Number one in the hood, G!

You may have heard of the Boston bomb scare that closed down half the city today? Yeah it was a marketing campaign by Cartoon Network. Now tell me, how the fuck does this look like a bomb?

More Detailed Pictures Absolutely no place for explosives. If the duct-taped batteries even were C4 they wouldn't do shit with that amount in an open area.

(Quotes from a CNN article)
"Electronic light boards featuring an adult-cartoon character triggered bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday, spurring authorities to close two bridges and a stretch of the Charles River before determining the devices were harmless. Nine were reported around Boston on Wednesday, sending police bomb squads scrambling and snarling traffic and mass transit in one of the largest U.S. cities. The discovery of nine of the devices around metro Boston led state, local and federal authorities to close the Boston University and Longfellow Bridges, and block boat traffic from the Charles River to Boston Harbor."

Rep. Ed Markey, the senior member of the state's House delegation, said, "Whoever thought this up needs to find another job."

No, dumbass you need to get a new police force. Here is a clue – if a terrorist was going to plant a bomb somewhere it would not be in an immediately visible location and would sure as hell not light up at night! Also, great job finding these "bombs" 2 weeks after they were placed. Sure does make me feel safe.

"Scaring an entire region, tying up the T and major roadways, and forcing first
responders to spend 12 hours chasing down trinkets instead of terrorists is marketing run amok," Markey, a Democrat, said in a written statement. "It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt."

No, this was a brilliant publicity stunt since the completely harmless lightboards will now put the show on every major TV network and the city of Boston paid for 90% of this advertising.

"I want to be certain that we take all of these reports very seriously," Mayor
Menino said in a written statement. "The coordinated response by all departments proves the system we have in place works."

No, it just shows you are more than willing to waste millions of taxpayer money and cause mass panic on something without stopping for a second to think about what precisely is going on.

Some officials have blamed Turner Media for not notifying the authorities of this marketing campaign and I agree they should have done that, however I believe that they legally had to have written an application in order to post something on city property anyways which makes me think that they did submit a notice and the city office just took the advertising fee without reading the report and ignored/forgot about it and are now trying to blame Turner for their own gross negligence and incompetence. Smoooth.

Bear Market Brides

Trader Daily has this column about traders and their crazy relationships. This month they talk about the pitfalls of having your work stress spill over into your personal life. While I agree that you should make every effort to not project your problems onto your partner, there is one case where I feel the trader was faultless.

Another trader named Dave was in his late 20’s and was in a long distance relationship with a woman in South Florida. He would spend his earnings on flying her into NYC and for him to fly down to the sunny beaches of Miami every other week. He worked 8-hour days and dealt with the frustrations of trading within the very volatile natural gas sector. Never a dull moment. Everyday that he misinterpreted the direction that this sector would take, he feared that he
would lose his job. He was under great stress.

He recounted a time that his girlfriend called him at work to tell him about her tough day as an elementary school teacher. She told a dramatic tale about how stressful it was when her student named Billy skinned his knee during recess and she had to take him to the nurse with blood trickling from his leg. Dave felt completely detached from this story, not having the ability to empathize with her perceived job stress. He pretended to care about her story and quickly ended the phone call to go out for drinks with his buddies.

The fact is that unless your teacher girlfriend is at a school where the faculty has to wear bulletproof vests chances are she doesn't have anywhere near as much stress as you do. Trader "Dave" actually went above and beyond the call of duty by taking his girlfriend’s call during work and listening to her story with any interest, be it feigned or not.

I've found that for some women drama is a competition and they always want to have more of it than their partner. Every tale of woe you tell will be seen as a challenge, and if you ever have the gall to imply that her trifles aren’t serious prepare for nuclear war. Relationships with individuals in other high-stress professions is arguably the best way to have someone who understands your daily stress and also has the sort of issues you can empathize with. I recommend surgeons as they have the added perk of being good with their hands.

Hippies in Texas. First sign of the Crapocalypse.

Hippies protest TXU Coal Plants

I think hunger strikes are great, but only when followed through all the way. I also think they should douse themselves with gas and burninate themselves outside the building. That will show those damn profit-maximizing korporations!
Seriously, this is friggin TEXAS. Is there nowhere in the world that’s safe from these parasites? We need to get Cartman over there, stat!

Die Hippie! Die!!!

Some choice quotes from the above article:

Wilder, TXU CEO, is United Way CEO of the Year in Dallas, where the company is based, and TXU employees donated 20,000 hours of volunteer service in 2005.

That sounds pretty irresponsible to me. I mean that's just 3 hours per employee. Those capitalist scumbags!

While the plants will meet federal clean-air standards, the critics say TXU is ignoring alternatives that pollute the state's air less than coal does.

Yeah, companies need to regulate themselves - but we still need to pay taxes to fund wonderfully useful organizations like the EPA - whose researched standards are apparently not good enough.

