News

Yes sir, the place is the same cantankerous, insubordinating, paradigm-challenging place as always.

One of the points of our travels this week has to be that neither Colorado nor Washington state have fallen under some pall of purple haze since the legalization of recreational marijuana in either place.

Traffic still moves in the same up-tight way, and I have yet (in either state) to catch so much as a whiff of the dread reefer madness.

Contrary to what some provincials may argue, there hasn’t been any sign of a major uptick in drug use in either state that we’ve been able to find.  Life goes on.

Any Seattleite, worth their Grande split-shot tall, double shake and hazelnut., knows these signs which are popping up around Snoqualmie Summit and the downtown Seattle Freeway is all part of another grand social experiment called “variable speed limits.”

The idea is that the state can dictate what it thinks the speed ought to be and thus make driving around here even more of a challenge than it is.  In fact in downtown Seattle where these variable-speed lab rat tests are more advanced, there are different speeds depending on which lane you’re in. I have to wonder is this is just a new and improved way to picking out the impaired drivers? 

“Ok sonny, do you know what your speed was and why I pulled you over?”

“Gosh, officer, let me look this up:  I was in lane #3, northbound at Spokane Street, it’s Tuesday, Sagittarius is in Neptune, incoming tide, 25-50% cloud cover, 59-degrees… dry roadway… I think that’s supposed to be 37.28 miles per hour, isn’t it? I mean unless I was indicating a lane change into lane #2 which would be…uh…27.63 miles per hour…”

“Close, sonny boy.  But you forgot the dew point.  That makes it 31.68 miles per hour so I’m going to have to write you for 5.6 over.  Unless you’ve already upgraded to Windows 8.1 in which case you get a special 7.3% discount IF you voted for release candidate 2…”

“Damn…No, officer….I voted for release candidate 1…”

“You did???!!! $%^&     Son, step out of the car….  (squelch noise)  Officer needs assistance and run an update trace on Washington plate…(muffled) . and send back up…I’ve got a release candidate 1 supporter –Tell the Fusion Center, too.  He may be a domestic programmer..  And notify DHS, too, as he looks like he may be  part of a Silicon Valley click gang…”

And in terms of entertainment, we also couldn’t help but notice in The Stranger that a joint called The Pine Box recently had an event called “Chicken Shit Bingo” with the subheading “Pick where he poops” which, even by Texas standards, is one of the more novel integrations of big city urban madness and rural serenity that we’ve come across yet.

All of which has me scurrying this morning to invent “Chicken Shit Speed Limits” which I’m hoping to make the Next Big thing up here.  It might not be as much fun as HOV and Reversible Lane Roulette, but any revenue stream in a storm, I figure.

Moon over Tacoma’s Commencement Bay as we rolled into el hotel last night.

You’re So Vain Dept..

If you think women take more mirror time getting ready than men, Madison Avenue Mike’s catch of the day over at the HufPo is that no, they take about the same amount of time.

More Yellen

If you think Don up (down this week, I guess) in Odessa, Texas and I don’t see eye to eye on Janet Yellen, we may not be so far apart as it  may sound:

HI George,

Not to get into a long discussion/argument about it, you are certainly more knowledgeable about such matters than me; However, to answer your question “Would you rather we get a strict monetarist, put the nation back on the gold standard,” The gold standard would be more honest, but the answer is no. I know enough to know that there has to be some creation out of nothing to finance growth. But I also know that debt as a way of life in the end is no life at all.

I know enough to know that we can not let this system of enslavement continue. I know enough to know that current system is way off track. I know enough to know that I am not OK with the system we have built.

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13 dead, eh?  A while back on Peoplenomics, we discussed the Fine-structure Constant and its implications for predicting the future as we continue to look at data, how the future arrives, and all that kind of stuff.  Of particular interest was this part of that report:

As you can quickly see, there appears to be some kind of a “resonance” around the 146-149 day timing.

