RadioActive Chief

The following all on Drudge at the same time (1636 CT 14 Oct 2011):

Meaning? If you figure it out, let me know, but the Chief would offer each in return a somewhat different finger gesture.

Comment-wise, this is a great piee of low-hanging fruit. Not quite as good as the self-writing Congressman Wiener jokes…but pretty good:

Obama on Solyndra: ‘People felt that it was a good bet’

In his first public comment on the solar-energy scandal, President Obama said Monday he doesn’t regret promoting the solar company Solyndra as a model before the company went bankrupt and lost $535 million in taxpayer dollars.

“Hindsight is always 20/20,” Mr. Obama told “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos in an online interview. “It went through the regular review process and people felt that it was a good bet.”

A god bet? Apparently the administration can’t tell the difference between gambling and a business plan. Of course this itself is consistent with attribution of the acquisition of wealth to “being fortunate” rather than bing the result of the exercise of entrepreneurial skill in some way.

Found this with an article on the Euro Brussels Journal blog.

Vice President Joe Biden appears to temporarily lose his mind during President Obama’s jobs speech on 9-8-11. This is not an altered photo, but a well-timed freeze-frame from a video recording made by Russ Allison Loar.

“Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”

PLO official: Palestinians, Israelis must be totally separated

The future independent Palestinian state will not include a Jewish minority, a top Palestinian official told USA Today on Wednesday…

Hmmmm. This has already been tried, when a leading Euro power set the goal of becoming “Jew-free”…except that they called it “Judenfrei”:

Synagogue in German-occupied Bydgoszcz. The inscription reads: “This city is free of Jews”
And B.O. demands that Israel knuckle under in “negotiations”, while the United Socialist Nations plans on effectively converting Israel into a giant ghetto.

“Jesus wept.”

The land of the no longer free

As terrorists struck New York on September 11th, the United States vowed to fight back and protect their country, their people and their freedom. But 10 years on, it seems that freedom is just an illusion, and the US is becoming an Orwellian state.

When George W Bush spoke about the necessity of “protecting the homeland of our country”, he probably thought that the homeland was literally just that – a land that one calls home. And while most people focused on the fact that the then US president had once again made a grammatical blunder, many saw a hidden danger in his statement – not only because of the Big Brother-type security changes ahead, but also because of the very nature of the word “homeland”.

Read on…the rest of this piece makes more sense than just about anything you can find in the US media for some time:

Merriam-Webster defines “homeland” as “a state or area set aside to be a state for a people of a particular national, cultural, or racial origin.” Now, that really doesn’t apply to one of the youngest countries in the world, which has no shared cultural or racial origin. Dig a little deeper and many linguists will tell you of the word’s decidedly Teutonic origin. A blend of two proto-Germanic words “kham” (home) and “landan” (land), a homeland does not unite people by ideas or beliefs. It ties them firmly to the land. It is a concept that has little to do with patriotism – despite the fact the words do share common Greek roots – and, ironically, it was used ad nauseam by the US government in the post-9/11 world. Ironic because it’s patriotism that is more applicable to the concept of the United States as a nation – one where people of all cultures and backgrounds come together for shared ideas, opportunities and beliefs. And one of the key ideas that most people chose to make the US their home was one much propagated by President Ronald Reagan. The idea of freedom.

Reagan once said that “above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.” But 20 years after Reagan was sworn in, the terrorist attacks of September 11th happened – and George W Bush decided that there are weapons more appropriate than freedom.

Because freedom – that greatly advertised American concept – was effectively taken away from the people, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Under the new Patriot Act, The Federal Bureau of Investigation began probing almost every second of every life in the country and when people wanted to leave the country, the Transport Security Administration probed them. The Big German-sounding Brother was fully established, the people living in the ‘land of the free’ under surveillance at all times.

This makes so much sense it’s scary.

It’s a sad commentary when one realizes that RUSSIA finds itself in a position to point out the corrosive erosion of our Constitutional system.

Return of the Gold Standard as world order unravels

As the twin pillars of international monetary system threaten to come tumbling down in unison, gold has reclaimed its ancient status as the anchor of stability. The spot price surged to an all-time high of $1,594 an ounce in London, lifting silver to $39 in its train.

So, what’s this have to do with us?
Have you heard of the latest proposed run of the monetary printing presses in D.C.?

Fed chair Ben Bernanke confessed to Congress that growth has failed to gain traction. “Deflationary risks might re-emerge, implying a need for additional policy support,” he said.

The bar to QE3 – yet more bond purchases – is even lower than markets had thought. The new intake of hard-money men on the voting committee has not shifted Fed thinking, despite global anger at dollar debasement under QE2.

