Simple Questions–Hard Answers

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Because there are so many moving pieces to the developing budget and debt ceiling story, I’m not going to focus on those in this morning’s report (except, to pretend I’m a play-by-play baseball announcer like my old friend Manning Slater did in real life, but another story for another time…) “It’s the bottom of the calendar, and the idiots are at bat…” is how I’d begin. Which is why CNN hires a foreigner to anchor, I suppose. So instead, something a little more hopeful:

Twilight of America: Kiss-Off Privacy

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Take me off your contact list, please.  The latest pisserlation (a revelation which causes you to get what?) is that the NSA – already seized by Gestapo-like management, is now ripping off your email address book contents, according to the Washington Post this morning.

What the article doesn’t get into, in much depth, is the why they’re doing it.

So here’s the deal, down and dirty:  The intel agencies (Stasi lites?) believe that they can build up a who profile on every single human being in America by bits and pieces without outright breaking the law.

You need to closely study the Wikipedia entry on “social mapping”

In social geography a social map is the cartographic, twodimensional representation of social institutions or processus projected on a plane. The first social maps date from the early 20th century. A recent example is the mapping of the residences of U.S. Facebook users and their social links [1].

In marketing a social map is a visualized analysis of a digital identity of a person, brand or company. A social map shows exactly where a digital identity is created, formed or discussed and sets each element in context and proportions.

These social map created an intense discussion about digital reputation and digital identities. For companies a so-called Corporate Social Map is still very new and an unusual methodology, but also very effective and meaningful.

Conspicuously missing is what it means to government and law enforcement.

File:Six degrees of separation.svgBasically, it takes guilt by association (an address book entry) and attempts to electronically morph it into probable cause.  

Since everyone on earth is connected to everyone else on earth, the wet dream here is to develop software that will ‘see through’ the six-degrees of separation’ problem and will turn everyone on a contact list into a suspect.

Of course, by weighting other contacts into the mix, we can see how it might, in theory, actually work.  But, the downfall is that the digital underbelly of everyone is exposed…except for the HMFICs who are running their own game.  Yes – the same guys who talk about –  but don’t deliver what?  TRANSPARENCY.

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Coping: With “Freedom” and Hells on Wheels

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Nothing like riding a motorcycle, especially with fall weather finally here.  The wind’s a bit cooler, no bugs slapping you in the face causing “rider’s welts” and the colors….  And so it’s again this backdrop we’re pleased to offer this first-hand ride report from a long-time reader…

Hey George,

Interesting weekend. Helped wish one of my heroes, the great (not late) Sonny Barger a Happy 75th Birthday by riding 150 miles or so in the Hells Angels (no apostrophe, of course) poker run for the occasion. My second year doing the ride on my 2011 Harley Fat Bob, and this year, it was almost overrun by law enforcement, who don’t seem to know the difference between a gaggle trouble-making metric riders, like the idiots in New York (no Harleys in that crowd) and a pack of Americans riding American-made iron. 

They pulled a few of us over, shadowed the run with at least a dozen marked and unmarked SUVs and took enough pictures to keep Walgreens’ photo department busy for a week, printing them all up. I fully expect to have finally earned my “Known Associate” patch.

What I guess they don’t understand, is that if you see a bunch of American made Harley-Davidson, Victory or Indian scoots surrounding an SUV, one of two things is going on. Either:

A – They are changing a tire or otherwise helping the motorist

B – The SUV is the target of an Amber Alert

But then, come to think of it, with all the ex-military, gun owning (and carrying, like myself) and Christian clubs in attendance, that means a lot of potential terrorists as labeled by the current administration. Maybe they were right to be there!

Sonny Barger’s book “Freedom: Credos from the Road ” is unapologetically conservative and libertarian. Maybe another reason to put him away, again!

Tell you what, though, I love being part of a group where it’s almost expected to be large and unshaven!

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Heads Up on a New Scam

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Love it! Nothing to freshen up a Monday like someone calling and saying in a heavy accent: “Hello, I am calling from the support department of Windows. We have just had a report that your computer is infected by a serious virus. We need to get some information about your computer from you…” I wasn’t the right guy to ask.

There Go Friday’s Gains

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Sheep, banksters, and Tarriers served up this morning:   A Monday slap of Reality is ready.

