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I received a follow up to the letter I sent in to Senartor Martinez about the FISA Amendments Act (HR 6304). It’s a bit canned, but I appreciate that a response was sent. Here it is in its entirety.

Dear Mr. Place:

Thank you for contacting me regarding foreign intelligence surveillance. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 provided the U.S. intelligence community with a framework to regulate the collection of electronic surveillance on foreign intelligence targets, while protecting the Constitutional civil liberties of U.S. citizens. FISA was written to distinguish between the collection of information on a physical wire versus collection of signals broadcast in the open air. In 1978, almost all U.S. domestic calls were on a wire and almost all international communications were transmitted via satellites through the air. Therefore, FISA required all U.S. intelligence agencies to obtain a court order to intercept a wire-to-wire communication or any communication transmitted domestically. FISA, however, did not require court orders to intercept and collect wireless communications outside the United States.

On July 9, 2008, Congress presented the President with the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (H.R. 6304) which modernizes our collection of foreign intelligence. This measure clarifies that FISA’s requirement of prior court approval does not apply to surveillance that is targeted at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States in accordance with the bill’s procedures. H. R. 6304 would allow the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to jointly authorize the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year. H.R. 6304 in addition requires prior court approval for surveillance of U.S. citizens who are overseas. H.R. 6304 will provide, upon a certification by the Attorney General, retroactive immunity to carriers that allegedly participated in the President’s Terrorist Surveillance Program. It also provides prospective immunity to participating telecommunications carriers for certain assistance.

Throughout the history of our republic, we have always been concerned about the proper balance between security and freedom. Those who are generally concerned about the power of government to trample on the rights of free citizens when necessity dictates are right to insist on maintaining the individual civil liberties afforded by our Constitution, especially in times of crisis. Keeping our homeland safe from foreign threats is my number one priority as an elected official, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides intelligence professionals with the legal authority to intercept communications from foreign terrorist to individuals within our borders. H.R. 6304 represents a balanced approach to target terrorist planning attacks while carefully respecting civil liberties. It is important to understand that the phone records are not used to spy on the lives of innocent Americans, and instead focus on tracking terrorist who want to harm the American people.

We must remember we are at war with a ruthless enemy that has no regard for human life and exploits the openness of our society to harm us at home and abroad. I am committed to defeating terrorist and their actions that would lead to harm and devastation towards our country. I believe H.R. 6304 is a necessary update to FISA in order for us to continue to protect ourselves from these threats. However, having experienced life under a totalitarian regime, I value our Constitutional civil liberties, and I will continue to protect these rights as your Senator.

Thank you very much for sharing your concerns. Do not hesitate to contact me with any additional questions or comments you may have. For more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator

The FISA amendment act is coming due on Tuesday. I’m overnighting a letter to my Senator and calling him as well. I encourage you to do the same.

To Contact your Senator: Enter your zip at this website and they will give you the phone number to the offices of the officials who represent you.

Here’s the letter:

Mr. Steven Place

[Address]

Melbourne, FL 32934

July 7, 2008

Mr. Mel Martinez

United States Senator

356 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Martinez:

I am writing to you today in regards to the FISA Amendments Act. As a constituent, I feel that it is my patriotic duty to contact you and explain how this piece of legislation, if passed, will severely damage our democracy and for what it stands.

I respectfully request that you act on these measures:

· Vote “YES” on the Dodd-Feingold amendment, which would strip telecom immunity from the bill entirely.

· Vote “YES” on the Bingaman amendment, which would delay implementation of telecom immunity until after Congress has received the Inspectors General report on the President’s warrantless surveillance program.

· Vote “NO” on the cloture motion to end debate on the FAA.

· Vote “NO” on the FISA Amendments Act.

The reasons for the above request are as follows:

The legislation violates the constitution. The 4^th amendment guarantees citizens the right against unreasonable searches and seizures unless a Warrant is issued. The legislation goes directly against what the constitution says and what it represents. If the government wishes to legislate measures as stated in the FAA, it needs to submit a constitutional amendment.

The legislation protects corporations from legal action. This should be decided by the courts, not the legislative branch. By enacting this amendment, it will set a legal precedent with which the judicial branch will lose power over creating legal and civil action against corporations. Furthermore, the bill wishes to grant retroactive immunity for actions that we do not know. Even closed hearings to Senators with clearances on the Intelligence Committee have not proven a rationale for this amendment.