The Chief  humbly offers this bit as the real bottom-line takeaway message:

“…the flight to gold is accelerating at a faster and faster speed,” said Peter Hambro, chairman of Britain’s biggest pure gold listing Petropavlovsk.

“One of the big US banks texted me today to say that if QE3 actually happens, we could see gold at $5,000 and silver at $1,000. I feel terribly sorry for anybody on fixed incomes tied to a fiat currency because they are not going to be able to buy things with that paper money.”

One might be mindful of a Larry Niven comment: “Not responsible for advice not taken.”

’nuff said.

Things have been hectic lately…what with trying to organize a new pole building on the outpost, along with the necessity to remove fallen trees from the recent wind storm (yep, we are close enough to Flandreau to have caught that!), and getting the electricity, internet, (wireless–antenna was knocked out of operation) restored, facing s 30′ spruce down in a small rural cemetery that I serve as sexton….and a few more fun items to boot…phew! Enough already!

The following are some thoughts and comments I have had recently, inspired by Ronaldus Magnus, the Gipper himself, which fit the season when we commemorate the independence of our Republic. Agree or not…this is where I come from:

When the politics (“the art of the possible”) is distilled away, Reagan really did have a core of personal belief that was so deeply ingrained and taken for granted by him that it was and is unrecognizable to “players at the game of Washington”, whether they be pols, press (incl. other media), or bureaucrats. They have notebooks, in his own writing, full of stuff that R.R. wrote over a period of years, refining and developing his political philosophy, and how this interacted with various issues. Reagan’s expressions of American exceptionalism, etc. are expressions of this.

CALL IT MYSTICISM IF YOU WILL, I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED THERE WAS SOME DIVINE PROVIDENCE THAT PLACED THIS GREAT LAND HERE BETWEEN TWO GREAT OCEANS, TO BE FOUND BY A SPECIAL KIND OF PEOPLE FROM MANY CORNERS OF THE WORLD, WHO HAD A SPECIAL LOVE FOR FREEDOM AND A SPECIAL COURAGE THAT ENABLED THEM TO LEAVE THEIR OWN LAND, LEAVE THEIR FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN, AND COME TO THE NEW AND STRANGE LAND TO BUILD A NEW WORLD OF PEACE AND FREEDOM AND HOPE. Ronald Reagan, 4 July 1986

Hear, hear!

When more conventional denizens of the political scene were exposed to this, it was so far beyond their consciousness, they never could figure him out…and in many cases they still haven’t. I have had some small degree of association with political and media types from both (? maybe more!) parts of the spectrum, and all too often the level of calculation, (dare one say cynicism?)…is such that a genuine, heart-felt expression of belief is greeted with skepticism if not actual derision. It sort of hearkens back to the old progressive attitude that people can only be trusted with democracy if they FIRST are trained to have the “proper attitude”.

People who have a personal core belief that the whole American idea is a good and qualitatively different attitude, found that reflected in Reagan, who shared this faith in the American experiment. IMHO, that was, and is the source of Reagan’s appeal. I think I’m on safe ground to say that no post-Reagan president has had the sort of solid core beliefs that Reagan did. People are still looking for that (hoping for that?) in their leaders…so maybe in that sense at least there is still a Reagan era…although he was ultimately expressing what is ultimately an old theme in the American experience…hearkening all the way back to “the shining city on the hill” noted by old New England.

Speechworld vs. Realworld
The widening gulf between Obama’s rhetoric and reality

The Democrats seem to have given up on budgets. Hey, who can blame them? They’ve got a ballpark figure: Let’s raise $2 trillion in revenue every year, and then spend $4 trillion. That seems to work pretty well, so why get hung up on a lot of fine print? Harry Reid says the Senate has no plans to produce a budget, but in April the president did give a speech about “a new budget framework” that he said would save $4 trillion over the next twelve years.

That would be 2023, if you’re minded to take him seriously. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, did. Last week he asked Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, if he’d “estimated the budget impact of this framework. “No, Mr. Chairman,” replied Director Elmendorf, deadpan. “We don’t estimate speeches. We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech.”

Hmmmm. There IS a term for managing something that involves finance without a budget: mismanagement!

In Realworld, political speeches would be about closing down unnecessary federal bureaucracies, dramatically downsizing or merging others, and ending makework projects and mission creep. The culture of excess that distinguishes the hyperpower at twilight would be reviled at every turn. But instead the “hugely persuasive” orator declares that there’s nothing to worry about that even more government can’t cure. In Speechworld, “no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach.” In Realworld, that’s mainly because we’re going downhill. And the horizon is a cliff edge.