There was (predictably) no breakthrough this weekend on the debt ceiling or the budget, so this morning, the market is looking (at least in the futures, and early on) to open about 80 points down.  And to see the market blow down several hundred points between now and Thursday shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

The Rest of the World (RoW) is becoming afraid of two things:  Namely that we American’s really might be as crazy as claimed by some and that worse,  the fear-mongering bankster class might actually be partly right about their “End of the World” yammering’s.

Me?  I don’t buy it. 

Americans were told by the hundreds of thousand just four years ago about how we should tighten the belt a notch and get on with working and spending.  We did our part and then some.

Now, when the same is expected of government, there’s a tremendous hue and cry about how whole this isn’t the country isn’t sailing off the edge of the Earth, yet, but you can hear the waterfalls from here…  (There’s a famous painting, or two, devoted to that…)

So here we are Monday and as we begin another “…work all day for sugar in your tay…” (the Tarriers part) we can assess the overnight global picture this way, looking for signs and portents as we do:

China up 1.16%

Japan up 1.48%

France down 0.10 %

Germany down (0.08%

And the UK up 0.14%

“So,” you’re thinking “If the end of the world is really that close, how come the global collapse is not on right now, then?”

Fine point:  At least in the early goings today, what I’d expect is a lot of ‘hot’ money blowing town looking for a more rational parking place.  That’s why other countries are UP.

The Hype du Jour this morning is that Senate democorps have a new budget front to push.  Yippee skippy!

The House is playing with (itself and) another short-term debt bill accompanied by the most bolloxed-up inability to articulate the concept of “Up to our collective asses in debt” in a way the sheep can grok as you’ll ever see.

Scare stories galore including this one about ripples at the State levels.

Hats off to our Veterans who went to the Memorials this weekend and tossed the barricades back to the White House.

Not to downplay the technical dangers, here, especially with IMF Money-Princess in Chief Chris Legarde calling things “very very disturbing,”  (no shit?) but a lot of our 99er-friends who lost homes and savings in the 2008/2009 collapse see poetic justice in the wings. Want me to mention the MF Global screw-job perp in here, too, long as we’re sharpening our words?

What the Fools on the Hill may not comprehend: “Too Big to Fail” may no longer apply.  And if that’s the case, we could be “Look out below!” for the markets.

A short story and  further smack of reality here, if I may?

Every so often, when Capt. Midnight has time, he called me from the rural part of Virginia or other east coast areas when he’s off adventuring.  And usually, our phone calls will be interrupted with cell drop out once or twice during a call.

When he rings back, the common laugh-line is “Damn third world phone system…”

Except we both know that is not a joke.

This morning there’s a really good interview by Kopin Tan with legendary trader Jim Rogers in Barron’s online over here.  The paragraph I’d point out to you is this quote from Rogers:

“When I was selling my New York house, I almost backed out; I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. But now I’m very happy here. I fly to New York and I realize I’m in a Third World airport. Then I get into a Third World taxi onto a Third World highway. The difference now just slaps me in the face. New York is a wonderful place, with the people and the vibrancy, but I can find the same vibrancy, if not more, in Asia. “

As an occasional trader who is one foot in technical analysis and one foot in fundamentals, what I look around and see is very similar to what Rogers is describing.

What we have before us is a country on the verge of technical bankruptcy, an administration which has promised more than it has performed, backed up by a congress that’s the laughing stock of everywhere but Greece, Iceland, Cyprus and the other Euro countries which are are the same track.

When we should be taxing machines that replace humans, we instead provide real (tax and other) incentives to rip jobs out of America and stash untaxed money offshore.  Slick, huh?

Businesses here, no longer fettered by monopolistic requirements such as make sense when placed on utilities (which telcos are) have systematically underinvested bare minimums to make as much money as possible.  But at its core, we’re still coasting on infrastructure investments made a decade ago.

Free lunching is not limited to the masses of the poor – works in telecom too, which is why you can’t hardly find American tech support to save your soul.

So yeah, people are a bit skitterish.  Like reader Andy:

G,
If the gov defaults, any recommendations in terms of having cash on hand, paying off debt ect
that you might share.
What will happen to the banks?
I can’t believe it has gotten this far.
But maybe it is good.
After all, you have been preaching that this insanity must stop and so this could be where it does.
What then?
Andy from Ohio

In order:  Yes, always have 90-days of cash on hand, but own a gun and keep your mouth shut.

