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Posts Made By: Dave Snope

March 19, 2012 11:03 PM Forum: Politics

Bless the Speculator

Posted By Dave Snope
In which Stossel explains to the politicians and other economic illiterates that speculators smooth out market volatility.

I doubt that speculators are responsible for much of the run-up of oil prices. Why didn't they run them up sooner? Besides, there are too many other explanations: increased demand from China and India, the declining dollar and Middle East tensions.

Even if speculators did play a role, what McCain apparently doesn't understand is that speculators perform a valuable service. Most people don't realize this because on the surface speculators don't seem productive. They buy what already exists and resell it. How does that help society?

In fact, the hated speculator is a good guy because his buying and selling reduce volatility and uncertainty in an unpredictable world. He may only be out for his own profit, but that doesn't matter. As Adam Smith wrote, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".

The prices of commodities often change unexpectedly, making business risky. The speculator brings a degree of certainty to otherwise risky ventures. When supplies of a commodity are plentiful and prices low -- but speculators expect the price to rise later -- they buy -- cushioning the collapse of prices. When supplies become scarcer and prices rise, they sell -- easing the shortage and lowering the price. Also, speculators may agree to buy a commodity in the future for a price locked in today. This reduces the risk for an oil producer or farmer who fears investing because he doesn't know what price his product will sell for next year.

As a result of these activities, volatile supplies and prices are evened out over time. Occasionally, speculators increase volatility. Markets are never perfect. (Although they are better than government regulation.) But in general, speculators increase liquidity and keep the market on a more even keel. This makes long-term planning easier for everyone.


http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2008/06/25/bless_the_speculator/page/full/

March 19, 2012 11:31 PM Forum: My Favorite WIMP.COM or YOUTUBE.COM

Brain Teaser Of The Day

Posted By Dave Snope
This is too funny grin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhm7-LEBznk&feature=player_embedded

March 22, 2012 04:22 PM Forum: No Holds Barred

Fluke Didn't Know About $9/mo Contraception

Posted By Dave Snope
And a Planned Parenthood visit 1.2 miles from GT Law School to get it prescribed costs $155.

But I'm sure that the facts won't phase her one bit. She's an activist and an idealogue. It's her far-left mission that counts, not whether women actually need her "help".

(CNSNews.com) – Thirty-year-old Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who told a House Steering and Policy Committee hearing convened by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last month that contraception can cost a student $3,000 during law school, told CNSNews.com on Tuesday that she did not know that the Target store 3 miles from the Georgetown Law campus sells a month’s supply of birth control pills for just $9.

Target advertises the $9-per-month birth control pills on its website, and CNSNews.com confirmed and reconfirmed that the $9 pills were in fact available at the Target near Georgetown Law.

“Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,” Fluke testified before Pelosi’s panel.

“For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary,” Fluke testified. “Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy.”

“Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer,” Fluke testified. “Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice. You might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s not true.”

On Tuesday, Fluke spoke at an event at the U.S. Capitol in celebration of women’s history month. After the event, CNSNews.com asked Fluke: “Were you aware of the Target store that’s 3 miles from Georgetown Law that sells a month’s supply of birth control pills for $9 a month without insurance coverage? Were you aware of that?”

March 24, 2012 12:57 AM Forum: Politics

CEA CEO on Obama: Most Anti-Business Pres. Ever

Posted By Dave Snope
Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), wrote today,
“President Obama is the most anti-business president in my lifetime.”

But I believe the Obama administration has hurt job creation in two big ways:

First, President Obama himself is the most anti-business president in my lifetime. With rhetoric not befitting a president he has attacked oil companies, banks, airplane users, Wall Street and anyone who makes money. Yet, he seems to forget that if you are making money you are in the best position to create jobs.

