But...Grover says cut defense

GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann ramped up the tough talk on national security Thursday and Friday, taking swings at China, President Obama and GOP front-runner Rick Perry.

On Laura Ingraham's radio show on Friday, the Minnesota congresswoman called out China for using lasers to blind U.S. satellites, arming the Taliban and helping North Korea deliver missiles to Iran. She also made the case for enforcing American dominance over the world order and said it was sobering that the United States was at risk of losing its status as the economic superpower.The Hill

The people of Minnesota fear heavy debt costs on the middle class, and here is Secret Girlfriend drumming up Big Government.

Solar energy

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2011) — Researchers from Northwestern University have developed a carbon-based material that could revolutionize the way solar power is harvested. The new solar cell material -- a transparent conductor made of carbon nanotubes -- provides an alternative to current technology, which is mechanically brittle and reliant on a relatively rare mineral. Science Daily

This is what we need: Charge driven direct production alcohol for energy storage. Take the desert solar energy acquired in day time and run it through a charge coupled combiner that generates alcohol.

So I patent thie following: A capacitive couple nanotube pack. Catalysts trapped in their buckeys operating under extreme charge density and splitting and combining a flow of water and CO2. A solar powered CO2 scrubber and alcohol generator.

I have to go with Jeb Bush

On the in state tuition thing for illegal aliens.  I first thought about  discrimination against illegal aliens from other states. Then concluded differently.

The presumption here is that anybody meeting in state residency, knows about and has in state support.  They are cheaper.  In state residency trumps illegal entry.

My views on immigration is that I discriminate in favor of North Americans. If we fixed the Senate, then I would invite Mexico to join the union, fair Senate membership.

The Las Vegas Autobot Convention

We have to get all these driverless cars together in one spot. This new driverless in Berlin is here. A lotta fun, get them all going through a complex maze and so on. The Superbus, big BRT, really the top end high performance asphalt autobots. We will do this in Vegas, they got the space. We will build some test track. Who is planning this? I will look it up.

Pizza delivery contests with deliverbot. Vegas can devote a neighborhood and feed he natives by delivering food to the curbside. Demonstrate low cost delivery at the last mile.

The telegraph and the Civil War

The telegraph made possible the sudden fulfillment of manifest destiny, faster than the federal system could adapt.

Farming and Ham radio

Ham radio got going, mainly with farmers, about 1905-1910. Once they had the vacuum tube, farmers broadcast ag prices across the nation. So, boom, farmers demanded roads and pick ups, hey had better control of inventory and wanted more yield space. Broadcast radio? Revolutionary as, say the manual switchboard.

The manual telephone switchboard

The gal with the cables in olden movies. She made your connection, so we had multi party switching phone networks. This happened quite suddenly, a very rapid development throughout the north eastern region, New York, Boston and Chicago. A historian should look for the sudden appearance of order over a two year span. Order converting to disorder. I would consider this as revolutionary as the Gutenberg. No?

Let's put the depression in terms of an agglomeration

My view, then, is simple. Info tech suddenly equalized the utility of capital across the globe. We had sudden agglomeration in China/Asia on a huge scale. That in turn caused sudden shortages in industrialized west, mainly in energy.



Historical:
This is the sudden appearance of order in the economy due to info shock.

The two periods to compare were Hoover and Clinton. Both key people who got it, especially Hoover. Both were racing to get ahead of info tech revolutions. Clinton the web and Hoover broadcast radio. (Hoover's son was a Ham and a garage entrepreneur for military radios.) The long depression caused by port congestion with the arrival of under sea cable. Always the same pattern, sudden widespread information about goods causes distribution to be requantized; and transportation clogs up. Think three day traffic jams in China.

Here is a PHD thesis, compare traffic jams in America before and after the arrival of broadcast radio in metropolitan areas.

Its a common pattern. The social past time of cheering the fastest schooner to bring European news to American shores, before international cable. The affect of the rotary press in British division of labor and products. Gutenberg press and its effects. All of the info tech shocks fouling up transportation somehow. And always components of info tech invade transportation to solve the problem.

Anyway, as always the problem appears as too many people in the queues.

Let's go on a bit. Our heads see inventory farther out in the economy, we see a bigger picture of the production chain. We remap our local environment to the new view. The new information is the sudden appearance of hidden order, unattended aggregates appear in the economy. That is order which we then disorder. That's maximum entropy, a finite Shannon channel.

How does evolution do it?
I think the heart of this process is that evolution somehow managed a natural Gibbs detector. This is the separator: How close is close enough. That breakthrough allowed multi-stage distribution, migration, flocking, herding and other aggregate functions. But the Gibbs separation is the SNR, the naturally constant signal to noise ratio.

Schwarzenegger, Big Government Republican

In a new report, Treasurer Bill Lockyer estimates California will devote 7.8 percent of its budget to paying off debt this fiscal year, more than twice the share in 2003-04.

Eight years ago, the state devoted 3.4 percent of its general fund to debt.

The spike in debt costs comes after California voters agreed to borrow more right before the state economy suffered a historic economic downturn, according to Lockyer's report.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers championed a $37 billion public works bond package in 2006, near the height of the housing bubble in California when tax dollars flowed mightily into state coffers. Since 2004, voters also have approved borrowing for children's hospitals, stem-cell research and high-speed rail. The state is also paying off bonds that Schwarzenegger and lawmakers used to balance the budget in 2003-04.

State general fund revenues have dropped from $105.3 billion in 2006-07 to an estimated $87.2 billion in 2011-12. Borrowing cost the state $2.5 billion in 2003-04; this year, it will cost $5.7 billion.

Lockyer also attributed the debt service rise to the June 30 expiration of temporary tax hikes and a shift of sales taxes to local governments, both of which will reduce the amount of money available to the state general fund this fiscal year.

The state's debt share will actually rise higher in 2012-13 to 9.2 percent even without any new borrowing, according to Lockyer's report. That's because the state must pay back $1.9 billion next year that it borrowed to balance the budget in 2009.

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/09/californias-debt-share-rose-127-percent-since-2003.html#ixzz1ZUC4NLZO

The Gubinator was fairly stupid it turns out.

Soros wants bailed out by a middle class

LONDON (Reuters) - Policymakers have lost control of the economic crisis and financial markets are forcing the world into a depression, George Soros said on Friday, urging Europe to create a common Treasury, recapitalize its banks and protect vulnerable states.

Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management who made a fortune during the 1992 sterling crisis, said the most important task was to "erect safeguards against contagion from a possible Greek default."

"Since a euro zone treaty establishing a common Treasury would take a long time to conclude, in the interim the member states have to appeal to the ECB (European Central Bank) to fill the vacuum," he wrote in an article for the Financial Times newspaper.

"Both the banks and bonds of countries such as Italy and Spain need to be protected ... To relieve the pressure on the government bonds of countries such as Italy, the ECB would lower its discount rate." Yahoo

So, anybody in Germany want to bail out the Greek Soros so he can do insider deals with the Socialist Banking Network?

