In Search of the Perfect Investment

The market continues its daily volatility.

Up and down, faster than a whore’s drawers.

The BIG problem remains our “hedge” in gold, which falls, even when the market falls — it’s not meant to do that.

I’m about to dump my gold.

There is fear in the market about a Trump presidency. He has publicly said the market “is in a bubble.” Market observers suspect that his Presidency could crash the market 7%+.

Fortunately more and more publications are coming out against him. The latest is The Atlantic Monthly. It just wrote:

Against Donald Trump

For the third time since The Atlantic’s founding in 1857, the editors endorse a candidate for president. The case for Hillary Clinton. …

Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.

These concerns compel us, for the third time since the magazine’s founding, to endorse a candidate for president. Hillary Rodham Clinton has more than earned, through her service to the country as first lady, as a senator from New York, and as secretary of state, the right to be taken seriously as a White House contender. She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency. We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt that she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.

This judgment is not limited to the editors of The Atlantic. A large number-in fact, a number unparalleled since Goldwater’s 1964 campaign-of prominent policy makers and officeholders from the candidate’s own party have publicly renounced him. Trump disqualified himself from public service long before he declared his presidential candidacy. In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners. He succeeded wildly in this; the fear he has aroused has brought him one step away from the presidency.

Our endorsement of Clinton, and rejection of Trump, is not a blanket dismissal of the many Trump supporters who are motivated by legitimate anxieties about their future and their place in the American economy. But Trump has seized on these anxieties and inflamed and racialized them, without proposing realistic policies to address them.

You can read their full article here.

Stuff learned

+ Your direct office phone can simultaneously ring your cell phone and your country house — if you program it. Verizon FiOS has that great feature.

+ ATM fees are closing in on $5. Some cards don’t charge fees.

+ Got a cold that won’t go away? Ask your doc for a Z-Pak — five days of 250 mg Azithromycin antibiotic tablets. They don’t work for everything. And you can build up a resistance to antibiotics if you take them regularly. But once every few years won’t hurt you, especially if you’re an alta kaka, like me.

+ Remember to turn your phone’s ringer off at the theater. Most importantly, remember to turn it on again. I don’t know how to remind myself. I feel really stupid when I miss a whole bunch of calls the following day.

+ Remove the battery from your laptop if you’re running it off the AC.  Otherwise your battery life will be lessened.

+ MR-16 lightbulbs are the stupidest, most unreliable light bulbs ever invented. Avoid fixtures with them.

+ The faster Internet you get, the happier you’ll be. 100 megs up and down is minimum. Trust me on this.

 Taylor Swift’s big pre-Super Bowl blowout

Taylor Swift will headline DirecTV’s 12th annual pre-Super Bowl blowout, Super Saturday Night, February 4th in Houston, Texas.

The show will take place at a 64,000-square-foot venue custom-made for the concert, though exact details have yet to be announced. Tickets will be available through a series of promotions and campaigns from AT&T (which acquired DirecTV in 2015).

There’s really no reason to publish this, except I’m secretly in love with Taylor.

I hear she has two categories of fans — 18 to 28 year old girls and grandfathers (i.e. me). My favorite Taylor Swift son is called is Shake It Off. It’s had 1,664,951,610 views on YouTube. (That’s over a billion.)

I watch Shake It Off when I lose at tennis.

Watch Shake It Off here. Turn up the volume.

Lewis Black is on Comedy Central at 10:00 PM this Friday

I like Lewis. His show conflicts with Bill Maher on HBO, also at 10:00 PM. So record one of them. Watch it later.

This is too brilliant.

SEX FOREVER

How to Have Great Sex Until You’re 90. An article in

Don’t get your hopes up. There is no “silver” bullet.

But there is good news. There are people called “sex educators.” (Maybe my new profession?)

I don’t make this stuff up. Click here.

Harry Newton, who spent half the morning changing blown MR-16 bulbs and throwing our blown MR-16 fixtures.

I’m also tightening my stop losses. I don’t think Trump will win, but stranger things have happened.