Posts from — December 2013

Mustard Ladybug

I’m not what you think, really!

[Editor: This Coccinellidae variant is headed for the roses and I wish it bon appetit.]

Friday Ark

Froggie in Isolation

Hello …?

[Editor: Froggie is the only cat out about. There is another front due through so everyone is preparing for the chill to come.]

Friday Ark

Yes, it is the day that kindly old Saint Nicholas fills the footware of good little girls and boys with treats [or his assistants beat the evil out of bad children, depending on the local customs – they didn’t just leave the sticks – in some places they use them.] Don’t forget the carrot if he rides a horse in your area.

He is the patron saint of Russian merchants and pawnbrokers (three gold balls are one of the symbols associated with him).

Badtux asks the basic question: Do ‘the rich’ create jobs?

MalWart is recognized as the world’s largest retailer, and is worth billions. If you read about Sam Walton and the building of his company, one of the things you will learn is that Wall Street wasn’t involved until after it was already a rapidly expanding empire. The ‘initial stock offering’ was Sam Walton selling stock to friends and neighbors, not a big bell-ringing ceremony involving investment bankers.

After a market downturn, a journalist asked Sam Walton what it was like to lose a billion dollars. He replied that he didn’t lose anything – that money never really existed. A lot of people learned that lesson during the global meltdown when their ‘million dollar house’ lost its value almost overnight, as did their 401K.

‘The rich’ aren’t investors, they’re gamblers, Wall Street is one of casinos they frequent. The only thing they actually invest in are Treasury bills. Of course the Treasury bills could be used to create jobs repairing infrastructure, but the political parties don’t want to do it.

The BBC reports on weather: European storm and tidal surge cause evacuations and travel chaos.

Just a winter storm with winds up to 142mph [228kph] in Scotland, the surge gates on the Thames, and in the Netherlands were closed to reduce flooding from the wind-driven tidal surge. Trucks blown off roads, trees uprooted, thousands in the dark — just a winter storm.

Not much different than a major hurricane … except it is cold to make people even more miserable.

The ABC article on Amazon drone delivery project discusses the general privacy unease that drones cause in the US, which has ratcheted up since the Snowden revelations.

Knowing my local community, the discussion will be about how much gun you need to take one out. Obviously a 10 gauge shotgun with a 36-inch barrel will do the job, but it is too much gun? Then there is the selection of pellet size and spread pattern. These things are important to real hunters.

I don’t see drone delivery as a realistic system in the US, but there is a company in Australia hoping to use drones to deliver text books to isolated settlements, if they can get flight clearance.

Personally I’m against drone flights in the US because of flight safety issues. Even the remotely piloted drones used by the military lack the situational awareness necessary for collision avoidance in crowded airspace. I was in entirely too many incidents when flying out of Offutt AFB in Nebraska involving collisions with geese, to wish anything heavier and harder be added to the airspace that lacks the ability to sense a threat and get out of the way.

Both Atrios and Charlie Pierce decided to notice what a total schmuck Chuck Schumer is today.

Since LIEberman finally left the Senate, Schumer has assumed the leadership of the Likud caucus in the Senate. While he is nominally a Senator for New York State, he only cares about the interests of Wall Street and Israel’s Likud.

If the New York Republicans had a functional party, Schumer would have been gone years ago. He will not do anything that upsets his masters, no matter how much it might help the people of New York State.

In the discussion about the Pope’s negative comments regarding supply-side economics I mentioned the old saw about ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’, so Badtux looked at the numbers:

According to U.S. Coast Guard statistics, there are 16,824,000 boats in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 114,761,359 households in America. What that means is that 14.7% of households benefit from a rising tide.

It is a good fit, because only about the top 15% of households are prospering or holding their own in this economy. The rest of us are treading water or sinking.

Once again, Why Now? is pleased to present the link to the webcam of Gävlebocken, The biggest Christmas Goat in the world [now with a blog].

From Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democratic Views in the comments from 2006:

Why build a giant goat of straw,
Which most of us would scarcely note?
Some, though, defy the very law,
To vandalize the Gävle Goat.

In some years, they used wayward cars;
In others, flaming arrows smote.
This year’s survives, although with scars…
A fact that gets some people’s goat.

A webcam and some watchful eyes,
A flame-retardant second coat,
Should save it… unless Dubya spies
The thing, and claims it’s his pet goat!

– SB the YSS

Happy NODWISH Greetings

As a service to my readers I have compiled a list of useful terms for our modern global village.

It is time to wish family and friends: [select one]

Happy NODWISH
Merry Solstice
Happy Hanukkah
Happy Kwanzaa
С Рождеством Христовым
Sung Tan Chuk Ha
Vrolijk Kerstfeest
Nadolig Llawen
Fröhliche Weihnachten
Joyeux Noël
Buon Natale
Feliz Navidad
God Jul
Rauhallista Joulua
Happy Hogwatch
Happy Christmas

[Read more →]

Looking around at the preliminary reports, all the retailers did by annoying the hell out of their employees and opening on Thanksgiving was to steal sales from Black Friday. So they paid a lot of people to open a few extra hours and to open their stores for no real increase in sales, i.e. they increased their costs without improving their sales.

It is obscene what the people who make these kinds of stupid decisions are paid.

Update: The new spin is that there were more people shopping this year, but they didn’t spend as much money as last year.

Last year people were recovering from the effects of the devastation caused by Sandy on the Atlantic Coast. People and businesses are coming back from that, but most people don’t see their individual economic situation improving. The cut in food stamps at the beginning of the month certainly didn’t help people feel like they could afford to spend money on holiday gifts.