Any hope of that? Not under the current regime apparently:

Geithner: Taxes on ‘Small Business’ Must Rise So Government Doesn’t ‘Shrink’

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”

First observation here: Why don’t we have the government shrink? Must be a version of “Too big to fail.” That would be consistent for Geitner, et al.

I think we’re getting to the real root of the problem on this one!

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
Physicists say sunspot cycle is ‘going into hibernation’

What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.

So much for Global Glowbull warming…it IS the sun, not a new Escalade that drives the climate.

Some more detailed information on this here.

Sometimes repetition works, like in the above header.

Sometimes it doesn’t, like in the described policies. We’ve been there, done that, and it wasn’t a pretty picture then, and it wouldn’t be now either.

A 62% Top Tax Rate?

Democrats have said they only intend to restore the tax rates that existed during the Clinton years. In reality they’re proposing rates like those under President Carter.

Check out the article for the gory details.

Rudy Giuliani leads new national poll

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll shows the former New York City mayor atop the slow-forming Republican primary field.

No thanks…another progressive RINO is not wanted. The McCain experience should have made the point.

By the way, the same objections apply to the like of Huntsman, Romney, Pawlenty, and Gingrich…among others…
Using the “Cap and Trade Tax” for example…see the following:

Are GOP Candidates Reversing Course on Energy and Global Warming?*

The tap dance of all of these guys is enough for the Chief to take ‘em off his list…I mean really, pseudo-conservative Gingrich swallowing the warmist dose and getting all touchie-feely with Pelosi in a TV spot?

US kills Osama bin Laden decade after 9/11 attacks

Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite American forces Monday, then quickly buried at sea in a stunning finale to a furtive decade on the run.

Long believed to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a costly, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military academy. The stunning news of his death prompted relief and euphoria outside the White House and around the globe, yet also fears of terrorist reprisals against the United States and its allies.

“Justice has been done,” President Barack Obama said in a dramatic announcement at the White House.

The military operation took mere minutes, and there were no U.S. casualties.

U.S. helicopters ferried troops from Navy SEAL Team Six, a top military counter-terrorism unit, into the compound identified by the CIA as bin Laden’s hideout — and back out again in less than 40 minutes. Bin Laden was shot in the head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards resisted the assault.

Better late than never…overall, a good outcome…and the dumping at sea is a nice touch…no pesky remains to give jihadis a place to go for pilgramage.

B.O. should get credit where credit is due…he directly ordered the search mission, and then, when we got the information, the SEALs were sent in to do the job in their own inimitable way! Bravo Zulu from the Chief!

Chronicle responds after Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia, then claims they didn’t

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The Chronicle’s report is accurate.

The Chief recently had occasion to read Stanley Kutler’s Wars of Watergate, his comprehensive examination of the Nixon White House’s relations with the press (and everyone else for that matter!), which was legendarily sub-optimal. Looks like B.O. and Carney, his appropriately named press shill are continuing that sorry tradition.

Of all the Presidents his worshipful lib/prog fan club would have expected B.O. to emulate, one has to wonder whether the one and only “Tricky Dick” was their first choice! Just wondering…

The Chief had the opportunity to attend the DakotaCon 1 computer security conference at Dakota State University, over in Madison.  The day-long event featured presentations by a number of different speakers from the world of deep geekdom, with handles (noms de guerre) like DCFlux, Moxie Marlinspike, Kingpin (a.k.a. Joe Grand), and even normally tagged presenters Jared DeMott, and NSA’s Dave Garland.

The talks were very interesting…and covered topics ranging from “hardware hacking” situations and workshop skills, as well as various social and economic consequences of the rapidly evolving state of the digital world in its various forms.  Well worth the investment of time…especially since the price was right…no charge!

While not on the scale of major hacking/security conferences like DEFCON, Black Hat, and Schmoocon to name a few, it brought some serious stuff that bears close attention as we apparently move ever more fully into involvement with and membership in a rapidly evolving digital world.

Moxie’s presentation specifically covered aspects of the privacy (or lack thereof) issues associated with the oncoming (and future) generations of cell phones, so when I saw the following it definitely rang a bell:

Snooping: It’s not a crime, it’s a feature
New apps hijack the microphone in your cell phone to listen in on your life

Cellphone users say they want more privacy, and app makers are listening. No, they’re not listening to user requests. They’re literally listening to the sounds in your office, kitchen, living room and bedroom.

A new class of smartphone app has emerged that uses the microphone built into your phone as a covert listening device — a “bug,” in common parlance. But according to app makers, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature!

The apps use ambient sounds to figure out what you’re paying attention to. It’s the next best thing to reading your mind.
Your phone is listening

The issue was brought to the world’s attention recently on a podcast called This Week in Tech. Host Leo Laporte and his panel shocked listeners by unmasking three popular apps that activate your phone’s microphone to collect sound patterns from inside your home, meeting, office or wherever you are.

