The Present in Plain Text

Paging Goebbels: you're Needed in Kiev

Why am I ever shocked by the lack of coverage from our so-called free media?

-- Mass Graves in Kosovo? Check
-- Gore won the election in 2000? Check
-- Britney Spears breasts are real? Check
-- The Arabs hate us because we're free? Check
-- Election Fraud in the Ukraine? Check
-- People are really vegetarians? Check
-- 2 + 2 = 5? Check

Ta,

Happy Birthday to my One and Only Fan

I don't much go for the sentimental stuff in public, but today is my wife's birthday. How old she is irrelevant and I'll spare her any public notice of her age. That's for her to comment on if she so chooses.

But, suffice it to say that it hasn't seemed nearly as long as it has been since I first embarrassed myself in her presence, on her birthday many years ago.

She's, by far, the coolest chick I know, and, I'm damn lucky to be man enough to keep her around. I mean, she likes Guinness, Guns and Gold. She's an outstanding cook, smarter than me and pretty damn cute as well. How much better does it get than that?

So, here's to Capt. Charity Vain.... may the world never run out of hair dye.

*ducks*

Ta,

Kinross Gold Corp. Cup and Handle

• 

This chart is a great example of a classic Cup and Handle Pattern. There are a few things to note in this chart that make it extremely bullish:

• The Fundamentals for KGC are very strong. The underlying industry, the price of gold, is in a secular bull market, therefore a responsible producer (small forward hedge book) should profit from higher gold prices.
• In a well-formed C&H, unlike the two examples linked above, volume on the left side of the cup should be high to start and decrease as a bottom forms.
  
• Once formed, and the right side of the cup begins, volume should steadily increase as the stock climbs a 'Wall of Worry' back to the price that forms the top of the cup.
  
• The top is defined as the price level where the pull-back or consolidation begins to take place. IMO, that consolidation is happening right now, as KGC continues to correct to it's lower (blue) trendline, and volume has begun to dry up sharply.
• Note that once the downtrend (left side of the cup) was broken, the RSI has not fallen below 50. Actually it has oscillated predictably between 70 ad 50 for the entire right side of the cup.
  

Therefore, it is my analysis that KGC could pull-back all the way to the trendline (which also happens to be the 38.2% Fib retracement line) in the next couple of day, but then should bolt higher and break out of this formation on its way to the price target of approx. $11.80.

Ta,

The Source of all 'Comedy' Really is Pain...

From Karen DeCoster via LRC this morning comes a fantastic rebuttal of Detroit News columnist Laura Berman on an educrat's snide attitude toward homeschooling.

Berman's thinly-veiled ad hominem attacks against homeschoolers and homeschooling in general were as childish and churlish as her 4 year old's desire for lip gloss that started this whole affair. As a long-time reader of Ms. DeCoster I was not in any way surprised at how she took exception to Ms. Berman's lame attempt at appealing to the mainstream vis a vis homeschooling. Pointed and devastating Karen's a joy to read.

But, I think she, DeCoster, missed an important point about why Berman is so hostile to homeschooling. It's a typical defense mechanism against what you know to be a bad decision. Deep down, I think, Ms. Berman is regretting her sending her child to public school, and not being as good a mother as she could be, and this is her way to dealing with it. Why else does she go for the easy swipe at homeschoolers locking their kids in the basement trying to deperately hold back the ravages of the society she admits she doesn't want her child exposed to?

Worse than that, why does she focus on this aspect of homeschooling so intently? What is she afraid of? It is that appeal to fear masquerading as 'comedy' that is really distasteful.

In the end I'm still trying to figure out whether this is a polemic against homeschooling or the the 'consumer culture' people like her are so obsessed with. Why use the vector of homeschooling to go all Scrooge-like about Christmas? Look, Laura Berman, if you don't want to buy your kids the latest fad toys this year, simply don't. And, while I find it fascinating that the free market has room in it for you to make a living exposing your neuroses in public, I'd still advise you to do so with just a bit more subtlety.

Ta,

The End of the Toilet Seat Argument

Apparently Vox Day took some exception to some of Amy Charter's observations about men. She seems to be the latest feminist bitch to make a lot of money spewing hate about men. The whole blog entry linked above is damn funny, but this one in particular is sweet:

Ms. Charter's assertion: Men do not appear to possess sufficient intelligence to enable them to replace the toilet seat in its rightful horizontal position.

Vox Day's response:
Any woman who would seriously complain about this would appear not to possess sufficient intelligence to look before she urinates. Or think before she talks.

and the other great response:

Ms. Charter: There is a form of the male species which fails to understand that a women’s breasts will never be great conversationalists.

