Video on Newtown Shootings

The school nurse was interviewed among others for this 60 Minutes piece:

Shortsighted and Greedy

That describes how the eyeglass industry is a ripoff if you go through traditional doctors or even through chains like Lenscrafters for them:




However, one can go online and get perfectly good eyeglasses for a fraction of what doctors charge.

The problem here is there is a monopoly.

What is Art?

Thomas Kinkade was a genius compared to these people profiled in 1993:

Since I Don't Have Television Service,

I waited until I could see this excellent 60 Minutes report on scientist/explorer Robert Ballard, best known for his discovery of the Titanic in 1985.

Part One:


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Part Two:


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Fascinating stuff.

More About Those Scams Called 401(k)s

Courtesy of 60 Minutes:



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I

went down and saw the flick Frost/Nixon, which was okay. I had a hard time, though, accepting Frank Langella as Nixon, for he looked nothing like him. Michael Sheen was good as David Frost.

And speaking of Frost, here is the 60 Minutes clip from 1977 of Mike Wallace with David Frost about RN:





I'd like to see the original interviews, but unfortunately they aren't all available on DVD. The four 90-minute specials were available on VHS many years ago.

Oil's Well That Ends Well

Well, no shit Sherlock speculation drove up the price of oil to obscene levels, as did the nonsense of "peak oil."

60 Minutes looked at the scam tonight:

To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it's traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it's traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.

It was created so that farmers could gauge what their unharvested crops would be worth months in advance, so that factories could lock in the best price for raw materials, and airlines could manage their fuel costs. But more than a year ago those markets started to behave erratically. And when oil doubled to more than $147 a barrel, no one was more suspicious than Dan Gilligan.

EVERY stinking thing in the past eight years has been nothing but a scam.

Video clip:

The Crappy Economy

60 Minutes looked at the Wall Street mess:




CBS many years ago reported on derivatives and their riskiness. This clip of a longer report was from 1995:


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link

For Those Who Missed It,

and for those who wanted to miss it, 60 Minutes star Scott Pelley conducted an interview with media darling John McCain.

I wanted to embed the interview here, but CBS screwed up the link.