All politics is local?

The prize for the most ethnocentric headline goes to the Times of India for "Indian-American puts the Senate in balance." According to the story, Virginia Senate candidate George Allen's use of the term macaca "to twit a political worker from the rival Democratic Party" turned the tide in that race. The political worker was, of course, SR Sidarth, "of Indian ancestry but born and raised in Fairfax, Virginia." From Slate.com

Hedge Funds v. Stock Market

No surprise here. 2/20 is hard to beat on broad, sustained basis...

A Limited Supply of Geniuses

In today’s Times, my colleages Jenny Anderson and Landon Thomas Jr. report that hedge funds as a group are underperforming the stock market.

That should be no surprise. Even with the wonders of leverage, outperforming the stock market by enough to overcome the typical hedge fund manager’s compensation of 2 percent of assests and 20 percent of profits ought to be very difficult. As a group, it is very unlikely that a large group of hedge funds could do so on a prolonged basis.

Some — including me — have long feared that hedge fund blow-ups would provoke the next big financial crisis. Perhaps that will be avoided, but here’s a forcecast:

Within 10 years, and probably less, those who paid the big management fees to hedge funds will be asking themselves, “What were we thinking,” and conventional wisdom will be as scornful of them as it is not of those who jumped into Internet stocks in early 2000.

Source is here

If we attack Iran

Interesting article about what might happen if we attack Iran. I have nowhere near enough military insight to know if this is plausible or not:

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The third and final act in the U.S. national tragedy that is the Bush administration may soon play itself out.

Sources indicate increasing indications of 'something big' happening between the Nov. 7 congressional election and Christmas. That could be the long-planned attack on Iran.

An attack on Iran will not be an invasion with ground troops. We don`t have enough of those left to invade Ruritania. It will be a 'package' of air and missile strikes, by U.S. forces or Israel.

...

The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq. American armies are incredibly fuel-thirsty, and though Iraq has vast oil reserves, it is short of refined oil products. Unlike German World War Gen. Heinz Guderian`s army on its way to the Channel coast in 1940, we could not just fuel up at local gas stations.

...

If the United States were to lose the army it has in Iraq, to Iraqi militias, Iranian regular forces, or a combination of both (the most likely event), the world would change. It would be our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige would never recover.

Full article appears to be offline now

Bud.TV

As many of you know, I have an extensive collection of .tv domains... This comes from a recent article about bud.tv that primarily talks about ID checking

"The company hopes to draw between 3 million and 5 million visitors to Bud.TV each month.”

I would consider this to be good news.

Full Article here