poems

this
 is
 a
poem

WHY should it not be eternal?

why should it be at all?

taken down after a night of sleepy pain

I hear that a lot of people get poisoned

they get poisoned by pain killers
maybe that killers thing is important

it can kill more than the pain

we should face our pain
we should figure it out
go to the source
and fix the source

too dangerous to just hide it

or hide from it

Unemployment

What is unemployment?
They take a survey and they ask people of working age if they are working or not and if they are looking for a job. If they are not working and looking for a job then they count as unemployed.

 For some reason they include teenagers in this survey starting at age 16. And for some reason the kids from 16 to 19 always have a really high rate of unemployment.
 I think I would feel bad if I wanted a job and tried to find a job and could not get one. And then what would I do?
 Personally I would clean myself up as much as possible and keep trying. Get a haircut and be clean shaven and wear my best clothes and be as perky as possible

. I imagine two kinds of unemployed people. One group has never been employed or has only had odd jobs. The other group had a good long term position and got laid off.
 Mostly this is all about money.
If someone has enough money then they could live without a job. Mostly people never have as much as they would like to have so they always want a better job or more money for the job they are doing.
 I would say to start on the attitude.
 Most important is to say
 THERE IS NO PROBLEM
  unemployment is not a problem in fact,

there are no problems
 discover this truth
 and all the problems just disappear

Oil Price Decline Coming

Change is happening
trees do not grow to the sky
oil is about to drop significantly

why?

don't kill the goose!
Substitution

people look for bang for the buck
oil is giving a lot less bang for the buck

all sorts of substitution is happening and it will
it will definitely
drive down the price of oil
and it will be happening soon

how low will it go?

$80 per barrel
$60 per barrel
$40 per barrel
$30 per barrel?

brave new world is coming to a community near you

Redistribution Harms Environment

Here is a working hypothesis
Giving money to low income people harms the environment and harms society

The question is this
What would that money be used for without redistribution versus what do the low income people use it for?

I would guess that the low income people use it for

food and shelter and medicine

but they also use a lot of it for

drugs
alcohol
tobacco
gambling
entertainment
gasoline
and making babies

so maybe the net result is to harm the environment by consumption of polluting resources
and to harm society by the consumption of vice

my suggestion
environmental impact studies of redistribution

has this been done?

Gold Price Explained

It finally got through my thick skull.
I have a new understanding of why gold has gone up so much in the past seven years.
Why the price of gold is out of line with other commodities....

Largely because of GLD

GLD is an ETF , exchange traded fund, which holds gold bullion
in fact it is holding almost 70 billion dollars worth of gold right now
$70,000,000,000 DOLLARS!

in effect they have cornered the market on gold.
All this has removed a tremendous amount of gold from the market and just put it in storage.
People will say it is new demand from India and China
That is the propaganda line. That and the possible future inflation and dollar devaluation
but those things are not an adequate explanation
the new thing in the world is the GLD fund
This fund was opened at the end of 2004 and then
the price of gold started escalating out of line with other commodities like oil and platinum

Now for the rest of the story.
Ultimately even with the GLD distorting things
the market will reassert itself

this means that ultimately the price will drop back to near the price of production
which is still only around $500 an ounce.

when will this happen?
I expect some time in the next five years
If I had to make a date I would say Jan 1, 2015 the price of gold will be around $555 per ounce
see you then

None of Our Business

when did we first get involved?
look at all the damage to our nation

Vietnam
Korea
Kuwait
Lebanon
Iran
Iraq
Afghanistan
Israel

why?
why are we involved

all our meddling has just made it worse

let us wake up and leave our neighbors alone
let them work out their own destinies

we can't understand them and their history
we need to let them be

let them be who they are and accept that

work on our own problems

mind our own business

Propaganda Strategy

The rebels always claim that the government has committed atrocities and war crimes
and killed innocent unarmed people.

They always make these claims.

In order to get support from outside parties

Now as a strategy does it really make sense for the government to order civilians to be shot? Does not the government know that if true this behavior would bring in support for the rebellion?

What can we believe? Is there any truth in this?
If someone gets shot in a demonstration, how do we know who did the shooting?
Plenty of people with guns.

Rush to judgment always picking sides never know the truth
cannot prove a negative

prove you did not do this!

that is not how our law operates.
Here you must prove somebody did something, they don't have to prove they did not!

If I accuse you of building weapons of mass destruction then you are already guilty because it is impossible to prove you are not building them!

I believe people everywhere are trying to do their best, to do what is right, according to their own lights.

I will not condemn, but I will criticize those who accuse and judge and use this to authorize and justify force and violence.

Who Is Funding Rebels?

apparently

we are

news out today is that USA is part of a friends of Syria group
that will be paying $100,000,000 to the rebels in Syria

but we won't be arming them!

they have to get their own weapons

It looks like our middle east policy is to destabilize nations there
we encourage chaos and rebellion
meanwhile in our own country

the authorities allow vigilantes to kill black teenagers

so I feel disappointed now with the direction of things
unlike my normal optimism

but here is the story I can tell myself.

I really don't know what is going on with other people. I really just do not know.
I barely know what is going on with me.

I know the wind blew over part of my fence this afternoon.
I got busy and patched it up.
But it is pretty rotten and we do need a new fence.

The fence is to keep the dog in!

The Wrong Question

health care

who is going to pay for it?
that is the wrong question

the right question is-

why does it cost so much? how can we get it to cost less?

and the right answers have something to do with incentives.....