It's Our Blogiversary!

Today is the 7th blogiversary of The Scratching Post. For 7 years and over 6,200 posts, we've done our bit to produce noisy content for web surfers. I thought about linking to a few of my favorite posts, but have decided to go with a short description of ...

How Blogging Has Changed My Life

First off, I don't miss a day. In 7 years, I think we've skipped one day on purpose and one weekend in support of a dear friend who was going through some rough times. Other than that, we post every day. I don't know why we post every day other than that we just do. It must be done because it has always been done. Here in the Catican, we're definitely traditionalists.

The 'Post is a remorseless information and analysis eating machine. Our commitment to daily blogging has changed the way I see the world. Everything is seen through a blogging filter - how can I turn this event, this book, this movie, this experience, this thought into something I can share. I think I'm more alert than before and I certainly have become more analytical about everything around me in order to feed the blog.

My blogging has been a journey to form a coherent world view. It's a chronicle of my progress from deep ignorance to slightly shallower ignorance. By writing this blog, I feel like I've helped myself evolve intellectually. Had I not been blogging, I could easily find myself retracing the same steps over and over again, stuck forever at a certain stage of development like the illiterate Germanic tribes described in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.

For someone who has been blogging as long as I have, I've not picked up a big following. After 7 years of daily posts, you'd think I'd be a much bigger player in the blogs. I made sporadic efforts to increase my base of readers, but I quit when I realized I didn't have the one key characteristic of the big bloggers out there, consistency. The Scratching Post is a chronicle of a journey, but it's a chronicle of my journey, my many and sometimes transitory passions. The top bloggers all have a focus area and stick with it. I found I couldn't do that and so I gave up. Instead, this blog is a grab bag of whatever I feel like posting at the moment.

What I Love About Blogging

You. You the readers. I know that seems odd having just said I gave up on creating a readership, but I deeply appreciate the folks who come by and check out what I've got to say. Comments are icing on the cake. I also love the way the blog has enriched my spiritual and intellectual life. For example, I don't think I would ever have read GK Chesterton had it not been for the blog.

What I Don't Like So Much

That I don't reciprocate your affection as much as I'd like. When it comes to the web, creating content for The Scratching Post takes priority over everything else. Many days I don't have time to visit other blogs and enjoy what you've created. It makes me feel guilty that some people leave comments when I post, but I don't always stop by their sites and return the favor. I feel like I'm acting superior to you and I don't see myself that way at all.

Special Thanks

In addition to you, I must thank my wife for have supported this ridiculous enterprise. I wake up early in the morning, get my coffee and go downstairs to read and blog. Up early usually means asleep early and that can mean less time spent together at night, all so I can feed this beast. I'm blessed with a loving and understanding spouse and am deeply grateful for that. It allows me to share important things like this:

Here, the head of the Catican Guards watches over our Maximum Leader.

God bless you all. Thanks for coming along on the journey.

On The Papal Resignation

Wow. Pope Benedict XVI is resigning. That had to be a tough call. The Catholics I follow on Twitter are shocked and some are dismayed. I'm shocked, but not dismayed. The guy is 85 and holds one of the 5 most important jobs in the world. In his resignation statement he said he was physically incapable of doing the job properly. This pope has been nothing if not a traditionalist, so being the first one to resign in centuries wasn't a decision he made lightly and just on that it deserves respect.

I always liked Pope Benedict. I liked that he unreservedly defended traditional Catholic teachings and was an aggressive proponent of the faith. I sat here drinking my coffee this morning and had the horrifying vision of a world where there's a pope who decides to go along with the mores of the moment. It would be as if the world had become unmoored and was completely adrift.

The world needs a steadfast pope and Benedict was all that and more. God bless him.

Your Mass is almost ended. Go in peace, papa.

A Call For Collective Action

... that has about as much chance of being truly "collective" as I do of growing wings and flying to Jupiter.

Here's what our thoroughly Peronist President had to say in his second inaugural address.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people. 

We're going to do these things together? Collectively? Really? Just who is contributing what here? If it's collective and we're all doing it together, then everyone has a role.

