Here’s an interesting story to get the kinks out from between the ears this morning:

Dear Mr Ure,

I have been a long time reader.  Something odd happened today.  My house phone rang and I ignored it.  Then my cell phone rang.  The person asked for Valeria Brooks.  She said it was in response to a medical alert.

I have had my current home phone number for 5 years.  Valeria was the last person to have that number so I occasionally get calls for her.

Here is the odd thing.  Well, actually a couple of odd things.  I called the number back as it read on my cell phone.  A recorded message stated that the company had received my phone number when I answered an internet ad on my computer about job opportunities.  It had nothing to do with a medical alert.  I also never look for job opportunities.

My house phone is a land line and is hooked up to AT&T.  My internet is on a separate line from Fidelity.  (Yes, I know it is stupid to have 2 different providers.) There should be no way to get my home phone from my computer line.
My cell phone is only 6 months old.  There is no way that it could be connected to Valeria Brooks. 

Somehow, it is possible to call cell phones within a house if you know the house land line phone number.  I thought that this was really weird.
Thanks for listening.
Eleanor

Hell, this is exactly the kind of cluster-blank that is embedded in the government’s use of Big Data files.  So here’s how it likely worked:

• An old primary data source said Valeria lived here.
• New data files were imported, but the key field never updates the name change.
• Now, as additional files have come in, the new information is subordinate to Valeria, not Eleanor.

This, boys and girls is the fun part of Big Data – and it’s why you never want to fill out anything other than a name on your loyalty cards…never any birth date, social, number of people living at home, or anything like that.

In fact, I would occasionally – just to make life interesting – make up letters (using old billing envelopes from the local utilities – and put some other person’s name on them and mail them to your home address.

You see, at some point, government will realize after XXX bad Swat raids, or whatever, that their databases are high corrupted by this parent/child data file issue.

Of course, the answer is simple:  You just take a good bill that goes to the home – like a water or power bill – an have the Post Office (which photographs everything) simply use optical character recognition (OCR) and write back as a parent to the master index of persons associated with YYY address.

Since it is not presently illegal to mail yourself a “pretend” bill (which you can toss out any time you want, ergo no evidence) it might establish that Valeria still lives there and so when the great roundup comes, there would be some question about where you actually live.

Helps to move around every five years, or so, too, which is why we keep kicking around moving back onto a boat and just pay transient moorage.

Say, if there any law on how often you can change a boat name?  I mean if it’s not a documented boat, state registered only?  I know, don’t ask so many questions…

Close Shaves / In Defense of Beards

Not only did I weed-whack another field of facial hair yesterday, but I got a haircut as well, since my retired bro-in-law Panama does a better job of cutting hair that everything short of a $100 barber.  This morning I got some solid advice from one of out 1,321 Bills who read this site advising me that beards don’t necessarily make you look older:

So geo, in regard your comments on Monday.  Beard makes you look older.  I strongly disagree.

I started wearing a beard in about 1980.  Once I shaved it off about 1995 and the result was so horrible and made me look much older and more decrepit.  So I promptly grew it back, have had it ever since.
Here is the deal.  You do know that the flesh under your chin and down toward your neck becomes slack or loose as you age.  It is a dead give away that a person is very old and worn out.  So, simple, cover that up by having a nice full beard. 

Because I have followed a healthy diet and supplements and exercise since I was a child I look younger than my age,  (dad was a doc who believed in supplements even in the 40’s and good healthy simple food).  As a result of a career in Computers (Main Frames Guru I was) the stress turned my hair white at about 31 (adrenal exhaustion methinks).
So, because the beard covers the loose flesh thing under my chin, people routinely think I am much younger than my actual age.  The other perk is that at Christmas all the little kids are totally sure that I am Santa.
Something for you to ponder.

I mean, there some simple “man” things you have not got a grip on yet.  You being 64, well I am 79 so your outranked.

For shaving with a blade.  Especially since you will have a full beard with mustache.  I use those inexpensive plastic BIC shavers for sensitive skin.  Get a bag of them for less than 3 bucks usually.  Works great, each one lasts for maybe 6 or 8 shaves no prob. At least.
So there you have it, and free advice too :-)”

Probably the best note came from reader Chris who suggested shaving in the shower was best, with a mirror in there.  I’ve thought about that, but the kind of mirror that hangs off the shower head doesn’t work for me, since I put the shower head up extra high (it would work if I were 6’4” or so).  Besides, I am a huge fan of those flexible shower heads like the Delta Faucet 75700 Universal Showering Components 7-Setting Handshower, Chrome ($28, Amazon).

