A Little Roundup

First, I haven't posted this graph in quite some time, so let me update the Calculated Risk Blog's chart of percent job losses in recessions since WWII:

It's hard to pick the intersection with "normal" since it goes beyond the edge of the plot, it looks like employment will return to pre-recession levels at around 80 months since the start of the '08 recession.  There's some disagreement on exactly when to count the start, but most writers seem to peg it in December of '07 or early in '08.  That means recovery will be complete in late 2014 to early 2015.  But I don't think I believe that.  First, it seems like there's a second dip coming, and second, this is just the "news blurb" unemployment number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes up with, so it doesn't include the number of people who are out of the market.  It doesn't reflect the "labor participation rate" being lower than any time since 1978. 

In the past, I've pointed out something that may not leap out at you: notice that the four longest recessions since WWII have been the four most recent recessions, in order by date.  If that trend continues, the next recession will be longer than 80 months, and probably by a large margin.  I believe the explanation for that is the continually increasing regulations and laws we live under are stretching them out. 

Next is a plot I should have posted yesterday.  This is the 30 year bond breaking out of its flag pattern.  Obviously, we have long way to go to get to that 2011 peak, and 2011 was deep in the current recession, so the fact that yields are up is not a sign of gloom in itself, it's just saying that the Fed's policies aimed at keeping interest rates near zero are running out of life.  Note that with the exception of a short retreat earlier this year, the rate has been going up since the summer of 2012.  (image from StockTiming.com)

Pew reported on Tuesday that:

For the first time in surveys dating back nearly 40 years, a majority (53%) says the United States plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago. The share saying the U.S. is less powerful has increased 12 points since 2009 and has more than doubled – from just 20% – since 2004.

I think a result like this comes from more and more people feeling their country and the world they knew are slipping away.  People know something is wrong, they just haven't quite figured out what to do about it.

Finally, a note that famous Marxist Nelson Mandela apparently died of old age today (yeah, I know, they'll call it something else, but he was 95 and stuff just stops working well for most people by that age).  Good riddance.  You can be sure all sorts of twits will be talking about how wonderful he was.  Dying of old age is a privilege his wife denied many, as she's credited with the invention of "necklacing" - tying political enemies up with a petrol-soaked tire around their necks and shoulders, and then lighting it on fire.  An incredibly awful way to be killed, done as a warning to those who were not being executed that day, to keep them from crossing Nelson.  Both Nelson and Winnie are on record endorsing it to execute enemies of their ANC party.

NOTE: Edited to add (12/6 1330 EST) Bayou Renaissance Man has a couple of long pieces on Nelson Mandela which are considerably more kind to Mandela than I was here.  Peter is a South African expatriate, and so has much more knowledge about events and history there than I do.  Further, in my haste, I misread that Wikipedia piece I linked to as saying Nelson personally endorsed necklacing, when it clearly says it was his wife:

" Winnie Mandela, then-wife of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and a senior member of the ANC, even made statements that endorsed its use.^[2] " 

One  comment that I like sums up the situation by saying that there were simply no alternatives to terrorism when Mandela was starting his revolt against the administration - it was the living embodiment of JFK's quote that "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." What matters more is how he lived after his successful overthrow of the government.  While I personally won't be doing any celebration of his life, I won't be doing any celebration of his death, either. 

The Artificial Prices Must Give Way to Reality

For years, if not decades, America has been "Living the Lie" - as opposed to living the dream.  The lie is that the creation of debt by the central banks can create wealth.  Denninger often makes the excellent point that borrowing can only pull some growth forward in time, but that ability breaks down when there's no ability to make the payments on that debt.  That's exactly where we are now.  The fed has been living the lie - creating $85 billion per month, drowning us in debt.  Those foolish little tyrants think that they can manipulate business cycles away, and instead blow bubbles (another form of cycle) the likes of which mankind has never seen.  As that article in Der Spiegel says, the question isn't whether they've set up another crash, the question is when it happens.  (Graphic from Der Spiegel)

It never fails to amaze me when you tell people to beware because economic trouble is coming, they all sound like Chris Matthews and say, "but the stock market is at 16,000!"  Very few realize that it's simply the free money in the banks and other financial companies that are pumping the prices and that if you correct for inflation, the market is essentially unchanged since the year 2000. 

Bill Gross of Pimco addresses this in his December column for investors, along with Mohammed El-Erian, Pimco's CEO in an interview originally with CNBC. The Fed has strongly hinted that the constant creation of money is going to "taper", although the interest rates will stay at approximately 0%.  The Fed is trying to wean the market off its teat, but the damage that the QE has created has permeated all investment asset classes.

The standard “three musketeers” menu for retail investors has always been 1) investment grade and 2) high yield bonds as well as 3) stocks. In recent years, institutional investors have gravitated into 4) alternative assets, 5) hedge funds and 6) unconstrained space, and so for them there appears to be an increasing array of higher return alternatives. All of the above 1-6, however, contain artificially priced assets based on artificially low interest rates. Some are unlevered, like Treasury bonds, but nonetheless priced too high by the Fed in an effort to encourage migration to riskier bonds and/or asset classes.

