Fire Eric Holder

I was happy to hear that Representative Alan West, the rising star conservative from South Florida, is calling for Eric Holder's removal as Attorney General of the US. The NRA has a "fire Eric Holder petition" you may want to sign (solicitations for contributions to the NRA-ILA arriving in 3, 2, 1...)

Eric Holder is a disgrace to his office and our country.  Let me count the ways.

Fast and Furious/Gunwalker.  Although this program started under Dubya, the Obamanoids latched onto it as their own.  Expanding the operation to multiple offices of the BATFE, and the DEA, how much do you want to bet that it's government wide and every fiefdom in the DOJ is in on it?  The only explanation for this abomination that makes any sense is as a prelude to the UN treaty on small arms control to show that the Western Hemisphere is awash in American guns - so that they can disarm the population.  Does it extend past Holder?  You bet your butt.  Probably all the way to the oval office.  Perhaps if we send him to Gitmo, or better yet, one of those Saudi rendition facilities and the put him on the barbecue spit, he'll finger the rest.

The largest documented provider of illegal firearms in the western hemisphere is apparently the US Government, not American gun dealers.

The refusal of his DOJ to prosecute racial crimes, unless the victims are "his people". 

His refusal to investigate ACORN, or Planned Parenthood - groups that need investigation.

Refusing to prosecute CAIR and other US groups with ties to Islamic terrorism.

Holder's gang has politicized every aspect of the DOJ down to Freedom of Information Act requests.  "According to documents I have obtained, FOIA requests from liberals or politically connected civil rights groups are often given same day turn-around by the DOJ. But requests from conservatives or Republicans face long delays, if they are fulfilled at all."

Holder's handling of the Christmas 2009 terrorist attack (the underwear bomber) where he singlehandedly decided the bomber deserved the Miranda rights of any American citizen (which he wasn't), went over the heads of every other agency in the fed.gov.  At best it's stupid; at worst it's a raw power grab over the DOD, and the rest of government. 

This blatantly racist, pathetic little man, the least fit to be attorney general in at least a generation, who said "America is a nation of cowards" when it comes to race issues is a disgrace to his office and this great country.  Congress - this man needs to be arrested for malfeasance. 

I'm A Little Conflicted Here

Today, we said goodbye to Shuttle launches, with the launch of the final Space Shuttle, Space Transportation System 135.  It was way too cloudy to see from home, so I'll have to content myself with memories of watching almost all of them.  I stood outside (while the DVR was recording) until I could hear the rumble.  The clouds muffle the sound, too. 

Click this NASA photo to embiggen - it's 1600x1200 resolution. 

I've written on this subject as the year has gone by.  I know that NASA is an arthritic bureaucracy, barely able to do this.  I know the vehicle was designed in the 1970s, intended for something around a 20 year lifetime, and it's time to hang it up.  I know the program was over hyped and it never achieved the costs to orbit, or the launch frequency, or the operational safety it was sold with.  I know that the most bang per buck has come from unmanned, probes.  But as Tam said earlier today,

If you're going to steal money from me at gunpoint, promise me you'll use it to do cool stuff like shake the ground with thunder and punch holes through the sky.

While I've seen almost every shuttle launch, I was actually only on the Cape for one, a night launch (STS-61) two flights before Challenger was destroyed (no I didn't remember the mission number - had to look it up).  There is really nothing like the spectacle of a night launch on the Cape, as the area lights up in a false dawn.  In the man made daylight, you can see the pressure wave of sound approaching over the waters of the Banana river.  When the sound reaches you from that four miles away, you feel it deep inside, resonating in your chest.  I was wearing loose slacks, and I could feel my pants legs moving in the infrasonic waves.  When Mrs. Graybeard worked on the Cape, they had a place to watch launches that was technically inside the fall-back zone, where the pressure wave can hurt you if Really Bad Thing happens. 

I know it's time to put the program away, but I know people who are being laid off, or living in fear of it.  I feel bad for what's coming for them.  NASA, of course, contracts out virtually everything, so my friends work for Boeing, United Space Alliance, and other contractors.  Many have worked most of the last 20 or more years up there, and a few are probably going to retire.  I know NASA must be cut like I know every government agency and program must be cut dramatically, but I hurt for all of those people.  Yeah, I know; I'm too soft.

It's no secret - chances are everyone who visits here knows the Endarkenment approaches.  I know as well as anyone that the economy is on the verge of collapse, and the social order on the verge of disintegration.  Knowing it's coming doesn't make seeing it any easier, and like some of the other folks I read, it pains me.  The end of American manned space flight just seems like another sign of the approaching darkness. 

 credit

Nice Little Vacation Project

I made reference to taking a few days vacation this week, and other than catching up on some reading, sleeping in, watching some TV, and generally being useless, I built a little set of wall-mounted shelves for most of my reloading gear. 

This is just about 30" tall overall, 22" wide shelves of 1x6 pine.  A couple of weeks ago, one of my favorite woodworking stores had the Kreg Jig master kit on sale, and since I had been thinking about getting one for a couple of years, I decided to grab it. 

The Kreg Jig is a well-thought out fixture for making pocket-screw holes.  It includes everything you need to start making nice projects almost immediately (although you'll run out of screws - not many in the kit).  With known square pieces of wood, either from purchasing S4S dimensional wood (hardwoods are typically sold this way) or by cutting your own wood to measure square, it literally takes minutes to build something like this.  I'll make the distinction between fine woodworking - think dovetails or other fancy joints and beautiful woods - and more casual carpentry.  This technique is more like B than A, but it works pretty darned well. 

