Saturday, October 5, 2013

Putin didn't actually say this...

Putin didn't actually say this.  But it sure has that ring of truth to it, doesn't it?
Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon.  The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game.
This little story has been around for a long time.  This site attributes it to a commenter on Amazon – same story, different protagonists. 

I like this version better.  Via my lovely bride...

California leads the way…

California leads the way…in “new feudalism” .  And all because the technocrats need to get reelected…

California leads the way...

California leads the way... in the creative definition of the notion of a “family”.  Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown signed California Senate Bill 274, which allows any number of people to be listed as the parents of a child.  Apparently this bill was motivated by an actual case:
...an appellate court case involving a biological mother, her same-sex partner and a man who had an affair with the mother while she was temporarily separated from her female lover. In the 2011 case, the California Court of Appeal held that courts could not recognize more than two parents even if doing so would protect the child from harm.
Twenty-first century relationships are complicated.  I fully expect California to be the first state to legalize polygamous marriages, in which case this law will have broader applicability.  Then there's the folks in Berkeley who believe they should be able to marry animals.  In such a marriage, the list of parents for any children might get a little odd: mommy, daddy, mommy #2, goat #1, horse #1, goat #2, etc.

It's really hard to keep up with this stuff...

On that “debt limit”...


On that “debt limit”...  That's an oldie-but-goodie satirical video at right explaining the debt limit and how debt is being transferred to the next generation.

With the approaching exhaustion of government borrowing authority, and “raise the debt limit” bellowing from every progressive mouth, it's time to go over this again – because the polls keep showing that the vast majority of Americans don't understand it.

It's really very simple, just as the video says.

Our federal government spends more than it takes in (from taxes).  Much more.  Year after year after year.  The only way they can do that is by borrowing money – which they do by issuing Treasury Bonds.  Those bonds are for a fixed period of time, as short as a few months, as long as 10 years.  When they expire, the federal government must pay them back, with interest (not much interest, but there is some).  This is a large scale version of what a family does with a bank loan or a credit card: they borrow money, then pay it back.

In mid-October, the federal government will have borrowed as much as they're authorized to borrow – they will have hit their credit limit, just like a family might hit the credit limit on the credit card.

It's what happens next that's important.

Obama and his minions are proclaiming, loudly, that without the debt limit being raised, the country will default on its credit.  By that, they mean we'd stop paying back the people who bought bonds.  That's exactly like a family who hit their credit limit telling the bank that if their limit isn't raised, they can't make any credit card payments.  How well do you think that would go over with the bank?

And yet that's exactly the situation this country is in.  We spend so much money on other things that we have to borrow to make our “credit card” payments.  Our government tells us that there's no way they can spend less.  But of course there are ways – many of them.  They're just politically unpalatable ways, and the politicians are afraid that if they propose them, they'll be voted out of office – and they may well be right, because American voters are so damned stupid about this that they wouldn't recognize good governance if it smacked them in the head.

Remember the financial disaster sometimes known as Greece?  This is precisely the difficulty they got themselves in, albeit even deeper than we have.  The rest of the moneyed world all got together and forced them to cut expenses and start repaying their debt. 

Who's going to force us?

I think there's only two ways.

The hopeful, but unlikely, way is that American voters will wise up and start voting for fiscally sane politicians.  I'm not holding my breath for that one.

The probable way is that something – possibly a default – will wake the Treasury Bond borrowers to the reality that they might not get paid back.  This will cause the interest rate the U.S. must pay on its debt to skyrocket.  The result will be greatly increased cost of new borrowing.  Thanks to “quantitative easing” a very high proportion of our outstanding debt is short term – and as those low-interest instruments expire, they'll be replaced by high-interest Treasury Bonds.  The only alternative to that is to actually cut expenses – which I'm sure the politicians will start doing once the public starts complaining about the pains induced by high interest rates.

If you've still got an ARM, now would be a good time to convert it to a fixed mortgage.  Those ARM rates are going to go up, and my bet is that they'll go up much like they did back in Carter's time – up to well over 10%...

Feds attempt to close the ocean...

Feds attempt to close the ocean.  They must think the average voter is pretty darned stupid.  But then again, they have evidence: Obama did get reelected...

Long-lost Da Vinci painting discovered?

Long-lost Da Vinci painting discovered?  The pencil sketch at right was known, but the painting was thought lost or never completed.  They're still working on authenticating it...

Bad optics...

Bad optics.  On Thursday, amidst the government shutdown non-negotiation meetings and general hullabaloo, Obama sat for a portrait.  I'm no PR flack, but even I can tell that doesn't look too good.  On the other hand, I had to read Breitbart to find it out, as the lamestream media is reporting not a single word of it...

A nuclear-powered, H-bomb wielding cruise missile...

A nuclear-powered, H-bomb wielding cruise missile.  Apparently we were seriously considering building it:
This crazy bastard had so many ways to kill you, it was like a death buffet: should I die in the nuclear blasts of the bombs themselves, or just let the shockwave of the overpassing missile kill me? Maybe I'll just wait for the radiation sickness as this thing circles endlessly overhead, like a colossal demonic robot vulture. It's so hard to choose!

Super-sensitive, zero-inertia acoustic sensor...