``TXU is purposely misleading the public in order to build old-technology coal plants the cheapest way possible to get the biggest return on their money,'' Dallas Mayor Laura Miller said.

Gee Willickers! A company trying to make money for its shareholders? That’s evil incarnate! Milton Friedman is rolling in his grave.

``This company is a renegade company that's way out of control, and they need to be responsible to the community,'' said Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition in Austin, Texas.

Renegade?! Out of control? In a separate comment this raving lunatic said that the new plants will cause “premature deaths” in Texas! Also, every time you buy a handgun 400 children in Africa get executed.

Hadden, 50, and two other environmentalists went on a 10- day hunger strike before the November elections to attract attention to their fight against coal-fueled power and demand a meeting with Perry. Hadden, who said she consumed only a concoction of water, lemon juice, red pepper and maple syrup, succeeded only in metting a meeting with a Perry staff member.

OK – Hunger Strike is not Fear Factor, so you don’t get to drink some weird hippie smoothie and as we all know maple syrup has plenty of calories. Anyways, it looks like you got some reserve fat in there tubby!

McCall said the new generators will reduce the state's reliance on gas, thereby pulling down power prices, and will add the capacity needed to increase system reliability.

See, I call this helping the community by reducing their energy prices, but that's rational thinking and rational thinking is immoral.

Two months after TXU announced its plan, NRG said it would spend $16 billion to boost capacity in the U.S., including nuclear and gas-fueled generation in Texas. The plants will cost more and take longer to build than TXU's. In the six months after TXU's announcement, its shares jumped 35 percent. In the same period, shares of Princeton, New Jersey-based NRG fell 1 percent.

That’s what you get for pandering to hippies, NRG! Seriously, hippies gotta go.

cause for restrained optimism

Finally, Lukashenko has backed down like a good little lapdog:

With the European Union voicing alarm and criticism and Russia threatening an all-out trade war against its former ally, the two countries' presidents -- Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko -- held talks by telephone Wednesday. Soon after, Belarus' government announced the cancellation of the $45 duty, and Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky announced he would fly to Moscow on Thursday for meetings with his Russian counterpart.A top Kremlin official said the decision was "cause for restrained optimism," but it remained unclear when pumping would resume across the 2,500-mile-long Druzhba pipeline network, which feeds Germany, Poland and other East European nations.

Now we can get back to your regularly scheduled exploitation of the West.

In other news, it looks like Delta may have found a White Knight in Northwest. Also Continental is apparently another United target. Here’s one possible scenario:
Northwest has preferred Continental shares and may be willing to sell them to United if it withdraws its hostile bid for Delta, allowing Northwest and Delta to merge smoothly.

Update: Putin's Hardball Felt on RTS

Russia's main equity index, RTS, dropped 6.7% today as Putin said that oil production may need to be scaled down as it considers diverting oil from Belarus completely. If this was to happen:

• All Russian oil companies will have to cut production because they don’t have enough storage capacity (Lukoil is down 9% today because of this).
• Belarus would be nearly bankrupted and have no energy and its government would be lynched.
• All countries serviced by the Druzhba pipeline would be screwed as well since Russia has no immediate way to supply them.
• After the new pipeline is built there’s no telling if Europe would still want anything to do with Russia.

Ukraine Redux

Russia Cuts off Belarus: NYT Link
In all honesty, I agree with Russia in that it should not charge former Soviet republics below-market rates. USSR is no more, and there are no reasons for these subsidies (as there were during communism, and especially during the Cold War, when Russia would give more money per capita to a Cuban/Vietnamese citizen than to its own). The mistake is that instead of instituting a program that gradually weans a country off the subsidized rates, which are often at over 50% below market, Russia decided to simply hike them in one fell swoop.
The problem is that the pipelines extend to Russia’s wealthy EU customers, and while they may let Putin play his games and assassinate a couple of expatriates with polonium – it’s all over when energy supply is at stake.
Russia’s strategy didn’t work well with Ukraine and it won’t work with Belarus – at least not without an undue amount of ruckus that will further strain relationships and loosen Russia’s chokehold over Europe. You can only push someone so far until they seek other (more expensive, but more reliable) contracts. The EU could always make Kazakhstan an offer that they can’t refuse, even though the country has sworn allegiance to Putin.
On the other hand, Putin is smart and cunning, if completely amoral. Surely he learned from Ukraine, so he must have some plan at work unless he is just completely drunk with power and wants to go on a bender before 2008 when he said he’ll step down (but remain “in a position where he can help the people” – that is become a puppetmaster.)
My guess: Putin no longer cares that much about how he’s seen by the West, he wants to give Gazprom as much power and reserves as possible then take control of the firm once he cedes his presidency. Only time and the markets will tell the truth.