The legislation expands power of the executive branch. By giving the executive branch legal authority to bypass warrants during searches, you restrict the system of checks and balances that our government needs in order to function properly.

The legislation gives the executive branch leverage over opponents. Expanding on the previous point, this amendment would give the executive branch tools with which they could suppress political opposition. If a whistleblower had information that would weaken the position of the executive branch in any way, warrantless wiretapping could be used to bully, blackmail, or manipulate opponents by adding deterrents. This method could be expanded to political opponents, advocates, and even Senators. By giving even the availability to the executive branch, we reduce the principles of our democracy.

This is not about politics, but morals. I ask you to transcend partisan lines as I encourage you to take these points into consideration. By taking the actions as listed above, you would be taking a great step towards a stronger democracy and a better America.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Along with the mailing address above, you can contact me with the information below.

Sincerely,

Steven Place

h: [home phone]

w: [work phone]

e: [e-mail]

Back in 1980, 52 U.S. diplomats were taken hostage in Iran. This incident, during the Iranian revolution, was a major blow to foreign policy and intelligence in the Middle East. After a botched extraction attempt (I personally know people who flew on that mission… disaster), the Algiers Accords were signed.

The incident was a major blow for the reelection campaign for Jimmy Carter. The very second after Regan was elected, the hostages were released. It also helped strengthen the Islamic revolution under Khomeni and showed vulnerabilities of one of the major superpowers at the time.

Is Iran doing the same thing with oil?

As of this writing, there were Iranian supertankers in the persioan gulf that hold about 5 months worth of extra crude oil. Why the stockpiling? Of course, you can use it as economic leverage against any attack on their coun

try, but what if the oil is being held hostage until a new president takes office?

The cost of oil, among many other reasons, have dropped the president’s rating to unprecedented levels. Bringing that sort of supply onto the market would create some serious turbulence in the commodities markets, possibly causing a correction in prices.
There are some hidden paralells that come to mind when comparing the two events. The major underlying theme may be that the Iranian government is trying to garner political and economic influence in the West, albeit indirectly.

So you’ve set up your Roth IRA and are ready to start plowing money into the market. What’s your plan? If you’re like most people, you don’t have one. You think that you should just buy and hold certain stocks or etfs and wait until retirement.

You’re wrong.

From: Bespoke Investment Group

Case in point: the banks. If you have been averaging in the bank etf $BKX for the past ten years, without taking profits, you would be losing money. The etf doubled from it’s lows five years ago and in the past year has taken back all of these gains. Do you see why having a strategy is important?

Of course there is a difference with trading and investing, but there’s one thing that the two have in common: risk management. If you’re investing for the long haul, you still need to have stops in place and contingincies written out. Your set of rules should tell you when to take profits, move your stop, add on more of a position, and when to pull off when you need cash in more valuable places. You also might want to consider option strategies (selling some stock and buying protective puts, or selling calls).

Even if you’re rules are based off strict asset allocation, it still requires you to take profits. Say for you to have a properly diversified portfolio, you want to allocate 5% of your investment account to the banks. If the etf doubles like it did (and all things being equal), your allocation is now up to 10% and too much for your portfolio. So you have to take some profits in order to keep your portfolio in balance. You would still give back some gains, but not as much if you didn’t look at it.

Wealth management is not an easy job. If you stay disciplined in your investing approach, however, then you will have a distinct edge over 80% of the people in the market.

This is a follow up to my thoughts on the advent of microjournalism and how Twitter could become a bellweather in the news media if it positions its brand correctly.

I’ve been diving in deeper into these ideas and I realized that the way Twitter is percieved will be a major hangup if they want to continue further. Currently, Twitter is set up as a many-to-many application, in which you try and get as many to follow you and reciprocate the same. This is the status quo in social media (blogging, facebook, etc).

A new shift, particularly in online media, is the few-to-many application, in which a select “high value” producers generate content for the masses. This is only the natural evolution of online media; noise eventually gets filtered out until you find producers that create real value. The problem with Twitter is that currently there is too much noise, and until you find the proper filters, it will not be able to retain a sustainable user base.

Twitter needs to become a few-to-many application, in which they recruit high-value targets to write random thoughts to their Twitter feed. I gave several examples in my previous post, but I’ve realized there is a much more valuable target for them to reach: the Olympics.

