Hi all, Just wanted to take a moment and refute most of my previous statements about politics. I was naive, and, like many of us, my mind was no doubt overrun by Soviet/Russian disinformation campaigns that have plagued this country since the early 60s. If anyone is curious, I'd recommend reading http://www.amazon.com/Disinformatio...ing-Attacking-Promoting-ebook/dp/B00D99V2RY/ . No doubt some of the old timers here are like, "WTF?" but let me give some examples and background.. The movement against fracking, IMO, is a very good example of a Russian disinformation campaign. First, a little background - during the Soviet times, about 2/3 of their economy was based on fossil fuels. Today, it's 75%. How did they get them? Usually by invading their neighbors and stealing them, eg Romania in the 50's, Chechnya in the 90's, and Georgia a few years ago. Today, they need an oil price of $103/ba just to keep their country afloat. Curiously, this was the same criticism levelled at Bush/Cheney for invading Iraq, yet the US has never been an imperial power (excepting maybe Native Americans, 90% of whom were lost to disease and not armed conflict or relocation). If Bush/Cheney wanted oil, why bother running for president? It sounds really ridiculous when you think about it. And Cheney didn't even want to be president. Bottom line, the more pro-US the politician, the more they will be skewered by the left. Why? Because whether they know it or not, the left works on behalf of Russia, who has been hell-bent on destroying us for 100 years. But if you understand that Saddam (and the Assad family, for that matter) was always extremely tight with the Soviets, suddenly things are a lot clearer. Equally clear is who benefits when Saddam goes (anyone who wants cheap oil) and who suffers (Russia) when Iraq starts pumping millions of barrels of oil, driving down prices. Granted, Bush/Cheney could have been better and more articulate salesmen, but global politics and intelligence seem really, really difficult to me from where I'm sitting. (Search for something like 'malaysian intelligence saddam 9/11 attack' and you will see there were links provided to us by foreign governments, sinking the claim that Iraq had no connection to 9/11). I'm not even going into the Oil For Food program here, which allowed a few Russians to make millions of dollars from Iraq under the pretense of sanctions.. To think that I believed a lot of this leftist shit makes me feel silly now. But the propaganda works very well. Bottom line is cheap oil benefits the US and hurts Russia. Russia has no economy, even today. All they can do is mine, which is why it is in their best interests to cause mayhem and keep oil prices high. I predict a historical low in terrorist attack frequency during the Sochi olympics. And where did useful idiot Snowden go? Curious how his Russian lawyer sits on the board of the FSB, the successor to KGB, formerly headed by Mr Putin.. Wikileaks as well as the two non-Russians "helping" Snowden have ties to Russia. Wikileaks is not your friend. Now on to fracking. Russia controls, eg, the Baltic states and even some W European states through the natural gas supply. They control all [the Soviet era] nat gas pipelines and have always used them to control these states politically (look at what is happening in Ukraine now as they try to escape Russia once and for all and join the EU). The ridiculous things you hear about fracking, eg polluting water tables (which is not physically possible), smells like Russian disinformation. Fracking has driven down the price of natural gas, allowing people to heat their homes, etc. more cheaply. I always find it the funniest of contradictions that the left claims to want to help the poor, while doing abolutely nothing but driving up the cost of things like gas that people depend upon. Does George Soros or George Smith the Janitor get hurt when gas prices go up? Global warming -- no, climate change -- also comes to mind here. It will be renamed again soon, I'm sure. I'd bet my left nut that the theory of global warming was created in the Kremlin. As for Al Gore (who received a "D" in Earth and Planetary Sciences at a university where 3/4 of the student body graduates cum laude) and his Nobel prize, both Arafat and Sartre also got Nobel peace prizes; both were KGB agents. IMO, the two political parties in this country can be divided based on whether or not their goals are in line with US or Russian goals. This is maybe truer today than it was 40 years ago. It's my strong opinion now that you cannot vote for Democrats if you 1)have any understanding of basic economics; 2)like America. Supporting progressive Republicans who increase the size of government (except defense) doesn't really help liberty. The bigger the government, the more inherently leftist and more easily corrupted it will be. I'm also not giving Bush 43 a complete pass here - lots of mistakes, like No Child Left Literate - were made. It's easy for traders to act like leftists since trading does not require a deep understanding of the world in which we live, which is about where I was when I was trading. I don't trade these days, and haven't in years. I don't miss it much. Maybe someday I'll come back to it, but I always enjoyed the chit chat and political back and forth I had here with the other guys on ET, and felt like I should probably correct some of the silly statements I made in the past, and offer a way out for anyone finding themselves buggered by leftism. Read the book I named above. You'll suddenly understand why the left hates two of our greatest Presidents - Reagan and Nixon - because they stood up to the Soviets. Reagan destroyed them by making it impossible for them to go on invading and stealing from their neighbors (not by simply outspending them). Grenada was a good example of this. Then look at the Democrat presidents of the last 50 years - LBJ (sociopath/womanizer); JFK (moron/meth addict/womanizer); Carter (moron); BJ Clinton (narcissist/womanizer); and Barry (where to begin?) - funny how all of these losers get a complete pass from the press, etc. LBJ probably did more damage to the US in 5 years than any other president, except maybe Kennedy. Thank God Nixon/Kissinger came after. The book also outlines how the Soviets are entirely responsible for radical Islam and the state of the Middle east today. It is worth reading just for that. The only real terrorists of the last 100 years are the Russians. The Red Terror was just the start of something that continues today. According to the book, they were responsible for the '72 Munich bombings and pretty much all middle eastern terror, either directly or indirectly. If you hear some conspiracy theory blaming Israel or the CIA for something, you now know where it originated. Anyway, thanks for listening. Lotsa things to get off my sleeve here. I hope you all are well! -B