Psychological Release and Pending Markets

You know what’s interesting…to me, anyway?  The idea that here we are in either a “running (iv) or an ending rising diagonal in the markets and shooters are popping up.  First the one at LAX and now one at the shopping mall in New Jersey.

This latest (suspected “relief of emotional tensions”) event involved a shooter finding 6 or 7 shots inside a mall about 9:20 last night firing shots, but no one was injured/hit.  The purported perp’s body was found several hours later…but again it was a 20-year old male which stories like this one, mention he had a history of of drug abuse.

This will be about the umpteenth time I’ve mentioned “blow of mechanism” for social tensions…damn strange topic to pick on for an ostensibly reasonable (somewhat, anyway) economic-oriented website…

Not only is it election day in New Jersey, but markets are in an area where we would expect to see a break in one direction or the other.  So we ask (innocently, I assure you) is this all entirely coincidental?

Markets: Noise Trading?

No accounting for why the market is looking to open down 50, or so, on the Dow in the early going.  There is some softness in Europe and Japanese futures were weak over here when I looked earlier.

Factory orders were “up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $8.1 billion or 1.7 percent to $490.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.1
percent August decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.2 percent.”

Now, if that was all sell-through, fine, but look at this:

Inventories of manufactured durable goods in
September, up five of the last six months, increased $3.1
billion or 0.8 percent to $382.3 billion, revised from the
previously published 0.9 percent increase.

So we sit back, scratch the head-top solar panel and wonder how much of the gain is real (increased unit volumes) versus how much is price hikes coming down the pike?

Leaving Colorado

While the play-by-play of the New Jersey and Virginia voting is OccupyingDistractifyingNews, we figure there’s more to be learned of the general public mood by studying the report that 11 counties in  Colorado may secede from the state and form their own, 51st state.

Since Texas has provisions (if I recall right) to break into multiple states at some point in the future,  it might be a pretty interesting trend-setter to watch.  Our part of the state here (east Texas oil country) and over in the Permian Basin, why just our oil-depletion taxes could buy everyone happiness…

Oh, Texans would have more sway in the Senate this way, too.

Der Purger in Chief?

Another top military leader is out, says a report over here, which adds to the body count of nine generals and flag officers bounced by the house-cleaning administration.

All of which could be consider more, or less, routine except we have been reading this  headline snagged by reader Madison Avenue Mike:  “‘I’m really good at killing people’: New book claims President Obama joked to aides about using drone strikes.”

All that’s missing is the jackboots, but the modern analog to these is the ubiquitous SWAT uniforms, but that may not be apparent until future generations come along.  Who needs brown shirts when black with the word “tactical” added cam garner the same price bumps?  All about business models, right?

And  related – in some of the most seriously back-asswards hype-ology to complete the public discombobulation – don’t miss kneeler/dealer David Cameron blaming Edward Snowden’s revelations for “eroding fundamental rights and freedoms” in the unemployed kingdom.

WTF, Dave?  That’s like telling a traffic cop that his radar made you drive too fast. 

Is it something in the water our leaders drink? (Can I vote, yet?)

Ginkgo Time for Obama?

Not to beat up on a fellow in mid-purge, mid-insurance roll-out, mid-Middle East mess, mid-climate change dealy, but has el Jefe flipped  because (according to this report) “Obama denies ‘you can keep it’ video taped promises…”

I mean if it was just once, but OMG 29-times

Dude…I take Huperzine and Gingko Biloba to cut back on this kinda thing happ’nin..know what I’m saying?

More after this…

Climate Police/Land Grabs?

I assume you heard about last weekend’s “crash course” to combat climate change?  Yep, training programs to move ahead with the “climate change” cum land grab and Agenda 21, if I am reading this right.

Especially now that the White House has rolled out it’s climate task force.  And along the way, be sure to read the underlying Executive Order on point.

All of which would be fine, except for the one small tiny, itsy-bitsy problem.  Global warming is over, at least for another 15-20 years and the reason is simple:  The Sun which has been through a period of very high sunspot activity is now in chill-down…

The implications of this are pretty simple:

Government seems in a big hurry to “get ‘em while they’re hot” and as part of that will be implementing another socialist-style land grab to try and force people off of privately—owned land.

By doing this, government makes people (humans, free unregistered free-thinkers, in particular) ever more dependent on what? 

You got it!  Corporations which are claiming patent rights to life and are renting the very life God put on earth (by accident or design, we can argue that nit) by claiming that they have a proprietary mix of jellyfish and wheat which does this or that. 