The benchmark 30 year bond yields have been going up since the summer of 2012 and just recently broke out of a flag pattern to the upside, indicating they'll continue to go up.  This means the market thinks these bonds aren't worth the price and demand a higher yield, another sign of decreasing confidence in the dollar.  These yields affect the prices of mortgages, so mortgages are likely to go up, too.  That's going to put a drag on everyday peoples' lives and affect everything.  Add in the expanding cost of health insurance and it has the potential to snuff out any hint of recovery.  And what they're claiming as recovery now is just the increase in prices from all the central bank machinations.

Bill Gross continues:

While this and its conjoined policy of QE may have only redistributed wealth as opposed to creating it (picking savers’ pockets while recapitalizing banks and the wealthiest 1% of our population), it is a policy that a Janet Yellen Fed seems determined to pursue. The taper will lead to the elimination of QE at some point in 2014, but the 25 basis point policy rate will continue until 6.5% unemployment and 2.0% inflation at a minimum have been achieved. [Note: not real inflation - that's around 8% now - they mean inflation as they define it - SiG]

El-Erian, for his part, just sees it as a "routine" market disturbance that can be planned for:

In stocks, it's no longer a risk-on trade, El-Erian said. "Look at sectors. This is going to be a very sector-specific market. Look at the disparities that have occurred across the world — that some emerging markets now are looking attractive relative to the U.S," he added.

"And finally, fasten your seat belt. There's volatility ahead as the Fed tries to change its policy mix."

Sooner or later, the Fed has to wean Wall Street off the free money that's been buying everything and let the market distortions they've created settle out.  There will be pain.  The central bankers' policies have led to a continually shrinking number of small banks and increasing profits for the "too big to fail" big banks.  It's an ideal situation for those big banks and you can bet they'll put pressure on the Fed to keep the free money flowing.  You might remember that just a couple of weeks ago, a former Fed official apologized for his part in "the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time".

Photographs and Memories

I want to thank all of you who left comments Sunday night, or who just quietly sent a prayer or a good thought. 

My mom passed away quietly in her sleep at home early Sunday morning, as best as we know.  She went into hospice care for Multiple Myeloma three months ago, virtually to the day, and went home for the last time in mid-September.  Mom just turned 91 a month ago, so it may seem strange to assign a cause of death, but when she was diagnosed, they said she was too weak for chemotherapy or other treatments except for palliative care.  When her weekend aide came to see her at 9 AM, she was unresponsive. 

My dad preceded her by 31 years: 1982.  He also died of MM, almost certainly coincidence as there are no known ways of it being contagious.  It has only recently struck me how young she was when he died.  31 years ago she was 60, and now that age is so close it's virtually here.  She never wanted to date again, never really wanted to leave the house.  She seemed to draw the curtains tight around herself and just want to stay in by herself.  We visited regularly for at least a decade, less so in the last ten years.  Back in '03, around the time of the Shuttle Columbia disaster, she fell and hurt herself (which was to become a recurring theme).  After a few visits she told us to bug off, in so many words, saying, "look, it's not like I'm gonna die any day now, you don't have to keep coming down". 

So we started going through photographs she had put aside in drawers everywhere and all the memories in the house.  They moved into that house in 1974, not too long after I had moved out on my own for the first time.  Brother's and my first jr. high wood shop projects.  Ceramics.  There are some modeling clay figures dad made... in the late 1970s?  It seems she slowly distributed the things she wanted to go to specific people.  It's not much of an "estate", but it's a tribute to dad that he set her up so well she could go 31 years on it, with the medical expenses and everything else, and still have a little left over. 

I came across this picture: mom as little girl with her mother.  I'm guessing 1930-ish.  Grandma passed away in 1979. 

Photography that gave paper prints wasn't around very long when some of these pictures were taken, and the pictures were clearly treasured.  Those old monochrome or sepia prints lasted indefinitely in a dark drawer.  Today, color prints barely last a decade.  Anything digital will likely evaporate, the bits will decay or (more likely) become an unreadable format in 20 years.  These memories are special.

It Has Been One of Those Days

John Lennon's most famous quote (perhaps):

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Going dark for a while.  More info later.

Banana Republic Stuff

Here in the Banana Republic of America (formerly the United States - before the '08 bankruptcy and re-organization), it's common for the administration to use tools of the state to punish subjects who speak out against the Glorious Fatherland.  Even though it's common, this one might be new low.

Picking up a story from Angry White Dude, Bill Elliot is fighting cancer.  Unfortunately, like many other people are finding as the country lurches into the abyss of Obamacare, his insurance is getting some of that wonderful "Change" we heard so much about.  For a while, it appeared he was going to "lose his plan" (un-possible!), and he appeared with Megyn Kelly on her Fox News prime time show to tell his story.  When the show aired, a guy who handles insurance problems like this, C. Steven Tucker, heard the story, got involved and got the insurance company to maintain his policy. 