The most time consuming part of making this project was driving over to the big box home improvement store (not the Borg), and getting the wood.  Cutting them to length and square took a few minutes.  I think it took about two minutes to drill two holes in each end of all four shelves, and another couple of minutes to assemble the whole thing.  A couple of coats of polyurethane, two screws into wall studs, and wah-lah (French for "whoomp - there it is").  A home for most of the reloading supplies except the press itself.  This stuff is no longer spread all over my woodworking supply bench.  The powders and primers are stored separately, in a controlled temperature environment, all separate from each other. 

Seems Like Some Good News Today

Ah, the wonders of a few days vacation.  I've been too busy building a little cabinet for my reloading supplies to do much bouncing around the net, but a couple of good news items for the R2KBA crowd came up today.  H/T to No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money for these. 

To set up the first one, the city of Chicago has been working through a lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation to fix city laws after the SAF's successful McDonald lawsuit.  The basic problem is that they have extremely restrictive gun laws that require demonstrated shooting practice, but the city wouldn't allow shooting ranges to get that practice.  The city did the typical, predictable politics, and drafted an ordinance that gave the appearance of allowing shooting ranges, but practically did no such thing.

So today, the 7th Court of Appeals unanimously (3-0) ruled against Chicago and in favor of the SAF.  Judge Sykes' ruling is quite a strong endorsement of the second amendment as an individual right, and ruled the city could not require shooting practice while effectively banning it.  As No Lawyers says

Despite Rahm's 11th hour move, today was a good day for the Second Amendment in Chicago.

The situation in San Francisco is less sanguine, but better than it has been.   Facing a lawsuit by CalGuns aimed at forcing the city's gun laws to comply with the state's laws, the sheriff offered a compromise that may stop the suit.  The compromise is still absurdly draconian (by my admittedly non-mainstream standards); for example, you may only carry four calibers (38 special, 9mm, .40 or .45), in only a handful of allowable brand guns, and the process of getting a permit will cost you thousands out of pocket ($2,607 for first time applicants).  That means no .380 LCP or TCP for you, Taurus is even a forbidden brand!, and revolver lovers have only one option.  Still, although somewhat of a hollow victory, considering this is in the nuttiest, fruitiest part of the Granola State, it might be considered progress. 

Scout Rifles

My earliest, fondest memories of shooting are wandering around beyond the ends of the road where I grew up in the boonies of north Dade county (north of Miami, same county).  I had my Nylon 66, which I still own, and my friends had some other .22s.  We'd set up cans on a piece of rock or something and plink them for hours.  One friend's dad let him wander around with a 20ga. shotgun and we'd shoot that, then set the shells up and shoot them with the .22s.  Today, I'm sure you'd get arrested for it - if you could even find a place to go plink.

Fast forward 40 years to today and I have a few rifles; a couple of AR-15 clones (including my homemade AR), the two Garands I just wrote about getting, and a few others.  I've noticed that while the crowds at gun shows tend to gather at the long rows of pistols, I have a thing for rifles.  A nicely figured walnut stock will always stop me.

So it was with some interest (and drooling) that I first encountered references to the Scout rifle concept from Jeff Cooper.  I saw that Sturm Ruger has introduced one, the commemorative  "Gunsite Scout" (pictured above), Steyr makes one, and Savage offers one in choice of .308 or 7.62x39 (the AK-47 round).  There's a handful of attributes that vary around a bit, but these seem to be the big ones:

• Carbine length barrel of 16" to 17"
• Overall length of under 40 inches
• A weight of 6 1/2 pounds or less
• Either iron sights, or low-power, forward mounted optics to allow the operator to sight around the optics if needed
• A potent cartridge that's effective out to 500 yards: .308 Winchester or 7.62x51 NATO.  

In Jeff's words, "The general-purpose rifle will do equally well for all but specialized hunting, as well as for fighting; thus it must be powerful enough to kill any living target of reasonable size. If you insist upon a definition of 'reasonable size,' let us introduce an arbitrary mass figure of about 1000 lb".

Last July, I reported on coming across a nice deal on an older (apparently 1984) Remington 700 in .30-06.  As it turns out, there isn't one thing on that list of scout rifle attributes that my Remmy has.  It's 42 1/2 inches long, the barrel is 23", and it weighs 8 pounds with my scope on it. 

I started thinking I could make it into a scout rifle.  I personally think the .30-06 has essentially the same ballistics as the .308 Win, so the caliber doesn't seem like a big issue.  I've seen a kit to modify the 700 BDL to give it a magazine feed, like the Ruger has.  It could probably use a new stock anyway: the barrel isn't floated, and the wood shows a crack right behind the bolt on top - whether that's just cosmetic, I can't tell. 

The way I see it, my options are pretty much to just replace the stock, or rebuild it.  If I were to put a new barrel on it, to drop it down to 16 1/2", and put a new stock on it, the only thing that remains from the original is the trigger group and bolt.  I suppose it's possible to saw off the end of the barrel, but I don't have a gun smith's lathe to re-crown the barrel.

I know I get some pretty sharp gun guys drop by here, so what do you think?  If it were you, what would you do?  Just put a new stock on it, or rebuild it?  If you put a new barrel on it, would you change over to .308?  If the answer is completely rebuild it, I sure don't want to get close to the $750 or $800 street price for the Ruger Scout.  The Savage shows up on Bud's Gun Shop for $503, which is a low bar to get under. 

Happy Independence Day

Let's not just call it the 4th of July.  Let's remember what it really was - the day we declared our independence of tyranny.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.


I would have highlighted portions that I think are particularly apt today, but the whole thing would be highlighted.