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Coping: With “When the World Breaks”

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The first thing I want you to do this week is carve out an hour and a half from Ure busy schedule to watch a movie which you can rent off Amazon for four bucks.  “ When The World Breaks” and it features a lot of interview snips with people like Jerry Stiller and Mickey Rooney about what life was like in the 1930’s. during the (previous) Great Depression.

Times are not particularly bad…yet. 

Oh, sure, we’ve had a lot of people lose their homes, and we’ve seen a huge fraction of the US manufacturing demand shipped off to the third-worlders, but in terms of starvation driving people to steal in order to feed their families?  We’ve been spared that, but I’d add again: Only for now.

If – or when – bad times ever return, the best  few words of advice I’ve ever heard are “Look for the work that needs done.”

I’ve always been amazed by a friend of mine in the cell phone business.  He never has a single ‘job’ per se; he’s always doing something new and usually making extremely good money at it.  What’s his secret?

“I look a companies, figure out what they need to get done, and then make them an offer to do it..” he explained.

The “Man on the White Horse” theory is simple, and along the same lines.  An employer in hard times doesn’t look for an employee who will do anything.  Most companies hire to solve one problem.  All you need to do is explain how you can solve that problem, better than anyone else, and you’ve got the job 7-times out of ten.

Since there’s so much work that needs doing in the world (an inexhaustible supply, even for my own overflowing List of Stuff to Do) there’s really not much reason to be out of work.  With a few exceptions, of course:  Need to be legal to work, need to be able to do what needs doing, and some rudimentary skills in sales.  But given that short list, that’s about it.

A lot of people disagree with me on this, of course.   But I’ve seen it work, more often than not, and as we roll through what could still be a couple of difficult months ahead, just remember if you need work to keep your eye on what needs doing.  Watching that video about the (last) Depression carries an undercurrent of that the whole way through and it’s definitely worth your time.

About the Murder Cycle, DNA/Telomere Weapons

Long-time reader says our “murder cycle” work may not have been far off:

Hello again, George!

You were right about your Oct 8 event:

Well, likely NOT, since there’d be something of a telltale from such events, but like yesterday’s mention of Dr. Bill What’s-his-name’s article about DNA/nano weapons being dispersed into the environment, seems to me that there’s some of “odd harmony” out and about.

Reader Rob read that Peoplenomics report, and sent in this:

Good Morning George,

Sitting here at an RV place in Fort Worth, went to Dallas yesterday and saw ‘where’ they took out Kennedy & replaced him with a politician who understood how business works almost 50 years ago.

Follow The Money, it was as true 50 years ago as it is today.

I was thinking about your kill-switch rumor. 307 million + dead bodies in a moment, what a mess and what a vacuum to be filled!

Actually the story was been done many years ago, “Earth Abides” by George R. Stewart, of course that was the whole world…

As a directional switch it would be great for dealing with protesters, other than the mess.

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Advisory for Peoplenomics Subscribers, Interested Readers

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As you may know, the topic of Peoplenomics this weekend was a purely hypothetical solution to the devastating consequences of an economic collapse that would involve the mass euthanizing of Americans. As happens so often, what is envisioned in our report is being overtaken by events revealing themselves on the web. This weekend, writer Dr. Bill Weld has released documents which allege that the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) has an active program in place which is releasing nano-devices into American food and water supplies and that by January of 2014 (less than 3-months from now) more than 98% of the US population will be effected. While we cannot attest to the accuracy of the report, the idea seems to be that once dispersed, the nano-devices which could theoretically operate at the cellular level, could be activated by radio transmissions from such sources as cell phone towers and airborne drones.

The Solution No One Wants to Talk About

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Tired of hearing endlessly about the Ceiling and the Shutdown? Well, there really is a solution no one talks about but it’s a very ugly and messy one. Many times in the past, we have referred to our purely hypothetical Directorate 153 as being a kind of Central Command for a shadow government which really drives US sociopolitical operations. Envisioned as being an outgrowth of the Cold War, when the US was at a long-term strategic disadvantage in policy implementation, due to the longer duration of Soviet and now Federation (State Duma) committee plans, our hypothesized Directorate at least gives the West a somewhat equalized footing on the timeline; one less subject to political breezes that blow through Washington in the wake of each election. This morning, after a cup and a crumpet, we’ll consider what we do best around here:

