Barack Obama Wins Second Term; Opportunities To Say "I Told You So" Immediately Present Themselves

County by county results of 2012 Presidential Election with red indicating counties that went with Romney and blue indicating counties that went for Obama.

Despite earlier indications to the contrary, the American electorate had apparently decided to double down on the previous four years of failure and re-elect Barack Hussein Obama to a second term. And I do have to use some sort of qualifier here not only because of widespread military disenfranchisement as well as election-day dirty tricks in some cities, but also some swing state counties having voter turnout as high as 111%.

It should probably go without saying that I was extremely shocked and disappointed in the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election. However, science fiction author and Mormon Democrat Orson Scott Card probably summed it up better than I ever could.

Of course, it didn't take long for harsh reality to rear its ugly head. On Wall Street in the days leading up to the election, there was talk of the markets rebounding regardless of who won because it removed 'uncertainty' from the longer-term picture, that turned out to be only partially true as the Dow-Jones plunged 369 points in a single day. Shares in finance and defense companies took a beating, but not nearly as bad as coal stocks. Since election day, shares of Arch Coal [NYSE: ACI] have dropped 14.78%, Oxford Natural Resources [NYSE: OXF] declined in value by more than 22% and shares of James River Coal [NASDAQ: JRCC] have lost 42.77% of their value.

Curously, the media decided to rediscover the 'fiscal cliff' and debt ceiling issues about one day after the election- issues the Romney/Ryan campaign had demonstrated they were at least capable of taking seriously while President Obama went on Letterman and denied there was even a debt problem. Some media types simply attributed the stock market freefall to uncertainty over the looming fiscal cliff.

Hardly 24 hours after Obama declared victory, a number of companies including Boeing, Energizer, Research in Motion, Lightyear Networks, Hawker Beechcraft, the Providence Journal, UtahAmerican Energy and Corning had announced a fresh round of layoffs while Olive Garden and Red Lobster parent company Darden and grocery chain Kroeger stated they were cutting workers' hours in anticipation of a number of 0bamacare provisions going into effect. A number of smaller businesses had reportedly trimmed their full time staff to under 50 employees so they could remain exempt from 0bamacare.

Financial consultants and industry observers also note that most of the smaller local and regional banks in the USA are set to disappear now that Dodd-Frank is here to stay for the forseeable future, leaving behind a number of the larger 'too big to fail' financial institutions that were bailed out with taxpayer money in 2008.

Of course, why should the bad news be limited to the economy and markets? On Friday afternoon, CIA Director David Petraeus announced his resignation, citing an ongoing extramarital affair. Interestingly, I heard this news being broken over CNBC, who claimed their parent network's Andrea Mitchell broke the story [given the close working relationship between the Obama campaign and NBC network's, I wouldn't doubt if she was handed the scoop in exchange for running interference on the Administration's behalf while on the campaign trail- NANESB!]. The affair reportedly came to light when Pretraeus' mistress sent threatening e-mails to another woman close to the CIA director who in turned reported the threatining messages to the FBI. Coincidentally, Petraeus was scheduled to testify before a Senate hearing on the September 11th terrorist attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi.

To hardly anybody's surprise, Petraeus' indiscrecions were made known to the White House by the FBI well before the election, but the White House reportedly held off on forcing him out until after November 6th- much to the chagrin of the FBI.

Keep in mind, all that wonderful news came within 48 hours of the election. If the Obama Administration can cram this much scandal and bad news into a timeframe of just under two days, imagine what could happen with four years.

East Coast Battening The Hatches for 'FrankenStorm'

Flooding in downtown Norfolk, VA ahead of Hurricane Sandy's arrival on Sunday night. Martin Cornick photo via twitter.

A 'perfect' storm which weather forecasters say is actually a Categroy 1 Hurricane colliding with two smaller storms is set to hit the East Coast beginning late Sunday. While Hurricane Sandy has weakened somewhat after earlier sideswiping Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Cuba last week,

Hurrican Sandy reportedly had winds in excess of 110 MPH and a well-defined eyewall more than 20 miles in diameter by the time it had made landfall on the eastern end of Cuba on October 25th. Although it weakened from a Category 2 to a category 1 Hurricane

Projected path of Hurricane Sandy, dubbed 'FrankenStorm' after it was forecast that it would merge with two other storm systems

Governors from the Carolinas to Maine have declared a state of emergency in their respective states in anticipation of Sandy/FrankenStorm's arrival. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey cautioned Garden State residents to take the forecaster's warnings seriously and that their state will likely take the brunt of Sandy while Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is asking schools and universities throughout the Bay state to shut down in anticipation of the storm's arrival. In Rhode Island, Gov Chaffee and local officials have ordered mandatory evacuations for some of the low-lying coastal towns while in Virginia, Gov McDonnell activated 400 National Guardsmen over the weekend. In New York, Gov Cuomo ordered a shutdown of the New York City subway system as well as the MTA commuter rail and bus services effective Sunday night.

