In comments Cookie Jill mentioned the possibility of speculators driving up the price of wheat. That reference triggered a curious thought: have you noticed the price of gas lately?

The thing is, the price of oil jumped over that past 6 weeks or so, and then it stalled and started to drop. What is so odd is this – when is the last time you saw the price of oil drop when there were riots in the streets of a major oil producing country, like Iran?

A suspicious person might conclude that there was absolutely no reason for the price of oil to rise other than speculation, and it had risen to an unsustainable level.

Just a thought.

While I accept the possibility that there is some underlying reason for married Southern politicians to become involved with women from Argentina, I have zero interest in being pressured into reading about it, nor in having it be the single most important story on what purport to be news programs. The gossip belongs on Divorce Court, not the evening news.

I don’t give a rat’s patoot about other people’s sexual activity. I already know that Republicans are hypocrites, so this isn’t news. I didn’t care when it was Democrat Wilbur Mills, so why would I care if it’s Republican Mark Sanford? Aren’t there several wars going on? Is the economy no longer in the tank? Was everyone suddenly granted health care? Has climate change been halted? Is there nothing else newsworthy in the world?

The entire Democratic leadership, from the White House down, would starve in a Tijuana market. They don’t even understand the most basic steps in negotiations. If you are going to buy anything in most of the world, you need to know how to haggle, or what you get will be less than worthless.

They need to be locked away for a week with a couple of grandmothers from a colonia to learn how it’s done, or at least with some seasoned labor negotiators to learn the basics.

You want Medicare-for-all? You start with the British National Health Service, and then negotiate down to single-payer.

If these wimps negotiated a labor contract, we would have slavery reintroduced in this country. They really suck.

This is from the CNN coverage Violence flares again in Tehran

Iran is saying that the woman who has emerged as an emblem of the Iranian government’s crackdown against protesters might have been shot dead by “mistake,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday.

The report said the investigation into the death of Neda Agha-Soltan is ongoing, “but according to the evidence so far, it could be said that she was killed by mistake. The marksmen had mistaken her for the sister of one of the Monafeghin who had been executed in the Province of Mazandaran some time ago.”

Monafeghin refers to the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, which promotes a secular, Marxist government for Iran and has waged a violent campaign against the fundamentalist Islamic Tehran government — including bombings that killed politicians, judges and cabinet members.

Is it “Islamic” to assassinate, without arrest or trial, the sisters of terrorists? Where is that found in the Quran or Sharia law?

CNN also reported Iranian football stars ‘retired’ after match protest. I would hope that FIFA again imposes sanctions on Iran, as they did in 2006, for political interference. Americans have never really understood about the place of football [soccer] in most of the world, but FIFA [the international body that rules football] sanctions have more meaning for the average citizen than UN Security Council resolutions. Consider what would happen in the US if the government caused the NFL and NASCAR seasons to be canceled.