Introduction to Blogging

This is going to be a multi-part series in which I go through steps to create, edit, and eventually customize a blog. If there is a demand for it, I can show you how to host your blog on your own web space (I use GoDaddy hosting). In this example your blog will be hosted at Blogger.com (Blogspot).

What do I mean by "hosting?" When you have information up on the web you have to have the source files for it somewhere. Just like a text document, the Internet is built on a connection of files. In order for you to have a blog up you have to have web "hosting" which Google provides for you through Blogger.com. If you are trying to get noticed, you can purchase your own web hosting and run the files from your own space.

Try to stay with me here: in my case, instead of my URL being everythingobjective.blogspot.com, the URL points to my own web hosting, not Blogger's hosting. So I can control my own URL, and I made it everythingobjective.com (which re-directs to blog.everythingobjective.com). In the future I can go in and make multiple blogs (ie politics, food, technology) and make their urls: tech.everythingobjective.com or politics.everythingobjective.com. Hosting from a site other than Blogger/blogspot.com will help your blog look more credible and enticing from an advertising standpoint.

Ok, first of all you need a Blogger account. Blogger is created by the guys at Google, that's why I chose this publisher to create a "How To" on first. You will need to set up an account with Google, or use your pre-existing Gmail account to login. AIM accounts work also for this login.

Google accounts are actually a great thing to have because of Google Docs. You can create and save documents, spreadsheets and presentations in Google Docs so that you have access to your files from everywhere. I'm actually editing this post in Google Docs in a document that I created in the library a few days ago on. This program comes with some caveats, though.

Formatting is limited so that the online editor only allows you to do minor changes like changing indents or font attributes. What I would recommend is editing the posts in Google Docs, saving frequently, and running the whole document via copy/paste through MS Word for format/ spellcheck issues before posting into the blogger "Compose" section under the Postings tab. Open a notepad document and paste the information into that before Blogger, because for some reason Blogger doesn't understand pasting directly from MS Word.

While blogging, don't be afraid to use the "Add to Dictionary" link in MS Word.

More to this series to come.

technology

Recently I have been finding that my questions online are often best answered by bloggers. I do search for a lot of Information Technology and web development knowledge., so this could be why. Bloggers are on the cutting edge of technology, because many of them have web development, programming or other communications backgrounds.

These experienced Internet specialists are king when it comes to extracting data from the web. Bloggers can utilize hyperlinking to display an immense amount of know-how, coupled with the ease of reading. And if the blog is linked correctly, it is often easy to follow their exact steps of action.

Also, more and more content development groups are using a sort of "thumbs up" or ranking system, that allows for the end users to moderate data. Link sharing through social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and obvious other mediums increase visibility for many sites. The lucky posters who are ranked near the top of Google have the combination of effective content and web traffic.

I have noticed that more and more bloggers are getting ranked above industry leaders in search result order. If your blog is informative, and can answer a simple, but generic question, your blog will be a hit magnet. Search engine optimization has a lot to do with routing this web traffic.

Advertisers are on board with this. If you find a good quality blog that provides good information and gets a lot of traffic, you are almost sure to see some ads on the page. So you can actually make money by blogging if you have the right things going for you!

In the next few weeks I'm going to put together some tutorials on blog making. It is free and relatively easy. And I'm going to try to set up a forum on my website so that people can post and answer questions on blogging. Stay tuned!

weekend update

Progressive Political Action Committee MoveOn.org has taken a firm stance on the Specter defection, and with good reason. The projected budget deficit for FY 2009 in the Keystone State was 3.2 billion dollars, which would trample the value of many seniors with social security and health benefits.

Mentioned in the link above, Specter has before flipped the coin to see who he’d be taking marching orders from. This time though, his hand may be slapped out of the way before he can catch the coin to look for heads or tails.

The day after positioning himself more to the left, Specter voted against President Obama’s budget and thus drawing a defining ideological line in the sand in Washington. The budget was the biggest piece of legislation to date for the Obama Admin. Specter’s party flip-flopping exposes a huge hole that exists in our bureaucracy: that of closed door, handshake meetings. But thank goodness, we live in a Democracy.

This entire situation, I believe, is turning into a classic “bait and switch” campaign. Obama said that he would campaign for the guy if he wanted to run for re-election as a Dem, but it’s likely that this promise was made when the Democratic primary was basically, a done deal. And I’d bet that the campaigning promised was designed to hit home near election time, after the primary.

