Subjectivism in the Age of the Pandemic

When I was a boy the jobs we aspired to were police, firemen, soldiers, cowboys. The most aspired to job in the US today is a celebrity.

And why not? 

The work is easy, the entitlements are huge, the pay is astronomical, the benefits are astounding; the lifestyle of the rich and famous is opulence with a view. We have paid these celebrities to insult anyone and everyone for whom God, honor, country, reality, and truth are more than false philosophies: They are bedrock values in a life well-lived.

Meanwhile, our enemies mock us while they sell us cheap plastic toys, plastic clothes, and plastic lives. In gratitude, they released bio-warfare that has accelerated a trip to serfdom for our culture.

There are a few that understand where we are and how we arrived here. The time for easy answers was long ago when we elected to abandon the hard-fought quest for good, freedom, morality and abandoned the ideals of duty, honor, and country in exchange for the relativity of subjectivism.

It's as if the reasoned ideals of Aristotle, Spinoza, Descartes have given way to the emotionalism of Social Justice Warriors claiming 62 genders as proof that 3 million years of evolution can be dismissed because their feelings became a bouquet of dysphoria.

We will no doubt return to those teachings by a force not entirely of our choosing: In ways, we can not now imagine.

For now, the streets are empty as we are faced with an enemy that intentionally or accidentally fired a single bullet capable of harming or killing us all in a worldwide pandemic.

It may be simply that our duty now is to live until we have discovered a treatment that blunts the sentence. So that we are able, as each Nation awakes to a new understanding of those precepts of right thinking, right action, right living; to again find the truth in a good for which our ancestors were willing to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor: In as much as there is a way to proceed in the right.

We are tasked now with discovering just what that may be in a new age that has come on us faster than we could have ever imagined with a horror that will rock us to abandon core principles for safety or harden us to a course that leaves no choices. We must adopt neither of them.

Rather, once again we are called as a nation to survive in order to know how to best handle, prepare and advance the next time. That will not be easy, but we are not guaranteed survival any more than we are pledged safety.

We must resolve to steel our each, individual course of preparation because we have just witnessed the harshest reality; no one can save you except you. When viewed from the reason for our humanity it seemed that all we needed were 'green' solutions for every phenomenon of a living being: mass transit, mass energy, mass bargaining, mass housing as well as mass farming, and mass consumption, which have all easily replaced self-sufficiency.

Why bother to clothe, feed or defend oneself? After all, if help is just a 911 call away or an online order for groceries and new micro-fiber sweats what is the point? The majority of American society appears now to view self-sufficiency in terms of enough toilet paper to last out a quarantine.

There has never before been a human epoch in which any rational thinker considered the idea that humans need not feed themselves until now. A coyote need never apologize for his rabbit catching, but a human must subjectively argue that putting elk in the freezer requires the approval of social media. 

Nor has there ever been a time in human history that a culture believed almost to a person that a human being is not a part of the natural world.

It might be time to review your quiver of life skills to include those simple truths:

Know how you will clothe yourself in the event re-supply is days away, the electrical grid has failed and the world around you is on fire.

Know how to defend yourself when what you have put aside for your loved ones is something someone else will be willing to take by force from you if necessary.

Know how to feed yourself when a season passes and protein, fat, and carbohydrates are no longer luxuries to be counted, but the very reason that grandma kept her bacon grease, flattened her aluminum foil and kept count of the deer on the place.

Probably not this time though- we're good- right? 

A Virus By Any Other Name

There has never been a world event quite like this one. No matter how it's labeled, the Chinese Virus as is now declared the official name, would be the same rosy scenario by any other name and undoubtedly be just as dangerous.

By dangerous, I, like all of us now bombarded by the 24/7/365 news cycle that is endlessly shared; dissected; pronounced; pontificated, and has not slowed its roll since we discovered that the Xi regime in China had attempted at first to deceive the world: Wake up every day sure that life as we knew it may never be the same again.

There are enough viral videos of the meat market at Wuhan that adding the sinister demon of a bio lab that seems like piling on. It's disgusting to anyone raised with FDA guidelines. Maybe that's one of the broader lessons?

The one truth so far is that no one knows anything that's true. What was true in February is no longer even a remote recommendation in mid- March. And still, the beaches of Spring Break are no less full of youthful revelry.