Of course this who area is wildly profitable – and following the health-insurance industry’s using the “Government for Corporate Enforcement of Forced Consumption” model, we should be seriously suspect when we read about genetic pollution.  So file this under GMO rants, but trust me when I tell you, there’s an agenda in play.

While the Washington Post warns about the “:Congress turns a blind eye to global warming” we note that a new study says we may be in “chill mode” for 20 years.

But look at the bright side: Al Gore, (who invented the internet, right?)  will continue to be able to command incredible speaking fees and the Agenda 21 backers have to be licking their chops at the prospect of kicking America’s small farmers off the King’s land.

As it reads in the Book of Carlin:  “It’s all bullshit and it’s all bad for you.” 

If government was serious about pollution, cars would weigh 1/2 what they do, mileage would be 60 MPH +.   We’ll all have 100 HP engines, tops.  And we’d learn that dying in auto accidents is when happens when people don’t pay attention.  Instead, whole industries have been built on safety gear.    Where’s the damn ViceGrips?  More pinches than I can count in this area…

Oh, you didn’t notice?  Corporate agendas are in play here.  And with all the hoopla, since solar cooling is obvious in the data now, government will do the usual grab and grandstand and claim success.

For the Sun’s behavior.

Carbon credits? Pollution credits?   It’s the same thing as wife-beating credits when you think about it:  It’s only a vehicle for the genuinely  corrupt to cash in on society’s ill-thought bad behaviors.  Ain’t that special?

Hell, I’ve been around damn near 65 years and people are working longer and harder today than ever…and jobs are drying up, to boot.  So what exactly is all this “progress” that we’ve built?  Sure and shit ain’t time off, now, is it?

Hand me my blood pressure monitor, would you? 

On my reading list is Rupert Darwall’s The Age of Global Warming: A History (Kindle) which is $10 bucks or the hardcover which is $32 and change. Gee, that shouldn’t be a tough decision, should it?

North Korea’s EMP Plans

From our resident war-gamer who eyes such developments with some suspicion…

Another ‘genie’ slipping out of the bottle.   

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/n-korea-developing-electromagnetic-pulse-weapons-135357782.html

Per U.S. nuclear policy, a high altitude EMP attack is treated the same as a nuclear first strike attack.  Things would “go ugly early.”

Jim Woolsey, CIA director for Bill Clinton, had some interesting observations here:

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/07/30/jim-woolsey-electromagnetic-pulse-emp-is-existential-threat-to-america/

Among some of the information Woolsey divulged, this snippet is an attention grabber:

“On December 2012, Cooper said, North Korea used its so-called Space Launch Vehicle like a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System – a secret weapon invented by the Russians during the Cold War to deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the south polar region, bypassing U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning radars (BMEWs) and missile defenses.  Cooper noted that the U.S. has no BMEWs radars or missile interceptors facing south.  North Korea apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States”.

As far as possible individual actions aside from standard disaster prepping, two words of advice . .

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Coping: Radar Rings and Reality Jumps?

I had a really weird experience Monday mid-morning…and it certain has raised some interesting questions for Ures truly.  Here’s what happened:

About 10 AM, or thereabouts, I decided to call someone I know up in the Pacific Northwest.  I absent-mindedly dialed and got….the wrong number.  But not just any wrong number…wrong number of some else I know.  Prehensile brain apparently has an auto-dialer in it.

So I quickly apologized – “Wrong number, sorry…” and that was that.

Until, that is, I  went back to idly looking at the weather radar at the arriving rain band thanks to the WeatherUnderground website.

There!  Do you see it?  One of those (damn strange) radar glitches…

Stand by for the weird part.  The radar snips on WUnderground go off like clockwork.  Every five minutes. 

Except that after this “ray” appeared, and our place is right above the white cross-hairs indicating Palestine, TX, the updates suddenly stopped for the next 40-minutes.  Hmmm…

Well, now, we had something on our hands that needs to be placed somewhere along the mind’s [coincidence/ponder/mystery] continuum for later processing.  And Ures truly, man of science and all, doesn’t like uncategorized data showing up.  Especially when temporally coincident to me making a “mindless dial” which I rarely do, but had just done.  Which was very strange, indeed.

Things got even murkier when I visited http://radaranomalies.com/ and found that two leading researchers in the field died a few years back, in 2006 and 2008.  Hmmm…coincidence?

Remember our recent discussions about how the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics works?

I’d love to simply believe the explanations found over on the MetaBunk.org website, but the explanation of the spike lining up with another radar doesn’t feel useful given the high number of occurrences of these things.

