The Position Makers

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To all of our readers: We have been extremely busy working on our real-life stuff, you know, the stuff that pays the bills. We will start posting again in the very near future. Look out 2008!

i’ve been wondering if US shareholders of Nintendo (NTDOY.pk) should seek Nintendo management to list the company on a reputable exchange.

as a benefit to shareholders:

1. increased liquidity — being listed on the pink sheets means that many brokerage firms have limited access to the markets making it difficult to execute buy/sell orders. by listing on a real exchange, [potential] shareholders would have access to more liquidity
2. increased transparency — because the market is not nearly as liquid as it could be, most tracking tools don’t maintain accurate information such as dividends, volume, etc. i’m not a purely technical trader/investor but i do like to look at historical data when increasing, entering or exiting a position. i have no intention of selling my nintendo shares any time soon but i would really like to have better access to information, information that brokerage firms (such as etrade) would provide were nintendo listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ.
3. higher stock price — because many institutional investors are constrained by the type of listings they’re allowed to invest in, not being listed on an exchange (in the US), prevents many firms from purchasing what is a growth company. even simple index funds are unable to purchase NTDOY because it’s simply not included in an index. the “supply of buyers” in the US (and europe) is limited to individuals (and some hedge funds), suppressing what could (and should be) a higher stock price. just to note, many of the institutional buyers (mutual funds, retirement funds, etc) are also limited by the number of international holdings eligible for purchase. in many cases, the company is limited to 2% or less of their total funds being invested in foreign listings, which Nintendo maintains under the ticker 7974 in japan.
4. increased trading options — meaning options could be sold. one of my primary investment models, as outlined here, is to sell short covered calls on my equity positions. this enables me to receive a higher rate of return even in a stagnant or side-to-side market. heck, even in this “bear” market where gains are quickly eroding. in fact the bear market may be the best condition for me to trade in since i’m able to sell the options short on up days and ride the contract down to zero only to resell the next month. providing more choices, i.e. options, to investors is not a bad thing.

so, what do you think? i’m obviously for it. are there any blaring problems that i should consider?

so i had the unique pleasure of being contacted recently via gmail through the finance.google.com forums.

the person who contacted me was curious about options and how i use them. i’m not sure if there was a single post that caught his eye or a series–forgot to ask. probably for the best.

i spent the first few minutes of our chat on gchat trying to delve into his current trading/investment habits. what was most clear to me was a lack of a plan–not on paper or in his mind. this is actually pretty normal i think. i don’t think i had a plan for a number of years…in fact, i’ve spent the first ten or so years of my investment adventure experimenting with different techniques. as i mention on the about page, i ended up living off swing/momentum trading for quite a while. since then, i’ve come to realize more and more lately that having a plan is extremely important. without the plan, we can’t know how we want to react and handle a situation that [potentially] requires immediate attention–but in most cases doesn’t!! in my case , i was an utter fool for not having a plan. i think a plan that clearly defined my investment goals, technique, approach, paradigm, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, would have put me in a better state of mind for managing my returns. rather than being only marginally better off, i’d be way better off. what a simple way to make myself feel stupid. lol

this brings me to my first rule of investing and trading: have a plan.

the best way i know of to treat a plan seriously is to consider my business. at least for me, it helps eliminate the gitters and anxiety of the stock market. i certainly can’t control mr. market’s offers or immediate need to sell (or buy), so i simply put a plan in place that helps me to be always profitable.

before going further, it’s important that you understand what an option is and how it works; so, if you’re unfamiliar with options click over to wikipedia’s entry, maybe follow up with a bit more reading from the external references and then get back over here. once you have the basics down, you’ll want to understand my plan a bit more–even if it only helps you to understand your own plan.

now, as we all know, an option contract constitutes the right to buy [in the case of calls] and the right to sell [in the case of puts] 100 shares of an underlying stock. i’m not going to recommend anyone purchasing/selling naked options–option contracts where there’s no underlying stock supporting the contract. in those situations, the investor or trader is taking a bit of risk that the contract will expire worthless and therefore have no obligation to own the underlying stock in order to procure the shares of an exercised option contract. besides not fitting in my plan, it seems like undue risk for lop-sided returns. just mon avis.

because my goal entails developing the largest stream of income while maximizing reinvestment potential, i buy underlying shares in the company. i don’t buy 100 shares at once, unless the stock is pretty cheap ($3-$5…i’m not talking penny-stocks), so i can make sure my entry price is actually at a fair value. maybe it’s just old chart reading habits; at the same time it really just comes down to me not wanting to pay full price. that’s a relative number typically so i just slowly build up a position over a month or even quarter. i also add to existing positions in this way.

