Great music for Halloween! So it’s in German, just go with it!
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Month: October 2010
Jobs that create wealth
There is one subject that is universally agreed upon with the mid-terms upon us. The economy is job one. The other major issues on the plate like health care, cap-and-trade and immigration are all based in economics. Of course, jobs are at the heart of the economic debate. The initial estimate for GDP in the last quarter of fiscal year 2010 is 2.0%. Likely it will be revised downward per normal with the 2nd and 3rd revisions down the road. Regardless, it is an anemic number given the normal post-recession recovery rates. We need, at minimum, 3.5% merely to account for the expansion of the labor force due to population expansion. 100,000 to 125,000 is the generally agreed upon rate of new jobs required each and every month to meet this standard. So while the country is technically growing and out of recession since June of 2009, the growth is actually negative when you consider the floor isn’t zero to start with.
How to create 500,000 jobs each month as a minimum is where we need to be looking. That may sound like a lot, but when you must provide jobs for the 15 million unemployed as well as the job growth required due to population growth, it’s really not. Not to mention the underemployed which is a very subjective number. However, those people are in competition for full-time jobs and must be accounted for. The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) puts the estimate at over 26 million underemployed.
So let’s do a little math. 26 million underemployed plus 15 million unemployed plus the approx. 1.5 million jobs required annually for population expansion is how much? A lot! What if our economy were to suddenly take off and create say, a million new jobs each month. Awesome! Great, all would be fixed in short order, right? Well, you’ve got the 41 million unemployed and underemployed plus the 1.5 million each year this takes. Around 4 years time should do it. Now, in light of the fact that we just lost another 95,000 last month, who in their right mind believes that we can even get to that level for one month, let alone for 4 years straight? Well…crickets…I didn’t think so.
Misc. cool stuff
Just mute the music and watch!
OK-sound back on for this one.
I spent some time at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas when I was in the USAF. We did a lot of work on the test range and one of the bennies was getting up close and personal with the Red Flag training.Climbing an antenna tower on top of a peak and getting buzzed by the jets is unforgettable.Here is a sample of the flying they do up there everyday.
http://shock.military.com/Shock/player.html?vid=1855530c8b90436ab7ab9a02602f1ee2
Liberty 1776 vs. 2010
To take measure of the progress of our country, the status of our freedom is the only fair litmus test. It’s the basis of the founding of America. We’ve lived under its umbrella for 234 years now. If you truly want to see how far we’ve come, or regressed, this is the only way to go. Sure, there are plenty of other issues that deserve merit. Civil rights. Technological advances. The industrial revolution. Life expectancy. I could go on and on, but these can’t be used as a scale for our progress. Why? Because many of these were developed under rule of a tyrant. Russia would be the best example. Certainly not in civil rights, but in other areas they have excelled. Don’t forget they beat us into space! So achievements in these areas are great for mankind, but are no reflection of how free a country is.
What is most important for the future of our country is liberty. Let it erode away enough, and we will eventually cease to exist. It is an issue reaching a critical stage. Those who wish to steal liberty away have done so in a very tempered, measured manner for a very long time. Incrementally doing so ensures that they can mask their true intentions. Usually it is done in time of crisis. We are far more willing to forego certain freedoms under the auspices of safety and security.It could be economically in the form of legislation such as TARP. It could be security in the form of the Patriot Act. We respond to violent criminal acts with the ceding of personal freedom such as gun ownership. If you even question the motives of government under some of the crisis events that have occurred, you are quickly branded a kook or conspiracy theorist. Yet, virtually every major crisis to beset our country has resulted in more liberty being stripped away, and usually voluntarily.
No doubt you can find various interpretations of what liberty means. The latin word libertas is the genesis of the word liberty. It meant unbounded or unrestricted. That is it in its most simplistic form. It has subsequently had many tags attached to it. Liberty in the eyes of the Founders was much different from how it is viewed by many today. Liberty was not a new idea born on July 4th, 1776. Liberty was a part of America for over 170 years prior to this date. It was the motto of the settlers of this country. They lived it everyday. This is true liberty in its purest form. It simply existed without proclamation. This is the true spirit of America.We probably can’t even envision what it must feel like to have that sense of freedom today.
Dull election needs some spice
This election sure seems to be lacking pizzazz. Of course, it’s kinda tough to dress up the economy and jobs and basically the entire future of our country and make it sexy. So, today let’s hit the rewind button and haul out the old dance contest video between Obama and McCain just for S & G’s.
Why don’t we get a name for our hurricane?
If there was such a thing, the kite olympics should be held here in the midwest. It’s one for the history books.
Low Pressures Not Just For The Pacific Ocean
Speaking of deep low pressure, we have a fairly rare situation of a very intense low pressure centered right over the Midwest!
