Ronald Reagan and Ron Paul

Fantasic video comparison of the former president, Ronald Reagan in 1964 and presidential hopeful, Ron Paul in 2007-2008.



Thanks to Daily Dose for the video link.

Book Review: Dispatches From The Edge by Anderson Cooper

Last evening I finished up Anderson Cooper's Dispatches From The Edge. I must say this book touched me like no book has touched me in years. I remember reading Chinua Achebe's book in High School, Things Fall Apart and getting upset as I read on. By the time the book ended I was mad. I had truly connected with the story and was emotionally affected by it. Since that time I have rarely if ever really gotten that connected to a book... until this read.

Last week I was sitting in a Taco Bell on my lunch break listening to chapters from this book on my Zune. I was sitting on the edge of my seat holding back tears as Cooper described the lives of people he encountered through his professional life as a journalist. I was sitting there eating a Crunch Wrap Supreme as he described the famine in Somalia and Niger and I suddenly lost my appetite. My food seemed somehow insignificant.

Cooper writes that the act of moving on kept him going. He intermingles his stories from the field with the story of his life. Everything seems tragic; everything seems painful. He describes his original desire to immerse himself in the worst situations in the world as a way to surround himself in other people's pain and sorrow in the hopes of wrapping perspective around the tragedy and pain of his own life. In the end Cooper makes it clear that he used to think his stories might cause change to the world but now he believes they merely show an audience what is happening in the world instead of inspiring us to change it.

From a news corespondent you hear on a regular basis the facts of stories and world events, hopefully unpolluted with bias. But from this book we really hear the opinion of a man who has seen many horrible things throughout a career. We see a man who has cried alone at night after watching men, women, and children dying of starvation in Africa. We see a man appalled by the death of Americans in the city streets of New Orleans with no government officials to clean up the bodies or save those clinging to life. We see a man who has held his tongue on his opinions out of duty to his profession who is full passion and pain.

This book was a brilliant memoir. It is short and readable and I will never forget it. It will change the way I think about war, poverty, hunger, and foreign affairs. It will stay with me for years. I don't expect another book to touch me quite like this one for a very long time!

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My other book reviews.

How do we fix the markets?

I'm going to get a little political here so bear with me. I've decided that of all the presidential candidates I'm going to be supporting Ron Paul during this electoral season. Mostly because he is a Libertarian and shares very similar views as I do.

I've decided that the Republican vs. Democratic system just doesn't work for people like me. Fiscally speaking I'm very conservative which bodes well with the Republicans but socially speaking I'm fairly liberal which bodes well with the Democrats. Basically if I choose sides within the two-party system I'm choosing one of my belief systems over the other and that's just not cool.

Anyway, Paul, though running as Republican, hits both sides of my political beliefs as he is fiscally conservative and socially liberal... and most importantly very capitalistic. He's perfect for me... except he's a little bit more anti-foreign involvement than I care for but I can overlook that.

So with all the market turmoil these days he has just published his "Comprehensive Economic Revitalization Plan". I encourage you to read it as it will drastically differ from all other candidates. The main difference is (generally speaking) Paul looks to revitalize the economy for decades instead of quarters. All this short-term stimulus stuff that everybody is talking about is just that, short term... and really short term. Although I'd like to receive a check this tax season for an extra $300-$1,200 dollars I'd also like the dollar to buy 1.5 Canadian Dollars again or 1.2 Euros again. I'd like commodity inflation to stop. I'd like government to stop spending us into greater deficits as that makes life tougher for me in the future.

In the end, a little market slowdown vs. recession today means next to nothing to me compared to a stronger US economy 20-30 years from now. I believe Paul's reforms could bring us the latter and that will mean something significant to anybody despite their beliefs.

In addition to Paul's plan (linked above) I'd encourage you to take a look at his Campaign Blog and subscribe to it. It is updated roughly 5 times a day but it's an easy and enlightening read.

Barclays: Don't Let A Good Idea Get Away

Just a random post here. I love this commercial and I only see it on CNBC so many people might not ever see it. Enjoy!

To Recap The Honeymoon: Part 1

Our honeymoon was a lot of fun to say the least. I wrote up a quick little write-up on it over at FlorAndBrian dot com. Check it out. It only covers day 1 so there's a lot more to come. In case you don't want to read much then you can just watch the day 1 video. Enjoy.


Honeymoon Cruise Video - Day 1 from Brian Mounts on Vimeo.

For recaps of other wedding topics check out the bachelor party recap and the wedding rehearsal day recap.

2007 - A Year In Review

Here's a quick synopsis of last year. What a year! It's amazing as you go about your day-to-day life you don't really see the amount of significant events unfold quite like you do when you look back on it all.

2007 ended up being a life changing year. It was full of joy and pain. I didn't even blog about everything but what I did touch on here is outlined below. I am so happy right now in my life that I can hardly express it. I look forward greatly to 2008 as it will be my first year as a married man.

