George Ure

Overs the past few days there has been a real push in the American press to whip up public support for the notion of climate change.  But a more measured report, out this morning from the BBC admits “Dissent among scientists over key climate impact report” which is due next Monday.

Of course, if you’re prepared to swallow “climate change” hook, line, and sinker, you  could no doubt send in links to stories like “Scientists to climate change skeptics: Get real.”

Next week;s report will be of more than passing interest because it may well represent a “tipping point” in the climate dialog.  Whereas the BBC version of what’s coming seems to focus on the adaptation angle, the USA versions is much more likely to pronounce the need for ever-more government (thus taxes) to address climate issues.

The reason, when you zoom out into the American overview is simple:  We have a falling crime rate, yet the hiring of police and security has never been higher.  And with the military winding down some of its spending, we see the need to employ people in an economy that still isn’t talking about the central issue:  The ‘brick wall’ of employment of automated manufacturing is killing off jobs wholesale.

While there has been a major increase (even in Europe) in business services, a lot of that kind of employment will be short-term as businesses get onto effective ERP & document management systems and then begin to really set about more layoffs.  And, of course, all but 10-25% of the consulting positions in business services will be left, and those will be mainly in software  updates and reconfigurations.

So yes, we need a grand new source of employment.  And, if you’ve watched “Inequality for all” you’ll see the problem is that the middle class is shrinking while those at the top just keep on getting richer.

But will climate money impact the middle class?  It’s early in the game, but my inclination is no, it won’t since the jobs there will be highly technical and highly skilled.  Jobs that may keep some of the rollout from business services going – when that begins to falter – but what about the working stiffs with high school and a year or three of college?

I’m only guessing, but a 90% change of a US climate tax, a 50% chance of a global climate tax, and a 3% chance of some meaningful change for the middle class seems about where this one’s going to fall.

Who was it who said “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross”?  Well, climate’s got its own set of wrappings, too.  And it will be carrying a tax.

No Bodies – Just a Media Burial

We have to wonder if the Malaysians have jumped the gun a bit here, declaring the passengers onboard MH370 dead.

That is expected to set loose the dogs of the insurance companies, who are offering initial payments by some reports $5,000 .  But under the Montreal Convention, passenger lives are only worth $150,000 to $175,000…which in today’s world, is a pittance.

Says Wikipedia:

Under the Montreal Convention, air carriers are strictly liable for proven damages up to 113,100 special drawing rights (SDR) (Updated from 100,000 on 31 December 2009), a mix of currency values established by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), approximately $138,000 per passenger at the time of its ratification by the United States in 2003 (as of December 2011, around $175,800). Where damages of more than 113,100 SDR are sought, the airline may avoid liability by proving that the accident which caused the injury or death was not due to their negligence or was attributable to the negligence of a third party. This defence is not available where damages of less than 113,100 SDR are sought. The Convention also amended the jurisdictional provisions of Warsaw and now allows the victim or their families to sue foreign carriers where they maintain their principal residence, and requires all air carriers to carry liability insurance.

The Montreal Convention was brought about mainly to amend liabilities to be paid to families for death or injury whilst on board an aircraft.

For a $30-million jetliner and 150 passengers, care to guess who makes out better?  Not the passengers ($26.2 million in settlement exposure) versus was could be $30-million or more for aircraft hull insurance..something a reporter with more time might want to look into.

A Few Notes on Futuring

You may have noticed last week’s Friday report (here) began with a forecast of a  big disease story this week.  What I said (yes, it’s bad to quote yourself, but I’m making a point, so go with me on this…) 

Looking at the data runs from our www.nostracodeus.com project, the word frequency blip today is “epidemic” which has popped up.  It doesn’t seem to have landed/taken root in a major singular story, unless you consider streaking the ruins at Machu Pichu, Peru major.

A check of the CDC website reveals a measles watch in the Philippines, but that shouldn’t drive things like this.  So we will be in the “unsurprised” category if the CDC or other agency announces something next week about an “epidemic” of something. 

These are low probabilities, but they seem to be peeking out of the noise

OK, that was posted on Friday.

This morning we’re hip deep in headlines :  Canada probes possible Ebola case.

Ebola outbreak in Guinea may spread to Liberia.

Ebola breaks out in West Africa for the first time.

