Word Clouds and Congress

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text you provide.  I’m sure most have seen examples, I know I have but until recently, did not know how to create the cool graphics and did not even know it had a name. 

Here I found an interesting thing to do with Wordle.   The Pew Research Center asked people to respond to the question;  Describe Congress in one word.  The resulting word cloud was interesting to say the least.  The larger the word in the cloud the greater the percentage of response. Only 4% responded with something positive.  (likely family members and staffers IMO) Larger words were Dysfunctional and Corrupt.  Go figure.  Anyway give it a look here http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=982

Just for grins I put together an example for Sidewinder's view.  Note I have a high opinion of myself LOL. Neat stuff nontheless.

This is about the general feeling I get percentage wise among folks I communicate with. If this in anyway represents the true feeling of the American public how the hell is it they keep on holding their positions?  Could it be we simply have no other choice?  Is it that the voting system we have in place has been figured out to insure desired outcome by those in the know?  How can fewer than 500 people have so much power over 300 million.  Is this the way the Republic was intended to function?  Why do I have this sinking feeling that something's just not right?

Blogs and demographics

Wow, I can't believe the way consistency effects readership.  Actually I can, because who wants to come to a blog to see the dame old crap all the time.

I got a little busy with real life and slacked off on posting for about 10 days.  I was actually surprised at the number and diversity of the visitor here in the first Month.  23 countries, 6 continents and more hits than I ever expected.  Just now looking at the stats I see the numbers fell steadily over the last ten days, falling 80%.  Interesting observation.  Hopefully the numbers will return as I post more.  Or actually it makes no real difference to me as I am not in the blog business for a living so just an observation.

To those that come here I appreciate your visiting and reading my drivel and maybe someone somewhere has gotten something of value by indulging me.   

Some Thoughts

I have been busy with some spring chores and other life support issues not to mention having to stay constantly on the computer with all the volatility in the market the last two weeks.  Sorry for not posting much but some things can't take a front seat to life.  I have been in some dialog with some socialist nitwits on another site in the evenings and thought I would place here one of my posts for your perusal.  I will try to make some market comment later, time permitting. But mostly this looks like a big correction to me and have been playing it that way.   someone made a statement that we were experiencing growth and put up some penny stocks that had like 19,000 % growth as examples.  Typical of the media morons touting how good the recovery is going.  That started the below rant after I called him on it and basically made a fool of the guy for even trying to sell such bull shit.  One of the companies he listed with massive growth is actually insolvent but socialist will say anything to promote their flawed Marxist agenda.  Anyway here is the post I was talking about.

************************************************************************

I think I am on record here as having very little use for either major political party, and politicians in general.  The reason I responded with actual facts that have meaning in an economic sense is that whoever is in charge always tries to paint the brightest picture.  I have seen others here talk about the perceived recovery and the post you made xxxx appears to me at least, as a weak attempt to promote the idea a recovery is underway

Senate unanimously approves measure to audit Fed - MarketWatch

Senate unanimously approves measure to audit Fed - MarketWatch: "Senate unanimously approves measure to audit the Fed
Bill would have Fed disclose names of bank recipients of emergency loans"

Senate OK's One-time Audit-the-Fed Measure - FOXBusiness.com

Senate OK's One-time Audit-the-Fed Measure - FOXBusiness.com: "Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Senate OK's One-time Audit-the-Fed Measure

�
ShareThis | Respond to Editor | Print
�
By Ronald D. Orol
MarketWatch Pulse

�
WASHINGTON -- A controversial measure requiring the government to conduct an unprecedented one-time audit of the Federal Reserve's economic crisis response programs was approved with overwhelming bipartisan support Tuesday by the Senate as part of sweeping bank reform legislation. The amendment also calls for releasing the names of institutions that received in total more than $2 trillion in loans from the central bank during the peak of the financial crisis. The provision received a vote of 96-0,"