer to put a GPS in the car for a discounted premium.  Basically the message is everyone pays a certain price, but if you jump through hoops then you get a discount.

We are facing 10% unemployment, along with the rise of robotic factories, and information technology that reduces the need for manual labor.  A few less people would bring the labor market back into equilibrium. It would continue transforming the world workforce into intellectual laborers.  This would be progress from the industrial revolution where everyone labored in dirty factories.

What about the safety net for the old and the sick?  Since death is inevitable it would be illogical to expend resources on individuals where there would not be significant benefit.  The old have had their time in the spotlight and need to step off the stage of life and let a new generation take over.  The world belongs to the young and the ambitious, not the old, fat, and lazy.  This is not to say that we should stop research into life extending technologies.  If new technologies can extend the useful lifespan of the brain and body, thereby extending productive life years, then such research is welcome.  Research has shown that obesity and Alzheimer’s disease are related.  This shows that fat people will continue to be a drain on the system by taking up space in nursing homes at an earlier age.

What kind of world would your eyes prefer?

There should be some benefits for the obese.  We need a biodiesel commodity on the futures markets so that fat people can sell futures contracts to deliver a quantity of blubber for processing.  Considering that these people are irresponsible with how they live their lives today, they would probably sell more futures than they could deliver safely.  Which would mean that we would have to send some repo men to “collect” on the contract so the rest of us can drive our fine German or Japanese automobiles.  This is a good way to reduce unemployment, carbon emissions, and Alzheimer’s disease in one simple step.

There would be economic benefit from a futures market in fat.  Funeral homes could be transformed into biodiesel reclamation stations to provide our future energy sources.  This would be an economic shift and allow petroleum companies to get into a new market, thus creating jobs.  We could have Valvoline Haus or The Penzoil Home for the Obese as nursing homes for our large friends.  Monsanto could buy McDonald’s to create a new form of genetically engineered fast food for our livestock that will fuel the economies of the future.

McDonald’s macht Kraftstoff!

The all mighty Taliban have told the Germans to get out or they will bomb Oktoberfest.  Obviously the Taliban are jealous of the Germans and their superior beer making capabilities.

We must stand with our German allies because when the Taliban came for Oktoberfest, I said nothing.  When the Taliban came for Budweiser, I said nothing.  When the Taliban came for Milwaukee’s Best, I said nothing and then the Taliban had the best beer in the world.

Now the music industry has shown their true colors.  They want to charge for those 30 second preview clips you hear at online music stores.  Techcrunch has a rather funny satirical view of the subject.  Let’s just ban music period to stop the music industry from embarrassing themselves.  Perhaps we can enlist the help of the Taliban to shut down the RIAA since music is forbidden.

On a more serious note the Tool that is head of the Songwriters Guild of America says,

“We make 9.1 cents off a song sale and that means a whole lot of pennies have to add up before it becomes a bunch of money,” said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters’ Guild of America. “Yesterday, I received a check for 2 cents. I’m not kidding. People think we’re making a fortune off the Web, but it’s a tiny amount. We need multiple revenue streams or this isn’t going to work.”

It sounds like Rick has a serious problem.  They’re suffering from a pricing model that undermines their success.  This happens in many industries before they go under.  If Rick were Asian he might be figuring out a solution to the problem by coming up with a new business model.  Unfortunately he’s choosing to whine about needing multiple revenue streams rather than finding the home run revenue stream that will enable them to drop all the little ones.  Songwriters will find new ways to profit without the guild or the music industry will, god forbid, consist of people who enjoy writing music.  Maybe banning music is going too far, but making sure that the crap is off the shelves might be a nice side effect of this upset in the market.  Think of a world without Britney Spears or The Backstreet Boys.  Ok, we’ll have to figure out what to do with all the Top 40 radio stations, but surely some smart Asian will have an idea.

Brother Grim asks the question of who is better for you, the government or the insurance companies?

Or are you willing to rein in anarcho-capitalism long enough to come up with a solution that works for everyone? People who rail against “Socialized Medicine” live in constant fear of having medical decisions made by government bureaucrats, but would you rather live at the whim of insurance company executives who see you as nothing more than an account ID? Choose your poison folks.