“Steve, the company decided to keep me active. Since it is a chronic illness. Until this illness kills me. Battle #1 is won. Now the hard part. You literally saved me. Thank you so much.”

Those are the greatest words I have ever heard in my 20 year career as a licensed health insurance broker. I couldn’t be a happier man today! – C. Steven Tucker

But one of the administration's minions (probably Media Matters, a group paid to watch Fox News and try to dig up trash on them) saw Elliot during his TV appearance.  Within days, the IRS launched audits against both Bill Elliot and C. Steven Tucker!  As reported over at iOwnTheWorld in his post The Vindictive Totalitarian Hand of the Obama Regime,

That’s the good news. Now the bad-

Bill is now being audited by the IRS.

And now for the 2nd punch line-

C. Steven is being audited back to 2003.

THAT’S what happens when you do the right thing, and in the process embarrass that bastard in the white house.

Making the administration look bad will not be tolerated and they will strike down anyone who does so.  Friday morning, Buck Sexton of the Blaze put forth an explanation for why CBS has punished Lara Logan so severely for an admitted mistake in the handling of a story on Benghazi (background).  His view was largely the same one: that's what happens when you embarrass that bastard in the white house.  Since being sexually assaulted while reporting from Egypt's Tahrir square, she has been vocal that the administration simply doesn't understand jihad.  They are dangerously incompetent and don't understand what's going on in the Mideast.  You don't embarrass the administration without being struck down.  Someone in the WH contacted CBS and had her suspended - if they didn't set up the entire falsified report that she used from the start.  

But as they say on the infomercials, Wait! That's not all!, Angry White Dude reports

An aside. AWD just got back from vacation two weeks ago. I got a letter from the IRS instructing my employer to make my W-4 exemptions zero! I always try to break even with the IRS every year as I don’t like giving interest free loans to the government! I am fighting this but it has crossed my mind if this BS has anything to do with this website and my support of the Tea Party movement? Why does the IRS care how many withholdings I have as long as I settle up with them at year-end? I’ve never heard of anything like this in my life! 

Did you ever think you'd see this sort of stuff in your country?  To paraphrase CA over at WRSA, "This is where we are now.  Imagine where we'll be."

Playing Supid Games - Ammoman Edition

Someone, somewhere, must have gotten some stuff on the Ammoman "Ammo by the pound sale" fiasco early Friday morning.  Not me.  Must have been someone very close, or with a fiber optic link or something.  Borrowing some comments from Kevin:

UPDATE:  12:00AM EST and the Ammoman.com website was obviously made by the same people who did Healthcare.gov!  Somehow I don't think I'm going to get to order any 9mm tonight.

UPDATE: 12:22AM EST Aaaand it's gone!

I started to reload the pages right at midnight and got either "Service not available" or "404".  The server was crashing.  After trying to get to a few pages over and over and over and over and over ... suddenly all of what I wanted was in my cart.  By the time I could get the check out page to load it all showed up as out of stock.   I know that technically speaking they can't know if someone that has it in their cart is going to buy it, but they can know it's in someone's cart - notice how the fed.gov can tell you how many health plans people have in their carts but haven't paid for them?  Once it's in your cart, you should be able to pay for it.  This is like someone in the store taking things out of your cart and walking off with them.

While I think the website was set up poorly, and they probably had a much higher response than they thought, I don't mind saying playing the stupid game was my decision.

(picture of sorted ammo from Ammoman's website - it's the only thing I got from them)

Happy Thanksgivukah!

Since this year features a rare coinciding of a late Thanksgiving and an early beginning to Chanukah, some enterprising groups have decided to call the day Thanksgivukah - web site by kosher food producer Manishevitz.  We've had our small family Thanksgiving Dinner already.  I put a small turkey (10 pounds) and a duckling into the smoker at 8:30, and they were done by 2:30. Just in time for an early dinner but with no sweet potato latkes (come to think of it, that sounds like it could be good!).  Mrs. Graybeard's wonderful scratch-made pumpkin pie and coffee will follow in an hour or so.  The big dinner will be tomorrow, when we go down to South Florida to visit Mom and the rest of our family.  Mom is under hospice care at home now, so there aren't many chances left for a good get together.

Enjoy your day as best as you can.  It's worth pondering the questions in WSRA's piece The Auxiliary.  The time I've spent lolling around has been reading blogs and watching the coverage of Comet Ison's dive to solar perihelion.  At this point, it sure looks like Ison has disintegrated and we will not be getting the spectacular comet show we've been hoping for.

("Whadda you lookin' at?  What's that long stick in your hands?")  

High Altitude Ice and Unintended Consequences

I swear that the most important natural law that never gets taught in school is the Law of Unintended Consequences.  Without exception, I see that law rear its head in response to every law, every regulation and even every desire.  It's a topic I've written about many times.