Interplanet Janet’s Rally – Change Point Weekend

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“She travels like a rocket with her comet team, and there’s never been a planet Janet hasn’t seen…”  That’s one of the lines in the Schoolhouse Rock episode which I mention this morning because I loved the rally yesterday.  OK, so a little later than I expected, but the bottom line here is this:  The prospect of a new Fed boss who’s going to make Ben Bernanke’s helicopters look puny could just push the market on to new highs any old time.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the latest Money Stocks report from the Fed shows M1 up at an annualized 8.3% for the month recent three months and similarly, M2 is up 8.2% for the three months, so maybe Led Zeppelin should rename word the song printing a stairway to heaven…

But, before we go there, the troublesome 1,690 line on the S&P remains and it’s best captured in Forbidden Zone’s “Bim Bam Boom” in terms of how it all works out.

As long as I have my world’s first EconoJay  (e-J) hat on this morning, here’s a song to play which summed up what we figure will be Interplanet Janet’s Fed policy in a nutshell.

Now, this is where things get interesting. I don’t think the prospect of buying a stairway to heaven (or printing it, either) will work, so Ures truly waded back in to his next wild-ass short side trade at the market highs yesterday.

NO!  This is NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.  This is a crazy man barking at the moon, but is there a chance that the market could briefly venture over that 1,690 level today and touch back down on Earth before the close?  We should know in a week or two who’s more irrational: me or the markets.

Budget Follies Will Decide

I should play poker with John Boehner sometime…and hopefully, if we ever do, he should bring a big bankroll with him because I’m gonna get rich off off him. 

Why?  Lousy poker player.  Obama called his bluff and Boehner folded…so this morning more talk is expected, but Boehner, who’s quickly losing support of the Tea Party wing for being to accommodative on the debt ceiling is also basically handing over the GOP’s future in 2016 by not hammering on the reality of what’s going down.

The issue, as I’ve tried ever-so-gently to explain is compound interest…and nothing more.  All Boehner would need to say is “Our Country is Blowing Up and the American people will not see their home foreclosed, the job-jacks to India, and then bless this administration’s bankrupting the US dollar to boot!”

Boehner won’t have the balls to get down and call it like it is.  Nor will he point out the heresy of claiming poor on budget and then having shock troops enough to turn away veterans from the Memorial while allowing pro immigration promotion at virtually the same time.

Nor, will he say the boondoggles which Faux News has been rolling out, are mostly at the feet of Fearless Leader not actuarial science.

Still, the government remains shut down, and despite the Interplanet Janet blastoff to the markets, I wouldn’t be surprised by a first stage burnout when people figure out that gravity (and pernicious debt-driven inflation) are not so easily fooled.

But for this morning, we should see a few more of the people, some of the time as futures are pointing to an effort to achieve orbit.  My money says it may look like Sputnik, but remember, the first satellite was up only 90-days. 

The markets should be so lucky.

With public confidence in both the poker player in chief and the inarticulate budget-aware realists cratering, polls are showing a high level of distrust and disgust.

It’s one thing to say the markets can “climb a wall of worry.”  It’s entirely another question when we ask “Can markets climb an asylum wall?”

More to the point, when was the last time a market staged a serious rally when 60% of poll respondents said to fire every member of congress?

Look for video later this morning as truckers plan to Ride for the Constitution.  And to be followed Sunday by a Million Veteran March at 9 AM at the National World War II Memorial.

Enough is too much and potential is high that this will be a change point weekend.

More After This…

 

JP Bleedin’

So, how does it feel to post a loss of a third of a billion plus?  Might want to ask the execs at JP Morgan which took a $7.2 billion legal hit this quarter.  Meantime, where there’s a fail, there’s a sale, as we say around here.  So word’s out this morning that JPM is looking to sell its commodities biz. 

Always ready to snap up a deal, I’ll call a couple of buddies and I’m sure we could make an offer.  I’m thinking about a $1,000 in cash and the seller to take back a note with no recourse to buyers.  Want in? LOL….  Oh, did I mention the no liabilities for past transactions clause?

Mideast Killing Fields

There’s so much murder and mayhem going on in the Middle East these days it could provide many lifetimes of storylines for someone like Joseph Wambaugh.  Here’s the latest body count:

Syria:  190  Number of civilians executes says Human Rights Watch.

Iraq: 42:   Number of people executed in a “clean up the streets” campaign following sectarian violence.