If we use the Mother’s Day shooting, 19 dead, we would expect October 8.  So because that doesn’t fit with the data, we need to look for a data Around April 22, 2013 which might somehow be tied in with an attack on a US military base.

Presto!

April 18, 2013 a suicide bomber attacked in Iraq killing 27 and wounding 65.  Exactly 151 days.

Or, we could find rather precise timing off a smaller mass killing in western Russia that took place on exactly the 147 days ago timeline and claimed six lives.  From Wikipedia:

On April 22, 2013, a mass shooting occurred at approximately 2:20 p.m. Moscow time on a street in Belgorod in Belgorod Oblast, western Russia. The shooter, identified as 31-year-old Sergey (Sergei) Pomazun (?????? ???????), opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle on several people at a gun store and a sidewalk, killing all six people that were hit: three people at the store and three passersby, including two teenage girls.

Now here’s where things get interesting (besides the Russian being 31 and the Monday perp was reported as 34:

Trial[edit source | editbeta]

The accused shooter Sergei Pomazun underwent extensive psychiatric analysis but was found fit to stand trial. His trial has began with preliminary hearings on June 22, 2013, with the prosecutor demanding life in prison. Pomazun confessed to the crime, but expressed no remorse for the shooting spree that he said was an accidental occurrence in the course of “a special operation” that went wrong. Pomazun testified that he plotted to kill a supermarket security guard who had insulted him and that he only intended to steal more weapons and ammunition from the gun store to be better prepared for a possible firefight with the intervening police following the planned murder. He claimed that the initial shooting was sparked by him spotting what he thought was a plainclothed policeman reaching for a concealed weapon; afterwards, he began shooting people to clear a path to the car.

A suspect profile can be found in this morning’s NY Times although I am not discounting the possibility of something yet to come on 10/8 plus or minus three days.

One item I am not clear on is whether members of the US military – on ready reserve status – normally get to hold a computer security access card.  We’ve talked about these before – CAC Cards as they are called – and we wonder if enlistees who go out on reserve continue to hang onto them, or not.  If not, they add additional weight to the theory that there is something more than meets the eye going on here.

151 days is very close, and it could be that this will serve as the mass shooting/sacrifice of the dark side for this cycle, so maybe only small doings around out October 8 hot date.

In the meantime, the data suggests that a cadre of East/West ex-military people both on the Russian side and ours – are out there as “sleepers” only to be awakens at extremely inconvenient times.  In such an event, the Mother’s Day shooting may come off US soil.  Maybe Russian?

Additional research on how the fine-structure constant works is a fine starting point for anyone serious about how patterns repeat.

We note that while a serious researcher might be looking at some of the underlying data in these cases, senator Feinstein is planning to use it to whip up the gun-grabbers – again.  A calendar, spreadsheet, deep background and a grand jury would likely be more useful, but as usual, that’s just our cold data-based way of looking at things.

More after this…

Arms for Terrorists 

“Do as I say, not as I do?”  We notice that president Obama has decided to waive certain portions of law and give US arms to “vetted” terrorist groups fighting in Syria.  We may not yet have our “boots on the ground” – seems those are being rented – and supplied thanks to the largess of the American taxpayer and the command in chief.

What lingers are two key questions:  What’s the hard-on for Assad all about?  Like the rebels will be any better?  Secondly, isn’t buying proxy warriors and giving them guns pretty much the same (morally) as going in and killing people ourselves?  I mean wouldn’t a prosecutor argue conspiracy to commit?

I’m not law review editor of course but just seems to me Congress isn’t voting so we shouldn’t be selling.

Yellen About Yellen

The “Summers it out” before he even started rally on Monday was a marvel…and yes, put in some new highs and all.  But not everyone agrees with my notion that Janet Yellen would make a good Fed boss:

So you think Yellen will make a “fine” hmm, what should type in here/ Oh I got it………thief! dammit! THIEF!!!!!