As we move into the second half of the week (slowly, for sure) that leaves expectations for attack on Israel from the north, another accident headline (though the declaration of death for MH370 passengers may suffice) and the Taliban may be expected to pull of a major something.  Between now and Sunday, on this batch.

Grady will have torn down the overnight data run and a report up shortly at the www.nostracodeus.com site.

Mud Search

That huge mudslide up in Washington State (north of Seattle) has 176 people listed as missing although the death toll is expected to be way below that.  Meantime, there is extreme caution involved because of the risk of further sliding in the area.

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Schedule note:  This morning’s report will be shorter than usual because I have a pretty demanding schedule today.  For one, I need to take the old Beechcrate down for service to an airport about 45 miles south of us.  There, Mark the Mechanic will do his magic (mostly paperwork) making sure we’re good for another year of flying by the book.  After that, a couple of subscriber issues to take care of, a conference call this afternoon, and work on Peoplenomics for tomorrow morning.  It will focus on real estate and how much dough to sink into your home; always a delicate balance.

Several comments have come in regarding my wife (Elaine’s) experience with the fleeting “cloud”.  Included were a couple of medical professionals.  So just to make sure we’re on the same page, here, let me describe why she called it a “cloud.”

She was standing in the kitchen, watching television, and this “cloud” the size of a beach ball appeared in front of her.    As she turned her head and eyes to the side, the cloud didn’t move.  This is a key medical note because with a visual hallucination, when you turn your eyes or body parts, the hallucination tends to move with the body.  But this one didn’t.  And when she brushed it away, then turned to the microwave to see if something was on fire, and turned back, there was nothing there.

There were also no feelings (no tingly or anything else) and no emotional reactions (goose bumps, or any of that) and no change in mental state.

We used to joke often about what Panama called “the companions” who he and a friend of his experienced while looking after the house for us, once upon a time.  It was a series of distinct footsteps going through the house and freaked them out, but this cloud thing was different.

There also don’t seem to be any lingering effects.  As we talked about it Monday afternoon, it didn’t have any of the “creeped out” feeling that she {still} has from her ‘teleported at nighty’ experience.  That was the one where she went to sleep on the sofa (watching TV) a few months back, and found herself awake and in bed…with no recall of how she got there.  Yeah, not that is a strange one.

The Headache Questions Explained

Thank you for all the answers to the headache questions.   My reason for asking will now be explained and why I wanted to collect some baseline answers before I rolled out the background of a rather amazing story.

The first thing I need to do is put out a disclaimer:  The following deals with religious matters and I don’t make any claims, except that I report things that come my way because I think they are of general interest.  I know a lot of people (all over the world) who are in – how to say this? – the field of light working.  So with that in mind, here’s the tale and I’ll keep this as short as I can….

The world as we know it seems to exist on two levels. There is the hard and fast Newtonian level where apples and gravity get along fine.  And then there is a not-so-firm level where intent makes things occur, where subtle energy, emotions, religions and all that “other” live.

The tale that came my way from a light worker recently comes from someone I would consider a trusted spiritual advisor.  Although this person has a different worldview/belief set than I do, I trust their integrity completely.

What the person explained, in so many words, is that over the past couple of months, they had run into 3 cases where women were beset with headaches (top/back of head) that were similar to, but different than the ‘conventional’ kinds of demonic possessions this person has dealt with many times in the past.

The assertion was that there was an alliance between certain people/humans with non-human/alien/etheric entities that had developed tools for monitoring humans that crossed the bounds of conventional physics as we know them.

In the this worldview, there was a new kind of ‘thing’ out and about that was sort of crab-like in appearance and which would wrap itself around the back of a person’s etheric head and could be used to monitor or suggest thoughts without a person being aware of it.

A quick Wikipedia quote here, since none of this etheric stuff is made up on my part:

The etheric body, ether-body, æther body, a name given by neo-Theosophy to a vital body or subtle body propounded in esoteric philosophies as the first or lowest layer in the “human energy field” or aura.^[1] It is said to be in immediate contact with the physical body, to sustain it and connect it with “higher” bodies.

The English term “etheric” in this context seems to derive from the Theosophical writings of Madame Blavatsky, but its use was formalised by C.W. Leadbeater^[2] and Annie Besant^[3] due to the elimination of Hindu terminology from the system of seven planes and bodies. (Adyar School of Theosophy).

