Well…I’m just getting ready to go out and do twenty on the bike and wanted to get this thought out on the turmoil in the commodities markets over the past week where we’ve seen silver fall almost 25% and oil down almost 12% in the past three days. In the case of silver, the trading board that governs these trades raised the margin percentage that traders had to risk in the market; making it more expensive for traders to speculate and drive the price up. This is exactly what I advocated last week in the case of oil and the results were exactly what I and some of the experts predicted; that when the traders actually had to put skin in the game they would flee like the rats they are. Even though we’ve seen oil correct over the past few days, I still advocate raising the margin percentages there, too, since it has been way too easy for speculators to maintain their grip on the market and manipulate it in their own interests… a tax that we pay to the rich who don’t care at all about tanking the economy just so they can line their pockets….geez…
Category Archives: Misc
Some new thoughts….
Well…wanted to get at this one before the day gets busy…it deals with a fear I have about how the news of bin Laden’s death will be exploited by the fear-based community (repubs and the security-military complex) to place further restrictions on American citizens and continue the undermining of the constitution and our individual rights. Now, I realize that bin Laden had pretty much been marginalized by the manhunt for him, left to communicate by human couriers to the world outside his complex, and that there were still terrorist attacks attributed to his metastitizing organization going on around the world; dangers that may or may not get worse with the killing. But, we already see the security-military complex taking advantage of the purported higher risk by asking for more money to increase police patrols and surveillance on the general public in the oft chance there may be reprisals. When is this going to stop? When are we, as a country going to say “enough” that we can take a little danger if it means that the government won’t be reading our e-mails, tapping our phones, and watching us with cameras everywhere we go. One of the things that the security organizations do not want you to know is the experience of England, where there is a camera on every corner and every move of their citizens is watched…with all of that watching, not one terrorist attack has been prevented by seeing the perpetrators ahead of time…at best, it may be a tool for hindsight but it is not preventative…and isn’t that what the increasing intrusion in our lives was sold as? I think the death of bin Laden should be the trigger for a real dialogue on what kind of society we want to be…a free one or the one of George Orwell from “1984”….we can’t be both….
A little more on binLaden…
Well..I know I commented on the death of bin Laden in the earlier post but I have a few more thoughts that I would like to share….some of them kind of personal….in that terrible week in 2001, so many punches hit that when I look back, I wonder how I got through it as well as I did….on the day of the attacks, my beloved mother-in-law died heaping shock upon shock…and only a week later, the job that I had held for 28years was eliminated and I was out of work for the first time in my adult life. If you’ve read this at all, you know it was initially intended as a chronicle of the life of an “overqualified and unemployed” old guy looking for work in the worst economy in the past century….and that as really the focus for the first few months…oh, getting off track here.
When I thought about bin Laden’s death this morning out for coffee, my mind goes to the changes for the worse in our society that came from the overreaction of our government to the threat…the warrantless wiretapping, taking your shoes off at the airport, getting groped by strangers as a price for flying…how do we go back from this restriction on our freedom? After all, we did this to ourselves and, as Ezra Klein said this morning ” we can undo this if we have the will”, that was a paraphrase…not a quote…and I hope we start undoing these as soon as possible…
Some thoughts on the tragedy…
Well…just wanted to get out a short one about the tragedy that unfolded yesterday in the states of the south….where over 200 people were killed and entire towns destroyed by the tornado outbreak there. Just wanted to send some good thoughts their way and hope that this country does it’s best to help them…..I can’t imagine what it must be like to have everything you’ve worked your entire life for gone in an instant…there is a picture of the devastation on MSNBC.com that broke my heart…in it, there is a man standing by himself in the corner, looking out at what I expect are the remains of his home….
What’s “the Donald” going to talk about now?
Well…just a shorty to comment on the morning’s knife to the heart of the birther movement. If you haven’t yet heard, Obama released the long-form birth certificate that these idiots, including Donald Trump, have been clamoring for for over two years and that he hopes will end this moronic obsession with where he was born. Yeah….I know, the truth never matters to these people and now they will just move on to knowing that this new one is a fake…I’ll predict a few of the new attacks: Why did it take so long? the typeface wasn’t invented when he was born….that it looks like there are erasures, etc., etc., etc….you can’t reason with irrational people. But, it is going to be fun to watch them tie themselves into knots when their primary argument goes up in smoke…
Thanks, Manny…
Well…if you’ve been here before, you’ve heard me take issue with the idiotic rantings of the Detroit News’ Manny Lopez, and I have to say thanks again for his column in today’s paper…it’s not the only thing I want to talk about but it gets me started and, hopefully, gets the outrage meter moving up. Today, Manny goes on to take issue with Bob King’s comments (Bob is the president of the UAW) that the new financial manager law is an attack on democracy by allowing elected officials to be removed if their organization, be it a city, town, county, or school district runs into financial distress. What would you call subverting the election process by appointed overseers, Manny? What’s next? Removing a congressman or senator if he votes for financially unsound practices? That would put all of your repub buddies at risk for voting for tax cuts when it results in bankrupting the country, doesn’t it? It’s just another instance where the repubs and their lapdog writers scream socialism whenever the dems do anything that will benefit the middle class but then see nothing wrong with tearing at the core of our democracy when they lie to get voted into office. Who would have voted for our gov Snyder if he would have revealed his plans for the giveaway to business and the rich paid for by taxes on you and me? Liars all….
