Sippican Cottage

Sippican Cottage is a great blog. The guy always has good you-tube videos plus he is is a genius philospher. Click below to see a great Monty Python skit.

http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2008/08/this-video-is-unlabeled-but-i-think-its.html

High Cost of College

Wow - John Edwards is speaking to a student group at a public university in Illinois. He will be paid a speaking fee of $65,000! Click on the link if you doubt my word.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1134374,CST-NWS-edwards29.article

Fat Eddie Rendell Is Full Of Soup

The Philadelphia media specifically and the MSM generally give Governor Ed Rendell 150% non-stop 24-7's favorable spin on everything he does and just about every word he utters.

So it is funny to hear Fat Eddie whining about MSNBC, one of the unofficial branches of the DEM Party. He claims MSNBC was way more favorable to Obama than to his girl, Hillary! Too too funny. In effect, Fat Eddie is proving what Republicans have known for years! The MSM is biased and liberal- I am shocked.

BTW- Pennsylvania has a new info access law and I am going to request copies of every press release that Fat Eddie's office sent to the Inquirer's idiotors so they could publish as a "news story".

[click on the post title above to read the story about Fat Eddie whining].

Jimmy Rollins

My Favorite all-time Phillies player:

My favorite all-time Phillie is Jimmy Rollins. He won an MVP last year and he replaced Lenny Dykstra who was my former favorite all-time Phillie. I don't remember if I had an alltime favorite before Dykstra. Possibly Jim Bunning, who pitched a perfect game on my birthday in 1964.

If you are a baseball fan, you can tell what type of players I like.

Rollins was my favorite several years before he won the MVP. He plays hard, can hit for average and for power and is always smiling. And he can motor around the bases too. I wish he'd work the pitchers more ala Dykstra.

Philadlphia Sports Fans Are NOT ANY SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE FAN

There is a longstanding myth that Philadelphia sports fans (and I am one) are so smart and informed. FWIW - this is a myth (origin unknown) and is in fact a big steaming load of bullshit.

Ryan Howard won Rookie of The Year and an MVP Award the next year. I have heard dumb ignorant Phillies fans boo him on several occasions. They are truly dumb and ignorant. They are not smart nor informed sports fans contrary to the myth that gets mouthed everytime a national sports crew comes to Philly to do a big game.

Let me repeat Philadelphia fans are no better nor smarter than the average fan in any city. BUT Philadelphia Eagles fans may be dumber than average. My evidence is I still remember when an Eagles fan called into the sports talk radio and asked if Dan Klecko would get any reps and carries at fullback. First, Klecko will be lucky if he makes the team and WTF does anyone with half a brain care if a 4th-string tackle gets to play 3rd -string fullback. Sheesh!

200 State Troopers To Guard One Governor ?

Click on the post title. It takes you to a NY Post story that reports the NY governor is increasing his state police security detail from 150 troopers to 200!

WTF does a stinking governor need 200 troopers for?

Home Field Advantage

I was watching the Olympics last night. I swear the pommel horse was on a hydraulic lift and it was lowered slightly just before the Chinese competitors got ready to do their dismount! That is out and out cheating - anyone else notice that?

Do you think the Red Chinese are monitoring my blog?

The Arkansas Project

Click on my post title - this new blog (The Arkansas Project) decries the expansion of state-run lotteries to raise more and more money to fund govt spending run amuck. I agree wholeheartedly.

Freeman Hunt is one of the blog's writers and I am familiar with her name as she comments on the Althouse blog.

Exxon Made 7 Cents Per Gallon Produced

Exxon released its quarterly earnings last week. There was a great hue and cry because it made $11 Billion in the quarter after taxes. The MSM had TV cameras in gas stations and showed some drivers whining about the price of gas. One said "why can't they give back some of their profits and lower the price of gas?".

So, I did the MSM's job and asked myself "how much did Exxon make per gallon"? Without knowing that, I could not determine if Exxon could lower it price for gas. And if it did give back some of its profits, would that have an impact on our pocketbooks?

Anyway, here is what I did:

• I did the googles on the internets and found Exxon's 2nd Quarter earnings report (took two minutes).
• Next I printed the report (took another two minutes).
• Read the report to find some statistic that would tell me how many gallons of gas they produce (took 15 mnutes).
• Found their "Oil Equivalent Production" was 3,801 KOEBD which I think means 3.8 Billion barrels of oil products (took my 30 minutes to get my brain around this concept).
• Next I made a presentation & analysis decision (remember I am a financial analyst. I am not bound by GAAP rules of financial reporting) and decided to use this metric to calculate Exxon's profit per gallon:
• {Exxon profit after tax divided by gallons of petrleum produced = profit per gallon}.
• Next I had to convert barrels to gallons. Had to do the googles again and found there are 42 gallons to a barrel (took me 15 minutes). Hope that is accurate.
• So here is the calculation:
• 3.8 billion barrels time 42 gallons per barrel = 159.6 billion gallons produced
• Exxon made $11.7 Billion
• $11.7 Billion divided by 159.6 billion gallons produced means they made a windfall profit of 7.3 cents per gallon (snark alert).

So if Exxon gave up half of their profit, next time you gas up you will save 3.6 cents per gallon. For a car with a 20 gallon tank that is a savings of almost 75 cents!! Or six bits as they used to say.

And that is my two cents - too bad the MSM can't do stuff like this. Maybe I should offer to school those journalists.