Jerry Brown and the Dills Act, San Jose version

Mayor Reed of San Jose explains how his city budget was trashed:

He [Mayor Reed]  hands me a chart. It shows that the city’s pension costs when he first became interested in the subject were projected to run $73 million a year. This year they would be $245 million: pension and health-care costs of retired workers now are more than half the budget. In three years’ time pension costs alone would come to $400 million, though “if you were to adjust for real life expectancy it is more like $650 million.” Legally obliged to meet these costs, the city can respond only by cutting elsewhere. As a result, San Jose, once run by 7,450 city workers, was now being run by 5,400 city workers. The city was back to staffing levels of 1988, when it had a quarter of a million fewer residents. The remaining workers had taken a 10 percent pay cut; yet even that was not enough to offset the increase in the city’s pension liability. The city had closed its libraries three days a week. It had cut back servicing its parks. It had refrained from opening a brand-new community center, built before the housing bust, because it couldn’t pay to staff the place. For the first time in history it had laid off police officers and firefighters. Vanity Fair

The article written by Michael Lewis portrays California municipal governments headed toward bankruptcy. San Jose devotes almost half its city budget to cover past political promises made under binding arbitration with a rigged game.

Islamic belt bomber killed by drones

SANAA, Yemen — Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical U.S.-born Muslim cleric and one of the most influential al-Qaeda operatives wanted by the United States, was killed Friday in an airstrike in northern Yemen, authorities said, eliminating a prominent recruiter who inspired attacks on U.S. soil. WA Post

CEO Incentives at HP

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Recently fired Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is walking away with more than $13 million in cash and stock as shareholders stew over a rocky reign that saw the technology company's market value plunge by nearly $40 billion in just 11 months.Yahoo

I dunno, if I am an investor and HP pays CEOs to lose market value, I might not invest.

Oil is money

Literally, the US economy adjusts to maintain the barrel standard. When Green Shoots are in the wind, oil ranges from $90-$95, and when things are Brown, oil is $80-$85. I call that well quantized. Oil is in short supply in the largest, most inefficient economy of the advanced set. Oil is liquid, and traded on an open market. That makes the barrel, not the dollar, a reserve currency.

The dynamics would say the economy is sorting through firms that can operate in that price range. The household has adapted already, and the household was always the faster adapter. Stable energy prices yields soft landings.

The EU parliament is a pretty good democracy

Proportional voting and unicameral; probably accurate. The result of accurate democracy in Federal Europe is a smaller central government. What's the fear in Europe? How about a different interpretation, Europe works its problems earlier, more often; closer to the frontier.

Advantages in Europe. Freedom to have their own language! Borders well hammered into stability. Rich cultural history. Fountain of the industrial revolutions.

If history is any guide, the outcome of he Greece affair is that Greece remains where it is, with roughly the same people.

A stimulus

Flaring is the practice of burning off the natural gas that is produced in association with oil rather than piping it to market, using it at the wellhead, or reinjecting into the ground. Flaring was once common, but in more recent times, it has largely been limited to places like Russia and Nigeria. Now, though, it is becoming a big source of controversy in the United States. According to a recent New York Times article, some 30 percent of natural gas produced from rapidly expanding North Dakota oil fields will be flared this year—more than enough to heat every home in North Dakota through the state's harsh winters. Elsewhere in this country, less than one percent of gas is flared. Ed Dolan

I would be stimulated building the pipelines to collect that stuff.

More China

The next ten years will see a seismic shift in the balance of power in global supply chains caused by the development of Chinese manufacturers from low cost suppliers of cheap goods for foreign original equipment manufacturers into global brands in their own right.

This shift has been largely prompted by the Chinese authorities who have encouraged companies to migrate up the value chain. This is sensible in an economic environment where inflationary pressures are making it increasingly difficult for Chinese manufacturers to compete on cost alone. WEF

Sarah is starting to get it

That’s what Sarah Palin suggested on Fox News’ “On The Record with Greta VanSusteren” tonight, saying that she’s concerned jumping into the 2012 presidential race will muffle her message.

“Is a title worth it?” she asked, rhetorically. “Does a title shackle a person? Are they someone like me who’s maverick? I do go rogue and I call it like I see it and I don’t mind stirring it up in order to get people to think and debate aggressively.” Outside the Beltway

She needs to carry that philosophy to production, we lack a meso-government, something between state and DC. Current government is destroying the economy because it got stuck, it no longer has the ability to adjust Senate proportionality. Manifest Destiny was and will be our outlet, with purpose of alignment of the Senate with demographics.

Sarah Palin might rediscover Manifest Destiny and save the union.

Productivity went south

Federal Reserve research

Economists generally agree that productivity is the primary ingredient for sustainable growth in GDP and wages. The August productivity data release provided some clarification regarding trend—or long-run—GDP growth, but the news was not good: Following a resurgence of strong productivity growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s after nearly a quarter-century of slow growth beginning in 1973, the latest reading from a trend tracking model now indicates that slow productivity growth returned in 2004. In this post, we describe our “regime-switching” productivity model and share the model’s insights into the historical profile of high- and low-growth regimes as well as the outlook for productivity.

2004 is the point at which the Fed began chasing inflation. This needs some data and thought!

Government is corrupt say Americans

Washington (CNN) - The public's trust in the federal government has dropped to an all-time low, according to a new national survey.

A CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday morning indicates that only 15 percent of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what's right just about always or most of the time. Last September that figure was at 25 percent. Seventy-seven percent of people questioned say they trust the federal government only some of the time, and an additional eight percent volunteer that they never trust the government to do what's right. Political Ticker 

Keynes theory says that corrupt elites can blow the budget, until the next election when they are trounced.

Warmaking with Dick "Deficits don't" Matter' Cheney

Chart taken from DeLong's blog

We over invested in lil Bush's war and failed to keep up. Hence the top three recovery curves happened without war mismanagement.

Road construction ended the depression

The timeline is simple.  Hoover started to standardize American roads and build them with state-federal cooperation.  Roosevelt continued and expanded another 500,000 of paved roads.   Once we had roads, cars worked and the economy became uncongested.

Cause of the congestion?  Mass marketing  by broadcast radio, they congested America's downtowns; instantly and an immediately crashing the economy.  Technology shock of commercial radio.

What does this have to to with demand collapse?  Buying a chair could involve a one hour wait in traffic. Hence, the lower the price the more congestion, a reverse sloping demand curve. Economics is always about waiting in line.

Seems obvious to me. Most of the rest of the depression was the usual economists running around in hysterics.

The Obama jobs bill, nothing but political scam

Asked Wednesday whether Senate Democrats, who control that chamber, are part of the problem, Mr. Carney said no. “There has been business that the Senate had to get done in September because of the fiscal year constraints,” he told reporters, citing government spending bills and extensions of highway and aviation legislation. “I mean, these were things that had to get done.” WSJ

The Senate has an agenda, an agenda that does not include Keynesian stimulus. So, where did that Keynes come up with the idea that the American economy will naturally engage in stimulus?

