algernonsidney

I predicted a few months ago that Bob Barr will not get more than 800,000 votes. I am more and more inclined not to vote for him. Wayne Allyn Root is a total embarrassment to the party.

I may end drawing cards between Nader, McKinney, and Baldwin. It depends on who gets on the ballot. It won't matter in Texas anyway.

If one had invested in BPTRX 5 years ago, despite the plunge the past few months, the return would have been more than 16.65% per year. Yup, it takes a real sucker to accept that.

I am on an Objectivist board, so I should have anticipated that someone would have the need to show everyone else just how "clever" he is. It's my fault for forgetting where I am. Most Objectivists I've known simply can't resist the temptation to make a smart-aleck remark. They make an effort to be disagreeable.

Not surprisingly, too, is that my question was never answered. Who does know what they are doing? What investment advisors are actually worth listening to?

It seems as though people have different definitions for romanticism. I think I do know the root of the problem and why it does not lead to healthy relationships.

Worshipping a man or a woman comes largely from a scarcity mentality. It comes from the belief that good men or women are scarce and difficult to find. When one does find a good man or woman, the worshipper then goes off the deep end. When both people do this to each other, it creates a high which does not last.

What happens is such people eventually start to see the person's flaws and mistakes. They also get bored and start looking elsewhere. It actually becomes easier for them to find people to cheat with because they no longer have the scarcity mentality.

Attraction is a process. For people who have a scarcity mentality, it either does not turn on easily or turns on much too easily. Ask yourself why your attraction process works the way it does then go from there.

If both of you can keep the process turned on for 50 years, you deserve gold medals.

I don't agree with you here Wolf. We have a lot of haves, but in general they are pretty quite. You can barely tell the millionaires from the guy next door, and usually if someone looks like they are wealthy, they are not. We also don't have the housing problem here like in other parts of the country, there was no skyrocket in prices and houses are still equal or gaining value. You also do not have that much of a problem with foreclosures. And yes a large part of our economy comes from natural resources, but that should continue in the near future, but the other two sectors of our economy are agriculture and trade (like you mention). While Texas has the second largest economy in the US behind California, we have the largest amount of exportation (trade) of any state.

It varies across the state. Austin still has a housing and building boom. They are still putting up condos downtown. Traffic in Austin is about as bad as any city its size--Austin still isn't that big.

My landlord works for Continental at the airport and told me that the airport has not seen many cutbacks in flights, in spite of gas prices. We did lose a direct flight to CLE, but that's probably due more to the depression in Cleveland than here.

Austin is a very entrepreneurial city. Lots of people are out there trying to become the next Dell or something like it. I just went to a meeting called Bootstrap (bootstrapping your business), and there was a lot of optimism there.

After Katrina, almost 500,000 evacuees came to Texas and any who need employment were absorbed by the economy, also every year we absorb large numbers of illegal immigrants (one reason I believe that our economy is so strong).

A guy from Houston got out of there because of Katrina. Katrina brought New Orleans's worst trash to Houston.

here in Texas we have the lowest prices in the nation for necessities.

Austin is getting kind of expensive actually. I've heard it's lower than Dallas, yet wages are higher in Dallas.

It's quite common to hear a story of someone being offered a job for $50,000 in Austin and $60,000 someplace else and staying in Austin.

So, what should a guy with about $20,000 or so do right now? I have subscribed to Doug Casey's newsletter for several years. I'm about ready to throw it in the garbage. I like Doug Casey's insights, but the bottom line is that his advice has completely tanked.

I also subscribed to _Prudent Speculator_ just recently. The longer I stay in the investment game, the less I trust people.

I don't think investment is luck. I believe that a person can do well if they know what they are doing or if they follow people who know what they are doing. I don't plan on being a full-time investor--thus I have to follow the advice of others. Who knows what they are doing?

Mutual funds are a sucker's bet.

Those Brazilians are brilliant.

This is a small correction. You refer to Roger Bissell as being course. Even a graduate from a public high school would know the word was "coarse".

What are you babbling about?

Ted only calls someone a journalist if they agree with him 100%. Anyone who disagrees with him is a terrorist.

Even though Ted has admitted elsewhere that he has actually been a victim of pig brutality, he still loves the pigs when they are beating up on people who disagree with him.