What IF there are certain kinds of “join error” symptoms which are just blithely passed off as “systems bugs?”  Is there some chance that we could find a telltale to how Universe really works?  And speaking of which CERN has sure been quiet lately…but they’re trying to scare up money (so welcome to the club!).

Oh, and the updating stopping for 40 minutes, either.  Yeah, I know – pure coincidence, right?

Since the NEXTRAD radar for the area is located at (airport identifier) KFWS (Fort Worth/Spinks) and since we have all kinds of mapping capability, I did a little extension and it didn’t seem to line up on anything in particular down to the southeast of the airport.

Are there reasonable possibilities?  Oh, sure, you bet.  For example, it could have been (rare) ducted propagation at the radar’s frequency, perhaps a slight “bank shot” to borrow a pool playing term, off the front which was moving through the area.

Still, with the president due to be in the Dallas area on Wednesday afternoon, it just struck me as a bit odd and thought I’d mention it.

Getting the Lead Out

Several comments on the mention in Monday’s column about the lead smelter closures., 

First came a phone call from my last liberal friend who pointed out that although the closure of said smelter was done during president Obama’s term, the actual EPA orders were cut under what he referred to as “those famous gun-grabbers Bush & Cheney…”

Then reader Bill up in Big Sky country sent this:

Here in East Helena Montana there used to be a lead smelter. closed it, sold it to a Mexican outfit and then they went banko. Left a bit of a mess and no more lead and other minerals being smelted. Now someone is looking into processing the left overs to reclaim lead…..maybe going to Peru?

I’m not sure, but maybe this is all part of some ingenious plan to save a little bit of resources for America which we might find useful when the rest of the world consumes itself back into a dark age…

In the meantime, however, reader David connects the dots this way:

Hi; This lead thing. Won’t it effect the price of car/truck, wheel chair, scooter, etc. batteries ?  Didn’t I hear your old truck crank a little slower this morning ?

And since he did ask, the truck runs fine, except for the transmission and that’ll be a topic for future discussions.  I’m being mindful of my blood pressure for now.  Let’s just say that I’m not particularly keen on Dodge transmissions from the early 2000’s era….

National Dream Center

Yes, our www.nationaldreamcenter.com website is still up – however, not too many people go there to post dreams lately…interest in “dream work” seems to have fallen off a bit.  Which is interesting, figured reader Marc, since there’s been a major fundraising success noted by SHADOW: Community of Dreamers over at KickStarter.com here, to build a dream logging app

Tuesday at the WuJo

Yes, we are still getting plenty of reader reports of “time going wrong” from readers…like this one:

Hi George,

Here’s a “time-ly” event that crossed my path one week ago:

Friday Oct 25 was the birthday of my dear departed mom. Decided to celebrate/honor “mom’s day” by traveling to the hometown to visit her sister, who recently moved to assisted living.

My aunt’s recently-vacated house is where I, and her son, take turns staying on our respective trips to the hometown.

I arrived there about 3:30 pm after an uncharacteristically long drive.

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Waiting on Data

Nothing like a slightly off-kilter Monday (Daylight hangover, more in our Coping section) to start things out on one foot, or the other. 

As usual, we see the latest reports about how sticker shock is hitting people all over the place on Obamacare.  And the Wall St. Journal this morning has a fine read about how the new law’s lies about keeping your own doctor are rolling through society.

But wait!  What, exactly, is it about members of congress and the president lying that is so surprising?  Or, were they not lying…just misinformed?

Or, is the agenda in plain site when CBS quotes “Obama: ‘I want to put the Fear of God in all of you.”

We may see some answers on Wednesday morning when the results of the Virginia governor’s race results clarify…but for now, it looks like a real ballot box test for Obamacare.

So that’s one data point to look forward to.

I mean besides the site being offline and users getting other people’s eligibility letters.

The rest of the week’s data is more predictable:  We get a factory orders report this morning, ISM services data tomorrow, blah, blah, Leading Indicators Wednesday. 

Blah, blah, Challenger job cuts Thursday along with another whack at GDP which means we can look forward to decrypting another one of the most self-referential percentage clusters on the planet.

And then Friday we get to see what unemployment is, but since that figure doesn’t count so many people who are out of benefits, we can look at percentage of labor in the workforce.

Of course, being well-schooled in matters economic, we already know where that has been heading in recent years.

What is more telling is when we look at the recent print rate from the Fed, we notice that the three months annualized rate of M1 printing is now running 8.4% and the three-month M2 annualizes out to  8.2%

So for the rest of the week (as long as a lid’s on the Middle East for a few days) why not just kick back and enjoy the illusion some more?

