Open Mic February 17

 I find the con­tra­cep­tives and the Catholic church dust-​​up a hoot!  Believe me, the Catholic Church lost THAT argu­ment with their own flock a long time ago.
 
I grew up in a very Catholic fam­ily — with 11 sib­lings.  All of us attended co-​​ed Catholic grade schools from kinder­garten through 8^th grade and then went on to attend either an all-​​boys or all-​​girls high school for grades 9–12.  I attended an all-​​girls Catholic high school from 1963–1967 and that Catholic high school was run by elderly Domini­can nuns who back in those days wore floor length  “pen­guin”  black-​​white habits and full head cover and veils.   There were no priests at all at our school.  Just women.
  
The recent con­tro­versy about con­tra­cep­tives and Catholics brought back a flood of high-​​school mem­o­ries, one of which involved con­tra­cep­tives.
  
When I was a junior in high school (1965–1966), our entire Junior class attended an inpromptu (at least to us) “health” class, held not in our usual class­rooms, but instead held in the school’s “lit­tle the­atre”  (think small movie the­atre seat­ing maybe 150 max, tiered seat­ing, aisle light­ing, com­fort­able seats).  Once we stu­dents had all arrived, two nuns were directed to the exit doors, which were then closed and a nun sta­tioned at each door for the entire class to bar any­one else from wan­der­ing in.  That was our first clue that this might be an unusual “health” class.
 
The the­atre lights were low­ered and our atten­tion directed towards the stage, where two nuns stood behind an over­head pro­jec­tor.  Thus began our class on con­tra­cep­tives– a sub­ject that in the 1960s was never openly dis­cussed in pub­lic and cer­tainly never with high school stu­dents.   The nuns pro­ceeded to edu­cate and impress upon us the impor­tance of con­tra­cep­tives, includ­ing the ben­e­fits and dis­ad­van­tages of each form of con­tra­cep­tive avail­able in the mid-​​1960s.  And amaz­ingly to all of us, as each indi­vid­ual con­tra­cep­tive came up for dis­cus­sion, that indi­vid­ual con­tra­cep­tive (the pill, IUD, cop­per coil, con­dom, etc.) was placed on the over­head pro­jec­tor, for all to see.
 
At the time, it did not occur to any of us that this con­tra­cep­tives class was edu­cat­ing us on some­thing that the Catholic Church in Rome itself strongly advo­cated against.   But look­ing back years later, those brave elderly nuns were, in their own way, try­ing to edu­cate us to become respon­si­ble for our­selves and that by being able to have con­trol over our own female bod­ies, we could con­trol our own lives. And I have absolutely no doubt that this nuns’ “health” class cov­er­ing con­tra­cep­tives was never men­tioned to the local arch­dio­cese and male Catholic powers-​​that-​​be. I also doubt we were the only school to have such “health” classes.
 
 

fili and curi­ous jane,

This occurred in the years when abor­tion was ille­gal — before Roe v Wade.  Abor­tions were not only dif­fi­cult and only fea­si­ble for the wealthy, but also very dan­ger­ous — mak­ing the nuns attempts to edu­cate us on con­tra­cep­tives all that more impor­tant.
 
One of my close friends, and who is still a close friend all these many years later,  got preg­nant when a fresh­man in col­lege (1968), was dis­owned by her own fam­ily, sent away to an “unwed mother’s home”, gave birth to a healthy son and was forced by her fam­ily to give her child up for adop­tion if she ever wanted to be part of her fam­ily again.   

Years and years ago my friend pro­vided the adop­tion agency with her name and con­tact infor­ma­tion, hop­ing that once her child became an adult he might search for her — his birth mother — and want to con­tact her, and she wanted to make that search easy for him. She so loves him and wants to hear from him, but so far, she has not.  It’s likely that her child was never told he was adopted. 
  
My friend went on to marry, had 5 addi­tional sons, but still holds a part of her heart for the son she had to give away. That era was a very cruel and bru­tal one for women.
 

Now that the econ­omy has started improv­ing, I see Red­state has also now picked up on the Chicken Lit­tle “the sky is falling” theme —  blam­ing Pres­i­dent Obama for high gas prices.  No sur­prise com­ing from that crowd. Sigh.
 
http://​www​.red​state​.com/​m​o​e​_​l​a​n​e​/​2​0​1​2​/​0​2​/​1​8​/​4​-​5​0​g​a​l​l​o​n​-​g​a​s​-​b​y​-​m​e​m​o​r​i​a​l​-​d​ay/
 

AW,
 
The key clearly needs to be iden­ti­fy­ing vari­ables that we can influ­ence. With­out some changes in how we do busi­ness, not much will change. 
 