The reason I like the hand shower head is you can use it for pressure washing any particularly difficult to reach areas.  I would hook up our electric pressure washer (similar to the AR Blue Clean AR383 1,900 PSI 1.5 GPM 14 Amp Electric Pressure Washer with Hose Reel) and use that, but I’d worry about electricity and water and me in the middle of it.  The hand-held shower head is great.

From the Kids

Oh-oh…the kids nailed me on my vaccine remarks and peanut allergies:

DAD, 

The original study that seemed to link autism with vaccines was later found to be falsified evidence.  He lied.  Bad science.  

Vaccines are not causing the allergy/autism epidemic.  I personally think it our exposure to toxic chemicals, the horrible terrible diet of average Westerners, and lack of germ exposure that is causing them.  Not vaccines.  

Parents who don’t vaccinate their kids are baby killing nut jobs.  ‘Baby killing?’  Yes. Baby killing.  Whooping cough can be fatal to infants and currently Washington state currently has the highest infection and infant mortality rate from this bug since the 1940’s thanks to parents refusing to vaccinate their kids.  Cute little babies are dying because people like you link to bullshit articles of lies, like “Peanut allergy epidemic”  

One of my stupid friends actually suggested on Facebook that she be given the option of sending her kids to a ‘vaccine-free’ school.  Because vaccines were so toxic and bad.  Are you kidding me?  One germ would kill 20% of the kids in that school in a few weeks time.  Vaccines might have some gnarly chemicals, but what is the alternative?  Letting kids get sick and die of measles and mumps like we did in the 1800’s?  

I am pro-Vaccine.  I texted George to talk to you because right now, you are believing lies and promoting them on your website.  You are a threat to public health.  Please cease and desist. 

My kids weren’t the only ones to spot the hole in my thinking.  Reader Dean offers this:

George I read your short article on possible links between rates of autism and peanut allergies and you implied that you feel vaccines etc may be responsible, please look up a recent study by MIT on autism, the study found links between use of pesticides on our food supply, most specifically Round Up, it also found links to other problems like allergies, immuno deficiency etc. I noticed also the MSM is keeping this very important research paper quiet so as not to suppress Monsanto’s profits, yet another reeason to raise your own food or buy from your local organic farmer.

OK, what was the other big environmental health thing that changed back there?  How about aspartame (thanks, Rumsfeld).  Is there a correlation there?  Here’s a 2012 PubMed listing suggesting the link is to formaldehyde derived from aspartame.  And a link between aspartame and migraines… and how about the paper “Systemic contact dermatitis of the eyelids caused by formaldehyde derived from aspartame?”

OK, kids, vaccines work – I know that and no argument. 

But if you really want to help solve a problem, how do we get PubMed to make the full texts available on anti-aspartame studies, most of which are done outside the US?

On the good foods side, Douglas sends a note to mention coconut oil seems to be pretty good.

Reader’s Writes: Who to Believe

Say, here’s one with a none-too-friendly tone to it:

I couldn’t help notice your expert article about the effects of ionizing radiation from the self-proclaimed expert on the biological effects of ionizing radiation. Here you have a screw- headed, glorified mechanical engineer, who probably got a certificate in nuclear engineering. Not health physics, not medicine, not radiation toxicology. He is expounding his expert knowledge on the biological effects of plutonium, strontium, and cesium en masse on large populations.

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Back almost 30-years ago my kids got me an electric razor for Christmas and it’s been doing a reasonably good job of keeping my face mowed ever since.  Except that recently – maybe it’s from looking in the mirror too long – I’ve begun to find fault with what I see.  I choose to blame the razor.

The difference is almost like the difference between a bush hogging job and a finish mower, to put it in local agricultural terms.

Not that the old razor has seen continuous use, either:  For months on end, a small Wahl trimmer kept up the facial landscape with just an occasional trim as in winter I often grow a beard or mustache.  But this year I’m not inclined to do that, having read that a beard makes a person look up to eight years older than they are. I don’t need the help.   And the mustache with a winter cold is always Kleenex challenge so this winter I may stay clean-shaven unless we get snow.

In shaving, the state of the art changes…and my face being an important part of my persona, I’ve decided to look around and see what’s what and likely buy a replacement for the Norelco three-header that has done so well for so long.