California vs Greece

Greece has "exhausted" its ability to pay more taxes to cover budget gaps, the deputy prime minister declared Wednesday, saying he himself can't pay a new emergency tax without selling property.

Theodoros Pangalos spoke as the debt-shackled nation faced fresh strikes and braced for another inspection by international creditors, starting Thursday, to decide whether to continue the vital bailout loan payouts.Zero Hedge

Central valley California has the same problem. There is little combination of property price inflation or rental value that covers the local cost of government.

Why did LA supervisors violate the open meeting law?

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors sat down Monday with Gov. Jerry Brown to discuss AB 109 realignment, under which counties, beginning Saturday, take responsibility for a large portion of inmates and parolees who until now have been supervised by the state. The law mandates that board meetings be public, but the supervisors wanted their meeting to be held behind closed doors. So county lawyers cited an exception — Government Code Section 54957(a) — that applies to meetings that local officials call to confer with security experts about threats to public buildings and utilities. LA Editorial

The meeting was secret so supervisors could try and get more state goodies for their pals. Another question is why does Jerry Brown go along with breaking the transparency law?

Los Angeles taxpayers are allowed to withhold tax payments until the secret conspiracy is uncovered.

Another taxi cartel will be destroyed by simple technology

Yglesias takes us to the city of Milwaukee which runs a monopoly taxi cartel by restricting cab medallions.

We already have a low cost solution, GPS-O-Meters and congestion pricing. I guess we can add Milwaukee to New York as cities with ignorant, corrupt politicians in the taxi business.

Greg Ransom, Hayek, RBC, Barro and channel theory

Hayek also explained the role of the tautological equilibrium construct. It has several, some of these closely echoed earlier by Marshall, Mises, Knight, and other giants of economic science.

The first role is this — the equilibrium construct allows us to perceive the design-like order in the coordination of economic plans. In other words, the equilibrium construct plays a central role in providing us with a perception of a pattern that gives rise to the problem of design-like order without a designer.

The second role is equally significant: by screening off what a tautological logical or math construct cannot include — open-ended learning and changes in understanding and judgment — the equilibrium construct isolates the contingent causal mechanism at the heart of economic explanation, i.e. open-ended learning or discovery and changes in rival understandings and judgments in the the context of changing local conditions and relative prices. It is learning and changes in rival understanding of the relative relational significance of things which allows Hayek’s famous understanding of market prices as signals to function. Taking Haktek seriously 

OK, let's see if I got this explanation right. The equilibrium construct guides local traders to maintain sustainability. When Barro and the Real Business Cycle theory operates, Barro will look back and separate out the equilibrium from the sustainable events that maintain the equilibrium. This is Shannon theory, quantization of goods to maintain sustainable flows within a channel having known bandwidth.

How do agents figure out what the equilibrium might be for a new venture? They run around looking for people waiting in line and insert a service or good. Requantization is the proper name, as simple as that. The bandwidth of the economy is determined by the service time of a human interaction.

Why broadcast radio? Too many people in line at the phone booth and news stand.
Why cars? To much congestion at the railroad stations.
Why airplanes? Too many cars in line on the highway.
Why the Interent? Too many authors waiting in line to get news column space.
Why on line mortgages? Too many people in line to see the loan officer.

Listen to Krugman describe the failure of Keynes

The story of Keynesian economists and the Obama stimulus, as anyone who’s been reading me knows, runs as follows: When information about the planned stimulus began emerging, those of us who took our macro seriously warned, often and strenuously, that it was far short of what was needed — that given what we already knew about the likely depth of the slump, the plan would fill only a fraction of the hole. Worse yet, I in particular argued, the plan would probably be seen as a failure, making another round impossible. Krugman

Keynes is nothing about policy, it is a fake theory so the hysterics can cry 'I told you so'

If Keynes was correct, then the stimulus would be properly sized, any real scientists figure that out? There is no economic theory that requires a bunch of frightened elites screaming to ignore democracy.

Comparing California and Greece

Amid all the doubt and despair, here is one thing we do know: Keeping Europe together, if it’s even possible, will be monumentally expensive. Christine Lagarde’s International Monetary Fund is supremely out of its league. Its $384 billion lending chest would barely be enough to saveGreece, never mind Spain or Italy. The IMF needs a bailout. William Pesek 

Greece with 11 million people has made $380 billion in promises they cannot keep. How many promises has California 1/10 Senators made? California has 53 million and constitutes 15% of the US economy, and so owes $2T of the federal debt. That makes California and Greece very similar insofar as promises politicans made but will not keep. Greek retirees took a 25% cut in pension and public sector unions in California will also take a cut in pensions.

However, in much the same way small state senators have been stealing from California, taxpayers in the large states have a Due Process clause they can exercise. We never had a fair vote, so when the bankruptcy comes small states, like Maine and Delaware, should accept a greater amount of the Federal debt.

ECB setting Greece up for a crash

Normally, things work like this for nations in crisis. Greece has experienced severe capital flight yet its current-account deficit has remained almost unchanged; its international reserves are little changed. On net, €24 billion of private capital left the country between 2008 and 2010, but Greece still managed to accumulate a €85 billion current-account deficit – 12% of GDP. Aaron Tornell Frank Westermann from VOX

The current account deficit is maintained by the ECB bond purchases from Greek government. The ECB has no intention of forcing a restructure on Greece.

Hispanics are not a minority in California

LA racists fighting for racists goodies from local government in LA.

Molina has argued that the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects racial and ethnic minorities, requires the county to create a second Latino-majority district because preserving the current lines illegally dilutes the voting power of Latinos. She says the county will probably be sued if supervisors largely retain the current boundaries. LA Times

California politicians practicing racism with the support of a racist Washington DC.

Orzag seems entangled

So what to do? To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic. Orzag

Sounds nice to allow the executive branch to manage flow between elections. Orzag misses the problem that we do not have democracy in DC. Orzag is unable to see disproportionate elections in the Senate, the taboo is engrained in his head.

Delusionist

GEITHNER: I've Finally Scared The Crap Out Of Europe, Huge Bailout Coming Soon

God's gift to Wall Street, Secretary Treasury Tim Geithner, says he has finally convinced Europe that the world will end if Europe doesn't bail everyone out the way the US did.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/geithner-europe-bailout-2011-9#ixzz1Z9bRzuEo

Fairly pompous. I remember Timmy himself having a pee in his pants about the budget thingy, I thought he was out collecting trillions of investment dollars for the Socialist Banking Network.

Germand finance minister responds:

*SCHAEUBLE SAYS INCREASING EFSF WOULD DAMAGE SOME AAA RATINGS
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS WILL ENHANCE EFSF IN MOST EFFICIENT WAY IF MUST
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS MONETARY POLICY `NOT THE WAY' TO SOLVE EURO WOES
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS `NO COMFORTABLE WAY OUT' OF CRISIS FOR EUROPE
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS EVERY STATE MUST PREPARE OWN BANK BACKSTOP PLANS
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS ASKED FOR BANK BACKSTOP PLANS FOR NEXT ECOFIN ZH

Herman Cain, the new Republican they say

His Wiki bio has him with a degree in math, so he gets a second look from your truly. And, rumor has it that a high muck muck in Tea Party brought old Newt back.

