Introduction to an Objectivist Epistemology
Things You Should Know About AYN RAND, and the GOP

Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was born in pre-Bolshevik revolution Russia. Her father owned a small, but successful pharmacy in St. Petersburg. When Alisa was 12, the Soviet/Bolshevik revolution (1917) came about, and the Bolsheviks took away her father's pharmacy. The Rosenbaum family fled to Crimea, and Alisa later returned to her (renamed) city of Petrograd where she was among the first group of women allowed to pursue a university education.

Sometime during her university career, Alisa assumed the name AYN RAND as her professional name. Ayn Rand came to America in 1925 on a tourist visa - stayed briefly with family and with family friends in both New York, and Chicago before moving west to Hollywood, CA.

Ayn Rand stayed in the US well past when her tourist visa expired, and worked for a wage as an extra in a few movies. She was an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT (by modern day right wing rhetoric). Ayn married Frank O'Connor in 1929 and became a US Citizen in 1931.

Over the next 40 odd years, Ayn Rand developed a very significant following in the United States, as a 'thinker' and as a 'free market capitalist' philosopher. The unquestioned commercial success of "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" made her a household name, and a very rich lady. Ayn made a lot of money - largely, I believe, by exploiting American fear of Collectivism/Communism, and by relentlessly pushing her agenda to enrich her coffers.

Ayn Rand retired in 1975 (age 70), and applied for SOCIAL SECURITY and MEDICARE benefits despite having a large financial estate. You see, as any other American, she was eligible, and she was ENTITLED. How very individualistic. How very Objectivistic.

Republican Party's drinking from the Ayn Rand fire-hose truly started in 1980s with the so called "Ronald Reagan Revolution", and its cousin, the "Trickle Down" economics that have since been heaved upon the American public. Why do the American masses have to wait for anything to 'trickle down'? America is based on the idea of equality and equal opportunity, so why not GO GET IT? Why wait for the 'Masters' to let crumbs trickle down? Trickle Down is pure and sheer BullShit, for the only things that have trickled down, in the last 30 years, is SHIT. Yes, Americans have creature comforts, flat screen TVs, yada yada yada, etc. But the American masses are broke and bankrupt. That is the true Trickle Down effect.

Trickle Down is the largest socio-economic fraud, in history, perpetrated on the American people by its elected conservative ruling elite. The real objective and true goal of the GOP and post-Nixon Conservatives is to forever keep the masses in modern day equivalent of 'Indentured Servitude'. That was how most passengers on the Mayflower paid for their passage to America. That, despite some lofty verbiage, was the Founders' intent. Read up, and look it up if you do not buy my line.

The likes of the Bush(es), Cheneys, VP candidate Paul Ryan, and the GOP Candidate Mitt Romney, have benefited and taken advantage of the 'American System' and the 'American Way'. And, once they 'made' it, they turned that Ayn Rand fire-hose FULL-ON.

Truth is, in my mind's eye, Ayn Rand propaganda was nothing but the psychology of being utterly and shamelessly SELFISH, to find a way to become rich in America. Once she got there, it was all about more money for her, and she was not above using ANY means to achieve her own goals and objectives, including hurting others' pursuit of similar goals.

The GOP is well on its way to its eventual self-destruction. The American Awakening is finally here.

PS: I refuse to address, or to acknowledge, Libertarians for they are nothing short of Ayn Rand to the power of N, a large positive integer. For my dollar, they can all collectively depart for planet Mars and set up new colonies.

On Republican Rock Stars that Matter in the 2012 US Presidential Election 

The song goes "Rumor Has it, Rumor Has it..." It was a recent Top 100 track. With America's fascination for rumor and nuanced innuendo, in politics, it is time to talk about some other rumors:

Rumor is that when they tried to measure John's Stewart's IQ, in 3rd grade, the "Simon-Binet" scale (aka the Stanford-Binet IQ score; note how we Americans always have the last laugh over the French) blew-up.

The rumor is puzzling, since the same scale imploded when George W. Bush was tested, as a college Senior - huh? did W'ya even graduate? That is a whole another topic of conversation, not unlike some other myths that surround W'Ya - his Air Reserve Guard Service (did he actually serve, or not?) during Vietnam, or was W'Ya guilty of DUI or not? or did Papa Bush intervene to save the Prodigal Son's proverbial rear-end? Or, are rumors of all the Global achievements from W'Ya's exhilirating 2 term rent free life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where instead of merely redecorating the West Wing, DumYa (sorry, that's a typo, I swear) focussed on redecorating the World (with a blanket permission, and a blank check, granted by our very own US Congress, with the exception of, amongst others, the current occupant of 1600, and a majority Blessing of the Truly Impotent - aka, The UN) true? Yeeeehaw!.