The term gained some general popularity after the 1914-18 war, Dr.Walter John Kilner having adopted it for a layer of the “human atmosphere” which, as he claimed in a popular book, could be rendered visible to the naked eye by means of certain exercises.^[4]

The classical element Aether of Platonic and Aristotlean physics continued in Victorian scientific proposals of a Luminiferous ether as well as the cognate chemical substance ether. According to Theosophists and Alice Bailey the etheric body inhabits an etheric plane which corresponds to the four higher subplanes of the physical plane. The intended reference is therefore to some extremely rarefied matter, analogous in usage to the word “spirit” (originally “breath”). In selecting it as the term for a clearly defined concept in an Indian-derived metaphysical system, the Theosophists aligned it with ideas such as the prana-maya-kosha (sheath made of prana, subtle breath or life-force) of Vedantic thought.

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We begin the week with a very sequence of report, event, and dream that reaches out fetchingly from the World of Woo-Woo to begin the week.  Between them all, it is a most savory and piquant mix to stir the non-rational side of thought.

The Report

If you’re a woman, and in the past 3-4 months you’ve had a strange headache, please let me know.  But only if the headache was in an odd place:  At the top, center, back-of-head area.  I won’t go into the reasons just yet, because I don’t want the inquiry to  be colored by suggestibility.   BUT, if you have had an odd headache, a feeling of heaviness, a headache of 1-3 days around the top/back/center of your head, please let me know via email.

The Event

So there were Mr. and Mrs. Ure last night, about 7:15 PM, watching television.  We were looking at “Inequality for All” which I hadn’t had time to watch and Elaine wanted to watch again.

I was sprawled out in my recliner and Elaine was munching on a snack in the kitchen warming up something in the microwave…

“Can I tell you something odd?” she asked from the kitchen.  I immediately hit pause on the video because Elaine never makes remarks like that.  “Sure, what?”

“I just had the strangest experience!  I was watching the television when all of a sudden I saw a white cloud.  It wasn’t a mist…it was like a white cloud, right down to the scalloped edges.  I though ‘Smoke!’ and so I turned around to look at the microwave…thinking it was a fire, or something….and when I looked back — IT WAS GONE!”

Needless to say, we talked about it and it was definitely not smoke, Elaine’s eyes are fine, the effect was binocular, fleeting, not headaches, body ache, and no drugs, hypertension, stroke, or anything odd like that. 

Just a solid-looking “cloud” – that was white, opaque, and about as big as a beach ball at half an arm’s length.

Preceding this, I had been working on a Linux server project on one of our laptops and we had been discussing a house-sitting opportunity next month up in the northwest (which was scuttled because of long range weather charts, which was disappointing for both of us…).

But I was left to wonder about whether the “cloud” had something to do with emotional release or leftover “energy” floating around.  There was no darkness to it – pure white – so I don’t know whether it held meaning (good call on the questionable flying weather, or what?) or whether it was some other [more rational] event.

A call to a trusted spiritual advisor suggested that it was just “one of those things” but didn’t seem to have any malice associated with it and nothing similar in his experience.  I made a note to pass it along to Dr. Rob the eye doc to see if he’s heard of anything like it before, either…so we shall see…

The Dream

And then I awoke this morning from another one of my super-lucid dreams which related to an all-night debate over whether I should mention any of this weird/woo-woo stuff in the column this morning at all.

The waking image in the dream was that of watching a containership, loaded high with containers on deck, swinging its stern in toward a dock, obviously where it was supposed to unload.

Was this a metaphor?  So I decided to share this rather odd sequence of events and see what you might make of it.

If anything…but disappearing clouds are not a common occurrence in Elaine’s like, or mine.  I did suggest next time one appears that she inquire about lottery numbers.

Oh…and one more odd little coincidence:  When I had that odd/strange dream on our last trip (about the road being closed and the detour and having it all come true three hours later…)  I had some of the most delicious-tasting ham in my life for breakfast. 

So good, in fact, that I inquired and was told it was “apple wood smoked ham” and so I had Elaine pick some up at the store when she made a supply run to town a few days ago.

And what was the only “new” food that we have eaten lately?  Yes…apple wood smoked ham.