Ironically he cites a life expectancy graph that has Japanese at the longest lived.  First of all, there is no comparing Japanese society to American society.  Diet is typically cited as the reason Japanese people live so long, not the kind of health care they have. As a matter of fact the Japanese system is more privatized than the US according to Professor Naoki Ikegami with 80% of hospitals being truly private with no government subsidy or subsidized workers.  Americans need to drop the burgers for some rice, tofu, and fish.  Then hit the gym more than they do to get the effect of walking everywhere like the French and Japanese do.

On the topic of which is better for you, the government plan or the plan of the big corporate insurance providers, we can take a look at the pros and cons of each.  Brother Grim says that the corporations will treat you like an account ID.  Well the government will treat you like a social security account ID, so there’s no difference with regard to identifying you.  Government is also a less trustworthy due to remarks that ignoring constituents because “they are just people” and the partisan closing of GM and Chrysler dealers.  It would appear that viability of the dealership was not a criteria, but who the owners donated to was.  This shows that government does not look at numbers only when making decisions, which is bad.  You know that the decisions made by government will be to the political benefit of who is in power.  Unlike China where there is only one party, you are at the mercy of your party being out of power when you have to depend on government.  So a government system is automatically stacked against 49% based on the consensus of the popular results of the general election.

How are the corporations superior to the government system?  Both identify you by some number and treat you like a number.  Where does the corporate system have greater benefit?  First, you get to choose which entity you want to go with.  I’m also including HSAs in the mix for young people who want to be self insured.  This lets the population choose which plan suits their lifestyle.  The next area that insurance companies excel at is data.  Actuarial tables and the Statistical Value of Life (SVL) can be used to calculate an appropriate payout.  This is superior to the government solution which relies on humans to make the decisions and puts these decisions in the hands of economists, mathematicians, and programmers.  If the formulas used by an insurance company are under change control and auditable then the consumer knows what circumstances they can expect the insurance company to pay and what circumstances the insured is better left to their fate.

This serves to enhance marginal private benefit by letting the formulas decide for families the appropriate time to stop throwing good money after bad.  There is no single formula for SVL, but many take into account occupation, education, hereditary diseases, current age, and other factors.  There are also general flat rate formulas such as the US DOT’s Treatment of the Economic Value of a Statistical Life.  If you’re in a plane crash you’re worth $6million.  Any way you calculate it, you can determine what is the best solution for your family.

How does this benefit a family?  If you have ever had to serve under medical power of attorney, you know that it is illogical to run a family into bankruptcy expending resources on someone where the computations indicate a lack of equlibrium between cost and benefit.  Americans unwisely bankrupt themselves on spending for end of life care.   If it makes little numerical sense to put grandma’s house on the auction block to pay for 6 months of chemo or dialysis then why do it? Another area is nursing home care which costs approximately $6000 per month according to the 2007 Genworth Cost of Care Survey.  It may may more sense to ship grandma to Portland Oregon or Beijing China where an honorable assisted suicide is legal, rather than wasting the family’s money on a futile effort or worse, allowing the government to seize grandma’s estate to cover her care costs, thus depriving the clan of resources.

That resource could be used to fund the college education of the children of the clan then why undertake such “heroic” measures as the medical care field says.  This leaves fewer resources to pour into a dynasty trust which in turn leaves fewer resources for education and betterment of the clan unit.  In one generation a clan can go from blue collar and poor to white collar through education.  We can also apply the same principals to child care as well.  If a very young child has a terminal disease the parents can always make another one.  This would be logical if the family has more than one child to care for.  With a minimum of $200,000 of child raising expenses, it’s better to reboot early on than spend a ton of money then lose out and have to reboot.

The corporate alternative provides us with a logical and auditable solution that doesn’t put families in the poor house, and maximizes marginal private benefit without the introduction of subsidies, taxes, and dead weight loss.  It also benefits the individual by creating the positive externality of reducing marginal social benefit that a government plan would introduce, thereby reducing competition for resources and enabling the individual to obtain said scarce resources in a more accessible fashion.

For those looking for the hottest new investment deal there are now Sharia compliant ETFs on the market to meet your investing needs.  Javelin Exchange Traded Shares launched its first fund at the beginning of July catering to the Islamic market.