With the pull out of MoveOn.org’s financial and grassroots clout, questions are looming in the Senior Senator’s head. MoveOn went to bat for Dems across the board in 2008, and the $38,123,090 that they spent running ads, strategizing and online organizing, no doubt, helped to swing many races. Now they have established themselves as progressive heavyweights, a voice to be reckoned with.

So what does all of this mean? Best case scenario, the Dems put up a few other candidates, including progressive Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, which will dilute Specter’s chances of winning the primary. Then, once Sestak wins out in round one, he will have a bruised Pennsylvania Republican Party opponent to beat up on in the general election. WHAMO! Now that is some “strategery.”

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

the link

Nowadays it seems like everyone is text messaging. I find that more of my friends are using text messages in lieu of a phone call to communicate, likely due to the ease of and convenience of using text. Often text is used in conjunction with an overbearing, micro-managing boss, a spouse, or even nature: I have heard it is convenient for hunting.

This week's link is devoted to that text message that you sent last night, that you probably shouldn't have.

www.textsfromlastnight.com

investment

click me for a better image ^

I'm reading the book The Automatic Millionaire by bestselling author David Bach. It is kind of timely that I am reading the book and getting involved in investing now, because a lot of the points he makes were valid until the economic downturn caused by the housing bubble bursting last year.

One of the biggest points that this author makes is that homeowners, not renters, are the ones who have the wealth in the United States. Again, this is something that would need to be viewed subjectively. When this book it was written he notes that the National Association of Realtors reported that there had never been a housing "bubble." Since then many people have lost their homes to foreclosure due to exploding ARMS (adjustable-rate-mortgages) that left them owing more money than their house was worth.

The problem with ARMS were that at any time the interest rate you were paying in your home could go up, and you were locked into this contract for in most cases 30 years. When the interest rate goes up homeowners were paying less on the principle of the loan and more on bank interest. Coincidentally, the National Association of Realtors is one of the heaviest lobbying organizations in the United States of America.

One fail-proof system that is mentioned in this book is to make an extra monthly payment every year on your mortgage. There are varying ways to do this he says, but the most inexpensive and easy is to add an extra 10% to your current monthly payment. Here is a calculation showing this difference on a $250,000 mortgage with a thirty year, 6.5% fixed interest rate.

click me for a better image v

At a glance, you are paying off your mortgage 7 years earlier! So if you crunch the basic numbers, $1580*12*7 = $132,720. This is a secret the banks do not want you to know.

Calculate a mortgage here at BankRate.com

technology

Facebook recently made some changes to its layout which caused a huge backlash amongst its users. Then they got smart, and implemented a bureaucratic structure so that the users could vote on these changes which I think is a good thing.

The crew at FB knows what they are doing, though. They realize that a few people still prefer Myspace to FB because of the functionality, less spam, etc.

Recently I have been exploring the new features they have added, and I find them to be quite effective. One issue that I had was with embedding video.

So today I am going to blog about how to embed video into your Facebook profile.

Step 1: find the video you want to embed
Step 2: see if there is a share link, and if FB is available amongst the share options
Step 3: if there is a share link for FB, give it a try. often you are done after this part
Step 4: share link doesn't work: see if there is an embed video link
Step 5: if there is an embed video link copy it and post it as a link in FB
Step 6: no embed video link: search for the video on YouTube
Step 7: you find the video on YouTube, look to the top right, copy the embed text inside the combo box
Step 8: go to your Home on FB, type in comment text, then paste copied text into link
Step 9: doesn't work: Go to the top of the page at YouTube and copy the url
Step 10: paste copied text into link after typing your comments into the top box
Step 11: if you can't get this video to work, try to find the same video with a different link, maybe the embedding is correct here or you can make it work with this video

On YouTube I usually try to find five star videos to embed because more often than not, they are linked correctly.

technology

I blogged in an earlier posting about Information Technology and how far it's come since I first got in during the early '90s. The need for information innovation drives the taxi of technology, while data is the fuel of this vehicle.

Companies like Google, a large cap (market capitalization) growth stock, sell for $400/share. This figure, down from $700/share last year, combined with the large market share of Google shows the emergence of IT futures in our society.