The once vibrant, rebounding Trump economic miracle has been stopped dead in its tracks by a pandemic. There are those who are positively sure that the effort is another in a series of 4 yrs of attempts to prosecute a coup against an American President. Now we await yet another decline that has wiped out 3 1/2 years of increasing wealth in less than 3 weeks.

Italy has been experiencing increasing numbers of infections along with increasing deaths due to the Chinese virus daily. The once vibrant Lombardy from Milan to Bergamo is devastated. For years the leather and textile trades there sold their factories to China. In return, China sent over 100,000 workers that there are direct flights from Milan to Wuhan. The unanticipated consequences are now mindboggling.

Last evening Gov. Newsome, CA announced a statewide lockdown ex- essential services as the rate of infection broke out overnight. NV, OR and WA have or will follow suit. California shut down gun stores as 'non-essential' businesses just as the lines at gun and ammunition counters are now flowing out into parking lots and the parking lots have grocery carts abandoned from toilet paper hoarding.

At some point, there will be plenty of blame to go around. For the rest of us, though, we better find a way to navigate the disaster that lying governments, complicit tyrants and well-intending politicians have created. That's not going to be easy nor will it be over in a convenient to the consumer manner. The downside of that is the reality that we are a consumer dependent society now world-wide.

That means we panic when there could be a shortage of toilet paper, line up to buy guns we have no idea how to shoot and watch the paycheck disappear as jobs & hours don't seem to return quite quickly enough for many.

All of a sudden those folks who spent their lives hunting, fishing, growing gardens, becoming masters of weapons crafts are becoming social media interests. For most urbanized Americans a day outdoors is followed by a night by the TV in the warmth of climate-controlled living.

We're so detached from the natural world that most wouldn't think of spending a moment in it unless they're wrapped head to toe in the latest micro-fiber, petroleum extruded, polyester-derived, miracle plastic.
Everyone is in agreement that something has to change. This time there will be more changes than we're able to stomach for quite some time to come. Maybe this time the change needs to start with us first?

F**K PARIS, FU** FRANCE, **CK THE FRENCH PEOPLE and *U*K YOU, TOO!

At some point in all the pomp and personal posturing, the platitudes and politically correct parsing, the absurdity of watching a French president declare a war of sorts (hey 20 bombs is a lot if that's all you have) ahead of the G20 Summit is tragic comedy defined. As a member of NATO the French must be shocked that the other 28 members haven't joined them yet as agreed by the terms of the NATO alliance.

The governments of the G20 member nations and NATO have not only profoundly failed their people, but in all the "P"s above over the last 25 years they have indeed sold them cheap to the slaughterhouse that is in the process of overtaking the entire European continent. 

It's coming soon to an American city near you if our leaders have their way.

Their governments f**cked every one of them, man, woman, child, corporation, company, church, and synagogue. City (Paris), country (France) and citizen (aka "the French people) are more cuckold than ever before in the history of representative governments on earth. Yet, even the French know a war when it's finally on them. 

Even the French know a thing or two about being cuckold.  Even the French, it seems, have awakened to the sense of sending men to do what must be done now that the bullets have anchored the victims to their chalk marks in the Gun Free Bataclan Theatre.

As distasteful as the title reads and at a time when solidarity is called for by the Sirens of taste, charity, feelings and civil company; the entire G20 member nations except the United States of America have convinced nation, state and person to trust the devil's trade: more security for less freedom. 

They all believed. They ridiculed America. Who are we to have freedom of speech and self defense? Silly Americans, the Constitution is sooooo outdated and written by old privileged white dudes.

But, instead on opening their trade prize what they got was repression, murder, tragedy, terrorism and submission to radical, murderous, pedophilic tyrants who are cloaked in the tyranny of belief. First in the form of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and still not waking to their garden of evil, the theatre of horrors that will forever be the Bataclan theatre.

Jefferson, Madison and Adams would not be surprised, but hey, they had white privilege....and could think good, too.

So now we're asked by the ever genteel elites to stand with France. Well f**k that. 

Any novice could have made that shot in Bataclan theatre. And any novice may have missed. But what if 10 more people escaped because sudden opposition turns plans into chaos and incoming rounds makes dreams seem so like yesterday? 