And that opens up a whole discussion on a long discussion about whether ancient food prohibitions were pure religious, or because of a lack of refrigeration (which is where I have always leaned), or now – because of events in my own life – whether certain foods, at certain points of evolution in one’s life – can encourage the kind of experience which might  freak some people out.

I may have to find some lobster and crab to continue the experiment.  I keep wondering “Is there some secret food chemistry that I might have stumbled over accidentally on our Arizona trip?  I mean I’d had lobster a day and a half earlier, before the apple wood smoked ham.  Say, you don’t suppose there are biochemical locks to higher realms that might be picked, do you?

Especially since we have been working so diligently on getting out vitamins dialed in just so….

Financial Woo for April

As long as we are running off into the Twilight Zone this morning, a note from my friend Robin Handler (Options Signal Service) about the upcoming astrological outlook is worth a look:

Hi George,

Thought you might like to share this with your readers.

As we enter April, we face the Cardinal Cross aspect I’ve written about I previous issues. Also, while calculating the cyclical reversal date for next week, I saw something that has never happened before: within a few days of the Cardinal Cross, there a multiple cyclical reversal, and one with a value of 26. I have never seen one with a value greater than 22.

Uranus S

The Cardinal Cross brings Uranus influence to a possible once in a life-time event. Uranus rules technology and aerospace. It is also associated with earthquake.

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I was going to mention in my conversation with George Noory Wednesday night that the more important time you can spend is the hour a week you gather up a few notes on trends in the news and reflect on how they are likely to impact your life and what you can do about it.

I get letters all the time from people who are worked their butts off and been screwed over by the “New America Business Model.”  Here’s a perfect example:

Quick and short-
husband self employed
had business line of credit with Bank of X since 1998.
Never late, never over limit, always paid on time and more than minimums
Two years ago, Bank of X says that they have determined we have too much overall debt
(we really didn’t)
and Bank of X turned line of credit into a term loan
increasing interest rate from 9.9% to 23.99%
AND
increasing payment from $1,900/mo
to $4,900.
They wouldn’t talk to us or even try to negotiate something- just said this is the way it is.
Of course, once this one change hit the credit reporting scam companies,
EVERY lender raised our interest rates and thereby increased our monthly payments.
It was a domino effect we had
ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL OVER.
Now tell me, how can the average small business owner continue?
We tried and tried – went through our meager IRAs to keep business afloat and employees paid and
cover ours and their health insurance.
But, with the cost of everything going up,
vendors paying late, a
and everything else that goes with  small business ownership-
Well, we had to lay off our 4 employees (and of course, no longer paid for their health insurance once they left), and
then we were hit by two separate medical emergencies and after the deductibles and co-pays, we owed about $18,000 (this, of course, is in addition to the outrageous monthly insurance premium of $1,600 for my husband and myself (we are close to Medicare but not there yet))-
bottom line
we had to declare bankruptcy.
American way of life – have no clue –
ask the thieving banksters who are worse than loan sharks.
Oh, and btw,
my husband and I haven’t had even a weekend getaway let alone a ‘real vacation’ since the late 90’s. Our vehicles are 10 and 14 years old; our home is under 1,900 sf and not new, we go out to a restaurant (nothing fancy, maybe Olive Garden) 2x year, have no hobbies that require anything besides a pair of walking shoes, our clothes are either thrift shop or places like WalMart (hate to admit that I patronize that company) or Target, so forth and so on.  In other words, nothing expensive or extravagant. 
And, the company he worked for during the 70’s and 80’s went bankrupt and there is no retirement/pension. 
Yes, life sucks sometimes, but all you can do is your best at whatever crap it throws at you.
Thanks for listening.
Pepper

This is one of 5those cases where “the system” just isn’t working, but there are tens of thousands more that fit this mold.

The problem is what to do about it?

And that’s why I proposed in Thursday’s discussion that there’s not really much that can be done EXCEPT encourage State Banks and Community Banks. 

The box we’re in, though, is that the big national banks, like Bank of X (BoX) have built a marvelous system of electronic integration such that if you don’t have a national bank credit card, for example, you can’t get a meal in a “foreign city” – like somewhere halfway across the country.

And THEN, if you do decide the answer is “I’ll just carry cash” then any cop who happens to pull you over for speeding, or whatever, is now empowered to seize your cash because it will be assumed in most jurisdictions that you’re somehow involved with drugs because who doesn’t have a BoX credit card?

