Don't Ask Don't Tell Repealed by House, Again

?The U.S. House of Representatives today voted 250 to 175 (almost straight down party lines) to repeal the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers in the U.S. military. This is the second time a repeal has been approved by the House. Previously it was repealed in connection with a defense spending bill, which stalled in the Senate a week ago.

Republicans voting against the bill argued it would put too great a burden on the military. And also, via CNN, that "The United States military is not the YMCA. It's something special," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, who added, [this is] "a liberal crusade to create a utopia."

Two Republicans will need to join Democratic senators in approving the repeal for it to pass. While several Republicans have expressed support, they want more time to debate -- yet pushing the repeal through becomes less likely once the more conservative incoming Congress is seated the first week of January. The L.A. Times reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has "promised to bring the House bill to the Senate floor, suggesting he may keep lawmakers in session through the weekend and beyond."

[JDoll]

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Roll With The Cycles, Grab Some Cisco While It’s Cheap Again

Darwin's ideas work in stocks, too

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” – Eubie Blake, American composer (1887–1983)

You cannot underestimate the power of cycles.? They reoccur in nature, business, and financial markets with great regularity.? When we ignore them, cycles seem obvious in hindsight.? Foresight is where you’ll make your money.

Time frames may be different based on secular trends, weather phenomenon, innovations in health care, and government intervention, but generally, what goes around, comes around.? For example, economic booms and busts occurred, on average, every 14 years for 2,000 years.?Beginning in the late 20th?century, they began cycling every seven years as a direct result of government efforts to stimulate economic activity during recessionary downturns.? While they occur more frequently, they’re cycles nonetheless.

Tall Parents Have Shorter Children, On Average
Charles Darwin and his cousin, Francis Galton, were the first to note that tall parents have shorter children, on average, and vice versa.? With Karl Pearson, they studied over one thousand father and son pairs.? Galton termed this phenomenon in nature “regression to mediocrity.”? Since then, the method of studying how one variable leads to another variable has been called “regression analysis.”

Financial market observers see it all the time.? Excessively high prices eventually lead to excessively low prices.? The key to succeeding as an investor is knowing where the excesses are when they’re happening and exploiting them.

Special Offer: Make the most of explosive moves in gold and silver but don’t get left holding the bag when it’s time to run.? Click here for instant access to market timing analysis and specific gold, silver and hard asset model portfolios in Curtis Hesler’s?Professional Timing Service.

“Joining The Dow Can Be The Kiss Of Death”
In September, Jeff Reeves of InvestorPlace.com conducted research showing that by the time companies have grown to become the recognized leaders in their industries, share prices are inflated.? For example, turning the clock back to March 1999 when the Dow Jones Averages closed above 10,000 for the first time, then crested to 11,000 a few months later, four of the biggest names of the day joined the Dow 30. Here’s how they fared: AT&T (then SBC Communications), down 38%; Intel, down 50%;?Microsoft, down 47%;?Home Depot, ?down 38%.

During subsequent reformulations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, laggards were replaced with other leaders of the time.? They included Pfizer, Verizon, Bank of America, Cisco, and AIG.? As a group, these stocks have been shellacked since they joined the Dow 30, but along the way they have continued to make a lot of money for anyone who purchased shares when stock prices were excessively low.? Many have tripled off of lows in 2003 and 2009.

The point is this: You cannot fight the power and magnitude of cycles.? They can make or break an investor.? Here’s one stock that appears far too low right now:

Fallen Angels Focus Stock: Cisco Systems? (CSCO, 20.15)

Cisco is the dominant player in the global networking industry.? Shares plummeted more than 16% on ?Thursday following a less than stellar outlook presented by company management.? While management cited near term challenges, we believe the selling has provided an attractive entry point for longer-term investors.

The company has a solid balance sheet, operating profit margins of more than 20% and net margins in the high teens.? Our fair value estimate (based on discounted cash flow analysis) is $30 per share; providing investors with 50% potential upside from current levels.

Gabriel Wisdom and clients of American Money Management LLC, including mutual funds managed by AMM may buy or sell securities mentioned without prior notice.

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Roll With The Cycles, Grab Some Cisco While It’s Cheap Again

Darwin's ideas work in stocks, too

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” – Eubie Blake, American composer (1887–1983)

You cannot underestimate the power of cycles.? They reoccur in nature, business, and financial markets with great regularity.? When we ignore them, cycles seem obvious in hindsight.? Foresight is where you’ll make your money.