The chorus from left just plays into those willing to use terror by quickly claiming themselves to be powerless to resist evil. We can all see you hiding like cowards behind that curtain as the pee stain of your cowardice runs onto your unhidden Birkenstocks. You're not fooling anyone but yourselves.

"Resisting is futile! You could harm others!" Get on your knees and take your beheading like the effeminate bitch you have become.

Liberals so willingly comply with their never ending self-loathing. They've even shifted the blame inward to western societies in some masochistic guilt trip.  Don't they know it denies terrorists their satisfaction of claiming responsibility? How thoughtless of them of other's feelings!

The  G20 member nations excluding the US have all sold the people this same shit-soup sandwich that American liberals from Krugman to Feinstein to Schumer to Obama have tried to roll up and shove up the ass of the American citizen: Gun Free Zones are for the safety of us all; it's not about the confiscation of guns; uncontrolled immigration is an act of compassion.

In the real time of the internet video we have had to watch over 26,000 attacks since 9/11/01 in which radical Muslims have wholesale slaughtered, burned, tortured, stoned, mutilated, hacked, dismembered and raped man, woman and child; Christians, Jews, Buddhists and other Muslims all over the Un-free world.

Here in America we were almost f**ked after the school shooting in Newtown CT. The great liberal cabal thought they could wad up the Constitution and rape us with shame for being unwilling to let them do what is 'best' for us all: Just quit clinging to your guns and your right to religious freedom. We'll protect you. Why can't you just be like those enlightened folks in Europe and Australia?

The G20 thought that they'd be able to force gun confiscation here. I'm sure that they agreed on it. You should be sure as well.

Now we're seeing, in real-time, the fruits of the folly. We're watching, if you have the stomach to watch, these evils played out like never before in the history of mankind on Facebook, Twitter, the blog-o-sphere, the internet. It's terrifyingly evil. It feels unstoppable. It's real time. It's f*c*ed.

So now aided by the entire G20 and NATO, masses of able bodied, military age, radical Muslim men are streaming into the socialist, politically correct, unprotected EU countries where they are demanding that to which they have been told that they are entitled. They are hungry, enraged, untrained and largely illiterate, inbred masses and militants of the religiously righteous. 

They are filled with hate, violence, greed, anger and stupidity in a bond that has welded itself to the arrogance of the G20 nations that 'thought' they'd re-write history and the nature of men. 

The G20 leadership has also agreed to import these refugees and among them they have now imported their own executioners. The enemy is within the gates because there are no gates.

Hollande of France finally has it right: This is war. And more, after 26,000 attacks worldwide, it's World War. And if your hand-wringing apologist, hanky-waving, kumbaya singing, Gun Free Zone, anti- personal freedom feelings are hurt by all this, well... *U*K YOU. 

You're part of the reason 350 people in Paris are dead, injured, and critical. Don't stand behind me when the shooting starts. 

Run if you can to your gun free 'safe zone.' Good luck with what is waiting for you there. You might want to grab a rock or two on the way.

Stranded On the Roof

They said that the battle lasted over 7 hours. I've tried to wrap my brain around how long that must feel when you keep thinking that the cavalry is on its way to the rescue. That's what happens, right?

The good guys gun-up behind barricades after a fire and fall back sprint while under heavy attack from the bad guys. You know, they're wearing civvies...civilian clothes... and the bad guys have them pinned down.

They're out numbered. They know that they can't possibly last much longer. They do the ammo count and then try to man six directions (N,S,E,W, Up, Down). We were raised knowing that the cavalry is going to make it in time. Why? Because we're the good guys, right? The good guys never leave their own if there is any chance that goodness, determination and sheer bravery can save them.

That used to be our creed. Sometime ago the story was written just that way. When was it anyway? Was it before or after the Battle of Thermoplyae where King Leonidas was never reinforced but he held his position long enough for the citizenry to be evacuated? Surely it was long before the American western movies anyway.

And it was way before we let four Americans fight for their lives in Benghazi.

It's Veteran's Day. I think about my father every day. There is no way to count the number of times that I've repeated something that he said or did. In so many ways he was both a mentor as well as a bad example. As adults we are tasked with reconciling it in our own minds and learning from it in our own lives.