And I mean everyone.

Just what are the baby mamas supposed to be contributing? How about the potheads? What about the indolent, the immoral, the wastrels and the slothful? What's the plan there? I'm guessing there isn't one. I'm guessing there's no real plan for truly collective action, merely another call to loot the people who practice self-denial, industry and thrift.

I think we need another word, another phrase, another turn of speech for what he means in this passage. Maybe we need to rewrite it entirely. How about like this?

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that infidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to self-inflicted challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms is pretty much a thing of the past and now it's time for the majority to loot those who are industrious and competent. Many of the American people can not meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone. We're going to need to harness the efforts of a declining minority to train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip a generation of future tax-mules and build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring jobs for these human pack animals to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must force these people to work for us, because we want it. 

There. That works.

Of course, we could try this. This looks pretty collective.

YELLOW!

These are tiny flowers on a tree in my parents' back yard. I forgot what type of tree it is, I only know that the flowers are YELLOW.

Does Blue Book Value Matter?

... if all you want is a comfortable ride that gets you from point A to point B?

My current car is the FredMobile*, a 2001 Nissan Altima. It was never my favorite as it was purchased while I was in extremis. My previous car, a quirky**, gold Nissan Maxima we called the Beach Bomber. We loved that car as it was pleasant to ride in and beaten up enough to not worry about sand on our bodies when we got in after a boogie boarding session. The Beach Bomber got hit while it was parked outside my house and totalled. I didn't have enough money for a good car, so I scoured the used car lots until I found the FredMobile.

Not the FredMobile, but the same year and model. Meh.

The FredMobile is a generic sedan. It's the second most gutless car*** I've ever owned. It's not a thrill to drive, certainly not compared to the DeLorean I used to cruise around in. On the other hand, it's been inexpensive to maintain and right now, all I want is to drive here and there cheaply and reliably while listening to Audible and podcasts. The FredMobile filled that need perfectly until this week.

Recently, the FredMobile has been eating my wallet. It just got out of the shop after I ransomed it for over $2,000. Ouch. My BMW-loving wife, who refers to the FredMobile as a "toad" saw the bill and suggested we pitch the thing over a cliff or sell it, whichever was easiest. It has over 165,000 miles and I'm aiming for 250,000, but she makes the point that the repairs are starting to exceed the Blue Book value, which is about $2500.

Who cares? After the repairs, the thing runs and I trust it. I'm not going to realize anything out of the sale, so why does Blue Book matter? To me, the real question is this: Can I get an equal car for the price of the repair? If the repair is, say, $3,000 and it lasts me 40,000 miles, can I replace the car for that? I think not.

Maybe I've just become sentimental about the FredMobile.

* - Named for the Fred Thompson for President bumpersticker still on the back of it. It just says "Fred 2008." I've got some replacements so when it fades to nothingness, I can still keep the faith. :-)

** - Example: You couldn't unlock the doors with the key. You had to use the keyless entry pad on the driver's door. The control of the door lock solenoids was all wonky and it would relock the door the instant you removed the key.

*** - The most gutless one was my first, a 1969 Dodge Dart with a 225 cu in slant six that would actually decelerate when you floored it. On the plus side, it had bench seats in front which was awesome for make out sessions.

Can You Stop Watching In The Middle?

I couldn't. I had to watch it all the way to the end. Hilarious stuff.

Enjoy!

H/T: Dawn.

What Does "Being Friendly" Mean?

My teenage daughter has been having great days at school recently. While talking about it, I asked her what made the days so great. She said that it was because everyone was "friendly." So what did that mean? It meant that everyone was in a good mood and no one was talking badly about others. Cheerfulness and kindness were her definitions of friendliness. I don't think that's universal.

To me, it's all about shared experiences and shared interests. It doesn't have to be shared passions, but you've got to be able to at least appreciate mine and I have to appreciate yours. For example, my wife will sit and watch EPL soccer with me, she knows what's going on and enjoys the games. She wouldn't be watching it if it weren't for me, but she does it with me. I watch Project Runway with her and have learned a lot about the fashion industry from it. We sit and discuss the designs and challenges as we watch even though I would never watch it without her.