A Gizmodo article rates a high-end Norelco at the top heap, so the odds are good that I will pop for the Philips Norelco 1250X/40 SensoTouch 3D Electric Razor which at $180 seems a bit steep, but not as bad as the ritual of having cans of shaving crème (which I’ve had go off in the luggage, always fun) and blades which (if you’re over 60 and doing the half-a-baby-aspirin-daily routine) can leave the bathroom looking like a murder scene.

My research in this reveals that the average man spends about 3-minutes a day shaving.  I timed how long it took to remove three days worth of stubble (15 minutes for the rough and another 10 for a putting green finish) and more solidly-based figures suggest that should have been 9-10 minutes; 12 tops.

Either the razor is just plain wearing out, or thanks to my vitamins I’ve started growing Kevlar.

As a cost containment measure, I’ll look around for the model number on the old triple-header.  Maybe a tune-up with new heads would help. 

One shaving tip if you’ve got a shop:  An air nozzle on your compressor at about 100-PSI is about the fastest razor cleaning system I’ve found.  And, working outside (tractoring) puts just enough of a dust layer on the face that the stubble stands up well, no need for alcohol or powder first.  Unless it’s over 85 and you’re all sweaty, in which case shaving after showering can take hours because the beard goes into fall-over mode.

How many times have I told you “Everything’s a Business Model?”  Even shaving is being well-monetized:  There’s a very good website called www.theartofshaving.com but it leans toward the traditional bladed approach.  While I appreciate a good, close blade cut, the smell of mentholated crème,, a splash of bracer afterwards, those relaxing “art shaves” are for courtings, weddings, and undertakers, as I figure it.  That would be “lost count” “three” and zero (for now) if you’re keeping score.  I’m sure there’s a profound lesson in there about diminishing returns, too. 

One of these days either Toro, WeedEater, or Stihl will come out with a razor that could cut face-time cut in half.  With the American obsession with “productivity,” how long can we avoid Bush Hog getting into the space, too?  Given how the Labor Department counts things, a 20% reduction in shaving time could boost the economic recovery 70%, too.

If there wasn’t work to do, we could spend the rest of the morning discussing this and other important-to-males topics:  How to cut and light a cigar properly (I’m a wooden match guy) and what to have with the cigar (VSOP works), but for now, it’s on to the oatmeal and treadmill…which is about as contrary to a proper lifestyle of luxury as can be imagined.  Unless it’s Mccann’s Steel Cut Oatmeal, 28-Ounce Tin (Pack of 4), of course, but even then I like half-and-half and brown sugar, so what’s the point?

Well, that leads logically to….

Toilet Paper Poll

Have you ever wondered how paper companies decide how much clay and softeners to put in toilet paper?  How many plies, how much cushion, quilted or not?  Ease of tearing, or puncture resistance…especially fun on April Fool’s Day?

It occurred to me this morning that there must be a effort being made somewhere polling for toilet paper makers and yet in all of my 64-years I have never read about such research, nor have I been asked to take part.

Just kind of curious if you know of anyone who has been asked? 

Morning’s like this with the world situation as it is, the question just seems obvious…can you help us flush out the details?

My logic?  Thought you’d never ask:  I think there is a marvelous one-last-bit of economic largess to be had by introducing “His & Hers” toilet paper.  You know, segment that market into absurdity live everything else!

I envision a proper bathroom with a “His” dispenser loaded with (Old Spice? Right Guard?) scented TP.  “Hers” would be Obsession or Este Lauder.  The kid’s would be “Kids” and would be unscented, except in California where I’m confident a coalition would demand selecting his or hers at age three, and too bad if you get this one wrong.

I’m telling you there are millions to be made in this TP differentiation model!  

Oh, and for pet owners, who clean their pet’s…err….this is indelicate, but how about a Whiskas or Gravy Train scented wipe, since animals are going to err…. regardless so….HOLD IT!  OK, a little too much invention time this morning. 

It’s probably just as well:  I was about to tell you my idea for a line of gourmet-flavored personal lubricants.  Pizza, popcorn, and beef tenderloin might be novel….