King (the Most) Cavalier was 27 when he 'put down my lunch pail'; left the coal mines of Pennsylvania and joined the Army/Air Corp in 1938. He found a life in the military. He was excited to be transferred for duty to Hickam Field, HI. He was proud to have served and survived the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor. He was proud to have served the duration of Word War II in the Pacific theatre.

I'm sure that when he met my mom at the USO in Austin TX he was quite a dashing figure. He taught ballroom dancing, a passion he pursued until his death at 90 in 2000. In between that time he served proudly in Korea during that conflict and again in Vietnam. I was 17 when he came home. Something changed for him.

There were four of us to raise in between TDY's (temporary duty assignments) and orders overseas in first Germany and then where I spent grade school in Italy on NATO missile commands. The ol' man never said he was "in the military". He always said, "I'm a Senior Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force." In retrospect I think he meant, "you have no idea what I have seen, son."

But, I know that it changed for him because he not only wouldn't let me go; he made me understand that he felt that he'd done enough for all of us. Once when I asked about enlisting he said, "How many times have I told you to stay out of fights that you aren't willing to win?" When he came home he cancelled my appointment with the Congressman from our district to secure a recommendation for me at the Air Force Academy. Yes, something had changed.

He was right.

Moving Out West

When the ol' man got orders back to California from Italy in 1962 we were all ecstatic. California was the promised land. It was a grand place. San Berdoo was the foothills of the San Gorgonio mountains; I hunted quail, dove, rabbits: fished Arrowhead; skiied Big Bear: surfed Newport to Ventura. Bought a 57 Chevy and traded that for a '58 Vette and then a Ranchero. My buddies and I ran to Tijuana and Ensenada; Dived from Coronado to September Reef off of Cabo all the way up the other side to Guymas and San Felipe. It was truly magic.

They re-introduced turkeys and we hunted them. We walked the PCT which runs from Mexico to Canada; climbed Tuolumne Meadows, many pitches on Half Dome up to the Salathe. Heck, I even hunted quail with the security cops at Cal State Univ San Berdoo before class 2-3 mornings per week in the abandoned vineyards behind campus. I'd come to class with my pump shotgun and vest in the trunk and we'd take turns blocking.

To say that it was Shangri-La wouldn't be an exaggeration. The schools were the best in America. The freeways were the state of the art.

I'm not sure what happened.

My mom still lives in Anaheim. Dad moved there because it was within a 50 mile radius of the best ballroom dancing in the world and a poker game could be found every night.

It had already started in So Cal. In 1978 I followed work to San Fran. I remember being so glad to finally be out of the smog and congestion. By 1982 I had lived from San Jose to Sonoma and like a dog circling to find a comfortable place to lie down; I finally gave up and moved to Jackson Hole WY. The sign at the Wyoming line says, "Forever West".

That's about right. And it's about right where it starts, too.

Years ago I was on an airplane coming back from a trade show in Chicago. Whenever I travel I wear my cowboy hat and I was aware that the lady in the seat next to me had been watching me intently as I carefully stowed it upside down in the overhead. 

When I sat down she asked, "where are you from?"

Proudly I said "WYOMING".

She said, "Really? Wow... I've never been that far west and I'd love to go sometime."

Wanting to be polite I asked, "Where are you from?"

She said, "California."

That's about right. The map may say otherwise, but we all know that they moved the line.

Trusting In the Mercy of Evil

I imagine a world where you go out into the woods and all you have are the clothes and gear you brought on your back. No one is coming to save you . Resupply, like hope is not a strategy. You're it... and what you have better work ...EVERY TIME... all day, maybe all night, maybe all week... no matter what hits the fan. That's why King of the Mountain started.

As a society we're not used to that kind of thinking.  I and four like minded friends set out in 1975  to walk the John Muir, High Sierra, Desolation Wilderness, Angeles Crest and San Bernardino mountains. Later finishing the best parts of the Pacific Crest Trail (Mexico to Canada) separately.  We wouldn't come out for supplies all summer long. We learned a great deal about what works and what only works SOMETIMES. It set me to thinkin' ....what if all you have is all you have? What if resupply was not an option?

Lately this has become reflected in modern art by a couple of new books/ movies; The Road (adaptation of McCarthy's Pulitzer prize winning book by the same name) and The Book of Eli. Both stories are post-apocalyptic tales of a journey. The Road is taken by a father and his young son at the end of the nuclear winter. The Book of Eli is set in an America and in a world that has lost its world order. The battle ensues for the "book" that can be used to control the masses.