That’s how Wall St. is reading it with the futures up 48 on the Dow and up 6 on the S&P:  Oil is still going down, too…down to $94.19 when I looked earlier. 

Deflation afoot, employment participation cratering and printing like a house on fire? At an earlier time in my life I would have called such discontinuities mindless.  But now, I have another word for them:

Monday.

More After This…

Middle East:  Made It Through the Weekend

I wasn’t the only one looking at the calendar, moon phases, and inspecting red lines in the sand, as last weekend wound up.  Apparently, the Obama administration was looking at the same problem and so, as a stalling tactic, we read this morning how SecState John Kerry is off to Israel.

It’s a kind of article of faith that countries don’t go starting wars with an American Big Cheese coming to visit.  Ostensibly, the trip is to present a WTF? to the Israeli government over plans to add 3,500 more homes in occupied areas.

Ore, if you’re Chinese, it’s to ask Jerusalem how it is they figure to keep building in disputed territories and still have a ghost’s change in hell of keeping the Palestinian peace process going.

What we need to ponder now is how long Kerry can stay in Israel after he arrives tomorrow.  And as our resident war-gamer notes:

The last line of this piece, quoting Bolton, sums up my sentiments rather nicely.  (US military support of an Iran strike isn’t going to happen.)

First Leon Panetta, now Bolton think the Iran-Israel war-timer is rapidly running down to zero! The leaks remain eerily consistent across otherwise divided party lines.

Oh, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard voted to keep “Death to America” as their official slogan. I think it’s rather nice that the U.S. can still bring people together.

Better living through weaponry, that’s the way the death industries work.  Iran is not too dumb to realize that a good internal defense against change to is to have a huge external enemy, and we are, at some level, trying not to be one of those.  But that’s not how it plays in carpet country fellow infidels.

Supreme Leader:  US Politician threatening to nuke Iran should receive slap in mouth.”

Oh, and from our news analyst fellow up in Winnipeg:

Perhaps you are aware of recent commotions near the Hindu holy centre of Tirupati, India, as a new Islamic womens’ college shrouded in mystery readies for business.

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Coping: With “National Go to Work Early” Day

As we mentioned to Peoplenomics subscribers, Elaine and I tried out of of those “Slow TV shows” and it was wonderful.  For one thing, it was quiet, for another – no commercials.  Just the kind of thing needed to help us adjust to getting up an hour later, going to bed an hour later…

A lot of research has been done on circadian rhythms and I was not exactly surprised this morning to awaken at the same old time, which is now being mislabeled  as 3 AM. Not that I’m really griping too loudly, since part of its my own fault: Of all the clocks around here, I don’t suppose you’d care to guess which one (on whose side of the bed?) I forgot to set?  Wasn’t self-adjusting…

Since conspiracy theories are popular, and because I haven’t run across a c9nspiracy based on the idea that Daylight Savings Time is a plot to prematurely kill people (thus keeping down the “useless eater” count), I looked through the Wikipedia entry for some support.  Check these snips out:

“Health problems can result from a disturbance to the circadian rhythm. These include seasonal affective disorder (SAD), delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) and other circadian rhythm disorders.[56] Circadian rhythms also play a part in the reticular activating system, which is crucial for maintaining a state of consciousness. In addition, a reversal in the sleep–wake cycle may be a sign or complication of uremia,[57] azotemia or acute renal failure.

Studies have also shown that light has a direct effect on human health because of the way it influences the circadian rhythms.[58][59][60][61]

Is there a link between increases in obesity and diabetes down at some low (barely measurable) level?

Shift-work or chronic jet-lag have profound consequences on circadian and metabolic events in our body. Animals that are forced to eat during their resting period show increased body mass and altered expression of clock and metabolic genes.[62] In humans, shift-work which favors irregular eating times, is associated with altered insulin sensitivity and higher body mass. Shift-work also leads to increased metabolic risks for cardio-metabolic syndrome, hypertension, inflammation.[63] It is thus further assumed that this is not only what we eat but when we eat that matters.

And do disruptions in circadian rhythms have other adverse fallout – like airliner crashes?

“Due to the work nature of airline pilots, who often traverse multiple timezones and regions of sunlight and darkness in one day, and spend many hours awake both day and night, they are often unable to maintain sleep patterns that correspond to the natural human circadian rhythm; this situation can easily lead to fatigue. The NTSB cites this situation as a contributing factor to many accidents[68] and has conducted multiple research studies in order to find methods of combating fatigue in pilots.[69][70]

Can people adjust?  Sure, and we’re doing that now….sort of.  But it seems to me that if there’s all this obvious negative impact from circadian disruptions, why mess around with it at all?

