Jason Moran's News

Are you a domestic terrorist? You probably are if you have any of these qualities according to this:

• Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)


• Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)


• Survivalist literature (fictional books such as "Patriots" and "One Second After" are mentioned by name)


• Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)


• Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)


• Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)


• Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government


• Homeschooling


• Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties


• Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

It's bragging time.

My wife makes a homemade dinner 5 nights a week - and she's a really good cook. When there aren't any leftovers in a Tupperware container for lunch at work, Kelly usually sneaks downstairs while I'm brushing my teeth to make me a sandwich and pack me a lunch. I'm...pretty messy. Somehow I have no natural sense of my own filth, but my wife manages to put up with me and clean up after me as I leave a disastrous path through the house.

Everybody's wife/husband/child is the "most beautiful", but just check that picture out - my wife actually is.

Thank you, Kelly, for the wonderful 9.5 years we've had together. Have a happy birthday and remember that you are my favorite and I love you!

The “top albums of 2008” is obviously a matter of opinion. I am not a well-regarded and highly-heralded music critic. I really don’t care what kind of music you listen to either. Therefore, I have decided to rate the music I listened to in 2008 on the Jason Awesomeness Meter. I took the top 8 albums ranked by how much they *JAM*.

• Metallica – Death Magnetic
• Girl Talk – Feed The Animals
• Santogold – Santogold
• Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
• TV on the Radio – Dear Science
• Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
• Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
• Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreak

Metallica caught me by surprise with one of their best albums of their career. For those that care I would rank the Metallica albums in this order:

• Master of Puppets
• ...And Justice For All
• Death Magnetic
• TIE: Black Album and Ride The Lightning
• Load
• Garage, Inc
• The rest of them are in no particular order and are not really my favorites

Girl Talk is actually a Biomedical Engineer named Greg Gillis from my Alma Mater (Case Western Reserve University). At first listen it sounds like a mash-up record...and maybe it is. If so he is the best at it. In much the same way you might have a 13 year old cousin named Jared that is a "guitar player" but I'm sure he's no Jimmy Hendrix. That's the rift between Girl Talk and any other mash-up artists.

Biggest Disappointment
Rise Against - Appeal To Reason.
Not that I didn’t like it - it was actually pretty good. I just had such high hopes after the wonderful “Sufferer and the Witness”.

EP of the Year
It's a tie between State Fair - Change and Emery - While Broken Hearts Prevail
State Fair is a local band (to Cleveland) but they deserve national attention because they are truly that good.

Some things make my blood boil. Boiling blood typically leads to a rant.

Hey all of you "Gen Y"ers or whatever you are called. The 25-and-unders of the world. Those born after 1984, the later the worse. Listen up: You are NOT entitled to just about anything.. I know you think you are, but you are wrong. You are not guaranteed happiness, you are only guaranteed the pursuit of it. The government is not your long lost rich grandparents that will sweep your problems under the rug if you slack off or screw things up. By simply being alive in the United States, you do not necessarily get a free place to live. You do not get to reap of the nation's bounty and eat to your fill. It is not any government's job to take care of your children. School is not a daycare. Even if you stay at home with the kids, the government should not pay you to babysit your own.

Life is hard! Grow up and realize your own personal responsibility! It is the fault of nobody else that you did not study in school and now you aren't qualified for a high paying job. If you got pregnant at 16 years old - buck up and realize it is your responsibility and you really should have just left your panties on. Whoopsie.

What happens when 30 million elderly and needy are on so much expensive medication and hospitalization that Medicaid and Medicare starts costing the government 30 or 40% of the money it can possibly provide? Guess what? It's almost there. At some point the government can't just put a band aid on everything to make it all better. You can wait until the entire system collapses or you can cut out a little bit of what everybody seems to feel entitled to. Is it harsh? Yes - but better than the long-term alternatives.

Let's get back to the modern-day high schoolers and the even younger brats. Don't tell me about the exceptions, there are exceptions to every stereotype. Mommy and daddy don't have to get you everything. You actually don't need a cell phone - and you definitely don't need a texting package. You don't need brand name clothing to survive. Owning every video game system and game gives you bragging rights, but it is a lucky privilege. Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. Go cry about it - nobody is gonna get you a freaking pony.