Announcement warning of service shutdown at the Long Island RR station in Hicksville, NY. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

Public safety employees and utility workers have been warned that they should expect to be working extra shifts over the next several days and in the Big Apple, both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ will be closed on Monday. The Statue of Liberty was slated to re-open to the public this weekend after undergoing a series of renovations, but the official re-open date has been pushed back in anticipation of Sandy's impact in the mid-Atlantic region. Not surprisingly, in addition to commuter rail, Sandy/Frankenstorm has already snarled air service throughout the Mid Atlantic region as thousands of flights have been cancelled. On Sunday, Amtrak announced cancellation of passenger service on the northeast corridor north of New York City while service on the Northeast Corridor between new York and Washignton DC is expected to grind to a halt effective Monday.

Sandy is also affecting the upcoming presidential election with both camps cancelling or postponing campaign stops in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Forecasters anticipate that Sandy/Frankenstorm will move inland in a similar trajectory to Hurrican/Tropical Storm Irene in late August 2011. Vermont and portions of upstate New York were particularly hard-hit, with heavily damaged roads, rail lines and bridges leaving villages in the Green Mountain state isolated from the rest of new England for as long as two weeks.

Sports Chowdah Update: Feat of Clay- Buchholz Throw Complete Game; Dutch Treat- Holland Takes Gold in Women's Field Hockey; Misty-May Calls it a Career; Manchester United Goes Public

RED SOX- The Red Sox came into Firday night's game at Cleveland's Jacobs Field losing losing seven out of their last nine games- including Thursday night's series opener.

However, Clay Buchholz stopped the bleeding with an outstanding performance, going the distance on Friday night. After allowing an early solo home run to Asdrubal Cabrera in the bottom of the first, Clay settled down, allowing just one other hit and striking out six in Boston's 3-2 win over Cleveland. Clay got run support from a Dustin Pedroia RBI single in the top of the 4th and a 2-run Cody Ross homer in the top of the 6th. The Tribe would pull to within one in the bottom of the 6th thanks to a Ezequiel Carrera sac fly, but that would be it as far as runs scored off of Buchholz went.

Saturday's game will feature Franklin Morales [3-2; 3.14 ERA] starting for Boston while Zach McAllister [4-4; 3.60 ERA] gets on the bump for Cleveland. The game gets underway from Jacobs/Progressive Field at 6:05 ET. Naturally, the game will be televised on NESN.

OTHER RED SOX NEWS- 3B Will Middlebrroks suffered what turned out to be a broken right wrist after getting hit by a 95 MPH fastball in the top of the 9th on Friday night's game.

Early reports indicate that Middlebrooks is likely to miss the remainder of the season. The Red Sox have recalled light hitting infielder Danny Valencia from AAA Pawtucket to take Middlebrooks' place on the roster.

OTHER MLB NEWS- Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Derek Lowe was formally released bt the team on Friday. Lowe had am 8-10 record with a 5.52 ERA this season. Boston and Baltimore had reportedly expressed interest in getting Lowe when the Indians placed him on waivers earlier this week, but neither team had followed through on their rumored interest.

Lowe is best known for being the Red Sox pitcher of record in the clinching games of the American League Division Series, the ALCS and the 4th and deciding game of the 2004 World series- thie first pitcher to do so. The Red Sox 2004 World Series championshi was also his last with Boston and he has since played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves before re-joining the AL with the Indians earlier this season.

OLYMPIC VOLLEYBALL- The women's beach volleyball gold medal game was an all-USA matchup pitting the duo of Misty-May Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings versus Jen Kessey and April Ross.

Treanor and Walsh swept Ross and Kessey two sets to none in the Gold medal game in what Treanor adamantly insisted were her final Olympics. The duo of Walsh and Treanor have won gold in Athens, Beijing and now London- this is in addition to three FIVB beach volleyball titles. If Walsh wants to compete in the 2016 Olympics in Rio, she will need to look for a new partner.