Right now, they need to start getting in contact with as many athletes and coaches that are participating in the Olympics (U.S. participants as well as others) who have access to internet and cell phones throughout their competitions. Explain to them that it would be a great way to vent their feelings and show the rest of the world what it’s like to be a world class athlete.

This will provide Twitter with access to information that NBC can’t have. If NBC takes notice, Twitter can then license out the Olympics content out to them or try for an all out acquisition.

Clock’s ticking.

In a continuation of the previous article, I attempt to look further for ways in which Twitter can expand beyond the TechCrunch crowd and start to hit the mainstream.

Yesterday, water was found on Mars. Who broke it? CNN? AP? Ah, no. It was the twitter feed for the mars lander who gave its audience a riveting story in tiny little pieces. Technology has now allowed the primary sources to become the media outlets, rather than being sanitized and processed for the masses, and this story may have saved Twitter.

This event will mark a new trend into Microjournalism.

Picture the scenario: you have all the major networks and their respective talking heads, well, talking. They sit their and speculate about every nuance of a major story. And their waiting…. for the next Tweet.

Imagine the countless opportunities for this! Howard Lindzon (investor in Twitter) brought up a good idea that Twitter should start paying for “inside reports,” with his example being Tiger Woods’ caddy. Imagine the traffic that would have came to their website, people grabbing onto every word… and then the mainstream media gets a hold of it. That’s critical mass.

Other possibilities:

1. Texting information from a closed courtroom where media isn’t allowed.
2. Celebrities Twittering about working in a movie. Think about Will Smith complaining about the heat in his suit for “Hancock.” This would be a tremendous promoting tool for the industry.
3. Have the lead scientists at the Large Hadron Collider funnel their thoughts into Twitter.

It’s coming to the breaking point for Twitter. There are scalability issues and rumours about management leaving. However, they are in a prime position to go critical mass, and they are lucky they are in an election year. If they want to get a ton more exposure, they need to start recruiting major political players, correspondents, and embeds to engage in MicroJournalism. Once they have a substantial number of power players, then go to the media and show that they have the quickest sources out their. For the 24 Hour networks, this is like bringing them a purer form of cocaine… they can’t resist. Start to establish deals with the networks and expand from there.

Twitter will only survive with product verticals. They have been dismissed by the TC crowd as unnecessary. I believe that if they execute properly they will become a new form of newsmedia, that once established, will become a necessary architecture to provide up-to-date news.

Hear me out. Just give me 2 minutes to explain.

In the next 20 to 30 years the state of Florida will experience a deep local recession (think Detroit). The Baby Boomers who bought up all those retirement villages will start to die off. Also, it’s becoming prohibitively expensive to get a decent house due to the insurance premiums. The real estate market will come into significant overhead supply. The decline in population will reduce sales tax receipts, cut retail spending, and economic growth will slow. Seeing this, people will leave, exacerbating the situation.

The tourism industry won’t save them. With newer (and closer) developments throughout the world being built, Orlando’s strong growth will slow. When it’s cheaper and more fun to go to Dubai for a week, Europeans will stop showing up.

It just keeps coming: the educational system is not graduating good workers, and businesses will have less of incentive to bring their business to the state. In the long term, the state will run out of water.

And the voters don’t notice the problem. They just put in a constitutional amendment to reduce property taxes, which will hurt the state in terms of tax receipts when the housing crash finally ends. This November, they are looking to cut state taxes to schools by a significant amount. Unless we privatize the Florida school system, this will be a bad move.

The solution is offshore drilling.

Offshore Drilling will save the environment. By leasing the land to the oil/nat-gas companies and taxing their profits, you can use that money for 3 major things:

1. Environmental Insurance in case of a disaster
2. Tax breaks for green energy (solar and tidal, not wind)
3. Development of a high-speed rail system

You will also get an increase in jobs. You could also use the tax receipts to subsidize household insurance. We need a combination of solar-heat and desalinization plants to get the water we need to the state.

The solutions to the energy crisis must not only come from long-term renewable energy; it must be subsidized by the energy that is immediately available to the country.

This is part 1 of an ongoing series of why baseball is categorically not a sport. It doesn’t fit the guidelines of what defines a sport. Yeah, sure, you can complain about how you think I’m wrong and baseball doesn’t suck.