I love it when people can share this with me.

The problem is that if people have different definitions of "friendly," you can end up thinking you're being friendly, but missing the mark by a wide margin. Someone who is cheerful, but can't appreciate my passions is at best indifferent to me. By the same token, if my daughter and I both enjoy watching Jeopardy, but I talk about people behind their backs, I'm not very "friendly" to her.

What's your definition?*

* - Posts that end with questions almost never seem to generate a response on this blog. It's an act of pure optimism to try it yet again. :-)

From The Spam Mailbag

... we get this gem:

Thank you foг the аuѕpicious wгiteup. It in faсt ωas a аmusemеnt account it. Lοoκ aԁvanсed to moгe аdded аgreeable fгοm you! By the way, hoω cοuld we communicate?

How could we communicate? Well, from the looks of your prose, it might help if I was from Mars.

Cheezburger of the Day

Embarrassed For Jay-Z

One more thing on Beyonce's skankfest during the Super Bowl. It embarrassed me as a man and it particularly shamed Jay-Z in my eyes. If your wife has to dress like that and do those things to turn you on, what does that tell you about Jay-Z? How dead to feminine attractiveness do you have to be to require that? It made me think of Hugh Hefner. I wondered just what Jay-Z had been doing to himself to make Beyonce have to go through all that just to attract his attention.

Pathetic.

Last night, while watching a little Bad TV (Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy) with the fam, we saw a commercial featuring the old Katrina and the Waves song, Walking on Sunshine. Watching the original music video on YouTube, I found that Katrina was about 1000 times sexier than Beyonce. No tight clothes, that silly oversized 80s sweater, no really suggestive lyrics, no pelvic thrusts, no thrusting of tongues into the various bodily orifices of an unidentifiable marsupial*. Instead, it's a cute girl singing about how she's walking on air because she found out that I love her.

Dude, I am here to tell you, that is sexy.

Bonus bit: Let's compare a snippet of lyrics from Walking on Sunshine to a bit from Beyonce's Bootylicious.

Walking on Sunshine: I used to think maybe you loved me, now, baby, I'm sure. And I just can't wait 'til the day when you knock on my door. Now every time I go for the mailbox, gotta hold myself down. 'Cause I just can't wait 'til you write me you're coming around

Beyonce: I don't think you're ready for this jelly, I don't think you're ready for this jelly, I don't think you're ready for this 'cause my body's too bootylicious for ya babe. Move your body up and down, make your booty touch the ground.

Analysis: If I ever devolve into a savage and want to have sex with a generic primate, I'll be sure to call Beyonce. In the meantime, I've got my own little Katrina here at home and I ain't goin' nowhere.

* - I'm not sure this last part actually happened during Beyonce's Super Bowl slut-tacular, but I think it did. To tell you the truth, I spent much of halftime laughing at my Twitter feed where people were just ripping the ho to shreds.

Beyonce And Crackheads

I had planned on a thoroughly nasty polemic about yesterday's Super Bowl halftime show which featured Beyonce and her dancers masturbating while worshiping a giant phallus, inflated from below the stage by emotionally scarred children of obese, illiterate baby mamas from New Orleans' 9th Ward, but I figured I'd keep it cool and just show off this video of people in Detroit who are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the shattered remnants of Western civilization that Beyonce and her loathsome allies in the self-destructive popular culture machine have done their best to obliterate*.

Enjoy.

* - There. That wasn't so bad, was it? Fairly restrained, I'd say.

Update: Rudell Solomon and Dequindre Jenkins, shown in the video above, have an open invitation to dinner at my house any time. They're men.

A Preview Of Coming Attractions

You didn't think I was going to let Beyonce's Super Bowl on-stage-masturbation go unremarked, did you? I'm still working on it, but I'll be generous to her right now and let her be my warm-up act.

"What a proud day for African-American women!" - Beyonce after her strip club act was finished.

You go, girl.