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I am besieged this morning with email from people who can’t believe my preposterous claim that human labor-replacing robotics should be assessed income and health insurance taxes, just as regular workers would be if they still held such jobs.

Here’s a note from reader Phil the Philistine:

George,

I assume you are kidding when you say silly things like this:

“The answer to the looming question is simple: Make sure that robotics plays the same income tax and Social Security taxes as the humans it replaced would have otherwise contributed.”

I say this is silly because every thing you do every day is done on the backs of what you call “robots”. Either that or you are a hyper-hypocrite. The IRS is eagerly awaiting the 1099’s you plan to file for the machines you enslave:

• Your coffee maker. A human should brew your coffee, not an automaton.
• Your laundry machines. Humans do those things you know. Where is your humanity? People need jobs.
• Your computer. You think it’s easy for your computer to perform millions of calculations a minute?

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According to my schedule, we should be pulling out of the hotel here in Grand Junction, CO in about three and a half minutes from now and this morning I figure to catch up on a little snooze time as Elaine drives us up toward Boise which is where we’ll be spending tonight.

Saturday’s drive from the ranch up to Amarillo wasn’t too bad.  The new (in the last year it looks like) Holiday Inn West (not to express version) met all expectations.  And the Double Tree here in Grand Junction, as I was able to use some of our Hilton Honors points, so sleep was cheap.

A couple of observations, if I may?

Traffic this time of the year seems like a third less than what it runs in the summertime. That it an of itself wouldn’t have been so remarkable except for the fact that everyone is so damn well mannered.

For example, one of the usual driving tricks of an old 930 pilot, such as Ures truly, if to find someone who is going the same direction you are.  As soon as they blow your doors off, you let them run a half mile ahead, so they trip any radar, and you leisurely get to drive however fast their desperation drives them. 

No one was speeding.  And, thanks to cruise control, we would leave city areas, set the snooze control, and awaken at the next “Reduced Speed Ahead” sign in exactly the same order as we’d left the starting gate.  Unnerving.

Near as I can figure it, America has become so law-abiding, as to making me want to puke, so as my personal bit of protest I set the cruise to three miles an hour over the limit.  So did everyone else.

Picture-taking kept Elaine busy when she wasn’t being grossed out by my travel diet which consisted of beef jerky, water, and a dill pickle.  I figured if I was going to be driving, I might as well lose a little weight by not eating so much, at least until dinner.

Elaine probably took 200 pictures, but of all the eye treats out there, the best looking seemed to be from Durango up to Montrose.

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You gotta love it when the market has just run into overhead resistance in the S&P 1,686 level and just can’t seem to get enough traction, and then looks like it will fall back.  You see, because the S&P and the Dow have not been able to punch through the old highs set on August 5th and 2nd respectively, the doors of hell could open in the next couple of weeks because (repeat after me) Crashes don’t just appear out of thin air:  they occur often times 55-days, or so, from a major high (which is coming up soon enough) and along the way there, you’d expect (under Elliott wave rules) to see Wave 1 down, then a wave 2 rally, and the decline and rally would then give you some key insight as to what will happen next.

That’s because a “normal” decline might be expected to be 1.608 times the first wave down, and then a 5th wave down would be another 1.5 to 1.8 times, except that with high frequency trading, it could be 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 times that.  So we sit with our cuppa Kona roast this morning (thanks again Hawaii Hank for that!) and ponder our navels and next trading moves.

One more “up” is possible, to the 1720-1735 area on the S&P, but catching falling knives is not the smartest thing to do on Friday the 13th. 

A week or three back I suggested in one of my columns, with gold north of $1,425, that a move down to the $1,200 level and lower seemed to be in the cards, too.  And sure enough, this morning, gold futures are down to $1,312 and, once a potential sell-off in coming weeks in the markets gets organized (if it does, remember this is not financial advice) than as big players sell everything including the kitchen sink and any gold or silver laying around, we could see the bottom drop out from under gold.  Not yet, but the potential is out there.

Retail Fails – Saved by Cars!