A friend linked a video the other day that you should see. It is a Viral Video (a bi-product of IT) about the IT of tomorrow. Credit goes out to Eich for linking and to Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman for the video creation.

politics

Early this week Senator Arlen Specter resigned from the Republican Party. This senior Senator from Pennsylvania played politics during this decision, as he did not want his thirty year career to end by losing the Republican primary in Pennsylvania.

Perfect example of a career politician. Now, you all have seen me mostly judge from the left on political issues. And this is an issue that I find to be non-partisan, meaning no political party is willing to take it on.

The reason that term limits have not been imposed on politicians is because, well, quite frankly they would have to be the ones to set the limits to this tenure. If your boss came up to you and said "We're having a vote later today on whether or not you should be able to work here for longer than 5 years," this would be a no-brainer.

Until there is a large scale movement to fund candidates through non-profits who are willing to argue the issue of term limits, there will never be an end to this. And this is a difficult proposition, because most non-profits tend to support one side or the other. This issue creates a catch 22 within our bureaucracy that is difficult to deal with.

In 1994 Conservative Think Tank the Heritage Foundation supported Newt Gingrich in a measure to try to impose term limits. I found an article from the Washington Post about this particular piece of legislation which failed to get the necessary 2/3 majority vote that year.

Read the Heritage Foundation's write-up on "Government Reform" here.

video

Hilarious hodgepodge of videos from last night's late night TV, by Politico.

the link

This week's link is dedicated to those who want to become engaged members of their society.

There has been a lot of talks since the economic downturn of last year. Many people commentate from the sidelines and not always do they know what they are talking about. These type of people are the greatest threats out there to our democratic society: ignorant voters.

Don't get me wrong, there are various campaigns of misinformation from both sides of the isle. That is why in order to objectively get to the bottom of it, one has to inform himself of current issues before going to cast a ballot.

Politico is a source from somewhere near the middle, that offers political information in as close to a bi-partisan manner as possible.

www.politico.com

food

Week 3

“The Pico”

Ingredients:
1 can of diced tomatoes
½ of a large white onion
2 or 3 good sized jalapenos
1 lemon
1 lime
1 bunch of cilantro
One package of tortilla shells approximately 10in. in diameter
One bottle of prepackaged spaghetti sauce

Start by cleaning off the grate of your oven if it is dirty, removing any burnt matter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut the tortilla shells in half, then take each side and continue to cut them in half until you have the desired size of your chips. Place the grate on your counter and lay the tortillas evenly along the grate. Cut one lemon and one lime in half and squeeze the juice over every piece of tortilla. Add a light coating of salt and pepper to the tortillas. Place the grate into the preheated oven for 10-13 minutes. You will want the tortilla to have a golden brown complexion and begin to curl up or down from the grate, it will not remain flat. Leave in a little longer if you want the chips to be super crunchy.

To prep the Pico de Galla put a fine dice on the onion, jalapenos, and cilantro. You will have to remove all leaves from the stem of the cilantro; you only want the leaves for the recipe. Discard the stems. Drain all liquid off of the tomatoes and pour them into a bowl.

Add the diced onion, cilantro and then the jalapeno. Gauge how hot you want the salsa by the amount of jalapenos. If you happen to have pickled jalapenos you can add a little bit of jalapeno juice to really heat it up.

Squeeze the juice from the remaining halves of the lemon and lime. Add in a small amount of spaghetti sauce and stir. You may want to add extra spaghetti sauce to the mix to create more salsa, use your own discretion with this. After you have all ingredients give it a stir again and place in a serving bowl.

Pull the chips out when done and enjoy!

Extra note: If you really want to get creative you can brown some hamburger meat, layer the chips with the Pico, meat and cheese and throw it in the oven to make nachos!

politics

I am a firm believer that everything in life happens for a reason.

Some people go to church to celebrate their faith. I, on the other hand, believe that every person can choose their own destiny and does not necessarily need to rely on a “supreme being” for guidance. This is my right as a United States citizen.

In my opinion there are some aspects of religion such as anti-abortion tactics from right-wing fundamentalists which have created overpopulation that will burden our country and tax structure for years to come. Non-widespread belief in the use of birth control is a perfect example.