When the president of the United States is using the bully pulpit to excoriate business at every turn and push the 99 and one percent rhetoric, he is leading by dividing. CEOs are understandably reluctant to invest and hire when they believe the nation’s CEO is out to get them.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/03/23/obama-is-most-anti-business-president-ive-ever-seen-and-its-killing-us/#ixzz1pyVDkEXy

March 24, 2012 01:43 AM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

IPCC Expert: "Not A Scrap Of Evidence of AGW"

Posted By Dave Snope
IPCC Expert Reviewer and climate scientist Dr. Vincent Gray writes today:


I have been an Expert Reviewer on every one of the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and I can tell you that there is not a scrap of evidence in any of them that human emissions of carbon dioxide have any harmful effect on the climate.

How have they got away with it?

Attempts to "simulate" their unreliable and manipulated past climate "data" have been failures, yet are claimed as successes, But even if the "data" were genuine and the simulation successful it does not prove anything. Correlation, however convincing is not evidence of causation. The only way you can demonstrate the success of any theory is successful prediction of future climate over the whole range it is intended to be used, to a satisfactory level of accuracy. This has already been done with Newton's Laws of motion and Darwin's theories of evolution. It has not been done with the "global warming" theory. There has been no successful attempt to predict any future climate event. They do not even pretend they can do it, as they only provide "projections" from their models, not "predictions": .

How have they persuaded us that they are able to predict future climate?

They operate a system called "attribution". This is a combination of "simulation" (correlation), and "assessment" by "experts". The "experts" are all paid to provide the models that they are assessing. These assessments are therefore an elaborate and comprehensive conflict of interest.

They apply a whole series of "likelihoods" to each "assessment" and apply a fake "statistical significance" which, unlike those normally applied to genuine science, have no background of actual experimental observations.

I attach the official list of instructions on how to perpetrate this elaborate fraud on the international community, from the Fourth IPCC Report.

Cheers
Vincent Gray
Wellington 6035



http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2012/03/nzclimate-truth-newsletter-no-287.html

March 24, 2012 07:36 PM Forum: Religion

Book Sold Out In CA: How To Control & Beat Wives

Posted By Dave Snope
From the land of multiculturalism, we have this bit of cultural enrichment provided by the muslims:

(Toronto Sun) — A local bookstore has “sold out” of a controversial marriage guide that advises Muslim men on how to beat their wives.

The 160-page book, published by Idara Impex in New Delhi, India, is written by Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, who’s described in the book’s foreword as a “prolific writer on almost every topic of Islamic learning.”

The store’s manager, who didn’t give his name, said the book had been sold out for some time, and the store’s owner, whom the manager identified as Shamim Ahmad, refused to comment for the story.

It wasn’t clear whether the shop has ordered more copies of the book, but it’s available at online Islamic bookstores and even through eBay.

In the book’s opening pages, it is written that “it might be necessary to restrain her with strength or even to threaten her.”

Later, its author advises that “the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes.”

Page 45 contains the rights of the husband, which include his wife’s inability to leave “his house without his permission,” and that his wife must “fulfil his desires” and “not allow herself to be untidy … but should beautify herself for him … ”

In terms of physical punishment, the book advises that a husband may scold her, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull (her) by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/23/book-tells-muslim-men-how-to-beat-and-control-their-wives

March 24, 2012 08:24 PM Forum: Politics

ObamaCare Vs. LeninCare: Not Much Difference

Posted By Dave Snope
When V.I. Lenin sought to remake Russian society into a “proletariats’ paradise,” he targeted three sectors for control: health care, banking and education. Sound familiar?

Of the three, however, Lenin viewed socialized medicine as the “keystone” to building a socialist utopia.

The Bolshevik leader told the Russian people everybody would be able to afford going to the doctor, not just the “greedy rich.” He also claimed centralized control of the medical industry would “reduce costs” and end the “waste” from “unnecessary duplication and parallelism” in a competitive market.

In 1918, the USSR became the first nation to promise “free” universal health care.

Fifteen years later, major flaws appeared in its grand social experiment, even to Western observers who largely romanticized it.

Russians suffered through 70 years of LeninCare. By the end of the century, the USSR was infamous for having one of the worst health care systems in the world. Horror stories were legion: surgeries performed without anesthesia; patients poisoned by bad food; HIV spread through dirty needles; rampant abortions; and the highest infant-mortality rate in the industrialized world.