Also related:  the dynamite-paid Peace Prize has gone to a chemical weapons watchdog group.  Wiki fact check:

Dynamite was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Germany, and patented in 1867.

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Coping: SimOfTheDead and other WuJo Implicates

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We have a longish discussion of WuJo this morning, one with many reports, some interesting speculations, and even some directions for additional research, so let’s get after it, shall we?

A numbers of readers took the time to comment (thank you) on the events this week which seemed to describe a “teleportation” event.  If you missed yesterday’s column, she (thought) she’d shut down everything in the living/media room and come to bed, only to awaken a few hours later, luxuriating in the comfort of the bed, only to open her eyes and discover she was still in the living room. 

Reader Dan picks up the trail from there?

Does Elaine recall around what time she thought she came to bed but didn’t?

Last (also Wed- G)  night my wife and I had a brief time-slip wujo moment ourselves.  I think it was around 11:20 pm Eastern because we had just watched the weather forecast on the 11pm news:

I was in the kitchen getting some water.  I use a water filter pitcher and filled my glass from it.  I turned around to take my glass out to the living room and my wife asked me to fill her glass before she went to bed.  I went back into the kitchen, opened the fridge but the pitcher was missing.  I looked in the sink and it was there, having just been filled with more water but the lid was still off and the pitcher was just sitting there full of water.  Okay, I must have filled my glass, decided that the pitcher needed filling, put it in the sink, filled it, but just left it there in the sink without replacing the lid.  Mind you, no alcohol or any other things consumed last night, and I routinely stay up until after midnight so I was definitely not too tired yet.  I was just about to pass it off as a slip of the mind albeit something that is not common to me but then my wife exclaims “what happened to my phone?”

I went back out to the living room to see what she was talking about and she said she was getting ready for bed and set her phone down but now it is gone.  She went into the bedroom and found it on the bed next to the nightstand but did not recall going in there to place it there.  This had occurred at the exact same time as I had apparently filled the water pitcher.

So in summary, sometime around 11:20 pm Eastern both my wife and I took action on an object, moving it somewhere, without having any recollection.  And we did it at the exact same moment.

As soon as I realized that, I chalked it up as a Wujo moment and made a mental note to write you about it.  Well, after reading Elaine’s experience, I can only wonder if it happened around the same time?

It was really strange, and I asked her about the possibility that she might have gone through one of those “abduction” experiences that we read so much about on the net. 

Two points: First she admitted that she had an odd sore on the inside of her lower lip, something that didn’t seem like it was a normal (as in bite your lip) kind of experience.  First, because she doesn’t bite her lip and secondly because of what she said about it…

“I was going to mention it, too, now that you asked, but I talked myself out of it…you know…don’t want to make too big a deal about it.  And besides, it has gotten better (less painful) as the day’s worn on…”

The other oddity that persists:  She’s extremely uncomfortable just talking about it such that even trying to remember details about it makes her uncomfortable.

Next time it happens, I’ve made sure that Elaine knows what the immediate follow-up will be:  Run to the bedroom and see if the bed there – the real one, one the tactile/dream-state version – feels like it’s been slept in and is warm.  That would have been a useful clue.

And though she’s too polite to mention it, in going over the details with her (for the umpteenth time) she pointed out I was in error reporting that she woke up in the media chair with the comforter on it (the west chair).  She’d awaked with all that tactile stuff in my chair, the east chair and it didn’t have anything on it…just a leather recliner.

Barring a reoccurrence, not much else to say about the case now but it goes into our files as an unsolved mystery.

A WuJo Puzzle Solved!

The good news now is that at least some of the mystery behind some of those “hum” stories is starting to peek out due to some diligent detective work by reader Cris.  If you hear “the hum” or the sound of “heavy machinery, almost like a diesel running at night” read this one for sure:

I’ve been hearing this for years off and on; a low hum that seems to come out of the very ground and I put it in the unexplained category until a few days ago…..

I was checking the upstairs toilet for leaks (there were none) and turned away after I thought the tank had filled….. No sound of running water for at least a full 60 seconds when: the hum began.  I happened to look in the tank, saw ripples and pushed down on the float….
The hum stopped and I could turn it on and off at will by pressing on the float!  Once the tank overfilled it could no longer be induced to make the noise.