Go far, far away.

This Should Be Illegal

Things this cute can cause an immediate onset of diabetes.

Doing Our Part For Civilization

The Catholic Church sees marriage as a Sacrament. We do our best to preserve it and lots of people within the Church work hard to help those who are engaged, those who are remarrying and people who are struggling in their marriages. Recently, my wife and I taught our very first remarriage class.

The remarriage class is required for anyone who has been married before and is considering getting married in the Church. It covers all of the common topics that cause problems in second (or third or fourth!) marriages. We had a blast doing and will be doing it as often as our schedules allow. Today we got together with some of the other people who work in this field in the Church, all of whom were volunteers. There was a lot to it, but I'm in a hurry, so I'll just go with this for now:

It was so beautiful to be a part of this. I felt so blessed. When I met the folks who do all the administrative and organizational work, I felt like a privileged rock star. I get to go on stage and perform during the class and there's this huge network supporting my fun. At the end of the class, all of the couples told us how much they appreciated us, but they never saw all these folks.

Awesomeness squared.

The little dude in the back in the black is the Bishop. He's a real character!

Support This And You'll Cheese Off A Peronist

That's a good enough reason right there, no? Click here to join the effort.

If This Is Racist, Then I Want Some Of That Racism Directed At Me

I could watch this over and over.

What a beautiful and loving celebration of the Jamaicans. Everything is friendly and kind and in the end, because the guy acts like the Hollywood stereotype of a Jamaican, things turn out great.

If some people feel this is racist and want it taken down, I would be happy to volunteer my ethnic heritage and religion for the next VW commercial. I'd watch it every time I got down and it would make me get happy.

H/T: Hot Air.

Update: Over at Hot Air, there's an excerpt from a Jamaican (probably the vast majority) who gets it.

I am a Jamaican who thinks this ad is so funny, just can’t see what the controversy is all about. Funny thing though it’s not Jamaicans who think this add is offensive, but people who propose to think for us.

Soup Kitchens: What's The Point?

My wife and I like to watch what we call Bad TV - Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. It's a bit of idling time for the brain. Over the last few weeks, there's been an Aleve commercial running about some dude who works at a soup kitchen, but has a bad back. Without the Aleve, he's reduced to crawling on all fours and panting like a dog. With Aleve, he can juggle several 4 gallon soup pots full of Soupe aux Chataignes while fending off a ninja attack.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I have the same reaction to that ad that I do whenever I hear the call to support Catholic Charities or a local homeless shelter. Why? Honestly, what's the point? We're blowing nearly $18K per person in government spending every year and I still need to go work at a soup kitchen? How in the world is a couple of hours of my time going to even make a dent in the problem when $18K per person can't solve it?

Per capita government spending by year. Source.

And therein lies the soul-corroding nature of big government. There is no practical reason to donate time or money to charity, once you understand the magnitude of the government. So you gave $100 to feed the poor. Big freaking deal. Spread over the 1500 people at Father Joe's Village, that changes the per capita spending from $17,129 to $17,129.07. Way to go there, champ. Great job!

It's an old saying - something that is everyone's responsibility is no one's responsibility. If I don't contribute to Father Joe's, nothing actually happens since the government has absolved me of my share of the burden through sheer size.

Richard Epstein has a long and thoughtful piece on the Obama Administration's attempt to reduce charitable deductions. It's ammunition for the crowd who thinks the government is trying to kill off rival institutions*. Looking at my own behavior, however, I don't think the attack is necessary to marginalize the Catholic Church and other groups who preach views heretical to the libertine secularists running the Democratic Party. Ennui has done the job for them.

I still give to Catholic Charities, but I do so without any great enthusiasm. Big government has eliminated any illusions I might have had that I'm actually accomplishing anything of significance**.

* - I'm a member of this crowd.

** - Yes, I know this is defeatist and unworthy of the Feline Theocracy. The solution to the ennui is to become more involved, not less and become familiar with the individual people at Father Joe's or wherever. Salvation is personal, not collective. I was just in a whiny mood when I wrote this. So sue me***.