A Note on Peanut Allergies

Reader Mary sent along this:

Thought you would be interested in this article, explaining how it all began — very thorough:

A link to the article “Peanut Allergy Epidemic:  What Everyone Needs to Know” contains a wealth of inflation.  But if you don’t have time to go read it right now, the main point is that the uptick in peanut allergies has paralleled the uptick in autism which all seem correlated back to the docs going heavy on injections, inoculations, and kids up with serums for this and that.

I’ll have to ask my most sensitive daughter (Denise) to look up he shot history from the big health cooperative in the Puget Sound area to see what she go when.  (Nickel says that like exact birth times which are disappearing, shot histories going back xx- years will begin to disappear, too…)

Fly Drones?

Reader Roberta sent in details about an odd encounter with a fly:

Hi George!

Some months ago, you had asked for stories of birds acting weird. I hesitated to write at that time (to see if anyone else would mention it) but my story involves flies. With no fear.

Either they very occasionally act like Australia’s flies (kamikaze, seeking moisture of one’s breath) or they are too mellow. I just escorted one out a few minutes ago by putting him in a cup, and after taking the cup outside, he would not fly away. I had to flick him onto a bush.

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Well, let’s try this again…  The US markets had a bad case of news-granola induced runs yesterday, dropping 225-points on the Dow and putting our current short trade decidedly in the black, but as Peoplenomics readers know, the trading model still says “Long!”  Confusing times these are indeed.  As we slip and slide along toward a long wave Kondratiev 60-year cycle bottom, we can expect further declines but in an irregular fashion until later this year when the astrological signs experts  (like Arch Crawford in that domain) and cycle gurus (like Peter Eliades) and Elliott sages (like Bob Prechter) are all fairly concerned. 

Bbb’s article link there, by the way, is especially good since he explains how  “Declining C Waves are Devastating, No Place to Hide Except in Cash” which if fine if you have some.  Does the term “stack paper” mean anything to you?

There are some other strategies which are not particularly cash-intensive which we’ll cover in Peoplenomics this weekend as we continue our musing into just how bad Wave C could be as part of our continuing exploration of prepping based on economic needs now arriving.

Which gets us to this morning.  We’ve got some hot productivity number to go over, just out, but before we do, let’s check the calendar because a small bounce at the open is almost likely this morning for mechanical reasons.  Thursday’s close was when the option indices settled for the month.  The close today will be where equities (the underlying stocks) settle.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that if an index closes on Thursday down, a bounce Friday would let the commercials make some lunch money.  But by late session today, we could be trending down again (depending on news flow, of course) but next week will really tell the tale as to whether this old market has enough juice in it to make another run to the upside.  Looking at the MACD and a couple of other indicators, it’s a hung jury. 

Although a “hanging jury” would vote for S&P 1,640 and maybe as low as 1,623.  The folks like me who wouldn’t ever be picked for the kind of jury duty where financial fates are decided would scream for an immediate hanging down at the 1,540 S&P level and somewhere thereafter, a cycle low in gold of anywhere from 770 to 1,100 to follow.

But no such jury is likely to be empaneled, because despite the B-school theory, markets are no more rational than I am, so we arrive at the meaningful headline of the morning which is the productivity data:

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 0.9 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2013, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The increase in productivity reflects increases of 2.6 percent in output and 1.7 percent in hours worked.

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What happens when you cross a high speed internet connection, high resolution video, too much spare time, and a mild case of paranoia?  It’s a phenomena I call “webanoia” and it showed up this morning as a well intended email from a reader:

“FYI  ????

“Subject: 57 Vessels/Ships Anchored Off Shore of NJ, MD/VA
To:

I have no idea what this means.  The person whom I consider to be my best friend called this morning and mentioned it, saying “they aren’t friendly.”  That doesn’t deal with why the ships are there – they might have found an excellent fishing hole, for all I know.  I just know they’re there.  This would probably be a good weekend to have the gas tank filled, some extra cash and food around the house, etc.  Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.  “

So this one is making the rounds, is it?  Well, here’s where use of date tools in search engines can be useful in trying to figure out how paranoid to be about things:

The first thing we do is check on Maritime Traffic.com and note that they don’t show anything particularly unusual in the way of traffic off the East Coast.  Then we run though a selection of weather other satellite image sites and nothing pops so we then become a little suspect.  Surely, after all, if there were really 57 ships which weren’t friendly, government would be scrambling. 

No signs of scramble.

So about here we ask “Is this one of those hoaxes/honest mistakes that happens on the net?” 

