Cenk Uygur Speaks Truth to Stupid

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This is hilarious. Cenk Uygur is the voice of reason?  Well, compared to a fruit cake like presidential historian and pollster Allan Lichtman and his “13 keys” nonsense about picking presidential winners he is.  Cenk is a Bernie Bro.  But he’s a veritable Einstein compared to Lichtman.  At one point Lichtman accuses Uygur of blasphemy for mocking his keys!  It’s wonderful.  And it may be the exemplar for the whole election.  Blame the voters for being too stupid to see how great everything is under the Biden administration.  Inflation is great, illegal aliens are great, crime is great.  We just were smart enough to enjoy it.

Tom’s World – 20NOV2024 – Gold and Silver Coins

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

Gold and Silver Coins

I’ve been acquiring/collecting gold and silver for the past 21 years. My motivation initially was to keep a store of PM (precious metals) as a hedge against economic “problems” but I quickly discovered that there was an aesthetic component to some of the coins. My 1st purchases were 100 and 1000 oz silver bars (in 2003 cheap) but they were as photogenic as bricks. When I discovered the offerings from some of the major mints around the work, it was a “Whoa” moment. So I started to photo them. It worked out that 2003 was right about the time digital cameras were becoming capable instruments.

Amusing that the owner of APMEX (American Precious Metals Exchange), the largest online seller of PM’s sent me an email in around 2006 asking if I would do all his product photography for him. I was happy for the recognition but I was a 50 something year old Civil Engineer at the time and I appreciate the offer but——

 

 

4 Ducat-  This is a restrike of a 1915 4 Ducat Austrian gold coin featuring Emperor Franz Joseph. The coin contains .44 oz (net) of gold. I’ve got a number of European gold fractionals (fractional oz) and some are quite nice if you manage to get one in good shape after 100-140 years. This coin is from the Austrian Mint

 

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2011 Kookaburra- From the Australian National Mint. The Kookaburra is just 1 of several yearly silver coin offerings from the Mint. All of them are incredibly nice and popular. This series started in 1993, different images each year, 1 oz of silver. As an aside, when I say one oz in the context of PM’s, I’m talking about Troy oz, not standard oz., the difference is 28.35 grams per standard oz vs 31.13 per Troy.

 

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ATB Florida- US Mint, ATB stands for America the Beautiful as in the state quarters  issued for several years. This isn’t a standard issue quarter but a 5 oz silver replica but still minted by the US Mint.  Some of the designs, like this Florida one, are quite nice, but others not so much.

 

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Britannia- By the British National Mint, one oz 24 kt gold. Britannia is the British equivalent of Uncle Sam. The coins were issued yearly, most years of different designs, in both gold and silver. A lot of the coins from this series are spectacular.

 

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Azteca Calendario- This came in different weights up to a kilogram, this one is 5 oz. You can find all sorts of base metal knockoffs of this coin but the real ones from the Casa De Moneda De México (Mexican National Mint) are fairly rare. I had a Mexican contact and we swapped  coins with each other for years. The Casa has  some beautiful coins and popular coins in its catalogue.

 

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Eagles- Silver American Eagles that is, from the US Mint. Probably the most popular, recognizable, desired and produced coins in the world. If you’re going to buy limited silver, get this one. Recognized everywhere and easily traded for cash. When I first started buying these, I paid $5 each, now they’re pushing $40.

 

GAE- As in Gold American Eagle. Ditto everything about the silver eagles. They are in 22 kt gold or 91% but the weight of gold is one full oz. I like that alloy, I’ve got 24 kt gold but it is too soft. I dropped a 24 kt coin once and it dented the he** out of it. Luckily, that particular coin had little numismatic premium and it was still 1 oz of gold after the drop.

 

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Maple Gold- This is the Canadian version of the GAE. These are .9999 gold. It was one of these that I dropped. This is a fairly early one and the image of the Queen is what is known as the “Hottie” Queen. The image was updated as the years went on to reflect the aging queen.

 

Of all these coins shown, only the Kookaburra and Calendario have any premium attached. All the rest, you could buy for close to spot price. For some reason, some years of SAE’s are rarer and the coins can cost you more. But just skip these years.

I might do another coin photo post down the line but I’ve got thousands of shots of beautiful coins and I don’t think that is the direction Photog wants his site to go in. But there are some incredibly beautiful coins series out there, Chinese Pandas, a number of private mint series, Britannias, ATB’s, Australian Lunar series, Australian Kangaroos, Canadian Predator series, Mexican, European coin types beyond count.

I was extremely lucky, one particular friend (now departed unfortunately), influenced me and got me started when I could accumulate most of this when PM’s were a fraction of current cost. I paid $250 for my 1st oz of gold.

TomD

The New Media Landscape

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Long, long ago in a reality far, far happier, there were things called newspapers and something called radio and something else called television.  Each of these was part of mass communication.  And each had its own mode of operation.  One of the most important considerations in all these media companies was the business model.  In other words, how did the newspaper or radio station or television network earn enough money to pay for all of the costs incurred in publishing a newspaper or running a radio or television station and also produce a profit.

And for the most part, advertising was the principal source of income.  For the most part, businesses paid money for ads in the newspaper or commercials during the air time of broadcasts.  And this system worked remarkably well to keep these media businesses profitable and stable.

