A Heartwarming Story of a Stolen 1911

Somehow, my web surfing ended up here today, at the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune, with a heart warming story about a guy who bought a 1911 at auction, and doing some research, found it had been owned by a Medal of Honor winner.  He found it had been stolen from the MOH owner and he was in possession of stolen property.  He did the right thing and not only tracked down the owner, he returned it to the owner. 

There's a law of the Universe that every religion talks about, and it's one of a tiny number (2?) of social laws that are as inescapable as gravity.  Eastern religions call it karma; Christians say "you reap as you sow".  Before that, Jews said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"*.  As the gentlemen who returned the gun said, 

"Concern yourself with what is right and you'll never second-guess that decision".

It's a great story.  Go read.  I should point out that the website apparently will use cookies to make sure you're not reading the old articles too many times in a month, so read it once and smile.  (I always heard that news in the morning was bird cage liner by that evening.  I guess they're holding onto everything they can.)

Photo from the paper (obviously)...

* I know: same author.  I'm tryin' to wax poetic here!

A Conversation With My Senator

I received an email from one of my US Senators today, Bill Nelson, D, in which he posts his “Common Sense” ideas on how to get out of our financial mess as published in Politico.  For a member in good standing of what many refer to as the Evil party, not what we call the Stupid party, he sure dispenses plenty of stupid.  As anything I say would never be read by the Gentleman from Florida (as they say up there),  I thought I'd fisk this here for tonight's amusement.  I will leave his pearls of wisdom in black text, and add my comments in blue. 

Close the tax loopholes
By: Sen. Bill Nelson,

"There’s no mystery about what we have to do. It’s just common sense. In addition to the spending cuts Congress just made, we need tax reform. And by tax reform, I mean closing loopholes, special interest tax breaks and corporate subsidies. It’s just plain wrong to be protecting tax breaks for oil companies and to be rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas." - Sen. Bill Nelson

After watching Standard & Poor’s performance in the Enron and housing debacles, it’s hard to stomach their decision to downgrade America’s credit.

Meh.  Complaining about S&P's performance is like TV producers complaining about Neilsen ratings.  You may complain all you like, but it's what the industry uses.  In truth, we've been degraded by other agencies, almost a year ago by the Chinese equivalent of S&P, and nobody over here said a word.  Frankly, I think S&P was right. 

But even coming from S&P, there is a message we should hear: The finger pointing and hyper-partisanship has to stop. If it doesn’t, we really will be on the road to ruin.

Democrats need to see tea partiers as something other than debt-limit hostage-taking Republicans. And Republicans need to see President Barack Obama and Democrats as something other than big-spending socialists.

We’ve got to stop this attack madness. We have to bring civility back to the public square. We have to put the country back on the path to fiscal sanity.

To do that, we need to cut some $4 trillion to $5 trillion. We made a down payment on this with the $2 trillion dollars we cut just last week. Now we need to go further.

I believe you're suffering from what the doctors call “premature congratulations”.  Your vaunted plan will not affect the big picture because that $2 trillion is in a 10 year plan and doesn't start for another three years (2014).  We need to cut much more than that. Here's a before/after graph with and without your cuts:

To understand what we have to do, though, we first need to look at how we got here.

We went from a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 to a $1.3 trillion deficit last year — and a record $14 trillion debt. A huge chunk of the debt comes from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re bringing the troops home.

It's been reported that the total cost of those wars is about $1 Trillion.  Too low?  Let's triple that and say we spent $3T.  3/14, or 21%, is not a “huge chunk” in my book; huge starts at around 2/3 or 3/4.  “It's the spending, stupid”, and stupid spending at that.  But I tell you what: if you went back to the spending levels of 2000 the problem would go away!  Don't want to do that?  Didn't think so. 

The implication here is the old “it's all Bush's fault”, which is a fantasy.  Bush was no fiscal conservative, and had many bad policies (which, strangely, have all been retained by Mr. Obama) but the deficit for this February was more than the entire year of 2007!  There is simply no equal in history for the deficit spending of this administration. 

Another significant piece stems from the Bush-era tax cuts. Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, says the tax cuts for the wealthy should be left to expire. They’re set to do so at the end of next year. We should let that happen.

First off, I hate to break your bubble, but Buffett is a has-been. I have done quite well with my meager 401k by doing the opposite of whatever he suggests. 

There is a persistent confusion of tax revenues with tax rates, which you seem to fall into, Mr. Nelson. The two are not directly related in the mathematical sense. If you raise rates, people can be relied upon to change their behaviors and revenues can fall – or, at a minimum, don't go up as much as you expect.

The historical limit on tax revenues as a percent of GDP is around 18-19%, regardless of tax rates.  Revenues are currently lower than that for a simple reason: the economic downturn is reducing the national income just as it has reduced the income of so many citizens. The emphasis should be on trying to create conditions that lead to job creation to push that revenue up, and raising taxes just isn't one of those. Never has been, never will be. 

See Hauser's Law in your favorite economics textbook.

(Hauser's Law from the Peter G Peterson Foundation)

Or, as a converse, when rates are low, the “rich” can pay more revenue, as in the fact that currently, the top 1% pays more than the bottom 95% combined.  Which leads to the very simple question: since the top 1% of incomes pays more than the bottom 95% of incomes, what is their “fair share”? You don't have much to choose from. 96%? 97%? Should the top 1% pay for everything? If so, I don't want to live in your world.

Agree or not, don’t you think most Americans were better off before the tax cuts than they are now?

Nope.  They were better off before the housing bubble burst, blown quite deliberately by the Federal Reserve, aided and abetted by the Congress. 

Much of the rest of the debt comes from the economic downturn since 2008. That brings us to today. And there’s no mystery about what we have to do. It’s just common sense. In addition to the spending cuts Congress just made, we need tax reform. And by tax reform, I mean closing loopholes, special interest tax breaks and corporate subsidies. It’s just plain wrong to be protecting tax breaks for oil companies and to be rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas.

The other word for “loophole” is “law”; a loophole is a law that someone whom you don't like is obeying.  You guys write the laws, so those “loopholes” wouldn't be there if you hadn't put them there.  Oil companies get fewer tax breaks than any other industry and are being punished as it is. And the reason companies move jobs overseas is that our tax system is the worst in the world. Maybe if congress grew up and realized that businesses don't pay tax, they simply collect it from their customers (that is, from you and me), and drastically reduced our corporate tax structure, you'd attract companies here from all over the world. 