The story can be traced back to its earliest beginnings, and from there it lands on sides like InvestmentWatchBlog, and Before It’s News, and ibloga and FromThe Trenches.  then we find it on YouTube, LunaticOutput, earthchanges.ning.com and even Free North Carolina.blogspot and others.

The point?  A scent of anything that even begins to smell like smoke is fanned up into a solid smolder on  the internet on conspiracy leaning sites in a process that takes about four days to work through the process.

Oh…and what does the original source of the report, which as best we can figure was posted at the Godlike Productions site and there, the original posted an explanation on Tuesday of this week:

“Ok folks..
Here’s the deal. There does seem to be a glitch in the server where the ship info is coming from. The weather reports are coming from a few ships on the move instead of being anchored. But the older reports from some of those ships older locations while on the move are not being removed. Normally it’s one ship giving one report one location at a time. Old ship locations are not being removed from the map!
Sorry for starting this thread. I should of dug further before posting this thread. But Like I said, I been using this program for 5 years and never had a problem.

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A number of people have written over the past couple of days that I must surely have lost the remaining bits of my mind to question something so “obviously true” as Stonehenge, which as a video recounts was substantially “made up” in the period of modern history since 1900.  No, I don’t think so…and you may have more questions when I waltz you through a few…well let’s call them inconvenient truths.

I use the term “made up” advisedly because I am not entirely sure of how much latitude should be given to the Stonehenge “reconstructors” who went about finding stones on the ground and then placed them where they believed them to belong and then insist that theirs is the only true possibility and that none other may exist. How much of the embedded “advanced knowledge” and presumed astronomical usage was due to liberties in stone placement?

Let me back up a bit for some broader context where I’ll give you some important insight into how our view of history shapes modern thought.  On the one side of this discussion you have alternative archeology where a wide range of names like Eric Von Däniken, Graham Hancock, and Anatoly Fomenko may be found.  Some hint of extra-human events is in these, for sure. 

Yet on the other side are the defenders of the current ruling paradigm and those who (citing the science they were taught) espouse a worldview that may also not be precisely as presented. 

No worries, this other side also believes in extra-human events, except that they hold the current intellectual high ground having their views “officialized” in rituals promoted at the State level in numerous Western and Middle Eastern countries. And toss in an Italian area city-state, if you care to round it out.

To make this a short dig into intellectual archeology, we begin with a fellow by the name of Julius Caesar Scaliger.  “Who?”  Right on…Wiki me, bro:

“Julius Caesar Scaliger (or Giulio Cesare della Scala) (April 23, 1484 – October 21, 1558) was an Italian scholar and physician who spent a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning. In spite of his arrogant and contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high, judging him so distinguished by his learning and talents that, according to Jacques August de Thou, none of the ancients could be placed above him, and the age in which he lived could not show his equal.’

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” you’re asking.    Nothing, except some puffery in his bio if you dig into it, but follow the trail with me:

Julius had a son, by the name of Joseph Justus Scaliger who rewrote a good bit of history in his “Study on the Improvement of Time” and elsewhere.  This, in turn was in some respects what the early Brits thought their heritage was all about, along with a 9th century monk by the name of Nennius.  While there were others we can get a sense of how British history was cobbled up. 

Let’s back up.  Takeing a few “liberties” with historical accounts was not uncommon.  A careful read of the Wiki entry on Scaliger (the elder) hints in this direction:

On his own account

When he was twelve, his kinsman the emperor Maximilian placed him among his pages. He remained for seventeen years in the service of the emperor, distinguishing himself as a soldier and as a captain. He studied art under Albrecht Dürer.

In 1512 at the Battle of Ravenna, where his father and elder brother were killed, he displayed valour, and received the highest honours of chivalry from his imperial cousin, who conferred upon him with his own hands the Order of the Golden Spur, augmented with the collar and the eagle of gold. But this was the only reward he obtained.

He left the service of Maximilian, and after a brief employment by another kinsman, the duke of Ferrara, he decided to quit the military life, and in 1514 entered as a student at the University of Bologna.

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My consigliere called Monday to point out that Art Cashin on CNBC had noted that the last time we had this many Hindenberg Omen’s we had the 2008/2009 financial mess.  “Aw shucks, I think we have a while to run yet…after all, auto sales have been strong and this oughta take a bit more time to roll over….” I explained, having just taken a gram of optimism pills.