Enjoy your day.  To those who serve - and have served - to provide this gift of liberty for us:  Thank You from the bottom of my heart. 

And - confidential to Richard Stengal at Time Magazine who wrote the stunningly stupid cover story on the constitution (which I will not link to) - not only does it still matter, it matters more than ever. 

Those Turtles at JFK

(couldn't resist)

Possibly true story, told to me by a pilot friend who says he was there and he heard it.  Traffic was held up at a regional airport while a large turtle got off the runway.  The tower finally cleared everyone with the advisory, "Beware wake turbulence, departing turtle". 

Agenda 21: Creating Paranoid Nutjobs Since 1992??

Excellent article by Rachel Alexander at Townhall.   "Agenda 21: Conspiracy or Real Threat".  I don't know, a policy dedicated to "reducing private property ownership":

Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interest of society as a whole.  (from page 113 of this document)

Dedicated to the reduction of the quality of life (if not the number of people) and reduction of liberty:

  "...[C]urrent lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat consumption and large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable. A shift is necessary which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations." (Maurice Strong)

Conspiracy Theory or Real Threat?  I'll go with B.  What do you think?

You Know, I'm Starting to Take This Personally

Since taking power, this administration has doggedly been trying to destroy achievers in society by punitive taxing, destroy savers by inflating the dollar to worthlessness, and they've been absolutely schizophrenic about private airplanes, first attacking private jets, then giving them depreciation breaks in the "stimulus program", and now they're attacking them again.

I can't believe that taking away accelerated appreciation on jets is going to bring in enough money to the treasury to change the picture, remember we're borrowing $4 billion per day, but the attack on small jets in 2008 caused a crash in the general aviation market that it's just now recovering from.  It also caused a lot of people I knew - good kids - to loose their jobs.  They're attacking my income, my savings and now my job.  I'm starting to think it's all because they don't like me.

Although this writer doesn't mention the people that design, build and test the aircraft and all the things that go into one, he's right in principle:

If Congress should actually change the depreciation rules for corporate jets—rules that were set by the Obama Democrats’ own 2009 stimulus package—and it had any effect at all, the costs would be borne not by clueless CEOs or other high executives, but by comparative little guys: the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and ultimately the folks that work the assembly lines at small jet aircraft factories. That’s what happened when Democrats in 1990 thrust a big tax on yachts over a certain size. The rich people who could afford them weren’t inconvenienced, but the folks in Maine and other places who build large boats lost their jobs.  (source)

When the president and his cronies do this pseudo-populist crap they have to assume people are ignorant, can't run a calculator and just want to resent other people.  All of their policies are based on class envy. 

Let's go back over the numbers for the bazillionth time.  They keep saying by raising rates on the "evil rich bastards that make over $250,000 per year" they're going to raise $700 billion in revenue.  That's a lie.  That number is for 10 years: for the first year, it's going to be $30 billion.  That's not even one week worth of borrowing out of the year.  The numbers are in a Geithner quote here.  Yeah, it's old, and yeah, it's from the time when they were first arguing about leaving tax rates where they are:  the situation hasn't changed.  Hauser's Law has not been revoked. 

I've said so many times I'm sick of it, but It's the Spending, Stupid. (that goes back to September of 2010). There is no way out of this but cutting spending beyond a balanced budget and running surpluses as far as the eye can see. 

But look at it this way:  a Keynesian stimulus spending program can not possibly work.  It's mathematically impossible to grow the economy that way.  The quantity of wealth is not changed.  It's like taking water from the deep end of the pool and throwing it into the shallow end to raise the entire pool level.   They take money from people who would spend it on what they want and give it to other people who spend it somewhere else.  All they've done is change the business that handles the transaction - and bought the vote of the money recipient, the whole point of this exercise. 

How Many Federal Crimes Did You Commit Today?

I've said before that around 1985 I had to take an EPA hazardous waste class for work, and even then the instructor piled about a two foot tall stack of regulations on the table and said, "what do you think the chances are that you haven't violated one sentence in these?"   Today, that stack would probably go ceiling to floor for those regulations alone.

Harvey Silvergate at Reason Magazine says, if you're the average American, you've violated three federal laws today.  

... far too many federal laws leave citizens unsure about the line between legal and illegal conduct, punishing incorrect guesses with imprisonment. The average working American adult, going about his or her normal life, commits several arguable federal felonies a day without even realizing it. Entire lives can change based on the attention of a creative federal prosecutor interpreting vague criminal laws.

A shining example of the sort of accidental violation of laws Silvergate writes about is the story of how Elisha Dawkins, an honored combat veteran is currently sitting in Federal jail because he apparently answered a question improperly on his passport application.   
I've written many times on this subject, and don't plan to stop.  Silvergate adds more.  

In 2004, Steven Kurtz, an art professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo, was indicted on mail fraud charges for what boiled down to a paperwork error. Federal agents, after learning that Kurtz was using bacteria in his artwork to critique genetic engineering, launched a full-scale bioterrorism investigation against him.  Finding nothing pernicious about the harmless stomach flora, they resorted to a creative interpretation of the mail fraud statute.

The most dangerously far-reaching statutes tend to result from knee-jerk congressional reactions to the threat du jour.

.....

The federal ban on providing “material support” to a terrorist group, the statute that the federal government uses most frequently in prosecuting terrorism cases, provides another example of how difficult it can be to stay on the right side of the law.......