Vox Day:
If you don't want men to look at you, it's not exactly hard to avoid the attention. Dial 1-800-DOMINOS. It seems to work for an awful lot of your sisters.

Me:
There is a sub-species of female that erroneously thinks we even want them to open their mouths in the first friggin' place.

Ta,

The U.S. Dollar's Journey to the Dark Side is Nearly Complete

On Friday, a nothing day market-wise saw the U.S. Dollar Index close below 0.8197, which, for those with a penchant for reading price charts like some read tea-leaves, means that a massive, multi-year Head and Shoulders pattern has been completed.

For those of you who do not know this, the Head and Shoulders is one of the most bearish of formations. The chart of the US Dollar (represented by the $USD Index) is nothing more than a series of Head and Shoulder breakdowns going all the way back to 1995. If the formation at ~0.800 is completed soon, the dollar could head into freefall.

The Chinese and the Russians have both stated that they are going to lighten their US Dollar reserves. Now, the question is if they do that who/what is going to soak up those dollars/T-bonds if they, in fact, take this course of action. There is a lot going on here that a great many people are painfully unaware of. I suggest a quick (sic) perusal of some of the links to the right because I don't have time to summarize. It's taken me a long time to grok the magnitude of the problem.

Simply put, it looks to me from the information that I've gathered that there are at least 3 factions at play in this currency war that has just started. The US is one, France and Germany are another and the Russians/Chinese/Islamics is the third (though I wouldn't consider them in cahoots just that they have similar goals). The problem is for the US, that we are not dealing here from a position of strength financially.
Points to consider:

• France and Germany want the Euro to be the world's reserve currency, while most of the rest of Euroland does not. France and Germany have the most to gain. They were at the forefront of the Food for Oil program that led to the US invasion of Iraq.
  
• As well, France and Germany hate the rapid appreciation of the Euro, and want to see it slowed down to help keep their export markets from collapsing.
• The Russians and the Chinese have been net buyers of Gold.
  
• The Chinese are building a huge Strategic Oil reserve and have been using excess Wal Mart dollars to buy it, thus driving up the price of oil as priced in dollars.
• The Japanese are no longer willing to finance our triple deficits, as their Dollar reserves have slowed (the yen is appreciating pretty rapidly) to the point of not increasing in September. October's numbers will be very telling.
• The Chinese will have to let the Renminbi float vis a vis the USD, and when they do it will be for their advantage, not ours.
• The only weapon left in our monetary arsenal is to try and devalue the dollar rapidly to create havoc for the Euro.
• The U.S. backed challenger in the Ukrainian Election is a former member of the Central Bank. See Justin Raimondo's latest article.
  

Hence.... Enter the Islamic Gold Dinar, which the idea for and impetus for its development originated in Iran, btw, not Malaysia. My bet is that bin Laden is working towards the complete bankrupcy of the western world. Why would you attack the United States militarily? Yamamoto knew better and so does bin Laden. No, you attack via the Empire's achilles heel, it's debased currency.

Got Gold?

Ta,

Holiday Traffic No More...

Nothing else tonight except a simple rant against ever, ever, ever travelling on the same day as everyone else. Under the best of circumstances I'm not the world's nicest person, but on days like today where I have to share 500+ miles of tarmac with people of varying ability to drive really tests the bounds of my morality.

To backtrack, I spent the past 4+ days in N. Carolina with my wife's family at her sister's house. Nothing of note to report there (as, frankly, that's beyond the purview of this journal) other than that I played some of the best Euchre of my life, which probably raised my standing in my wife's family just a smidge.

I had predicted to my father-in-law that the worst section of the trip would be I-95 between I-26 and the Ga. border, and .... boy, howdy!.... was I ever right. 4 different accidents in that stretch of road. By the time we reached the Ga. border and three lanes of road, I was ready to kill someone. I actually cheered the misfortune of one idiot who tried to kill me and those around him for the 10 miles preceding his plowing into the ass end of the two cars in front of him during one of our all-too-frequent stops. He was driving his pickup truck w/ even larger pull-behind camper like I would drive my Subaru Forester. I shake my head in wonder at how some people don't kill themselves earlier in life. Unfortunately, I had to immediately feel bad for the two cars that bore the brunt of his stupidity, which would have been three but one guy (in a wine colored Nissan of either Sentra or Maxima presuasion) ditched to the left avoiding any damage other than to his blood vessels and liver from all of the adrenaline that would now have to be processed.