A mundane explanation for a VERY spooky sound.  The delay was long enough that you would not think having just flushed.  Very common valve assembly of Asian manufacture,
Cris

And this might explain some of the sounds in other areas, too (thinking the Windsor or Taos hums, too):  Could it be that a larger but similarly designed valve is being used at a local waterworks and it’s seating allows for some hum-inducing vibration?

Something to check on, next time you hear it in the middle of the night.  Get up wit the flashlight and check the loo….

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Waiting for the Big Distraction

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The heat is on in Washington where headlines questioning the omniscience of the Obama administration are popping up all over the place.  For one, there’s the matter of the GOP digging in on the debt ceiling, although admittedly, Obama may win on this one when the GOP caves in, which should (predictably) happen in the final hours going into next week.

And the rabid right is making the most of it with one writing “Democrats to America: We own the government!”  Another decries how inarticulate republicans are, while the bloviator-in-chief notes Obama’s approval ranking and questions how repubs can question how they’re losing…

One of our well-connected sources called from the low-rent district of “203-land” to bemoan the obvious:  Actuarial reality is that America’s debt monster is anything but solved and appointing Janet Yellen to the Fed won’t change any of the hard physics of compound interest.

Sadly, the brief respite in debt growth claimed by the administration’s apologists is more attributable to falling interest rates and debt growth will go absolutely crazy when rates begin to rise.  The same for the mis-named “shutdown.”  Looks good on paper now, but when the back pay comes through…

But we have other problems as well:  For one, TechDirt is bemoaning the quality of the Affordable Care Act website and “We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404…”

What’s more, a growing chorus is beginning to wonder “If the system doesn’t work, how can people be penalized?”

Well, the answer here is simple:  Read Kafka!  Wiki it!

During 1914, Kafka began the novel Der Process (The Trial),[124] the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Kafka did not complete the novel, although he finished the final chapter.

And it’s here that we find the delicious irony of a Thursday morning:  Just as Kafka didn’t finish his novel, so too ‘Merica seems to be in a terrible rush to finishing the final chapter without filling in the blanks along the way.

Amazingly, the stock market is buying it:  Futures this morning are up 123 on the Dow which should about finish off the “Princess Janet” rally.  Like fans of Kafka, who seemed not too bothered by the holes in “The Trial” fans of Yellen are happy that easy money and keep on printing is the route ahead.

Besides, the holes in economic thought are probably just those damn actuarial realities that an East Texas curmudgeon keeps mentioning.  That and the mistaken belief that there are jobs left to puff-up with again.  The reality of automation’s contribution to structural employment won’t been seen until too late.

In the meantime, the Janet Express should drive the S&P back to 1,700 and maybe new highs  just as soon as the GOP caves in.  If it doesn’t happen?  Well, cue the Big Distraction and let’s grab some more powers once reserved to the States and try again, shall we?

More after this…

Jesse Ventura in 2016!

Already a Facebook site trying to get him on the ballot in all 50-states.  I, for one, would vote for him.  And if Hillary runs?  Can I vote twice, please?  Hey…maybe if I could lose my proof of citizenship, ya think?

Middle East Roulette

Our first spin of the Big Wheel of Life landed on Saudi Arabia where the powers that tent are looking for how to deal with the US burying the hatchet with (instead of in ) Iran.

Our second spin came up Triple Zero…but that turned out to be a typo, so it must have been Tripoli where the prime minster was held by rebel gunmen  for a while, then released.  No accounting for how that works…if this was any kind of ‘Merican gang, he’d have been dropped and popped, but maybe there is a different code of honor there.

Our third spin of the Big Wheel came up “6” which I can only assume means the six soldiers who were killed this week near the Suez Canal which is starting to look like its own little craps table.

“Big Shooter Coming Out?”

Speaking of gambling,  the odds and such: We have to comment on the blessedly lousy aim of our scheduled “Murder Cycle/Outrage” case which came along one day behind schedule, showing up in Wheeling West Virginia, of all places.  Turns out that although 15-20 shots were fired, no one was hit but the would-be killer who was taken down by  security officers.

And, in terms of a better date match, a curious “open carry” report came out of Green Bay…but no harm was intended there, seems.

We’ve set an alarm to mention this cycle when it comes up again in March of next year, or so.

Climate Disaster,  Big, Ugly Winter?