Most people don’t realize how many versions of “time” there area.  But you’ve got a circadian clock inside you, you have “royal time” all based off Greenwich, local time (regular and daylight) to go with that UTC and Elaine has a hell of a time remembering the proper offset for the boys in Arizona.  And even there, the Navajos observe it, while the intruders down in the Valley do not.  Go figure.

Also sharing this common sense are people in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands plus the US Virgins.

And a reader of ours in Indiana sent this…

My little family lives in the southern most tip, Evansville, IN.  My husband’s family all reside in Pike County, specifically in the Winslow area.  I hate this change so damned much because it screws with my ability to meet obligations concerning them on time.  Half the time up around there, I don’t know if some of those little towns are on the change or not.  If you look close on a map, you’ll see my area is right around that damned border and not all communities are on it (if they can help it!).  It’s my personal belief that when this damned day comes, it should be referred to Daylight Menopausal Time since it gets people pissed off, hot and cold, and makes a general mess of their state of living, for a short time at least.

Although you’re have to deal with a bunch of popups, or login with a FB account, the National Geographic seems to be on this bandwagon too with an article here which questions this whole time-changing drill.

Somewhere in the dark halls of Washington, there’s got to be a group of psychologists who are laughing there asses off at the joke played on us.  I am imagine their glee…

“I’m not sure ‘Mericans could be made much dumber…we made up “time” for them, pulled on over in the Kennedy case, they believe the moon story, think contaminated vaccines are good for them, and we steal 3.24% of their wealth year-after-year by just printing up more money.  And now we’ve gone just CRAZY with that and they STILL don’t get it, ROFL. 

Yessir, they believe just damn near anything…Hey!  I have it…let’s run another mixed citizenship guy for president in 2016, shall we?”  [ROFL again]

And somewhere in this [once great] Land of Ours, some hapless sonovabitch  (or daughter, for that matter) is going to arrive at work early.  Which ought to set off peels of laughter among the insiders who tell us what to believe, and what not. 

Their joy should peak around sidereal noon.

Monday at the WuJo

Further to our recent chats about how macro-time is getting a bit slippery lately:  Try this reader report on for size…

, I go out for a run every day at lunch when time allots and calendar is clear of meetings. I go with one of my dogs who loves to run too. I usually go for a quick two miler. AS I get out of my front door the mailman was putting mail in my mailbox.

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Peoplenomics: To Bug Out, or Not to Bug Out?

That is the question this morning. When I first wrote UrbanSurvival back in 1996/1997, one thing led to another, and by 2001 what was then the “Inside Report” series was covering all kinds of things “preppy.” This included bug-out bags, bug-out plans, where to get military manuals on CD (a novelty back when) and lots of discussion about which parts of the country would be “good” to survive in, and which would be “bad.” Although it has been a topic hugely imitated by (sleazy marketer/imitators (Google “UrbanSurvival” sometime and find any that have been around as long, lol) we do need to keep our contingency plans tuned-up, so we set off down that road this weekend, having just tasted a very bitter week of bug-out vehicle disaster. But first, the morning bean and some leftovers, starting perhaps with…

Nostracodeus Updated

For those following our watching of word-frequency analysis over at www.nostracodeus.com, there’s a fresh update on how war-like words are popping up. Don’t forget to click on the images to see the enlarged screen captures.. We note that in the summary form, references to Israel have dropped from #3 in nouns Thursday to “disappeared” today.

Expect the Trick, Where’s the Damn Treat?

“So let us stop talking falsely now, the hour’s getting late…” 

~Bob Dylan reprised by Jimi Hendrix

If you’re looking for a weekend to really worry about the world “blowing up and going to hell” this would be the one you’d have to pick for the next several months.  Not only are there significant downsides to it, there’s a marvelous “market set-up” and important strategic reasons to be concerned.

The high-level view was summed up by a reader named Bill who lives up in the Northeast:

Two small points bear observation at this late hour:

1)  This weekend is the dark of the moon.  Optimum time for mil-ops for high-tech nations that own the night.

2)  Israel hit two missile “bases” in Syria earlier Thursday, meaning there will be a lot of hollering and general bellicosity today. (Thursday)  Maybe some triggering blow-back…

It’s really only a question of when, and not if…

This pessimistic outlook was echoed by our resident war-gamer who is calling it much the same way:

Could this be a prep clearing an air corridor to Iran in the process of short circuiting the transfer of deadly SAMS to Hezbollah? Stay tuned as the new moon approaches.