covered calls:

again, i’m trying to maximize my reinvestment potential. that means i’m going to want my money to be compounding as often as possible (i like every 30-60 days). Luckily, option contracts are expiring once a month. So, depending on the option contract price and my total share number (100 shares to 1000 shares for example), i sell 1 to 10 contracts.

i choose the price that i feel i need to make the transaction, with general pricing metrics in mind. the nice thing about option contracts is they’re based on some pretty rigid mathematical formulas, namely accounting for underlying stock value and volatility. this means there’s not much fudging of the numbers going on. the market price is actually pretty accurate in my mind for that particular day/week. this doesn’t mean i don’t get to choose the price that i’m willing to sell for. it’s just about proper timing and . (so, yeah, you can definitely time the market…it’s just all a question of what we mean by ‘time it’.)

how do i figure my price out?

simple. i just ask myself a couple of quick questions:

what return would i be willing to sell these stocks for if the option contracts are ultimately exercised?

what is the value for the risk i’m taking to sell this option contract?

depending on the volatility of the market and the long-term growth potential of the company (again in relation to the violent swings mr. market creates), i set a % return. i typically want 20% return on the stock itself and 2-5% for the option contract.

so, if my shares are taken in the 30-60 day period, i’ll make 22+%.

again, i always look at where i think the stock is going to end that period at, so i’m not selling in the money options. i’m selling out of the money but not ridiculously out of the money unless i have to extend my reinvestment horizon out. (i’m a fan of 22% returns). the reason for not tending to avoid really-out-of-the-money options is that they are worthless at that point; i’m certainly not going to give someone the right to purchase my stock. i’m a greedy bastard.

reinvestment is of course an issue. so, what happens if the shares are taken?

i’ve never seen a stock that sky-rocketed up and then didn’t come back down to earth. if someone buys my shares because of irrational exuberance, fine. i’ll just buy it off someone other schmuck after the euphoria passed and the price is back down to normal, pocketing/reinvesting the differnce. (my definition of normal of course).

let’s keep in mind that as we implement our plan, the underlying stock may keep creeping up to the point where the stock 2, 3, 6 months before was ‘way out of the money.’ that’s just great in my mind. that means i’m selling even more out of the money options for an even better return. and if the price tumbles from there, i haven’t lost anything on my original investment. sweet.

another obvious concern is that i didn’t enter the position at the right value and the underlying stock goes down even further. so long as my break-even is out of the money, i don’t see a problem with selling the option contract for that exercise price. so long as i’m confident that it won’t end in the money. again, i can also just say, “shit. i didn’t do my homework correctly. i have to sell a LEAP.”

some of my companies are dividend payers, others aren’t. dividends are great because it’s just gravy for the reinvestment program or for starting new positions.

i think of it like this:

options are the monthly dividend and some of the companies pay me quarterly bonuses for good behavior.

i am in the process of getting ready for a trip to africa, so i may have left a step out or glossed over an important/debatable point. leave your comments and i will definitely discuss when i get back. and just for the record, i won’t even dream to think or imply that i’m the first to do this. that’d just be straight up ignant.

on that note i’m going to end this post with a poem that i’ve had posted at my desk for 4 or so years now–i also have a sign that says, “jesus helps me trick people” so go figure on the crazy stuff i have hanging around my desk!! i originally came across the poem in how i raised myself from failure to success in selling by frank bettger, and I think it’s fairly applicable to this post and especially rule one. (author unknown) it’s over my desk so i’ll read it at least every other day; helps me keep focused on the tasks and goals at hand.

There may be nothing wrong with you/The way you live, the work you do,/But I can very plainly see/Exactly what is wrong with me./It isn’t that I’m indolent/Or dodging duty by intent;/I work as hard as anyone,/And yet I get so little done./The morning goes, the noon is here,/Before I know, the night is near,/And all around me, I regret/Are things I haven’t finished yet./If I could just get organized!/I often times have realized/Not all that matters is the man;/The man must also have a plan./With you, there may be nothing wrong,/But here’s my trouble right along;/I do the things that dont’ amount/To very much, of no account,/That really seem important though/And let a lot of matters go./I nibble this, I nibble that/But never finish what I’m at./I work as hard as anyone, /And yet, I get so little done, I’d do so much you’d be surprised,/If I could just get organized.