The apps are Color, Shopkick and IntoNow, all of which activate the microphones in users’ iPhone or Android devices in order to gather contextual information that provides some benefit to the user.

YIKES! The Chief thought it would be sort of neat to have a Droid phone. (Except for the slight detail that there is nearly no reliability of signal at his rural outpost, and the other detail of the cost of the airtime that he would like to use. Oh well. maybe it’s just as well.)

So what can they REALLY find out? 

You should know that any data that can be gathered, will be gathered. Since the new microphone-hijacking apps are still around, we now know that listening in on users is OK. So, what’s possible with current technology?
By listening in on your phone, capturing “patterns,” then sending that data back to servers, marketers can determine the following:

• Your gender, and the gender of people you talk to.
• Your approximate age, and the ages of the people you talk to.
• What time you go to bed, and what time you wake up.
• What you watch on TV and listen to on the radio.
• How much of your time you spend alone, and how much with others.
• Whether you live in a big city or a small town.
• What form of transportation you use to get to work.

In the early 70′s the Chief had the acquaintance of a highly unconventional electronics and media mavin who at the time was running an alternative FM station (KDNA) in St. Louis.  His often repeated admonition was “assume that anything you say can have someone else listenting” as the only sure-fire way to maintain privacy.  I’m not sure his warning was ENTIRELY true at the time…but if not, the way things have developed now have made him into a prophet…now that I think of it, he literally had the name of a prophet too!  Believe it or not, your choice.

This essay bears close attention, and IMHO is right on target….

ENEMIES!

Opponents or Enemies?

In any conflict, it is a deadly error to mistake or underestimate the adversary’s capabilities, will to employ them, or ultimate goals.

Around the globe, what was once confidently deemed “Western civilisation” is in an end-stage battle with champions of a collectivist and statist ideology which, over the last century, has enacted programs of redistributive taxation, borrowing, and spending whose unsustainability has now become self-evident and which, unless the present course is altered, will collapse in at most ten years. Further, the second- and higher-order effects of these policies have led to demographic collapse in the societies which have adopted them, crippled capital formation and the creation of productive enterprises, and been used as a justification for mass immigration from regions hostile to the culture and values of the West which have been responsible for its prosperity.

Those who would destroy a society, destroy first its language. As Orwell observed, when the terms of discourse are corrupted, the corruption spreads into every domain the language is used to debate. So deep has this language rot penetrated, that it is difficult to write an essay like this without succumbing to it—that is the intent of those who spread the contagion. The present-day culprits identify themselves as “progressives” or “liberals”. Take a step back and ponder how manipulative this is: if you’re a “progressive”, then you must obviously be on the side of progress, even though the outcome of the policies you advocate will ultimately roll back all of the advances in individual liberty and prosperity made since the Enlightenment; if you’re a “liberal”, surely you must advocate liberty, notwithstanding that the consequences of your prescriptions will be descent of society into serfdom for the masses, deemed property of the state, ruled by an unelected, unaccountable élite.

These so-called “progressives” or “liberals” are not advocates of progress or liberty: they are enemies of them, and the sooner champions of liberty acknowledge what they are, the better our slim chances for defeating them will be. Libertarians and conservatives are inclined toward civil discourse and respect for the rule of law. They must come to terms with the fact that their enemies—not opponents—are implacable, bent on winning whatever the cost may be, willing to use any means whatsoever to prevail and, once triumphant, to deprive their opposition of the means to reverse or even impede the implementation of their agenda.

They are enemies.

What is to be done?
In the middle of World War II, would it have made sense for Roosevelt and Churchill to have arranged a secret meeting with Hirohito and Tojo to try to “work out their differences” and “find a middle ground” where, say, Imperial Japan would be allowed to keep half of its conquests in the Pacific? Of course not: Japan was the enemy, and only its definitive defeat could undo the damage its conquests had wrought.

Enemies of individual liberty control the high ground today in most of the institutions through which they have made their long march in the last half century, and they perceive themselves as winning: with every generation they educate, inform, entertain, and rule, they create more dependent subjects who acquiesce to their rule and groom a new self-perpetuating class of élite. They are not people who have a different vision of how to create a society in which the aspirations of the majority of the people for themselves and their families will be achieved, but rather aspiring rulers of infantilised subjects dependent upon the largesse of their betters.

How does one deal with enemies? To survive and prosper, one does not negotiate with them—one defeats them. There is no “reasonable, achievable compromise” between liberty and tyranny, freedom and slavery. One must vanquish the tyrants and slaveholders and ensure that their spawn cannot reinfect society.