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth Subcommittee, I’ve scheduled a hearing for early September to investigate closing many of these loopholes. Doing so will likely generate $2 trillion over the next decade. Add that to the $2 trillion in spending cuts we’ve made — and we’re in the $4 trillion range that we need to hit. It’s time to stop the shouting and bickering and political attacks. It’s time to show the world that America can take care of business.

Here's a few ideas for your consideration: we've deficit spent over 2.2 Trillion in failed stimulus, TARP and other ineffective programs. What if we said there was to be no income tax at all next year? The cost would be about the same as what we've spent.  We'd borrow 100% of spending instead of 43% of it, but with some discipline, perhaps we could just get it down to doubling what we now borrow. 

Do you think that would stimulate things, if everyone kept their taxes and spent it on whatever they want? Or do you think people would rebel when they had to pay taxes the following year? 

No good? How about if we eliminated corporate taxes, since they don't pay tax anyway. If that's too radical, how about if instead of having the highest corporate taxes in the world, we had the lowest? Do you think that might give some foreign companies a desire to move here? Do you think some American companies might want to “in-source” more into our country? 

It's a law of economics that if you want less of something, you tax it, and if you want more of it, you reduce taxes (or give other incentives). If we want more jobs, we should cut corporate fees, and taxes. 

And if you really want to increase tax revenues (not rates!), have you looked at the Fair Tax people? Of course, you and I both know, that the purpose of the tax code isn't to raise revenue.  One purpose is to punish behavior you don't approve of and reward behavior you do approve of. Social engineering. The other purpose is to reward the people you like with loopholes that they can use.  The tax code hasn't been about revenue in a long time - if ever.

Cordially,

SiliconGraybeard

Quite the Week So Far, Eh?

We see the DJIA down about 2000 bucks from a couple of weeks ago, over a thousand this week alone, and whipping up and down, like boiling water.  Gold is at a nominal high although the inflation-adjusted equivalent of the all time high is around $2400/oz (and a moving target).  For the first time I can ever recall seeing, platinum is cheaper than gold (at this instant, Pt is $1780 while Au is $1803.  Silver has been late to the party, strangely going down for two days. 

London is being burned to the ground.  Baseball bats and kubatons are leading sales on Amazon.uk (here, for zample).  The so-special-everyone-gets-a-trophy generation is reaching its zenith.  Closer to home, Philadelphia youth have a new sport: see if you can knock out an innocent person with one punch - even if they need brass knuckles.  Of course, when someone is knocked out, they've suffered brain damage, which is lifelong - as the NFL keeps telling us.  The Milwaukee mob attack appears to be isolated.  At least, so far.  Just wait.  More is coming.

The lesson I learned in 2008, that when everything crashes, everything crashes was certainly true last week. Yet the dollar is relatively unaffected, and the interest rates on bonds are going down, not up, after the downgrade.  The moral to this story is that the least ugly girl at the dance gets asked the most.  With the EU on the brink of collapse, the dollar seems safe.   Actually, with banks now charging to store money overnight, I would like to offer any billionaire or foreign country a place to store their cash.  Simply contact me and I will store your billions in my living room right here.  No wait, over here.  No, wait....

I'm a Little Distracted

Late night phone calls are generally bad things, but always calls that need to be taken.  We had one last week, a friend of Mrs. Graybeard's called from the hospital where she's in with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  This story is a little involved, and surprisingly raw for so long ago, so bear with me a little. 

It was 14 1/2 years ago, the first Monday of 1997; Mrs. Graybeard had a mammogram scheduled and came home with the films under her arm.  You probably know enough to know this isn't good.  In the whirlwind that followed we lived Tim McGraw's song, ("I spent most of the next days   Starin' at the X-Rays   Talkin' about the options   And talkin' about sweet time") We went through more diagnostics of the spots, surgery, months of chemotherapy and eventually a stem cell transplant.   Along the way, she met this friend in a support group.  At that time, both of them had similar diagnoses, and both went through similar treatments with stem cell transplants; my wife at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center on the University of South Florida, and the friend had hers at Duke University Medical Center (about a year ahead of us). 

A stem cell transplant is often called a bone marrow transplant, but I use the  term as short hand for autologous BMT where your own stem cells are used to differentiate from an allogenic BMT where the marrow is donated by someone else.  These are more risky and grueling.  In a stem cell transplant, SCT, your own immune system's stem cells are removed from your blood and transplanted into you later.  How do they remove the stem cells?  You get a set of tubes (stronger than the normal chemotherapy ports)  surgically implanted into the largest vein in the body, then you're plumbed into a centrifuge that takes your blood out, separates the desired white cells, and returns the rest of the blood into you.  The reason for collecting the stem cells, and the real purpose of all of these transplants, is to give you a dose of chemotherapy that is so strong that it will kill your bone marrow and your ability to produce an immune system.  Although we joked about it, in fact, the dose of chemo is calculated to just not quite kill the patient.

The doctors referred to the SCT or BMT as the most grueling ordeal in medicine.  In August of '97, 14 years ago this month, I took the month off work as family leave to serve as Nurse Stimpy for an outpatient SCT.  Thankfully, the anti-nausea meds worked and she was not terribly sick the whole time - in fact, the whole event was more boring than anything, which gave rise to one of our sayings in life, "boring is good" - especially if it's boring instead of life threatening.  After 6 weeks, we returned home, instructed to stay out of public for a few months while her immune system rebuilt.  On our first full day home, she insisted on going for a 10 mile bike ride.  A few weeks later, she started radiation therapy, five days a week, with the final treatment and the end of the journey that began in early January finally taking place the day before Thanksgiving. 

So why am I going through this story?  Our friend's leukemia is being attributed directly to the stem cell transplant she went through.  The same SCT that Mrs. Graybeard went through.  And the same treatment that several friends we lost along the way went through. In a group of 8, all of whom who were given "about 75%" chance of survival, only two are still alive and one now has leukemia.