But that’s not what I said. Baseball sucking is a completely different topic. This is the discussion of how we ought to dismiss it as a sport altogether.

1) Bonds hits record homerun, isn’t pissed that team lost

A lot of news has been generated, along with a lot of controversy, with Barry Bonds and his home run record. Obviously, the whole steroid thing comes to mind, as it does with anyone that can rub two brain cells together, but that is not the point here.

What was the end-game score? Anyone? Anyone?

They LOST. They lost their game. 8 to 6 against the Nationals. And noone cares.

And this one reason why baseball should not be taken seriously as a sport, much less a team one. The game didn’t matter. That hasn’t hit anyone on the head yet? I have yet to find one instance in which any player, manager, or owner said “Well yeah, that was great and all, but we still lost the game.” That doesn’t happen. Look at historic competitors in any other Big 4: broke a record, yeah, big deal, but we still lost the game.

2) Babe Ruth did it on Hot Dogs and Cigars

One of the most celebrated players of baseball was unhealthy and out of shape. You can’t say that about other sports (offensive lineman may be a counter-argument, but I’ll get to that in reason 4)

3) Baseball is America’s pastime

Yes. A pastime, not a sport. It’s more of a hobby, like craft sticks or scrap-booking.

4) You can be obese and still succeed at this game

There are athletes in baseball, but not all baseball players are athletes. Look at David Wells: he’s a fatty, and still pitched a perfect game.

Now don’t go off and talk about lineman in the NFL. They *have* to be obese in order to play their position. There’s a difference. They’re like sumo wrestlers, who have to gain weight in order to participate in their sport. There is no position in baseball that requires that.

5) Anyone can play well in a pickup game

Get a couple people and hit the ball around. How hard can that be? Baseball is an event that you can play drunk. Liability issues normally require companies to play slow-pitch softball, but the concept is the same.

You can’t get some overweight middle manager at Dynetech to play a pick-up game of rugby. He’d die. But baseball… piece of cake.

I’ve got about 40 more reasons lined up, so subscribe to my feed and I’ll keep you posted.

This past Thursday, Oil inventories came in with an 8.8 M bbd draw. You could see that crude spiked and then started to drop all of a sudden… did something change in the fundamental picture?

No.

This is where the discrepancy between what oil is fundamentally worth and what a contract is worth to a trader comes into play. This past week, NYMEX increased the margins you need to trade crude oil contracts, both regular and miNY contracts.

Margins for the crude oil, crude oil calendar swap, and crude oil financial futures contracts will go up to $7,250 from $6,500 for clearing members, to $7,975 from $7,150 for members and to $9,788 from $8,775 for customers, NYMEX said in a release.

Margins for the NYMEX miNY crude oil futures contract will rise to $3,625 from $3,250 for clearing members, to $3,988 from $3,575 for members and to $4,894 from $4,388 for customers. Margins for the NYMEX MACI index futures contract will increase to $1,450 from $1,300 for clearing members, to $1,595 from $1,430 for members and to $1,958 from $1,755 for customers.

This decreases the ability for some players to use as many contracts as they used to, as well as some players who can’t trade at all. This has reduced the demand of these contracts significantly, which explains the drop in price.

Hopefully this drop in the price of the contract will keep going as some speculators will have the fear of Vishnu put in them, which will cause a significant correction down to more fundamentally sound levels.

Thanks to Barry for reminding me of this.

Howard Lindzon points out that the first adopters of Twitter are saying that there is no good way to monetize that app. That sort of talk always leads to nowhere. He argues:

They are early adapters for sure, but the data they create is mostly worthless.

He goes on to point out that breaking Twitter up into a niche (namely finance) would help stimulate monetization of the application. It’s a novel idea, really. The functionality has already been hacked together at StockTweets, a Twitter Channel.

Any ticker that the writer wishes to discuss will be prefixed with a ‘$’. So if I wanted to spill some haterade on Crocs, I’d say “$CROX : They make your feet stink.” The data is then aggregated and linked to the ticker so users can go back and browse various opinions.

Twitter in finance is a damn powerful tool. I swing trade occasionally, and it’s nice to have up to the minute information from people you can trust.

There are other niches that you can aggregate information from and monetize that data. I’m not going into detail here, but there are some possibilities that I’m mulling around. (BTW, I need a programmer that knows the Twitter API… contact me if you’re interested.)