We will never defeat them as long as we view them as “opponents” who play by the same rules and share the same goals as we. They are enemies, and must be completely defeated and removed from the political stage. That is how they view us—they have no desire to compromise but rather intend to destroy us. [emphasis added] Until we take the battle to the enemy with an equal fierceness, we shall have no hope of success. Here are a few things we can do, starting immediately, once we come to terms with the fact we’re confronted with an enemy, not a well-meaning opponent.

Reclaim the language from the enemy.
We should have a “swear jar” for every time we utter the words “liberal” or “progressive” except in scornful irony. May I suggest “statist”, “collectivist”, “socialist”, or “communist” as alternatives?

Do not trade with the enemy.
Do not patronise businesses which support enemy causes; by doing so you support them yourself. While an individual choosing not to be a customer of a mega-corporation has negligible impact, millions of like-minded people deciding to go elsewhere can. On the local scale, telling the owner of the pharmacy who’s posted a petition supporting socialised medicine that he’s just lost your business and why does have an impact—I did this two weeks ago myself.

Don’t be taken in by enemy propaganda.
The mainstream media are almost entirely in the hands of the enemy. Help to make them the legacy media by ignoring everything they say, not subscribing to their enemy propaganda. Rely instead on first-hand reporting on the Internet whose veracity you can judge based on a network of trusted sources who comment upon it.

Do not entrust your children to the enemy. So-called “public schools” (the correct term is “government schools”, since in recent decades the public—parents—have lost all control over them) have been entirely captured by the enemy and become institutions of indoctrination and moral corruption which fail at teaching even basic skills. It is parental malfeasance verging on child abuse to send one’s offspring to these corrupt, corrupting, and nonperforming schools. If you cannot afford a well-run private or religious school (most have per-pupil costs well below that of government schools, but of course you have to pay that tuition on top of your taxes supporting the failed government schools), consider home-schooling your children, perhaps in conjunction with other like-minded parents. Even if you can afford it, don’t assume a private or religious school supports your values; talk to parents of students enrolled there and teachers: if they show signs of being enemies, don’t send your kids there.

Do not become indebted to the enemy. Higher education is overwhelmingly in the hands of the enemy. One of the greatest scams in recent decades has been the explosion in tuition and fees, which results in graduates of four-year and postgraduate programs burdened with six-figure debt they’re forced to pay off in the key years they should be saving to accumulate capital for starting a family, buying a house, educating their children, and retirement. This is not accidental: by blocking capital formation in people’s key earning years, they are rendered dependent upon the state for their retirement and health care in old age, which is precisely the intent.

What élite universities and professional schools provide for the exorbitant fee is a credential which offers entry into the ranks of the enemy, and the “education” they provide is indoctrination in the enemy’s belief system. If you need a credential, shop around and get what you require at a price that doesn’t sink you into debt throughout your peak earning years. Unless you’ve bought into the enemy’s credential game, where you went to college will be irrelevant after you’ve had a few years of job experience.

Do not hire the enemy. Are you an employer? Why should you pay those who support the destruction of your livelihood? In our information-intense age, nothing could be easier than determining the political affiliations and contributions of applicants for employment, as well as their sentiments posted on public fora. If they are enemies, don’t hire them. You wouldn’t hire somebody without a police background check to make sure they weren’t a crook, would you? So why should you employ an enemy who will use your paycheck to destroy the values you cherish and spread the enemy’s perverted belief system among co-workers?

Roll back the enemy’s gains. One of the enemy’s key intellectual force multipliers is the concept of the “ratchet”: that any movement in their direction is irreversible and that consequently the debate is only about how rapidly one will arrive at their destination. Those who view the enemy as an “opposition” fall for this completely—in effect, their slogan becomes, “We’ll deliver you unto serfdom, but later than the other guys”. This is not how one deals with an enemy: they must be definitively defeated, removed from all positions of influence, and their pathological beliefs cleansed from the society. Any politician who speaks about “reaching across the aisle” or intellectual who grants any legitimacy to the anti-human, liberty-destroying nostrums of the collectivists is a fool at best and a collaborator at worst. Failing to acknowledge that an enemy is an enemy is to preemptively surrender.

We do not compromise with enemy politicians; we defeat them, regardless of the political party from which they hail. If they’re enemies of freedom and the other party’s candidate is worse, challenge them in the primary.

We do not consent to enemy occupation of the media. These are businesses, and we will withdraw our support from them by letting subscriptions lapse and withdrawing advertising from them. This will provoke a “circulation collapse” death spiral for them. All public funding and subsidies for media must be defeated.

We choose not to fund enemy occupation of our educational institutions. All taxpayer-supported institutions must have their funding made contingent upon abolition of tenure (from kindergarten through university professorships) and retention based upon objective measures of merit by third parties outside the academic system.