Time frames may be different based on secular trends, weather phenomenon, innovations in health care, and government intervention, but generally, what goes around, comes around.? For example, economic booms and busts occurred, on average, every 14 years for 2,000 years.?Beginning in the late 20th?century, they began cycling every seven years as a direct result of government efforts to stimulate economic activity during recessionary downturns.? While they occur more frequently, they’re cycles nonetheless.

Tall Parents Have Shorter Children, On Average
Charles Darwin and his cousin, Francis Galton, were the first to note that tall parents have shorter children, on average, and vice versa.? With Karl Pearson, they studied over one thousand father and son pairs.? Galton termed this phenomenon in nature “regression to mediocrity.”? Since then, the method of studying how one variable leads to another variable has been called “regression analysis.”

Financial market observers see it all the time.? Excessively high prices eventually lead to excessively low prices.? The key to succeeding as an investor is knowing where the excesses are when they’re happening and exploiting them.

Special Offer: Make the most of explosive moves in gold and silver but don’t get left holding the bag when it’s time to run.? Click here for instant access to market timing analysis and specific gold, silver and hard asset model portfolios in Curtis Hesler’s?Professional Timing Service.

“Joining The Dow Can Be The Kiss Of Death”
In September, Jeff Reeves of InvestorPlace.com conducted research showing that by the time companies have grown to become the recognized leaders in their industries, share prices are inflated.? For example, turning the clock back to March 1999 when the Dow Jones Averages closed above 10,000 for the first time, then crested to 11,000 a few months later, four of the biggest names of the day joined the Dow 30. Here’s how they fared: AT&T (then SBC Communications), down 38%; Intel, down 50%;?Microsoft, down 47%;?Home Depot, ?down 38%.

During subsequent reformulations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, laggards were replaced with other leaders of the time.? They included Pfizer, Verizon, Bank of America, Cisco, and AIG.? As a group, these stocks have been shellacked since they joined the Dow 30, but along the way they have continued to make a lot of money for anyone who purchased shares when stock prices were excessively low.? Many have tripled off of lows in 2003 and 2009.

The point is this: You cannot fight the power and magnitude of cycles.? They can make or break an investor.? Here’s one stock that appears far too low right now:

Fallen Angels Focus Stock: Cisco Systems? (CSCO, 20.15)

Cisco is the dominant player in the global networking industry.? Shares plummeted more than 16% on ?Thursday following a less than stellar outlook presented by company management.? While management cited near term challenges, we believe the selling has provided an attractive entry point for longer-term investors.

The company has a solid balance sheet, operating profit margins of more than 20% and net margins in the high teens.? Our fair value estimate (based on discounted cash flow analysis) is $30 per share; providing investors with 50% potential upside from current levels.

Gabriel Wisdom and clients of American Money Management LLC, including mutual funds managed by AMM may buy or sell securities mentioned without prior notice.

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Press Clips: RELEASE THE IACRACKEN! (or: Newsweek/Daily Beast Merger Rumored, Again)

?ARISE, DAILY NEWS BEAST OF THE WEEK! Press Clips, Day 20, I'm Somehow Writing About The Observer Again edition, right here:

THE DAILY BROWN WEEK BEAST: Nick Summers at the New York Observer has just reported that the Newsweek and The Daily Beast merger is happening (again). I guess they hammered out "the pre-nup." Nobody can really tell you what this "means" right now, so don't listen if they try to. The only thing this means right now is that -- despite the (now disclosed!) fact that Summers used to work for Newsweek -- if this turns out to be true, Summers' has more than delivered with an epic scoop for the Observer. Yes Kyle Pope, it's quite nice, and that disclosure wasn't too hard now, was it? For the moment, breath held, except for a premature congrats to the sad soul who is about to get this "completely thankless...hopeless job," (Tina Brown?) and a premature congrats to Summers: given the signs of all things, he's probably correct.