Why aim for anything less than a series of Texas sized accomplishments when one can Shock and Awe, Grin, Holler, and then Grin some more, and, land aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (It's gonna be OK Mr. President, stop turning in the grave. Its all good. The Union is still together. As of today.), in a two seater Lockheed S-3 Viking fighter jet flown by the other guy (Lt. Ryan Phillips), in full fighter pilot regalia. Perhaps W'Ya did serve after all - he remembered how to put the gravity suit on. See, I am a reasonable man, and will always err on the side of granting the benefit of doubt, unless someone, anyone, even the Rovester, can create reasonable doubt - that is how high the bar should be, for such National Security matters, and for the human body that sits in the chair in the Oval Office, with keys to our collective Nucear arsenal (another type, I am sorry). Mission Accomplished. Indeed Mr. Texas Rangers. You succeeded in creating Jaw-Dropping Shock, and Eyebrow Raising Awe with your temerity, and Executive spending of Pentagon funds. You ended "Major Combat Operations" on May 1, 2003. Without capturing Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive (Its all good, Bon Jovi). I know, I know - you left detailed instructions, for your successor, on how to get Osama, and 8 years after your selfless risk taking, as Commander in Chief, with the aircraft carrier landing, HE got it done. Finally. I know right? - What took him 3 years into his first term to capture and kill America's Enemy number One and FBI's number one Most Wanted? Well that, DumYa, is the reason the Stanford-Binet scale imploded in the first place. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise is still contemplating those copyright infringement charges. How un-American. How un-Scientific.

Dick, Bless-His-New-Heart, Cheney, meanwhile, argues that even though he hauled his hind end to Canada (Canada? Really?? Fine, let's not talk of the 'Looney', it was simply closest to land-locked Casper, Wyoming, by way of Billings, Helena, and Great Falls. There is no proof though, that a Robert Bruce Cheney crossed the international line via the land border, but merely an informed guess, since Dick's father was, of all things, a not-so-highly-paid soil conservation agent for the US Department of Agriculture - talk about having a Big Government, and an EPA like Agency, even back in 1941), to beat the draft during Vietnam. We accept, without an iota of doubt, your claim, that Vancouver, BC, was not 'Hunting' Central, though there were multiple sightings of Weapons of mass Destruction, in Canada, that you had been covertly tasked by ____ (covert, you see), by an unnamed (covert, again) Federal Agency. In your defense, though, Carl Rove has been pointing out that J. Edgar Hoover was secretly a CIA operative. That's code for Agent. And that J. Edgar was Gay. That is Carl Rove just being Carl Rove.

Finally, Mitt 'the-money-man' Romney. I am not sure where to start - that he served as a missionary for his faith, in France, spreading the Mormon word, while Americans were coming home in body-bags, or with mangled bodies, if at all, during the time our French friends (why is it that France is always the party-spoiler?) was enjoying one of the finest runs of Burgundy seasons in its history. Or, should I begin with his Leveraged Buy-Out deals, as head of Bain Capital, that he is trying so hard to recast, and sell, as a 100,000+ job creation Venture Capitalist tenure. Never mind, that a paltry 2.5 million investment in Staples counts today as having created 42,000 jobs. Feel the Shock, Staples? Feel the Awe emanating from the audacity of the lie? Or, should I merely mention how many Americans were fired, and families destroyed, after Bain took control of each of those LBO target companies, leveraged those Balance Sheets to the Hilt, thereby Bankrupting viable businesses that had previously had a history of profitable operations, and that Bain, and Mitt, made their fortunes (read, hundreds of Millions of Greenbacks) in the process.

I can continue, but Zuckerberg called last night, if I remember the foggy 1AM call right, and asked if I would stop sending him not-so-nice-emails regarding his IPO, and keep my Status Updates to the mundane, like most of his 900 million plus users. But then, I digress.

There is no doubt you have some brains, Mitt. 2 degrees from Harvard, despite being burdened with a former Governor as Dad. You have money, and that is amply clear in how you like your cookies, and from your having examined your full tax-disclosures, as presumptive nominee.

But you Mitt forget one thing - the 'Other' guy can shoot 3 pointers, from downtown, and around your sun soaked celebrity looks. Yes, 'White Men Can't Jump' was a real movie. I also hear he can also drive them straight down the fairways. Nothing like Bubba Watson from Iraq, FL, can, but long enough. And always straight. Well, at least that's his intent. No fades. No Draws. No Flips and No Flops. And without even an Etch a Sketch layout of the golf course. Just straight. I hear that is the only way you like them anyways.

Incidentally though, he also has a degree from Harvard. Sponsored by his single 'parent' grandmother.

What was that Mitt? Birth Certificate? Yes, he has one, an Original from the hospital in Hawaii where he was born. You do know that Hawaii became our 50th Great State before August 4, 1961, right? Or are you simply confused about the dates? Fine, that was on August 21, 1959. Darn, missed by just shy of 2 years!

November 2012 is not about any Republican. It is about the soul of America, and its Heart. And, it is about to be ripped out, leveraged and sold in Bankruptcy courts, if the Republican Men have their way.  In the interest of full-disclosure, I am a registered independent in FL.  That is why I was unable to vote for any one of the clowns on the GOP slate.  Not that I would have.

