I was poking around the net typing in names of old friends and teachers into Google and seeing whatever happened to them. I came across this photo of my 5th grade teacher, Terry Bartholome:

Unfortunately, I found my teacher the photo from the Megan’s Law database. Not exactly the place you want to find one of your childhood teachers. In fact the experience kind of dampens any good memories I had of him. Bartholome was one of the most popular teachers at the school and we used to call him “Mr. Barth-all-over-me”.

I felt lucky to have been assigned to Bartholome’s class instead of Mr. Robinson–who was a dick. In retrospect, while Mr. Robinson was an asshole at least he wasn’t fantasizing about doing my pre-pubescent female classmates like Mr. Bartholome was. Here is what one journalist who covered the Bartholome arrest had to say:

But the story that stays with me most — one of the district’s darkest moments — came more than 20 years ago, when South Los Angeles elementary school teacher Terry Bartholome was sentenced to 44 years in prison for molesting 13 girls in his third-grade class.

Let’s just say that I won’t be looking for him at any reunions.

Reason #757:

Showing us that there are more ways than one that a woman can be “literally busting out of a tight tee” (and they’re not all good):

Ouch!

As I’ve noted before, these guys are geniuses.

Concentate on four areas - Differentiate from Obama

“The War: Our aims are victory, and we will leave each region of Iraq as our victory on the ground allows us to turn another province over to Iraqi security forces.” I’m consistent in my views, Obama isn’t. My way is working, Obama’s won’t.

“Money: Tax cuts led to greater aggregate revenues. Deficits grew due to uncontrolled federal spending.” I will reduce spending and keep the revenue generating tax cuts, Obama will increase spending and increase taxes - A recipe for disaster.

“Energy: I’m as much for wind, solar, and conservation as Barack Obama. But for now at present rates of consumption and production, we will go bankrupt in the transition to green energy.” Too comabt this I will use all available sources. My opponent will not.

“Illegal Immigration: We can talk all we want about “comprehensive immigration reform” but it won’t matter if we don’t close the border—now. I will; my opponent won’t.”

I know the last one is contentious especially with people like DrewM over at Ace of Spades who feel like you can tell McCain is lying because his lips are moving, but he has said it repeatedly in speeches and it is far ahead of Obama’s position.

If it was me I would add one more item - Judges, but I think Victor Davis Hanson’s list works well enough.

The real issue with Jesse Jackson’s crude comments isn’t that the “minister” uttered him. Anyone who has followed Jackson knows this is just his true character popping through the persona that he tries to project. It’s that Jackson actually took offense at what Obama said.

Obama in a speech last month on Father’s Day suggested that African-American fathers needed to take more responsibility for their children - a point made by the entertainer Bill Cosby and others. That line of argument has rankled those on the left including Jackson, who want to more strongly hold government policies to account for the impoverishment of African-American families.

That’s right according to Jackson the fault of deadbeat dads is the government not the dads or the unwed mothers.

People can question Obama on several grounds but putting the responsibility for children growing up without fathers squarely on the shoulders of the fathers is as accurate as one can get. Even the far left humor blog, HelloRocky.com, notes: “Rev. Jackson’s comments are just the ramblings of a frustrated old whiner, himself politically neutered and ideologically impotent. “ How impotent? For that we’d have to ask Margo Kidder.

Researchers Didier Sornette and Ryan Woodard of ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Wei-Xing Zhou of the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China think so:

In their analysis, the team gathered data on oil prices since 2005 in US dollars, euros, and other major currencies (to confirm that the results are not a consequence of the weakening of the US dollar). They also examined worldwide oil supply and demand data, specifically investigating the extent of increased demand from emerging markets such as China and India.

Then, the researchers analyzed this data using a method that Sornette’s group started to develop in 1996 that identifies bubbles as “transient superexponential regimes” – basically, areas of rapid growth that occur due to a source of positive feedback within the system. The scientists looked at the data in the context of three different models, and all three models revealed the existence of a “log-periodic power law,” in mathematical terms – in other words, a bubble. In economic terms, the researchers explain, a bubble refers to a situation in which expectations of future price increases cause prices to temporarily rise without justification from fundamental valuation.