OK, new report out from the Census folks this morning sounds like all sweetness and light:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $426.6 billion, an increase of 0.2 percent (±0.5%)* from the
previous month, and 4.7 percent (±0.7%) above August 2012. Total sales for the June through August 2013 period were up 5.4 percent
(±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The June to July 2013 percent change was revised from +0.2 percent (±0.5%)* to +0.4 percent
(±0.2%).

What could be wrong?  Do I have to beat you on the head with this stuff?  OK, I snipped the year on year change chart and drew my squiggly line across what year on year inflation at the M2 level has been based on the Fed’s H.6 money stocks report.  Other than being “saved by the auto industry” are you still all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?

There, how’s that feel?  Yes, that’s why credit card use is down…people are sitting on their wallets.

Here’s comes more evidence of our deflationary depression in this morning’s Producer Prices report, too:

The Producer Price Index for finished goods rose 0.3 percent in August, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Prices for finished goods were unchanged in July and increased 0.8 percent in June. At the earlier stages of processing, prices received by producers of intermediate goods were unchanged in August, and the crude goods index fell 2.7 percent. On an unadjusted basis, prices for finished goods moved up 1.4 percent for the 12 months ended in August, the smallest advance since a 0.5-percent rise in April 2013.

When crude goods producers have no pricing power, their wages are flat to falling and that lights a fuse going forward for weakness.  Intermediate looking flat ignores that 6.8% watering down of the purchasing power of money, but let’s pretend that doesn’t mean anything and everything is coming up roses and lollipops for another week, shall we? 

Consumer prices next Tuesday…

Climate Change to the Rockies?

Normally, the backside of Colorado’s Front Range is a notoriously dry place.  Until this week, that is.  Over the past couple of days, 8-inches of rain has fallen, leaving some cities cut off by roads washed out. and more rain ahead today in the forecasts.

With our trip starting tomorrow, we’ll be sure to take pictures and route to avoid the worst of it. 

Boardwalk Disaster

A terrible disaster at the other end of the spectrum may be found in the fire which consumed more than a six-block area of the famous New Jersey Boardwalk which was just rebuilt in the wake of hurricane Sandy.  Governor Christie getting lots of face-time on the tube with this…

More after this…

Our Good for Nothing House

How useless and irrelevant has the US House of Representatives become lately?  Let me count the ways:  No constitutionally required federal budget, check.  No immigration reform, check.  No vote to contain presidential war-making powers, check.

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This is one a buddy of mine has been sitting on for a good while…since when it happened it was one of the most disturbing things ever is this fellow’s life.  It involves a very good daylight UFO sighting and his report (and accompanying sketch, with the object sketched in just to the size he saw it) is mind-numbing in its implications:

“May 26, 2013.

The day before this event I had heard the chatter of returning flocks of cranes or storks and it was happening again, so I stopped my yard work and took the time to watch them enjoy the thermal lift provided by the rising heat of the day. I have been watching them each year and look forward to their annual return. The birds have a distinctive chattering sound that is easily recognizable.

After the event, I looked up the height at which the birds fly when migrating. It’s approximately 2400 feet, so I am assuming that is at or near the altitude of the flock. My view of them was framed by the second story edge of my home (not in the picture) to the west and a tree in my neighbor’s yard to the east. I stepped back into the shadow of my home to get a better view of the birds.

As I watched, above the birds who were not disturbed, there came a circular craft plowing through the overcast from the west. It had lights turned on inside the turbulent bow wave it was producing in the cloud,

It was large and moving south east at (my guess) forty to sixty miles per hour.

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Yes, the book Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects is likely worth your time to read, as is a visit to author  Kevin Robert Ryan’s website over here.  Getting traction…

Also:  Hat tip to reader Charles for the catch…and he thinks you might enjoy Project Censored’s “Exploring the Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class” which gets more into those check-writing rulers behind the seats of power.

