Thursday, June 30, 2011

Corn, Wheat, Chavez, DSK...

Wheat plunges to 11 month low; Corn lock limit down on USDA report. As it turns out, it appears farmers have planted right up to their wive's flower boxes. Not that the marginal acres aren't below average - they are.

The stock piles number, while not all that great, was better than expected, too. The U.S. and the West appears to have dodged another bullet, for another year.

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Hugo Chavez has cancer?  The battle to succeed him is now ON. I can only hope that the U.S. stays out of it.

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U.S. backs Assad in Syria? Why? Isn't that up to the Syrians? I know the devil you know is often better than the devil you don't... and I realize that this is an attempt to stop the domino effect in MENA, particularly Saudi Arabia... but, once again... it is time to cut funding to our far flung diplomatic corps. If not, there will be no return of troops from abroad absent a political convulsion... a convulsion I would rather pass on.

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I just went over the Constitution again... Nope. Nothing in there about trying to influence prices in the marketplace for anything. I guarantee this gets f***ed up, and gets someone serving in the Military killed... which leads to more funding of stupid policies that get more guys killed... so that we can fight over an Oil supply that will not be there in my life time (and I am old).

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It would appear the case against former IMF head DSK is on the rocks.  I kept quite about this since the incident... but I have met DSK, and I want to say this kindly... the guy is an elderly runt... what I mean to say is, he farts dust...  He would have had to plan FAR in advance to make sure the Viagra kicked in before he was going to force any kind of penetration... even then, he would be in need of a step ladder or stool... There is not a maid in New York that couldn't kick his ass blind folded and with one arm tied behind their back... Did I mention that all of the early "facts" were disgusting manipulations of the jury pool?  Remember that story that he ran to the airport so fast he left his cell phone? LOLOLOLOLOL!!! Research that, among others. I think of all those nit wits that showed up to cast aspersions at him as he was led into Court... can you imagine them on a jury? Well, who do you think is sitting on our juries?

Look, prosecutors and politicians: you guys have gotta show a little backbone (or another masculine body part) when dealing with the mercenary/rapacious (pun intended) Feminazis... And buy (another pun... its all part of the "Lawyer Full Employment Act") the way... that whole "Perp Walk", thing? Ditch it - and do it quick. A clearer violation of the Fourth Amendment in this era of digital technology I cannot dream of... using a man's image against him... tsk, tsk.

SOMEBODY wanted him out of the IMF... Cui Bono?

DSK goes on to win the French Presidency... and he is going to get even with a lot of people. Whoever set him up should be looking for Real Estate in the Trobriand Islands.

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The sad fact is that the Tea Party folks have not proved to be Libertarians or Constitutionalists... and not even fiscal conservatives. They have squandered a sure thing presidential victory and are left with an up hill battle at the moment. "I fart in their general direction". What a disappointment. All that work and effort, and they drag in another sub-zero.

I was truly hoping that a 3rd party of Libertarian leaning folks was going to form in the Senate... all it would take is 5 or 6 Senators.  I "thought I heard the voice of the people. Must of been something else".

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Obama's Release of Oil from the SPR

I needed to noodle the release of Oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a few days (and I have been under the weather... which tends to slow my noodling).  CNNMoney had this not too dumbed down article recently:

Four reasons are emerging for President Obama's surprise decision Thursday to release 30 million barrels of oil from the nation's strategic reserve -- economic stimulus; a looming supply shortage; a wake up call to OPEC; and a warning shot to speculators in the oil market.
I think that that line of reasoning is essentially correct... so lets take it apart one item at a time, but in reverse....

1. "A warning shot to speculators in the Oil market." Hmmmm..... This is so wrong on sooooo many levels... but OK, we live within a body politic filled with dingbats and dumbbells... true believers and complete deniers... wing nuts and fruit loops.... Here's my take:

Our command economy control freaks have undertaken an incredible effort to stimulate the economy (most of these efforts are doomed to fail or have a cost/benefit ratio f***ed up beyond recognition). Some of this attempt at command and control had some unintended consequences - just take a look at the US$ - and so the control freaks think they can micro manage aspects of their efforts to increase speculative activity that they find unappealing - even if there is only (and barely) circumstantial evidence that the original efforts to increase risk appetite were the driver behind Oil prices - by driving out speculators??  After all, energy was one of the worst performing sectors in the commodity markets... WhoTF is advising these people? Commodity trading is a Zero Sum Game. For every buyer there is an equal and opposite seller. The market price will ALWAYS get to equilibrium eventually via the supply/demand price discovery between producers and consumers. Reducing the number of trades in between Exxon and Mrs. Smith will absolutely, positively not change the AVERAGE outcome of price... it WILL, however, increase the volatility in the market price... which might have the unintended consequence of reducing risk taking at the Exploration and Production level.