Okay…that is the only topic for this one….I will try to get another one out later but I do feel pretty crappy and want to make salmon for lunch….I have been better lately at getting these out before you come back from lunch….I’m better than Keith at it…oh, that is one thing I did want to talk about and forgot…Keith Olbermann is coming back with “Countdown” on the 20th of June…same time, different channel…..welcome back, Keith….
I was right about oil and gas prices…
Well…it’s red letter day here at “Overqualified & Unemployed” when I have been proven right by no less than the crooks at Goldman Sachs…should I feel good or bad about this? In today’s Free Press, there was a long article where it reported that the commodities people at this large trading house did a study of oil and gas prices and found that 27 dollars of the 110 dollar price of oil is directly attributable to speculators that are trading in the oil futures market…that is over 25% of the cost of a barrel of oil…and the traders have a neat little scam running on all of us….that when the traders bet that the price will go up in the future…it always goes up….you heard me right, these guys have so distorted the normal rules of supply and demand that they no longer have any bearing on the price of oil. I’m sure that with just a few phone calls amongst the big traders, they alternate daily who is going to be the one to bid the price up and who is going to just sit and rake in the profits. Now, who among you out there are for more deregulation of the economy? This crap started when the Bush administration pushed for rules that allowed traders to never take possession of the commodity they are trading…allowing oil and gas to be commoditized and made just another financial instrument like sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps….where there is no risk for the traders and guaranteeing that all of the benefits fall to the traders while the rest of our country pays for it….geez….but what to do about it? Normally, I just bitch about this stuff but this time I’m going to offer suggestions….let’s make these guys that are paper trading actually take possession of the commodity they are trading and put up, in real dollars, the total amount of the transactions. This will push the risk back on the traders that are distorting the market and make them less likely to continue to rake in billions in profits off you and me….
I understand this one….
Well…just reading an article that, in the weird way my head works, brought to light other small articles and congealed into something I want to talk about. I know, still burying the lead in some of these but this isn’t a newspaper and those rules don’t apply here….and, how long does it take to read a couple of sentences? So, on to the subject….the whole thing was started by an article about a guy who couldn’t figure out how to get the security to work on a new wireless router, gave up, and left the thing running overnight. Later that night, a pedophile neighbor logged on to his router and downloaded millions of child porn pictures. Of course, the police and their captive judges don’t really need probable cause anymore and issued a warrant for the guy whose only crime was that he couldn’t figure out a wireless router. But that’s not the worst part…the FBI, ICE, and local police then had to form up a swat team that kicked in his door, threw him down some stairs and held him at gunpoint until they took him in to be charged, tearing up the house and confiscating all of the electronics in the house; many of those belonged to his wife. The question I want to ask is “when did every police action in the US become one that these thugs have to abuse American citizens? What is wrong with a couple of detectives just walking up to the door, knocking politely, and asking if they can talk? What, in this man’s history, would make them think he was violent? The answer to that one is nothing….that’s right, never in trouble, no violence, no nothing. and, if the police would have done the very simple job of checking out the username that was involved…they would have seen that it was not him…but that doesn’t matter to the thugs that infest our police today.
There are too many stories like this in our country today…that the citizens are more scared of the police and government than they are of terrorists….if that is the case, then who are the terrorists? And, to those that always come back with the tired old saw “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear”…..that’s just not true anymore….if this man would have defended his home and his family, he would be dead…dead for an unprotected wireless router…is that what we’ve come to in this country?
The brain still isn’t working…
Well….it’s gotten to almost noon and I don’t feel too much better either physically or mentally so there won’t be any politics today I don’t think. Have not done much yet…did go out for coffee and read the papers but there are no topics that have grabbed me…there was one about ethanol and the new rules that are going to allow 15% ethanol in gasoline but then it goes on to say that any car older than 2002 won’t be able to use it without damage….so, anyone who is poor like me can’t drive anymore? Or, are they going to put normal gas in one pump and then jack the price up because it’s “special” gas? I can see why people are concerned about government interference in their lives….and I haven’t even touched on the effect that the diversion of all that corn has had on food prices or the subsidy that the ethanol producers get to make the stuff. Okay, repubs, why aren’t you bitching about this…oh, that’s right it helps business and it’s okay if government helps business; but it’s wrong to help citizens. See…I can’t even work up the minimum of outrage that would power my writing so I’m going to quit here….
Bye Bye, Glenn…
Well…I missed this one and I can barely believe it myself…didn’t really miss it but my brain has been on alert overload for so long that this easy, simple, target was missed. It is a day of rejoicing for America and for us progressives…but not only that, for any thinking, rational human being….damn, buried the lead again…let’s back up…Glenn Beck’s show on the fake news network has been canceled and I can’t be happier. Before you think that I am a proponent of censorship of even extreme ideas, if you’ve been here before you know that I always want an interpretation of the constitution that leans toward individual freedom that is almost absolute, and would want even Glenn Beck’s views to be protected by the first amendment. That said, I also think that the public discourse in our society has become way too coarse and is a factor in the polarization of our country….something I think is the root cause of the looming government shutdown. As I’ve said before, crazies like Glenn would have been unwashed, and standing on a street corner spewing his hate when I was growing up…but in these cynical times organizations like Fox will do anything to further their cause and that has meant giving people like Beck a mouthpiece, but I think it was more than that…I think it was a ploy to make the rest of the extremists at Fox look less far-right than they are….providing a convenient but still false comparison. So, goodbye Glenn….and good riddance….