Coping: 2015 – Is it Over Yet?

New, Fabulous Ure Crackpot theory time!

Lookie here:  I don’t know if the moon going Void of Course on December 18th has anything to do with things, but this week has turned into a real crap-storm of “best laid plans of mice and…”

The the big puddle-dumper (and now 43-people dead if our reader clicking the counter hasn’t missed anyone) has thoroughly screwed up the idyllic life here in the woods at Uretopia.

For one, during the storm we had a big power outage.  How big, exactly?  Well, big enough to wipe out an inverter on the back-up power system, getting past a big-ass surge suppression system (and did I mention my EMP preps?) when the power came back on.

Well, now we get into a story of cascading failures. 

You see, on that leg of the AC power in the shop/office is a branch off to run the back-up well pump and the small freezer for the things in our long-term storage that need to be kept frozen.  Granted, there’s not much, but there is Panama’s stash of used-to-be-frozen Belgium Waffles, too…

So when the power came back up, the obvious thing to do would be pull the output line off the inverter, wire in a big herc’ing plug kept for just such emergencies…and then plug the former inverter output into the the former inverter input (which transits a 20-amp outlet box purpose-made by the designated system designer.  (Yeah, me.)

Well, fine…it all worked…for about 30 minutes.  The wireless router for the office came up (the satellite router is on hot UPS power and never goes away, at least for several hours).

The CLICK!  A heard – so much as seen– there was a flash of light from a nondescript location in the office and the breaker, now feeding this part of the office (being jumped around the inverter) fails.

Well, crap. 

So I click back through all the things that could go wrong and it occurs to me that it might have something to do with running over the schedule 40 buried conduit that takes power from the office and runs 20-feet underground over to the former wood crib, to which we added a roof and tons of insulation – where the freezer is housed.

With power off, I ohmed things out at that end, but even with the follow-on leg (up to the greenhouse) disconnected, I found myself total screwed.

Night before last I was arguing with myself about cutting the cable at the conduit inlet (which would give me occasion to install a waterproof outdoor outlet that I nave no use for) so I decided to have a glass of Grandpa George’s Scottish Cure and think about things.

No, nothing wrong with Sched. 40 buried a foot…so it MUST be something else.  My infallible engineering doesn’t fail that easily.

As soon as Peoplenomics was done (disengage economic brain, re-fire the electrical engineer brain) it occurred to me that something in the office might be at fault…

So I pulled everything in my office off the circuit and by God, it held.

About here, although my beard is too short for real beard-stroking, I sat down and have a cup of hot soup.. .since in the midst of working on the inverter in 35-degree weather, I wrenched my back (lower left) and it hurts like hell.  Where’s my Oxy dealer, when I need him, right?

Finally, with Elaine looking on, I started plugging things back in, one at a time and sonofagun if it didn’t turn out to be one of those three  Sceptre 246X-1080 24” LED monitors that I had explained in a Peoplenomics article (or here, mind is going) about how cool it is to refurb old electronics by replacing the capacitors in the power supplies.

Except that was a year to 18-months back (calendars and I aren’t on good terms…especially today)…and it was time for one of them to fail again.

How, exactly, I don’t know.  That falls down the “To do” list.  I can get by with two monitors.

Knowing that the inverter was going to need a trip to the doctor’s office, I decided to give it one more test as I was getting ready to box it up.

Just as I was doing this, all of a sudden (I can’t make this stuff up) there is a gentle pushing on my butt as I’m bent over in the king of all awkwardness positions.

One of my neighbors has a 6-month lab pup (nice dog, actually) but as young dogs will sniff the damnedest places.  This one decided to sniff Mr.

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2016: Where to Hide? Plus: Hypocrisy in the Headlines

Where to hide?  I mean besides moving to Ecuador, as some of our reader have, that’s the topic this weekend as we roll out our look ahead at 2016 and explore some of the (amazingly-poor) economic choices before us.

To underline how bad things are, let’s take a look at where the stock market is likely to close today:  Looks to me like the S&P 500 will close right around where it is:  2,063.36.

Where was it at this time a year go?  2,058.90.

That means the total return on stocks is 2-10th’s of one lousy percent.  If you want to call that an Economic Recovery, pass the pipe.

Needless to say, the me-too-media (MTM) will not be screaming this from the rooftops because it blows the “narrative.”  (Narrative is another word for fairytale only this one if far more Grimm.)