At the time, SCT for breast cancer was experimental, but a researcher had published a paper saying early data showed it was effective.  It turns out this study was falsified, and clinical trials of SCT/high dose chemotherapy were halted.  In a recently reviewed and dated position paper from the ACS:

At one time it was thought that this would be a good way to treat women with advanced breast cancer. However, several studies have found that women who receive high-dose chemotherapy do not live any longer than women who receive standard chemotherapy without a stem cell transplant. High-dose chemotherapy with stem cell transplant also causes more serious side effects than standard dose chemotherapy.

This is one reason why I want my science as hard as I can get it.  It's one thing to be faced with all the uncertainty you face in that situation; it's another for a researcher to commit scientific fraud.  I don't care if they really think they're right and the data just didn't work out right.  You don't adjust reality to fit your ideas, you adjust your ideas to fit reality.  Would we have done it if the doctors said, "this procedure may not help at all and may cause very serious side effects"?  I honestly don't know.  But I think we should have known the truth. 

Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD, is running the gauntlet with his fiance right now and posted this cartoon (and a cool follow up).  I wouldn't wish this on anyone.  

In the end, we're left wondering if the transplant helped or hurt. There is no rational way to decide which one of those cartoon lanes you're on and it seems more like random event than science.  It may disturb you to read that one of the most quoted and followed medical papers in history statistically demonstrates that most of modern medicine is not much more advanced than applying leeches.

Our friend is in good spirits and looks good.  She knows the battle ahead.  It's possible the early rounds of chemo she's getting now will fix everything.  And it's possible another BMT - this time with donated marrow - is in her future. 

Face It: S&P Was Right

One thing I've learned about you folks is that I have a very erudite group that reads here regularly.  I think that anyone who stops by here often probably, like I did, expected the S&P downgrade of the US credit rating, so it wasn't really news to us.  As the famous Jim Rogers said on July 25 (H/T to JDA)

“Everyone already knows that the U.S. has lost its AAA status,” Rogers said. “Anyone who knows what is going on, already knows that the U.S. is now the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world. It’s only S&P and Moody’s that haven’t figured out what is going on. The investment world knows that the U.S. is not AAA.”

Because of that, I didn't think the markets would tank as badly as they did today.  I thought it was "priced in" already - exactly because I figure those clowns on Wall Street know what's going on.  Is this the beginning of the dreaded double dip?  My gut feeling, and I can't tell for sure without doing some actual math on data I don't have, is that there never was a recovery.  What the Bureau of Lies and 'Scuses Bureau of Labor Statistics claimed to be growth was simply inflation from destroying the dollar (QE1 and 2).  And speaking of the BLS, isn't it funny how growth always got adjusted downward after the press release, just as unemployment always got adjusted upward? What a coincidence! 

Despite missing the details of this drop, I prepared for it long ago.  My exposure to stocks is very low.  This thing has been coming for a long time, and anyone who thinks more than one move ahead could have seen it coming. 

The president, as King of the Evil party, keeps saying millionaires and billionaires "don't pay their fair share".  Probably most of you will recognize this graph that shows that the top 1% of incomes paid more than the bottom 95% put together. 

King Evil, sir, how much more is fair?  Should the top 1% pay more than the bottom 96% put together?  99%?  All of the rest?  With that sort of imbalance, there just isn't much room to change.  If you work in whole numbers there's just 4 steps where they pay more.  Unless you think 1% of the income distribution should pay 100% of all taxes.  If that's the case, I don't want to live in your world.  If you, dear reader, think the top 1% should pay everything, kindly leave and don't come back until you get your head out of your butt. 

More importantly, the fact that Fed.gov says things like this, hasn't recognized that their spending is what caused this, and has yet to do anything to fix the downgrade simply reveals S&P was right, and the collapse will continue.  As I've said many times, I'm not sure they're deliberately trying to destroy the country, but I am sure I can't think of anything they would be doing differently if it was deliberate. 

Cowboys and Aliens

As world continues to go down the tubes around us, I don't know about you, but we need some light-hearted diversion.  We've gone to see a handful of the "summer blockbuster" movies: Thor, Captain America, and Cowboys and Aliens. 

I've read some critical things about the movie, basically complaining that it isn't a compelling story with characters you want to get to know.  Get a grip, people: it's not Shakespeare, it's freakin' Cowboys and Aliens!  There's a lot of explosions, chases, Apaches, authentic period firearms, fights with bad-ass looking aliens, what more could you want? 

The story asks the question, "what if alien abductions took place in the old west?".  Daniel Craig wakes up in the 1873 Arizona back country with some sort of strange "bracelet" on his left wrist and no memory of who he is, or much of anything else.  Turns out he's a robber who got abducted along with his girlfriend but managed to escape.  Harrison Ford plays a tough, grizzly, old Civil War veteran turned cattle magnate with a useless son and very useful, adopted Apache son.  Olivia Wilde is not just thrown in for the obligatory beautiful girl who has to be in any blockbuster movie; her character has a very big and important, but secret, part in the movie.  The aliens aren't just here to abduct folks, probulate them, mine their nose nuggets, and set them free; they're here for our gold! 

So while there's still a civilization around us, enjoy some recreation.  It can't all be prepping, training, drilling, reinforcing your retreat and loading ammunition.  You might wanna consider taking advantage of civilization within the next week or so. 

Just sayin'...

Almost The Perfect Gun Control Experiment

Wouldn't it be interesting to find a place where a population was split in half, and one half was subject to strict control while the other had free access to arms and could carry almost without limit (assuming they aren't actually in prison)?  Sort of like an East/West Berlin where a population and culture that were once one become split into two, so that many of the cultural differences would go away? That way, if the results show that gun control doesn't work, it would harder for anyone who cares about facts to dispute the data.

The closest to that description I know if is the divided cites of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.  Twin cities, similar population demographics, separated by a national border, which is about as good of a seal as screen door on a submarine.    For all this, hat tip to Michael Bane, PJ Tattler and Dave Kopel of the Second Amendment Project. 

Mexico has draconian gun control. Researcher Dave Kopel notes that possession of firearms above .22 caliber is practically prohibited, though there is a second set of rules for the wealthy. Mexico also requires registration for all civilian gun owners, and federal and state governments actively discourage firearms ownership.