The postgame celebrations were marred somewhat by the partial collapse of the floorboards backstage at the Horse Guards Palace- Treanor, reportedly still wearing her gold medal, slid halfway into the hole but was uninjured along with some of the The venue had to be built from scatch after the Queen's diamond jubilee celebration earlier this summer, but completed in time for the opening ceremonies.

The Chinese duo of Zhang Xi and Xue Chen won the bronze medal match, besting Brazil's Juliana Silva and Larissa Franca. After a dissapointing start to the 2012 campaign, Xi and Chen rebounded to take their second consecutive Olympic bronze medal.

For the indoor women's volleyball, the USA Women's team once again bested South Korea to advance to the gold medal game, which sets up a rematch of the 2008 Olympic gold medal game between the USA and Brazil. South Korea will face Japan in the Bronze medal game.

OLYMPIC SOCCER- It was a rematch of last year's women's World Cup, only with different results.

Japan was attempting to become the first team to win consecutive World Cup and Olympic championships while Team USA was hoping to repeat their success in Beijing from four years ago.

Before a crowd of more than 80,000 at Wembley Stadium, Team USA got out to a relatively early lead thans to midfielder Carli Lloyd who hit paydirt about 8 minutes in. After the opening goal, Japan then dominated as far as time of posession went, but their quality scoring chances were either blocked by USA goalie Hope Solo or went off the post.

Lloyd would then give the USA some insurance with a second goal to make it 2-0 team USA early in the second half, but Yuki Ogimi cut the lead in half and put Japan on the board in the 63rd minute. Japan would get some quality scoring chances late and threaten to knot the contest up at 2-2, but Team USA managed to fend off the late rally and outlast Japan.

USA wins the gold medal game thanks in large part to Carli Lloyd. Goalie Hope Solo officially faced 7 shots on goal, stopping six of them. The women's national team has already planned a barnstorming victory tour, facing Costa Rica in forward Abby Wambach's hometown of Rochester, NY and Australia in Carson, CA in September.

Over on the men's side of the pitch, Mexico's national team stunned the heavily favored Brazilian team, going on to win by a 2-1 final for Mexico's first ever gold medal in soccer. Curiously, depsite winning five World Cup titles, Brazil has yet to win Olympic gold in the event. Mexico got on the board early with a goal from Oribe Peralta in the opening minute of the match- the quickest Olympic goal since FIFA started tracking such statistics 36 years ago.

WOMEN'S FIELD HOCKEY- Even before the first game got underway, the Dutch women's Field Hockey team has gained attention from observers worldwide by exclusively rostering of stunning women clad in bright orange dresses.

This is not just a case of having attractive women out there as a sort of publicity stunt. The Dutch women, as it turned out, were quite good at Field Hockey.

'How good?' you might be asking? Try undefeated throughout the 2012 Olympics.

In the preliminary round, the Dutch women blazed a day-glo orange swath through Japan, Great Britain, South Korea, China and Belgium- shutting out the latter two.

The Dutch would need a shootout at the end of regulation to get past New Zealand in the semifinals. In a match that no doubt brought unwarranted comparisons to the Falkland Islands war, Argentina and Great Britain faced off in the semifinals for their respective pool. However, unlike the Falklands campaign, Argentina would come away victorious and face the Dutch in the gold medal game.

On Friday's gold medal game, Carlien Dirkse van den Heuvel would put the Dutch on the board with a tally in the second half while Maartje Paumen would give Holland a 2-0 lead. Goalkeeper Joyce Sombroek kept Argentina off the board altogether and the Netherlands Women's team would go on to win their second straight Olympic gold medal after beating China 1-0 in the gold medal game at the 2008 games in Beijing.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters photo

ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE- Shares of one of the most widely recognized professional sports clubs went public on Friday afternoon.

Manchester United Football Club [NYSE: MANU] traded flat for much of Friday, closing out at $14 per share, down slightly from the openeing price of $14.05.

The venerable British football club was purchased by American businessman Malcom Glazer in 2005, who also owns the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The purchase reportedly saddled Man U with close to a billion dollars in debt and high interest payments.