What about schools that no longer post "Honor Roll" boards on the walls of the school because it will make Johnny or Suzy depressed that they couldn't make the grades. Boo-hoo. Sports that don't keep score so there aren't any losers. Now nobody has any motivation to achieve anything. Now nobody gains any character because apparently the average human has become too frail over the past couple of decades to handle any sort of hardship. If there are no losers then there are no winners. If nobody wins then there's no point to even playing. No wonder the masses are full of unmotivated zombies that aimlessly wander through "life". Everything has become ambiguous and numbed, dulled and jaded. Get off your lazy butt and doing something useful for once.

I always love the way elvish names sound in movies and books such as the Lord Of The Rings. As it turns out, many names have an elvish version. I looked them up for my wife and I:

Kelly Warrior Maethoriel (My-thore-ee-ell)
Jason Healer Nestaron (Nehs-TAR-on)

Elvish female names
Elvish male names

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been busy. I was gonna post all kinds of neat stuff about Obama and McCain and Social Security and taxes and welfare and income redistribution and pay systems and free-loaders and banks and no proof of income loans...but I never got around to it all and it really isn't as interesting any longer.

Grandpa Bouchard stopped in town yesterday seemingly to rave about the stock market, cycles, charts, patterns, and the idiots of the world. Grandpa is retired now, but he has been a broker among a myriad of other things. He has spent 10-16 hours per day for 60 years researching the market - and he has some pretty strong opinions.

He said just about everything fits into one of 16 (or so) patterns and it is so easy to predict what will happen next if you identify the right pattern.

One of them is a depressionary cycle that was supposed to hit a year ago. He told us to get our money out of the market and even to get it out of banks. He was a year off, but it was a 240 year cycle leading into a depression that he identified quite a while ago and it is hard to get down to exact dates when the cycles are that big. Of course it is cool that his predictions are starting down the path that he felt they would, but if he continues to be correct then things will get far more scary than they are now.

Grandpa told me (with crazy eyes) WAIT FOR GOLD TO HIT $650. As in, he's positive gold will continue to drop in price at least to $650 per ounce. Once it does then I should buy up gobs and gobs of it because it will go through the roof for years and years.

So, why are precious metals dropping in price even though demand is through the roof? Have my lessons in economics been a complete waste? He says this: Hedge funds and the other very large owners of gold and silver have to sell now because they need cash to stop the bleeding - that is helping to drive the price down over demand because they are bigger players. They should be all sold out soon which is when those with demand (regular people) will start getting their hands on it...and when prices will skyrocket.

Overall Grandpa B is worried about having almost anything sitting in the stock market as a whole. He is actually serious when he says this will be a Great Depression unlike the 1929-1932 time period. He thinks nearly every financial institution will collapse and he has asked my cop dad which gun he should purchase to protect his home from the crazies in the coming years.

"A depression is when money goes back to it's rightful owner". - Grandpa Bouchard

Unfortunately my grandpa thinks things will get far more difficult than I can imagine (with me being 28 years old and never having lived through difficult times during my lifetime). However, he believes the U.S. will fair better than most of the rest of the world. Sure, there was a housing bubble in the U.S. with home prices going up an average of four times their value over some number of years I can't remember. However, over that same period England's home prices went up 12 times, Ireland 20+ times! Most countries went up a similar amount. So, if a $100,000 house in the U.S. drops down to it's real value at $25,000 that's pretty tough to deal with. However, in Ireland that $100,000 would drop down to about $4,000! My head would asplode.

I hate those greedy, evil and selfish banks as much as you do. This predicament is a terrible spot to be in. However, do you want to have another depression? The depression was the result of a "do nothing" policy. The government never stepped in and things were pretty bad for a while. They would have been worse if a world war didn't start up after a few years.

Anyway, $700b bailouts suck, too. I've been paying my mortgage and other debts, so why should I take on more to cover the sorry louts that can't pay up (and to cover the banks sorry behinds for ever approving them in the first place!).

However, have you ever heard of The Paradox of Deleveraging? The same principal carries in the opposite direction. If *I* am thrifty then *I* save money. However, problems happen when *everybody* does the same thing. If *everybody* suddenly becomes thrifty then they do not save money! By spending money I am providing somebody else's paycheck. If everybody stops buying things then *I* do not have a paycheck because of how everything interacts. The paradox of deleveraging is similar because it isn't one or two banks failing - it is all of them!

The third option that isn't being talked about is nationalization a la Sweden a few years back. Not everybody is a fan of it, though. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are already pretty much nationalized...so why not some more financial institutions? I haven't come to a conclusion on this one yet.

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I did want to say that the powers that be are finally checking into the silver market. It seems that when demand is through the roof, supply is pretty much gone, yet prices go down it raises some eyebrows.