More than 1,300 people have been killed in Juárez this year, and more than 8,600 have been killed since 2008 when a war began between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels.

Meanwhile, here in Texas:

• Law-abiding citizens can walk into a gun store, buy a gun, and walk out with your purchase.

• Law-abiding citizens can carry concealed handguns in public.

• Concealed carry licensees are exempt from the NICS background check, because a FBI background check is part of getting their carry license.

In 2011 to date, sister city El Paso has experienced 15 homicides.

Putting it another way, it would take El Paso criminals about 50 years to catch up to the Juárez death toll January – July 2011.

In my world, if you were to divide an American city, say Chicago, and set up these conditions, it would be unethical, because you'd be condemning so many of the people without guns to die. 

Not Making the National News I'm Seeing

Last night (Thursday, August 4th) people in a crowd leaving the Wisconsin state fair were dragged out of cars, beaten, kicked or knocked off motorcycles by a mob of black youth.  Witnesses said they were clearly only attacking white people.

“It was 100% racial,” claimed Eric, an Iraq war veteran who told the station that young people beat on his car.

Witnesses describe numbers varying from "dozens to hundreds", running between cars, pulling people out to beat them, knocking at least one person off a motorcycle and viciously assaulting that person.  Eric said:

"I saw them grab this white kid who was probably 14 or 15 years old. They just flung him into the road.  They just jumped on him and started beating him. They were kicking him. He was on the ground. A girl picked up a construction sign and pushed it over on top of him. They were just running by and kicking him in the face."

The Milwaukee Star-Tribune reports:

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said he thought the attacks were premeditated.

"I believe that a group of individuals, young people, got together and decided that they would wreak havoc on families, on people who wanted to take their families to a safe gathering at State Fair. I am outraged by what happened," a visibly angry Barrett said. "I will not tolerate any behavior like that in this community."

Business Insider probably has the most honest headline, "Race War at Wisconsin State Fair".

At first impression, this is like the flash crime mobs we're seeing widely around the country, but (of course) I have no way of knowing if it was coordinated online.  Several of the reports I've seen give the strong impression it's the clash across the Bracken cube: perhaps corners 1 and 8 in this case. 

Consider how you would handle this sort of situation.  I don't know if the fair allows concealed carry; if it did, I would be carrying.  But I don't know how much good a handgun and even a couple of magazines does against "dozens to hundreds".  Especially if you're in a car blocked off by dozens of others.  Run and abandon your car?  Lock the doors, but be prepared to shoot if they break in?  I don't think I'm lucky enough to have any professional trainers drop by here, but I'd sure be interested in knowing how to handle this situation.  An image from "Black Hawk Down" comes to mind; of the lone American (Delta Operator?) sitting on the ground by a downed helicopter, emptying his sidearm into the crowd over and over, until he's out of ammo, and the crowd wreaks its revenge. 

Bad Day Today - Could Be More Tomorrow

Quite a day if you're nervously watching a retirement account - or if your day to day life depends on stock prices.  The big market was down over 500 bucks today, along with every asset class: stocks, oil, commodity metals like copper, aluminum, zinc and lead; gold, silver, platinum... everything.  Everything except the dollar index, which was up again as it has been for a few days now.

The dollar is up?  Why would anyone sell commodities and move into dollars?  The way I see it, there are only two reasons one would do that:  psychotic illness or a desperate need for dollars.  A need for dollars could come from having positions in the market that must be paid off in dollars.  Then it makes sense to sell other assets to get dollars to pay losses. 

Industrial commodities like oil and copper being down, on the other hand, means the speculators believe the world economy is going down (or, at best, not going to be growing). All the stock markets are down because everyone is losing faith in ability of the central banks to stop the sovereign defaults that are looming. 

So while it's tempting to blame this on the phony debt reduction turkey they just passed, it's more than that.  It's worldwide systemic collapse. 

Is this "it"? As in the final slump?  Hard to say.  Things to watch for in the coming days are a failure of the Italian and other European banks.  Tyler Durden at Zerohedge posts:

Less than an hour ago, Larry Kudlow tweeted the following: "Sources tell me Italy has to restructure bonds.Deposit run on Italian banks.EU will have to mount Tarp rescue.Big stress on interbank loans." Basically, this is the worst possible combination for Europe which means that another bailout is not only imminent but has to happen tomorrow.

As I write this, it's just after 1 AM in London, a few hours earlier in eastern Europe.  Markets will be opening in another six or eight hours.  The Asian markets are opening now (Nikkei is down a few hundred Yen already).  By the time we wake up on the US East Coast, we may know the next attempt at a fix.   

What can be done to stop it?  To actually stop it, in any sort of meaningful way... nothing I know of.  Oh, sure, they'll do a QE3 and dump tons of paper into the market, so that buyers will get their dollars or lira or drachmas, but that paper currency will be worth paper and ink.  There will be bailouts and transfers between the productive and unproductive classes; German workers will pay for Greeks who are 10 years younger than the workers and already retired.  Americans will provide bailout money to European banks, just like the trillions in 2008/09, and continue to provide cellphones to the poor and other handouts.  In the process, any money you have saved will become worth less and less until it's worthless.  Food and other real necessities will get very expensive, more companies will close, more jobs will be lost, European-style riots will spread over here. 

Remember, Bernanke asserted once that he had the power to deposit funds directly into individual accounts.  Maybe they'll allow us to just draw extra zeros on our dollars with a Sharpie, so that ones become tens or hundreds.  It's exactly what they're doing. 

John Maynard Keynes once famously said, "The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead", as a counter to the argument that his policies would lead to destruction in the long run.  A lot of Austrian economists are saying it may now be "the long run". 

Comparison of the original baseline 2012 budget and the terrible, draconian, Tea party terrorist-demanded budget that will be killing people in the street.  If you can't cut more than this, you are doomed. 

We Hit the Debt Ceiling Again In 4 Weeks

I had the same reaction you just had: "What do you mean?  We just went through this!  Not again!!"

According to Tyler Durden at Zerohedge:

Two things happened when the Senate voted in the "Bipartisan" plan into law yesterday: i) deferred debt on the Treasury's balance sheet finally caught up with reality, and ii) as a result of i) America's Debt/GDP just hit a post World War 2 High of 97.2%.