And let’s not forget the President Doolittle has consumed the same Kool-Aid as Eurabia (formerly the EU):  The Washington (rotten) core somehow believes that immigration is the answer to economic growth.

It’s not.

Although, in terms of providing a short-term economic stimulus, it can work.

We presented some convincing evidence (complete with charts from Eurostat) in  Peoplenomics yesterday that make the case.

But here is the “thinking” that has gone viral among the bleeding hearts in the District of Corruption:

Since we don’t have organic growth of the economy, if we import 5% more people, that will result in 5% growth.  That’s because everyone will need a place to live, there will be auto sales, new grocery stores, and even more people to pay into the Social Security Ponzi scheme that has been beggared, along with the Highway Trust funds…”

HS&J – hype,. shuck, and jive.

As a result, we looked at the European “import economic expansion model” to see how that’s working out.  Instead of long-lasting economic stimulus, what Eurabia as done is import an occupying army.  But before losing Germany, they will buy a bunch of things.  And that causes “economic growth” – so goes the storyline.

Way to go, Angela Merkel.  Who would have thought the Great American Democracy would follow the megalomaniacs of the Ure-a-pee’in Union down this dead-end (and the bridge is out) road?

2016 (Q3/Q4) should see the implosion of Germany and then the banko E.U. begin in earnest.  We here in America will benefit for a short time (6-months?) but then the contagion will spread here in 2017.

And that’s regardless of what happens in our presidential contest – where we still expect the Obama-wing of the GOP to scuttle real change (Trump) and broker the convention and run with the put-up wet dishrag candidate (Busk the X).

Elaine and I sit around almost daily, shocked in the horror of what’s to come…and wondering why the rest of America slumbers on.

Or, should I say “¿Por qué la gente estúpida de Estados Unidos todavía durmiendo?”

The answer is obvious: “???????, ??

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2016: Cross-Migrations, Europe’s Pending Implosion

One of these is obvious, physical, and emotionally impacting: That is the physical relocation processes underway in places like Europe, but oddly, not in the core Middle East. The second migration is the “other” one – as people get “off planet” and into augmented mind “space” with social media and the [useless drivel] of social video games.

Coping: With a Cranky Sun

Before I share an interesting email with you, I’m sure you’ve already seen the emails floating about about the most recent M-class solar flare.

If not, take a gander at this video over here…

In the meantime, just to keep things in perspective, from a radio communications standpoint this is a tiny event.

The idea is that what we have had so far is an expectation of a small regional outage of some High Frequency (3-30 MHz) operations on a small part of the Earth’s surface.  Compared with “real-deal” EMP (think Starfish Prime here, which blew out lights in Hawaii 800-miles away) this is a tiddler to be sure.

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Housing was OK in October

Remember as you read the following report that it is based on October data.  This was before the Housing wholesale pricing started to creep into the Houston market due to the cheap prices of oil – which is holding things down in that area…

So with this as background, off into the Housing report…

New York, December 29, 2015 – S&P Dow Jones Indices today released the latest results for the S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for October 2015 show that home prices continued their rise across the country over the last 12 months.

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Markets: Letting Some Air Out

This as we have another shortened trading week with markets closed Friday for New Years. Bond traders will take off early Thursday. A neener moment.

Coping: With Goliath and the Septic System

Let’s sort of ease into this  by starting with a record report from the National Weather Service…

At Waco Regional Airport… 2.24 inches of precipitation fell on
Sunday. This breaks the daily maximum precipitation record for
December 27…

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Scoring 2015

Right at the outset however, one thing is clear: While many of the Internet’s soothsaying and doom porn sites were predicting a bitter end to the financial world, Peoplenomics has the rare distinction of being more right than most – including a fair slice of those $300+ per year newsletters – in calling not only for no End of World events, but indeed a possible major rally to new all-time highs in 2016. Beyond just getting what to do with our money right, we continue the task of squeezing the most value out of each dollar earned.

And Merry Christmas

Not a column for the kiddies this morning…

Barring the Syria-Turkey (U.S. – Russia proxy) mess escalating into a “flash dance” – we have some reason to hope on this Christmas Day 2015, that we will have at least one more pleasant holiday ahead of us next year.

If you follow chief word-tracker Grady’s adventures, you’ll appreciate that there are two words that have been giving us fits lately at our www.nostracodeus.com project.