Despite there being a government shutdown, thanks to the hard working people at NOAA who track such things, the monthly solar cycle update is out, and it continues to show the current Solar Cycle is in epic fail mode.  I mean seriously colder sun…

Now, this is not meant to send you scurrying for the dust bunnies under the bed, or anything, but please think through what a return to a Dalton Minimum would be like.  I suppose I could suggested a petition to the White House to name this the Ure Minimum when it is eventually realized as having occurred, but I haven’t seen petitions get much done there, so I’m thinking it may not be worth the effort.

Nobel Dreams

Still, while I wait for my Nobel Prize in Mental Clarity (a prize they haven’t seen the wisdom of awarding yet, but what do you expect when dynamite money hands out “peace” prizes, right?)  I should mention the Nobel Prize in lit to Alice Munro.

We have an arrangement, I think:  I haven’t read any of her books, but I doubt she’s read any of mine, either.  Fair’s fair.

Buzz Word of the Day

Cyberchondriac:  Someone who self diagnoses on the web.  Although yes, your voice dropping into a falsetto could mean low-T… or it’s time to call 1-800-genderbend.  Operators are standing by, this is a free call.

Licensing Beggars

Sounds like something out of India (OK, without deliberately maiming kids so they make more money) but if you ever doubted my contention that ‘Merican’s lifestyles are being systematically flushed down to old crapperoo, here’s proof as Middle Township, New Jersey wants to license pan-handlers.

In order not to be confused with Kafka, the permit is free.

Backassward Edjumacation

Used to be that students would go to school to learn, and come how to do their writing (as in homework).  But Madison Avenue Mike’s find of morning in the NY Times is a story about how kids are being sent home to watch video lectures and then come to school to do their homework there…

Amazingly, it seems to be working.

Lonesome Planet

One of those oddities around the net is the notion that the planet Venus just sort of showed up at some point in our remote past, swept into our solar system, caused a calamity on Mars and finally took up station in its present orbit.  All stuff of internet lore and we could argue the science of it all day long.

But look this morning at the NBC Science story about how a lonesome planet – without a Sun – has been spotted and this means that yes, there may be orphaned planets out there waiting to be captured and in the process, yes, they could cause Velikovsky-sized planetary calamity.

Truth of Chinaquenses

We’re please by a report from reader Roaming Ron, that UrbanSurvival is once again available in China:

Hi George,

As I had to report last time here UrbanSurvival was blocked, I’m happy to report now I found out coming back to China for some months to stay yesterday that some Liberalization’s coming here luckily: I can (and so everybody else here) access your site again.

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Coping: Thursday at the Wujo

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I’m a reasonable guy and all, but when the WuJo stuff starts happening in my own home to a highly reliable wife, it leads to a very big WTF moment.  Here’s what happened.

I woke up this morning and trying to catch up on sleep sort of half-snoozed until 4:30AM.  At which time I hear Elaine ask…

“Are you awake, George?”

I admitted I was and that I’d be getting up in a minute or two and sorry if I woke her with my tossing about.  And then she related this bizarre story:

“Last night, I come to get bed and I got all snuggled in.  A dozed off for a while, you know, how you will sometimes when going to sleep?

Anyway, I was enjoying the comfort of the bed, feeling the covers, feeling happy and safe when I – for some reason – opened my eyes.

I was shocked!

Somehow I had been transported back into the living…a light was on, the TV was on, the audio says was on, and there was a show on at very low volume.

I have no idea how that happened.  But I was in one of the leather recliners, I had a comforter, but it felt different than the covers that I’d felt only a few seconds before.

It bothers me….”

Questioned further, she couldn’t recall any of the specifics about the “going to bed process.”  You know…what was the last show on TV?  Do you remember turning off the light?  Did you click off the audio system?  Do you remember touching the remotes?

“No, but even THAT is weird.  I did all those things again and it was just like I had done them earlier..and it just….you know…bothers me!”

I was going to ask her if she remembered anything else being odd – had there been any odd lights around as she dozed off the first time?  I’ll also follow up on how similar the comforter in the leather chair (side-by-side media chairs) felt to the covers in the bed…that kind of thing.

It is possible, even likely that what she experienced was simply dozing off in the media chair, and projecting that she was in bed?  Yes, and I’d venture the odds on that are 80 percent – or better.