Disorder and order again

OK, maximizing entropy is maximizing disorder. Disorder means unexpected events can happen. The house hold and firm like disorder in the market.

Here is how I remember. Order are traffic jams. Traffic jams on our streets organize the flow into quantum convoys. So, traffic flow is maximized by order (traffic jams) when the work day is done (a release from the order inside the firm).

Equilibrium is when all partitions agree on the amount of public order we tolerate, we agree on a finite number, the number of people in the queue. That is the key mechanism of change in the economy, the agent is queue manager. The secondary effect is maximum flow quantum numbers for all goods flow.

This is really basic biology, all about an uncertainty agreement, he Gibbs separation, becomes built into an optimum flow economy. It allows each party to independently set inventory levels and equalize inventory risk, among the partition. in a flow situation.

California Bearish

A just-released survey by the Public Policy Institute (PPIC) paints an interesting portrait of the political psyche of California voters in the run-up to the 2012 elections.
Californians are sour about the direction of the state and nation, disenchanted with their leaders and morose about the economy, but they’re also more liberal on social issues than they have been in the past.“Most Californians—regardless of political party—say things are going in the wrong direction in the state and the nation,” observed Mark Baldassare, PPIC president.

Californians! Rebel against your enslavement by North Eastern bankers and their corrupt government.

The software biz

Software continually migrates to open standards.

Last time I worked on software, on this blog, it was all HTML5, Javascript, WebSql, mostly browser based software that is driving our personal computers. Something called native language gets you closer to the processor for speed, but I think it is playing a minor role.

What's with the applications? They are all about getting folks to donate information about themselves for social networking. But entering of personal information is becoming standardized, and an entire world of programmers is set to display and mange that information. So the software giants get knocked off regularly.

The web pushes transportation still. One half of the commercial web is, ultimately UPS.

RINOs back away from defense cuts

A new House Republican study concludes additional Pentagon cuts would force a draft, gut the military and make “defending our freedom harder” — but other Defense Department watchers say such warnings are far-fetched.

The report, prepared by the Republican staff on the House Armed Services Committee, concludes that if Congress enacts cuts beyond $350 billion over a decade, which were already agreed to, the military services would shrink to pre-9/11 levels and most of their big-ticket weapon programs would be “at risk.” The Hill 

RINOs love debt based spending.

The Groupon Problem

Felix talks about it.  MySpace replaced by Facebook replaced by Google+.  The value added in these companies is being first, there is no technical barrier to entry.

Look how long Amazon took to show any profit, and their margins are small.   However, the Internet is removing the need for Amazon warehouses.   Webbots today can plan delivery from factory to consumer, and UPS can manage the efficiencies of delivery.

Groupon will face standard technology that allows web sites to target local shoppers.  When that becomes commonplace, local businesses will have local web connections to local shoppers.

Keynes works if policy makers lie to the voters

Krugman criticizing Lucas:

The Lesser Depression arrives. It’s clearly not a technological shock; clearly, also, nobody is confused about whether we’re in a slump, as the old Lucas model required.

Lucas caims we got our signal crossed on shortages. Krugman clams we have plenty of oil, we just suffer from shock.  Lucas is right, in fact, there is a written policy of denial of the oil shortage in the DeLong.Krugman.Thoma nexus, they are not allowed to consider shortage as that would invalidate their desire to expand government.  The economic crisis comission was not allowed to consider oil shortages.  Hamilton's continuing work on oil supply barely gets a mention.

So why does Yglesias now accept that fact of higher oil prices?  Because Yglesias doesn't have to deal with 30 years of wasted effort with the bogus Keynesianism. We do not suffer three year hysterical economic shocks.

Yglesias needs help

Any Road To Recovery Will Make Gas More Expensive

He is basically right, this is the Minsky snap back problem. The economy will eventually snap back, even if the economy contracts first. So, if oil prices rise with the snap back, then either the economy has gotten energy efficient, or the economy is exporting energy products. DC debt costs will also rise dramatically in the snap back, so we will have two years of a wrenching deficit reduction.

Yglesias says price is a signal:

In other words, if some initiative raises the price of gas that’s more likely a sign the initiative is promising than a sign that it’s failing.

Essentially he is right. When the Fed pushes more debt on government, government spends on energy and energy prices jump, signalling that is time to stop growing government and start selling energy. So for all you Keynesians in denial about energy shortages, this is what your push does, it causes us to become a commodity exporter.

Mataconis will not break taboo

What’s Wrong With Our Government

Say what one might about Frum, but this strikes me as pretty plausible explanation of what’s happened to our system, and it indicates that fixing it is going to involve more than just kicking out one set of bums and voting in a new set. In the end, the people that sit in Congress are a reflection of the people who put them there and if Congress has become more polarized, it’s because the American public has become more polarized. It’s not longer enough to just disagree with someone, in today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere you have to question their sanity, their intelligence, their loyalty, or their motives. Is it any surprise that an environment like that create the kind of full-throated opposition we see in Congress today?

Doug Macaconis is discussing a Frum article on the bygone days when parties maintain discipline. The point Frum makes is that we do not have a parliament, but instead have three separate branches of government. That situation only works when parties enforce a discipline that allows government to operate. Frum is a RINO, wanting to restore power and geniality to DC.

My point here is simple. Under stress, our Congress cannot work as long as the Senate is so disproportionately represented. Neither author wants to delve into the anti-democratic nature of the Senate, they want to preserve anti-democracy, it is a feature not a bug to these authors.

A borrow and spend Republican

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain — fresh off a surprise victory in the Florida straw poll that has re-energized his campaign — broke with House Republicans on Monday and urged Congress to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster-relief program now, regardless of whether they can tie budget offsets to the bill. The Hill

Warning signs abound on this presidential candidate.

Pension Crisis getting worse

House prices falling, deflation, stock market losses and the Fed's insistence on lower long term yields; all of these will cause significant shortfalls. The pension administration is California will try to hide the problem, bu expect bigger budge revisions, downward, n the next few months.

South Carolina declares war against Pakistan

WASHINGTON — A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the U.S. should consider military action against Pakistan if it continues to support terrorist attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

"The sovereign nation of Pakistan is engaging in hostile acts against the United States and our ally Afghanistan that must cease, Sen. Lindsey Graham told "Fox News Sunday." Savannah Now

If Lindsey succeeds in his war charge, then Billy Kristol might get his Socialist Defense Goodies. Watch out for Grover Norquist, he wants big defense cuts.

I might vote Republican

A House-passed stopgap spending measure would trim annual Pentagon funding by more than $7 billion from the current level and prohibit the Defense Department from starting new weapon programs.