Obama is no Lenin. But he, too, thinks the state can provide medical care more equitably and less expensively than the “selfish,” profit-oriented free market.

"Monetary motives have almost entirely ceased to operate in medical practice in Soviet Russia," observed a pair of sympathetic physicians from America and Britain, who traveled to Russia in 1933.

As a result, "there still exists a great shortage of physicians and hospitals," they wrote in their report, "Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia." "Drugs are almost fabulously dear and scarce."

"Overworked doctors" couldn't handle the flood of new patients. A bloated new medical bureaucracy, led by the People's Commissar of Public Health, only worsened delays in treatment.

"The dissatisfied patients objected to the many formalities before they were allowed to see a doctor at the public clinic, and to the fact that the intervals before they saw him again were excessive," the 1933 report said.

"Other complaints have been of lack of hospital beds when needed."

It was not uncommon for patients to die while waiting in line to be admitted.

Rationing became necessary. Elderly patients were often turned away from care. Death panels appointed by the health commissar decided their fate.

"This committee decides as to patients needing treatment at a rest home or a sanatorium," the Western doctors reported.

As bad as Soviet medicine was, it was anything but "free."

"Most workers and their families receive free medical treatment as insured persons," the report said. "But the funds for this treatment do not come from insurance funds, but from general taxation."

This is how President Obama intends to pay for his own universal health care plan, which will subsidize some 28 million uninsured and underinsured Americans through tax hikes on the rich.

In a little-noticed 2009 speech, Obama vowed to demolish "structural inequalities" in America and rebuild the economy on three new "pillars" — socialized medicine, banking and higher education.


http://news.investors.com/article/605433/201203231732/obamacare-ominously-similar-to-soviet-socialized-medicine.htm

This is about healthcare policy, so let's not get carried away here and say that someone is calling Obama a "Lenin". That would be stupid. Obama is black. Lenin is white. Obama is a black liberation theologist. Lenin is an atheist... there is no comparison.

March 25, 2012 01:37 AM Forum: Politics

Obama's Speechwriter's COPY Key Stuck

Posted By Dave Snope
What an insincere jerk Fresh Prince is:

Thomas Buch-Andersen, host of the Danish TV show Detektor, mocked President Obama's political rhetoric in a recent episode. "Obama used a metaphor from boxing to explain Denmark's role in the world," says Buch-Andersen, introducing the segment.

He then roles the tape. "That's fairly typical of the way that Danes have punched above their weight in international affairs," President Obama says at a press availability in the Oval Office with Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark.

"It's nice to be praised," Buch-Andersen remarks. "We punch harder than our weight class would suggest. But how much should we read into his words? According to Obama, are we doing any better than, say, the Norwegians?"

The TV host again turns to the tape, this time showing President Obama in the Oval Office with Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg. "I've said this before, but I want to repeat: Norway punches above its weight," Obama says.

Back to Buch-Andersen. "Hmm. So Norway packs a punch too. But what about the Netherlands? Here, their head of government, Mark Rutte, visits Obama."

The tape roles yet again. "We have no stronger ally than the Netherlands," says Obama. "They consistently punch above their weight."

The TV host continues, pointing to the similar rhetoric Obama used when Ireland's head of state came to town, and then the Philippines.

Buch-Andersen wonders aloud, "Maybe the copy key got stuck on the presidential speechwriter's keyboard."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/danish-tv-host-mocks-obama-his-rhetoric_634403.html

March 25, 2012 07:11 PM Forum: Birding Optics and Photos

California Quail

Posted By Dave Snope
This fellow has taken up a post on my wall this week. He walks back and forth like a sentry. I think that my yard has become his territory.


March 28, 2012 07:51 AM Forum: Religion

A Demographic breakdown of the world of religion

Posted By Dave Snope
Interesting graphic lays out the world's religions by number of followers:

http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/03/23/graphic-a-demographic-breakdown-of-the-world-of-religion/

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