The Glazers will maintain control of the club by way of a tiered structure. The Class A shares available to the General Public providing one vote per share held while Class B shares would translate to 10 voted per share held. The Glazers would own both Class A and Class B shares, but retain the majority of their holdings in the more influential Class B shares. This makes it more difficult for an outside entitity to launch a hostile takeover over Manchester United through the publicly traded shares.

The Initial Public Offering makes Man U the most valuable sports franchise in the world, putting its estimated worth at around £1.5 billion- or US$ 2.3 billion, more than the Los Angeles Dodgers were sold for earlier this season.

NFL PRESEASON- The New England Patriots got their first win of the preseason with a low-scoring affair against the New Orleans Saints at Foxboro on Thursday night. Tom Brady saw limited starting time, going 4 for 7 with all of 30 yeards while backup QB Brian Hoyer went 8 for 15 with the game's ony TD in the 7-6 win over New Orleans.

The Patriots will next take on the Philadelphia Eagles at Foxboro on Monday night in a nationally televised game that gets underway on ESPN at 8:00 ET.

NBA- The Los Angeles Lakers have acquired Dwigt Howard fromt he Orlando Magin in a 4-team 11 player megadeal. The deal sends Andrew Bynum from Los Angeles to Philadelphia while Andre Iguodala goes from Philly to Denver.

Howard had earlier demanded a trade from Orlando and refused to start in some games, demanding that the magic fire head coach Stan Van Gundy

Kodachrome Skies No More- End of An Era As Photography Pioneer and American Icon Eastman Kodak Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Kodak Building seen from downtown Rochester, NY. Photo- Carol White Llewellyn

In a sad but widely-anticipated move, Rochester NY based imaging company Eastman Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday afternoon.

Kodak, which is more than 130 years old, filed for Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The imaging company is expected to continue to try to auction off a lucrative portfolio of 1,100 patents that could be worth around $3 billion while in bankruptcy. Interested parties, which reportedly include Google [NASDAQ: GOOG] and Apple [NASDAQ: AAPL], seemed to realize they would have greater leverage if they waited for Kodak to file for bankruptcy.

“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio,” CEO Antonio Perez said in a statement, pointing to “our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images…and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies.”

Kodak said it anticipates completing its U.S.-based restructuring during 2013. In the meantime, it expects to pay employee wages and benefits and continue customer programs.

To keep the company operating while in reorganization, Kodak said it has secured a $950 million debtor-in-possession, or DIP, financing with an 18-month maturity from Citigroup [NYSE: C].

Lazard [NYSE: LAZ] and FTI Consulting are advising Kodak and its board on the bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in shares of Eastman Kodak and taken steps towards de-listing it from the exchange.

Most day to day operations at Eastman Kodak will likely remain unchanged during the bankruptcy. As of 2011, the company employs 7,100 people in the Rochester, NY area and an estimated 18,800 nationwide.

Kodak was founded in 1880 when George Eastman began the commercial manufacture of dry plates from a leased office building in downtown Rochester. Within 8 years, Kodak produced a fixed-focus handheld camera that almost singlehandedly began the epoch of amateur photography. By 1900, Eastman introduced the inexpensive handheld Brownie camera, which was in production (with many variants) for more than 6 decades. However, the company was slow to adapt in the age of digital photography, and while they held a number of digital imaging patents and introduced their own line of printers and ink cartridges, this did not translate to commercial success.

On a personal note, however predictable this was, Kodak's bankruptcy filing still saddens me tremendously. I've done some professional photography work before and I cut my teeth on Kodak- including their now-discontinued line of Kodachrome slide film [Fujifilm would occasionally give me photos with an odd greenish or bluish tint- NANESB!].

For all those wonderful and even mundane moments in my life that I had been able to photograph, it was Kodak that was in the camera.

BUMPED 8/5: USA Loses S&P AAA Credit Rating; Dow Plummets More Than 500 Points in One Day

In it's worst single day since the 2008 Subprime meltdown, the Dow Jones fell 512 points on Thursday, wiping out their gains for the year in one afternoon. The 4.31% loss would be the market's biggest single-day loss since October 2008. Declining stocks outnumbered stocks that finished ahead on the day by a 14 to 1 margin.

Meanwhile, the NASDAQ was down 2.68 on Thursday. Gold prices pulled back slightly from an all-time high to end at $1652 an ounce while oil dropped down from $92 a barrel to $83.