Then there’s the fine print.  I’s made it a practice for years not to sign something that I haven’t read thoroughly and understand.  You should take the time – whenever you take out a loan for anything to be sure and read the fine print.

In most car loans, for example, there is weasel-wording that will let a bank come after your home and any other assets if your car is foreclosed on (e.g. repo’ed) and it sells at auction for less than the amount owing.  The bank will send you a bill for the “gap” unless you have “gap insurance” which is what?  Just another way to screw over the poor.

Once upon a time in finance – so long ago that I can barely remember it – the bank or finance companies looked at interest as comprising two components.

The cost of money (*the amount banks had to, in effect, pay to rent money to lend) was only one component.  The other aspect was risk of loss which could occur when a loan went “bad.”

What happened, in the 1950s when the (large corporate national banking industry) was beating back usury laws was their story that losses (in things like auto loans) could exceed 12% which was a common usury cap.

And they got it through, but not without a lot of good people Labor and communities raising hell about it.  It was somewhere back in here that “checkbook government” evolved to power.

That’s because the banking industry was much more highly organized than the labor and community activists in the day.  The game was over before it even got started.

As soon at the usury laws were upended (part of the move involved moving credit card operations to states with no interest caps including (my memory may be wrong here) South Dakota.

As soon as the caps were gone, up went the rates.  Not because of the cost of money (although it was already going up toward the long wave economic cycle 1980 interest rate peak) but because banks no longer sent a local “vice president” out to repo cars.  Taking back became and industry (and a very expensive one) which involved impound lots, repo men, lawyers, and processors of one sort of another.

And that’s how banks slid into their current role of screwing the Middle Class.

Elaine’s Pick

If you haven’t see it yet, Elaine watched former Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich who came out with a documentary called “Inequality for All”  and you can rent it, or buy it via the documentary’s website over here:  http://inequalityforall.com/

The Bill Moyers interview on point opens with Reich asking a very obvious question:

“How do you constrain capitalism from doing stupid things that are not in the public interest?”

Social media uprisings are happening all over the world.  It’s a trend and what’s going on beneath the surface is the “new masters” are fomenting revolutions in orders to seize power through electronic and propaganda means.

I’m not talking about Ukraine.  I’m talking about the places that have gone down that road (with varying success already) and those which are following this year.

Syria didn’t work out for the social revolutionaries, but Egypt did – sort of.  And so did Libya.  Places like Saudi Arabia are scared crapless by the trend.

And this week voting will wrap up in Venice, which is trying to leave Italy.  Catalonia is trying to leave Spain, and the Flemish nationalists would like to depart the belly of the beast Belgium (where the EU is headquartered).

So the Big Ponder for you this weekend is the Big Question: 

Since the Middle Class here is being screwed over, just like elsewhere, what are we to do about it?

The Millenials have one answer:  Minimalism.  Don’t spend till you make.  And that’s a message that has been delivered to school students by the likes of Warren Buffett.

Governments have different answers.  Turkey this morning tried to turn off Twitter because the country’s government fears (and rightly so) the possibility of socialrev.

Points Where Due

My friend G.A. Stewart gets a nod this morning, now that Russia is turning the G-8 into the G-7.

Stewart, who’s website The Age of Desolation ties up loose ends of Nostradamus quatrains sent me a friendly “Told you so…”:

Okay Doom and Gloomers, Conspiracy Theorists, and Prophecy Neophytes, still waiting for those predictions from Remote Viewers to come around: Solar Kill Shots, Space Goo, or Global Coastal Events? Who’s your Daddy?

Revelation 17:11
And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven and goeth into perdition.

…The Second Son is the Eastern Orthodox Church and a reference in particular to Russia. As a member of the Group of Eight Nations, Russia’s cooperation with the former Group of Seven Nations may be tenuous.
…Both Nostradamus and the The Holy Bible suggest that the Group of Eight Nations will turn against one of their own.

And off on the margins, all of us who look at futuring issues are wondering if the MH370 flight is an accident or whether it somehow ties in to all of what’s coming apart…

Correction:

These are  rare, but I do make mistakes now and then: 

In my CoastToCoast interview this week, I incorrectly recalled Bill Gates family as being involved in the clean up of Lake Washington in Seattle…That was incorrect (a function of bad recall on my part…) It was Jim Ellis, not Gates Sr, although he was a key member of the downtown Seattle business groups that supported METRO’s clean-up..  It was Jim Ellis championed Seattle’s Forward Thrust campaign.

