THEME: FAHRENHEIT 9/11

The effects of F911 are starting to show. Typically, surrounding a major studio release, the cable networks play movies related to the movie (usually featuring the star) to either stoke interest or to reinforce continued interest. A movie like F911 not being a studio release certainly had no such support. ABC did not play Bowling for Columbine.

So, it is curious that today, on Fox's The Simpson's, the plot involved the entire Simpsons family being carted away by the government to an undisclosed detention center where other supposed dissidents are being held. One of the dissidents was Michael Moore! I wonder how the producers snuck that one by Murdoch!

Also, TCM featured Fahrenheit 451. This shouldn't come as a surprise given Ted Turner's politics, but my guess is that interest is slowly being piqued. Look for the movie version of 1984 or Animal Farm on your cable tv soon!


On a related note, the stock market remains soft. Friday was the first appearance in market sentiment by a few of the respected sentiment authors of the Bush Can Lose meme.

Don Straszheim of Straszheim Global Advisors said he was not concerned by the recent softness but projected the economy going forward would be only “decent,” not strong. And that, he said, is not a good sign for Bush.

Over the past four decades, he said, strong employment growth generally has benefited the incumbent president, while weak employment has boosted the challenger. When economic conditions are more neutral, as they are now, the election tends to turn on non-economic issues, he said.

“I think the election is being served up on a silver platter for Kerry,” Straszheim said this week in a conference call for clients. “This looks increasingly like a 1968 kind of election cycle in which global issues swamp those domestic economic issues.”

Jim Cramer got the ball rolling by declaring the market to be "sick from the top down," and citing "a gradual realization that Bush will be forced out in November and a new man will be president, a man who may not be better for the stock market but one who arguably may not be worse if simply because a gridlocked government is better than the drunken spending and the no-vision team we have in now."