The story of what happens when an organization that asked if something is illegal and eventually ends up in the supreme court.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that helping terrorist organizations to resolve disputes through international bodies or obtain humanitarian relief from the United Nations inevitably would free up resources for other, more nefarious ends. Hence a “person of ordinary intelligence would understand” that such conduct constitutes “material support.”

I would argue that if the case makes it all the way to the supreme court, enough people of "ordinary intelligence" have pondered the question that Justice Roberts' answer is offensive.  Which leads, of course, to this prescient quote from Ayn Rand. 

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."   Ayn Rand

To borrow my line from earlier in the month, "Code of Federal Regulations, Volume 1 of 9247, Abridged Edition"

Quote of the Day

Actually, a headline from the UN

DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA ASSUMES PRESIDENCY OF THE CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT

In case you have friends who don't understand why the UN needs to be dumped somewhere, putting the North Koreans in charge of disarmament ought to say something.

The Conference on Disarmament held a plenary meeting this morning in which the Democratic People's Republic of Korea assumed the presidency of the Conference and members bid farewell to the departing ambassadors from Canada and the United Kingdom. 

H/T to Sondrakistan, bounced there from Improved Clinch. obligatory f-bomb warning for:  

A Follow Up

Tam had this comment today, which led me to expound on things a bit.  Whenever I get really long, I turn the comment into a post, so let me go there. 

So "Ha ha ha! Dumb democrats living in a city below sea level in hurricane alley!"

But "Ooh, evil democrats trying to chase brave republicans out of bottomland that everybody before 1960 had the common sense not to farm or build on!"

Anybody who'd buy bottomland that's only protected from flooding by a pile of dirt that was stacked up by the government deserves a good soaking.

Interesting set of quotes, but not where I'm coming from. 

I'm unabashedly in favor of farming, mining, and manufacturing as the ways to create real wealth.  The problem isn't that the fed.gov put down piles of dirt - I'm sure they're not the first group to try and tame the Missouri; that was probably an indigenous tribe.  The problem is really bad management of the river.  Bad river management means that higher food prices are coming.

There's almost a "perfect storm" of things around the world that are combining to push up food prices. 

A couple of those things are the apparent mismanagement of the spring thaw/flood season on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and the tendency to put environmental concerns ahead of human concerns.  It's being widely reported that the corps of engineers mismanaged the situation.  The corps was warned early in the season to open flood gates and not let the land flood so badly.  If true, they're responsible for ruining people's houses and property, along with destroying farm lands.

Other things that are coming together to force food prices up are weather problems around the world, and the political groups that are dedicated to putting concerns for humans on the bottom of any priority system. 

The ugly truth is that anything the causes drastic increases in food prices kills people on the margins.  Not just the ACOE, but also insane decisions like giving incentives to take food and turn it into fuel (corn ethanol), which is blamed in part for the riots in the "Arab Spring", and lots of deaths. 

Unlike the watermelon greenies, I view this as tragic.  I don't think sending mining overseas (and I include oil "mining") so that the pollution only affects "little brown people" is a good thing, as the enviro-weenies seem to.  If they don't want to harm them, why are they sending mining and farming from the most environmentally responsible places on the planet to the least responsible places? 

Lessons Learned As We Totter Through Hurricane Season

It has been hurricane season for just about a month now (it's June 1 through November 30) and while the Atlantic tropics are quiet, this weekend marked the start of our regular summer monsoon season with some impressive rain on Saturday and more gentle rain today.  I saw over the weekend that there was an area in the Bay of Campeche that some models said would organize, but it hasn't really.  The NHC is giving it a 50% chance of becoming a "cyclone" before it goes ashore in Mexico, probably near Tampico and probably as a depression. 

Last spring, I took the unusual move of preemptively replacing our water heater.  Around here, getting a decade out of a water heater is good, and ours was  hitting nine years old.  Rather than have it go out at an inopportune time, we elected to replace it with a natural gas powered tankless water heater.  There's a handful of reasons for this, but it was the first time we connected to the natural gas utility, and there was a pretty fat rebate for all we did.  After our two hurricanes in 2004, the natural gas system worked for everyone I knew, while many people were without electricity for days to weeks.  A "hot" shower may not be your goal after running a chainsaw in the summer heat cleaning up the damage, but a shower sure is nice to have.

Saturday night, I noticed there was no hot water.  After a brief effort to fix it, about midnight in our back yard with flashlights, we gave up showering and got up Sunday to try and figure out what was wrong.  It ended up being the outdoor ground fault indicating power fixture, and it cost me about $20 to get a better outlet and install it.  The lesson?   Keep some AC outlets, switches and electrical supplies, in case the stores are down, or inventory isn't being kept up.

If you don't have one, you should have a voltmeter.  Nowadays, basic digital multimeters can be found for $20 or $30.  Electronics stores like Fry's have a wide assortment and even Lowe's or Home Depot have them for home electrical work.  They're very easy to use; and the auto-ranging ones can almost be used by the brain dead.  In my case, once I opened the junction box cover, I could see 120 VAC on the input to the fixture (metal pieces on the sides) but not when I stuck the probes into the outlet.  In general, you'll want to turn off the breaker for anything you're working on, but you probably want to test the outlet with the power on.  It's more direct that way.  Just don't touch metal and you'll be fine.  Turn off the breaker to wire in the new outlet or switch.

An interesting aspect about hurricanes is found in the work of Dr. Ryan Maue at FSU Dr. Maue has been tracking the amount of energy transferred by cyclones around the world for some time, and energies are at low levels not seen since the late 1970s.  Don't get too comfortable: the North Atlantic contributed around one third of the entire world's cyclone energy last year, and one storm can really ruin your day.   Dr. Maue's work appears to completely debunk the idea that a global increase in the number or severity of storms is going on, as advanced by Al Gore and the Hysterics (I saw them open for Ultimate Spinach in the '60s).  His work shows patterns in hurricane strength more in line with the known oscillation patterns. 