You may have heard this past weekend that Boeing has issued warnings to airline customers with the new 747-8 and the 787 about troubles from high altitude ice crystals.  Over the life of these aircraft, several flights have been aborted due to loss of engine performance caused by ice crystals causing loss of engine thrust.  Both of these aircraft use the new General Electric GEnx ("Genix") engines, among the highest fuel-efficiency engines made. Aviation Week reports:

The advisory, which warns operators of GEnx-1B powered 787-8s and GEnx-2B powered 747-8s to stay at least 50 naut. mi. away from large convective thunderstorms which can generate high altitude ice particles, is expected to be followed shortly by an FAA airworthiness directive. Although five of the six events that have been reported so far involve 747-8 freighters, one recent incident occurred on a 787.

So why the reference to the law of intended consequences?  Engineering is all about trades, and it's almost always the case that designs good at one characteristic are bad at another.  For an example that many people have experienced, have you ever ridden in a flat-bottom Jon boat?  Compared to a boat with a more V-shaped hull, it's more stable in the water, and tips less when passengers move around, but the flat bottom rides extremely rough in a chop compared to the V hull.  Crossing a few miles of windy open lake or bay in a Jon boat will pound you until you think your teeth are coming out.   In the jet engine case, two of the main design trades that give the GEnx higher fuel efficiency make them more susceptible to ice problems. 

(GEnx-2B)

There are two problems directly caused by being more fuel efficient.  The biggest is that the engine is larger in diameter than the one it replaces; that helps the bypass ratio, the ratio of intake air that doesn't go into the combustion core area to the air that does, and ultra fuel efficient engines are ultra high bypass ration engines, but being larger exposes more engine frontal area to the icing environment.  Second, more efficiency comes from minimizing wasted heat.  Jet fuel burns at temperatures higher than the melting point of even the most advanced aviation alloys.  As a result, the jet engine designers had to come up with elaborate ways to prevent melting and cool off the hot section of the engine by “bleeding” in air through tiny ducts and pinholes inside the turbine blades.  This makes the engine cooler, but also less efficient; still, they have to do this in order for the engine to survive.  But optimizing the engine to keep the heat in the one area where fuel burns keeps heat out of the big fan blades in front, making them easier to ice. 

The design factors that led to higher efficiency led to more issues with ice getting into the combustion area and interfering with operation. 

Fuel efficiency is probably the biggest issue for the air travel industry.  Fuel prices have risen substantially in the last decade and are not likely to go down substantially, if at all.  Modern aircraft design is all about cutting fuel costs.  The industry sees the problem with icing and is organizing both private and public sector groups to study the problems and find ways around it.

Techy Tuesday - Still Learning From Apollo?

The Apollo program ended with the conclusion of the flight of Apollo 17 in December of 1972.  Some wrap up and clean up activities took place after that, but the flight portion of Apollo ended almost 41 years ago.  Strange, then, that in the last few years, an experiment that the 17 mission left on the moon and which operated for a mere 620 hours, has emerged that seems poised to change our view of the moon.

There are storms on the moon.

The next time you see the moon, trace your finger along the terminator, the dividing line between lunar night and day. That's where the storm is. It's a long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.

Never heard of it? Few have. But scientists are increasingly confident that the storm is real.

The final mission to the moon carried an experiment package called LEAM, the Lunar Ejecta And Meteorite experiment.  Apollo-era scientists wanted to know, how much dust is ejected by daily meteorite impacts? And what are the properties of that dust? LEAM was to answer these questions using three sensors that could record the speed, energy, and direction of tiny particles: one each pointing up, east, and west.

(LEAM Package)

LEAM's four-decade-old data appear to show a "large number of particles every morning, mostly coming from the east or west--rather than above or below--and mostly slower than speeds expected for lunar ejecta."  The results are now being reexamined by several independent groups of NASA and university scientists, who are tentatively concluding the particles were from electrostatically-driven dust storms.  Interestingly, Apollo astronauts may have seen the storms, too. While orbiting the Moon, the crews of Apollo 8, 10, 12, and 17 sketched "bands" or "twilight rays" where sunlight was apparently filtering through dust above the moon's surface. This happened before each lunar sunrise and just after each lunar sunset. NASA's Surveyor spacecraft also photographed twilight "horizon glows," much like what the astronauts saw.  There's even speculation that Transient Lunar Phenomena, which both professional and backyard astronomers have been reporting since the 1500s, could be these dust storms. 

There's new importance in this 40 year old data because several nations (Russia, China, and India for example) have announced plans for manned moon flights.  Some have talked about staying for long periods, and building habitats rather than just coming back after a few days.  NASA has talked about such a mission in 2018.  It may turn out that mining the Helium 3 on the moon for energy production could be the first, big economic incentive for space flight there has ever been.  The wall of dust, if it exists, might be diaphanous, invisible, harmless. Or it could be a real problem, clogging spacesuits, coating surfaces and causing hardware to overheat.  