It is seriously amazing how predictable things are when you take a step back and look at the big picture. Do you guys remember my post on January 2nd of this year speaking about Gold, Oil, and recession? If not, go ahead and read it (Oil hits $100 a Barrel, Gold hits $850, Dow Drops…). I believe we still have a ways to go.

Today:

OIL: Light, sweet crude oil. Oh how sweet it is! $111 and $110.70 were the highs I last saw. Passing $100 back in January was a benchmark. $110 two and a half months later? That’s 10% in that time frame! Can you beat that in an investment standpoint?

GOLD: That yellow-ish, shiny metal hit a benchmark today. $1001. Based on inflation, it is not at it’s all-time high. Actually, it is just about 50% less in value. If we go into a recession, we’ll be right up there again. Back in 1980 (taking into account inflation) the price of a gold ounce was just about $2,177.

DOLLAR: What’s up Benjamin? WTF. Since January I have been moving money to Euro’s through my ETrade account. And you know what? My buying power is increasing as the dollar continues dropping. I don’t think this will go on forever. But this year? My gut says it is… so far so good. The euro rose as high as $1.5625 and in Asia, 99.75 yen before hiking back to 100.27 yen. Seriously, this isn’t good for America.

Some recent blog posts on the topic:

k5dkz.com
blog.sharenet.co.za
crooksblog.sovereignsociety.com
thetraderblog.com

I also found an interesting post about the new $5 bill at chatterlounge.com. Check it out!

keith johnson over at environmental capital of the WSJ points us to the services of Firstlook, a new mashable combining atmospheric data with google maps. and the result is AMAZING.

i’ve been a big fan of alternative energy for years; being immensely curious about the potential of starting an energy production company, i was always dismayed at how difficult it is to quickly get estimates for power-production (how can i calculate #s without a basis in input figures?). actually getting site assessment is extremely clostly and Firstlook eliminates a lot of the intial grunt work, especially for entrepreneurs (or even environmentally conscious consumers) looking to compare regional advantages of solar over wind.

keith says that the company’s goal is to provide wind-farmers more information that can leverage their power-production efforts to be more valuable, essentially by providing them models for how “dry” seasons will differ from “wet,” making a great head-to-head with hydroelectic power.

i aslo see this mashable as emensely valuable for developing nations. by eliminating many of the costs for a professional site assesment, a local village could locate where in their region a small solar or wind farm could produce energy for them. there’s not even a need for creating an electric grid and services like this one can really empower a local community. this is a win-win for those nations since they can simply by-pass the infrastructure costs of building a grid from the ground up, by instead focusing locally, rather than nation-wide. once there’s a small bit of power, the local development options can increase quite quickly: from water and agriculture to increased literacy rates (not to mention the internet!!). from my understanding one of the major hurtles to raising the standard of living is satisfying basic necessities, power generation being among those needs since the applications are quite numerous: food preservation to education to water & sewage management.

there’s no information on the site now for non-US countries/regions but it’s still a fantastic start and i’m looking forward to seeing more come from these guys.

also worth a quick note, i’m a HUGE fan of the business model which allows for the basic use of the product for free but then charges for more detailed reports or maps. fantastic! 3TIER’s distribution margins went to zero by being on the internet so content is generally free to produce and distribute and only the most dedicated need purchase the servcie.

founder/ceo Kenneth Westrick may be an atmospheric scientist by training but he’s definitely got the internet figured out! his business plan could be a page right out of seth godin or chris anderson’s play book. go westrick; serious kudos!

Take a look at this CNN interview with John Williams from LiveLeak.com:

I have been doing some extensive research online as to how to better manage your finances. I have personal and business bank accounts, credit cards, stock accounts, car payments, bills, and so on. So, my mission was to find the right tools online that would help me keep organized, know how much I am spending, and help me be more frugal with my money. Everything from keeping a daily budget log to viewing all of your accounts in one place and even discussing your finances with other individuals, it’s all here.

Here are my results:

Yodlee -
Yodlee is probably the most established account consolidation software on the net. You enter in all your bank, credit card, bill, travel, and other financial accounts, and you see all the data on one page.

BudgetPulse -
BudgetPulse has the ability to have multiple accounts, track money, and plan budgets. The system provides you with analysis, charts, reports, and RSS feeds with your data. “BudgetPulse, acts like pulse to show our health condition, is a simple online tool that aims to reflect our financial situation.”