In the U.S., many state judges are elected; Federal judges are not, and have lifetime tenure. But their courts are funded by the legislature, which can abolish them with the consent of the executive. Abolish abusive and misbehaving courts, and create new ones, and let that serve as a lesson to those who would legislate from the bench.

If you’ve gotten this far, go to the site and read the rest!

A couple of items here that speak for themselves.

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; Inflation Pressure Grows

New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, bouncing back above the key 400,000 level, while core producer prices clumbed faster than expected in March, government reports showed on Thursday.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 412,000, the Labor Department said.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 380,000.

The prior weeks figure was revised up to 385,000 from the previously reported 382,000.

The four-week moving average of unemployment claims—a better measure of underlying trends—climbed 5,500 to 395,750.

And on the inflation front:

U.S. core producer prices rose slightly faster than expected in March and the increase from a year ago was the largest since August 2009, pointing to a broadening in pipeline inflation pressures.

Of course these calculations EXCLUDE food and energy costs…but hey, everyone knows that these don’t affect most people anyway, do they?!

More Americans leaving workforce

The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.

Doesn’t exactly suggest a vibrant economy, does it?

Nancy Pelosi: ‘Elections Shouldn’t Matter as Much as They Do’

Amazing! You couldn’t make this up!

Perhaps it’s sour grapes, or perhaps it’s a recent reawakening, but in a speech by Nancy Pelosi at Tufts University earlier this week, the former speaker of the House had some advice for her Republican colleagues in particular and some reflections on elections in general:… “But the fact is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”

The application of logic dictates then that she feels that vox populi is something overrated and worthy of fear. Curious that she’s in a party that labels itself “Democratic”.

Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home

You just had to know that things would come to this, based on what has already been going on with regulation nad legislation dictating the availability and use of food. It is LITERALLY not too far out to call these types of food police Nazis. Hitler WOULD have approved…he was a strict vegetarian, tee-totaler, and non-smoker, although even he wasn’t ready to enforce his personal preferences on others…yet. Fortunately he met his fate, and that problem went away, at least until its latest revival.

To encourage healthful eating, Chicago school doesn’t allow kids to bring lunches or certain snacks from home — and some parents, and many students, aren’t fans of the policy

What’s next? 2-way “telescreens” with compulsory daily physical exercise under surveillance monitoring a-la 1984? What’s scary about that concept, is that we now have the technology to actually pull that off!

A Latin tag comes to mind: NON SUPER NOS – “You ain’t the boss of us!”

CORRECTION!
Ooops! The Chief’s percentages listed below are off a bit, due to his use of an incorrect total for the proposed 2011 non-budget. The really bad news part of this is that the outcome is even worse than before…in other words the actual “chump change” at the center of the current dogfight is even LESS significant than previously calculated. Corrected figures are plugged in at the appropriate places in the post:

White House Summit Fails to Yield Budget Deal as Shutdown Approaches

What a total joke!

President Obama, after a high-stakes meeting Wednesday night with congressional leaders at the White House, called the discussion “frank” and “constructive” but said no budget deal was reached.

“If we are serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal, get it passed and avert a shutdown,” Obama told reporters in the White House briefing room, though it remained unclear how the two sides would forge such an agreement.

Unfortunately this whole discussion is a virtual farce!
According to the Washington Post, the Donkey Party has expressed willingness to accept a whopping $23B cut at this time. That represents approx. a 1.6% 0.7% cut. The GOP on the other hand is currently thumping for a righteous and allegedly draconian $40B cutback, which is about a 3% 1.2% cut. So, do the math…the big brouhaha (ha ha ha indeed!) is about a difference of $17B, a huge difference of 1.4% 0.5% of the total budget!

Yep! Just imagine for comparison purposes what would happen to your personal or family budget if you were forced to confront a massive 3% 0.5% loss of income – 1/2 cent per dollar! Definitely a case of being reduced to dumpster diving and hitchhiking? It is according to Pelosi, Reid, et al. Doubtful however in reality, unless you are a bigger dolt than the Congresscritters fighting about the arrangement of deck chairs on the listing titanic ship of state.

T minus two years: World’s most powerful rocket set to launch by late 2013

The most powerful rocket since the Apollo missions has been unveiled and is set to launch in 2013. The Falcon 9-Heavy will be able to put 53tonnes of satellites or spacecraft into orbit – more than twice the amount its closest rival, the Delta IV Heavy, can carry.

Falcon Heavy’s first stage will be made up of three nine-engine cores and will be powered with Merlin engines, currently being tested in Texas.