Many call that kind of thinkin' "Survivalist" mentality.  But, is it really survivalist (fear based, scarcity, etc)... and more is it really unthinkable?  And, if you think like that for a moment:  Wouldn't you want to have stashed someplace a very large can of WHOOPASS as well as a can of WHOOPASS small enough to take anywhere?

Where would you start?  What do you need?  How will it work? When do you need it?  Why would you want it?

I suppose this "prepper" mentality can become an obsession. Or, rightfully placed, it can also be the extension of religion. No one does this better than the Mormon community where extensive food storage and self-reliance preparedness is part of the culture. After witnessing our many recent natural disasters one has to wonder if this attitude of self-reliance and preparedness doesn't make more sense than blindly assuming that the trucks will always run and the power will always flow.

As a nation, though, haven't we honestly become like de-clawed house cats in many ways? Most urban dwellers couldn't feed themselves without robbing their neighbor. Lines of vehicles littered the streets in the Northeast after the recent hurricanes; lined up for miles to get rationed fuel; fighting broke out after hours and then became worse after days. What might it be like after weeks?

And in that world, will your cell phone bring you the law enforcement help you might need when neighbor turns on neighbor? A call to 911 in most true violent emergency cases brings a team of investigators not timely intervention. Lately we've witnessed an explosion in gun sales as perfectly rational Americans answer their own call to at least take a first step to defending themselves, their families and their property.

Americans aren't stupid. They simply vote quietly with their feet and their wallets. They avoid the confrontation with authority. This isn't the first time that good, law-abiding people have prepared themselves against lawlessness or tyranny.

And, once again, art mimics life. The Tarrantino movie, "Django" has an underlying theme that is missed by so many of the pundits and reviewers: A SLAVE is turned into a FREEMAN when he is given a gun and taught how to use it. Django’s journey mirrors the German fairy tale of Siegfried’s journey of rescuing Broomhilda.  Because slave masters didn’t want marriages, Django and Broomhilda were married in secret, but because they’re sold in different direction, they would probably never see each other again. Even though he gets his freedom, Django’s willing to go back into the pit of hell to rescue his love.

He couldn't have done that as a slave. The plantation owner played by Don Johnson wonders out loud a question that has troubled him since his youth, "there were 100's of them and few of us. I always wondered why they didn't just kill us." They didn't have the means. They had no guns.

Neither did those on Schindler's list.

Who is coming to save you and your loved ones? What about if no one is coming because they're all busy enough saving their own? Or the evil that you face has no mercy.

Life isn't a movie. At a movie in Aurora, CO recently 12 were killed and 58 were wounded by a gunman preying on an innocent crowd that all heeded the sign on the door, "GUN FREE ZONE". Over and over we've had it shown to us that there is no place in the world more dangerous than a GUN FREE ZONE. 

Whether that is a movie theatre in Colorado or the streets of Chicago, New York and Washington DC, one has to wonder about the folly of FREEMEN who choose to rely on the mercy of evil.

PAX AMERICANA

When the great Roman general, Pompey, was asked to clear the Mediterranean of pirates he told the Roman Senate that he had to have permission to follow them wherever they landed. He hunted and killed them and established a garrison on each quadrant of the Med. The greatest trade in the history of Rome and 500 years of Pax Romana followed.

The United States under the order from President Obama who ordered the US NAVY SEAL mission to kill Osama Bin Laden ignored  the sovereign border of Pakistan; hunted a criminal and killed him and his "army" right under the noses of those who were harboring them. Let's put this in the context of current events.

Gadaffi has continued his reign of terror in Libya, threatening the flow of oil much like the pirates of 40 BC threatened the flow of grain to Rome in the Mediterranean sea. The negotiations right now must be intense, Gadaffi will see that exile with a ton of his ill-gotten cash is better than the deal that we gave Bin Laden.

Further, while we took out Saddam Hussein for arguably the wrong reasons; there is no denying that having inserted a democratic state between the terrorist factions of Syria and Iran with American logistics (boots) on the ground; ships patrolling the shipping lanes; phenomenal air superiority; communications control, etc. Has allowed the US and its allies the ability to act with total impunity with drones, special team strikes and laser guided precision.