Xpenser -
Xpenser is an easy way to keep track of the money you spend, as you spend it. You can add expenses via Email/PDA, SMS, Twitter, IM, Voice, or from your web browser.

WalletProof -
Very similar to Xpenser, WalletProof let’s you set specific budgets and then enter in each expense as you incur it.

SpendView -
The idea behind SpendView is to consolidate, categorize, and track your accounts. It seems to be very similar to Yodlee, but not quite as intense.

billQ -
billQ is a web-based application that gives you an easy way to keep track of your bills, receive reminders before they’re due, and make sense of them once they’re paid. With billQ, you always know exactly what you have to pay, and when you have to pay it.

Wesabe -
Wesabe is an online community of real people, with real financial goals and concerns. You can compare and discuss your finances with other individuals.

Mint -
Very similar to Yodlee as well, but looks much better. Great graphical interface that allows you to view all of your accounts and manage your money in one place.

“When our constituents ask us to do something about gas prices, they don’t want us to raise them,” Mr. Herger said. “Yet by increasing taxes on U.S. energy manufacturers by more than $17 billion, this bill creates a significant disincentive for domestic production, decreasing our energy security and increasing our over-reliance on uncertain foreign supplies.”

i’m getting sick of the BS. seriously. “decreasing our energy security”? “increasing our over reliance on uncertain foreign supplies.”? common…just last week Krugman was saying we were no more dependent on oil today than we were in the late ’70s and now we have Republicans claiming that shifting energy policy to renewables is going to cause an increase in reliance upon foreign supplies?  i guess he didn’t take the time to look at the situation from a non-biased, informed perspective.  i guess he also[convienently] forgot about our war in the middle east…oh, right…that was to stop “terrorism”…right…

considering he’s been getting a majority of his funding from businesses this shouldn’t be a big surprise. we live in a nation supported by a few select mega-industries and there’s a lot of vested interest in protecting the “investments” in those mega-industries.

–relevant email to a discussion group i’m a part of–

it’s pretty funny to me actually. i mean on the one hand we want the “beautiful affects” of creative destruction within our economic system–but only so long as it doesn’t affect me or my business or my employer or my investment. as soon as creative destruction threatens an elite’s business segment (such as mega-agriculture or coal mining or healthcare or XYZ-issue * 1000), we don’t want creative destruction to touch us, so “we” put up policy infrastructures to prevent the affects of a market system.

i’m trying to address the contradictory nature of the status quo within the context of our society.

maybe we can’t look to history for help in shaping policies that would be socio-economic solutions to our current malaise of corruption and greed since there really isn’t a precedence for it. … europe, france and germany in particular, aren’t very illustrative examples since the economic recovery and growth they experienced after WWII was simply a result of needing to rebuild everything. germany hasn’t grown much since “everything” was rebuilt, especially now that eastern germany is pretty much back up to snuff. the real benefits to a society, as measured by capitalism, seem best framed by how much destruction occurred from war. chompsky gave a talk two days ago and cited chechnya as being on the road to recovery but he contextualized everything as being a recovery from russia’s bombardments. he deridingly said, “maybe iraq can one day experience the recovery chechnya is experiencing now…but that’s doubtful.”

i think in the case of the US, our best hope for sustained growth would be in moving toward renewables. power-production is a big $$ industry and getting our nation converted over from coal and n.gas would spur a lot (read as “SHIT TON”) of economic development–and make jobs. i think this is pretty appealing and i suspect it’s one reason, among many, that nader is pushing for solar. (as a shareholder in a US-based solar company, that also has the sound of “subsidies” to it…which will benefit me w/ a higher stock price. lol.

–end of email–

hubbert peak has some interesting graphs showing US domestic production of oil:

(the black line is US production; the red is our nation’s demand)

so wtf is mr. herger talking about?  seems suspect to me.

wired magazine has an interview with fred krupp, environmental defense fund’s head honcho, with some amazing quotes: (thanks environmental economics for bringing the wired article to my attention!)

responding to a question about competition from india and china as a result of us implementing mandatory and severe caps on emissions:

Krupp: It’s inevitable that those countries will adopt caps, too. We will gain a competitive advantage by going first. The real question is, do we want to import clean tech from Germany, Japan, and China or export it to the rest of the world?

