Lemonjello's intermittent skullduggery

[mrmarket]

Any more lemons to be had?

[lemonjello]

I happened to be looking at the updated versions and remembered there were a lot of skeptics here when I originally posted them many moons ago.

Geez...You tricked me...I looked at your chart and said to myself..."Where'd he get this"?...So I went to SC and came back and that's when I noticed you posted an old chart...Now we are at the lowest in well over 20 years...I'd have to go somehere else to find it lower...If it ever was

[IIC]

Geez...You tricked me...I looked at your chart and said to myself..."Where'd he get this"?...So I went to SC and came back and that's when I noticed you posted an old chart...Now we are at the lowest in well over 20 years...I'd have to go somehere else to find it lower...If it ever was

[lemonjello]

How about this chart? Any guesses what it looks like now?

[lemonjello]

Anyone care to guess what this chart looks like now?

I put this together earlier this year. It's interesting, no? Any opinion from Elliott Wavers out there? (This is the SPX adjusted by the price of gold - or you might say US stock prices in real money )

As you can see the line is starting to curve back down again.

[mrmarket]

No question..people have a need for risk taking, and gambling scratches that itch. Build casinos closer to people and more will gamble.

[lemonjello]

Hit me

Still sticking with LVS and WYNN as potential 5-10 baggers. 08 Olympics coming they are going to be HUGE.

Macao surpasses Las Vegas as gambling centre

By the New York Times

SHANGHAI, Jan. 23 — Macao surpassed the Las Vegas Strip to become the world’s biggest gambling center in 2006, measured by total gambling revenue, according to industry analysts and government figures released today.

In the eight years since Macao, a former Portuguese colony on the coast near Hong Kong, was returned to Chinese control in 1999, it has experienced a huge boom in casino investment, and millions of mainland Chinese have been flooding into the tiny island territory to gamble.

As a result, gambling revenue soared by 22 percent in 2006, reaching $6.95 billion, according to figures released by the local administration today.

Las Vegas has not yet released its own full-year revenue statistics. But its cumulative figures were trailing those of Macao in the final months of last year, and analysts estimate that the 2006 total will come in around $6.5 billion.

Where Macao was once derided for its seedy gambling dens and endemic organized crime, it is now being referred to as Asia’s Las Vegas, and not just by the locals.

Hoping to ride the gold rush, some of the world’s biggest casino operators, including Las Vegas tycoons like Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn and Kirk Kerkorian, have agreed to invest more than $20 billion to outfit Macao with new luxury hotels, giant casinos and V.I.P. suites to cater to the apparently enormous gambling appetite of the mainland Chinese.

Macao is the only place in China where gambling is legal, and it is only in recent years that many ordinary Chinese people have been able to get permission to visit the city. Last year, some 22 million visitors poured in, most of them from China.

For investors, one of the big lures is that, on average, the city’s gambling tables pull in about seven times more money than tables in Las Vegas. The winnings are a testament to how serious the gamblers are in this part of the world, despite the fact that income per person in Chinese averages just $1,700 a year.

Other cities in the region are eyeing Macao’s success and rethinking their tourism strategies. For instance, Singapore is now planning to build its own casino resort, and Hong Kong officials have talked about allowing casino gambling.

But few rivals will be able to try to match Macao, which already has 24 casinos and over 2,700 tables in operation. To accommodate even more visitors, the 10-square mile city of 470,000 residents is expanding its airport and reclaiming broad tracts of land from the sea.

The city’s transformation began in 2002, with the expiration of the Macao billionaire Stanley Ho’s colonial-era 40-year monopoly on gambling in the territory. New licenses were issued to a handful of competing operators as well as Mr. Ho, and a construction boom began.

The city now has two giant Las Vegas style casino-hotels, the Sands Macao and the $1.2 billion Wynn Macau, which opened late last year with 600 guest rooms and about 200 gambling tables.

Mr. Ho’s family of casinos and entertainment palaces are also expanding, betting that the casino and entertainment pie will keep his profits growing rapidly enough to further enrich his empire even though it is now shared it with competitors.

But perhaps no one in Macao has quite the ambitions of Mr. Adelson, who operates Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Mr. Adelson says he plans to spend $4 billion to build whole Vegas-style strip, including a a 10.5 million-square-foot hotel, casino, shopping mall and entertainment complex that would include the world’s largest casino.

Part of the plan among investors is to transform Macao into more of a destination for conventions, entertainment and leisure, rather than simply an arena for hard-core gamblers, many of whom drive across the border from China and sleep in their cars rather than rent a hotel room.

Some analysts say Macao, ruled by Portugal for 450 years, is an ideal spot for such a destination because about 2.2 billion people live within five hours’ flying time of the city.

And Macao’s growth since 2000 has been spectacular, largely because China has liberalized its travel policies and allowed more of its citizens to visit Macao and other parts of the world.