It's Complicated

If you haven't read it, Fred Reed (Fred on Everything) ventures afield from his usual topics into trying to make sense of evolution vs. intelligent design in an essay he calls The Bugs in Darwin (h/t to DumpDC).  It's long, for which Fred apologizes, but strikes me as the highlight of the weekend on the various blogs.  As usual, I give you a teaser.  Go read the whole thing:

Impossibility Theory

If you look at evolution from other than the perspective of an ideological warrior who believes that he is saving the world from the claws of snake-handling primitive Christians in North Carolina, difficulties arise. Chief among these is the sheer complexity of things. Living organisms are just too complicated to have come about by accident. This, it seems to me, is apparent to, though not provable by, anyone with an open mind.

Everywhere in the living world one sees intricacy wrapped in intricacy wrapped in intricacy. At some point the sane have to say, “This can´t be. Something is going on that I don´t understand.”

Read a textbook of embryology. You start with a barely-visible zygote which, (we are told) guided by nothing but the laws of chemistry, unerringly reacts with ambient chemicals to build, over nine months, an incomprehensibly complex thing we call “a baby.” Cells migrate here, migrate there, modify themselves or are modified to form multitudinous organs, each of them phenomenally complex, all of this happening chemically and flawlessly. We are accustomed to this, and so think it makes sense. The usual always seems reasonable. I don´t think it is. It simply isn´t possible, being a wild frontal assault on Murphy´s Law.

Therefore babies do not exist. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Unless Something Else is involved. I do not know what.

As a Bible reading believer, I think I can answer the "what" question, but I'm happy to see Fred questioning everything.  Questioning is the beginning of wisdom.  Fred links to a book called "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution", on National Review's list of the 100 most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century, and includes some great things to ponder the complexity of.  

I've written about this topic before, because I believe the complexity of life precludes a Darwinian explanation of how we got here.  I'm not saying Intelligent Design is a provable scientific principle, I'm saying Darwinian evolution is not a provable scientific principle either.  Neither one is what I consider to be hard science.  What experiment could you conduct that would start with pure, inanimate chemicals and end up with Venus flytraps and penguins (flightless waterfowl)?  When a look at any one of literally thousands of known biological systems shows a system that simply could not have evolved through competition of millions of single point mutations, or one that had to spring up at its full level of complexity, the gradualism of Darwinian evolution breaks down.   (Punctuated equilibrium theories don't get you out of the mess, either because they depend on gradual evolution as well)

Go read. 

The bacterial flagellum, simplified view.  The similarity to an electric motor is so strong, some writers even call it a motor, complete with rotor and stator.  And apparently a clutch.  Can you imagine this system working with a hodgepodge of assembly methods and parts in a hundred different orientations?  Would a non-working flagellum provide survival advantage so that the right one could evolve?  National Science Foundation picture.

Obamacare Is An Economic Cancer

Remember the big fuss with Ted Cruz "filibuster" about not funding Obamacare?  I didn't care about that game and I didn't do anything to support them because the amount of influence that could be exerted would amount to a couple of percent.  Obamacare, like a cancer, has tendrils that reach into the entire economy, with taxes and fees spread throughout many laws, not just the ACA act itself.  It wouldn't even be sufficient to completely nullify the ACA law; we would have to nullify every law that feeds money into it. 

For example, if you are one of those "Evil Rich" people with a house that can get you over $500,000 profit, there's a special tax just for you:

If you are single with an adjusted gross income of $200,000 or file jointly with an income of $250,000 or more, you may be impacted. Once you sell your home, any profits over the first $500,000 are already subject to a capital gains tax. And now those profits will have an additional 3.8% tax to fund Obamacare.

In that "My9NJ" video, one staffer is heard to say, "on that $500,000 profit, that 3.8% is only $19,000 tax, so it's not like anyone is having their nest egg stolen" - a perfect Socialist Stooge viewpoint.  Dude, You Have No Right to that money.  It isn't the state's or the federal government's money to take.  That money belongs to the people who were smart enough or lucky enough to buy a house that made them money.  Plus, those people are not just paying $19k, it's $19k plus $119,000 (23.8%) capital gains tax, plus every other penny the socialists think they can justify taking. 

This is barely even scratching the surface.  Newsmax lists 20 hidden taxes, including special taxes on charitable hospitals, taxing innovative drug companies (which ought to help stifle the creation of new drugs), removing the ability to use pre-tax FSA or HSA money to pay for non-prescription drugs, raising the limit on taxpayers' ability to deduct medical expenses from 7.5% of AGI to 10% and the ability of the IRS to decide to not allow perfectly legitimate deductions simply because they decide to:

Codification of the “economic substance doctrine” (Tax hike of $4.5 billion). This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks “substance” and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed. Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 108-113.

 

The costs are showing up everywhere.  Do you have a dog or cat you love and take to the vet?  Expect veterinarian fees to go up.  Like all small businesses, when your costs go up, you can only either pass that on or absorb it.  

Of course, the whole reason for the law isn't to provide for the uninsured.  It's to increase the amount of money and power in the center of the empire, and increasing the ruling class' opportunities for job jumping or moving into the private sector.  The New York Times is all conflicted about this:

“The health care industry now spends more money on lobbying in Washington than any sector of the economy, according to the Center for Responsive Politics here. … Critics say these former officials are cashing in, trading on the relationships and expertise they acquired while working for the taxpayers, and cite such career moves as proof that Mr. Obama has not lived up to his promise to change the culture of influence peddling in the capital.”