Elon Musk, chief executive and designer of Space Exploration Technologies, said: ‘Falcon Heavy will carry more payload to orbit or escape velocity than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn V moon rocket, which was decommissioned after the Apollo programme. ‘This opens a new world of capability for both government and commercial space missions.’

The space craft is due to arrive in Vandenberg, California, at the end of next year with plans for a lift-off from Cape Canaveral as early as late 2013 or 2014. At lift-off, Falcon Heavy will generate 3.8million lbs of thrust – equal to the thrust of 15 Boeing 747s taking off at the same time.

YES!

Whatever NASA was able to accomplish in the past, it’s obvious that it has outgrown its usefulness, and with the budget situation that we are dealing with, we have better uses for our money than by spending it on a bunch of subsidized science and (unfortuantely) junk-science projects that don’t have enough significance to earn funding from anyone except governmental bureaucrats who themselves are in search of a real life. (“The bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”)

So, where does that leave us in terms of space? Turning it over to private venture capitalism. The alternative is to concede the ultimate geopolitical “high ground” to the Russians and the ChiComs, and isn’t THAT a cheering thought! (NOT!)

With the capability of SpaceX’s machine, there’s no reason to stop at low earth orbit. With Musk, and others who are working on developing private spaceflight, there’s no reason not to get back to the Moon. (A good source of abundant Tritium…useful for fusion energy reactors. Any use for THAT these days? Hmmmm?)

Here’s a related vid clip from SpaceX…included because IMHO it’s just cool in it’s own right, and features SpaceX’s manned flight system that is currently under development.

Admittedly there has been a bit of pyrotechnics going on in Washington, and elsewhere…but really, for the most part there’s not much of it that’s qualitatively different, so it hasn’t elicited that certain indefinable response that compels an answer. Hence the minor blog hiatus.

In itself, this can, and probably is a danger…if everyone responds that way, then the lilliputian yahoos who are running the brobdingnagian monstrosity that the multi-trillion government has turned into will have their unobstructed way…speaking of an even greater danger…so, forward once again into the breach!

Former Clinton Official Paid $26 Million by Fannie Mae Before Taxpayer Bailout Now on Obama Shortlist to Run FBI

A firend said “Cheer up, things could be worse!”
So I did, and sure enough, they were.

Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration official who has reportedly made the Obama administration’s to become considering the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was paid more than $26 million in total compensation as a top executive at Fannie Mae–before taxpayers had to bail out the mortgage giant.

More Gorey gory details of her talent for getting rich on the public dime.

If appointment of this Clintonista actually happens, it’s definitely a case of turning the fox loose in the hen-house.

Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s the Only Choice

From no less than the NYT.

The following is the final take-away point of the article…but the real interesting meat of the issue is in consideration of examples and cases that lead to it. Without looking into those, the concluding paragraph is pretty much irrelevant, so if the concluding concept is interesting, go check it out.

Some scientists like to dismiss the intuitive belief in free will as an exercise in self-delusion — a simple-minded bit of “confabulation,” as Crick put it. But these supposed experts are deluding themselves if they think the question has been resolved. Free will hasn’t been disproved scientifically or philosophically. The more that researchers investigate free will, the more good reasons there are to believe in it.

So How Much is This New Conflict War Costing?

Ever wonder how much a Tomahawk missile costs? How about 110 of them? And what effect will those prices have on GOP attemps to trim the budget? Those are the questions that many are asking as American involves itself in yet another international conflict. And the answers aren’t too settling.

Well, DUH! Fighting even a limited high-tech war is an expensive business, in any sense of the word!

The question that remains unanswered is what in the world are we really trying to accomplish with this one. There’s info out there that the best organized eastern Libyan opposition to Qaddafi is our old fave al-Qaida. Not wouldn’t THAT be an improvement to Muammar? (NOT!)

We would be better advised to husband our resources, and not be involved with this one….Like, if you’re hiking down the trail and come upon a scorpion dueling with a rattlesnake, would you choose a side and get involved? No thanks!

A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION

The Chief has actually seen some other peer-reviewed scientific papers about low level radiation being beneficial to living cells and organisms. Like water, sodium, zinc, copper, and many other substances, some is helpful (and in some cases even ESSENTIAL), while too much of the same thing can be harmful, up to the level of fatality.

With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.

This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.

As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level — much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government — radiation is good for you. “They theorize,” the Times said, that “these doses protect against cancer by activating cells’ natural defense mechanisms.”

Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population.

And there are lots more!

Take away message: without absolute evidence, don’t sweat the small stuff!

Tim Pawlenty becomes first Republican to launch Presidential campaign

Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor has become the first bona fide Republican candidate to launch a campaign for the party’s nomination to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Mr Pawlenty has methodically moved toward a national campaign since announcing in 2009 that he would not seek a third term. Struggling for name recognition against better-known probable opponents, Mr Pawlenty announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, which in recent times has served as the signal for entering a primary campaign.