We barely have the ability to educate and care for the people that we have currently in the US. Personally, Plan B has prevented my life from possibly dramatically changing twice. What I find to be funny is that the same pundits who support right-to-life and are for privatized healthcare are the ones who love to accuse minorities of milking the tax system, very contradictorily.

Another thing that is quite funny is that these same critics of “socialized medicine” love to criticize those who go to the hospital and get care, for free, on the back of the American taxpayer. That’s pretty socialized already, isn’t it? We are just paying retroactively rather than proactively.

This is true especially in the rural south, where because of long lasting segregation and poor schooling, the black community was set back and hit hard for generations. This trend makes for an easy scapegoat, though.

Intelligence developed from a second class education and poor mental health, generation after generation, has stunted evolution of the black community in the Deep South. Depression and attention deficit affect people of all colors, and believe me, are serious risks to the advancement of education. And treatment doesn’t come at an affordable cost to even those who are affluent.

My private healthcare plan spiked from $80 initially to over $130/month (and rising) for just the premium. This was over the period of eight months. I asked why it was going up in cost and never got a clear answer, nor could they promise it would stop. I wasn’t happy with this answer and cancelled.

What I am saying about this very controversial issue is that improving secondary education and healthcare for all will be an immeasurable service that we can do to the future generations of this country as a whole. The cost of employing this strategy, in the long run, will save taxpayers trillions of dollars in medical expenses by helping folks make better decisions and live healthier, more productive lives.

investment

I wanted to share some useful tidbits discovered in this book I’m reading by bestselling New York Times author David Bach, titled The Automatic Millionaire.

Obviously I want to be rich, who doesn’t? And I’m not talking about becoming a disconnected billionaire like some of these folks who have been in the news recently. I could settle with having beachfront property in the southeast and a home in the mountains, coupled with a lucrative trust to pass down to the children.

In the book I’m reading there are some very useful and simple pieces of information that can help a person retain wealth. Some of the main points state that you don’t have to have a six figure income to be wealthy. In fact, the author points out that if you make millions of dollars a year and spend it all, you will never become wealthy (unless you hit the lottery, win some massive lawsuit etc.)

This strategy involves cutting useless daily spending (he deems this the “Latte Factor”), purchasing only your home on credit, and paying yourself first. The first two steps in this solution are virtually no-brainers, but allow me to describe the latter.

Paying yourself first involves taking a small deduction (10%) out of your paycheck automatically every time and putting it away into an investment vehicle. He makes the point that once you get used to not having the extra 10% in your pay, and you automate the process, you can sit back and let your money work for you. My calculus teacher in High School taught the same principle; some of you may even know her! So remember before you go and blow that $5 at McDonalds every morning for breakfast to always pay yourself first!

military

Yesterday insurgents of the Taliban took control of a small region about sixty miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The United States sees this advance as a flex in power and a potential threat to the nuclear arms that exist within Pakistan. The Pakistani military is the second most powerful in the world, but due to tough economic situations within the nation, the Taliban believes this is the time to take over the government and change it to an extremist state.

The Pakistani government has yet to comment on what type of stance they are going to take on the advancing militants. Surely they have the ability to defend the capital city, but why have they not thwarted the attack already?

The Taliban has made its training and its home in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan since day 1. Perhaps for this reason it is in the best interest of the Pakistani military to allow the Taliban to advance onto a more preferred battlefield closer to the city? Either way I am closely following this breaking story to see how successful the Pakistani military is in defending its nation’s capital.

food

Week 2

“Steeplechase” Sangria

Ingredients:
2 large containers of fresh strawberries
2 gallons of water
4 cups of sugar
.5 gallon of citrus punch or orange juice
1.5 liters of non-sweet white table wine (not chardonnay)
.75 liters of strawberry schnaps
.75 liters of triple sec (liqueur)
1 liter tequila
1 bunch mint leaves

Day 1:

Bring two gallons of water to boil on the stove with four cups of sugar in it. Make sure that the water is boiling when you add the sugar and stir until it dissolves, creating simple syrup.

Add ten 5in. sticks of cinnamon and allow the mix to steep in the refrigerator for the rest of the day.

Day 2:

To prep ingredients cut 1.5 - 2 large containers of strawberries. First remove the top of the strawberry and place it upside down on your cutting board. Make two cuts that are perpendicular to each other, splitting the strawberry evenly from the top into four equal sized pieces.