Super-sensitive, zero-inertia acoustic sensor.  There aren't too many details, but enough to convey the basics.  Conventional acoustic sensors – aka microphones – all depend on movement of some part of the sensor.  This moving part – usually a thin diaphragm – has some mechanical inertia, and this is the limiting factor to its sensitivity.  This new acoustic sensor has no moving parts at all; it directly senses the motion of the air molecules as sound makes them vibrate.  Furthermore, it can be constructed to have directional response, which means that it can tell what direction the sound is coming from.  Right now it's used only in (very) expensive military applications – but if it's cost can be brought down, it could enable all sorts of interesting civilian applications.  For instance, it could let your mobile phone, sitting on the table in your kitchen, track you as you moved around the room and deliver your voice perfectly clearly.

A bejeweled ribcage...

A bejeweled ribcage.  Really.  It seems the Catholic church, way back when, had a tradition of decorating skeletons.

Holy encrusted skeletons, Batman!

ObamaCare fail...

ObamaCare fail: Chad Henderson is the lamestream media's poster boy for ObamaCare, mainly because he's the only person they could find who said he successfully enrolled.  But it turns out he didn't enroll.  Reason has the whole story...

But wait – does this mean that nobody successfully enrolled?  That would amaze even a cynic like me, but I searched this morning for a non-Chad success story and failed.  Yikes!

Tesla fire, classy response...

Tesla fire, classy response.  The video at right went viral, and one consequence was that Tesla's stock price dropped like a stone as investors had visions of problems like the ones faced by Boeing earlier this year. 

This morning I read Elon Musk's response.  He and his companies are developing a fine track record of classy, substantive, and transparent response to corporate challenges.  If I were a Tesla owner (and I am not), this would give me considerable confidence...

Downer of the day...

Downer of the day: from Niall Ferguson, a voice I listen to, writing in today's Wall Street JournalHe's not impressed with Obama's leadership:
Meanwhile, President Obama has become the Hamlet of the West Wing: One minute he's for bombing Syria, the next he's not; one minute Larry Summers will succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve, the next he won't; one minute the president is jetting off to Asia, the next he's not. To be in charge, or not to be in charge: that is indeed the question.
And he's utterly convinced the U.S. is in deep debt crisis:
Yet, entertaining as all this political drama may seem, the theater itself is indeed burning. For the fiscal position of the federal government is in fact much worse today than is commonly realized. As anyone can see who reads the most recent long-term budget outlook—published last month by the Congressional Budget Office, and almost entirely ignored by the media—the question is not if the United States will default but when and on which of its rapidly spiraling liabilities.
As Maggie Thatcher liked to say: the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money...

ObamaCare fail...

ObamaCare fail: warning displayed on Kentucky's insurance exchange:
Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy.  Any or all uses of this system and all files on the system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized state government and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.
Well, at least (unlike, say, the NSA) they're telling us they're going to spy on us!

Trust the math!

Trust the math!  Schneier art.

This surprised me...

This surprised me: in pre-WWII Germany, less than 1% of the population was Jewish.  I've read a lot of WWII history, but still remained ignorant of some basic facts that Neo-Neocon uncovered...

I miss Rummy...

I miss Rummy.  After 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld could be counted on for clarity and plain talking, unlike most of the political establishment.  Whether or not you agreed with his opinions and conclusions, he was always worth listening to – he had a way of getting to the heart of a problem that was quite refreshing, and on occasion he was laugh-out-loud funny.  He's still that way.  In a recent interview, asked about Obama, he said:
I begin with incompetence as a problem.  I think his behavior reflects a lack of experience and a lack of a strategic concept, or some principles or values that he tests things against.  We are contributing to a vacuum in the world that’s going to be filled by people who don’t have our values and don’t have our interests and our beliefs, and that means it’s going to be a more dangerous world for us and for others.
The interviewer further reports Rumsfeld's state of mind:
What seems to bother Rumsfeld most is his sense that America is a country in steep decline – which is a word that he used more than once. While he thinks that Obama’s Syria policy is a fig leaf for a disaster, he actually seemed less focused on specific policy choices than on his sense that the socio-economic foundation of American power is disintegrating. Without sustained American economic strength, neither American threats nor American offers of friendship are likely to carry much weight with the rest of the world.
That's consistent with my own sense, but somehow it's more worrying when Rumsfeld says it...

Miriam Carey shatters media dreams...

Miriam Carey shatters media dreams.  Da Tech Guy imagines what the lamestream media was thinking as Washington D.C. reacted to the dental hygienist/car crasher.  He's a funny guy :)

Debbie and I had a lovely evening last night...

Debbie and I had a lovely evening last night with Jim and Michelle B., our friends and neighbors.  It started with wine and the appetizer at right: tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little balsamic vinegar.  Yum!  Lots of happy conversation followed, along with (lots) more wine, grilled steak and shrimp, baked string beans, and sauteed mushrooms.  We're not even slightly hungry this morning :)

This evening, the four of us plus another old friend (Soon K.) are planning to go up to Cuyamaca for some wildlife viewing, followed by dinner at Descanso Junction Restaurant.  I just hope the winds have calmed down a little by then...

Heads up, Jamulians – it's Santa Ana time!

Heads up, Jamulians – it's Santa Ana time!  Gusty winds woke us up intermittently last night, starting around midnight.  By 2 am, they were constant enough for the noise to keep me awake.  As I write this, the National Weather Service is forecasting gusts to 60 MPH today, with temperatures in the low 80s and sub-10% relative humidity.

Fire weather, dang it...