This morning, the happy pills have worn off and we have a less than thrilling Retail Sales report just out a few minutes ago:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $424.5 billion, an increase of 0.2 percent (±0.5%)* from the
previous month, and 5.4 percent (±0.7%) above July 2012. Total sales for the May through July 2013 period were up 5.2 percent (±0.5%) from
the same period a year ago. The May to June 2013 percent change was revised from +0.4 percent (±0.5%)* to +0.6 percent (±0.2%).

Retail trade sales were up 0.1 percent (±0.5%)* from June 2013 and 5.6 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Auto and other motor vehicle dealers
were up 13.3 percent (±2.1%) from July 2012 and nonstore retailers were up 8.8 percent (±2.1%) from last year.

Are the good times in auto sales ending?  Sure looks that way.  Consumer super-saturation we call it around here.  Eventually everyone buys the last new car anyone can afford or the last possible iPhone…

Where we are now is simple:  Waiting for the other shoe to drop.  While some are suggesting around November 1st (like Steve Quayle and the Guerrilla Economist) its as good a crash date as any, although it could come a month before, or next spring.  In the meantime, the market should open up a bit this morning, but the premarket optimism was halved by retail’s fail.

In the Big Picture, we should see a modest decline begin shortly, and its then that many will be tempted to toss money into short positions.  Inevitably, this will be followed by a “running of the shorts” and it’s right there (with blood running in the streets) that Ure’s truly will enter the short side in a meaningful way…along with the commercials, of course.  It may not play out exactly this way, however, so constant vigilance and a good supply of tea leave to read is important.  We have our libretto and the tea has been ordered.

Ignoring implications from the effects of tax changes, I built you an infographic that explains why you feel like you have been working harder for little or no gain…

Meantime, real prices have continued up, and that’s why the old joke “The harder I work, the behinder I get!” is no longer an old joke.  It’s present-day reality.

Obamacare: It Just Got Worse

Breaking story in Forbes this morning reveals another bait and switch in Obamacare (my words, not theirs):  The promised out of pocket caps have been delayed for a year until 2015.  I’ve given up counting backpedals on this stuff…

The one thing that surprised me was that the story was written by Forbes contributor Avik Roy.  I would have expected a different reporter like, oh,   Ben Dover.

The Hot/Emotional LBGT Story du Jour

Rather than have a bunch of people figuring out that their lifestyle is going to decline, since prices have been going up faster than GDP growth in real terms since 2007 by my scrawlings, we instead are being flooded with hot-emo stories about how California has now strengthened the state’s treatment of transgender K-12 students in public schools, signed by Calgov Jerry Brown.  Depending on which side of gay rights you’re on, this is either a good thing or one of the dumbest, most insane things ever to come down the pike. 

So here’s what the bill actually says:

An act to amend Section 221.5 of the Education Code, relating to pupil rights.

[ Approved by Governor August 12, 2013. Filed Secretary of State August 12, 2013. ]

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 1266, Ammiano. Pupil rights: sex-segregated school programs and activities.

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Oh-oh….here we go off on anyone one of our “question everything” trips:  Got a hot tip from long-time reader Teresita in Manila who stumbled over something on YouTube  with less than 1,700 views, and one is extraordinarily odd: 

“How true is this?  Just got it today and for some reason, why would anyone want to fake this – Stonehenge!!? 

Just experiencing another typhoon since yesterday.  It seems to be  leaving and hopefully it does soon.

Boggles the mind and yet here it is. Just wondering what is going on.

First thing you need to watch is the video over here. 

Well, yes, if sure looks like Stonehenge pictures and since the site originally posting was Russian, seems to me that there’s a chance that this is based on black and white pictures that the Russians had in their spy archives.

Whether there’s anything to this video, I will leave to you to discern.  But, if one accepts that it is footage from the original site, and then you begin to piece together why would anyone go to such lengths to make us believe in “ancient wisdom” with a high-precision astronomical calendar, maybe it has something to do with bolstering the legitimacy of ancient “orders” and such.  Or, people like me would ask why does the calendar and astronomical calculation series based on Stonehenge work out to so many decimal places of precision?  Wouldn’t Earth’s rotational change have changed over time?

Kim’s Got WuJo

What’s better than a good WuJo report to ponder?  This one’s a peach!

Good morning George,

I’ve been an avid reader and off/on subscriber for years. I love your Wujo reports, but never thought I’d experience anything worthy of reporting. The other day something occurred that might make the cut. I held of on sending it until reading your column today. Your theory that the disappearing/reappearing items might correspond to the writer’s emotional attachment struck a chord.