My memory is around here somewhere… I forget where I put it, though…

Friday at the WoWW

The World of Woo-Woo (WoWW) just never stops.  And there’s no better way to wrap up the week with another one of those encounters with the “strange”.

George: Read your column daily, except Wednesday of course, and I like the woww segment. Here’s a little from personal experience, well almost:

My brother and I were both deputies in a small Northern Calif town, very diverse population base. One family living there were “Arkie’s” to the max, I mean Arkansas hill people, having moved from the hills to the bright lights of our big city. Shortly after arriving, they moved into a clapboard shack that had originally been living quarters for some of the less desirable laborers(Italians, Mexicans, etc) that were employed by the towns lumber mill.

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Last week, we talked briefly about whether banking should be considered a regulated public utility, like water, sewer, and power companies, or whether we should continue under the delusion that “for profit” banking is the only model that works.

This is, of course, heresy, but we don’t mind thinking the unthinkable now and then.

Not only are there some fine examples of State banking, as in North Dakota, but there’s a groundswell beginning in Vermont as well.

Why?  Well, punitive charges, especially against the poor, are the obvious reason.

I happen to have two credit card accounts, both with no annual fee, but they both have wildly different interest rates.  It doesn’t bother me, since if I can’t just transfer and zero the card daily, we do without.  Simple budgeting and I never let the banks set its teeth in our wallets.

But just to show you how the two cards (from the same bank) work, one has a monthly rate of 6.9% and a cash advance rate of 19.24 %.  The other has a 12.99% monthly and a 24.99% cash advance rate and both have a jaw-dropping usurious 29,99% rate if payments are late.  I haven’t paid a dime in interest charges (and never venalities) in years.

The cheaper card doesn’t offer “points” while the more expensive one (if I was dumb enough not to pay on time) does.  It’s more like giving a Band-Aid to people kicked when down.

But many people are not so lucky and so our first question of the morning is whether banks are really serving the public need, interest, and concern, when they kick people who couldn’t afford a payment with a 30% penalty.

I’ve been around enough banksters to know that they have costs…sure, they do.  But is it the right thing to do?

So now we get to the “revolutionary” thinking stuff.  An email from a reader by the name of Michael up in the Pacific Northwest:

Greetings George,

Several years ago in a post, you alluded to an effort in the Washington State legislature to limit credit card interest rates for Washington residents. You mentioned that the effort was scuttled.  I am considering starting a Washington state ballot initiative to bring that about, and doing so in a manner that might serve as a model for other states.

In proceeding upon this, of course I am doing research.  Learning more about what transpired in Washington would be helpful. Would you be willing to share more about that by email or a phone conversation?

Back in the “old days”  Washington state (and lots of others) had usury laws on the books.

Thanks to a weird tweak in the War On Terror, to even bring up fighting usury  is framed as taking up with Sharia banking…which it’s not.  And even the most ardent supporter of kicking people when they are down (with 30% penalty rates) does seem to run counter to Biblical accounts of running money-changers out of the temple.

One of the champions (think 40-years ago) was the Washington State Labor Council and their late president Joe Davis.  The University of Washington has old documents going back into the late 1950’s available to researchers.

What we eventually come around to is this:  When the banks are borrowing at under one percent, shouldn’t there be a cap on credit card debt that might read something like:

• Interest on monthly purchases:  Fed Discount Rate Plus 5%
• Penalties:  Fed Discount Rate plus 7%

That would be a fine start I would think, but bankers will howl and run around as though a rapist is on the loose when such ideas come up.

And so we get the second choice out, which is a State bank, which would operate as a cooperative (on behalf of its members) very much like a good credit union.  In Washington, I have friends and family that are very happy with Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU) and a handful of community banks that owe their first allegiances to local customers, not a board of directors with phat salaries.  As it should be.

So thanks for the great question…and if would be a grand thing to see:  Have consumers march the banks out on the plank and give them a choice:  Reasonable fees with more due process and fees that should be a third of what they are now.  OR the choice is the plank – which is a State Bank with proper margins the good of the people – not the banker class – at heart.