There are those who say the best response to the law is to let it fail and collapse under its own weight.  Sorry, but I can't agree.  Washington never cancels failed or obsolete programs, and this one won't be canceled.  With all these former DC insiders forming an industry to keep the law alive, they'll effectively lobby and keep it in place.  "We'll fix it" will be the rallying cry until they ride it down into the economic collapse.

Taking Things at Face Value

I spent the week in Toronto, again, only with even less free time.  A few thoughts and things.

The morning news on CBC had features on Toronto Mayor Ford every day of the week.  On Tuesday morning, I had a bit more "adventure" than I had planned when my rental car wouldn't start.  Long story shortened, Hertz eventually sent out a real tow truck, and I find myself riding with this guy in the truck cab to the airport to get my replacement.  Random small talk follows: "where you from?", "Florida", "bet it must be really cold for you" and so on.  I tell him I don't know much about the city, but the news has been dominated by stories about the mayor.  Somewhat to my surprise, he claims to know someone for whom the mayor helped fix a city hall problem.  He says the mayor is a decent guy, but anyone who would go into that line of work probably has ego problems.  I say it's suspicious when, all of a sudden/out of nowhere, some city's mayor is major international news and I'm suspicious of the media.  We agree.

Despite spending a weekend packing, preparing, and double checking, I still managed to forget some important stuff and needed to make an "emergency" trip to the land of the Walmartians.  Canukistanian Walmartians are well dressed and classy compared to their American counterparts, although having to brave a subzero (Celsius) parking lot might affect that.  My packing is apparently every bit as good as my copy editing, though, which is frightening.

The folks at Regulations.gov have a rule up for comment to remove the Gray wolf from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.  If you want to comment, that link takes you right to the page.  You know something like this will get flooded with comments from people who know nothing about the real world, like the woman that jumped into the polar bear exhibit at a zoo to experience her animal friends up close and personal.  Having some people comment who have more experience and knowledge would be good. 

Speaking of the flood of regulations (another nearly 6000 in the last 90 days) Veronique de Rugy writes in National Review about the Over-Regulated state.  We have clearly gone from a place where things were generally legal unless specifically outlawed to one where everything is illegal unless specifically permitted.  Why would the feds need to issue a special regulation into the CFR allowing importing of lamb from Uruguay, unless the default was it's illegal to do so?  It seems to me it's getting pretty bad if the New York Times runs an article on the loss of freedom from over regulation.

The total number of federal regulatory restrictions is now more than one million. And they’re not all necessarily good ideas. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration has banned some useful asthma treatments because they have a slight negative impact on the ozone layer. The nation has medical-device regulations that take longer to satisfy than those of the European Union.

Many regulations, when initially presented, can sound desirable.  The problem is that, taken in their entirety, excess rules divert attention from pressing issues like the need for innovation and new jobs.

Finally, many of fellow bloggers are commenting on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination.  It's one of a handful of events I'll always remember clearly; aside from a few personal things, there's the assassination and the day the Shuttle Challenger blew up after launch.  I was a kid and, like most, had no knowledge of or interest in the president.  As I've gotten older, though, I've come to have respect for him.  Miquel at Gun Free Zone ran a column that featured this illustration (from an ad in American Rifleman) saying he was an NRA life member. 

By today's standards, he seems Republican, and maybe even a conservative to the right of McCain. It just doesn't seem he could possibly survive in today's Obama/Pelosi/Clinton leftist Democrat party.  Check out this quote:

"A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget.... As the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance."  Sept. 18, 1963.

Or this quote, which would sound right at home at a Tea Party rally:

"Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people."

Naturally, this is just taken out of context and there's debate about all of it.  It's probably not fair to make this sort of comparison across 50 years.

While I Was Gone

Today, on the way back to work after lunch, Mrs. Graybeard says:

Mrs.G:  "Sebelius was in town while you were gone"
Me: "In town? Here?"
Mrs.G: "Yeah, she was at the college"
Me: [pause] "Laying eggs?"

[EDIT 11/22 2038 to note that we got the city wrong.  She was in Orlando at Florida Technical College, not here in town at Florida Tech]

Pardon Me, I'm A Bit Thor

Not really, just couldn't resist the joke. 

We went to see Thor, the Dark World yesterday, and while I like these escapist comic book movies, this one had surprisingly witty aspects to it.  Far too often, these movies tend to have stilted dialog that sounds like it was written by 15 year old nerd boys (after all, the comic books are written for 15 year old nerd boys!).  This one was a bit more adult, with a lot of tongue in cheek humor, especially about the relationships between Jane Foster and Thor, and Jane's Intern and the Intern's Intern. We found ourselves laughing a lot more than I would have expected.