All of which, he notes, could be a nice series of backgrounders before you move along to the front-edge newsnipulations (go ahead, use it, my gift) about to come at the helm changes at the Fed.  So, go read “Failing Up to the Fed, a Reporters’ guide to the paper trail surrounding Larry Summers…”

Another futuring point, as long as we’re trying to look at things as they are, you might want to spend some time on the Mark Zuckerberg article over at The Next Web where he lays out where Facebook is going “to connect the next 5-billion people.”

Oh, and you mean social map them, too?

We may never know the extent of Facebook’s relationship with government agencies, but the LA Times article this morning where Zuckerberg says “The government blew it” on leaks, is interesting.

I prefer to sit back at watch things from my skeptical marketer/investor standpoint.  What I see as a kind of over-arching deal is that a further drive to connect people to social media, moves in the direction of getting more and more people to self-map into social media.  Which, figures Ure’s truly, is why everyone is so hot to develop killer aps for social media…so it will become so “necessary” (like CB radio, right?) that everyone will do it and as a result, everyone will self-map, self-confess, and self-leak all over the place.

Who needs a security state apparatchik when you’ve got social tied up?

So,  do I seem a bit skeptical?  I figure it’s only a matter of time before not having a social media account will be a cause for suspicion and eventually even arrest as an anti-social threat to society (because failing to self-map and self confess will definitely be found to be a telltale of something)!

Meantime, the danger of the net to the PowersThatBe peeks out from China where 500-retweets will land you three years in the slammah.

Carrying the thought a step further, Madison Avenue Mike (OK, Mish, but I call him Mike so his friends don’t catch on)  spied this really good article in the NY Times which lays out a good bit more about how  online confessional aps work under the headline “Free Apps for Nearly Every Health Problem, but What About Privacy?”

Yeah?  What about it?  So far, my answer has been simple.  Whenever I use one of those calculators which wants to email results (like body mass, heart/blood pressure, like expectancy, and things like that) I use Zeus the Cat’s email.  (zeusishot@gmail.com)

You’ll be thrilled to know that Zeus is likely to live to age 89-92, doesn’t have diabetes, and is now able to receive $250,000 worth of life insurance from just $19/month.

I don’t know how much longer I will be able to keep up this up, however.  I figure it’s only a matter of time until the Department of Homeland Security will turn identity theft from a cat into a class one offense.   Although so far, I’ve blown off the demand letters from Zeus’s attorneys about sullying his reputation and demanding I give him back his Gold Card that he recently received along with a bunch of hotel points.

Rotsa ruck.  No mice, no card.

Speaking of Petmail

Normally, I don’t read Zeus’s emails, but here’s one he didn’t mention from back in January from Reader Jimmy’s cat Mandy Sue..

Hi Zeus,

Ask your peon housemates whether or not they noticed that the recent quake in Alaska was coincident with the big outbreak of new sunspots.

Also, demand that they feed you raw organic meat like I get.

Isn’t it great that we felines rule the world! What other species can get humans to do anything we want and we give nothing in return unless we feel like it at the moment. Looks like the democrats are starting to copy us, though.

Regards,

Mandy Sue (sorry, too old for you, at age 18)

Near as I can figure it, Mandy Sue’s reference to democrats copying cats has to do with wrapping things up in kitty litter, but I can’t be sure.  I’m sure NSA will be keeping a closer eye on Zeus now because of provocative (and under age) emails like this.  I’m just wondering if he’s working for them and if they wouldn’t mind kicking in a few bucks toward cat food?

Reader’s Writes

Nice to see that a few folks have picked up on our new $20/five-month Peoplenomics.com subscription rate.  Especially Edward down under who’s been following our cubit discussion:

George,

First time I have written you as a subscriber (new $20 client) but have written you a few times over the six years I have read the “free side”.

The Cubit discussion isn’t my area. My partner is a long time “organite” maker. She makes a variety of pieces and a number of them incorporate copper wire coils of various lengths according to the characteristics the piece is intend to possess.

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