I purchased a Wi-Fi hotspot device a while back because my daughter and I travel frequently for softball tournaments. I am the team’s scorekeeper and broadcast a live “scorecast” to our parents at home over an Internet application.

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Say, isn’t this a fun way to wake up after the alarm doesn’t go off?  Rereading a weekend email from reader Todd who quotes a lot of rhyme and verse in this YouTube video over here which explains why the last week in October – and most likely November1st – could be see a major collapse – to be followed by a US bail-in – of most of the world’s financial system.

Todd, like me, was already looking for the Pandora’s box of of economic wasps to be opened around then when he noted this wasn’t a big change from his earlier estimates:

“Deadline was revised due to Fannie withholding a $30 billion payment to the U.S. gov’t…please share this video with as many people as possible so folks will have ample resources on hand by the end of October.

From a note this morning by economists at Barclays:
The US federal budget deficit has been improving at a dramatic pace in recent months. As a percent of GDP, the deficit peaked at 10.2% of GDP in the four quarters ending in Q4 09; over the past four quarters, it has totaled 4.2% of GDP, down from 7.7% one year earlier.”

Not that he’s wrong, mind you, but I expect we will need some “out of left field event” in the preceding week or three before that so that Wall St. will be able to maintain “plausible deniability.”  You know, like the post-Internet Bubble collapse has been buried by effectively having the “pain and suffering sectors” of your brain’s hard drive overwritten by the events of 9/11..

In fact, following that brain and hard drive analogy, maybe it was more than a simple file re-write…maybe it was a whole low-level reformat!  Everything is terrorists, terrorism, War on Terror and that (other than the Housing Bubble) has really taken America’s eye off making money and other old-fashioned American ideals.

China was up more than 2% overnight, Japan down 3/4’s of a percent, or so,  And in the early going in Europe, France, German, and the UK were all down earlier, so a short, coordinated dive off the low board is about all we can expect this morning when markets open.

Todd’s guess as the real diving action (off the high board) will be along in 11-weeks, or so, which means you still have plenty of time to prepare.  Or, if you’re not inclined to do that, at least you have time to invent some creative denials.

The Week Ahead

The Treasury Budget out this afternoon is expected to show the US ran a –96 billion deficit this month.  More amusing should be the accounting to prove we haven’t really blown through the budget ceiling…and we know the answer to that one:  Off-books accounting!  Plus short-term transfers from Peter to pay Paul… 

Accounting is a very precise science, but if airliners were designed with this level of integrity, we’d be surrounded by crashes because in aeronautical engineering reality isn’t so easily papered over.

Tomorrow we see retail sales, which I expect will continue to show the Auto Industry as the only sector doing better than inflation dollar-wise.

Producer prices Wednesday will be another one worth watching…since it may be something of a barometer on how much of the Fed’s noodle pushing has actually strengthened prices.  My guess is not much.

The week’s “biggy” will be Consumer Prices and a rise of 2-10th’s of a percent for the month which means about 2 1/2-2.6  percent annualized is the consensus view.

Which means, with the Fed printing and QE’ing M2 at a 5.3%, the implied deflation rate is likely in the 2.7% range which  (considering all the jobs which corporatists have moved to Mexico and Asia (that includes China and India, right?) is not totally bad.  But close enough for home use.

More after this…

Madness on Bordering Dept.

As you might expect, as grim as the US economic outlook may be, there are many countries were things are much worse and so, as a result, lots of people want to move to America.  Well, as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to ‘talk your way in’ if you know the right key words to lay on the border folks…

Bordering on Madness Dept.

Is it really news when the presidential pooch going bye-bye for vaycay is a headline?  How many first families have done the same?

Unable to pass a budget?  Stuck in sequester?  Pernicious unemployment papered over?  Forget the pooch, let’s get on to the presidential golf outing for the rest of the week’s “news.”

If I were Vlad Putin, meantime, I’d be smoldering pissed:  Stiffed on a summit and yet time for golf?  What was the Nobel Committee thinking?  (If at all…)

Holder’s Latest Non-Answer

I don’t like “tolerance policies” – I went through a lot of that as a 21-year old radio news beat reporter when I started my news-chasing addiction back in 1970.  I watched development in Seattle and King County (Washington) and after a series of corruption cases, concluded that “tolerance policies were a bad idea.