Remove cinnamon sticks and pour simple syrup into a two gallon pitcher.

Measure out two cups of simple syrup and pour into a one gallon (or two quart) pitcher. Add in one cup of strawberry schnapps, one cup of citrus punch, one cup of triple sec liqueur, one cup of tequila, two cups of white wine (I used pinot grigio/chenin blanc) and 1.5 cups of strawberries.

Put plastic wrap tightly around the top to seal the mixture, and allow it to steep in the refrigerator for three or four days. Serve with ice in large drink glasses and garnish with mint leaf. This recipe yields about five gallons.

earth

Everyone knows there has been much debate over the issue of global warming. Conservation and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have been leaders of this movement, by putting heavy pressure on elected officials and staging public demonstrations to take a firm stance.

This year, for the first time ever, the Environmental Protection Agency stated publically that global warming is a real threat to the planet. Soon there will be stringent penalties imposed to those who dump toxic chemicals into the environment.

I remember learning about global warming in elementary school. We had a little jingle about recycling that I recall today: “Recycle, reduce, reuse, and close the loop.” The analogy of a car with its windows rolled up during the summer, while heat was getting trapped inside of it was a good learning tool.

Young people today are more conscious of global warming than any generation ever before has been. Congress is acting quickly to curb damages, and with any luck, we could soon be a nation powered in part by renewable energy. Just like we are leaders in fields such as engineering, science and technology, the United States has a duty to the industrialized world to set pace for curbing climate change.

Earth Day is tomorrow and I want to urge everyone out there to do something to reduce their environmental footprint for the day.

Starting a recycling program at home is easy, and it can save you money! First, check with your local recycling program to see what they will take.

The first place to look for material to recycle is in your kitchen. Everything from aluminum and tin cans, plastic from product packaging, and that junk mail on your kitchen table are probably all recyclable! To be sure look for the logo on the bottom of the container or on the packaging.

Once you have determined what is recyclable, set up a small trash can with a plastic grocery bag in it as a liner. Make sure to rinse out cans and drain all liquids to prevent having a mess to clean up! Throw in everything you come across until the bag is full, tie it up and toss it in your bin outside. After replacing the bag for the second time in one week you will notice that you are significantly reducing your load in the garbage and saving money on trash bags. You may even want to look into a Pay-As-You-Throw program, where you will only be billed monthly for the amount of trash you consume.

the link

Have you ever thought that you had that dynamite idea? The next big thing has to start somewhere, but how to do you know if you have the keys to the car? There are a few ways you can develop your idea if you think that you may be ahead of the curve.

One way to be able to tell if your idea is golden is to do research on it to see if there is a similar idea out there. The Internet is a great place to start. You can formulate a list of keywords and send them through any search engine, and if the product or service is already out there you will most likely be able to see it in the first few results. If you don’t see it initially, dig deeper.

Another good bet is to always jot down a note of the idea and file it away somewhere. If you feel it is a good idea, make it a secret place.
An important thing to mention is that there are a lot of sharks out there. Be careful who you discuss your idea with.

If you are friends with someone who is an innovator or creator by trade in a similar field, maybe try using this person as a sounding board.

Or, if you just want to be lazy, you can put the idea up for sale. This week’s link is devoted to the ability to sell intellectual property, or the Idea Trade Network.

http://www.newideatrade.com/

markets

Please read my disclaimer before continuing.

The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch division has an interesting article on their website over the weekend that is extremely optimistic. Here are a few snippets from this write-up:

“Oil, a commodity that's highly sensitive to the economic cycle, has rebounded about 48% from a February low to just over $50 a barrel even though U.S. demand is running low and stockpiles are near 19-year highs.”

The price of oil last year spiked to all time highs during the summer, and then was driven (heh) lower by demand in the next months. Since then the price/barrel has fluctuated greatly. One thing holds true: the more people commute the more money they have as expendable income. If you don’t have $30 to fill up the gas tank you sure don’t have the same amount to eat at Outback.

Consumer spending is a key indicator of economic growth. Companies see increased revenue when consumers have duckets to shell out. If the company is publically traded company the ask price of their stock will go up proportional to revenue (as long as nothing dramatic happens).

Here is another snippet from the article:

“Gold, embraced when the economic outlook worsens, has toppled to about $868 an ounce from more than $1,000 in late February.”