The Dow Jones Islamic Market International Index Fund (JVS) seeks performance that corresponds to a benchmark index that measures investment return on “Shari’ah compliant securities. JETS notes that certain businesses are incompatible with Islamic law and therefore excluded from the fund. These sectors include alcohol, conventional financial services (banking, insurance, etc.), casinos, firearms, and pork-related products.

That last part doesn’t sound very fun.  To many people investing is not fun, so let’s get down to basics.  The JVS fund opened up on July 1, 2009.  The opening price per share was $399.99.  In less than a week the fund as fallen down to $38.85 per share.  Sharia doesn’t appear to be a good investment.

The stock market works through good old supply and demand.  Let’s take a look at the JVS fund in depth and see what it looks like.

This looks very pitiful.  There were only 100 shares of the Sharia fund traded today.  It’s not that popular compared to other picks.  Let’s take a look at the Level II screen to see how many shares are for sale.  A Level II Quote lets you see all the buyers and sellers along with their prices.

The Ask price is what a seller wants to get rid of his shares.  If you’re a buyer you typically buy from a seller at the Ask price.  Here we have someone with 800 shares of the Sharia fund and they are Asking $399.99 for each share.  If you want to buy 1000 shares, you’re out of luck because there are only 800 shares for sale right now.

The Bid or Offer price is what a Buyer is offering to take the stock off someone’s hands.  There is a buyer out there and he’s wanting to buy 800 share of the Sharia fund, but he’s only willing to pay $0.15 for each share.  He obviously doesn’t think these things are worth that much.

What this means is, if you want to buy some Sharia fund shares you can put an order in to buy at the Ask price of $399.99 per share.  You could set your Bid price lower than the Ask price to see if the seller will lower his price.  If you Bid price is higher than the currently listed $0.15 your order will appear above the one pictured.  This goes on and on until both parties enter the same price for the stock if you don’t offer the Ask price up front.  But it gets even better folks.  Let’s say that you bought 800 shares of the Sharia fund for $399.99 and now you decide you don’t want them.  There’s a buyer out there offering $0.15 per share.  You can either lose $399.84 per share and take him up on his offer price, or you can name your price and it will appear in the Ask column.  Then you hope and pray to Allah that someone will buy those shares at your Ask price.

Now let’s look at a more exciting example, the Direxion 3x Daily Financial Bear (FAZ)

This fund also has a good example in it to illustrate price moves with a volume of over 185 Million shares traded today.  There are a total of 22400 shares for sale between the NASDAQ and PACX at 5.07.  What happens if someone buys all those shares from these two sellers?  The price next price listed is 5.08 with 3500 shares.  That is what happens behind the scenes when a stock price goes up.  Unfortunately the Sharia fund is unlikely to go up since it only has one seller who will probably never close a deal at $399.99.

This fund (FAZ) is not Sharia compliant.  This is a fund that performs opposite to the traditional financial sector we all know and love to hate (Citigroup, AIG, Bank of America, etc).  This is a 3x short fund so it basically means when the stock market goes down, this thing goes up at 3x the rate.  If the banking sector is down 5%, this fund goes up 15%.  And that’s how you make money when the market is going down.  Unlike the Sharia fund.  This puppy has had over 185 million shares traded today.  The Sharia fund on the other hand only traded 100 shares today.  Finance is hot, Sharia is not.

If you aren’t feeling very Sharia, then the Vice Fund (VICEX) might be worth taking a look at.  It is a traditional mutual fund and not an ETF.  The fund managers invest in tobacco, alcohol, and casino companies.  In a recession vice companies tend to do better than regular companies . I don’t own any VICEX shares, but it may be something worth researching if you don’t find the Sharia funds to be that profitable or fun.

No surprise here.  Ahmadinejad and his supporters stuff the ballot boxes to where we have over 100% turn out.  Now we predictably have a situation where Ahmadinejad is up in the vote total after a recount.  I am surprised of the naivety of the Mullahs.  Did they not know that there are 1.3 Billion Chinese out there that can call them on the suspicious nature of the numbers they are turning up?  That’s 1.3 Billion math experts out there that don’t need a Persian Abacus to count.