Will the US get hit this year?  Just like all other preps, it's better to have and not need...

Let's Tie A Couple of Stories Together - part ii

Let me tie Wednesday and Saturday together.

As I said Wednesday's post, it's all about UN Agenda 21, and allowing the flooding of wide tracts of the US supports that idea.  Trevor Loudon at New Zeal has a great post to help you get up to speed on the UN's Agenda 21.   The implications of this plan make Soylent Green or any of the worst, most dystopian-future movies look like Mary Poppins (the most relentlessly optimistic, happy movie I can think of).  To begin with, let's look at a map.  Trevor has a small version, so I went and found one that's readable if you click on it:

If this UN plan goes into effect, every area in red will be "forbidden zone" for humans. Every area in yellow will be "highly regulated".  I assume that means you will only be allowed there with permits and strict time limits - not to live there.  Humans will basically be allowed to live only in densely packed urban areas, shown as black dots.  Think all of the worst places in America: Chicago, Detroit, New York, Boston, DC... you get the idea. 

Central to the plan is the idea of being carbon neutral.  That's right, "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever they call it this week, is the basis for mass murder on a scale that Mao, Pol Pot, or Hitler could never aspire to.  You see, to quote from this piece at End of The American Dream, the population must be reduced:

• CNN Founder Ted Turner: "A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."

• Dave Foreman, Earth First Co-Founder: "My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world."

• Maurice Strong: "Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?"

Gee, the moderate guy only wants to kill off more than 95% of the human race.  See the current world population is around 7 billion people.  For Dave Foreman, 100 million out of 7 billion is 100 out of 7000 or 1.4 %.  At 300 million, Ted Turner would generously let 4.3% live.

Around 20 years ago, I heard that the entire population of the world would fit in Jacksonville, Florida, without resorting to vertical high rise buildings.  It would be austere, but they would fit.  I found a the area of the city (885 square miles), ran the calculation, and it worked.  Even today, you still could fit every man woman and child in the world in the area of Jacksonville, but each person would only get 3.5 square feet, so it would pretty much be shoulder to shoulder.  According to the Wiki, the area of the state of Florida is 65,755 square miles.  Given the 7 billion people in the world, if you spread them evenly across the state, every person in the world would get 261.9 square feet.  Not a big room (unless you're in NYC), and small by US standards, but generous compared to much of the world.  Of course, the infrastructure would take room, so you'd probably need to spread them out, but I suspect everyone in the world would fit comfortably in the southeastern US.  And we need to kill off 95% of them because they're taking up too many resources? 

John P. Holdren, Barack Obama's top science advisor, co-authored a textbook entitled "Ecoscience" back in 1977 in which he actually advocated mass sterilization, compulsory abortion, a one world government and a global police force to enforce population control.

source for that and this:

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

So the Fed.gov, acting under the Agenda 21 of the UN, wants to forcibly - at gunpoint, I assume - abort your babies, put sterilants in the drinking water, move you to a city center where you can be stacked up like cordwood, and "live" where every move you make, every thing you eat, every decision you make, is made for you by the state.  If you're one of the few percent who aren't killed off.  All in the name of the skankiest, most corrupt "science" humans have ever put on paper (pretty good summary).   It's pretty damned obvious why they don't want us armed, isn't it?

(Edit: 1712 forgot to label the post)

Is Someone Trying To Create a New Holodomor?

Is a reference to the Holodomor going too far?  Read for a while and then tell me.

Ann Barnhardt posts the contents of a phone call she received. 

1. File this one under "Now It All Makes Sense". A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to BUY THEIR LAND.

Of course they're going to buy the farm land.  It's your benevolent government just helping you as much as they can.  You're having troubles due to these unfortunate, unpredictable floods, so they're going to help you out by using your neighbor's money to buy your farm.  

Intentionally flood massive acreage of highly productive farmground. Destroy people's communities and homes. Catch them while they are desperate and afraid and then swoop in and buy the ground cheap. Those evil sons of bitches. 

Intentionally flood the lands?  You mean the floods weren't "unfortunate, unpredictable" "acts of God" events?  Joe Herring at the American Thinker backs that up in this article.  You should RTWT.  The essential argument is this:

Sixty years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers had a mandate to tame the Missouri River, "...by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods." Sixty years ago was the 1950s; America was flush with our success in WWII, and taming the environment was a priority everywhere. But thirty years later, the 1980s, the greenies got involved.

An idea to restore the nation's rivers to a natural (pre-dam) state swept through the environmental movement and their allies.  Adherents enlisted the aid of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), asking for an updated "Biological Opinion" from the FWS that would make ecosystem restoration an "authorized purpose" of the dam system.  The Clinton administration threw its support behind the change, officially shifting the priorities of the Missouri River dam system from flood control, facilitation of commercial traffic, and recreation to habitat restoration, wetlands preservation, and culturally sensitive and sustainable biodiversity.

You can guess what happened next: the system turned entirely toward restoring the river to its wild ways; restore the animals at the expense of the humans.

The Missouri River Recovery and Implementation Committee has seventy members.  Only four represent interests other than environmentalism.  The recommendations of the committee, as one might expect, have been somewhat less than evenhanded.

