KGB Report by Kevin G. Barkes

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(July 2000 and earlier)

Saturday, September 27, 2008
posted by KGB at 12:19 AM (permalink)

Margin of error

What's wrong with this picture?

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Friday, September 26, 2008
posted by KGB at 4:26 PM (permalink)

Retirement planning 101

(A bit outdated, but conceputally dead on. Thanks to Fred Verno.)

If you had purchased $1000 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.

But, if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund you, would have $214.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

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posted by KGB at 7:43 AM (permalink)

"John McCain is the only man who can impulsively overreact to something 10 days old. "

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posted by KGB at 12:46 AM (permalink)

Don't say you weren't warned...

From March 8, 2008.

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posted by KGB at 12:01 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.
-Ron Paul

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Thursday, September 25, 2008
posted by KGB at 9:27 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

In a presidential campaign, the surest sign that a candidate is playing politics on an issue is when he claims not to be playing politics on an issue.
-John Dickerson (Slate)

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posted by KGB at 8:16 AM (permalink)

Takes of our Founders

Benjamin Franklin:

A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.

An empty bag cannot stand upright.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it.

In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at the top.

Many foxes grow gray, but few grow good.

Necessity knows no law; I know some attorneys of the same.

Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but nothing in this world is certain but death and taxes.

George Washington:

Few men have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Prosperity destroys fools and endangers the wise.

John Adams:

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery of party, faction, and division of society.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other.

These bickerings of opposite parties, and their mutual reproaches, their declamations, their sing-song, their triumphs and defiances, their dismals and prophecies, are all delusion.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

Thomas Jefferson:

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should all want bread.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

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.

It is part of the American character to consider nothing desperate.

Merchants have no country.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

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posted by KGB at 1:08 AM (permalink)

Uh oh. Hang on, here we go...

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

"The decree appears to be Beijing's first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland's major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis," the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley and Langi Chiang; editing by Ken Wills)

...or, maybe not...

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) on Thursday denied a newspaper report that it had told Chinese banks to stop lending to U.S. banks in the interbank market. A spokesman for the regulator strongly codemned the article in Thursday's South China Morning Post, calling it irresponsible.

"The CBRC has never, through any channel, issued a statement or told domestic commercial banks not to lend to or borrow from U.S. financial institutions," the spokesman said in a statement on the agency's website. (Reporting by Langi Chiang and Zhou Xin; Writing by Alan Wheatley; Editing by Ken Wills)

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posted by KGB at 12:44 AM (permalink)

Letterman eviscerates McCain

I wonder how long it will be before this is yanked from YouTube?

What's interesting is that this appeared several hours before Letterman's show aired.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
posted by KGB at 10:28 AM (permalink)

If you don't vote, you're a moron.

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posted by KGB at 7:01 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher- a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, "This Side of Paradise" (1920)

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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
posted by KGB at 3:06 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
-Edward R. Murrow

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posted by KGB at 12:20 AM (permalink)

Hey, Bob.

The NSFW big finish from All That Jazz, Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical fantasy of a hard-living filmmaker/choreographer/director who ultimately dies of a heart attack preparing for his musical's opening. Fosse died eight years later, on September 23, 1987... of a heart attack, as a revival of his musical Sweet Charity was opening at the National Theater in Washington, DC. He was 60 years old. He collapsed in his hotel room as the the curtain was going up in the nearby venue.

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Monday, September 22, 2008
posted by KGB at 11:32 AM (permalink)

Pancho's and Lefty's Excellent Career

Apparently, I've nicknamed my breasts Pancho and Lefty. But that's just not true, sadly.

In the flesh, I don't think they're that magnificent at all, but something happens when they appear on screen- it's like they expand or something.

But that's it for them now, I think. I wouldn't get anything done to them again, because I tend to think about my health a lot more now than I ever did before.

When I first got a boob job it was because everyone else was getting theirs done, and I didn't put a great deal of thought into the whole process. Then I got the implants removed after my divorce (from Lee) in a kind of 'I'll show him' way, except I really missed them myself, so I put them back in.

But all in all, I'd say they've had a pretty good career. I've basically been tagging along for the ride.

-Pamela Anderson, displaying unexpected insight and self-awareness.

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posted by KGB at 2:07 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.
-Milton Friedman

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Sunday, September 21, 2008
posted by KGB at 5:03 AM (permalink)

Cut... It... Out!

This obscure Nickelodeon series helped me make it through the five years I spent in Philadelphia in 1984. I still remember the kids laughing hysterically, and how then-six-year-old Sara could perfectly imitate the bizarre yodeling type noise Diz made. It was almost Pythonesque in nature, but accessible to both kids and adults.

I mention it because its star, a pre-Full House Dave Coulier, is 49 today.

It's also the birthday of the late Chuck Jones.

Hey, Doug... remember this one:

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Copyright © 1987-2025 by Kevin G. Barkes
All rights reserved.
Violators will be prosecuted.
So there.
The kgb@kgb.com e-mail address is now something other than kgb@kgb.com saga.
kgbreport.com used to be kgb.com until December, 2007 when the domain name broker Trout Zimmer made an offer I couldn't refuse. Giving up kgb.com and adopting kgbreport.com created a significant problem, however. I had acquired the kgb.com domain name in 1993, and had since that time used kgb@kgb.com as my sole e-mail address. How to let people know that kgb@kgb.com was no longer kgb@kgb.com but rather kgbarkes@gmail.com which is longer than kgb@kgb.com and more letters to type than kgb@kgb.com and somehow less aesthetically pleasing than kgb@kgb.com but actually just as functional as kgb@kgb.com? I sent e-mails from the kgb@kgb.com address to just about everybody I knew who had used kgb@kgb.com in the past decade and a half but noticed that some people just didn't seem to get the word about the kgb@kgb.com change. So it occurred to me that if I were generate some literate, valid text in which kgb@kgb.com was repeated numerous times and posted it on a bunch of different pages- say, a blog indexed by Google- that someone looking for kgb@kgb.com would notice this paragraph repeated in hundreds of locations, would read it, and figure out that kgb@kgb.com no longer is the kgb@kgb.com they thought it was. That's the theory, anyway. kgb@kgb.com. Ok, I'm done. Move along. Nothing to see here...