:: meanders ::

:: MSNBC: Images of war
TV is a remarkable medium for its immediacy, but still photography has a mysterious appeal, capturing of a moment in time, unlike our daily life where each moment is fleeting.

There image links for each day at this excellent montage: MSNBC: Images of war

:: War & Business Reporting
It eventually had to come to this: the embedded reporters are not objective! They're bonding with the very ones they should be investigating. I say, baloney.

Reporters want nothing less than a mind-plant. Anything less means the subject of their scrutiny must be hiding something. Had they been "left out", the complaint would have been the same. There have already been a number of reporter casualties, but I don't believe of embedded soldiers, rather of freelance.

If "impartiality" was a hoped-for by-product of embedding reporters, any benefits of that are wiped out by reporters stationed in Kuwait, Qatar, etc. There is no such thing as a question. Rather, they file their story, bias intact, standing on their legs, in the guise of a question. The most extreme example of that occured in last nights press conference held by the British Air Marshall. When the floor was opened for questions, the Al Jezeera reporter leapt to his feet to be first. He proceeded to deliver a "canned speech", reading off a sheet of paper, then sat down. The Air Marshall asked him if he had a question, to which he replied "No".

The only thing "we" can do is to do what we should do all along. Listen, research, question, and think independently.

By the Way, have you notice that routine business reporting has dwindled to a trickle? What happened to the scandals of just a few months ago? Cavuto has long given up the pretense of covering business. Even Kudlow and Cramer no longer talk business, they talk war with the same retired guys from the mainstream sister channels.

The fact is, none of the fundamentals-type guests favored by CNBC have a jump on "what will happen". The market either goes up, down, or sideways. It's only crashes and bubbles that merit any further inquiry. You gotta watch CNBC-Europe or Bloomberg for business coverage, the former actually features technical analysis!

:: The Real Stalingrad
There are elements in the media intent on characterizing the Iraqi resistance as "Stalingrad, with some calling it the "Mesopotamian Stalingrad". Do a search for yourself. You'll find that most of those references are heavily Marxist and hardly unbiased. It is perhaps no surprise as a scant month has passed since Russian ceremonies commemorating that event. See BBC NEWS | Russia marks Battle of Stalingrad and related links.

With the passing of the Cold War, the old red guard has had little to propel its views into the main stream. It is my belief they have filled that void by focussing their efforts into the so called globalization movement. It is a perfect vehicle, filled with comfortably disaffected youth with enough free cash to fund travel to rallies local or otherwise .

But that is a minor, even if critical digression. My point is that The Real Stalingrad makes the 7th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom look pale in its scope. The Real Stalingrad battle was conducted over many months saw the death of more than 250,000 German soldiers, with Soviet deaths estimated at half a million.

But that is not the real purpose of harkening Stalingrad. It is a vieled attempt to project Hitler's megalomania onto Bush, to project Soviet tenacity onto the Iraqi "people".

The comparison insults the intelligence of thinking people and is nothing less than a belligerent taunt to the Cent-Com and Joint Forces commanders that must field the questions from news "reporters" who must inject their own bias.

The people of Volgograd, the reformed name for Stalingrad, are anxious to put that chapter of life behind them. It would seem that the neo-Stalinists are not going to let that happen without a battle.

:: It's not enough to hate yourself
It seems to hate oneself is simple lacking a key ingredient... someone to share the experience with. So why not make a movie! Share the hatred with others who similarly loathe their lives of freedom.

Unmoored from Reality, an OpinionJournal piece by John Fund in his Political Diary, neatly explores the latest venture into hip: Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", a diss documentary of "The American Way of Life" and "our" so-called obsession with the love of guns. That he leaps from the tragedy of Columbine into hip hatred of those he would wish us to hate the most, the dreaded military-industrial complex is but one of the stretches of logic and reason.

Like many people who do One Good Thing (his rather good and sincere documentary of GM), he has gone one bridge too far.

:: My Precious!
Technical Analysis, and science for all that, is a matter of observed coincidences, patterns that reappear and have potential for profits. Being human, however, it is all to easy to wed oneself to a pattern or idea. It is no surprise then that one of the first lessons the market teaches is that nothing is ever the same, every day is different. To paraphrase Mark Twain[*], history does not entirely repeat, at best it rhymes.

[*] Could it be that Plutarch, who in Twain's day was no doubt part of the curriculum, was the inspriation?

It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results. Plutarch, Life of Sertorius(c. 70 AD)

This wonderful little ring may be just the talisman the trading shaman ordered.

Inscribed with This too will change, it is "an ever-present reminder of the truth of impermanence." At $24.95, it's an inexpensive way to remind yourself that the market, while always changing, is always "right".