Practical Thinking

One of the points that I made on my CoastToCoastAM appearance with George Noory last night was that people spend a huge amount of thing working on things that have no pay-off for them.

In other words, if you put 24-hours a day into Facebook, you may end up with more ‘Likes’ than you can shake a stick at, but can you really make money doing it?  I mean, without owning Facebook?  Ha!

And so it’s a delight to preach the gospel of “control your own inputs and control your own life…”

It’s also fun to get emails from people like reader Dan who obviously is doing just that…

Hi George.

I appreciate your expando-planet theory that links large earthquakes to solar activity but there are a few nuances that still puzzle me.  One is that I have noticed an uptick in strong earthquakes right after magnetic filaments collapse on the sun.  I only noticed this relatively recently and magnetic filament collapses are not that common so more data is certainly needed but this is something I am keeping an eye on.  As it happens, if you go over to www.spaceweather.com today you will find that there are two huge magnetic filaments facing Earth right now.  Hmmm…

The other thing I wanted to write about is in response to your peoplenomics article today where you point out how the western MSM is using language to distort the reality of what is going on.  It is completely true and I noticed it prior to the Ukraine situation – during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, actually.  Is that then that I started to detect an anti-Russian tone from many of the reporters at the games.  I recall watching with my wife and even commenting to her how it feels like we are being trained to hate Russia again and something must be in the works.  Sure, that could have just been an anti-Russian sentiment in response to the anti-Gay stance Russia was holding.  Or maybe that was all the ‘plan’?

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With Ukraine/Crimea on a rolling boil on the back burner this morning, we can mix our oatmeal with a healthy helping of low calorie deflation, says the monthly update on consumer prices just out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, though they somehow overlooked the oatmeal reference:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.1 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.1 percent before seasonal adjustment. An increase in the food index accounted for more than half of the all items increase in February.

The food index rose 0.4 percent in February, driven by a 0.5 percent increase in the index for food at home, with four of the six major grocery store food group indexes increasing.

The energy index declined, with a decrease in the gasoline index more than offsetting sharp increases in the fuel oil and natural gas indexes. The index for all items less food and energy also rose 0.1 percent in February.

An increase of 0.2 percent in the shelter index was the major contributor to the rise, but the indexes for medical care, airline fares, personal care, recreation, and new vehicles also increased. In contrast, the indexes for household furnishings and operations, apparel, used cars and trucks, and tobacco all declined in February.

The all items index increased 1.1 percent over the last 12 months; this compares to increases of 1.5 percent in December and 1.6 percent in January.

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A super-hot emotional topic this morning:  As expected, my note (in the Monday news section) about the dog mauling case in Arizona received a lot of email from dog owners, anxious to defend the pooch.  Several were quite good and some fine issues are raised.  This one is among the best:

Just a quick note about your article on the face chewing dog.

To start off with let me say that I am no fan of pitbulls.  The breed was bred for only one thing – to kill other pitbulls (or other breeds unlucky enough to fight them) in the fighting ring.  Unnatural, unacceptable and totally uncalled for.

It defies explanation as to how this breed of dog, vicious as they are, has become so iconic in our society.  Nary a weekend goes by that I don’t see someone selling pitbull puppies on a corner or across from Walmart.

I firmly believe that the breed should be erased from the canine race.

Having said that, the story you are referring to runs a little deeper than what you see on the surface.  You were out here in Arizona not long ago so I’m sure you’ve had the opportunity to hear the local news take on this story.

If not, here’s a quick synopsis.

The boy that was mauled has special needs.  Not sure what those special needs are.  News didn’t say and it’s really none of my business anyways.  But this is a factor in all of this.

The boy’s mother was at work when the mauling occured.  He was being watched by a relative who let him get out of their sight.  The boy got into the neighbor’s yard where the animal Mickey lives.  Not only was the young boy in the wrong place, but then he picked up the dog’s bone.

Have you ever owned dogs?  I have for most of my life.  My experience is that when a stranger enters into the dog’s territory even mild mannered breeds can become quite agressive.

Then take something that belongs to them?  Holy batsh**, Batman! 

So the young boy got away from the babysitter, entered into the yard where the pitbull lives and took the dog’s bone after which the dog goes psycho on the boy ripping his face off.

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