When each of us was in third grade, we learned the legend of John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed. We were taught of his beneficence, and we marveled over the Disney-esque pen and ink drawings of him wandering barefoot through the woods, tin pot on his head, followed by an assortment of happy woodland creatures. He was the pioneer saint, there to spread the healthy goodness of apples across the frontier in advance of the great westward expansion.

What Mrs. Klein, my third grade teacher failed to tell me (likely yours failed to mention this as well), is that Chapman's intentions were not entirely magnanimous, and the fruits of his labors were not meant for children. When he set out from Massachusetts in 1797 towards Pennsylvania, Ohio, and eventually Fort Wayne, Indiana, pioneers could lay claim to land simply by having planted a crop there. His savvy as a land speculator and as a nurseryman selling seedlings to the region's new arrivals made him quite a wealthy man. And those apples were not meant for keeping the doctor away or giving to prairie schoolmarms. Apples grown from seeds (as opposed to grafts) were, as HD Thoreau once wrote "sour enough to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream." No, these apples were meant for cider, and not the soft sweet stuff either.

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The name of the game for the Obama administration comes down to three words: the House of Representatives, not Congress, just the House. If the GOP takes it back it will spell disaster for the Obama Administration. A GOP run House will stall, dodge, and effectively stymie any and every spending initiative and bill that President Obama proposes. The GOP then will turn around and paint the administration as hostile, confrontational, ineffectual, and a promoter of gridlock.

GOP leaders have concocted a masterful strategy to grab the House. The ploy is this. Appear statesmanlike, pragmatic and thoughtful. This means downplay the GOP's stock inflammatory, wedge issues of abortion, and gay marriage. At the same time, avoid capitalizing on fringe, controversial and impassioned issues such as the looming battle over the Ground Zero Mosque, Obama's birth certificate, and his religion, scotch any talk of repealing the 14th Amendment, and do not openly renew the battle over the health care reform law. Relentlessly play to the two major fears and concerns of Americans. They are the economy and government spending. In the process, stress openness and flexibility. This makes it appear that the GOP is prepared to take the political and principled high ground and shed the image of itself and Congress as a deal-making, clubby, disconnected, alien presence that a majority of Americans now hold in contempt.

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Many people recently were openly puzzled, annoyed, confused, inspired and generally curious about what Prince meant when he said "The Internet's completely over". That sound-bite was part of an interview given to Peter Willis (from the Mirror.co.uk) and here's the quote in its entirety: "The internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it. The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

Now the media pundits focused on Prince's stand against the lack of control artists have over their material. The techno experts were calling Prince some type of technology Luddite who has not yet learned how to warm himself by the glow of the techno light. And finally, the music entertainment crowd simply was amazed at the irony of the whole sketch; "Every website covered his new album which is delivered via the Internet." This crowd perceived this as a marketing stunt - incredibly clever or diabolical depending on your perspective on the artist.

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Ananthan Thangavel of Lakshmi Capital is long silver futures and call options for his clients- and will add to his silver positions on any pullback. He knows there are huge short positions in silver; CFTC records show that 44.1% of the gross short position in silver is held by the 4 largest traders. And he reports in a comment on the silver market on Lakshmi's website ("A Twist on the Silver Market") that "Some traders I have spoken with are targeting the 40-50 level within 4 months." A chart of silver prices shows that silver in recent weeks has outshone the rise in gold prices by jumping 50% from around $18 to nearly $30 and then backed off to $27.16 today. This extraordinary increase in the price of silver suggests that short covering might explain part of the gain.

Nevertheless, bullishness on silver is also based on the feeling that "the world's silver supply and mining production is not enough to satisfy the increasing industrial demand as well as vastly increasing investment demand, Thangavel wrote me in an email Nov. 10. Only 116.1 million ounces of silver out of 2009 production of 709 million ounces were available to satisfy investment demand. "This huge shortfall indicates that the outstanding short position cannot be solely on behalf of producers, because there is a far larger outstanding position that could possibly be hoped to be mined this year, " Thanagvel wrote today.

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