Chief’s first reaction: ho-hum.

Somebody needs to slap Michael Moore upside the head with a serious cluebat for crying that we had LOTS of money to spend!

Maybe we WILL have lots more dollars if we keep the presses rolling, just like the Germans had lots more Reichsbank Marks in the twenties:

50,000,000 Mark note, Sept. 1923, which was already only small change:
1st November 1923 1 pound of bread cost 3 billion, 1 pound of meat 36 billion, 1 glass of beer: 4 billion.”

Mandatory Spending to Exceed all Federal Revenues — 50 Years Ahead of Schedule

…if national defense, interstate highways, national parks, homeland security, and all other discretionary programs somehow became absolutely free, we’d still have a budget deficit. The White House Office of Management and Budget projects that in the current fiscal year (2011), mandatory spending alone will exceed all federal receipts. So even if we didn’t spend a single cent on discretionary programs, we still wouldn’t be able to balance our budget this year — let alone pay off any of the $14 trillion in debt that we have already accumulated.

And the administration and the Congressional Democrats Donkey Congs cry about attempting to cut a measley $61B out of a trillion+ package, for a whopping 4% (or less) cut? Give me a break!

Vikings running back Adrian Peterson compares NFL owners’ treatment of players to ‘modern-day slavery’ in an online interview

Vikings running back Adrian Peterson compared NFL owners’ treatment of players to “modern-day slavery,” according to an online interview published Tuesday by Yahoo! Sports.

Yahoo’s Doug Farrar, who conducted the interview Friday with Peterson, removed that comment from the story later Tuesday, explaining on Twitter that he wants to give Peterson the chance to provide context.

Peterson, who is known to be thoughtful when speaking with the local media in Minnesota, is in Africa with other NFL players on a goodwill trip and unavailable for immediate comment.

One is tempted to note that it’s one of the Vikings saying something so stupid…but I’ll skip the cheap shot…

NFL owners and players couldn’t agree on a new collective bargaining agreement last week after more than two weeks of federal mediation. Shortly before the players union NFL decertified, Peterson spoke to Yahoo to promote a recent appearance on the online reality show “Double Take.” The NFL declared a lockout when the CBA expired.

“The players are getting robbed. They are,” Peterson told Yahoo. “The owners are making so much money off of us to begin with. I don’t know that I want to quote myself on that.”

If someone were robbing ME, I would at least stay away from them henceforth.

When discussing other players feeling the same way, Peterson said: “It’s modern-day slavery, you know? People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too. With all the money. … The owners are trying to get a different percentage, and bring in more money. I understand that; these are business-minded people. Of course this is what they are going to want to do. I understand that; it’s how they got to where they are now. But as players, we have to stand our ground and say, ‘Hey, without us, there’s no football.’ “

OK. Call an spade a spade here. He says he can understand the owners wanting to make money…because he is concerned with exactly the same thing. So what…but don’t resort to the level of hyperbole that labels one of the most remunerative occupations as being slavery:

Peterson is set to make $10.72 million in base salary in 2011.

Poor baby! How can he survive on that sharecropper-style starvation pay!

On the same page was the following poll:
Do you agree with Peterson’s comparison of NFL owners’ treatment of players to “modern-day slavery?”
Total Votes = 2282
Yes. 2.453 %
No. 96.18 %
I don’t know. 1.358 %
The Chief concurs.

Contrary to Peterson’s assertion…no one is standing there with a whip forcing him to accept that $10.72M paycheck. This IS the US of A, and the 13th Amendment IS enforced. If he doesn’t like the NFL, he’s free to get a real job, in the real world, assuming he can qualify for one.

No sympathy. At all. Sorry.

Dead soldier Liam Tasker and Army dog return home

Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, from Kirkcaldy in Fife, was shot dead while on patrol in Helmand province.

L/Cpl Tasker, who was called a “rising star” by Army chiefs, was shot by Taliban snipers and Theo died of a seizure shortly after his master.

The ashes of the 26-year-old’s dog Theo will be flown home on the same plane.

This really touches me. Otherwise, words fail.

Wis. GOP bypasses Dems, cuts collective bargaining

The Wisconsin Senate succeeded in voting Wednesday to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers, after Republicans outmaneuvered the chamber’s missing Democrats and approved an explosive proposal that has rocked the state and unions nationwide.

The piece goes on to report on the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth of the usual collection of unions, and their at times thuggish activists and supporters.

Oh, the cruelty of it all! They will now be restricted in their bargaining rights and reduced to the status of another large group of oppressed and beaten down public employees: US federal workers. Oh cruel world!