Due to the accounting tricks TurboTax Timmy was playing (did you think being a tax cheat would help him in his job?), we had the largest one day increase in debt in our nation's history, $238.2 billion.  I happen to remember that the deficit for February was the largest single month deficit to that date, $225 billion, and larger than the deficit for all of 2007.  Which was then surpassed by March's debt increase, and so on.

Just as confusing is that according to the endnote in the debt subject to limit calculation, the new ceiling is not the $900 billion increase as requested, but only $400 billion more than the $14.294 billion previous, or at $14.694 billion. We hope this is some Treasury type or misunderstanding as this new ceiling will be breached in a month. (emphasis added)

Look at it this way:  maybe this time they'll get it right. 

Cartoon source... (but, seriously... does anyone really think I'm Bill Watterson, or that I'm trying to make a buck off selling Calvin and Hobbes as my work??) 

A Summer Hobby - Watching Hebert's Box

Every year as hurricane season progresses, many Floridians find ourselves spending spare moments at work and home looking at whatever happens to be brewing out there.  I pay attention to whether or not the storm passes through Hebert's box.  There are two different boxes, first noted by Paul Hebert (French - so it's pronounced AY-bear)

...who observed in the late 1970s that most strong hurricanes (characterized as those with winds exceeding 110 miles per hour (177 km/h)) which had struck South Florida since 1900 had also passed through one of these two small 335-mile-by-335-mile (517-km-by-517-km) square geographic regions.

This is a correlation, not an absolute guarantee, but there's a good chance that any storm that hits here will go through one of those boxes.  The western box, near the Yucatan channel is less of a concern to me, because storms that go through that path tend to hit Florida's west coast, which weakens them and makes them less of a concern going overhead. 

Don't look now, but Emily has traversed the eastern box, and the 5 day track has her possibly messing up our weekend.  The morning track was closer to land, and it seems that as the 5 days go by, these tracks always move to the right.  So we'll see...

The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions

No, this isn't about the charade being sold as a "deal" to allow the country to escape "default".  I was going to tear that apart, but figured with my work schedule, by the time I was able to tear it apart, someone else would have.  If you want good details, Ann Barnhard has an excellent piece on American Thinker:  "We the Stupid".

This will be be about gun control. 

From an article on the same subject in NRA's First Freedom digital edition (which I don't think I can link to for non-members), I get this article on American Spectator, "Split Wide and Dis-Armed".  I follow football somewhat; more than some, less than others, but I'm sure many people have heard of the ex-New York Giant Plaxico Burress.  Plaxico is the guy who famously shot himself in the thigh when a Glock he was carrying illegally, without a holster, slid down his pants and he grabbed it.  In a New York City nightclub.

The short version is that Plaxico spent two of his most productive (salary-wise) seasons as an NFL pro in prison for being stupid.  And he has followed up that stupidity by being stupid again. 

One might think that this injustice would spark the former Steeler and Giant to lay down $1,000 for a National Rifle Association lifetime membership. Instead, after losing the bulk of a $35 million contract, endorsement deals, and nearly two years of his life behind bars, Burress, perversely, has joined forces with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

(from the American Spectator article)  While I would suggest that instead of a life membership in the NRA, he spend that thousand dollars on some training in how to be safe with a handgun, that isn't what this story is about.

Just three days before Burress's unfortunate incident in a Manhattan nightclub, fellow Giant wide receiver Steve Smith had been robbed at gunpoint. In recent years, gun wielding assailants have murdered unarmed NFL players Fred Lane, Darrent Williams, Steve McNair, and Sean Taylor.

Sean Taylor was a 24 year old Free Safety for the Washington Redskins, from the University of Miami.  Sean had been involved with stupidity with a firearm also, and as part of his plea bargain, surrendered his right to a firearm.  Sean didn't shoot himself, or anyone else, but he lost his temper and pulled his gun when his life wasn't in danger.  This is mild stupidity compared to Burress, but it cost him his life:  

Taylor had been accused of brandishing a gun, making threats and initiating a street fight on June 1 of last year with a group of people he believed were responsible for the theft of his two all-terrain vehicles out of a neighbor's driveway. After Taylor retreated from the fight, his blue GMC Yukon Denali was sprayed with gunfire while it was parked in a neighbor's driveway.

No charges were filed in the shooting incident, but Taylor was charged days later with one count of misdemeanor battery and one count of felony assault with a weapon. The felony charge was tripled in January with the addition of two additional victims to the case, raising the maximum prison time he faced from 16 to 46 years. The three felony charges each carried a minimum three-year sentence. 

As Flynn says (back to American Spectator):

The court-ordered revocation of Taylor's Second Amendment rights, along with the inevitable media-frenzy that vilifies athletes who carry protection, literally made him a cliché: the man armed with a knife at a gun fight. Wielding a machete to fend off home invaders, Taylor, just 24 and one of the most promising defensive players in the NFL, lost his life 18 months after he lost his gun rights.

Football is a rough sport played by rough men who frequently come from bad neighborhoods.  Their wealth makes them a target for anyone after money, and their status as "stars" makes them targets for anyone who thinks beating up a star will improve their reputation (called "cred" in da hood).  The types of people who think this probably think it doubles their cred if they kill the big, bad football star.  You can add State Prosecutors to the mix of people think damaging a football star gives them cred.  

"At worst, [Taylor] got into a fight confronting the thieves who had stolen his property." Sharpstein and his wife, Janice Burton Sharpstein, argued since they joined Taylor's defense team in February that the charges were overblown and that Taylor had been singled out by a publicity-hungry prosecutor. That prosecutor, Mike Grieco, gave up the case in April after Sharpstein discovered Grieco had links to media reports of the Taylor case on a personal Web site that detailed his exploits as a Miami Beach disc jockey  (emphasis added)

In my book prosecutor Grieco and anyone who insisted Sean Taylor give up his right to self defense as a condition for letting him continue to play football work for a living is an accessory to his murder.

This isn't going to end any time soon.  NFL Players will continue to attract the dregs of society, and more people need to respect their need to defend themselves.

