Sex in the City with BHO and SJP or WJC

Well the Democrats have done it now, invited me to two competing fundraising dinners in New York City.

Behind Door Number 1: A grassroots supporter and their guest will be joining President Obama and the First Lady at Sarah Jessica Parker's home in New York City, with airfare and accommodations provided by the campaign.

Behind Door Number 2: President Obama and former President Bill Clinton are inviting a Democrat like you, and a guest of your choice, to join them in New York. Airfare and hotel are covered.

Dinner with George Clooney was just the beginning, we're going to be raffling off President Obama all summer.

PURCHASE, PAYMENT OR FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION WILL NOT INCREASE ODDS OF WINNING. PROMOTION VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

Texas Gives Romney the Ring, Ron Paul Eyes Newt

Mitt Romney went over the top, securing the last of the 1144 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination with a win in the Texas primary yesterday.

# of delegates secured so far	NYT	WSJ	CNN	CBS	MSNBC	RCP
Mitt Romney	1183	1183	1163	1198	1174	1064
Rick Santorum	261	261	262	231	253	259
Newt Gingrich	135	135	141	125	131	141
Ron Paul	129	129	132	121	119	108
Jon Huntsman	1	1	0	2	0	0
Total	1709	1709	1698	1677	1677	1572
% of delegates secured so far
Mitt Romney	69%	69%	68%	71%	70%	68%
Rick Santorum	15%	15%	15%	14%	15%	16%
Newt Gingrich	8%	8%	8%	7%	8%	9%
Ron Paul	8%	8%	8%	7%	7%	7%
% of remaining needed to clinch:
Mitt Romney	-7%	-7%	-3%	-9%	-5%	11%
Rick Santorum	153%	153%	150%	150%	146%	124%
Newt Gingrich	175%	175%	171%	167%	166%	140%
Ron Paul	176%	176%	172%	168%	168%	145%

Ron Paul has pulled within 4 to 9 delegates of surpassing Newt Gingrich. With six states left to vote and a number of delegates to be selected at state conventions where Ron Paul is always well organized, he's on track to do that. That would put Ron Paul in third and push Newt Gingrich down to fourth going into the convention.

Well, everything after first place is for bragging rights, but that may go to the lone Huntsman delegate from New Hampshire, if there is even one. Lone Huntsman, that sounds like a superhero. Dr. Paul is the evil villain with the heart of gold. Newt Gingrich is the hapless henchman.

Memorial Day 2012: Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

Pete Seeger will seem an odd choice to some for Memorial Day, but it is perhaps the best tribute to the old military saying: "Every soldier is entitled to a competent command."



This goes out to:

• My high school friend Traci's son Lucas who will be commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis tomorrow. Semper Fi and God be with you.
• My cousin Justin who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in spring 2011, and served on active duty for 10 years with more deployments than I could keep track of. This will be his first Memorial Day as a veteran.
• My cousin Bud, an Army Air Corps pilot who died when he was shot down over Belgium on December 24, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge. His name is carved in an arch at Virginia Military Institute where he took his officer's training.
  
• My severals-great uncle Isaac Lee, a private in the Iowa Volunteers who was mortally wounded and taken prisoner at Jenkins Ferry, Arkansas on April 30, 1864, died in hospital a week later, and is buried beneath the southern pines.

Poor Joe Biden Still Dreams of Being President

A lot of people are talking about Joe Biden's rant in Ohio. What they are not talking about is the gaffe within the gaffe. Queue to the 45 second mark:

"I resent the fact that they think we are talking about, we're angry, it's job envy, it's wealth envy, that we don't dream."

Pay attention to the switch in what he says next:

"My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be President of the United States I could be, I could be Vice President."

Joe Biden always wanted to be President. He wanted it so bad that he ran for President to no effect in 1988 and 2008 He got the VP slot on the ticket in 2008 after John Edwards self-destructed and Hillary Clinton decided she'd rather be Secretary of State.

"My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could a millionaire."

Joe Biden's net worth is notoriously low, a mere $500,000 by some reports, despite making pretty good money as a U.S. Senator for 36 years and currently making $230,700 a year as Vice President. I don't know if Joe's siblings achieved the parental dreams but Joe apparently has come up a little short of his mother and father's dreams.

"My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams. They don't get us. They don't get who we are."

Oh, I think I get it. It must hurt Joe Biden to the core to be serving alongside President Barack Obama. Not only does he have Barack Obama's $400,000 a year salary to envy, he also has the many millions Barack Obama has made from his book, Dreams from My Father.

Elizabeth Warren, Woman of Color and Mystery

The Elizabeth Warren affirmative action fraud scandal continues to unravel. It's clear Elizabeth Warren self-identified as a minority in professional directories to further her professional career. It's also clear that some of the law schools where she worked took that information and touted her minority status as evidence of their commitment to affirmative action.