This was an exceptionally snowy and wet winter.  The Missouri is running at levels it has not run in the 60 years the Corps of Engineers has been managing the river:

 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a victim/tool of the above-described process.  The horrifying consequence is water rushing from the dams on the Missouri twice as fast as the highest previous releases on record.  Floodgates that have not been opened in more than fifty years are in full operation, discharging water at a rate of 150,000 cubic feet per second toward millions of Americans downstream.

Note that this surge of 150,000 has to eventually go from Montana and North Dakota down through the Mississippi River and into the Gulf.  Their flooding isn't over, yet.

This is a mind-boggling rate of release.  Consider that 150,000 cubic feet of water would fill a football field instantly to a depth of four feet.  This amount of water, being released every second, will continue unabated for the next several months.  The levees that protect the cities and towns downstream were constructed to handle the flow rates promised at the time of the dam's construction.  None of these levees have ever been tested at these levels, yet they must hold back millions of acre-feet of floodwater for the entire summer without failing.  In the flooding of 1993, more than a thousand levees failed.  This year's event will be many orders of magnitude greater.

At this point, you certainly have mismanagement of the flood control aspects of the Corps' duties, and priority to environmentalism over humanity.  Does it rise to the level of trying to create mass starvation?  If your preference for wildlife destroys the people's food, how can it not create starvation?  We'll just buy food from somewhere else?  Where, exactly?   

Enter Dr. Evil, George Soros.

Returning to Ann Barnhard's post:

Speaking of evil sons of bitches, George Soros appears to be "investing" in farmground through the same puppet company that he used to get into the grain elevator and fertilizer business. The company is called Ospraie Capital Management and is buying up farmground in a joint venture with Teays River Investments as a partner. Here is that announcement:   Click Here

Now Soros may just be putting his money where he sees the opportunity for good returns, or he may be trying to buy up all the food production in the world so everyone has to play his game.  Hard to say.  Ann concludes with this bombshell (emphasis added by me):

Bottom line: Soros, through Ospraie, is buying up farmground. Please also note that the hotlink citation above is dated June 26, 2009. My contact says this has been going on for two years - and also remember what I told you about farmground prices inflating wildly, especially in Illinois. I have personally confirmed farmground in Illinois selling for $13,000 per acre within the last month, whereas that same kind of ground in Illinois was going for $5500 per acre the day Obama was inaugurated.

I'm sure you have heard the Chinese are buying up US farmland due to weather problems with their own crops.  Chinese and US corn farmers are having problems.  I summarized some of these here, earlier in the month, and GardenSERF has an excellent summary here. 

The question is one of malice or stupidity; maybe more a question of whether the greenies are evil or useful idiots.  Are the environmentalists intentionally trying to destroy the US by regulating us into paralysis?  Remember when the environmentalists ordered the end of irrigation in the central valley of California, creating a crippling man-made drought in some of the best farmland in America, to protect the Delta Smelt?  A 2" minnow that was said to be harmed by the irrigation dams - by some enviro-weenies; other scientists said the population changes had nothing to do with irrigation.  Since the little fish isn't much of a poster reason to starve the people in the valley, the National Marine Fisheries Service said the irrigation would kill whales, and we sure can't have that!  I'm sure all of us would gladly lie down and die to save a whale.  Confidentially, here's a suggestion.  If you would gladly lie down and die to save the whales: go ahead.

The Holodomor was the deliberate starvation of the Ukraine by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.  If you just search the term you'll find descriptions and denials, not unlike those of the Nazi holocaust just a few years later (if I had more readership, a Soviet apologist would probably show up here to rebut me).   A consistent and tragic tactic of socialist regimes from Stalin to Mugabe is to take farm land away from those who have been managing it successfully and giving it to the underclass.  Famine and death is the frequent result.

Is some group or small number of groups trying to starve the US?  It's hard to say, but I think the argument can be made.  There are groups who will say other countries around the world have a more tenuous food supply than we do, and many in the US could "stand to lose a few pounds" by shipping more food overseas.  There are those who seem to think "we have plenty of farms in the US" and "it can't hurt to shut down a few million acres to protect the rivers or the wildlife".  And, quite possibly, there are those who would like to see us starve because starving people are easier to dominate.

Friday Night Funnies

We all have our little idiosyncrasies, and one of my many is that when I'm doing the kind of work that keeps me at my desk in my office, I usually listen to the I Heart Radio app on my iPhone.  I used to bring a general coverage handheld radio and tune it to either the local talk radio, local ham repeaters, FM broadcast or perhaps the airport tower.  Although the app itself can be clunky and crash too often, when it works its sound quality is better than what I can get indoors with a limited antenna.

My latest little find is the 24/7 Comedy Channel, which features short (usually less than 2 minutes, always less than 10) of stand up comedy performances.  Some big, classic established names - George Carlin, Robin Williams, Steven Wright, Richard Jeni; some big newer names - Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Chris Rock; and a bunch that I frankly had never heard of before.  I really enjoy Maria Bamford, Patton Oswalt, Jim Gaffigan and more.  One guy I've never heard of before is John Pinette.  Earlier this evening, Mrs. Graybeard laughed until we hurt watching a full hour of Pinette's "I Say Nay Nay". 




If you're up for a good hour of silly, start here and go watch the other 5 sections. If not, just watch this one.  If you can't handle 10 minutes or want a sampler, just go here and pick something.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Alec Ross, and advisor to Hillary Clinton at the State Department, thinks the Internet is as good as Che Guevara.  Someone who helped enslave millions, who  personally tortured and murdered thousands is a force for freedom?  Whose freedom? 

Ross said that the internet had "acted as an accelerant" in the Arab spring uprisings, pointing to the dislodging of former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in little over a month. The internet had facilitated leaderless movements, Ross added, describing it as the "Che Guevara of the 21st century".