In 2001, for instance, Macao reported about $2 billion in gambling revenues. Industry analysts expect four times as much in 2007.

Though Macao appears to have overtaken the Las Vegas Strip in 2006, it still lags far behind the state of Nevada as a whole, which reported close to $12 billion in gambling revenue in 2005.

Still, the Chinese government is not wholeheartedly supportive of the Macao gambling boom, because the city seems to attract the corrupt as well as the merely sporting.

Some of Macao’s highest rollers have been caught gambling with government money or with cash siphoned off from state-owned companies rather than their own funds. In 2005, for instance, Beijing said that more than 8,700 “party members and cadres” were punished for gambling.

In one publicized case, a married couple embezzled more than $50 million from the state-run Bank of China to pay off gambling debts in Macao.

Some analysts have also warned about overinvestment and about overly rosy forecasts of gambling revenue growth. But most analysts and investors have dismissed such talk and instead have watched the flood of gamblers into Macao.

In an interview, Mr. Adelson once said that turning Macau into the next Las Vegas was not rocket science.

“This is a no-brainer,” he said. “If you build it, will they come? In my mind, not only will they come, but they’ll come in droves.”

[lemonjello]

Strange days indeed

If the Saudi's are offering this they are extremely worried about an escalation into their Eastern Province. This is beyond bizarre and almost unbelievable. Back in the day the Saudis were hard desert fighters, but oh, how things have changed.

msnbc.com

By Alex Johnson and Andrea Mitchell
MSNBC and NBC News
Updated: 5:01 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2007

Saudi Arabia believes the Iraqi government is not up to the challenge and has told the United States that it is prepared to move its own forces into Iraq should the violence there degenerate into chaos, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Tuesday.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal made no effort to mask his skepticism Tuesday about President Bush’s proposal to send 21,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq to stem sectarian fighting.

“We agree with the full objectives set by the new plan,” Saud said at a joint news conference in Riyadh with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in the region selling Bush’s plan. “We are hoping these objectives can be accomplished, but the means are not in our hands. They are in the hands of the Iraqis themselves.”

In fact, Saudi leaders are privately “deeply skeptical” that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki could implement the U.S. plan, the senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, who is traveling with Rice.

The Saudi government has signaled in the past that it would oppose an early withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, fearing it would leave minority Sunni Muslims at the mercy of Shiite Muslim militias.

The Saudis’ primary concern is the Sunni population of Anbar province, the senior U.S. official. The official said the Saudis had informed Washington that they were considering a plan to send troops into the province if Bush’s plan failed.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the report, which Rice downplayed during a briefing for reporters. She said such a scenario was why it was important for the U.S. plan to produce a unified Iraq.
...

[lemonjello]

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

[lemonjello]

The usual suspects

How about some revolutionary quotes from an original radical. Somehow I don't think he'd be surprised by current events -


I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
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Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
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When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
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My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
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I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
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Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
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It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
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I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
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I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
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It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
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For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
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Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
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No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
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Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
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The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
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Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
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The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
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Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
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It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
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There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
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A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
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I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

[lemonjello]

Yup

posted 12-29-2006

There is at least one positive out of the Iraq war not in the media - the Kurds were as good as exterminated under Saddam. Now they are an autonomous region governing themselves quite well and keeping any insurgents/terrorists beat down in their region. I assure you, the Kurds are very happy with the way things worked out. Maybe the coalition should just leave the Kurds in charge of security in Iraq? They are some tough people. BTW, for the inquiring minds - the Kurds are not Arabs.

Kurdish Brigade Trains
For Baghdad Operation
Associated Press
January 13, 2007 1:21 p.m.

KIRKUK, Iraq -- An Iraqi army brigade based in the northern Kurdish region is undergoing intensive training in urban combat and will be dispatched to Baghdad as part of a new joint U.S.-Iraqi security drive in the sprawling and violence-ridden city, the commander said Saturday.

The brigade is one of two coming from the Kurdish region and a third brigade will come from southern Iraq. The second Kurdish brigade will come from the northern city of Sulaimaniyah.

"We will head to Baghdad soon. We have 3,000 soldiers who are currently undergoing intensive training especially in urban combat and how the army should act inside a city," said Brig. Gen. Nazir Assem Korran, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, 2nd Division of the Iraqi army that is based in Irbil.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in his first comments on the new Bush administration plan for restoring security in Baghdad, said the proposal was "identical to our strategy and intentions."

Mr. Maliki, however, continued to avoid naming the Mahdi Army Shiite militia, of one of his key supporters, as a target of the military operations to cleanse the capital of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia gunmen and death squads.

"Our strategy that aims to control security is based on using force against any outlaws whatever their background or identity," Mr. Maliki said in a brief appearance on state-run Iraqiya television. The prime minister told a small group of Iraqi reporters that "what we have seen in the American strategy is that it is identical to our strategy and our intention."