?VICE Gets Strung Out Over Wired's Breast Cover. The distinguished editorial employees of VICE have somehow yet to smoke their long-term memories today, as someone was cognizent enough to recall that this month's issue of Wired looks exactly like the cover of a 2003 issue of VICE. The peak of their charming, trenchant take on the matter? "Lastly, our model's cleavage is way better for titty-fucking. All smushed together and ready to go, where Wired's model has a canyon (relatively speaking) of flesh between her floppy bazongas." It's never not disappointing that they have yet to devote further resources to media reporting and analysis, a space they are clearly more than primed to get into.

Keller Skelter: New York Times executive editor Bill Keller doesn't like it when reporters are obsessed with the minutiae of his newsroom, Tom Scocca reports. He called those who do "oxpeckers." It might be predictable to point out that some of the most senior and famed reporters on staff at the New York Times actually do this, but, well, there it goes.

Mawhoo To Loosen Grip? If what Edmund Lee at Ad Age, Kara Swisher at All Things D, and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch have all reported to some extent is true, eegh. If they happen, they don't appear to be editorial layoffs, but they're layoffs nonetheless. Takeaway: a once layoff-immune gig looks that way no more.

The Scorched Earth Approach to Your Readership, by Joel Johnson. I'm not sure exactly what triggered Johnson's raging screed against his readers, but whatever it is only serves as more evidence that everyone who doesn't work at a tech blog has it easy. Those people -- as in, their readers -- are categorically insane. That said, "you dumb, cruel, entitled, tunneled vision shit eaters" is exactly how I feel -- and I suspect, most bloggers feel -- about the majority of their commenters. No, not you, but the other commenters. Sorry. It's true.

Linked In. A Miami Herald writer discovers that people pay other people to link to them. It's easy to laugh at the naivety of the piece, but....well, no. Nothing more than that. Information economics are horrifying and widespread. It's a truth people should just get used to.

Glenn Beck vs. The Jews. If he were any more Goyim, he'd be a jar of Hellmann's. I'm just surprised Glenn Beck even knows who George Soros is.

The New Media Ethics: Hamilton is right.

[Full Disclosure: I used to work with Hamilton Nolan at Gawker. I've had beers with him two or three times, and saw him at the Christmas party. I've been to Miami before but never read the Herald, and I'd never pay someone to link me, but I'd consider paying someone to un-link me if I ever ran for office, which I won't. Oh, Hamilton once wrote for Runnin' Scared. Forgot about that. Gawker is owned by Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, who Joel Johnson wrote for, and Johnson also wrote for The Awl once, which Hamilton and I have both written for, and I can't imagine any of the three of us were paid for it, but Johnson's the only one of us who could ask for the money, anyway. I'm a Jew, not really a practicing one, but I'm certainly guilted by my parents like one. I eat mayonnaise sometimes. I generally think Glenn Beck is a penis and would not pay for Fox News if I didn't have to. I didn't know what the word "oxpecker" meant until today, and I once subscribed to the New York Times until it kept getting stolen and I canceled it. Those things should come with dye packs. I've been drunk on VICE's tab a bunch of times. I've never been denied entry into Monkey Bar, but that's also because I've never been, because I really don't think Graydon Carter needs any more scratch than he has. Also, I had miso soup for lunch today, and it was pretty good. There was no mayonnaise in it.]

[fkamer@villagevoice.com | On Twitter | (Actual) Disclosures]

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Matt Damon Rallies the Troops Again for Working Families Party

?The frantic, pre-election, get-out-the-vote push is on everywhere. But aside from President Obama, whose last-minute stumping attracted a crew of stunningly self-defeating AIDS-activist hecklers over the weekend, the biggest star-power has been mustered by the Working Families Party which got Matt Damon to do his second video in a week urging New Yorkers to vote Row E.

Damons's message this time is a lookout for the city's "crazy new voting system." As he puts it: "If you're voting Working Families Party -- and you should be -- only bubble in the ovals on the Working Families line, Row E. Don't go nuts bubbling in Andrew Cuomo and Eric Schneiderman everywhere you see them. That's no good. Your vote won't count for the Working Families Party and you're going to make those people in Dade County Florida look like geniuses...Do yourselves and everybody else in New York a favor and go to Row E and cast a good progressive vote this Tuesday."

For those who missed the first one, it was a little goofier, but if any other legitimate Hollywood stars are doing on-camera bits to rally the vote for Cuomo-Schneiderman-DiNapoli on the Democratic or the Independence Party lines, we haven't seen it.

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