Taylor's free-safety successor at the University of Miami enjoyed a happier fate. Brandon Meriweather survived a South Florida gun attack by returning fire. Though a college teammate endured a gunshot wound, Meriweather emerged unscathed as the cowardly burglars turned tail. High fives to Brandon, right? Not exactly. The media viciously attacked him and his draft-day stock dipped.
...
Sports media are buying the post-prison anti-gun makeover of Burress as a sign of maturity. It's really a sign of stupidity. Advertising one's unarmed status isn't a good idea. It will win him plaudits from the likes of Brady Center President Paul Helmke, who said that the former Super Bowl star "has learned directly, and painfully, about the risks of gun ownership." But there is a greater risk than owning a gun. That's the risk Plaxico Burress takes by making such a public proclamation of not owning one.

Let's hope no one ends up putting a toe tag on Mr. Burress for bringing a fist to a gunfight.  

It's Like This...

Michael Ramirez in Town Hall. 

So the buzz today is that "a deal" is near, and our economic troubles are over.  They've done it!  They've slain the beast!

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.  - Jabberwocky, Lewis Caroll, 1872

Two words:  Bull. Crap.

Let's get real.  The debt ceiling is going to be raised.  No plan that I've been able to see details of actually cuts spending in any meaningful way.  Of course, we don't have a debt ceiling in any meaningful way, either.  Debt always goes up.  The ceiling always gets raised.  Can you say "exponential"? 

 

Hat tip to Zerohedge - my previous charts only go back to 1980.

More real: we're not going to default unless the President orders it.  Just as the social security checks he threatened about will go out, unless the president orders them not to.  We talked about this before and often enough that I feel my blood pressure spike every time I hear some media moron say "default" when they talk about borrowing more.  (h/t Zerohedge)

Instead of dangling the default threat every chance they get, Obama and Geithner should be telling the world that the U.S. has every intention, and the resources, to meet its debt obligations. They should shout it from the rooftops, put a banner on the Treasury Direct website, and use the Sunday talk shows to reassure investors, not frighten them.

We don't know exactly what's going to happen because terms of the possible agreements aren't being discussed.  There's talk of kicking the can to a "special committee" to recommend fixes by Thanksgiving with "automatic cuts" if the congress doesn't agree to specifics.  That sounds sufficiently spineless that many congresscritters would vote for it - but didn't they just do that with Erskine Bowles/Alan Simpson commission?    If they didn't listen to that commission, why would they listen to this one?

But the debt ceiling going up was a foregone conclusion.  The Stupids only control 1/2 of the legislative branch which is 1/3 of the government (or less - think of the czars and the bureaucrats).  They simply don't have the power to do anything other than try to prevent anything from getting to the president.  Which isn't such a bad option.  Except it leads me to think he would take that opportunity to do what he wants and dare the rest of us to stop him.  "So sue me".

In my book if nothing changes, nothing changes.  The long term prognosis is still grim.  The chances of economic collapse are still great, the chances for QE3 are still high, and the fact that some really bad times are coming is bet-your-life guaranteed.  On this trajectory, we eventually do default and collapse as a country.  Not because of this, but because eventually, no one will buy our bonds.  Right now, the dollar is doing well, because the whole world's financial system is as solid as jello, and they reflexively think the dollar is safe.   

It's August in Florida

There are many places in this nation where folks look forward to summer; it's time to go outside - maybe for the first time in months, enjoy warm, glorious days; garden, bike, picnic; maybe enjoy a book while lounging on the beach.  Nat King Cole's classic "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" comes to mind.

That's not here.

When we first got an HDTV a few years ago, Mrs. Graybeard and I naturally spent most of our TV time searching out HD programming.  One of the first movies we watched was "The Chronicles of Riddick".  You have to understand this is not even particularly good scifi.  It's a fun movie to watch, it's a visual treat, it's a fantastic display of special effects perfect for HD, but don't pay too much attention to the story.  To quote a review, "Furyans, Necromongers, Elementals, The Underverse, the Threshold...it so clearly wants to be epic that it forgets to tie all of these disparate worlds, universes and civilizations into a coherent story. (Director) Twohy clearly makes the mistake of not realizing that there is a huge difference between being grand and being simply confusing and the more ideas that are introduced, the more lumbering it becomes…"  

A large portion of the movie, and one of the longest action sequences, takes place on the planet Crematoria (yes, all the names in the movie are that cheesy) .  Crematoria is a planet that has a tremendous temperature variation (probably an impossible amount) with daytime temperatures of 700C and night time temperatures far below zero.  When the sunrise terminator sweeps through, the force of the heat gales that come with it is literally enough to blow you apart, disintegrating flesh and blowing pieces off until you die.  There's a scene where a character (Purifier) destroys himself by walking into the sunrise terminator and self-immolating.  That's him trying to stand up to the gales while being set afire and having pieces of burning flesh blown off him. 

The first time I saw that scene, I said, "I've been out on days like that".  Mrs. Graybeard said, "Oh, yeah.  We've been out on our bikes when it's like that". 

And that's what life here in Central Florida is like in the summer, for August plus or minus a week or two.  Stay out of the sun.  Do your outdoor activities near sunrise or sunset.  Don't expose bare skin to the sun for longer than necessary - and even then, use sunscreen if you need to be out for any length of time (SPF 3 million is adequate).  Without air conditioning and mosquito control, a technological civilization could not exist here. 

Are You a 10 Percenter?

There was a science story this week from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that got some talk in the liberty sphere, and, interestingly, not much other coverage.  Glenn Beck's website for one reported the group announced their computer modeling showed:

... if 10% of people (on any topic) strongly believe in something – 100% of the time it becomes the norm for society. (bold added)

That means if those of us who consider ourselves threepers, could engage enough people with persuasive arguments about liberty, reducing the size of the government and reducing the size of the debt, once we get to 10% of the population, we have won.  To quote a more in depth report at ScienceBlog.com: 

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”

The abstract is viewable at Physics Review E (but doesn't say much).

The authors cite as example the overthrow of the Egyptian and Tunisian governments, where decades-old governments collapsed in short order.  There is no specific mention of Libya: did they start from much less than 10%?  Are there other forces at play?