All of this has lead to a rising up of the most oppressed peoples in the world. They're emboldened by a sense that their religious, political and business leaders have enslaved them whether by dogma, embezzlement or sword. In some places one could argue all three.

The killing of Bin Laden, therefore is a water mark in history. It's the continuation of the doctrine first proposed, but abandoned by Clinton after terrorism became the modern form of warfare. The prosecution, invasion and occupation of Iraq by Bush effectively putting a wedge between Iraq and Syria; preventing their literal partners-in- crime alliance against the west. As well as the effort in Afghanistan, which logistically meant that we have the bastards surrounded, has perhaps unwittingly all served to create an opportunity for the US and its Allies to chase them across the borders and kill them.

Some things need killing or one can't have a nice garden.

The markets have reacted.  Be aware that it has nothing to do with killing one man and everything to do with killing one man.  By that I mean simply that the world just changed.  When that happens rules change. When rules change then investments and investors by nature react.

The entire world has seen a continuing total annihilation of debt formation and demand for debt. Sovereign debt, public debt and private debt, which all grew exponentially through the 1990's and 2,000's are now contracting at a rate that can't be 'pumped up' through central banks policies of increasing the money supply. It's as effective as throwing water on a counter-top in an attempt to serve everyone at the table a drink.

The only things inflating right now are those commodities that have speculative markets. What I mean is that the grain complex, the metal complex, the meats, the softs, the energy markets have all exploded. At the same time, the old definition of inflation, "too much money chasing too few goods and services." Has been supplanted with, "too little jobs, inability to qualify for credit, lack of job creation, declining consumer spending, declining public tax revenues, deficit federal, state and local budgets forcing cuts, declining pension benefits, and hedge fund monies chasing momentum models for risk trade returns."

Obama will now claim victory in the War on Terror and establish this victory as his doctrine to continue the hunt using all the intel gained from water-boarding to clandestine missions. I don't blame him, it's how the powerful put a flag in their legacies. But, make no mistake, "if it can't happen then it won't happen" is at full operation here and now. That is, we can't keep spending TRILLIONS chasing every jerk-off in the old war model of assault/ beach-head/ invasions and occupations.  It's way cheaper to send the SEALS (hooo-ah) and bring the rest of them home.  Well, most of them will come home. Like Pompey and Rome, we'll continue to keep garrisons where they serve us and our allies.

Obama will now say that we must fortify our own borders. That our national security is our top agenda even while we maintain a 'presence' in the Middle East, Afghanistan, etc. And that our allies will be more looked to for support as we did in Libya.  These are all good things.  Much as I don't like most of his domestic agenda, maybe this dividend alone will save an otherwise depressing Presidency.

Continuing to move to the center, the United States can no longer afford to give politicians a blank check on the futures of our children and grand-children.  They can't be trusted with it.  Rather than fighting incessantly about debt ceilings an budgets he will be forced by the GOP and members of his own party to adopt (and may even preemptively suggest) a balanced budget amendment.

What an incredible platform for an almost disastrously lost President to be able to run for re-election on! WOW! He would have placated his base by doing as he promised to bring the troops home and at the same time STOLEN the right's best issue against him.  He can then claim victory on two fronts and blame it all on Bush in the process.  In fairness, Bush was caught flat-footed in his last term by the stare down with Ahmadenijad. He lacked the vision or the balls or the timing to do both things himself even as the fruit dangled in front of him.

Unfortunately this won't bode as well for our markets as rule changes never happen in a clean manner. The hedge funds are all loaded in silver, gold, corn, meat, defense contractors, energy etc, etc, etc. And they've paid a tidy premium for them all through the new derivative ETF markets.  There will be some dislocations that scare the be-jesus out of the orderly markets.  Markets don't like surprises and volatility will once again be the assassin that kills your retirement portfolio, kids education, 401k. etc. WHY?

Because as always you will hold on thinking, "I am almost even and now I'll wait until it comes back."  Singing the "Bag- holders blues", again.  This will take 10 years to work out. In the meantime, while interest rates are low... they'll go lower as US T-bonds/ notes and bills become a sanctuary as safety is once again worth a premium.  In the words of my old mentor, "Screw return 'ON' my money. Let's first talk about return 'OF' my money.

And the mania of metals and commodities represented by the new derivative "ETF's" is the spider that delivers another surprise.