The lower chamber’s 2012 continuing resolution calls for a 1.4 percent reduction to the Pentagon’s budget from the $533 billion it got in 2011, which would put the military’s base funding at around $526 billion. The Senate on Friday tabled the measure over issues not tied to Pentagon spending.The Hill

The House, with its Majority Republicans, is the only democratic legislature we have in DC. If they keep this up, they have earned my vote.

Whoops!

While banks and European leaders hold abstract talks in foreign capitals about the impact of a potential Greek default on the euro and the world economy, something frighteningly concrete is under way in Greece: the dismantling of a middle-class welfare state in real time — with nothing to replace it.
Since 2010, the government has raised taxes and slashed pensions and state salaries across the board, in an effort to rein in the bloated public sector that today employs one in five Greeks. Last week, the government announced it would put 30,000 workers on reduced pay as a precursor to possible termination and would cut pensions again for nearly half a million public-sector retirees. NY Times

So those government guarantees are no good!

In California, Fresno County, I know retirees from the county who can't be sure which month the county goes bankrupt. We really can;t sell houses at current prices, the property tax liability for retirees is too high. But if we lower prices to market, then the county goes belly up.

Mexican cartel members are brain damaged meth addicts

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Police found a woman's decapitated body in a Mexican border city on Saturday, alongside a handwritten sign saying she was killed in retaliation for her postings on a social networking site.

The gruesome killing may be the third so far this month in which people in Nuevo Laredo were killed by a drug cartel for what they said on the internet. AP

They have been turned into cowardly ignorants by the constant use of the drug. They have a hole in their head making it impossible to act rationally. They send the brain damaged up from Mexico as psychotic mules.

Ethnic politics in LA

A coalition of Asian Pacific Islander groups backs a plan by Supervisor Don Knabe, joining opponents of two proposals seeking to create a second Latino-majority district on the five-member board. LA Times

It's democracy But, having ethnic politics is a strong argument for smaller government. We would want government to use its power too take sides in ethnic politics.

Outsource the FAA says Orzag

Take responsibility for implementing the new GPS system, and for air-traffic control altogether, away from the FAA and assign it to a private, nonprofit organization. Bloomberg

Texas need six more Senators

Luttrell and Rosenblum also note that the state’s job growth has exceeded the nation’s since the 1990s. “Data from the 2010 census show Texas’ population expanded 48% since 1990, twice the national rate. Net births (births minus deaths) accounted for 60% of the growth; migration from other countries and states accounted for 40%. Domestic inflows rose significantly in 2007–09, perhaps reflecting the relatively strong state economy before the recession and the shorter business-cycle contraction. In the long term, a relatively low cost of living, including no state income tax, and the availability of jobs attract workers. In-migration from abroad often hinges on conditions in countries of origin. Recent violence in Mexico has produced an influx of middle- to high-income immigrants, bringing their human and financial capital across the border to El Paso, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.” WSJ

It is becoming glaringly obvious that he big western states have little Senate democracy, and less as time goes on. Congress needs to implement the voters right agenda, Subdivide the late states and let the economy aggregate around nine regional of reserve banks. Do it with Congressional consent, within the Constitution, like we did in the antebellum days. Congress could actually sell about 30 Senate seats to aggregates of the newly created states and cover a third of he debt.

Fuel prices and channel theory

We start again with the basic equilibrium, a minimized distribution network will deliver maximum entropp flow under small shock. In short, is adjusts inventory in the minimum number of exchanges.

In transportation, a shock is seen as long lines at the pump.  The theory implies the buyer/seller arrangent is governed by queue management, keep the line length at 1.5   Under minimum net configuration, the fuel buyer looks at queue only, how many lined up at the pump.  Waiting times are more important than price

When fuel shortage hit, the queues jump for days, and schedules everywhere are so fouled that the cost is much greater than the cost of a gas hike.  After a queue mash up, buyers and seller seek a greater variety of prices over time for their finite fuel purchases.

The regime shift, as Hamilton calls it, is a change in the buyer/seller arrangement.  The seller looks at price first. He looks for high but reasonable, then he looks at queue. By maximizing mutual entropy between the fuel budget and the queue length, here results an optimum match between the finite set of buyer fuel needs and the set of localized gas distributed.  The net maintains maximal disorder, transaction are maximally encoded.

The result should show up in data comaring unit volume fuel purchases and fuel prices over time.  After the Hamitonian shift, the mutual entroyp measure between the two should show fewer unattended mismatches in the sequence.  Price and queue length at the finite set of distribution price are back in harmony.  The result will be greater fuel efficiency, and we often see a short term burst in fuel usage as it become allocated more efficiently with price signals.

Operation Twist and Channel theory

I should go in to the relationship.
All things beig equal, I have switched the norm, minimum variance becomes minimum redundancy. I have a theory of minim span flow graphs, queuing theory. The banking network at equilibrium will reaste to smal shocks by a tendency to reduce the network flow rank, get economies of scale to conserve inventory.

THis is maximum entropy calculus, so I use Channel channel: The banking network at equilibrium is perturbed, and should show a set of events i, as in -iLog(i), within an integer, as if they were encoded by a Huffman encoder. How does the be operate under flow conditions?

I convert the finite precision of Shannon into a yield curve, plotting the N as in (Signal to Noise ratio, (SNR). That plot of sigma variation in SNR, vs the finite set i, will be matched by a basis set from Fibonacci. So I can model the ideal banking network, and it will be visible as the dual of the Huffman encoding tree. My model in a nutshell.

When I run it over real data like the SP100, I see unattended aggregates appear in data. A perfect flow will appear to the Huffman encoder as 'already encoded'. This is simple economies of scale.

Result of Operation Twost in the finite channel model? A shock disturbs inventory and the net wants to drop rank and get economies of scale, a contraction.

I go on.
The central banker is squeezed by this effect and central government debt service. A steep curve helps the banking network, but makes he borrowing costs of Congress jump a large chunk in the finite solution  space.  Government's forced to get economies of scale when the curve gets steep. Crowding out, channel style, cwntral governmen is a wuantum constraint, a condensate, a large stone ball and chain.

How does the central government constraints show  up in the data? If we could assemble all government transactions in a flow, the run our Huffman encoder over it, the Huffman finds huge bunches of unattended aggregates.

The House is the most democratically elected body

The Senate on Friday rejected the GOP-led House's bill to avert a government shutdown, intensifying a partisan standoff that many in Congress hoped to avoid. The vote was 59-36.
LA Times

My socialist space proposal

Assemble large, lightweight telescopes at the space station, using erector style assembly with micro bots, under human control. Get the gains from scale, make many of these telescopes with apertures of five or six meters and up. Light weight electronics and sensors. Automate their construction around the space station then send them aloft to stare at various parts of the universe. Make it the global past time to show the most brilliant pieces of the universe.

Genetic engineering

La Jolla--A strain of genetically enhanced bacteria developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies may pave the way for new synthetic drugs and new ways of manufacturing medicines and biofuels, according to a paper published September 18 in Nature Chemical Biology.