*** - Please don't sue me.

Women and Children First

... first to sacrifice, first to suffer, first to die.

Toure Neblett, hipster MSNBC host, killed his own child because it was inconvenient. Toure came out and said as much on the air.

I like the way Toure's top button is undone and the collar folds down. Very chic!

There's a good takedown of Toure over at Kelly Clinger's. While it's all worth reading, here's the particular tidbit that struck me.

Toure begins by talking about a relationship he was in 15 years ago. He says, “I was in a committed relationship with a woman I knew was not the one. She also knew it probably wasn’t going to work out…” If you are in a relationship that you KNOW isn’t going to work out, why continue to call it a committed relationship and stay in it? He goes on to say “…and then she got pregnant…” ... 

“I knew that the pregnant woman and I were not going to be able to form a lasting family.” Then why have sex like a married couple, who is ready for the real commitment of a family? Talk about a picture of selfishness and cowardice. 

“She decided it was best to have an abortion… and in some ways that choice saved my life.”What a weak, narcissistic response to having your child killed…that hiring a hit man to kill someone who had half of your DNA saved you.

Yay! Toure was saved! This is the part where we should all be nodding our heads (or waggling them side to side) and saying, "That's right. You got to save yourself, man."

It's the part where a grown man helped the woman who was sexually gratifying him to kill his child. It's the part where the grown man shrugged his shoulders at that woman's possible post-abortive depression. It's the part where Toure was able to put on his sport coat over his casual clothes and stroll down the street knowing he didn't have anything to do that day other than find someone else to boink.

Women and children first.

Addendum: I feel very proud of  myself that I made it all the way through this blog post and didn't call Toure a subhuman piece of filth or a moral scrofula. I deserve a cookie.

Thanks, Patty

Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the Andrews Sisters died yesterday. The Andrews Sisters were way before my time, but I love their beautiful harmonies and the way they would team with Bing Crosby on some songs. Here's one of my favorites. Enjoy.

Cheezburger of the Day

Guns: Tennessee vs. Chicago

Check out what our Knight Protector and Defender of Yarn Balls has found.

I Am A Microsoft Software Pirate

... but I don't want to be.

My Lamborghini laptop (Asus G73S) had a hard drive failure recently. I had prepared myself for this situation and had the Asus recovery DVDs standing by. I bought a replacement hard drive, installed it and went to work restoring the thing. On DVD #2 of 6, the restore failed.

Yarr!  Oops, I mean, Argh!

I've got the Win7 full install disk from the Catican PC, so I took a chance with that one, hoping I could use the Win7 product key from the laptop.

Bzzzt! Wrong answer. The Lamborghini key is for Win7 Professional and the Win7 install disk was Home Premium. They didn't match up and the product key failed. I shrugged and decided to throw caution to the wind and just reused the Catican's product key. It worked.

So now I've got two PCs in the same house running Win7 using the same product keys. I'm a pirate. I don't want to be a pirate, but I can't figure out how to make this work. I don't have a Win7 Professional install disk or even an upgrade disk.

Yarr! Leave a solution in the comments and I'll give ye a share of our doubloons!

Courtyard Is Better Than Marriott

By now, I should know this.

We spent this weekend in Chicago visiting family. We stayed at a Marriott rather than a Courtyard* because Priceline gave us a better deal on the Marriott. That was before the extra charges kicked in.

• Good points for Marriott hotels: They look nice. Some have really high ceilings, others have suites. Ours was a suite configuration or rather, an almost-suite. Separating the sleeping room from the anteroom was a pair of french doors which let light in from one room to another. The door into the bathroom was a sliding door that banged when you moved it. While the place looked nice, it was functionally indistinguishable from a Courtyard.
• Bad points for Marriott hotels: Marriott hotels charge extra for parking and Internet. Courtyards do not. We quickly wiped out our savings and that was without buying Internet access. I had french doors, but no Interweb tubes except what I had on my phone. Grrr.

Repeat after me, class: I will never choose a Marriott over a Courtyard again. I will never choose a Marriott over a Courtyard again. I will never choose a Marriott over a Courtyard again....