very important question. i’m not sure what happened to the buzz of the early “2000s” but there were articles flying about that the US was falling far, far, far behind on in educating future engineers.  (for example, anyone remember the world is flat ?) one of our key advantages in the market place now is our head start over developing nations. that being said, china and india have really illustrated that it only takes a single generation to catch up.

in my mind, this becomes not only a question of economic competitiveness but future national security and prosperity.  i’m sure it will only be a bit of time before the “far” right “sees” the light…but i’ll bet that happens AFTER they liquidate their oil holdings–or make a big enough push for those companies to invest in alternatives.

an oldie but definititive goodie:

Look at what’s happening at Royal Dutch/Shell. Five years ago, working with Hamel, the company’s exploration-and-production division set aside 10% of its research budget for “crazy” ideas, proposals that were far removed from its existing operations. Anyone in the division could apply for the funding. And a group of four or five employees — all of them well-known mavericks and nonconformists — were charged with deciding how the money got spent. The strategy was called GameChanger.

Consider the implications. There were millions of dollars set aside for no specific purpose. The accountants hated that. The people making the funding calls weren’t managers, so they weren’t wedded to any existing projects. “Experience shows that in a normal hierarchy, people don’t like ideas that do not support their businesses,” says Leo Roodhart, innovation manager for the Shell group. “These were ideas that by definition didn’t fit with current business thinking.”

GameChanger creates a marketplace within Shell for ideas. Proposals are assessed within one week of application. If they are judged promising, they win seed capital and support. If early results meet expectations, the innovation is marketed within the Shell Group. So far, GameChanger has attracted hundreds of proposals. It has funded 150 projects a year, 10% of which have become commercialized.

another interesting quote, back to wired:

Wired: Why are so many of the leaders of the energy revolution the same folks who led the dotcom boom?

Krupp: It’s the mindset: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are willing to take risks. And many of the energy technologies are founded in computing sciences. But the energy business is much more capital-intensive than Web apps. And ultimately, clean tech is a much more important revolution. We’re talking about the future of humanity, not how to find a date on the Internet.

i’m going to post on this separately because i feel it’s deserving of its own post but take BP as a counter-example.

the company yesterday admitted to having enough reserves to maintain output at 4 million barrels per day until 2020, without locating new reserves.  basically, the company said it has 12 years of viable operation left. (and here’s why it deserves its own post,) the CEO went on to allude that they may divest some of their alternative energy assets. duh! you just said you can only remain well positioned in business for 12 years and you’re going to sell your next, best-hope for remaining a company? what a dumb ass!!

conclusion:  vested interest will make people do stupid things.  greed connected to those vested interests will drive a person to a slow suicide… too bad the jerk, idiots are taking us all down with them!!

can we please, PLEASE get a real leader–or body of leaders???

maybe i should run for president when i’m finally 35…  

as you [should] know, nader has thrown his hat back into the ring and is running for president again (3rd time).

nader has a track record of fighting for the consumer, the little guy, the families forgotten on the tarmac to riches and a higher standard of living.

as readers of the blog know, i got really excited by obama.  i’ve since had time to look over his voting record and of course check other sources.  aside from the fact that having a black man running for president being quite the accomplishment for a still-subtly racist society is pretty exciting, i’m not sure i see myself putting the check next to his name…not now that nader’s back in.  i was emailing my friends just last week (”way before” the announcement) that if nader runs i’m going to abandon the obama-drum-beating and go with my gut and vote nader.  i have one friend in particular who was shaking his head in dismay that i was supporting a dem…i can’t honestly recall if that’s something i said i would never do or not…

reading through some blogs for reactions, i’m still seeing a lot of nonesense comments that illustrate, as mr. nader called it, political bigotry.  tim russert with meet the press is a smart  man for asking and probing into what nader thought the american reaction, and dem’s in particualar,  to his candidacy would look like.  obviously nader thought about this for a while when he responded:

Solon Simmons and other scholars–he teaches at George Mason–have shown that by pushing Gore to take more progressive stands, he got more votes than the votes he allegedly–were withdrawn from for the Green party. Twenty-five percent of my vote, according to a Democratic pollster, exit poll, would’ve gone to Bush. Thirty-nine percent would’ve gone to Gore and the rest would’ve stayed home. Every major–every third party in Florida got more votes than the 537 vote gap. So let’s get over it and try to have a diverse multiple choice, multiple party democracy the way they have in Western Europe and Canada.

…

If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.

so why is nader running?  (again, from meet the press)

Let me put it in context, to make it a little more palatable to people who have closed minds. Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That’s about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz’s poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the–all, all the candidates–McCain, Obama and Clinton–are against single payer Health insurance, full Medicare for all. I’m for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don’t like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That’s off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.