One is the word “flash” so we will be watching to see what evolves with this one.  A “normal” track back into Google and Bing is less than satisfying.  Sure, we have The Flash season II and we have plenty of flash flood cancellations as part and parcel of the weather being exceptionally warm this winter due to El Whats-It.

But I’m thinking the word will meet up with rising prominence in stories like the big explosion  in Nigeria where about than 100 were killed overnight.  Toss in multiple human suiciders and maybe that’s what the language shift is hinting at there.

The other word to watch is Methane.  It may be related to the evolving environmental disaster at Aliso Canyon out in California.  There, an underground gas leak is causing more environmental damage than dozens of volcanoes.  And there seems to be no way to shut if off.

While Porters Ranch residents “lawyer up” the imagery of this slow-motion disaster is impressive, indeed.

Still, our main focus is captured at the macro level by three defining events which continue to unfold.

One is the election.  As mentioned yesterday, when the Obama administration announces a “sweep” to pick up illegals – and they do so a month in advance (which gives everyone time to hide) we can’t help but sense it is all a set-up.  That’s being echoes by others this morning including the Western Journalism site.

The second and real story to track over there is how Paul Ryan (who we’ve name the head of the Obama wing of the GOP) is defending the horrible budget just passed by the Fools on  the Hill.

While Ryan, et al, talk about how we “need” H2B visas, the reality is that we’re bringing in a new underclass from overseas.

What’s more, while Ryan and the Republicrats screw-the-pooch on the budget, they make senseless yammerings about a future balanced budget is in the works.

What Ryan assumes is that you and I are idiots.  He may be right about me, but you’re maybe aware enough to figure that NO CURRENT CONGRESS CAN BIND A FUTURE CONGRESS. 

Anyone with a nickel’s worth of brains sees proof of this in the how the Social Security and Highway “trust” funds have been broken like piggybanks and how we should have had a balanced budget many times over.  And let’s throw in the piecemeal destruction of Dodd-Frank, too, while we’re at it.

The paymasters (many of which are big District of Corruption law firms) and the Legions of Lobbyists pretend there is not a moral and ethical ideological meltdown underway in America.

But to my third point, let me run this one by you as two obviously contradicting headlines:

The first (and remember who got a piece of your tax money in the budget) is this gem:

Hiding HIV From Partners Is A ‘Human Right’, says Planned Parenthood.”

Oh?  So being a broken condom away from a slow death, shouldn’t be a choice? 

Meantime, the NY Times reports “Man With H.I.V. Gets Prison Time, Again, for Unprotected Sex.”

What we have here looks suspiciously like America is “making up industries” by holding to conflicting, nonsensical policies that serve to create more problem than they solve, except they do result in additional economic activity.

I mean seriously, think about it:

On the one hand if HIV positive is a secret, then we expect more headlines like the fellow going to prison.  That one case alone employed three lawyers (the two sides and a judge) not to mention the custody costs for however long.

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Santa Rally Ending?

Time to “shoot the reindeer” down on Wall Street.

Metaphorically speaking of course; don’t want our peace and quiet in the Outback ruined by a pack of animal rights activists.  Otherwise, I’ll send them up to talk to the coral snake family.

Point is (local flora and fauna aside) that our long-awaited Santa Claus rally this year has done a marvelous job of cheering up traders by tacking on an additional 185-points Wednesday.

Today?  Well, the market looks softer than a geezer who’s lost his Viagra prescription.  We might get a rise of out things, but will it lead to much?  Likely not.

For one thing, the markets will close at 1 PM eastern, while the bonds will close at 2 PM.  No doubt to avoid a logjam on the Long Island Expressway.

For us mere mortals, we notice the 10-year bonds are right about where they were prior to the “rate hike” – which as we’ve explained is really just an ease to please.

U.S. Department of Window Dressing

We can help but be a bit suspicious when the democrats start working the border invasion issue, just in time for what’s her name to claim spurious data in the wo9ol-pulling contest (which some call a presidential election).

This story in the WaPo makes it sound like it’s going to be a big deal. A planned Federal “sweep” of illegals is coming.

While there will no doubt be some arrests (the window-dressing) we are collectively appalled that while this is going on, thousands of Syrians are jumping ahead of lawful immigration applications because of the cynical Obamanistas and their Bolshevikian plans to bring in as many people who hate us (or will become good little democrats) before the election.

Then, expect another flood.