A second reason to know this is that Leviathan will certainly use this against us.  Obviously if the liberty sphere figures out that if we spread enough belief in our values we'll collapse Leviathan, and they sure ain't going down without a fight!   They will mount counter campaigns to convert the Free S*** Army zombies that they feed off of.  Plus, we'll be fighting the media.

I will personally file this as "interesting claim that deserves some tests".   It certainly can't hurt to spread the word on our beliefs. 


EDIT 7/30 1144 - I left a sentence in there that was so hard to read it would actually damage your eyes. 

Where's My Robot??

I don't know about you, but I grew up reading science fiction, and every story worth a darn had robots.  I remember devouring "I Robot" by Issac Asimov, and all of his robot stories; I ate that stuff up.  By this time, I figured we would all have cool robots as our personal tools.  They'd do the dirty and disgusting jobs for us, and allow us to enjoy more leisure. 

It's no secret that robots are here and they are doing a lot of work.  Humans and robots have been working alongside for over 35 years.  The speculation has gone from intelligent machines (Ray Kurzweil in the 80s) to spiritual machines (Kurzweil in the last decade).  The first human to be killed by a robot, Robert Williams, was decades ago - in 1979.  Obviously that whole "Three Laws of Robotics" thing is a ways off. It's fine to say "A robot shall not harm a human or by inaction, allow harm to come to a human", but the sophistication to decide what's human and what isn't human would choke the biggest computers on earth today.

Allow me to introduce Heather Knight, Ph.D. student and owner of the (fantastically named) company, Marilyn Monrobot.  Engineering magazine Design News had an article on her work that drew my attention to it.  Her interests are in making robots "live" better with humans.  Making them "Devilishly Charming Robots and Charismatic Machines."  Robotics researchers talk of something called "the uncanny valley":

Part of her mission is to address the so-called "uncanny valley" -- a moniker used by roboticists to describe the phenomenon wherein humanoid robots give the creeps to real humans (which most of you probably are).

There's a fine line between making robots that move with us, fit in with us in our homes, but that don't creep us out.  I have seen some anthropomorphic robots that do creep me out a bit.  

Her approach is get the robot to do stand up comedy!  (No, seriously - a robot walks into a bar...)  The robot learns from audience reactions and continually adjusts its routines.  Enjoy this six minute video of the world's first performance of a robot doing stand-up. 

 

Continuing Education for Shooters - II

In response to yesterday's post on an interesting analysis of shootings, commenter Reg T raised some interesting points.  I frequently turn long comments and responses into new posts, and will do so here.  Reg's points (I'm editing here - you can read the whole thing):

When trying to decide what is significant and what isn't, I usually take anything based on plain statistics and throw it out the window. ...(some content deleted for brevity - GB)

When looking to the real world, especially in the effectiveness of ammunition, I tend to think the military - especially in places where there have been many thousands of shootings, like Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. - provides the best data available.

The Moro uprisings in the Phillipines caused the military to switch from a .38 caliber ammunition to the .45, because the .38s were frequently not effective at stopping Moro warriors, while the .45 was often effective. More recently, the military has given excellent reason to believe the 9mm is often ineffective, and a number of military units that have a choice in what caliber they use have switched back to the .45.

Any ammunition can be effective under the right circumstances, especially with proper placement. Overall, though, especially with troops that do not get the best training with handguns, nor the most effective ammunition (FMJ vs hollow points), real world results measured over many thousands of uses indicate that caliber is indeed significant.

Statistical analyses do not always prove out in the real world. They can sometimes be useful for generalizing or in determining trends, but it is too easy to miss significant data, over weigh some data, or be used to justify someone's personal agenda.

In regard to statistical analyses in general and Reg's distrust, being skeptical is good and healthy.  There's a great quote I got in a statistics class: "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital!".  In this case, the relevant question is what these statistics are concealing.  While this is counter-intuitive, what if the .22 really was massively superior to the .45, but the statistics showed them roughly equal?  Wouldn't you want to know? You can shoot a .22 all day for $20 (I have) while $20 buys one box of .45 FMJ; it would be nice to know if .22 was better. 

Let me put forward an idea.  I'm not going to argue it's absolute truth, but I think it's logical.  Suppose there's a fundamental difference between the people the military faces and who you're likely to face in a self defense situation?  To use the statistics term, they're not the same population - and that's what his statistics conceal.

The opponents the military faces know they're in a war, and are driven by some mix of duty, honor, loyalty to squad mates and (often) religious fervor.  That means they're much more likely to keep fighting after they've been shot than a criminal is.  After all, he's probably a criminal because he doesn't have a really good work ethic.  From the self defense standpoint, the Moros are not a good model; they were a dedicated army, in a war, defending their homes and families, "reinforced" with various drugs, not a lowlife trying for an easy meal ticket. 

That's what Ellifritz is saying: that the attacker doesn't get incapacitated so much as they quit the attack once they realize they've been shot.  I've heard (can't confirm, obviously) that the Marines are now teaching new guys that they may well get shot in a battle, but just keep fighting. What Ellifritz' data is saying is that in the average self-defense situation, you're not fighting a trained Marine; once he realizes he's been shot, he's going to stop.

Put another way, the most widely accepted statistics (there's that word, again) on self defense say that there's around 2.5 million uses of a firearm in self defense every year, and that thousands of times every day, simply drawing the firearm ends the confrontation without a shot being fired.  Does it really matter if you pull a .32 or a compact .45 if they're going to back down as soon as they see a gun? 

Now, everyone has seen the stories of a drug-wracked stoner who doesn't stop until he's been hit 40 times.  The Moro tribesmen were drugged up on something that kept them going, too.  It's not like that's an unlikely scenario, either, with the prevalence of crystal meth in our society.  Faced with that situation, I'd really prefer 12 ga to the brain stem, but I'd settle for a major caliber handgun.

And the other viewpoint is also obvious: there's often no disadvantage to carrying your .45 instead of something smaller - my .45 when fully loaded weighs an ounce or two less than my 9mm XD subcompact (which has 3 more rounds).  So why not carry the big one? 

Just In - Sarah Palin Endorses This Blog!

Last night, in this video, Sarah said,

"And you know, back in the day, we used to hear that, "Hey, it's the economy stupid." Well, now, simply put, it's the spending, stupid!"