…

A comparison of supply and demand showed that, most recently, supply has been exceeding demand by more than a half million barrels per day. Meanwhile, the price continues to increase. Since it appears that the supply-demand balance has only a small effect on the price of oil, the researchers suggest that a major effect lies elsewhere. They point out several reasons why speculation, fed on rumors of rising oil scarcity, may be the positive feedback causing high oil prices.

As one motivating factor, investors could be searching for a new high-return investment following the collapse of three recent economic bubbles in the US (communication technology, which peaked in 2000, real-estate in 2006, and sub-prime mortgage lending in 2007). Also, speculation may have increased due to the deregulation of oil futures in the US in early 2006, corresponding to the fluctuations that occurred shortly after that time. Investors may also be concerned about a weakening US dollar, which may encourage protective hedging against future oil price increases.

h/t instapundit

On a closing note I am going to plug Radio Free Moronsphere. It’s a new internet station I have set up. If you have podcast suggestions or a playlist that you would like to here you can contact me thru the station page.

The folks behind the always funny HelloRocky.com have adopted an investigative journalism slant and hit a bulls-eye with this piece on Senator Dodd and the “Friends of Angelo”:

The pompous dunderbutt just crafted a bill to provide $300 billion in taxpayer loan guarantees to Countrywide Financial Corp. and others. While this was going on it was revealed that Dodd was on the “Friends of Angelo” list, refering to Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, and Dodd, along with Senator Kent Conrad, received Countrywide mortgages at below market rates that saved them each thousands of dollars a year.

Good reading.

Following Paul Krugman’s lead The Economist this week lays out the case that speculators are not to blame for oil’s increase in price.

Pointing out that the increase in speculation tracks nicely with the tripling of oil prices the author of the article then attemps to prove that this is a mere coincidence -

This reasoning holds obvious appeal for those looking for a scapegoat. But there is little evidence to support it. For one thing, the surge in investment in oil futures is not that large relative to the global trade in oil. Barclays Capital, an investment bank, calculates that “index funds”, which have especially exercised the politicians because they always bet on rising prices, account for only 12% of the outstanding contracts on NYMEX and have a value equivalent to just 2% of the world’s yearly oil consumption.

More importantly, neither index funds nor other speculators ever buy any physical oil. Instead, they buy futures and options which they settle with a cash payment when they fall due. In essence, these are bets on which way the oil price will move. Since the real currency of such contracts is cash, rather than barrels of crude, there is no limit to the number of bets that can be made. And since no oil is ever held back from the market, these bets do not affect the price of oil any more than bets on a football match affect the result.

Now I have to admit I am almost convinced that speculation is not driving up cost, but something about this explanation bothers me and maybe someone who actually invests in commodities can explain to me why I am wrong.

As I understand it when you buy oil futures you are paying for so many barrels of oil to be delivered at a certain date. You can then sell this oil (hopefully at a profit) at that time or if you have the facilities to take delivery you can hold it and sell it at a time when the price is more in line with what you want.

If I understand it correctly until very recently most speculation was done on a short term basis because federal regulations only allowed certain “persons” like an airline (Southwest would be a perfect example) to buy large numbers of futures and hold them without taking delivery. In addition there was a much larger up front cash payment required and a much more limited number of barrels could be traded; that changed in 2000 when a lot of energy markets were deregulated.

With these changes in place it seems to me that a feedback loop has been set up. The changes have made it more profitable to buy and hold oil for a long term than to trade it in the short term, which if my understanding is correct is the opposite of the way markets usually work. Usually the spot market is more expensive, Now when the oil that had previously been held by the specualtor comes onto the market it drives up the price on the spot market, which in turn increases the price of long term futures and the cycle repeats.

I know this is simplistic, but is it incorrect?

If my speculation on speculation is correct then everytime new futures are purchased the price is going to go up, until at some point some breaking point is reached and then we will probably see a crash like no ones business - much like the housing market.

Anyway that is my uninformed rant of the day.

Zimbabwe’s low inflationary days are over. Just a few months ago, inflation was barely over 100,00%, a figure that is paltry to today’s rate of over a million percent. Some facts:

Strongman, Dictator-For-Life Robert Mugabe’s destruction of the once thriving economy is nearly complete.