Someone I came across somewhere said there were too many story details and it slowed the movie down - it didn't seem that way to me.  They had to set up what the movie was about and that's all the distraction there was. 

One of the traps of writing superhero stories is that there needs to be suspense about whether or not the superhero is genuinely at risk.  You need a super villain.  I have to say Tom Hiddleston, the actor who plays Thor's nemesis (and half brother) Loki really gets the super villain role down.  A great villain, a great foil for Thor. 

In a scene from the trailer that has been on TV, Loki absorbs a hard slap to the face from Jane, while Thor and Sif look on. 

And in less-related news, blogging will slow again the next few days.  On the road until Thursday night and while I should have better access than in early October, I have no idea how long the days will be.

The Wrath of the "Tolerant" Left*

They're at it again; the "it" this time is attacking someone who posted pictures from a hunting trip online, with the same death threats and other evidence of tolerance we hear about all the time.

I think the first story I posted about this was about Olympic shotgunner Corey Cogdell and the death threats she got for daring to speak about hunting.  A few months ago, Michael Bane relayed the story of one of his friends, NBC Sports host Michael Baker, who had just returned from a trip to Africa and posted about taking an elephant on his trip.  The lefty-verse erupted in outrage, showering abuse on Baker, too.  I consider this a "PG13" blog, and I won't print much of it here, but a relatively polite comment was:

Worthless Cunt Kills Elephant In NRA-Sponsored TV Show

(also marking the first time I've seen the "c"-word applied to a guy)

The Blaze brings today's story that Melissa Bachman, who hosts "Winchester's Deadly Passion" posted a picture of herself with an African Lion she took recently.  She was proud she had tracked and stalked the big cat to within 60 yards.

“An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60-yards on this beautiful male lion…what a hunt!” she tweeted from her now deleted account, attaching a picture of her kneeling over the dead adult lion.

The lefties went into their predictable outrage.

“I hope someone smiles like her, when someone kills slowly and painfully,” said a user going by “WolverHampton.”

What these folks know about African safari hunting or wildlife management wouldn't fill a thimble.  One just doesn't waltz into the bush in Africa and go shoot something.  The governments have set up programs to manage their resources and make a good chunk of income from tourists.  The population of predators and prey both need to be managed, and there are special considerations for animals that are potentially destructive to their environment, like elephants.  The utopian dream of never being involved and just letting nature be nature is just that: a dream.  African game competes with the people for food (and, in some cases, considers the people as food).  Wildlife needs to be managed, so why shouldn't the government make money from it, and why shouldn't those who pay big money get to go hunting?  

And it's not just an African problem.  I've read many times (here, for example) that mountain lions are moving into the suburbs in the US, and that there are more of them in the suburbs than in the more rural areas for the simple reason that there's more food in the suburbs.  Coyotes are being spotted in urban areas, like Long Island and New York City.  Know any missing dogs or cats, anyone? 

I've said before that I've never hunted, and while I say I'd like to try turkey hunting, the mere fact that something else always seems to take priority says it's not my top priority.  I would have a tough time killing any large cat, except in the case of self defense.  All that said, I don't have a single problem with what Bachman, Baker or Cogdell have been gutted in the media for doing. 


* - I know they're lefty anti-gun and not conservative for two reasons.  The first reason, to borrow a saying, is "If a conservative doesn't like hunting, she doesn't go hunting.  If a liberal doesn't like hunting, she tries to ban hunting worldwide".  Second, more pragmatically, I never met a conservative that objected to hunting.  There must be one or two out there, but they're not sending death threats: see point 1.   

 

I Was Thinking More Like Replacing the Timing Belt

In case you haven't seen it, Tam has the post of the week If Schadenfreude had calories I'd weigh 300 pounds.  Go read it and the comments.

A highlight to me was where she said,

"How could this be going so spectacularly wrong?" goes the hand-wringing lament.

How could it not? Seriously! You think a bunch of people can sit down and... Lux Fiat! ...re-write the rules for how 15% of the economy works in one fell swoop, in what amounts to a giant bong-fueled bull session, and have nothing go wrong? You might as well try to change the spark plugs on your car while the engine's running.

and that's where I thought "spark plugs?  More like changing the timing belt."  On the majority of the cars I've had you actually could pull plugs while it was running with some pain and suffering.  But it's physically impossible to get to the belt, and economically impossible to write a command economy for health care.  But I over think analogies like this.
  
Tam needs a link from me, even without this one on Facebook, like Donald Trump needs another dollar, but that piece is pure gold.

Cartoonists Get It

No comment needed

Changing the Language - Welcome to Socialized Medicine

One of the things that the Obamacare website debacle has shown me is that the progressives are doing what they always do and making words mean things that they've never meant before.  By mixing the words insurance coverage and healthcare, along with clever manipulation of legalese, they're implementing socialized medicine right now.