Since I've said that very thing, word for word, many times, I'll take that as an endorsement.

Continuing Education for Shooters

One of the most persistent falsehoods heard from anti-gunners, I mean besides the penis jokes, is that gun culture folks are all toothless idiots who "jest wanna shewt sumthin".  Of course, when you're familiar with the facts, you know that a large percentage of the folks who carry study all the time: they study tactics, take classes and spend a fair amount of their resources trying to be ready should they be called on to use that gun they carry.  (To be fair, there is probably a few percent that fit the mythology, but about 5 or 10% of the population of the country thinks we never went to the moon, so there's a few percent of losers no matter what group you look at.)

So in keeping with the idea of studying, with thanks to the Michael Bane Blog, we have this link to an alternative look at the persistent myth of stopping power, by Greg Ellifritz.  It's really one of the most interesting things I've read in a while. 

The average number of rounds until incapacitation was also remarkably similar between calibers. All the common defensive calibers required around 2 rounds on average to incapacitate. Something else to look at here is the question of how fast can the rounds be fired out of each gun. The .38 SPL probably has the slowest rate of fire (long double action revolver trigger pulls and stout recoil in small revolvers) and the fewest rounds fired to get an incapacitation (1.87). Conversely the 9mm can probably be fired fastest of the common calibers and it had the most rounds fired to get an incapacitation (2.45). The .40 (2.36) and the .45 (2.08) split the difference. It is my personal belief that there really isn't much difference between each of these calibers. It is only the fact that some guns can be fired faster than others that causes the perceived difference in stopping power. If a person takes an average of 5 seconds to stop after being hit, the defender who shoots a lighter recoiling gun can get more hits in that time period. It could be that fewer rounds would have stopped the attacker (given enough time) but the ability to fire more quickly resulted in more hits being put onto the attacker. It may not have anything to do with the stopping power of the round. (emphasis added)

I find that bolded text a very interesting statement.  Look at these two data sets, for example:

.22 (short, long and long rifle)
# of people shot - 154
# of hits - 213
% of hits that were fatal - 34%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 1.38
% of people who were not incapacitated - 31%
One-shot-stop % - 31%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) - 76%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) - 60%

compare that to this one:

 45 ACP
# of people shot - 209
# of hits - 436
% of hits that were fatal - 29%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 2.08
% of people who were not incapacitated - 14%
One-shot-stop % - 39%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) - 85%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) - 51%

Let's resist the conclusion that the .22 is a more lethal round than .45 ACP (34% fatal compared to 29%) with more "stopping power" (1.38 rounds to incapacitation vs. 2.08) and just go with his conclusion:

What I believe that my numbers show is that in the majority of shootings, the person shot merely gives up without being truly incapacitated by the bullet. In such an event, almost any bullet will perform admirably. If you want to be prepared to deal with someone who won't give up so easily, or you want to be able to have good performance even after shooting through an intermediate barrier, I would skip carrying the "mouse gun" .22s, .25s and .32s.

An interesting comparison is how those numbers for "incapacitated by one shot" jumps for rifles and shotguns.  As has been said many times, a handgun is for fighting your way to your rifle.  I'll add "or shotgun".  If you really need to stop someone right freakin' now, grab one of those! 

The famous FBI study of the Miami shootout concluded (to paraphrase) the three things that matter the most are: "shot placement, shot placement, and shot placement".  Ellifritz adds to that, and holds out the prospect that you're only going to need more than two hits in two cases: the goblin is really high on something and is oblivious to having been shot, or the goblin really wants to hurt you and will walk through a hail of lead to do it.

To use his conclusion:

The results I got from the study lead me to believe that there really isn't that much difference between most defensive handgun rounds and calibers. None is a death ray, but most work adequately...even the lowly .22s. I've stopped worrying about trying to find the "ultimate" bullet. There isn't one. And I've stopped feeling the need to strap on my .45 every time I leave the house out of fear that my 9mm doesn't have enough "stopping power." Folks, carry what you want. Caliber really isn't all that important

There's a lot of good stuff in that report; so you should go read.

(Special offer to O. F. Mossberg & Sons: I'll sell you exclusive rights to the phrase, "Mossberg!  When you absolutely, positively need to kill someone right freakin' now!"  Call me).

Monday Miscellany

I've been really bad about pointing out blogroll changes and other administrivia that goes on around here.  So let me do a bit of that now.

First, I have added links to Slogging Toward Liberty, an interesting blog by an interesting guy (known to my regular readers) who profiles himself as "Former LEO, current RN, Rotorcraft rated, Heinleinian non-specialist. A "grouchy old cripple" who "prefers the tempestuous sea of liberty to the calm of despotism."".  Next, most readers know Kerodin from his two blogs Momento Mori and III Percent Patriots where he regularly distills down ideas and events to smaller nuggets than I do.  He says, "This website is the Official home for the III Percent 527 Issue Advocacy Group, dedicated to promoting III values within the political realm. ... We do not claim to speak for the entire III Movement. " 

My Gun Culture was another recent addition, because I value humor.  With the world as it is, we can always use some more humor.

I decided to add a breakout for some other blogs I read from time to time, with the common thread that these are all fellow Florida gun blogs.  These are folks way more widely known than I am; Robb Allen at Sharp as a Marble,  Gun Free Zone, the political organization pushing for Open Carry in the state, Florida Carry, and Jon Gutmacher, whose book on Florida Gun Law is considered required reading. 

And, although I don't make it as much as I thought I would, I consider this a gun and gun rights blog, too.

I always reciprocal link, and I think I've got links back to sites that link to me.  If I missed it and you want to be included, just let me know.

Finally, is anyone else watching Falling Skies, the post-alien invasion apocalypse show on TNT?  It's on too late for me, since it's over at 11PM eastern and work days start at 6, but we DVR it on Sunday night and watch it... now.  I'm not convinced it's a great show, but it's not a bad show, and how can you go wrong with 6 legged aliens called "Skitters" that communicate by radio telepathy, kidnap kids and put a Puppetmasters-like harness on them to control their every move, and that control giant two-legged kill-bots?  Further, I see they've picked it up for a second season, unlike V, and Jericho, two other shows I started to like.

A "Mech" - the giant kill-bot from Falling Skies.