A loaf of bread costs 30 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

Bills are only good for a few weeks before they lose their value.

Billions have been replaced in most businesses by “quadrillions” (a million billion).

A can of Coke costs 15 billion Zimbabwean dollars. Vending machines are long gone. Who carries a billion coins with them?

In the latest twist, German money printer, Giesecke & Devrient cancelled its contract with the Zimbabwean government. This is notable for the company that had no trouble printing the tickets for Hitler’s 1936 Olympics and did business with General Francisco Franco.

If you are looking who to blame beyond Mugabe then look no farther than the South African government who has been loathe to even criticize Mugabe, regardless of what he does to his people. In fact, with notable exceptions, African leaders have thus far failed to condemn a fellow leader. This is just one more reason why Africa is doomed and why most aid simply perpetuates a fundamentally corrupt system. If Bono wanted to make a real difference he’d be rallying African “leaders” to deal with one of their own.

Source: WSJ

Floyd Norris in the has an article in the New York Times Business Section entitled “The Beginning of the End for High Oil Prices” in which he speculates:

Oil prices are up sharply (again) today. But stocks in oil companies are not.

…

It may be that the stock market is growing worried that high oil prices contain the seeds of their own destruction.

“At some point, it is likely to dawn on people who own oil shares that rising oil prices are raising global recession risks, and that a global recession would be really bad for oil companies,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG.

which leads one of his commenters to remark:

Floyd, your observation is right on the money, the “financial players/traders” who have jacked up the oil prices beyond any logic, are getting out of the oil company shares first (being ahead of the curve), and soon will be unloading their futures contracts…..

Stay tuned!!!

Now I can’t prove that speculation is causing the rise in energy prices - Paul Krugman doesn’t think so:

Is speculation playing a role in high oil prices? It’s not out of the question. Economists were right to scoff at Mr. Masters — buying a futures contract doesn’t directly reduce the supply of oil to consumers — but under some circumstances, speculation in the oil futures market can indirectly raise prices, encouraging producers and other players to hoard oil rather than making it available for use.

Whether that’s happening now is a subject of highly technical dispute. (Readers who want to wonk themselves out can go to my blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com, and follow the links.) Suffice it to say that some economists, myself included, make much of the fact that the usual telltale signs of a speculative price boom are missing. But other economists argue, in effect, that absence of evidence isn’t solid evidence of absence.

This would normally make me positive they were, but a lot of other very smart people tell me the same thing (and honestly as mistaken as I think Krugman is in his politics there is no doubt he is a brilliant guy).

Others just say this is supply and demand playing out in the market. It’s true that use in both India and China has surged in recent years, but that much? And is their increased use really exceeding supply. According to the oil companies and the Saudis the answer is no. They see an equilibrium price of about $55 a barrel.

Finally - these prices just feel wrong. Oil jumps 4% two days in a row with no real change in the world supply or demand? Come on.

So now back to the question I started out with? Are speculators dumping their stocks? I am not a financial analyst so this is probably not the right way to do this but I looked at the 5 year averages of 4 oil companies (Exxon, Chevron, Marathon, Conoco, BP and Shell) and while their stock prices are down over the last couple weeks it isn’t by a lot and they are still essentially double what they were 4 years ago. So if there is a sell off it is going slow.

What does this mean? I don’t know. All I know is that like I said something feels crooked about these prices. I still can’t prove it but I think that George Soros is behind it and that as soon and Obama is elected prices will fall.

related

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

…

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.”

source

I am sure Nobel Prize winner Al Gore is completely OK with this; after all this is a settled question every scientist who has examined Hansen’s work has found it to be 100% accurate. Oh wait that would be wrong. The guy who is calling for people to be prosecuted was found to have been using data that was incorrectly adjusted for the Y2K bug and recently has (or NASA has been where he is a leading climate scientist) been accused of cooking the books on temperature data (NASA’s data is out of whack with other measurements).

I don’t know why anyone would think there might be reasons to dispute his conclusions.

I’m very conflicted. By many accounts, Jamie Spears qualifies as a MILF. But then again she’s just a kid. Thoughts?