Why else would Obama admin officials leak news of these strikes to the media? I’m open to alternatives, but I cannot think of any decent ones. This targeted media leak is undoubtedly intended to muddle Israel’s potential attack plans. But Israel will surely stand alone, if necessary.

On top of this rather disconcerting Middle Eastern escalation, CBS is reporting they have footage of Iranian troops in combat in Syria.

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Coping: Friday at the WuJo — Preppers as Precogs

The more I study the reports of people’s WuJo events, the more they seem to be consistent with multiple Universes winding back and forth across each other’s path, as was described in the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum Mechanics.

While the Wikipedia entry picture of a “split” in the Multiverse illustrates one portion of how the MWI divides itself, we need to “mirror” it to show how after an “excursion” the MWI comes back to a different kind of itself.

Unfortunately, along the way, many “little things” can go wrong (Universe is a BIG place, after all) such that the comings and goings are subject to various “join errors” as tiny flaws which may (or may not) be noted by passengers of “current reality”.

You’ll see that the symbols on the “frames” of reality are related to the Schrödinger’s cat experiment, which we’ll assume you’ve read, but if not, it’s over here and is suggested before continuing.

With that as a bit of mental foreplay, we can evolve what may (perhaps) be a workable model of how the MWI changes over time and thus, is prone to tiny errors and inconsistencies:

So, How Many Axes?

In the above illustration, we can see a single-axis model of the MWI and how it plays out.  You might think of it as the classical Western/Christian/Judeo Good versus Evil, or, it may be vastly more complicated than that.

However, since the join errors  seem to be increasing in obviousness and frequency, we might consider that a MASSIVE EVENT/SHIFT is coming down the road towards us.  In fact, maybe this weekend, the Israelis really do launch an attack that wipes out their intended target but leads to a regional nuclear conflict which has blow back over many generations to come.

Part of an in-house note from G.A. Stewart of the Age of Desolation website is directly on point:

“I’ll tell you, I have this theory now about every time I turn my attention to the Dark Side by working on the site and doing an update, just bad stuff starts to happen. Do you guys see an uptick in bad WuJo as the bad Jinn dip into your lives as you follow through with your own work in exposing their plans?

So, yeah, it looks like the game is on this weekend. If it goes with Israel and Iran, expect it to get real bad very quickly.

Rearranging events on my timeline:
1) Israeli/NATO attack on Iran/Syria
2) Iran sinks 5th Fleet
3) 6th Fleet Holds its own with Russia
4) Nuclear event on the West Bank Balata al-Balad
5) Mass UFO Sightings Before or After the first Nuclear Event
6) Nuclear Event in Italy in early December that drives the Pope from the Vatican
7) Pope Francis captured in France by terrorists
8) Former-Pope Benedict XVI arranges the False Peace
Kindest Regards,”

Ah, but perhaps by simply becoming aware of the potential rip in events is enough to cause it NOT to happen, since these things may not be intended for humans to see directly, and yet we persist in trying.  Good on one side, bad Jinn on the other, and yes, this would fit with many of the world’s religious models, but each frames it differently, just as you can drive around a mountain and come up with unlimited numbers of panoramas which all tell exact truth and yet, paradoxical not entire truth.

So Back to Some Join Errors

If it seems like a fascination with the WuJo is out of place, I hope this explains why it is specifically NOT out of place and may be considered a simple, logical extension into how the future arrives, fought-over perhaps by forces of Good and Evil.  Where these, in turn, arise from, is a different problem, indeed. 

For now, the main thing in this WuJo work is to capture as many reported examples as we can solicit and see how they could all fit into a kind of mechanistic interpretation of something that’s infinitely bigger and more “squishy.”

Like this report from Linda S…

“George,

I have had 3 weird incidents with the oven in my stove. This is so strange I feel a bit crazy telling you about it. Only because  I have read similar things on your WUJO have I gathered my courage. This is the most recent incident. Here goes.

My oven does not cook evenly, so when I cook biscuits I put the timer on half the time required. Then I check them to be sure one group is not burning while the other group is raw. I warmed my oven to the required temperature setting, put the biscuits in and set the timer to 7 minutes, half the time required.

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About those Personal Income Numbers

Not Everyone will be talking about the BoSox this morning, and since we don’t care about sports much (other than the sports of job-keeping and face-feeding), we wanted to gloss over all that baseball talk and get right to the nitty-gritty just out from the Bureau of Economic Amazement…except that ain’t happening until a week from tomorrow.

What’s more, some economic reports, which people actually read in order to figure who’s telling which version of economic truth will still be delayed in December.  The BEA schedule is over here, if you’re interested, but it bring up an interesting economic point.