The losses weren't limited to the NYSE or NASAQ either. North of the border, the TSX Composite dropped 3.4% while in Asia the Nikkei was down 3.72%, Straits Time was down 3.61% and the Hang Seng index plunged 4.29% overnight.

Analysts believe that a concerns over the economy, high unemployment numbers, the recently passed debt ceiling deal and the ongoing Eurozone crisis played a part in Thursday's selloff.

The massive selloff comes a day before the July jobs report is set to be released, but investors and analysts have even less reason to optimistic as far as that's concerned.

Curiously, a number of experts that spoke out in favor of the debt ceiling cautioned that this was exactly the scenario the markets would face if the ceiling wasn't raised.

UPDATE 8/5:: The markets closed on a mixed note Friday afternoon, with the Dow-Jones up 60 (0.54%) and the NASDAQ down 24 points (0.94%). However, that was nothing compared to the bombshell that was dropped after the markets closed on Friday afternoon.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Friday lowered the nation's AAA rating for the first time since granting it in 1917. The move came less than a week after a gridlocked Congress finally agreed to spending cuts that would reduce the debt by more than $2 trillion -- a tumultuous process that contributed to convulsions in financial markets. The promised cuts were not enough to satisfy S&P.

The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was telegraphed as a possibility back in April. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody's Investor Service and Fitch, had warned during the budget fight that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade. Moody's said it was keeping its AAA rating on the nation's debt, but that it might still lower it

Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of what Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said would happen if a debt ceiling agreement was reached.

Not surprisingly, the Obama Adminstration has gone after the messenger by shooting it with both barrels.

WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The Obama administration attacked the credibility of the analysis underlying Standard & Poor's decision to downgrade the United States' top credit rating on Friday, saying it had found a $2 trillion error.

S&P was forced to remove the number from its analysis after Treasury officials discovered that the rating agency's estimates of the government's discretionary spending was $2 trillion too high, sources familiar with the discussions said.

There was evident dismay, and some anger, within the Obama administration at S&P's decision to downgrade U.S. debt despite the errors officials said they had found in the calculations.

"A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself," a Treasury spokesman said after S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about growing budget deficits.

Also unsurprisingly, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) used the occasion of the S&P's Downgrade announcement to call for tax increases.

[Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool: Sea of Syrah]

FCC Approves Comcast-NBC Deal

Federal regulators have approved a deal this week in which cable giant Comcast [NASDAQ: CMCSA] acquired a 51% stake of NBC Universal from General Electric [NYSE: GE].

In a 4-1 vote on Tuesday, the FCC determined that the deal, which creates a company with a combined 16.7 million broadband subscribers and 23 million cable customers, is in the nation’s public interest, seeing it complies with certain conditions.
The conditions, among other things, are intended to ensure that the nation’s largest cable provider share NBC programming, such as MSNBC and USA Network, with cable, satellite and Internet rivals. They are meant to stop the conglomerate from trampling competition, which could ultimately lead to an increase in prices for customers, according to the Department of Justice.

Also according to the deal, Comcast will have to offer online video distributors the same package of broadcast and cable channels as it sells to traditional video programming distributors.

This deal effectively makes Comcast the parent company of MSNBC, which as any cursory glance at the ratings will tell you, was likely kept around by the benevolnce towards the networks leftist 'personalities' by GE CEO Jeffery Immelt. It will be interesting to see if this deal in any way changes the arrangement (and God-awful business model) between MSNBC and its parent company.

Buffet's Berkshire-Hathaway Announces BNSF Deal- Railroad Stocks Surge

Already owning a 22% stake in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, Warren Buffet announced earlier Tuesday that his Berkshire-Hathaway Group reached an agreement with BNSF's board of directors to purchase the remaining shares of BNSF in a $44 billion deal. This would make the railroad the single largest investment by Berkshire-Hathaway [NYSE: BRK-A].

Wall Street seemed to take the news rather well.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe [NYSE: BNI] closed at $97 a share, up 27.51% in a single day.

Canadian National [NYSE: CNI] closed at $49.99, up 2.73%

Canadian Pacific [NYSE: CP] closed at $45.53, up 4.24%

CSX Transportation [NYSE: CSX] closed at $45.97, up 7.31%

Kansas City Southern [NYSE: KSU] closed at $25.79, up 7.1%

Norfolk Southern [NYSE: NSC] closed at $45.15, up 5.4%

Omaha-based Union Pacific [NYSE: UNP] closed at $59.41, up 7.9%