 What really dri­ves those ‘world prices’?
  

“Here we go again. Numer­ous eco­nomic indi­ca­tors once more sug­gest that our econ­omy has improved — lower job­less claims at the end of the year, a slight uptick in home sales, seven months of improved car sales and a large jump in con­sumer con­fi­dence in Decem­ber. More impor­tant to the con­ver­sa­tion, all of this hap­pened dur­ing a period in which it appeared that the Euro­pean debt cri­sis might spi­ral out of con­trol, and China’s eco­nomic index actu­ally fell into con­trac­tion in Novem­ber. (It rose slightly in December.)

Some ana­lysts are already pre­dict­ing that gaso­line will hit $4 a gal­lon by the spring of this year, which obvi­ously would not bode well for its price this com­ing sum­mer. And the usual excuses are all being trot­ted out as jus­ti­fy­ing the com­ing price swing. Last year it was the Libyan Civil War, this year it’s the pro­posed world­wide embargo on Iran­ian oil — not to men­tion addi­tional sanc­tions that would be placed on any inter­na­tional com­pany deal­ing with Iran’s Cen­tral Bank as a result of trades.

Amer­i­cans won’t just have to endure the daily real­ity of gas prices hiked by the spec­u­la­tion in the oil mar­kets; we’ll also get to lis­ten to vested traders try­ing to con­vince us that they’re not to blame — those high crude prices result solely from sup­ply short­ages. Oh well, that hasn’t actu­ally been the case in the last eight years; maybe this year it will be.

How­ever, unlike three and a half years ago, more peo­ple under­stand that the oil mar­ket has always been not a “just in time” inven­tory sys­tem, but a “five min­utes after you needed the oil” inven­tory system.

Cer­tainly Gary Gensler, head of the Com­mod­ity Futures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, admit­ted months ago that 80 – 90 per­cent of all oil con­tracts are now held by spec­u­la­tors, not by legit­i­mate hedgers try­ing to pur­chase oil for refin­ing. Like­wise John Bogle, con­sid­ered one of the finest investors ever to grace the halls of Wall Street, seems infu­ri­ated that our finan­cial indus­try is no longer geared toward long-​​term invest­ment in Amer­ica, but instead is solely focused on the quick buck that can be made in the gam­bling hell we call com­modi­ties spec­u­la­tion.”

 
http://​www​.star​-telegram​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​1​/​0​6​/​3​6​3​9​6​9​0​/​2​0​1​2​-​e​n​e​r​g​y​-​p​r​i​c​e​s​.​h​tml
 
Today, even one of the most respected investors in Amer­i­can his­tory, John Bogle, is blast­ing the new Wall Street cul­ture and warn­ing of the long-​​term eco­nomic dam­age to every­one because we no longer invest in Amer­ica, we sim­ply gam­ble on commodities.

But as the author sum­ma­rized, “It would be nice to see the gov­ern­ment finally put a lid on exces­sive spec­u­la­tion and give the aver­age Amer­i­can fam­ily a break. That’s not hap­pen­ing, but at least they told the car com­pa­nies they had to improve the fuel effi­ciency of their cor­po­rate fleets. Which, if noth­ing else, gives us more great choices.”

IMO, that may not be what is cur­rently hap­pen­ing, but is what SHOULD be hap­pen­ing — end exces­sive speculation.

Mainer,
 
One of the rea­sons gas prices are so volatile is because of spec­u­la­tion unleashed when Bill Clin­ton and Bush 2 dereg­u­lated the com­modi­ties mar­kets. Pre­vi­ously, com­mod­ity trad­ing was restricted to pro­duc­ers and whole­sale users because the whole point of a com­mod­ity mar­ket is to facil­i­tate trad­ing between busi­nesses that actu­ally use the prod­ucts. It’s not sup­posed to be a get-​​rich-​​quick scheme for arbi­trageurs. But now the rest of us pay. As usual, the Repub­li­cans are blam­ing the Democ­rats for the mess they had a large part in hav­ing created.

We need to repeal the Com­mod­ity Futures Mod­ern­iza­tion Act of 2000 and The Finan­cial Ser­vices Mod­ern­iza­tion Act of 1999 and get spec­u­la­tors out of the oil mar­ket!
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