As Humberto Fontana says at Daily Caller, imagine if this turned up in the Sarah Palin emails:

Imagine the MSM snarkiness and uproar if somewhere in Sarah Palin’s e-mail garbage bins they scrounged up an item where she equates Internet freedom with the co-founder of the regime that Freedom House rates as among the three most repressive on Earth against the Internet, where bloggers were being jailed and tortured for the crime of blogging while she wrote the message. Because, in fact, Cubans were being jailed and tortured for blogging while the U.S. State Department’s senior advisor on “Internet freedom” hailed the Cuban regime’s co-founder as the emblem of Internet freedom.

and concludes:

Imagine the MSM snarkiness and uproar if Sarah Palin, as an official of the U.S. Department of State, lauded a man who insulted the U.S. as “the Great Enemy of Mankind!” and her countrymen as “hyenas fit only for extermination!” and who openly craved to incinerate millions of them with a surprise nuclear attack. “If the missiles had remained,” confided Che Guevara to The London Daily Worker in November 1962, “we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City.”

Some days, it's better to laugh this crap off than pay too much attention to it, but it emphasizes the character of the administration where Chairman Mao is worshiped as a hero. 

Much has been made of Obama's former Communications Director Anita Dunn quoting Chairman Mao as one of her two "favorite philosophers", and Ron Bloom (Manufacturing "Czar") saying "... We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun... "

While The Media Was Telling Weiner Jokes

President O signed executive order 13575.  The Establishment of the White House Rural Council, in which they move to impose even more federal control over farmlands, rural areas, and 16% of the population. 

Section 1. Policy  Sixteen percent of the American population lives in rural counties. Strong, sustainable rural communities are essential to winning the future and ensuring American competitiveness in the years ahead. These communities supply our food, fiber, and energy, safeguard our natural resources, and are essential in the development of science and innovation. Though rural communities face numerous challenges, they also present enormous economic potential. The Federal Government has an important role to play in order to expand access to the capital necessary for economic growth, promote innovation, improve access to health care and education, and expand outdoor recreational activities on public lands.

The Blaze picked up this story, in an article written by Mike Opelka.  That whole thing sounds benign if not warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?  Question: is there anything this bunch has done that's benign?  I wonder who's running this show?

• (1) the Department of the Treasury; Timothy Geithner
• (2) the Department of Defense; Robert Gates
• (3) the Department of Justice; Eric Holder
• (4) the Department of the Interior; Ken Salazar
• (5) the Department of Commerce; Gary Locke
• (6) the Department of Labor; Hilda Solis
• (7) the Department of Health and Human Services; Kathleen Sebelius
• (8) the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Shaun Donovan
• (9) the Department of Transportation; Ray LaHood
• (10) the Department of Energy; Dr. Steven Chu
• (11) the Department of Education; Arne Duncan
• (12) the Department of Veterans Affairs; Eric Shinseki
• (13) the Department of Homeland Security; Janet Napolitano
• (14) the Environmental Protection Agency; Lisa Jackson
• (15) the Federal Communications Commission; Michael Copps
• (16) the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Orszag
• (17) the Office of Science and Technology Policy; John Holdren
• (18) the Office of National Drug Control Policy; R. Gil Kerlikowske
• (19) the Council of Economic Advisers; Austan Goolsbee
• (20) the Domestic Policy Council; Melody Barnes (former VP at Center for American Progress)
• (21) the National Economic Council; Gene B. Sperling
• (22) the Small Business Administration; Karen Mills
• (23) the Council on Environmental Quality; Nancy Sutley
• (24) the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs; Valerie Jarrett
• (25) the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs; and such other executive branch departments, agencies, and offices as the President or Secretary of  Agriculture may, from time to time, designate. Chris Lu (or virtually anyone to be designated by the 24 people named above)

Oh, that makes me feel much better.  Valerie Jarrett, TurboTax Timmy, John "let's put contraceptives in the water" Holdren, Michael Copps, either the biggest turd on the FCC or a close second... the whole den of thieves.  As Obi-Wan said, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy". 

You have to ask why.  After all, the fed.gov already has power over these areas, already has tons of programs to manage farmlands and crops, even paying farmers not to produce.  They already provide loans.  On the other extreme, there's already a National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management to provide "outdoor recreational opportunities".  In other words, they're already deep into this "under served" 16% of the country.  Why now?  Note the buzzwords "sustainable rural communities" in that first paragraph.  Author Opelka puts this whole thing in the context of UN Agenda 21, which is all about "sustainable growth" - which is code for elimination of private property.  Newsflash: if it's from the UN, it's socialist.  I'm sure you're as shocked as I am to hear this. 

Go read the whole piece.  On a day when another story about how gentle and kind to rural folks the fed.gov already is, and that story itself should be headline news.   

The Impact of One Man

This is going to be a departure from my usual fare - I don't think I've ever written anything quite like this. 

Have you ever wondered about the impact of one man on the world?  Just how much can the world be changed by one guy? 

Look around where you are.  Are you in front of a computer?  Laptop?  If you're reading this, you're using some form of electronics.  Do you have an MP3 player, like an iPod?  Do you listen to podcasts? 

The common thread I want to point out is analog electronics.  Not digital.  Not the computer itself but the sound system.  Although very few people are aware of this, the number of people who design the modern analog integrated circuits is shockingly small.   Two very bright stars in the history of analog IC design have both died unexpectedly in the last 10 days, and the engineers who know them by their work are in somewhat of a state of shock.