When folks think they are going to lose money in the stock market, they pull out and travel into more secure, lower yield products such as gold and treasuries. The price of gold and the stock market have a directly inverse relationship.

On the same subject eTrade Financial Company (ETFC) stock has been on my watch list since I first opened an account with them. I’m kicking myself now that I didn’t purchase shares earlier this week; the share price has almost doubled. If eTrade gains value that means they are opening new accounts and receiving fees from the purchase of investment products, circulating new money into the system.

The week that the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 700 points after hitting 6500 I called the bottom on Facebook, something no economist has had the guts to do. Bottom line is that in my opinion, it is the time to get in if you have the means to do so!

market disclaimer

Disclaimer: Stock Market opinions and information provided in this blog are for entertainment purposes. I am not a spokesperson for a wealth management group or a financial advisor. Opinions represented here are merely my take on the American Stock Market. Securities contain risk and may lose value.

technology

For many years the Internet has been an ingredient in my daily life. I remember back in 90’s during the first days of AOL, they offered a trial Internet offer of 500 or 1000 minutes. This was mailed out on a CD, the cutting edge media for those days. We used a modem to connect to AOL at blazing speeds of up to 12.5kb/second.

Not only the information technology (IT) was lacking, there was also a lack of intuition coming from developers and packagers of these products. At the age of twelve or thirteen the Internet started getting discovered and mined by my family, myself being the driving force of curiosity. Around the same time my brother and I discovered that you could re-order another CD from AOL, disconnect your current account when it got to the house, pop in the CD, and simply create a new user name to use the trial version again.

Many things have changed in the past fifteen years in IT. Cyber security is an issue on the minds of everyone from an identity theft victim, to a website designer and even the US State Department. Last year during the Russia/Georgia fiasco, a massive denial of service attack on Georgia’s information systems caused devastation of unmeasured proportions.

What does the future of IT hold for the developing world? Is it possible that we could ever have a Terminator 2 type scenario? The artificial intelligence (AI) is there. In fact we have been using drone planes (no pilot) to do a lot of bombing in the mountains of Afghanistan.

AI and bionics/prosthetics are of particular importance to me for two main reasons: strong opposition to the Iraq war, and that if this technology was affordable and readily available, it could dramatically change my father’s life.

When pops was a child, he was diagnosed with the Polio virus. Although this condition was eradicated right around that time, he did not escape its wrath. Doctors said he would never be able to walk. Through sheer determination and the great work of doctors and rehabilitators at the Shiners Hospital, he has been able to live a “healthy” lifestyle. He’s is fifty-four years old and he walks every day. Polio attacks the nerves on one side of the body, and so even though he is able to walk decently, he has never been able to use his left arm effectively.

I wanted to share a video with you about new developments by a bright group, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA teamed up with the creator of the Segway and scientific venture capitalist Dean Kamen in conjuncture with President Obama’s new $100 million research program, “Revolutionizing Prosthetics.”

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NEWS ARTICLE AND VIDEO

politics

Mid week memo from the desk of Governor Rick Perry:

Wednesday- tea bagging, political posturing
Thursday- secede from the United States
Friday- golf

I’m not sure if any of you guys heard about the Governor of Texas and his statements yesterday, but I feel the need to weigh in on this topic.

First and foremost, what happened the last time a Texas Governor decided to be a leader? I think we’re all familiar with that state of affairs. So apparently Governor Rick Perry has had an eventful week, promoting fellow tea baggers on tax day and now threatening to secede from the United States. As Keith Olbermann notes in the video, it is quite funny that a prominent Texas politician would comment on higher taxes, seeing as they get back 88% of their tax dollars. Who’s next, Alaska complaining about taxes? Foresight would lead me to believe that if Texas or Alaska were to succeed from the United States, they would likely be taxed substantially more by every nation on the planet.

Border violence from Mexican drug cartels is near an all time high, does Texas have the ability to fight and win the battle against South America?
If one really digests this statement, it could be viewed as an anti-American sentiment.

I am predicting a heavy democratic majority so long as the GOP has spokespersons such as this distinguished gentleman from Texas. The whole scenario reminds me of an old saying: “It’s better to have people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

markets

If you are reading this blog and are between the ages of 18 and 30, I would like you to take particular interest in this entry. All information provided in this posting is just that, information. I am not a spokesperson for a wealth management group, and opinions represented here are merely my take on the American Stock Market. Securities contain risk and may lose value.