Politically, these knuckleheads have been able to label "speculators" as the evil doers... so this might appeal to the non-thinking viewers of the likes of Oprah and Nancy Grace.

2. "A wake up call to OPEC". ROFL!!! OPEC is keenly aware of their precarious position - there ain't a damn thing they can do about it. IF, and its a BIG IF, OPEC has ANY spare capacity at the moment it almost assuredly is in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and KSA has already said they are going to increase production... my bet is that that was just propaganda... and we will know the truth soon enough.

I am quite sure that a "Wake up call to OPEC" was not part of the administrations thinking... or at least I hope not. While the ruling OPEC's elite might benefit from selling the West and the BRIC's their oil as fast as they possibly can under NO CIRCUMSTANCE is this in the interests of the PEOPLE living in the OPEC countries. The West's ongoing War with Islam has been the predictable result, and the Arab Spring is just the latest chapter in this ongoing saga.

3. "A looming supply shortage". We need a definition for "shortage". There will be no shortage of $150, or $200, or $300 per barrel Oil... and no $100 per barrel Oil to be found. There will be no "shortages" unless governments attempt to ration by inconvenience.  If "rationing" occurs by price, the market will handle everything... now you might not like that; you might have to drive fewer miles and in a smaller car and live in a smaller dwelling and grow your own food and share bath water... amongst all manner of other adjustments. But you will adjust. The problem for the Federal, State and local governments is that this will simply destroy their budgets. The good news is that the "smaller government" folks are going to win by default without having to throw a single punch.

4. "Economic Stimulus". This is just too silly to even address. The amount of Oil in the SPR might, MIGHT, get these folks through the 2012 elections... and then what? Is our economy "stronger" by destroying contingency funds? "I fart in the general direction" of this one.

In the final analysis, this is just another cluster f*** coming out of the 2 Headed 1 Party (2H1P) Monster that has been eating us alive since the end of the Civil War... but the fat is gone, the muscle is gone, and the Monster is gnawing at the bone of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Forget the Alamo, Remember Vincent Hodgkiss

I barely knew Vincent Hodgkiss. The fact that I knew him at all was one of the vagaries of life. The 3rd anniversary of his murder at the hands of the Pembroke Pines police, and the fact that all of people in on the murder were "cleared", has sent me into action.

I am producing a documentary about this killing, and will be airing it out on my blogtalkradio show, The Libertarian Animal. 

I spent yesterday and today trying to speak by phone with the Mayor, Frank Ortis; the Chief of Police, Dan Giustino; and, the Administrative Law Judge for Florida's Broward County The Honorable Sharon Zeller. The Judge's administrative assistant has been playing telephone tag with me, but the Chief and the Mayor have yet to call me back.  

I hope they will open their doors and answer some questions... I can assure them that I will be showing up, and soon, with a camera crew in tow. 

I will be putting up a link shortly to my radio webcast on what I have come to find in the Hodgkiss Killing.

Americans War Weary?


The writer made the incredible leap that Americans are "War Weary".

Really? I hope so. But weary of which War? The 10 year old war in Af-Stan? The 7 year old War in Iraq? The 40 YEAR OLD War on Drugs? The 50 YEAR OLD WAR between the sexes?

WTF happened to us? We seem to have forgotten how to cook good food, make love, and drink wine. To enjoy the seasons of our lives and revel in the buoyant surge of just being alive, rejecting that philosophy and instead tuning in to watch Nancy Grace bite the heads off of chickens and Gloria Alred display the latest victim of some "evil doer's" sexual conquest (I always wondered where the Male equivalent of Gloria has been hiding - after all, there are no shortage of gold digging, money grubbing, leaches among the fairer sex... marrying for money, divorcing for money... or divorcing for a lack of money... he could set up shop in Boca Raton... the supply of "Material Girls" is simply endless there... not a set of natural boobs in the place... Wait. That's not manipulation, is it?). We have forgotten ourselves and our humanity and have filled our prisons to overflowing with non-violent drug users... and have taken leave of our senses by rejecting the health and beauty of youth for an extra 50 pounds of body weight kept cool in an Air-Conditioned mirage of Television "Media Rooms", Barco loungers, and anti-depressents.