Duluth, Minnesota, right in the eye of the low, reported a central pressure of 961.1 mb Tuesday afternoon — that’s 28.38″ on the barometer! And again, a reading that if measured in a hurricane would make it a Category 3. This storm is bringing very severe weather across the upper Midwest and into the Northeast this week and 81 mph winds.
UPDATE: National Weather Service confirms this storm has the lowest central pressure reading in the mainland U.S. of any non-tropical storm in U.S. history. That means worse than the pressure that produced the Blizzard of 1978, the March 1993 “Storm of the Century” or the November 1975 storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald freighter, memorialized in a song by Gordon Lightfoot.
Here is some background on the epic storm of 1913.
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, historically referred to as the “Big Blow”, the “Freshwater Fury” or the “White Hurricane”, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario from November 7 through November 10, 1913. The storm was most powerful on November 9, battering and overturning ships on four of the five Great Lakes, particularly Lake Huron. Deceptive lulls in the storm and the slow pace of weather reports contributed to the storm’s destructiveness.
The deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes,[1] the Great Lakes Storm killed more than 250 people,[2][3] [4] [5] [6] destroyed 19 ships, and stranded 19 others. The financial loss in vessels alone was nearly US $5 million, or about $100 million at current value.[7] This included about $1 million at current value in lost cargo totalling about 68,300 tons, such as coal, iron ore, and grain.[8]
The storm originated as the convergence of two major storm fronts, fueled by the lakes’ relatively warm waters—a seasonal process called a “November gale“. It produced 90 mph (145 km/h) winds, waves over 35 feet (11 m) high, and whiteout snowsqualls. Analysis of the storm and its impact on humans, engineering structures, and the landscape led to better forecasting and faster responses to storm warnings, stronger construction (especially of marine vessels), and improved preparedness.
That baby also dumped 24 inches of snow in some areas to boot!
Mid-term elections voting guide
OK-here you go. You need a comprehensive guide in which the exhaustive background research has already been done for you. A guide you can take along with you to the polls and feel confident you’re making the right choices on the candidates best suited to help reverse course on the direction this country is heading. We’ll probably say this prior to every election from here on out, but here goes anyway. This is the most important election of our lifetime, so don’t blow it. Make a mistake now and there may be no stopping the destruction of our country by the progressive movement. So feel secure in the knowledge that I have made it foolproof for you.
Follow these steps in the exact order. Don’t deviate or you might screw it up.
1. Make sure you are registered to vote.
2. Go to your designated polling place on election day, November 2nd.
3. Vote out every Democrat on the ballot.
That’s it, you’ve done your part to save the country! Go ahead and pat yourself on the back. Oh, maybe you ask who you should vote for? Who cares! Vote for Bugs Bunny, it doesn’t matter. Sure, maybe we’ll end with a kook or two in the mix. And we’ll surely get some bad Republicans elected that love to spend our money. But the bottom line is, at the end of the day, Obama and his progressive agenda supported by most Democrats will ensure that some day in the future, you won’t have any say about these matters any longer. Liberty is evaporating. Our country is dying. Wolverines!
Ted Nugent-Hey Baby!
Credit-is it harmful?
I ask a question you’ll likely not hear anywhere else. Has the very concept of credit been beneficial to us and our economy over the long-run? That may seem like a resounding yes to some. Yet, let’s look at the downsides of credit to be fair in comparison. There is a very important context in which I raise this issue. Government control of our lives. There are two main issues related to finance which has allowed this to morph into a web of control over our lives. Fiat money and credit. Fiat money, which means creating money out of thin air, has allowed the Federal Reserve to manipulate our economy at its whim since it’s inception. Along with the ability to set interest rates, they have the ability to instantaneously alter our economy one way or the other. That is far too much power invested in a single entity. Yet, we allow it to happen and even encourage it. The campaign to simply audit the Fed has been derailed time after time. I would think that people would be marching in the streets demanding a thorough and honest accounting of our what is happening with our nation’s money supply. Yet, we have little concern for it in our society today.
The Fed can create inflation or deflation. Currency manipulation not based on true market conditions should equate to a criminal offense. Yet, most people view it in the opposing way believing that absent the Fed, we would have utter chaos in the markets and the financial sector would collapse. This lack of understanding how free markets work by the general populace will provide the cover needed for the Fed to continue operating uninhibited. I think if people truly understood the level of control they have extended to the Fed over the money in their pocket, they would quickly change their view. You know, I cringe when I hear Obama make his claims that if people just understood his health care monstrosity, they would come to love it. Yet, in the case of their money, this view holds true. They would cringe if they knew how the system worked.
J.Geils-Trifecta!
Some old school J.Geils Band. Not much out there with any good quality.
Here’s another that you just can’t find video of.
I did find a live version of One Last Kiss!