Mark,

We can go on and on about facts regarding the long sordid history of American imperialism. We both know the facts.

We also know that apologists for imperialism generally ignore all facts, except for the few that support imperialist ideas. As Ricky Fitts said in American Beauty: "Never underestimate the power of denial."

Just as the alcoholic derives an emotional benefit from drinking, the advocate of imperialism also derives some type of benefit from believing in American imperialism. Championing the empire gives him some kind of comfort. It makes him feel good. He gets a "fix" from it, and that fix is extremely important to him.

Can you reason with an alcoholic? Hell, no. Can you reason with an imperialist? I've been trying for years. It's a lost cause.

For imperialists, there is an emotional payoff in believing in their delusions. The only thing we can do is help them find an emotional payoff from something else. They will never accept the facts.

This is from personal contact. I don''t lie!

That's fine. It's just that I have heard other people make those kind of comments about people they have never met.

I guess the last three posts are from the anti-reason crowd at Objectivist Living.

All sarcasm aside I rarely look at Reason but I am not happy with anti-war.com. Justin Raimando is one of the most personally obnoxious persons I have ever meet.

Is that based on personal contact?

I've never met him.

I've known way too many activists who are "personally obnoxious." Quite a few called themselves "Objectivists."

I ended my subscription with Reason about 1999 and, as far as I am concerned, they do not live up to their title.

Reason has not only has gone out of its way to insult Libertarian Party candidates (like Harry Browne) but also they have an interventionist tinge to them that doesn't set well with me.

Your pointing out their support of maintaining the 21 year old drinking age is an example.

Justin Raimondo had some very interesting things to point out about Reason and how they ended up being taken over by Liberventionists.

They backed Gulf Wars I & II, for instance.

It was Raimondo's missives at Antiwar.com (which are heavily researched) that finally convinced me to stop subscribing to it.

I find Liberty magazine to be a better choice.

I didn't mind their article on Browne all that much. They seemed to have adopted a vendetta against Ron Paul--not sure what has motivated this one, unless they are looking for acceptance by the establishment. And Raimondo's comments have definitely swayed me against it as well. I'm actually hearing from some long-time subscribers that they have already given up on it as well.

I will give a little cash cash to antiwar.com instead.

When my next renewal comes, I will be ending my subscription to REASON magazine. I have subscribed since 1994. I don't seem to have much time to read the magazine itself anymore, but do check out the web site now and then. Even though I haven't read it that much, I still felt that I should support it with a subscription.

The "final straw" was this piece of garbage on the web site:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/128200.html

It's an article defending the drinking age of 21. The author even hints at increasing it.

Some people tell me it's been going downhill since Marty Zupan left the magazine.

Back in early 2005, I decided to take some acting classes here in Austin. Austin has a small scene compared to LA, of course. But quite a few movies get made here, and quite a few entertainers live here.

I took a class from a guy named Van Brooks and had an absolutely wonderful time. I had never done anything like it back in school. In February 2005, I took a weekend workshop simply called The Mastery.

Van told us that the workshop had been created by his mentor Dan Fauci. Dan leads the workshop in LA and has mentored other Mastery leaders around the world. It takes a special person to lead the workshop.

I've done lots of "success", "self-help", "growth workshops," etc. The Mastery is the only such workshop that I recommend with enthusiasm. It is the only one which holds you accountable for creating your own victories. You truly get out of the workshop what you put into it.

I got to meet Dan Fauci at the follow-up workshop here in Austin in October 2006. It's called Leadership and has a lot of the same power as the Mastery. You have to do the Mastery to do Leadership.

During that weekend, Dan told me that he appears in the softball game photo in The Passion of Ayn Rand. I then realized that Ayn Rand's influence is definitely there.

I did the Mastery again this last weekend. It was another great weekend with more great memories.

Dan Fauci says: “Most people are naturally creative and are somehow aware that they’ve cut off this unique part of themselves. The purpose of the Mastery is to discover that you create your own creativity. At each moment you have the choice of turning it on or off. Making the creative alternative available is the goal of everything we do at The Actors Institute.”

Here is a web site with sites and dates:

http://www.themasteryworkshops.com/

Here is another web site with testimonials from people like Ted Danson:

http://www.thefaucimastery.com/index.html