Barack Obama has opted out of public financing for his Presidential campaign. This despite promising in 2007 to accept public financing and return any private donations raised during the general campaign period:

On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that he would take up Mr. Obama on a proposal for an accord between the two major party nominees to rely just on public financing for the general election.

Such a pact would eliminate any financial edge one candidate might have and limit each campaign to $85 million for the general election. The two candidates would have to return any private donations that they had raised for that period.

Mr. Obama laid out his proposal last month to the Federal Election Commission, seeking an opinion on its legality. The commissioners formally approved it on Thursday.

The manager of Mr. McCain’s campaign, Terry Nelson, said he welcomed the decision.

source: NY Times via barackobama.com

This is despite promising multiple times to accept public financing if he became the Democrat nominee as pointed out by Patterico.

Apparently one excuse that is being floated for this reversal is that Obama’s donors constitute a parallel public financing system.

Huh???

Of course it’s a parallel system you retards it’s called private donations!

Here is the announcement

Is this what Stephen Cobert means by truthiness?

And on the truthiness front…

Remember a couple of months ago, the kerfluffle about Obama’s position on NAFTA? In his speeches he was referring to it as the devil incarnate while one of his advisers - Well not really an adviser. More like some guy who had a PhD in Economics, worked for the campaign, had been referred to as a main economic adviser, but was really just some guy that Obama ocassionally said hello too - was calling the Canadians and telling them it was all just campaign rhetoric, “don’t worry about it”. The Obama campaign strongly denied the contact, then when a memo was produced about the meeting they claimed it was a misunderstanding, and the campaign denied the contact was authorized. Eventually the guy Obama ocassionally said hello too resigned from the campaign he didn’t really work for to begin with. (At least as I recall he did)

Well in Fortune magazine this week, guess what - Turns out that Obama thinks NAFTA really isn’t that bad after all:

“Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA “devastating” and “a big mistake,” despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? “Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don’t exempt myself,” he answered.

h/t Instapundit

Wow! I sure feel the love don’t you?

h/t Instapundit

Yesterday’s LA Times carries an opinion piece by James Kirchick of The New Republic entitled “Bush never lied to us about Iraq. The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to assert deception.” Given that this piece follows a similar piece in the Washington Post on June 9th I think the Bush Lied People Died meme may be dying

Why?

Well I have two interlinking theories about this.

First - I think people are starting to take a serious look at what Obama’s foreign policy may look like and they are a little scared. By rehabilitating some of the decisions under President Bush they weaken some of his stances. (And I am not just talking about the political right here either - The New Republic is a left wing rag)

Second - The report that was issued on the 5th by the Senate Intelligence committee was just to raw a partisan political move on something that is very important to a lot of people. Our national security. My personal opinion is that people are looking at this report and thinking to themselves;

1. That the CIA which really screwed the pooch and needs to be held to account is skating scot-free because the Dems have an axe to grind.
2. That it’s really not a good idea to be using the official committee reports of the US Senate to engage in this type of thing. Personally I think that it destroys what little trust is left in government.
3. That Rockefeller et. al. are liars. There are just too many newscast going back to even before George Bush was President of Senators pronouncing Saddam Hussein a supporter of terrorists, a WMD prolifirator and a general threat to world peace.

At some point reasonable people have to call BS on this stuff.

from the LA Times:

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don’t get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were “misled” into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

In 2003, top Senate Democrats — not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others — sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month’s report, titled “Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information,” includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees — who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors — many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.

This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11, President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over this history, the Democrats’ lies-led-to-war narrative provides false comfort in a world of significant dangers

… and it ain’t Paul Krugman.

From today’s New York Times cover story:

Media critics have been increasingly concerned about what will happen to investigative journalism with the continued emphasis on cutting costs. This latest NYT story should help sooth some of those fears as it is clear that hiring just one good photographer with an eye for the ladies replaces the need for a room full of grouchy old white guys in the editorial department. Think of it as a win-win (or perhaps Wynn-Wynn).

The only mistake that the Times made was in trying to craft an actual story around the photograph. Futile and unnecessary. Does anyone really read Playboy for the articles? In time the Times will learn this lesson too. The only downside of this shift by the Times is that if they keep posting “stories” like that, who needs us?

h/t: Dirk