But in the 1990s the internet started growing from humble beginnings to its present ubiquitous position.  And one thing its existence did was divert all of the advertising revenue that the newspapers and other media companies formerly collected, into the hands of a few large internet companies.  Specifically, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and X currently capture the lion’s share of this revenue.  And the result of this shift has been the impoverishment of most of the newspapers in the United States.  Even the ones that aren’t teetering on the verge of bankruptcy are just pale ghosts of their former selves.  The network television companies, ABC, NBC and CBS are slightly better off but aren’t looking very healthy either.

And the second way that the internet is endangering these media companies (including the cable television stations) is by providing competition for their viewers.  Netflix and Amazon and others provide streaming services that compete with both the news and entertainment programming that these stations provide.  And with respect to the news programming, the dishonesty and bias of the media news shows over the last few decades has alienated about half of the viewing public.

Throw this loss of audience due to distrust on top of the loss of advertising revenues due to the internet and what you get are companies like CNN and MSNBC that no longer have a viable business model.  When customers cut the cable because they don’t want the cable revenues going to people they hate, then the paying audience shrinks.  And if the shrinking audience scares off the little advertising they have left, then what you’re looking at is a death spiral for these cable news companies.

They’ve tried to mimic the streaming services and fill the gap with subscriptions.  But even delusional cable news executives have learned that no one is paying a monthly fee to see more Joy Reid and Andrea Mitchell.  That’s just not in the cards.  So, if you are Comcast or Warner Brothers-Discover what would you do with these dying companies?  Currently they say they are looking for buyers to unload them on.  To me that seems far-fetched.  Only an idiot would look at MSNBC and say, “Yes, I want to own this.  I know I can make lots of money by putting these people on tv.”

So, what they will do is set up a subsidiary that is made up entirely of these unwatchable channels.  And then they’ll let them sink or swim on their own revenue.  And they will sink.  And that will be the end of it.  The big question is will there be any cable news channels left at all.  Even though Fox News is doing better than their leftist competition they’re not as healthy as they once were.  It may be that cable news is no longer a viable product.  And we’ll find that out too.  Personally, I’d prefer to pay for subscriptions to sources that I like; whether they’re individuals or companies.  And it seems that the shake-out will soon clarify who and what will survive the current media meltdown.  One thing is for sure.  The next presidential election will have to happen without the help of Joy Reid and Dana Bash.  They’ll be working in the retail food industry and too busy at the fryolator to opine on politics.

20NOV2024 – Quote of the Day

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Hitherto the civil Power has been Christian. Even in countries separated from the Church, as in my own, the dictum was in force, when I was young, that: “Christianity was the law of the land”. Now, every where that goodly framework of society which is the creation of Christianity is throwing off Christianity. The dictum to which I have referred, with a hundred others which followed upon it, is gone, or is going every where; and, by the end of the century, unless the Almighty interferes, it will be forgotten. Hitherto, it has been considered that Religion alone, with its supernatural sanctions, was strong enough to secure submission of the masses of our population to law and order; now the Philosophers and Politicians are bent on satisfying this problem without the aid of Christianity.

John Henry Newman

Going, Going, Gone

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As I noted today, Morning Schmoe is kneeling in the snow outside the Pope’s window begging for clemency.  And he’s just the first.  There isn’t enough money at CNN and MSNBC to employ 20% of the talentless hacks that are currently on the payroll.  I can’t imagine that Warner Bros. Discovery wants to continue paying Anderson Cooper $20 million a year for doing whatever it is he does.  And there’s no way on Earth that NBC Universal is going to pay Joy Reid anything at all for the toxic sideshow that she puts on over there.  But the question mark is who gets to stay?

Will they keep some of the marquee players to maintain the pretense that these cable channels are “serious” journalism?  Or will they keep the cheapest talent and try to turn a profit that way?  If they’re smart, I think they should follow the latter course.  Their ratings have already reached the bottom so quality is no longer a consideration.  Cutting costs might extend the viability of these companies for a little longer.  But what’s going to happen to all of these unemployed “journalists?”  In a way CNN did a favor to Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon by letting them go first.  They got the first chance to find jobs before the glut of their peers.  Both of those guys probably lined up some sweet assignments with Uber and Papa Gino’s.

And things aren’t going to be much better for the Fox News guys.  Cable News is a dying industry.  For the foreseeable future it will be like a giant game of musical chairs with fewer and fewer chairs to go around.  Think of all the amazing characters that will disappear from your tv screen (well, that is if you regularly watch MSNBC and CNN.  Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.  Jonathan Capehart, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell, Lawrence O’Donnell, Jen Psaki, Joy Reid, Al Sharpton, Chuck Todd, Dana Bash, Anderson Cooper, Van Jones and Jake Tapper.

Look at those names.  Irreplaceable talent.  Almost like friends; like really, really annoying friends.  The kind who says inappropriate things and borrow money.  The kind who won’t leave at the end of a party.  And suddenly they’ll all be gone.

Well maybe I can cope with the sadness of their loss by making a game of it.  Maybe I can start a betting pool on who goes first.  Who cries on screen?  Who takes the largest voluntary pay cut?  Who has to share an office with the security staff (my money is on Lawrence O’Donnell, he looks reasonable)?  Who goes postal (Mika)?

But most interesting is which if any will make the ultimate compromise and become a conservative to try and get a job at Fox News?  I’d say the early money is on our good friend Joe Scarborough.  After all he was a Republican congressman before having the lobotomy.  It wouldn’t take hardly any makeup to turn him into a rabid MAGA attack dog.  And I’m sure Mika could make the same transition with no real difficulty at all.  Boy, it’s good that the fourth estate is there to take care of us.