So later on this morning attorney general Eric Holder will unveil what amounts to a tolerance policy for certain kinds of non-gang related low level drug offenses. In telling his US attorneys to come up with local guidelines, it will be effectively a tolerance policy left to individual regions.

But, as I see it, this is the wrong policy and just another cluster-mawhozit instead of doing the right thing.  The right thing is to tell the booze lobby that “Time’s up…no more penalties for home grown and home use of marijuana…ya’ll have had 50-years of profits and now you’re going to have to deal with a drug that seems to fight cancer and certainly is better on the liver.”

Admittedly, Holder’s got a tough one here:  Oh, sure, a tolerance policy would allow some rebranding of “criminals” from Mexico who aren’t gang-related and yes, it might play in the Colorado region.  But is it even application of law, equal enforcement?  Or, is it just another stupid “special class” and a further abandonment of equality?

More chasing around of their tales…but if that’s what it takes to balance prison over-crowding against booze lobby fund raising, I get that’s how complexity in End Times works.  Fair laws, evenly administered?  Gone are the days, gone is the foundation that made American jurisprudence exceptional.  Tolerance policies and the erosion of contract law…

More Jailhouse Rocks

An al Qaeda boss vows to free more jailed AQ members on the Arabian Peninsula.

Bathroom Bill or…?

Ah, the delights of following mis/dis info around the net.  I bet you’ve heard by now that a bill sitting on Calgov Jerry Brown’s desk would be a “bathroom bill” which would allow males to use girl’s bathrooms in school IF they felt gender-leaning.

Well, there’s another take on which over at Media Matters which says this isn’t what the bill does:  It merely reaffirms current law….

But wait!  Cynical George wants to know if that all it does, who are the idiots in Scrotomento who pass laws that don’t actually do something new?  (This might be why California’s in bad financial conditioned and the most over-regulated state in ‘Merica…) Or are both sides of this story….oh, you know:  MARKETING!

From the Compounding Economic Pharmacist:

I’ve counted well over 6,000 bank branches having been closed as I meticulously did whenever the FDIC filed a bank closure report.  I did this going back to IndyMac before finally giving up at about 6,300 branches.  There seemed little point to it.

Fast-forward to this morning and here’s report on Russia Today (RT) that “20,000 bank outlets closed in EU since start of downturn.”

We need to talk seriously here about economic prescriptions.  Here, let me slip into appropriate professional wear so I can at least look the part, OK?  Hand me my lab coat, would you?

The whole/Big Picture Truth of what’s going on in Bank Land is complicated.  But if I were an old-fashioned compounding economic pharmacist, I would mix up:

• Seven parts bankus disrectus au finance for balance sheet collapse.
• Nine parts consumus todeathtus for transitioning out of paper on into all plastic.
• 21 parts connectus onlineus since digi-dollars don’t need a roof or staff time and last but not least
• 12-parts automatus tellus which has the financial alchemical symbol “ATM”.

Mix in a mortar, crush with the pestle of regulatory reform, and package as troches.  Avoid taking before elections, may cause systemic reactions including monetary diarrhea.

Foreshocks?

6.2 quake this morning off the northern coast of Peru.  If you are expecting the global tsunami when the southern part of the Pacific Plate breaks off on a line from Polynesia to South America, this is more dust-bunny sniffing news, for sure, since there was also a 6.0 along the Kermadec Islands 500 miles Northeast of New Zealand….  The black line would be the plate crack and the black circle is the Peru quake…

What about the 6.3 in Indonesia?

Earthquake charts of the long-term view tomorrow morning!  Oh, and reader Hank out in Hawaii sent this Sunday morning:

Big Island had a 4.8 earthquake at 6am local time this morning.  Not huge, but worrisome is the location.   It was on the southern cliffs of the volcano where the massive ‘crack’ in the south flank is located.  Someday that chunk is gonna slide into the sea…  ala-Canary Islands… and we will have about 20 minutes before the wave inundates Honolulu.

Yes, there are several undersea landslide run-outs from Hawaii undersea slide that send 50-100 foot tsunamis into the US West Coast in historical times.  Float us some Kona Roast and Macadamias on a long board when it happens…I’ll wander out to Phoenix to pick ‘em up!

Eyes on South Americas

This from our Winnipeg news analyst is interesting…

Dear Mr.

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