But the part that concerns me is the feeling after the fact of being “bothered” by it all.  So here in a while, when she gets up, I’ll ask her to note if there are any new cuts, bruises or wounds that weren’t around last night.  Although the odds are a tiny fraction of one percent, this is the kind of thing that is sometimes reported around “abduction” cases, especially the feeling bothered part, so it I’ll keep you posted on any follow-up.

Around the Ranch:  The Left Mag Oddity

Elaine’s story was not the first odd thing that happened yesterday. I had posted Peoplenomics early and made it down to our hangar where our old Beechcrate lives.  In order to be ‘legal’ to take Elaine with me flying, I need to maintain currency which means – under VFR flight rules, three full-stop landings in the last 90 days in the aircraft type and category.

Since I hadn’t touched the plane for 92 days (since our big Connecticut trip) I decided to bring down the air compressor, top off the tires (they lose a tiny bit of air sitting, and since we’re going up to Branson for our annual confab with Robin Landry and to compare notes one of these days, I thought a perfectly clear, crisp, fall morning would be ideal…

Everything went fine, of course.

I did three of the nicest short-field landings I’ve every done.  And to give you an idea, I “borrowed” a satellite view of the airport off Google and I sketched in the approach, braking area, turn-around, taxiway, and so it again route.

To do three landings with 600-foot (and less) rollout after being “hands off” for 90+ days seemed pretty good to me.  The first one was 10-degrees of flaps, the last one (about 450-feet worth) was full flaps, and the final one was two notches.

Because I’m still catching up on things from our road trip, I only had six landings in the simulator, but with the vortex generators, the trick is to come in at an approach speed where the stall warning is just coming one, since the “break” to the stall is about 6 MPH under that…no bounces and I was mighty pleased with myself.

But back to the weird part of this.  I noticed on my last go-round of the pattern that the engine was not “turning up” like it should be.  It was only making 2,250 RPM and usually it was 2,450 or higher, even during an aggressive climb.  I leaned it out, slightly, which brought it up to 2,325, or so, and landed.

So here is the weird part:  Every pilot before take-off goes through an extensive checklist which is called CIGARS:  Controls, Instruments, Gas, Attitude, Run-up, and Safety.

In the Run-up there are a couple of things that take place:  You apply the brakes full on.  run the engine RPM up to 2000, then click the ignition two clicks right to run on the right mag only, then two clicks back to it is running smooth. A difference of more than 75-100 RPM can be a sign of plug or mag issues. 

Then you do it again, only this time it’s one click left and then one click back to the right to check the other mag.  After pulling on carb heat, to make sure that’s working right,  you’re set to complete the  S part of CIGARS (door secured?  Seat belt tight?  Any loose objects in the cabin?) and off you go to announcing your departure with something like “Palestine traffic, Musketeer7912-lima rolling for takeoff on runway 18, staying in the pattern…”

So how did the mags get over onto the wrong (single mag) spot after twice around the pattern?  I have no clue, but I remember thinking at the time when I sourced the problem on the ground after deciding to go ahead and land rather than go through the low engine power checklist, since the first rule of piloting is “First, fly the airplane…”  And if you’re ready to chop engine power and land anyway, the right thing to do is come in a tad high so you’ve got plenty of room to land even if the low RPM issue goes to zero.

Still…the question lingered all the way home from the airport:  How did that mag switch get turned like that?  It’s not one of those things you screw up on, and the odds of the switch being “split” and falling off to the single mag position is about zero.  Hmmm…

Phone WuJo?

Reader CM reports an oddity of the WuJo stripe, only it involved phones…

Hey there George,

I got a good one….

We have a large house and we have two cordless telephones one for each end.

In February my wife complained that one of the phones was not recharging properly.

after swapping out the battery with a new one and that not helping, I opted to buy a new phone.

The new one was delivered and worked great for about two weeks…..then it was just gone.

We looked everywhere called it but no sound etc.,,,,,,, looked EVERWHERE FOR DAYS….

Finally I decided to buy a new one again……This all took place by early this summer.

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Yellen over Kohn: A Vision of What’s to Come

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It’s a buzz. A vibration that permeates the soul that I haven’t felt in years. The last locks on a tumbler of an incredibly complex lock mechanism finally falling into place at last and revealing a graceful treasure within. Unfortunately, what is unlocked if the future, as a design comes into view; one that’s at once horrifying because of the magnitude of change it will be to the unwary, but – in a curious way – one that preserves America as a country while ceding the obvious: We aren’t the only country of power in the world, anymore.