Yours truly.

PS: Upon looking up VP biden's IQ scores from his college days, we discovered that the scale wasn't around prior to World War I. I am serious.

Gas Prices

In a past life I spent some time trading derivatives on Wall Street. It was a highly lucrative, and a very eye opening experience. Wall Street was meant to help companies raise funds, go public through IPOs, and help us John Qs with our investments and retirements. Over time, that business model expanded into a few higher margin areas - mortgage securitization, risk management, aka hedging risk, proprietary trading, private equity investing, and prime brokerage services.

We are all to aware of how the Securitization business wreaked havoc - the US housing and financial crisis - personal bankruptcies, foreclosures, blighted communities , among its side-effects (makes securitization look like was a dangerous, new social Rx medicine). But Wall Street's lust for originating, buying, and securitizing low documentation, low documentation, no income proof - collectively known as Liar Loans - into Mortgage Backed Securities, and selling them around the world also led to Wall Street being (temporarily) brought to its knees.

As mortgage payment default rates soared, starting mid 2006, greed kept the Street from paying attention. Fraught with inertia, and the propensity to worship money making, Wall Street kept amassing raw inventory of "Alt-A" liar loans, until our marked to market regime blew the cover off the House. Among the many high profile people, and investment banks, that lost the shirt off their backs were several bank CEOs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia Bank, Washington Mutual Bank, and Merrill Lynch. All were iconic companies in the US. Gone, over a period of 12 months. 100s of billions of Dollars of shareholder capital lost. 10s of thousands of low and mid level jobs lost (I have no sympathy for the highly paid superstars of Wall Street who lost their jobs too).

The attentive reader may, by now, be thinking that this rant has nothing to do with Gas Prices! It does. I just have a fondness for the scenic route.

Prop Trading, as in trading for the House, on Wall Street is very large. There are no sane, internal leverage limits for money spinning businesses. Prop traders can take extremely large positions (buy and sell) in anything they want. Prop trading is pure speculation at its core (I wanted to say heart, but they don't have one).

Prime Brokerage was meant to settle and clear trades for independent traders. Then, Hedge Funds got involved, and Wall Street was more than happy to provide the leverage and liquidity to Hedge Funds. Most hedge funds are pure speculators. Some readers may remember the spectacular demise of LTCM (Long Term Capital Management), in 1997, which was the largest hedge fund of its time. Ironic how short the Long Term was. John Merriwether, and his band of traders at LTCM, including the Nobel Laureate Myron Scholes (of the Black-Scholes option pricing model fame), leveraged their fund in excess of 100:1 ($100 of borrowed money, for each $ of capital) to bet on World Convergence. Then, Russia defaulted on its debt obligations, and that default set off a chain reaction of World Divergence that blew LTCM out of the world!

Starting in the mid 2000s, economists and researchers started predicting a major future shortage in global oil supply. A large factor in these projections - the astonishing and continuing growth in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC group). Wall Street Prop Traders and Hedge Funds pounced on this as an opportunity to make a lot of money for themselves. The logic actually may have some merit.

Hedge Funds do not disclose their holdings of crude oil, or the size of the open positions in the crude futures prices. Investment Banks do, but in a convoluted manner, buried on page 900 something of their annual disclosure filings. The obfuscation is startling.

It has been reported, elsewhere, that Wall Street owns several hundred million barrels of crude oil, sitting in tankers off the US coast. One report I saw claimed 120 million barrels. That would roughly be 4 days of US's total consumption of oil.

Found an interesting graphic to make my case: http://goo.gl/MyDWC

It shows that crude oil prices collapsed, starting in September 2008. Remember that the weekend of 9/15/2008 was when Lehman Brother failed, and Merrill Lynch was forced into the arms of Bank of America. Within 3 months, gas prices hit $1.60 per gallon in the US. The Bush (junior) Administration bailed out our dear Investment Banks in October 2008.

See a trend in gas prices since then? It is not a coincidence. The cost of producing a barrel of gas has not risen by 100% in the last 4 years. It is Wall Street that is back at its GAME - pump (pun unintended) and dump. In their Prop books, and alongside their Hedge Fund customers!

With unemployment in the high 8%s, and stagnant relative incomes, the John Qs of America are being taken to the cleaners. By Wall Street. And our Congress, including the Administration can do NOTHING about it. Frank Dodd Act, and CFTC's amended powers could have put the brakes on such naked speculative hoarding and trading, BUT the Republican controlled House has effectively blocked Frank Dodd Act, and may infact entirely repeal it. The CFTC meanwhile had its budget severly cut, so the amended powers to monitor and regulate oil speculators was dead on arrival.

America's next NIGHTMARE - Romney @ 1600, combined with John Boehner as Speaker of the House, and a GOP majority, or a close tie in the Senate. If that happens, we are all SCREWED.