I don't want to get too off track, but I'll bet the vast majority of folks who stumble across this will know the names of the big name digital companies;  Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments (where the IC was invented).  You'll probably know Samsung, Fujitsu, Cypress or some other big players.  Digital is the hot technology, right?  Every generation, digital circuits get faster and more capable.  Everyone who has been around computers for more than a few years has stories of how much they spent for something that's cheap today.   I've had computers long enough to remember paying $350 for my first hard drive (30 Meg!) and $200 for my first megabyte of memory.  At a recent show, I was given a 1 Gig USB thumb drive as a promotion.  But have you heard of Fairchild Semiconductor?  Philbrick?  What about National Semiconductor, Linear Technology or Analog Devices? 

The analog world is a small piece of electronics, but indispensable.  Digital circuits are switches, and they function by rules of logic (Boolean algebra).  They work by switching between off and on at blazing speeds.  Modern circuits may only switch 1.8V or less, down from the 5V logic that was the norm when I was a kid - the lower voltage helps them speed up, and reduces power consumption.   Analog circuits, by contrast, are thought of as continuous operation.  While any signal below the high "turn on" level for a digital circuit (1.2V, for example) is the same, whole analog systems work with signals very far below that measured in millionths to thousandths of a volt.  Analog circuits power the digital world.  Essentially all modern systems use switching power supplies (also called switch-mode) to achieve the efficiencies we want in our electronics.  A simple power supply made of a transformer, rectifiers and filtering, may be 30% efficient; modern switchers can hit 90% efficient.  Think of the power saved!  (and the market did it on our own, without the .gov forcing us!  Imagine that...) 

One of the bright stars in analog IC design was a genius named Jim Williams.  Jim passed away unexpectedly June 12th after suffering a massive stroke.  Jim is best remembered for his years at Linear Technology, and they currently have a nice memorial page on their site.  I never met Jim in "meatspace", but I have read many of his applications notes describing the most intricate concepts clearly and concisely.  I think I first noticed Jim by name in the late 80s when I came across an applications note he authored called "Switching Regulators for Poets - a gentle guide for the trepidatious" (AN25).  An MIT guy, but not an actual graduate engineer, he is recognized widely in industry, including being inducted into the hall of fame.  Like all the great ones, he realized that filling a book page or whiteboard with math might describe the way the circuit worked, but didn't bring understanding; description and understanding are different things.

The second bright star, Bob Pease, died on the way home from Jim's funeral.  Bob first met Jim at Philbrick in the early days of analog ICs.  Bob cultivated his image as a curmudgeon, maintaining a "wizard beard", and at one time throwing computers off the National Semiconductor headquarters because the circuit simulation software "lied to me".  Again, I never met Bob in meatspace but I've read hundreds of his columns in Electronic Design magazine.  They have a tribute page up now, too, as does National Semiconductor.  Bob was involved in a lot of ground breaking design, but I think he was most proud of inventing the bandgap reference - still the state of the art approach for a voltage reference that varies the least with temperature - and started calling himself the Bandgap Czar.

In our modern, technical society, we tend to take things for granted.  We'll always have amplifiers and analog "black magic" electronics.  The community of people who actually do this is small, though.  I think it would surprise you.  National Semiconductor, where Bob and Jim both worked before Jim left for the upstart Linear Technology, has been acquired by Texas Instruments.  I'm not sure what will become of the name, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was gone in a year or two.  Of the 5700 employees at National, I'll bet there's less than 100 analog IC designers and one or two "staff scientists" who grok it all.  How many are there in the world?  Perhaps a thousand people on earth?   

Going back to my start, what's the impact of one man?  The philosophers argue that while a Jim Williams or Bob Pease may have invented much of modern circuitry, if they hadn't been there, someone else would have done it.  But how do we know?  Anyone who has done math has likely had the experience of struggling to solve a problem, only to have it look clear and obvious when the teacher solves it.  Oftentimes, the hardest part in solving a problem is seeing that it can be solved; and knowing a solution exists will drive someone on to find it.  I am always in awe of the great minds who do so much, and advance the standard of living for all of us - just because it's fun for them to do.  You'll see people saying that if we got through a really big SHTF event, that we'll be back to 18th century living.  We'll be surrounded by tech that no one knows how to use.  If the wrong thousand people die, society may "forget" how to design analog ICs. 

RIP, Jim, Bob.  Though we never met, you improved my life. 

The Dollar Can't Buy a Friend

H/T to Zerohedge; more bad news for the dollar, the Russians have gotten rid of about 1/3 of their US bonds and plan to buy fewer.  

"Just in time for the end of QE2, when the US needs every possible foreign buyer of US debt to step up to the plate, we get confirmation that yet another major foreign central bank has decided to not only not add to its US debt holdings, but to actively sell US Treasurys. The WSJ reports that "Russia will likely continue lowering its U.S. debt holdings as Washington struggles to contain a budget deficit and bolster a tepid economic recovery, a top aide to President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday. "The share of our portfolio in U.S. instruments has gone down and probably will go down further," said Arkady Dvorkovich, chief economic aide to the president..."

So China is getting out of the dollar, Japan is out of the market, Russia is getting out... who's left?  The EU?  With Greece moments from collapse, massive protests in Spain and their other problems?  While congress fiddles, anyone with any sense is getting out of the US bonds.  In fact, bonds from any nation don't seem really secure now.  The stock market technical indicators are insisting that trouble's coming.  The EU and US are in trouble, while China has built ghost cities (can you say "bubble"?) and is facing social unrest, themselves.  Looks like it's getting to be time to find a bunker to hide in.