The issue of labor law reform, repealing the notorious Taft-Hartley Act that keeps workers who are now more defenseless than ever against corporate globalization from organizing to defend their interests. Cracking down on corporate crime. The media–the mainstream media repeatedly indicating how trillions of dollars have been drained and fleeced and looted from millions of workers and investors who don’t have many rights these days, and pensioners. You know, when you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people, you–one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in the terms of third parties and, and independent candidates; to recognize historically that great is sues have come in our history against slavery and women rights to vote and worker and farmer progressives, through little parties that never ran–won any national election. Dissent is the mother of ascent. And in that context, I have decided to run for president.

what was really appealing to me about obama in the first place is the passion that he puts into his claims that he’s about change.  obviously this message resonates with a lot of people since obama has been steadily destroying hilary in the primaries.  people do want change.

the question i keep coming up against is whether people really want the change that obama says he’ll bring or if they just like the idea of change.   here’s a portion of my comment on “economist’s view” (cited above)

the democrats problems all come down to one thing: they act like liberals–meaning everything they say and maybe even believe is with a “left-wing” tilt but they really can’t reconcile that paradigm with being just as money-hungry, power-grubbing as republicans. essentially, the democratic party is a bunch of rich, elites who like to parade blacks and other disadvantaged minorities around so they can show the people that they have “their” best interests in mind. if they were just honest and real, they may actually be a party but this fissure in their political ideology and it’s foundation is too great to maintain a consistent party…so they keep losing to dough-doughs (like the pun?) remember, they don’t have the civil rights movement (among many other politically charging events) to ride the wave into office.

another way of phrasing this would be: (quoting my friend joe who’s way more informed about politics than myself–and much smarter to boot!)

It also rests on the false assumption that opposition to Bush was the primary political motivation of Nader supporters (as it appears to have been for Kerry).

What this argument fails to realize is that Nader supporters are primarily progressive liberal populists, and they therefore have almost as much to despise about the Dems as the Repubs.

Furthermore, Nader’s platforms tend to emphasize “voting your conscience” or “vote your dreams” by which he means that he endorses ideologically based voting.  He believes, as I do, that one ought to define one’s politics by what one is in favor of to a greater extent than who or what one is opposed to.  At times, in 2004, it seemed to me that Anybody-But-Bush folks defined themselves entirely by their opposition to bush.  They had no discernable stance on any issue except this vague notion “Bush bad.”

Anyway, all that is my understanding of how the forces were aligned in 2004.

I don’t see how they’ve changed that much.  Dems still define themselves as “we’re not them” to the extent that they court the middle.  They’re republican lite.  Non-committal (when not diametrically opposed) to the populist stance on almost every subject.

Plus, none of the old “survivor-like” mentalities are gone.  I suspect that many Democrats still consider Nader supporters to be naive, and to be unknowingly supporting the republicans.

I still know many on the left who marginalize the idea that democrats are not legitimately progressive.  They don’t tend to deny the claim, as those who do are easily refuted.  But it’s just not as important to them as defeating the republicans.

Personally, I think the whole bullshit distinction between democrats and republicans is like the acid-laced kool-aid of our time.

There’s far less difference between them than there is similarity.  Period.

Until the droves of allegedly progressive, allegedly liberal people on the left who support the democrats out of an alleged desire (hope!) for change wake the fuck up and quit drinking the Kool aid, voting, particularly in presidential elections, will remain a meaningless, symbolic, and divisive activity that only serves to perpetuate the status quo.  Things will not change until people realize what the reality is.  And to me, the primary fact that people miss is that there is no two party system!  Just like the spoon in the Matrix.  That shit is just a convincing illusion.  Wake up and smell the oligarchy, succa!

so, what does everyone think?

will a vote for nader be a vote for mccain?  will a vote for nader be a vote for a depression?   would regining in the costs for health care be a good thing?  would unionized clothing makers in malaysia be a bad thing for us?

what would the affects of changing our socio-economic paradigm to transparency, efficient government, reduced corporate influence on policy, etc, etc be on our country and it’s “growth”?  would we need to redefine how we define growth?  nader’s not a communist but i see him coming to office being something similar to a political revolution…

speical thanks to counterpunch for posting the transcript for me.

more reading:

•  http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02262008.html
•  http://www.votenader.org/issues/