* - Yes, I know these are brands from the same company.

A Brief Debt / Immigration Rant

Just for fun*, here's the debt clock.

Learn more about us debt.

As I understand it, the Senate is taking up an immigration bill that will provide sweeping changes to the current law. That's the same Senate that hasn't passed a budget in four years. My family with kids and parents is down $400,000+, it's getting worse all the time and for some reason they think I want them to deal with immigration.

Maybe it's not me. Maybe there's a ton of other people who want them to deal with immigration. A bunch of folks who know how deep in debt we are, but don't care about anything but more immigration.

Awesome. I get to pay their bills, too.

Unless I pull a John Kerry or better still, a Tina Turner** or Gerard Depardieu and find ways to escape my taxes. Then they'll have to pay their own bills.

I wonder if they know that?

Update: Reich Tax, anyone?

Update 2: Luckily, we still have money for high-speed choo-choos!

* - Hmm. That wasn't really fun, now was it? I need to work on my fun.

** - Dig the poll on that link! Most people have no problem with her bailing out to avoid taxes. They may think differently when they start to realize what it means for them.

Increasing Instability

I'm writing this on a PC in the business center of a Marriott in Chicago. More on that later, but here's a chart from a recent post on Zero Hedge*.

The percentage of the population with a job has decreased to mid-1970s levels.

The nation was quite different in the 1970s. For one thing, we wore a lot more polyester and hideous prints. In addition to the ghastly fashions of the day, there was a much higher percentage of married families and stay-at-home moms. When you look at this chart, the figure for the mid-70s represents greater social stability and the figure for today represents less.

* - I said I'd reduce my consumption of ZH, not eliminate it. At least, that's what I think I said. It's too hard to check as this PC uses IE as it's browser and for whatever reason, the thing can't handle multi-tabbed browsing. Pathetic.

We'll Find The Money Somewhere

A very good friend of mine of Facebook posted that she absolutely loved President Obama's inaugural address. It was so full of compassion and togetherness. A friend or relative of hers came back with what I would have said - where are we going to get the money? She responded, "We'll find the money somewhere." When he came back yet again with the examples of Greece and Spain, she didn't budge.

That we cared mattered more than whether or not we could.

If we want to change minds about this whole thing, we're going to have to show that the mammoth nanny state is destructive to individuals.

The Misty Mountain

I got this shot from an airplane window using my Galaxy S3. I thought it came out quite well. I left it large enough to click. Enjoy!

Shangri-La?

I Love Hillary

... because of moments like this. The whole concept of government accountability is simply alien to her*. Alien as in, "not part of her Universe in any way, shape or form" alien.

How dare you suggest I was lying when I was lying! What difference does it make whether I lied? I should be able to lie at will, Senator! At will! And if the press isn't bothered by this, you shouldn't be bothered, either! You are all but worms under my heel!
Hilarious!

* - This is a natural outgrowth of their ideology. Fascists have this problem in spades.

Best. Pro-life. Ad. Ever.

This is just perfect. It captures the sleaziness and selfishness of the whole abortion industry. And best of all, it was made by a pro-abortion group.

Update: Our Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings beat us to the punch with this one and has extra commentary that you don't want to miss.

Pacific Sunset

The time is ripe for picking up some new sunset videos. Rainy days have given us great clouds and sunset is timed perfectly with my drive home from work. I'm going to start bringing the little Kodak PlaySport and tripod with me in to work, but in the meantime, here's a shot I took yesterday with my Nikon artillery piece from some cliffs overlooking the Pacific. I left it large, so it's worth a click.

Enjoy.

Strange Moth

Found this character in our kitchen a few days ago. Been too busy to look him up. Probably blinded the poor thing with my camera's flash.

Nothing too special here, I just liked the narrow wings. Funky looking, no?

Apocalyptic Talk Has Limited Use

I've decided to cut back my consumption of zerohedge for the same reason I stopped reading Mish Shedlock a while back: it's a one-trick pony with limited advisory benefits.

