changegonnacome

Indeed agree with all that you said above....and computer code isn't a terrible analogy for any religion.....and Islam as you point out, in particular, attempts to replace more of an individual's 'core code' than any other scaled religion...and unlike say Catholicism where the Pope/Rome provides kind of patch updates to the OS such that it can flexibly move with the times....Islam doesn't have this patch update feature....the Quran is such an expansive and static rulebook that contains so many 'teachings' that are antithetical to modern liberal democratic life that the calculus for how countries think of immigration from fundamentalist source countries should be very different. The left would say that is discrimination but the reality is inviting people into your country who despise your values and culture is just not a good idea ever.

I disagree here - Islam, maybe because of its age, maybe because of its books and ideology or maybe because of the direction it has taken in recent times......has a militant violent streak (read dangerous) which dwarfs any of the other faiths. The classic Sam Harris analogy is instructive.....which is.....one could produce and put on a Broadway comedy play/musical lampooning Jesus, the Mormons (already have), the Jews........and it would go off with some fanfare but no violence/deaths........the same could not be said for a comedy musical lampooning Muhammed/Islam......it would require the national guard to provide round the clock protection to the producers, actors and show attendees....yet the Book of Mormon can run for a decade with zero violence. Why? Because as it pertains to 'defending' the faith in a world of free speech......contemporary Muslim's (all things being equal) are worse than Jews, Christians etc......because contemporary Muslims, the evidence shows, have a much higher propensity to turn their ephemeral faith into real acts of violence/terrorism that are antithetical to Western values of individual freedom than any other contemporary religion......if the period was ~1095 - 1291 (the crusades) I would say the same thing about Christians. However we dont live in the 1100's, we live in the 2020's......and in the 2020's Islam has a crusader streak which means that a mind virus is loose in a minority (but substantial) number of its faithful which justifies absolutely heinous acts of violence like Oct 7th......or the various atrocities too many to list.

@Vish_ram I think that's right - the US indices have become so service and software heavy (capital light writ large) that the old models are going say its expensive no matter where we are in the cycle versus the past....the average SPY company is now simply a better business than the average SPY company from 20,40, 60yrs ago.....margins, ROIC, global TAM's feeding into global growth avenues all requiring little incremental capital to do so etc. You can and should pay up more for this versus the past.........within limits of course.....so a model rooted in the capital heavy past would of course flash red as Hussman's has forever basically.

Centene investor day has now gone virtual....previously it was to be held in person at NYSE on Dec 12th..... https://investors.centene.com/2024-12-05-CENTENE-CORPORATION-TO-HOST-VIRTUAL-INVESTOR-DAY-ON-DECEMBER-12,-2024 Very sad state of affairs that this is where we are now.

Hate to break it to folks.....but the premise of Breaking Bad no longer really stacks up..........Walter White at the next ACA open enrollment period could have signed up for a top tier coverage plan.....with no pre-existing condition exclusions and no waiting period for coverage to start!

This does not exist anymore - the individual mandate at a Federal level is gone....only California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia retained their own state level mandate.

Southpark is on point as always! No healthcare system is perfect........but what I've seen hybrid private-public healthcare systems I've encountered globally are probably the best........a single payer system with blanket universal access......creating a base layer of care and cutting off the tails of medical bankruptcy.........but where private hospitals & private insurers......compete for incremental healthcare spend because they are providing incremental outcomes, speedier turnarounds, better service over the basic public option. Not perfect - but as @Castanza has pointed out - too many talented people are shackled in the US by the employer health insurance chain.........it has undoubtedly suppressed entrepreneurship over the last couple of decades.

Totally agree - disconnecting the patient from the price of service via the HMO cut-out then abstracting the cost of the overall insurance even further by embedding it as a group benefit paid for by your employer (but then ultimately paid by everyone that purchases goods or services from that employer)....is one of the many ways that the US healthcare 'vampire squid' financial shakedown has increasingly got out of control.......its a kind of zombie bloated bureaucracy where no individual provider or worker in it could ever be accused of the shakedown.... but rather the shakedown is the labyrinth system itself for which there are thousands of little innocent cogs that dont need to be there..... The American healthcare system represents a kafkaesque nightmare......as most know on this forum being involved in the finance world....when you encounter something that is needlessly complex......well......where there's mystery, there's margin'......

You know your in trouble when Jeremy Siegel is calling for S&P in 2025 to return 0 to 10% If Tom Lee or Dan Ives....comes out and says anything less than 20% return for SPY in 2025.....I'm selling everything

I hope they do. The economy really needs to be brought to its knees there to create the right conditions for some sort of settlement next year.........cause every report I'm reading right now from the front lines is bleak....... showing a Red Army on the march and clearly in the ascendency....by contrast Ukrainian reports are of relentless shortages of artillery, men and moral........some 50 ATCAMS, for all the talk, are not changing the overall trajectory of what is fundamentally a ground war.....there is very little military incentive right now for Russia to come to the negotiating table on January 20th....increasing economic pain on Russia is now the most viable pathway through which the West can help Ukraine (& itself) save face with a deal that may be defensible relative to all the hot air spewed in 2022.

Not sure you picked up my sarcasm….or the post above it that pre-dated Trump doing exactly what I said he would (telling the public something is fixed when nothing in a practical & quantifiable way has changed at all )….but it goes to prove my point…truth social or X posts are the new governing…the tribalism inherent in the country (on both sides) means simply telling your ‘team’ that you’ve fixed something…results in them swallowing it …..forget the post-truth era….we are living in the political vibes era….your party/president is in power and everything is automatically great again (data be damned)….your party/president isn’t in power and the place has gone to hell in a hand basket again (no matter what the data says)…democrat and republican diehards are as guilty of this as each other..it’s quite the trick they’ve pulled the boys and girls in D.C.….turning each parties supporters against each other like rabid dogs….is a genius move for politicians that now run on clicks and vibes…versus actually doing stuff.

Voila......and just like that.........the Southern Border has been 'fixed', the migrant crisis ended....all in a phone call with the President of Mexico......and effective immediately! Wonderful to hear it. https://nypost.com/2024/11/27/us-news/trump-says-mexicos-president-has-agreed-to-stop-migrants-from-crossing-the-us-border-illegally/ “Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately,” the 45th president said. “She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” he added.

Yep been watching that..... I think everything in the US/EU's power now should be done now to kind of dial up the pain on the Russian side......not sure what sanctions are left or whether the existing ones enforcement can be dialled up....but they should be.....there's a window, perhaps only a few months when Trump gets into office where the whole situation is really Biden's folly still......before too long though the stink starts to get on Trump's suit & its his ego/machismo begins to get wrapped up in the situation.......there's on off-ramp coming up for the two superpowers......I think they'll take it....at the expense of Ukraine.

Yep mutually hurting stalemates and the concept of 'ripeness' for negotiated settlements has always been a pretty descent framework for how a lot of seemingly intractable conflicts get resolved......ripeness almost being a perfect substitute for the word exhausted! https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/9897/chapter/7 The wrinkle to this..........would indeed be a Ukrainian collapse whereby Russia started making sustained and speedy territorial gains due to the Ukrainian front line collapsing......nothing mutually hurting about making advanced gains in a short space of time....before you head to the negotiating table.

Jesus - rough stuff reading........It really wouldn't surprise me if Ukraine's front line collapses in the coming weeks....it must be incredibly difficult for Ukraine's military leadership to maintain discipline and commitment now in the lower ranks.....I feel for the Ukrainian fighters out there in Eastern Ukraine.....the David vs. Goliath ending is assuredly over now....and so it must be near impossible to summon up the 'why' required to press forward and put your life on the line.