For the first time, the scientists were able to create bacteria capable of effectively incorporating "unnatural" amino acids - artificial additions to the 20 naturally occurring amino acids used as biological building blocks - into proteins at multiple sites. This ability may provide a powerful new tool for the study of biological processes and for engineering bacteria that produce new types of synthetic chemicals.

"This provides us with a lot more room to think about what we can do with protein synthesis," said Lei Wang, assistant professor in Salk's Chemical Biology and Proteomics Laboratory and holder of the Frederick B. Rentschler Developmental Chair. "It opens up new possibilities, from creating drugs that last longer in the blood stream to manufacturing chemicals in a more environmentally friendly manner." Eureka Alert via Next Big Future

The shadow application are fuel producing bacteria.

Grover Norquist says cut defense

Panetta: Supercommittee failure would ‘hollow out’ military's combat force

Warming to Sarah

She met the folks still does, and settled in the lower 48.  In the set of checkmarks for the South Park Libertarians, she is not clicking mine.  And she is a favorite LGBT Oppressed Hot Babe in politics..

Who was Christ, really?

The guy we call Christ was likely the proto-leader  of modern Jewish revolution.  Christianity means to me, the philosopjy of peaceful exchange.  Spiritual enough for me.

Old people are cowards

In record-setting numbers, young adults struggling to find work are shunning long-distance moves to live with Mom and Dad, delaying marriage and buying fewer homes, often raising kids out of wedlock. They suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II and risk living in poverty more than others - nearly 1 in 5. AP

Vegetables send RNA signals into our blood stream

Research at Nanjing University has found that strands of RNA from vegetables make it into our bloodstream after we eat them, and can regulate the expression of our genes once they're inside us.
MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are little strands of RNA that selectively bind to matching sequences of messenger RNA, resulting in repression of those genes. Their role has only been understood in the last decade or so, but miRNAs are currently believed to take part in a vast number of processes in both plants and animals. PopSci

It's the matrix, it has intelligence.

Steep vs Flat Treasury curve, via channel theory

A steep yield curve, say for producing apples, indicates high gains from distribution. A flat curve means low gains from distribution. Gains from distribution are applesauce makers seeing profits from buying apples, and the farmers see profits from growing apples. We get a steep curve after a downturn because marginal producers have exited the field and remaining firms are more profitable. I generally skip the tight vs loose money analogy since distribution of actual goods in a network is the exact model.

What about the government channel?

The Fed is making the Treasury curve flat because its major customer, Congress, has low gains from distribution; Keynesian multipliers are low. So, how can Congress borrow over a trillion a year and not cause a rise in interest rates? The answer is they cannot, and as we see, Congress has had to discontinue whatever democracy they had and now we have a Gang of 12. Removal of democracy, asset controls, more police, and wars are symptoms of low government multipliers and the beginning of bankruptcy.

Yglesias vs DeLong

First Yglesias

Via Ryan Avent, a very informative James Hamilton post on why whether or not oil hits a technical production peak in the near future we should expect to see very little elasticity of supply. That means growth spurts will produce oil price shocks that drag the economy back to the ground. Bad news.

Then DeLong:

And as it turned out to be long and nasty, recent economic theories of macroeconomics have fallen like tropical rain forests. The--already implausible--claims that downturns had real causes? Fallen.

So, we still have one hold out, DeLong, who believes we are in a depression because of psychological shock. The holdouts are the Keynesians who cannot bear the idea of actual shortages of energy. We have Thoma, DeLong and Krugamn still in denial, all of them claiming that 'growth spurts' will not increase energy shortages.

Unfortunately, we now have three years of Keynesian stimulus causing oil price hikes and subsequent contraction of the economy. Their goal, obviously, is a much smaller private sector while central government gets to allocate limited oil.

Insulting the religious psychotics

A San Juan Capistrano City Council member faced harsh criticism from some of his colleagues Tuesday night after a comment he made at an earlier council meeting in which he said he named his dog Muhammad, the name of the Muslim prophet.

Mayor Sam Allevato and Councilman Larry Kramer said Derek Reeve's comment Sept. 6 was offensive to Muslims who were at the meeting, including some city staff members. OC Register

Maybe his dog wears a turban bomb.

Banking day at the market

The market dropped on US bank downgrades, but are recovering a bit on the Fed bond buying announcement.

Harold Meyerson and the dictatorship of the proletariat

The bozo claims that voting by Congressional district in Pennsylvania if better than voting by state. The issue is a Republican proposal to apportion presidential electoral votes by Congressional district rather than state majority.

How did Harold come to the conclusion that districts are more gerrymandered than states? The idiot must have gone to history class at some time, in which he would learn that states vary from populations of 35 million to populations of a half million. Quite a gerrymandered configuration, and quite innaccurate voting. So this idiot prefers that method when Congressional districts are managed with federal law to be resonably close to even populations.

This is the shit that Keynesians do, they deny the right of voters. 

Texas Bible Belter swooning for Jews

An Israeli lawmaker says Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry likely will visit Israel in October or November.

Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon, who appeared Tuesday with Mr. Perry at a pro-Israel rally in New York, told The Washington Times that he had invited the Texas governor to visit the Jewish state.WA Times

The man thinks ghosts and goblins still haunt Israel, and intends to spend trillions in Middle East wars, protecting the Earth for the return of the main goblin.

Republicans write a letter to Ben

No more money printing, they demand.
The Keynesians are in an uproar, something about protocol. So far all we know is that Ben is going to flatten the yield curve, borrow short and lend long, to Congress. Bondholders are not willing to loan long term money to Congress with CPIAUSL running at 3.77%. So the agreement has been made, investors will hedge with gold and Ben can print away.

Military robots at work

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp.

The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. WA Post

This is not difficult software, folks, it is made possible by high speed CPU that can process images.
And this:

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.

One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.WA Post

What is the upshot of all of this?
Well, being frank here, making a robot bomb is quite simple. A model airplane, a stick of dynamite and a GPS CPU. I suspect that as costs drop, hobbyists will be able to buy a complete system for less than a thousand dollars. As both sides acquire the technology, it is duck and cover at a moments notice.

Return of the gold standard

Deep in the 7.4-acre Singapore FreePort next to Changi International Airport’s runways is the bullion vault of Swiss Precious Metals, behind seven-metric-ton steel doors built to survive a plane crash or earthquake.

The rooms are almost full after demand rose fivefold in the year since the Geneva-based company opened the facility. The firm plans an extension, and relocated Chief Executive Officer Jean-Francois Pages to Singapore last month to cope with the surge of investors willing to pay as much as 1 percent of the value of their holdings each year to keep them secure. Bloomberg

And:

Barclays Capital is building a new vault, The Brink’s Co. (BCO) and Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) may add more space, and the Perth Mint may expand for the first time since 2003, a sign they expect demand to keep increasing after the 11-year rally during which prices increased sevenfold. Investors in exchange-traded products backed by gold bought 2,198 tons of bullion since 2003, exceeding all except four countries’ official stockpiles.