If you had a government which has, oh, 83% of its workers around, don’tcha think the delays are a little, oh, you know, freaking absurd?  At the present “recovery rate” we may see ripples of our near-encounter with economic reality blubbering out into 2014.

Since we already know government can’t roll out software on schedule, and since they’re taking so long to play catch-up (which would never has been permitted in private industry), what say we make it three for three?

How about government spying on Google and Yahoo and putting a nail in the coffin of the arguments that “terrorism” (quick!  bow down and prostrate yourself before Authority) made ‘em do it.  The EU is planning payback…and you know what they say about payback is a…what?

The US, I’m becoming quite embarrassed to say, as lost its ever-loving mind.  And like they say, fish rot from the head.

Meantime, what we know about employment is from the Labor Department weeklies:

In the week ending October 26, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 340,000, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 350,000. The 4-week moving average was 356,250, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 348,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2 percent for the week ending October 19, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending October 19 was 2,881,000, an increase of 31,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 2,850,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,878,750, a decrease of 10,000 from the preceding week’s revised average of 2,888,750.

And the waiting resumes around here for something we can sink our teeth into besides the typical month-end beat down on gold and silver, which ought to be along any old time.

Flooding in Central Texas (Updated)

We will update this morning’s outlook as the morning wears on toward our regular publishing time ( 8 AM’ish Central) but a few notes early on (4:30 AM ) since our part of Texas has some widespread power outages and momentous rains coming down.  6” in the past say here in the East Texas Outback.

Boy, did it ever rain overnight here.  We have now had 11-inches of rain since we got back from our travels last weekend and an amazing 10.5 inches of that fell overnight.

In fact, it’s starting to make the regional (overnight) news with stories like “Flash floods swamp cars, homes in Central Texas…”  Other reporting is available here.

Are there many economic stories to cover?  Well, yes…and no.

For one, the Social Security increase this year will be a lousy 1.5% and while this is going on, there’s a “bum’s rush” starting to try and convert the benefit basis to chained dollars, which would shrink benefits even further.

A little logic will show clearly what’s going on.

First, we assume that government would never raise a benefit without overwhelming public outage.  And even then – like bankster and Detroit bailouts – they simply hang up on the calls from back in the home district.

Secondly, they would never change something unless it would have some effect.

Which gets us to curtain #3:  It’s another screw-job in the wings.  Grab your ankles, they’ve gone death in Washington once again.

Oh, speaking of bailouts gone bad, Your Tax Dollars At Work lost $9.7 BILLION on the GM bailout?

It sure feels like having bailed Detroit, the screwing of Social Security beneficiaries is part of the plan to paper things over.  And no, 1.5% isn’t keeping up with the grocery bills, since hedonic adjustments to BLS numbers understate apples to apples grocer costs over time.

This an ultra-slow-motion screwing.  How slow?  Well, the late Senator Robert Byrd wrote about it in his “Bird’s Eye View” report back in May of 1978.

And things have only gotten more-so since. 35-years is a lot of slowly screwing the numbers around.  Unanswered is the question what the 1967 market basket survey would cost today with no adjustments – just item-for-item.

What Washington policymakers seem to forget, when they are trying to minimize the cost of Social Security, is that a) every dime that seniors make is spent somewhere, thus every dime given in Social Security is spent.  And b) everyone leaves life broke.

So the common sense of it is that by trying “to cheap” on Social Security, government is actually trying to put the brakes on a key segment of the economy.  Which is NOT how to end a recession, just thinking out loud.

Dow futures down 40 and gold down $7.80 at 4:37 AM…maybe someone else gets it?

More when it get some coffee…power’s still out… and…

45-minutes before the open, gold was down almost $15-bucks, and the Dow was about flat, but that sure smells of some taping painting, since the NASDAQ and S&P were down more.  A nickel on the side says down another 50 (or more) on the Dow today, but there’s no money on it. 

It’s just not a bad expectation in a country which seems to have lost its hustle, ability to put out hard work, oh, and lost its way at the same time.  Splendid!  Wucking funderful.

Constitution’s Going, Going, Gone…

…at least so the headlines keep hinting.  And about the only one to notice is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who is now being critical of Eric Holder;s DOJ for arguing that an international treaty can trump the Constitution!

I can hardly wait to hear how my central government apologist liberal friends defend this one. Might as well turn every local cop into a Fed and be done with it, eh?  That’s the track and that’s the push, near as I can see it.  (But then again, I’ve been up all night, so don’t mind me…)

More after this…

No Change from Fed

Not that it came as any surprise (NoDoz, please) but the Fed left rates unchanged yesterday.  And from the sound of this, it’ll continue being print-to-win for many months to come:

To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends and the economic recovery strengthens.