It is a complicated equation that landed us here: Vietnam x Gloria Steinem ÷ Billy Graham √ Jesse Jackson ∑ Charles Manson to the 3rd power of the prison/industrial, marriage/divorce, educational/student loan Industrial Complexes.... or something like that. The other side of the = sign contains even more bizarre data - far too disparate to recount here.

(Now, the only sensible people in the West when it comes to enjoying the fruit of our existence are under attack from Maureen Dowd & Co. I pray that the French do not crumble before the onslaught of the "The Angst of Empty Beds and Empty Wombs" (that quote is my own, and I place it in quotations as it is the title of a long essay I am writing). Anything for a perceived political gain, eh Maureen?)

America's "Make War, not Love" culture has put billions into the pockets of weapons manufacturers, Law Enforcement and Prison Budgets, Lawyers of all persuasions, Politicians, and a cadre of other miscreants... while most of our wineries are going bust. Clearly, something is wrong with that equation.

Are Americans really ready to Make Love not War? Not with Gloria Alred on duty.

NAZI Coward Police Officer

This is not America. Yet another case of government agents SWORN to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution... and then trampling on the spirit and letter of our founding document.

I pray that this officer's career is finished. Assaulting citizens under "color of authority" should result in a hefty prison sentence and a felony conviction. He is nothing but a coward and a piece of sh#!

The various State legislatures and the Courts had better wrap their collective minds around the new reality - cameras are EVERYWHERE.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Somebody noticed War Spending?

Wow.

"Sagging economy draws attention to War spending"? No F***ing Duh.

I gotta tell you how disappointing I found this... some how it was OK to kill innocent people with drone missiles and get American teenagers killed and maimed... but its not OK because war costs money?

I swear that it tastes like somebody just sh#! in my mouth.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The First Casualty of War is Truth

The EMU is unwinding, with Greece its first jettison.

The 20th Century will eventually be viewed as the Century of social/fiscal experimentation... with the conclusion being something we adults knew all along - there is no such thing as something for nothing. NOTHING is free, and anything free is NOTHING worth having. Unfortunately, this won't stop people in the future from believing in something for nothing or stopping others from trying to take advantage of people by promising them something for nothing.

I had a nice conversation with Stu Staniford of earlywarn.blogspot.com the other day. I share his view that a Greeek contagion slow down could spread to the other PIIGS... and drop European demand for Oil to its knees (it is my sense that that will be the time to buy Oil).

But I think the Greek thing is small potatoes when compared to the international Corn Crop and Demand picture.  In fact, a powerful recession in Europe might be helpful in taking pressure off of Food prices in addition to Oil prices.

Its all about the weather in the growing regions. World inventories of grains (outside of rice... rice is in pretty good shape at the moment) are at multi-decade lows. A weather catastrophe in a major producing region would be very, very interesting politically - even here in the U.S. If you think $5 gasoline is problematic for the 2012 election pols, try $10 per gallon milk.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The various complexes...

Today's Show.

Yesterday's Show.

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Don't know how many of you caught this. A Miami Beach police officer pointed a gun at an innocent bystander for filming a police shooting. This is serious stuff; the kind of stuff that can lead to civil unrest and entire cities being burned to the ground. Having goose-stepping-NAZI-garbed thugs threatening to KILL (that's what pointing a gun at somebody's head is... a threat to kill) for having the temerity and audacity to witness and record a government worker is not going to lead anywhere else.  I have lived in South Florida for most of my adult life and I am AT LEAST as terrified of the cops as I am the criminals. And Miami Beach? That city will never see a nickel of my money. That city's government has lost its humanity.

Here is one of the videos. You can google more for yourself.

BTW... a gun was found in the car. Maybe the driver DID threaten a police officer with it. In that case, the police MAY have been justified (and maybe they were not... it has been reported that 4 innocent bystanders were wounded). Or, given the police department in question... maybe the gun materialized in the deceased's car after the fact. I will leave that to Internal Affairs, although I have little faith in them, either.  Like I said: The answer for thinking people is to boycott this city. Starve them of the resources needed to continue this insanity. Unfortunately, the risk that NON-thinking people will take matters into their own hands is very, very real.