I also have to call your attention to something else I've said here before: watch the other hand.  They're making a big public mess about this website, so the news media isn't covering the EPA's attemp to grab control of the entire country at all.  In a nutshell (and go read), the EPA has had powers to regulate waters since the "Clean Water Act", but an early Supreme Court ruling limited them to "navigable waterways" which are only the larger rivers and some lakes.  The power grab is to assert control over every drop of water in the country, this time by expanding it to even small lakes and ponds.  There was some bogus study that concluded every single body of water is connected underground and they're using that for justification (seriously: how do they measure that?  What sort of sensors do you use to establish connections between a farm in, say, Nebraska and the Atlantic Ocean?)   They are virtually claiming the power to regulate puddles on your property.

But back to the ObamaScare mess, have you noticed how choice in your plans is being eliminated?  Every plan must cover maternity, even for single men, even gays - single or married.  You can't refuse that.  (Is it fair or "=" for gays to pay for maternity they'll never need?)  Everyone must buy substance abuse, even teetotaler Mormons.  Catholic hospitals will be required to provide birth control and abortions to employees.  The reason everyone's policies are skyrocketing in cost is the expansion of the risk for the insurance companies.  (see here and here).

Until now, insurance was a form of risk management in which groups of buyers put money into a pool to cover the cost of certain risks, and only the small percentage of buyers who realize that risk take money out.  The insurance companies, of course, make money off this (and contrary to Kathryn Sibelius' claims, they are highly regulated) so all companies that can afford it are self-insured; they pay the benefits themselves, simply using the companies they contract to administer claims and hiring them for their insider knowledge of how the industry works. 

Again, this is highly regulated: for years now, every health plan had to cover risks that I'm willing to accept.  I'm willing to accept the risk that my wife or I will suddenly decide we need gender reassignment, or that we'll suddenly become addicted to gambling.  I don't want to pay for insurance for that, but I don't have that choice.

So by mandating these coverages, the Obamanoids are already instituting socialized medicine, but since it's still managed by corporations, I'll call it fascistic medicine.  They're creating a big pool of money taken from people who are legally required to pay for risks they'd never buy coverage for, and using that money to pay for unrelated problems for other people.  To try and personalize the point, they might take money you'd put up for the risk of a heart attack or something you consider possible, and use your money to pay for medical care for that exact condition for someone else.  They're even using some of your money to subsidize lower income people's insurance - direct wealth transfer.  It's not "single payer", managed by a massive federal bureaucracy (yet!), but it's still "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs". 

Even Evil Party mouthpiece Kirsten Powers has openly split from the strict party line by reporting how her own premiums are doubling for worse coverage and she seems to know she's simply paying for other people's care.  She's just more OK with it than most.

Instead of Techy Tuesday - Something Different

Head over to Bill Whittle's place and read Thoughts on the Common Sense Resistance.  When you're done, read the next piece on the First CSR Iconography.  Bill is up to something big here.  (H/T WRSA)

You just gotta know that if it involves the resistance and fixing things, I'm all in.  Putting together a series of stories, or videos, or role-playing games to get the message across to the millennials makes sense to me.

Somehow, I Think This Might Not End Well

So PETA (no, not the People Eating Tasty Animals - the real PETA) has decided to introduce drones to:

...collect and publicize footage of hunters shooting animals and allowing them to escape, only to die slowly and in agony, among other common violations.

They also want them used to fly over factory farms and "...other areas that are hotbeds of abuse."

You know what?  I'm not going to focus on those lies.  Everyone who has read the first thing about hunting, let alone known actual hunters, knows that hunters are committed to ethical hunting, "one shot, one kill", and committed to not seeing animals suffer.  It's just that accidents happen and an animal gets away from time to time, not that hunters are being deliberately cruel.  Deliberately cruel is the description for PETA, who killed over 92 % of "adoptable pets" between 1998 and 2012 in Virginia. 

For some unknown reason, Electronic Component News, a trade magazine for engineers of all types, is all over this story.  PETA claims they'll be flying a specially marked version of the AR.Drone 2.0 from Parrot.  The control is via WiFi, and Parrot has apps to run on your iPhone or Android to control these guys.

Hunting in some form or other, of course, is legal in all 50 states.  Some of them - even the Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts - have coded into law that it's illegal to harass hunters:

In Massachusetts, for example, it is illegal to “obstruct, interfere with or otherwise prevent the lawful taking of fish or wildlife by another at the locale where such activity is taking place.” If you fly a drone above a hunter, you not only present a tempting (and slow-moving) target, but you could go to jail or pay a hefty fine.

The first comment is indicative of where I think this is going:

Well... I could use a slow moving practice target. You fly that thing above my property and I have every right to bring it down... and no... I'm not giving you the wreckage back. I'm mounting that puppy.

It's a little nastier than that, though.  WiFi links in wooded areas, where you might be hunting deer, ducks, or whatever,  aren't going to be very long range. The chances of PETA kids meeting Elmer Fudd up close and personal might be a bit higher than they'd like. While I'm comfortable that the vast majority of hunters wouldn't fire on a PETA kid, accidental shootings happen in the woods, especially with people who don't know what they're doing out there.  There might even be some who would invoke the 3 S mantra.  Ya never know.