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Coping: With Thursday at the WuJo

The WuJo is a place not unlike the Twilight Zone, except, unlike Rod Serling’s fine capers, ours are real-life events reported by readers.  And what better way than this one from John M:

Hey George,

Last week I was celebrating my birthday by using my coupon for a free piece of cookie cake with drink purchase. I picked the piece with a vanilla frosting leaf with chocolate accents because I love vanilla and chocolate frosting and dislike the other colored frostings (they just taste different.)

So I get to my parents house and partake of my cookie cake after dinner. It was delicious as usual. Just as I had about 2 bites left my parents called me out to show me something on TV. So I put the cookie cake back on my plate and walk out.

When I sit down out there they start the show up and I go to finish my cookie cake and notice that my once delicious vanilla frosting had now become the not as good flavored yellow… just in the time it took me to walk out to see them.

They panicked a little when I mentioned this thinking something was wrong with it, however, being a long time reader of yours just figured I was the victim of some flux in space/time and now had a yellow frosted cookie cake. So I ate it and, other than the not quite as good yellow frosting, no other side effects.

Thanks for preparing me for such oddities in life,

John

He’s not the only one reporting oddities and inconsistencies in how Universe works.  We report them frequently – and if you have one of these oddities where things that shouldn’t take place in life actually do take place, by all means, send them along to george@ure.net and put the keyword WUJO somewhere in the title so they don’t get lost in the flood of emails…

Rammed and Ready

As mentioned in our 3 AM’ish (power and personal earthquake forecast post) my brother in law (Panama) wad some time Wednesday and so between us, it only took about 3-hours to get the old Dodge truck back and on the road again.  I have to say, it runs like a top, everything is just smooth as silk.  Quiet, the engine purrs, and I’m pleased.

But I’m not the only one sharing knowledge and insights on this “home vehicle repair” stuff.  LOTS of reader feedback so here’s a sampling:

You just crossed over that invisible demarcation line that separates the haves from the have nots.

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Rain Delay? And some Personal Wu

First off, if the report this morning is oddly timed (late), please don’t be alarmed. We have had more than 6-inches of rain in our rain gauge here in the East Texas Outback in the past 24-hours and a lightning show which has been going on for 12+ hours now. Frankly, it’s one of Ma Nature’s finer displays. The problem is that there is fairly large power outage, so our emergency power systems are what’s keeping us online for the moment. Not that they won’t continue doing their jobs, but the little matter of not having coffee until I fire up the BBQ and make some…well, THAT is the important stuff when I get up before three effing ayem.

If a Million Bucks Lands on Your Head…

I get a fair amount of reader email asking my opinion as to where I would personally invest a couple of hundred thousand (or more) should it fall out of the sky and land on me. Universally, these are accompanied by “We won’t you accountable because we realize that it’s just an investment opinion, but really, George, what would you do?” And then there’s the matter of my son. He’s working steady lately as an EMT and he’s “stacking cash” but he’s also got the “Old Man’s” conservative streak. So this morning we lift our heads up for the wild market, which, as of yesterday’s close, looked like it might really try for that run-up to Dow 20,000 and S&P 2,200.

The “Housing Candle” Brightens – a Lot

It’s been an article of economic faith that with any solid recovery, America ought to be seeing a major jump in home demand.  Not only should the housing prices see a 2.3% (or whatever price inflation is), but it should also seem to pressure to the update from a) all that quantitative easing, and then b) by all the Federal Reserve M2 printing festival which has bumped up M2 by 6.4% over the past year.

So, with this (unfortunately sobering) view, we flip over to this morning’s press release about the Case Shiller/S&P Housing Index which blew away just keeping up with inflation:

New York, October 29, 2013 – Data through August 2013, released today by S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, showed that the 10-City and 20-City Composites increased 12.8% year-over-year. Compared to July 2013, the annual growth rates accelerated for both Composites and 14 cities.
On a monthly basis, the 10-City and 20-City Composites gained 1.3% in August. Las Vegas led the cities with an increase of 2.9%, its highest since August 2004. Detroit and Los Angeles followed with gains of 2.0%.

The chart above depicts the annual returns of the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. In August 2013, the 10- and 20-City Composites posted annual increases of 12.8%.

“The 10-City and 20-City Composites posted a 12.8% annual growth rate,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Both Composites showed their highest annual increases since February 2006. All 20 cities reported positive year-over-year returns. Thirteen cities posted double-digit annual gains.

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