Gen. Korran told the Associated Press he did not know how the drive in Baghdad would be carried out but said the Defense Ministry had asked the brigade to take part in the security operation announced by Mr. Maliki a week ago.

Thousands of Iraqi and U.S. troops are expected to do neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches to clear the city of Sunni Muslim insurgents and local militias such as the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army has been blamed for much of the sectarian killing in the past months.

"We are going to confront any terrorist elements or militias. We will confront any outlaws," the general said.

Gen. Korran said his troops would face a language barrier because 95% of the brigade is Kurdish and unable to speak Arabic. Kurds, a separate ethnic group, are largely Sunnis but not Arabs. "I believe that we will bring translators with our brigade to solve this problem," he said.
...

[lemonjello]

The anti W

There seem to be a lot of armchair generals in the US now that have never been to war.

Here's a few quotes from one of the finest generals the USA ever had. His integrity is unimpeachable. He led the defeat of the real Axis of Evil at a point when things looked very bleak for the free democracies. He seems to be speaking about the present.

---------------------------------


I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
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When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.
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Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
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How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
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I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
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I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
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If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
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In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
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Only Americans can hurt America.
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The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
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The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
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There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
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This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
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Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
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Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
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War settles nothing.
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We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
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We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
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Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

President Dwight David Eisenhower

[lemonjello]

Remember this? Does anyone believe a nuclear sub could possibly run into an oil tanker by accident? This is a Los Angeles class attack sub probably carrying tomahawk cruise missles.


Bloomberg News
U.S. Submarine Hits Japanese Tanker in Arabian Sea
By Steven Bodzin and Megumi Yamanaka.


Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The US military submarine USS Newport News collided with a Japanese tanker in the Strait of Hormuz near the Arabian Sea, US Navy said in a statement.

There were no injuries and no damage that affected the navigational abilities of either vessel, Department of Defense spokesman Todd Vician said in a telephone interview. It's too early to establish the cause of the collision, he said, when asked how a submarine operating near a war zone could hit another vessel.

``Any time there's an accident there's a concern,'' Vician said. ``The Navy will be looking into it.''

The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and is an important shipping lane for transporting oil products from countries including Saudi Arabia and Iran. U.S. forces are still fighting an insurgency in Iraq at the northern end of the Persian Gulf nearly four years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The USS Newport News, a 360-foot (110-meter) nuclear- powered submarine, has 127 officers and crew, according to the U.S. Navy Web site. The crash with the Mogami Gawa happened at about 10:15 p.m. local time, the U.S. Navy said in a statement.

The Newport News was on a ``regular'' deployment carrying out ``maritime security operations'' under the U.S. Navy Central Command, the statement said.
Heading to Port

Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd., Japan's third-biggest shipping line which owns the ship, said no oil leaked from the tanker and the vessel was heading to port for inspection. The ship, which has a crew of 24, mostly Filipino sailors, was leased to Showa Shell, a Tokyo-based refiner. It's heading to port, according to Japan's Foreign Ministry.

Kawasaki Kisen leased the tanker, which can carry 2.11 million barrels of oil, to Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K., Japan's fifth-biggest refiner, under a long-term contract, the refiner's spokesman Jun Kimura said by phone today.

Crude oil the tanker was carrying belongs to a third party, Kimura said. Kimura declined to identify the company citing a confidentiality agreement.

The U.S. Navy in 2002 paid $11.5 million in partial compensation for sinking the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru a year earlier off the coast of Hawaii in an accident that left nine people dead.

The Ehime Maru sank within minutes of being struck by the 6,900-ton USS Greeneville submarine while it was demonstrating a rapid surfacing maneuver for 16 civilians on board near Hawaii's Oahu island.

Twenty-six people were rescued. The Feb. 9, 2001, incident caused anger in Japan and strained U.S.-Japanese relations.

The submarine's commander, Scott Waddle, was given a written reprimand and relieved of his command after an inquiry was told he rushed preparations for surfacing, such as failing to carry out a proper periscope search for ships in the area.

The DPG - or the Cheney Plan

http://www.harpers.org/DickCheneysSongOfAmerica.html

''the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years."

This is the nut of the pretext. This is a technology evaluation that has already been somewhat publicly debated in the U.S. media. Also, of course, subject to being quite self-serving of Israel interests, as was the U.S. invasion of Iraq, UNLESS, that is, Iran stands to gain increased control over the territory of southeast Iraq after the eventual U.S. military pullback. I've been interested in finding out how we get a sense of where the eventual long-term U.S. base(s) within Iraq will be located. Will the U.S. cede the Basra area to Iran? More likely than not when the chips are down? Will the U.S. cede anything west of Basra? Don't know.