When we'd made it halfway through Georgia and had to stop for gas, and realized that now we were averaging less than 40 miles per hour, and I was putting more than just a little wear and tear on both my clutch and my brakes (not to mention what was left of my nerves), I told the wife to get a map and scope out a route to US 301, or better yet, Fl. SR 121. Having a degree in geography and working on a surveying crew, I leave, very un-male-like I might add, all decisions directions-wise to her. For those of you that know US 301 in my neck of the woods, to call it a 'ticket-trap' would be the very height of understatement. "Rural Town Cash Crop" would be much more appropriate. So, the decision to jump over to US301 figuring it would be nothing but little towns dropping the speed limit to 35 because there's a convienience store two blocks off a feeder county road punctuated by small stretches of 2 open lanes of pure unadulterated Georgia swampland was a momentous one indeed.

So, instead of turning left to go back to the River Sytx, er, I-95, I turned right, and had none of the problems I awaited. The rest of the trip was fast, stressless and almost pleasant.

The next time I travel up the Atlantic Coast by car, it will definately be up SR121 to US301 as far as i can stand it. Apparently, 301's 4 lanes all the way up through South Carolina. Better and Better.

Ta,

History of Thanksgiving

Lew Rockwell has some things to say about thanksgiving on the LRC blog... see title link.

Hmmm, this is something that I didn't know. Of course, I have never done any research into the matter whatsoever. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite of holidays, and most recently, because I perceived it as being divorced from the state. I just looked upon it as a triumph of capitalism and human cooperation.

Though this year is an exception (I'm at my sister-in-law's house in NC) my wife and I usually put on Thanksgiving for all of our friends who have know here else to go, and for them to heap lavish and nigh-inappropriate praise on her food. Living in a college town it's common for people to not have either the means or the opportunity to be with family over this weekend. Extenuating circumstances within my wife's family led us to not do the work this year, but I would like to return to our little tradition next year. With my mother's house being complete by then, there might even be a strong contingent from *gasp* my family there. That would be a first.

The upshoot of this post is that I feel an awful lot better about having made Leg of Lamb on thanksgiving for most of the time we've been hosting it as opposed to Turkey, though the past two years we've done the Southern perversion thereof.... Deep Fried Turkey, which kicks complete ass, if you've never had it. Two years ago we had a smoked Venison shoulder to go with it (there were 16 people at that dinner).

Enjoy your holiday today, and give thanks for any number of things that could be considerably worse.

Ta,

So? Still think Isolationism is a bad idea?

Who do we think we are to delcare, unilaterally that the Ukrainian election results are invalid?

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate, because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse," Powell said.

Hmmm... maybe old Colin should re-consider that old chestnut about people who live in glass houses? Also, did I miss something? Where in our constitution does it say that our elections have to live up to international standards? So, if ours don't have to then why should the Ukrainians' ??

This is just another example of extreme Imperial Hubris. More of the dysfunctional parent role the United States continues to play on the world stage. We're like the Wizard of Oz pontificating while the dollar burns. Only the apparition we project has the weight of thousands of nuclear warheads behind it.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!! We are the great and powerful Amercians. Do as we say and not as we do or we'll kill your children and burn your homes to the ground."

We've become like Nurse Ratchet, so convinced that the rest of the world is helpless and stupid that any assertion of independence on the part of our charges must be met with lethal doeses of compassion.

"Now remember, I'm only hurting you for your own good."
In a country where every state in the union has a Department to protect children from abusive parents, here we are bombing, shooting and/or starving children all over the world.

No amount of hyprocrisy is too much for the people in charge of this administration.

The only good thing that happened today is that the dollar fell and gold rose, thereby hastening the time when our creditors will make us sue for peace or destroy our society.

Ta,

One Down, Two to Go...

With Dan Rather stepping down as CBS news anchor, and Tom Brokaw making noise about retiring as well, all that's left is for Peter Jennings to bungle his contract negotiations with ABC and we could be rid of all three of them.

Interesting thing to note, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and his take is interesting. With FOX War Channel spanking all of the major networks and CNN, this may be the perfect opportunity to see a major re-alignment philosphically in network news coverage.

I'm not saying that I'd like to see more news coverage like FOX, but without these old liberal/socialist standard bearers driving the direction of the broadcasts of the network news and there being an obvious audience for a different slant to the reporting it is possible that honest competition would drive up the quality of their offerings.

FUD for thought, anyways. This is the best I can hope for with the completely fascist state media we have currently. The real hope for the future lies right here, on the internet.

Ta,