Ok, I saw this yesterday, and then again today in multiple places and now its just annoying the crap out of me. I really don’t know the legality of posting these images, so I pulled this first one from associatedpress.com and the second from cnn.com (both on their front pages)

Both are used with headlines such as “Dow has biggest drop in 5 years” or “Traders fear next great depression” pretty much the scariest headlines possible. Then they throw in a picture like this. Your wondering what is wrong with these? It is just some stock trader covering his mouth aghast at what is going on? But hes not covering his mouth in shock, hes guarding his headset so he can be heard by whoever he is talking to.

This second one is less apparent but I saw a bigger version and there is an obvious motion blur as he moves his hand away from covering the mic. I think anyone who covers the trading floor would know what these guys were doing since I picked up on it and my 3 months with A.G. Edwards as an intern don’t exactly qualify me as some sort of NYSE all-knowledgeable genius. It’s nothing terrible, its not photo shopping extra smoke in an Iraq city or extra missle launchers in Iran, but it is a misuse of a photo that goes against normal editorial rules. Now my rant is over it won’t annoy me… until I see it tomorrow.

I read this article by the Chicago Tribune that says McCain is 6 times more likely to die in office than Barack. That seemed like a bold statement based mostly on a lot of interpretation of medical records. So, I wanted to go above and beyond and do some REAL scientific research on the matter. 

First off I had to compile some statistics on both candidates, and after some heavy lifting (had to go to the 2nd result in Google for these) I found the following : 

McCain is old. Really Old. 1936 is like a different millienia. In 1936 the average cost of a new house was $3,925.00. The average income was $1,713.00 . I spent that much on redbull last month. A loaf of bread was 8 cents and a pound of hamburger meat was 12 cents. No wonder McCain doesn’t know the price of milk.

What I am trying to say is that McCain lived in an era BEFORE the invention of the ball-point pen (1938) and over a decade before the Frisbee was invented. How do you live in an era without Frisbee!?!?! 

So, McCain also smoked for a while but eventually quit. He actually has a BMI of 24 (recommended is 22-25… didn’t see that coming) and I percieve him to be mostly a pessimistic guy. Maybe thats just me. Some might say he is sadistic. My results take both into account just in case.

I took this information and threw it into everyone’s favorite Death Calculator (THE DEATH CLOCK) and found out that McCain is actually already dead. Thats right folks. McCain is completely and utterly not alive. A walking corpse, probably running off some sort of futuristic japanese technology. In fact, he died in the 90’s. YIKES. So, just throwing it out there, McCain won’t “live” through his presidency but he also won’t “die.” The nice thing about being dead, it can’t happen twice. So seriously, stop with the fear-mongering about Palin taking over. It won’t happen.

Just to make sure Barack isn’t left out of the equation I had to run his numbers also. He’s not as interesting. He’s from the 60’s so he probably did a lot of drugs or something… he didn’t get to witness the invention of awesome things like the helicopter and he was born into a world with Frisbees. He doesn’t have the same kind of perspective. However, he does smoke, and apparently still does to this day though they do a good job of hiding it. So that throws a little loop into our processing. Nonetheless, the boy stays in shape, is very positive (that whole hope thing) and has a long life to look forward to. He will die in 2052, so he’s got plenty of time. By that time a lot of crazy things could happen… we could live forever, or we could find something better than frisbees.

SO I guess what I am trying to say is that if your vote depends on if Palin is going to be President. Don’t worry about it. Both candidates have a long future ahead of them. I’m not really sure when McCain will be done… probably when the disintegration of his corpse gets too far to cover up, but they both should last at least 4 years.

My name is Fred.

I had a house. It was destroyed by this big predictable hurricane called Katrina. After Katrina I asked you for money and took that money to rebuild my house exactly as it stood before. Even though it happened once, it couldn’t happen again. But now there is another hurricane coming called Gustav, so I’m evacuating again. I’m gonna come hang out with you for a little while, and before I go back will probably need some cash to rebuild my house again. No actually, I’m going to demand the cash, and then blame the hurricane on you.

That is what I imagine New Orleans residents are saying to FEMA right now, which I don’t understand. How can you build an entire city in a below-sea-level area, in a hurricane-prone area, with sub-par levees? The argument that Katrina was an extraordinary storm are just wrong. Katrina was a strong hurricane, but its not like Andrew wasn’t as bad, or a number of other storms that have hit in the four decades since the construction of the levee system. NOLA rolled the dice for 40 years and when it finally got unlucky it decided to call on FEMA / our government … to rebuild it.

Now here is the thing. You would think that that money would go towards a) building the sickest sea wall ever or b) moving out. However, the levee system is not nearly enough to stop another hurricane (like Gustav) or anything else for that matter until up until 2011. What? How does it take 6 years to throw some dirt on a hill. I know thats an extreme exaggeration but you think a little bit more effort would go into fortifying an entire city. So, 15 billion is going into a ‘plan’ to re-protect the city, but only 20% of that is done and the rest won’t be done for some time.

I wouldn’t rebuild a house there. In 2008 there are expected to be 8  hurricanes that hit the US, 4 of which will be major hurricanes, along with 15 tropical storms (because parts of the levee may not hold up to that).  Note that these are on the east coast (since on the West they are tsunamis), and that the Gulf of Mexico is sort of Hurricane Alley. So any resident of NOLA is rolling the dice that between 2005 and 2011 (6 years), that 1 of 48 (predicted) hurricanes will not hit close to the city (because if you remember Katrina wasn’t even a direct hit) . Yikes. Not odds I would bet my livelihood and home on.

While looking up some of these facts I found some other interesting tidbits such as parts of NOLA have sunk 3 feet in the past couple of decades, and some parts quite a bit more than that. Meaning a) the levees are lower than designed and b) the future of the city as a whole is seriously in doubt. Yikes, again.

So, it is with the above statements that I kind ask my government to not send my money to New Orleans this time around, that they can keep it and use it for other things, like re-painting the white house pink for Obama’s daughters…

P.S. Why stay in NOLA anyways? It sorta sucks outside the French Quarter, and really, you can move that anywhere. I hope I get hate mail.