Syria, Amnesty, and Calling Out St.

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Coping: The “Questionable Future” – Doing & Verbs

Ah, the Christmas spirit.

Elaine and I finally got around to putting the railings up on front deck #1 Wednesday.  It’s a feat made possible by the amazingly nice weather this winter (so far).

No, that is not global warming:  It is El Nino which is at an extreme this year.  Which is fine, and since there seems to be some correlation to the Sun’s 11-year cycle (and don’t get me started on the economic cycle that runs with that) because it means in a few more years, the pattern will flip. 

By then, the sycophants of global warming will use the natural cycle behind their  cause célèbre to proclaim victory. 

You’ll know that time has arrived because you will have been hoodwinked into paying another layer of taxation…but again, not today’s story du jour.

No, instead I thought this morning we could do a little thought exercise about the future as shown by activity verbs.

I’ll show you what I mean:

Let’s go back a hundred years, or for that matter, to the lead-in to World War II.

A glorious time in American history it was; for we were a country which built things.  We constructed marvels of engineering.  Grand Coulee Dam had been built.  Haven’t done anything that big since.  (The Chinese have with Three Gorges which may be a sign of ascendancy in global activity rankings.)

Today, though, we don’t seem to be “constructing” or “building” as much.

In its place has come “coding.”  We also see a lot of “developing.” A few offer “work product” while others create  “intellectual property.”  All as vapor-ware replaces real stuff.

Google Trends is a marvelous tool for spotting trends like these.  For example, when we look at a term like “build,” what we see is that we are just now rolling over at the top of a cycle and we may be heading down over the coming few years:

BUILD:

As you can see in this chart, the past cycle high was around 2004, but the peak in the housing market didn’t come until 2007 – so three years between language/use and  the evolving physical reality appearing. 

Not to harp on our outlook for a grim  mega-depression in 2017, and thereafter until 2021, but if you look with “soft-focus” you can almost see it.

On the other hand, all those computer science grads may have something to do…because there is a long-term recovery in search activity for…

CODING:

Here is another trend – not that the sample is large enough – but it sure as heck is interesting: 

WALKING:

And here is another trend of something “verbly” – this whole “prepping” movement.

Now, to my (admittedly cynical) eyes, this one, like construction, seems to be just past “peaking.”

PREPPING:

Don’t get me wrong: People are still very interested in DOING something, it’s just not as clear WHAT exactly they are interested in doing…at least from among the small number of action words (verbs) we have been sampling this morning.

DOING:

Things may not be all bad.  Lots of Americans doing…which didn’t seem to happen on the GOP’s watch in Washington.

In fact, the good news is that the act of “giving” seems, according to our Search Engine Oracle (www.trends.google.com not to be confused with the other kind of SEO) seems to be telling us that there is a very regular heartbeat in the behavior of humans.

Not only does Christmas (and the period leading into it) show an annual  heartbeat but the difference between the peak and bottom of trend may represent something about what we might describe as a prevail level of generosity… which is what the giving chart showed ….More people DOING good irrespective of season:

GIVING:

It is possible that the crass materialism of the “me generation” has also peaked?

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Advisory: West Eyes a Russian Nuke Plant

Just so you’re up to speed:  Sources in the nuclear field tell us there is an incident underway at a Russian nuclear power station near St. Petersburg, Russia. 

From the initial reports circulating in the industry, it seems to have been a failure Friday on the secondary side of the reactor, not the primary side.  Our initial input seems to suggest that it may not amount to much and while there may be some minor radioactivity release, it is not likely to be the kind of event to require evacuations.

As with Fukushima, or to a lesser degree, Three Miles Island back in the day here, the big challenge for these older plant designs is keep the core cooled even when shut down, which appears to be going on now.

We understand the plant involved to be the Leningrad Power Plant in Sosnovy Bor which is 43 miles (80 clicks) west of St. Petersburg.

But what puts this on our radar is that the plant involved consists of four of the RMBK-1000 reactors which is of the same type as Chernobyl.

There was been some tracking in media (Russian) (example here) but no play here in the West yet.

A Wikipedia page exists on the plant here.

In a “chalk it up as strange” the last time we got a blip out of the Leningrad Oblast area was in September when a “Mysterious deal create [was] found near the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant.”

For now, looks like the Russian response and been fast and effective, but whenever a Chernobyl-type reactor is involved, U.S.

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