The latest revelation is this paragraph from a 1997 Fordham Law Review article:

There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries. This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reasons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.

Portions of the Fordham article are archived at the website racisim.org, which includes this tantalizing tidbit:

I have spoken with many women of color about their law school experiences of attending class, hearing a professor say something demeaning about women of color, noticing no reaction among their classmates, and ultimately wondering, "Is it just me?" To illustrate, at a conference at Harvard Law School organized by the Women of Color Collective, when one panelist described the "is it just me" phenomenon, women throughout the audience nodded their heads in understanding.

Just who was the panelist who asked "is it just me"? That sounds like a certain blue-eyed blonde white woman who wants to be the junior U.S. Senator for Massachusetts. Well, maybe not. But just what was Elizabeth Warren's connection with the Women of Color Collective at Harvard? We have ourselves a mystery.

The thing that you can regard as absolutely certain is that organization's such as the Collective kept close track of minority hiring at colleges and universities around the country, and kept especially close track at Harvard. It's inconceivable that such a conference would have been held at Harvard at a time when the law school was publicly touting Elizabeth Warren in its minority hiring stats without her being invited.

Mitt Romney Bullies Nebraska and Oregon

The Washington Post story with allegations of bullying as a high schooler didn't hurt Mitt Romney much in the Nebraska and Oregon primaries today, as he won both with more than 70% of the vote. Better to be the boy that bullied than the boy that was bullied if you are running for President of the United States.

I personally think the reported incident was one of hazing not bullying, and while some equate the two they are not the same. If I am right, Mitt Romney probably got hazed himself a year or two earlier in his high school career. Now if the Post had that story they might do some damage.

Here is the scoreboard:

# of delegates secured so far	NYT	WSJ	CNN	CBS	MSNBC	RCP
Mitt Romney	989	989	961	980	989	989
Rick Santorum	265	265	274	244	265	264
Newt Gingrich	130	130	145	124	130	141
Ron Paul	106	106	114	98	106	104
Jon Huntsman	1	1	0	2	0	0
Total	1491	1491	1494	1448	1490	1498
% of delegates secured so far
Mitt Romney	66%	66%	64%	68%	66%	66%
Rick Santorum	18%	18%	18%	17%	18%	18%
Newt Gingrich	9%	9%	10%	9%	9%	9%
Ron Paul	7%	7%	8%	7%	7%	7%
% of remaining needed to clinch:
Mitt Romney	19%	19%	23%	20%	19%	20%
Rick Santorum	111%	111%	110%	107%	110%	112%
Newt Gingrich	128%	128%	126%	122%	127%	127%
Ron Paul	131%	131%	130%	125%	130%	132%

Ron Paul is still in the race, and could overtake Newt Gingrich for third place, in the delegate count at least. Oh, the days of March and April, with their talk of a brokered convention, they seem so long ago.

Proof New Dodd-Frank Is Same Old Dodd-Frank

Everyone understands a $2 billion loss (or is it $3 to $4 billion?). No one really understands JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's explanation of how his bank got caught short making ill-conceived hedging trades and whether those trades would violate the Volcker rule that will take effect under Dodd-Frank in July.

It seems that the new Dodd-Frank legislation passed by the Obama administration that was supposed to prevent such scenarios just served to create a false security, in much the same was that the financial industry oversight work of Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank provided only a false security before the September 2008 financial crisis.

In 2011, JPMorgan Chase had $19 billion in net income on $2.265 trillion in total assets. But 92 cents on every dollar of assets is borrowed money. The equity to absorb losses is only 8 cents on the dollar. At that scale, you don't have to lose very much on each dollar before you've lost a lot of money. Too big to fail but not to big to flail.

The loss of market confidence in JPMorgan Chase is more measured. It's stock price has fallen 8% for an $18 billion loss in market capitalization. Yet the $36 per share it's trading at today is still higher than the $28 it was trading at last October. The market giveth and the market taketh away.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner was quick to pounce: "I think this failure of risk management is just a very powerful case for financial reform. The test of reform is not whether you can prevent banks from making mistakes, the test of reform should be: 'Do those mistakes put at risk the broader economy, the financial system or the taxpayer?'" The FBI has also been dispatched to investigate but if they actually find anything I will be very much surprised.

Here's the Charles rule: If you think you can outlaw banks from losing money in the financial markets, whether by hedging or by regulation, you're a fool.

Update: Today on May 15, 2012 JPM closed at $36.240 per share. On December 31, 2011 it closed at $33.250. That means the shareholders lost the opportunity to make even more money than the $3 per share they have made in the last 4 and 1/2 months. Oh, the horror and deprivation of those poor shareholders having to settle for a 9% return with the year not even half over.