Obama cannot save CA, IL and NY with a fake jobs bbill

Illinois ranked among the three worst states for business, according to a survey of U.S. corporate executives released Monday.

Nearly one quarter of the survey's 322 respondents said Illinois had one of the least favorable business climates, according to Development Counsellors International, which specializes in economic development and tourism marketing.

Taxes and high costs were among the factors that contributed to the state's poor showing in the survey. California was deemed to have the worst business climate, followed by New York and Illinois.

Mish points out that we are onto the game, provide a jobs bill but really just stuffing state pensions with federal money.  The jobs bill was a scam to fund the big states that have little democracy in the Senate.  Obama cannot figure out we live in the internet age, as soon as a scam bill is prosed, all the pundits have analyzed every detail and backed out the political scam behind it.

Soft Landing says Anderson School of Business

The national economy is in "far worse" shape than it was just three months ago, but neither the U.S. nor California is expected to slip back into recession, according to UCLA researchers.

The U.S. economy has "stalled," the job market is "horrible," and even a "modest shock" could trigger a full-blown recession, according to a quarterly economic forecast released Tuesday by UCLA's Anderson School of Management.LA Times

I have been thing the same thing for two months.

Whoops

In statehouses across the U.S., a budget-cutting congressional supercommittee and the sputtering economy threaten a fledgling recovery from the worst fiscal crisis in more than 70 years.
Stalled job growth, eroding consumer confidence and a stock market that has lost more than $2 trillion since April may cut into tax collections that have yet to fully rebound from the recession. At the same time, Washington policy makers are moving to slash federal spending, a potential threat to dozens of programs -- from Medicaid and school-lunch subsidies to defense contracts and law-enforcement grants -- that nourish state budgets and local economies.Bloomberg

Then this:

“The weakening of the economy is going to have a more immediate hit, but I think the focus of the market is what the 12-person panel does over the next few months,” said Chris Mauro, a municipal-debt investment strategist for RBC Capital Markets in New York. “Investors shouldn’t think the worst is behind us.”

Do we think the Gang of Twelve can handle the pressure?

Market is all Greek today

Traders rushing to safety until a positive announcement.

Molecule in a cage

In a step towards realizing ultrahigh-density storage devices based on individual molecules behaving as magnets, researchers in Japan have developed a candidate building block1—a supramolecular ferromagnet, which is a caged molecule with magnetic properties. The research team was led by Takuzo Aida at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute, Wako, and Kentaro Tashiro at the National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba.

The researchers’ supramolecular magnet is based on a metallofullerene dubbed La@C82—a lanthanum ion trapped within an 82-carbon spherical cage. La@C82 has well-known paramagnetic properties: it becomes magnetized in the presence of an external magnetic field. However, like all paramagnets, La@C82 loses its magnetization once the external field is removed, rendering it useless for data storage.Riken Research

Putting a metal molecule into a buckey ball is a milestone on the way to nano chem factories.

Chart of the Day

Political calculations is getting better each day.

In the week that Greece defaults, Timmy and the Socialist bankers are telling the world that tax collection from the median American household is no problem. Timmy can't think out of the box. A huge chunk of those resources going to central government are coming right off the California economy, and our unemployment is 13%!

Paul Ryan and his $4 T in debt based spending

Why do people even listen to the guy. Complaining about the fact that Obama ran up $4T in debt does not justify Bush and Paul Ryan running up $4T on their watch.

Stupid Greek ministers

VOULIAGMENI, Greece (AP) -- Greece's finance minister promised Monday to stick with his plan for the country to post a primary surplus in 2012, hours before he was to hold an emergency teleconference with debt inspectors.

Evangelos Venizelos' target of generating more revenues next year than the country spends, before paying off interest on debts, comes despite the ongoing recession in the crisis-hit country.

Greece's economy is expected to contract by about 5.5 percent this year and to shrink further next.

Speaking at a conference south of Athens, Venizelos said the 2012 target was vital for Greece to avoid international "blackmail and humiliation" and came as markets continued to fret about the possibility of an imminent Greek default -- stock markets around the world were down sharply Monday.Yahoo

They are not promising anything, they are going bankrupt. Of course Greece will have a primary surplus, no one is lending to them!

Chris Ladd picked the wrong metaphor

Hamilton vs. Jefferson All Over Again And concludes:

The rebellion against the Neo-Confederate Revolution must start inside the Republican Party. If we fail to manage the complexity of our age, there are horrors that await. Jefferson’s world is gone, but we can still have a banana republic if we so insist.

The better metaphor is the Revolutionary War.

The issue before the nation is why do we have such a large economy ruled by far away elites in which Western states are deprived of democracy. We have a common language and continent wide transportation. Why cannot we break up into regional government and be more like Europe? The battle is between the Englisd aristocracy in DC and large independent, regional economies.

Looks like Greece will have to miss the October debt payment

In order to shrink the public sector, the government has announced plans to merge existing agencies, abolish others and put tens of thousands of employees on a "reserve" status at 60 percent of their pay.

But the agency mergers have not yet resulted in a single layoff, with employees shuffled from one agency to another: in one case, several employees at the debt-ridden Hellenic Railways have been transferred to public hospitals.

The tactic has left Greece's lenders very skeptical at the government's willingness to shrink the public sector. It now seems that, with its back to the wall and no wiggle room left, the ruling socialists are finally prepared to bite the bullet. But with the constitution expressly protecting civil servants' jobs, the government is looking for ways to go around that obstacle, first by firing contract workers and then tackling the core civil service. Yahoo

The Greek socialists never intended to shrink the public sector, The plan all along was to hold out until bankruptcy.

Google's Schmidt supports the Buffet Tax

Here he talks about the wonders of federal stimulus, which I presume he intends to pay from his taxes.

Medical doctors on a killing spree

Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.LA Times

Robot talk

The XML dialect called AIML was developed by Richard Wallace and a worldwide free software community between the years of 1995 and 2002. It formed the basis for what was initially a highly extended Eliza called "A.L.I.C.E." ("Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity"), which won the annual Loebner Prize Contest for Most Human Computer[1] three times, and was also the Chatterbox Challenge[2] Champion in 2004. Wiki

I have to make an XML version of myself. Get my theory straight then map the entire English language to it.

The real importance of the technology is robots talking to each other, as in intelligent vehicles. We can write the rules of driving, in XML format. When robots crash, we go back and look at the XML based rule book to define fault.

Let's check with Grover Norquist

A troop drawdown that would fail Iraq
From the usual Defense Socialists:
John McCain, Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey O. Graham

The Middle Class in South Carolina must tire of paying for the wealthy adventures in global defense socialism.

But BMW has the automated assist

The car needs the high speed lane guided software so it can share the roadway with automated vehicles.

Drivers despair at more motorway bus lanes

Drivers are to be forced to make way for bus-only motorway lanes as the squeeze on the car continues.

With motorists already struggling with spiralling fuel bills and increased congestion, the initiative announced yesterday was greeted with astonishment.

