Caption this Photo!

It’s Friday which means it is time again for the weekly photo caption contest. Caption this photo and you just might be the lucky winner to be announced on Monday.

Rules
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1. Shut up. If you are reading the rules for a caption contest, you need to get a drink and come back in a better mood.
2. You can enter as many times as you like, in fact it is encouraged.
3. A first, second and third place winner will be declared.
4. Winner will receive the vaunted Right Punditeer award, which has not been given away on these pages for four years.
5. Second and third will receive a smaller version, appropriately scaled to the achievement.
6. Contest is over Monday 6pm PT.

Vick, a pastor, is campaigning on a theme of traditional Southern family values. His campaign literature features the good pastor standing with his wife in front of their church. It turns out that when Reverend Vick was pulled over in the middle of the night, he was in the company of a comely 21 year old coed, Sunny Sain. The candidate, who has two children, was less than a mile from his ‘apartment’ when pulled over by the cops. Vick’s attorney claims that the coed was tipsy, so good pastor Vick was providing her with a ride home, I guess so that nobody else would take advantage of her. In a bright note to the story, he was still in prison this afternoon, so apparently his wife isn’t accepting this explanation. In a bit of irony, Vick began running campaign ads on Tuesday.

Vick follows in a long tradition of traditional family values in South Carolina. Who of us could ever forget Mark Sanford, who was governor at the time, going for a long hike along the Appalachian Trail, but ending up in Argentina in the arms of Maria Belen Chapur? Then, in this same Congressional district earlier this year, the leading GOP candidate, Thad Viers, was forced to drop out after his ‘girlfriend’ said that she dumped him when she discovered his marital status but that he continued to stalk her.

Here is Vick’s campaign video. Enjoy.

Right from the beginning why find Senator Labrador Casey confronted by a mystery. A region of the community known as West-town is the scene where a growing number of Yorkshire Terriers are vanishing without a trace! Are their human owners disposing of them? Are they being run over by automobiles? Are they being carried off by predators from the nearby open country, known as ′The Wilds?′

Immediately Casey finds a possible political scandal, as the elected representative from West-town, a Cocker Spaniel named Lucky, has a lot of unhappy constituents. Lucky is a member of the Submissivist Party, who preach a policy of Canines First and absolute obedience to humans. The opposing Contrairian Party believes that dogs and humans should interact with each other for mutual advantage. Or do they? Casey must learn if Rep. Spaniel Lucky has become corrupted, and in league with other species who are out to soil the relationships between Dog and Man. What she learns alters her view on the whole structure of her existence, and leads to The Fitzy Resolution.

So this novel is not exactly another children′s book like Dubs Goes to Washington. This one requires a bit more maturity but should prove entertaining to young teenagers through to us older adults. There is a bit of violence and some of the themes and subjects are way over the head for young children. But if you are adult enough and love dogs, then you will find this novel an interesting one.

I hope you enjoyed my book review of The Fitzy Resolution by Allen D. DeSena and illustrator William Bergin. Published by Dogged Publishers, the novel is available through most major book sources, such as Amazon.com. Needless to say, they have both the print and Kindle versions.

I have to admit a personal passion for all things nautical. My father was a veteran of World War Two, fighting during the harsh days of the Battle for the North Atlantic as a volunteer with the Free Polish Navy. There were many dark, grim days as German U-boats came dangerously close to cutting off the life line to Great Britain. One of my favorite movies is ″The Cruel Sea″, which charts the crew of a British corvette as it struggles against both the Nazis and the ever indifferent Atlantic Ocean. Icy winds and 40-foot swells do not care whose flag you fly under or why.

So hats off to Fleet Week 2012, NYC style! New York launched its 25th year of Fleet Week with a wonderful parade of tall ships, with their sails unfurled, as well as more modern examples of the US Navy, such as missile frigates and an F-18 Hornet Blue Angel fly-by. This year also celebrates the bicentennial of the War of 1812, which got its start on the high seas. Fleet Week comes to us as Memorial Day weekend marks the start of the summer season in America. So anchors aweigh and grab a soft pretzel! The Big Apple is going Navy!

Mia Love was elected Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah in November, 2010. She served on the City Council from 2004 until becoming mayor. She was born in Brooklyn in 1975; both of her parents emigrated from Haiti. After completing college, she eventually moved to Utah, where she met Jason Love. Ms. Love converted to the LDS church, they got married, and now have three children.

She will now face incumbent Democratic Congressman, Jim Matheson in the November election. She has already gained the support of such notables as Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and (House Majority Whip) Kevin McCarthy. Because of her ability to engage voters, and her interesting demographic mix (Haitian-American woman, Mormon, Republican), Love is sure to get a lot of media attention in the upcoming election.

As far as issues, Love is pro-life, and plans to run on the issues of fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility. Here is the video of her speech to the Utah Republican Convention last week:

Much of the confusion comes from the ratcheting up of both the volume of shares and its IPO pricing. Initially, some 300 million shares were priced at $28 per share. This steadily grew to $34 a share until the week of the IPO, when over 400 million shares were put up at $38 each. Minus some stock owned by Zuckerberg and other early investors, as well as employees that cannot be traded for six months, the IPO was set to value Facebook at $104 Billion dollars. Earning only $1 Billion dollars gives the social networking giant a P-E ratio of about 100 to 1, a worse valuation than most of the subprime derivatives.

The pie-in-the-sky enthusiasm for the Facebook IPO, had it been handled better, could have opened the door to more capital investment in technologies, as well as more IPOs in general. Some analysts were hailing the Facebook IPO as the second coming of NASDAQ, which was hurt bad when the Dot-Com bubble burst in 1999. With some 900 million users, it was hard for anyone to believe that the future was unlimited. But the business model for success in the long run may prove far more elusive. Even if they were to charge a nominal fee, say $5 a month, just how many users would stay with Facebook? My guess is that other sites would sprout up like dandelions in a summer meadow drawing most of the crowd away with free service.

Mark Zuckerberg cannot be happy watching as Facebook stick is crashing. Now with a lawsuit filed after the glitch filled Facebook IPO last Friday, the NASDAQ and Morgan Stanley may have more to worry about. The price of Facebook shares have fallen from $38 to $31 as of yesterday. Allegations of insider trading are also being raised, as some major investors on Wall Street may have had advanced noticed about the company′s latest earning reports. This is going to be very messy!