So there is much speculation about the market right now. Critics of the Administration rail that obsessive government spending for “socialist” programs including health insurance coverage, unemployment assistance and mortgage re-financing, are undermining our capitalistic economy. The backlash of the bailout of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailouts are an often pegged point.

Now, I’m going to take a firm stance on this. Pundits are speculating that the stock market could plummet in the near or long term future. That inflation from the government borrowing and spending will stunt gross domestic product (GDP) and leave your children with the tax burden. This is actually a pretty effective technique from conservatives to drive consumer confidence to the floor, thus making the Administration seem less effective and promoting slow growth of the market.

Objectively looking at this, if you have some extra cash and do your research, the time to buy stock is now. After the collapse in late 2008 the capital market has been a hungry hungry hippo for cash, gobbling up stake as it comes its way. I wanted to share an excel spreadsheet of how I have been doing since initially investing. It is mention worthy to note that I have been studying the stocks that I invested in since the summer of last year.

This research came from news briefs from websites such as the Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch, Bloomberg News, and most importantly from simply watching the stock market through my eTrade brokerage account. Having this account open has been the biggest tool that I used in making these decisions, because eTrade offers data analysis of each stock. These analyzation tools are updated weekly opinion statements by groups such as Thomson Reuters, Standard & Poor’s, Jaywalk Consensus Report from ConvergEx Group, and Market Edge Second Opinion.

CLICK THIS LINK TO VIEW MY CURRENT PORTFOLIO

congrats

I just want to send big CONGRATULATIONS to my little bro for his accomplishments yesterday!

It was quite an interesting day in the history of this friend and relative's life; he left on a journey to visit the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He mentioned that the campus was nice in Virginia but I know him, he was really curious to see what DC and in the next days New York City had to offer.

Coincidentally, on this day this young man shared the campus of Georgetown University with our current President, Barack Obama. This perk, not foreseen during the initial trip planning process, would set the stage for what could be one of the most exciting days of his life. Inevitably spirits were high during this occasion, and I believe this coincidence melded a strong framework of conviction and interim success.

Set out to tour New York University on Thursday, my dad and he found limited time to tour the school in DC. The admissions staff at the University was top notch and busy as a bee, nonetheless they made personal time to speak with and accommodate the family.

As the two were about to leave after their tour and a quick Q&A session, a nice employee of the University equipped my brother with a packet deemed a “parting gift.” Undoubtedly this present was the gift that keeps on giving: Georgetown Law admission information. CONGRATS BRO!!!

politics

the link

This link could be anything from something in the news to a new product or service that is going to be available. A funny website or any random link.

Common Cause (non-profit)
A call for accountability. Finally a group who is willing to stick to their guns and put pressure on elected officials to use transparency within their political campaigns, especially in regard to campaign finance reform.
www.commoncause.org

food

Here are some recipes that I have put together over time.

They are a collection of recipes from friends, family, and complete strangers who all joined together for a common cause: great food.

WEEK 1

Citrus BBQ stacked Crackers with Pepper Jack and Mushrooms

All ingredients should be cut to a little under 1/8 an inch.

To prep, cut sausage on a bias, cut Pepper jack, cut mushrooms.

Cook sausage at medium heat for 5 minutes, flipping every now and again.

Add mushrooms to the pan, increasing heat to medium-high for 5 minutes, then turn the heat onto high (the idea is you want to char the sausage a little bit on each side).

De-glaze the pan with orange juice or pineapple, the fresher the better, and allow the mix to simmer on a medium heat for 5 minutes. Use a spoon to get any burnt stuff off of the bottom of the pan when you start doing this because it will add an incredible flavor once it breaks down and adds to the liquid in the pan.

Allow the mix to cool and it should condense into a citrus bar-b-q sauce, sausage and mushrooms. Place sausage on top of a cracker or bread, place mushroom on top of the sausage, and then top it off with a piece of pepper jack. Stick a plain wooden toothpick (without the frill) to stabilize if necessary. Place as many as you can make in a pan and put them on broil at 400% for about 2 minutes or until the cheese is melted, locking in the delicious flavor-ness. Serve and impress.