January 03, 2012
Pay Attention!
Don't be fooled! We are seeing what is called "window dressing" in the markets, today. Many mutual and other managed funds
took advantage of apparent tax losses last week and sold. Today, they are buying back those stocks.
Pay Attention! We have not seen the bottom of this bear market.
Iowa Caucae
Not alot to say. Fox is practically pushing Romney, praying his baseless hatchet-jobs on Gingrich and Paul
and Santorum will make conservatives give up and support him.
I don't really know what will happen, today, or how stupid Iowans can be. But, I do know that the one thing we
DO NOT NEED is to "get together" with Progressives, the very people who have set this country on the road
to ruin with the help of gullible moderates. What good does it do to embrace the evil or the "luke-warm?"
And one other thing. KY Sen. Rand Paul said something really interesting about his dad, today, "Why can't
Independents be smart enough and brave enough to vote for a Reagan libertarian (meaning his dad, TX Rep
Ron. Paul)? I think it's a mistake to think that Independents are liberals or moderates."
We'll see.
Eddie Mology
Sometimes, sharp people can be so obtuse. A recent example of this is recent "scholarship" surrounding the
origins of the word "caucus."
Caucus is a late Greek and Latin (καυκος, caucus)
word for "drinking vessel." As we know from the creation
of the Star Spangled Banner, drinking clubs were numerous in the 18thC, and one of their favorite songs was
To Anachreon in Heaven, Anachreon being the Greek 6thC BC drinking song poet of all time. Clubs
for celebrating the classics of Ancient Greece and Rome while enjoying wine and beer were peppered
throughout England, Germany, and America. They would sing songs, drink, recite classic poetry and so forth.
By the time of the Revolution, the clubs were mostly for singing about the classics and drinking. One such club was even called a "Caucus Club," ie., a drinking vessel club.
It's important to note that many Americans hated ANYTHING to do with England, after the Revolution.
This fact is important because if you've forgotten most of the history of the classics of your drinking club,
things only the English remember, and you hate the English, if somebody asks you the definition of something
that even smacks of being English - like the late Latin word for drinking vessel - you're going to find another
definition, which is what Dr. J. H. Trumbull did, calling
it an "Algonkin word" (sic).
Now you've got smart people trying to justify the word as Algonquin, when
the real, older, classical definition is staring them in the face. And, it's all over the internet!
But there is a problem with the "Algonkin" argument. The French saw Indians through an almost romantic
eye, exploring and writing down the names of all the northern tribes. By the time the English got around to
looking at the French-made maps, they mispronounced all of the names - or Anglicized them, if you will,
which served the same etymological purpose.
Most people, for instance, do not know that the name, Iroqois, should be pronounced Ih - ROK - Wah, not EAR-o-kwoi.
The settlers, except for some few Indianaphiles, wouldn't even know how to pronounce the Ahl - GONK - Wah word.
Hence the Trumbull argument is weak, at best, because the Indian word "caucauasu," originally spelled in French,
would not be pronounced "KAW-Kuss," but KOE-KOE-WAH-SOO.
"Wah," by the way, means "We are" or "I am" in all of the so-called Civilized Tribes. I first learned this from a Cherokee
gentleman who, when I asked him how to properly pronounce the name of his tribe, said, "OHN - WAY - Wah."
"Cherokee" is another English-mispronounced word, "Tsa - Lah - ghee," which was a slur used by the other tribes
when referring to the powerful southern tribe, the Ohn-Way-Wah Indians, who inhabited Eastern Tennessee,
Western North and South Carolina, and Northern Georgia. So the Algonquin are, literally, "We Are the Ahl Gonk!"
In any case, if you follow the Greek, the Anglicized plural of caucus would be "caucou," like the plural of gyros
(thinking of Pete's on the corner of East North and Laurens Road in Greenville, and The Old
Town on King Street in Charleston!); If Anglicized Latin, "caucae." In any case, it was never "caucii."
January 02, 2012
Nothing Left To Say, Except..
Eleven and Two.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
January 01, 2012
Happy New Year!
You have the power. You have the vote. You have values. You have the ethics and the morals. The liars have only money.