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January 2007 - A new year begins and I begin blogging again after a long lull. I then begin picking and tracking stocks again as I try to stay current in the business world. Finally I decide that I should make sure I'm healthy by seeing a dentist and a doctor for the first time in a long time.

February 2007 - I begin tracking all of my bowling statistics and start looking back on past NGS videos with fondness. Valentines Day with Flor went off great as did the championships of our softball league with Flor making the game winning catch. Ohh yeah, I finished my BA requirements.

March 2007 - Graduation! Decision to take multivitamins was made, as was a nice guys decision to get married. Got tired at work so I went on a vacation, Big Bear was great!

April 2007 - Tough month for the family, Grandma died but Flor got to meet my family. I did some bowling, got my first Dutch 200, and went green. Great news! I saved a ton of money on my car insurance... er, Student Loan.

May 2007 - A 299 game, a journey into Africa with my lady, and my diploma arrives. Stink! My car is broken into, luckily my first audio books weren't stolen. Cousin John leaves town.

June 2007 - Grandma's cat moves in, Kathleen visits SD, and Flor and I hit Reno & Yosemite in style. I was happy to take Flor golfing for the 1st time.

July 2007 - I bowled great in Reno and caught my cousin Jess' wedding. An important 1-year anniversary and family camp.

August 2007 - Took a trip to Dublin and Barry hits #756. Flor and I start cooking hard core stuff and I make some great cookies. How cool! My dad starts blogging.

September 2007 - Flor says yes! We take pictures and start our wedding website..

October 2007 - Fulfill lifelong dream and do some more bowling.

November 2007 - Amazingly I decide to enroll in Grad School. I'm getting an MBA and I spent the holiday with Flor's fam and with friends.

December 2007 - Christmas time again. and the wedding came so fast! The newest Mounts' celebrate Christmas together and then we spent time with family.

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Read my reviews of 2006 & 2005

Book Review: Carrie by Stephen King

Last month around the amazing schedule Flor and I kept as our wedding approached I managed to tackle a relatively short but classic book from Stephen King, Carrie. Carrie was adapted into a movie back in the 80's and was played by Sissy Spacek in a magnificent performance and I was very surprised to listen to this book as it was narrated by Sissy Spacek also. As many of my readers know I tend to not actually "read" many books but listen to the CD versions of them in mar car predominantly.

Anyway, the book was a mere 6 disks long so it was a pretty short read for me and I was able to finish the book a few days before the wedding despite my significant lack of free time. For this reason alone I love the audio book because had I been reading this book conventionally I never would have touched it in those few weeks in early December.

There were quite a few differences between the book and the movie and like most books the book contained far more detail and was much more rewarding to finish. I'd have never known otherwise but Carrie basically did 95% of her telekinetic development in the few weeks the book/movie covers. Also, we learn in the book rather than the movie of all that happened in Carrie's past through a documentarians writings. Carrie also finds herself taking her wrath out on the whole town as opposed to just her school in the book and continues of her rampage for hours after the initial blow-up at the school before finally slowly dying in the middle of nowhere due to the wounds of her mother inflicts on her.

The book was intense from start to finish and as it was so short I could imagine someone getting sucked in and reading the whole thing in one sitting. It's one of few books lately I've read where I was troubled to put it down due to a craving for more chapters and when it ended I was sitting on my seat.

The concept of the book really was quite crazy but the storytelling is so good that you instantly bond with Carrie and care for her. You overlook the ridiculousness of the plot line and feel like it is totally normal despite it's tragedy. I recommend this book to all King fans and to those that don't mind a classic story with a lot of blood and gore.

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My Other Book Reviews

To Recap The Wedding: Part 2

So I just posted a lengthy post on the subject of The Wedding Rehearsal Day over at http://www.florandbrian.com/ so I'd encourage anyone checking out my blog here to go read that over there. To summarize however, I will say that the day was very long and very busy. I was stressed but not quite stressed out for most of the day and I lost my appetite by dinner because I was so tired. I LOVED spending time with family by the way; it was incredible to see so many people from my extended family sitting with me and Flor for dinner in San Diego. These are people that flew thousands of miles just to support Flor and myself in our marriage and that is a powerful statement that didn't go unrecognized. I love you all and I'm thrilled that you all were a part of our wedding.

Now, in the interest in making pretty posts I'm going to attach the following pretty picture from the day. Now go check out my more "enhanced" post on this same subject over at the wedding site blog. Here's the direct link.



In case you missed it, here's the link to Part 1

I'm Honing My Video Editing Skills

So as I've got a lot of video footage from our Honeymoon that I've got to make into a cool video I decided to do a test run and reacquaint myself with my video editing software. I put together this little ditty last night after doing laundry and making dinner and I'm pleased with it. It's a little footage from our New Years trip to see Flor's family over Monday and Tuesday of this week. We had some good times and we watched a lot of TV. Enjoy.