It will mean that at peak times cars will be crammed into two lanes on motorways, with the third lane remaining virtually empty. Drivers straying into the reserved lanes would face heavy fines. Only one small stretch of motorway, on the M4 between Heathrow and West London, currently has a bus and taxi lane. Mail Online

BMW automated car

Engineers at BMW Group Research and Technology aredeveloping advanced automated driver assistance systems for the highway. Researchers have equipped a BMW 5 sedan with intelligent software as well as vision assistance and environment detection systems.

The prototype system can autonomously control acceleration and braking, and it can safely pass slower vehicles. One of the greatest challenges early in the project involved reacting to vehicles merging on to the motorway at exit and access points. The prototype system reacts to the situation by allowing the merging vehicles to join the traffic flow, and it can even change lanes giving the merging vehicles adequate space to enter traffic safely. This is possible up to a speed of 130 km/h (80 mph), but in compliance with current traffic regulations regarding speed limits and such things as prohibited passing zones. Green Car Congress

Making apps for the Android

I am looking at various development environments, looking under the hood of Andriod, the tablet OS

Cakifornians notice their 1/10 of a Senator

Oh, no! Another Democratic senator in possible election trouble for 2012.

And from California already?

A new Field Poll just released this morning brings news that California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein is -- how can we put this in a liberal kind of way? -- approved by 41% of voters who want to see her reelected next year. LA Times

Every Western fiat currency is now pegged to Greece

THE pledge by the world’s leading central banks to provide unlimited dollar liquidity in three month-loans to battered European lenders cheered up markets on September 15th. European stockmarkets closed up, by more than 3% in France and Germany. French bank shares, which have been in the eye of the storm, recovered sharply (BNP Paribas was up 13% on the day while Société Générale rose by 5%). But the co-ordinated action, while helpful, is a palliative rather than a solution. Economist

Big Government Texans

Top Dem: Obama Plans to Run Against Bush Again in 2012

Anybody from Sacramento forgetting your Mexican history?

Plaque dedication to remind Sacramento of its Mexican heritage
By Stephen Magagnini

The unbearableness of human evolution

It is one of those paradoxes. Consider a world in which the human mind fully accepted evolution. It wouldn't work, we would too often plan for failure.

I bring it up because Paul Ryan said something, its ok for someone to die early for lack of government health care. Krugman takes the position that Malthus can be controlled by human legislatures.

Death, differential death before mating is the main method for evolution. Another alternative is failures do not mate, but live long. I think the former predominates. But progressives claim to be scientific and believers in evolution. No, they are religionists about it, just like the other side.

Islamic Belt Bomber killed

Al-Qaeda operations chief in Pakistan killed
By Jason Ukman and Peter Finn
Al-Qaeda’s operations chief in Pakistan has been killed, according to U.S. officials, marking the latest in a series of losses for the terrorist network.

One official said Abu Hafs al-Shahri, a Saudi, was killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas earlier this week, less than a month after the killing of al-Qaeda’s no. 2 official. It was unclear how he was killed, but the CIA has been using armed drones to target militants in the region. WA Post

Red State Blue State

These vast contributions to the coffers of state and local governments, though pitched as a jobs bill, are in reality the latest in a series of bailouts for debt-ridden state and local governments. They are of special benefit to states in the blue regions of the country where the president's most fervent supporters reside.

In many blue states, legislators have copied the politicians in Washington by running up state debts to extraordinary levels. Nationwide, state debt is running around $3 trillion. If unfunded pension liabilities are factored in, estimated liabilities leap forward by another $1 trillion to $3 trillion, depending on the optimism of the assumptions made. Peterson/Nadler

The molding of the jobs program through state mal-proportionality.

Communications through the ages

Courtesy Big Picture Worth a look definitely, with great graphic.

Oppressed Hot Babes in Politics

Drudge has the visuals:

Babaroony number uno

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The Obama administration has warned that a victory by Tsai Ing-wen, the Taiwanese opposition leader, in the island’s January presidential election could raise tensions with China.

Babaroony Number Dos

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Denmark elected its first woman prime minister and ended 10 years of centre-right rule on Thursday as opposition parties achieved a narrow election victory.

Let history record that basement dwelling, softporn loving blogger identifies two Hot Oppressed Babes in fulfillment of my LGBT duties.

Likely true of all religions

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Yglesias

The frustrations leading to devoutness are not related to problems a religion can fix. Hence, the unsolved problems come back, suddenly. So, experience and common sense would tell the FBI that religious nuts can become violent. Same is true of devout racists.  Devout socialists are quick to rob us of democracy. Devout tax cutters take away Socialist Defense Goodies.  Ideologues usually miss the sweet spot, in general; and then lash out.

Socialist Defense Godies

Republicans on Capitol Hill are floating the idea of a ceiling for defense cuts mandated by the deficit-reduction supercommittee that would not exceed $150 billion over 10 years.

Congressional sources said the $150 billion figure is cited often in private talks among staffers but is by no means final.

In fact, several Republicans say they will oppose further Pentagonbudget reductions, after last month’s Budget Control Act pared $340 billion of defense spending from 2013 to 2021. WA Times

The Republicans have to find a middle class willing to take a tax hike. Maybe Rick Perry knows a middle class that wants to pay for a bunch of new defense goodies.

What is a Greek default?

Greece is already locked out of the bond market.  Soon they will default on pension payments to government unions. Riots, negotiations, crime, possible Greek military revolt. I don't see how changing currency makes that any better.

My favorite indicator

I am seeing a soft landing.

Gains from distribution, maybe the best general description. That ratio changed, but changed smoothly these past few quarters. What is happening? The various flows are adjusting to the reality of energy availability. Investors are beginning to understand the future of energy. This soft landing is associated with oil price stabilization about the $85-$90 range. The stable point is confirmed at the 1985-1990 period, this is a gain we can sustain.

The goal is to move gains back up to 1.2, the next stable point upward.  To get there, we need to move solar efficiency in energy conversion to 10%.  The employment path is 1) transportation automation and 2) energy conversion along our gulf coast.

When galaxies collide

A dwarf galaxy called Sagittarius can be credited with giving the Milky Wayits signature spiral arms.

Sagittarius struck our galaxy some 1.9 billion years ago. It then looped over the galactic "north pole" and struck again about 900 million years ago. It is heading back right now, on course for a third clash in 10 million years or so. New Scientist

There is a neat video simulation. The dwarf galaxy seems to be merging with us.

Slave State and Master State

Reporting from Washington -- For more than a year, as conservative states have battled President Obama's sweeping healthcare law, California was supposed to be a model that showed the law's promise.

But the state is emerging as one of the biggest headaches for the White House in its bid to help states bring millions of Americans into the healthcare system starting in 2014.

Though still outpacing much of the nation, cash-strapped California is cutting its healthcare safety net more aggressively than almost any other state, despite billions of dollars in special aid from Washington.

And state leaders are pressing the Obama administration for permission to place some of the toughest limits in the nation on government-subsidized healthcare, including a cap on how often people with Medicaid — the healthcare program for the poorest Americans — can go to the doctor. LA Times