While Googling "what will happen when the bond bubble bursts," I came across a 2010 post on Zerohedge that claimed the bond implosion was imminent. It breathlessly talked about how the Fed was blowing another bubble by purchasing all available Treasuries. That drives bond investors further afield, bringing down rates of all grades of bonds, including junk. Rates being a measure of risk, there are now gobs of money invested in bonds that are mispriced for their risk, thanks to the Fed printing money. That was 2010.

And the beat has gone on.

For me, financial sites have two purposes: general education and investment advice. Zerohedge has reached the end of its lifespan for me as a source of general education and, like Mish, it's never been a good place for near-term investment advice. Doom-mongers rarely are.

I'll still read it from time to time because it posts news articles (almost always bad) that are hard to find elsewhere. In the meantime, I'm wandering around trying to find the answer to my original question: what happens when a bond bubble bursts? My best hit so far is this piece in Forbes from which I recommend these tidbits.

To be flexible and tactical means to temporarily accept the mundane results that are available in a portfolio that has a low risk of capital loss, and that is liquid (“liquid” meaning you can convert any part of it to cash quickly and cheaply). At present, that means to turn the 65/35 portfolio on its head and have less stocks and more bonds. Importantly, the bonds cannot be long-term bonds; short and medium-term only since they have lower risk and greater liquidity.

The objective of this approach is to wait for one or another asset type to become cheap...

The caveat in all these suggestions is that investors must be caution about taking too much risk to in order to eek out a little extra return. The old parable about trying to squeeze blood from a stone comes to mind. In the case, the only blood you’ll find coming out may be your own.

That's useful information. I still firmly believe things are highly unstable and the size of the correction grows as the central banks print money, but instead of just being panic talk, it's useful and actionable.

A 1-year chart of the S&P 500. Not quite the apocalypse Zerohedge and Mish have predicted.

It Looks Safe. For Now.

Yesterday's post clarified quite a few things that had been murky in my mind for a long time. To me, the world is in a very unstable condition, right on the edge of financial chaos. Taking Japan as an example, they owe more than they can ever repay. It's pure fantasy to think their bonds are worth anything in the long term. Dittos for Europe. You are guaranteed that within 10 years, European and Japanese bonds will be worth nothing because they are insolvent and bankrupt, thanks to progressive policies.

Knowing this leads to a bunker mentality. Hunker down, because the storm is coming. But when? How will you know the storm is nigh? Yesterday's post answered it for me. Inflation will be the telltale sign. Here's how I came to that conclusion.

1. Debts and deficits are not in themselves the problem. As the video I linked to yesterday said, bond vigilantes, those who will sell bonds, driving up rates, have been completely defanged by the central banks. Any and all excess government debt will be bought by central banks by printing money.
2. Low interest rates will continue on for the foreseeable future. For years now, the US has been borrowing huge amounts of money at low rates, some of it in short term debt. The instant rates rise, the government budget is blown. That means the Fed, which has become codependent with the debt-addicted federal government, will continue to enable them with low interest rates as long as they can and probably even longer.
3. The trigger for deficits, debt and government budgets to all blow sky-high will be inflation. It will trigger a cascade of bond selling, higher interest rates, deficits far in excess of what we have now and the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The good news is that inflation doesn't show up instantly. It grows over time. I'd say that until inflation starts to show some growth, we can all relax.

We're not there yet. Source.

Interestingly, this is the linchpin of the arguments made by our favorite fascist economic charlatans, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich. Inflation hasn't happened yet and so we should keep borrowing and spending like crazy. What they don't admit is that borrowing more is like making the atomic bomb of upcoming fiscal collapse larger and larger and larger. If we keep borrowing a trillion dollars a year, that bomb is going to trigger events that none of us can foresee.

For now, however, I'm going to chill out.

A Little Bit On Japan

There's a great CNBC video up today on Japan's upcoming government debt implosion. It's worth watching the whole thing, but here's the payoff in case you want to skip it.

Japanese 10-year bonds yield about 0.76%. The new Japanese government has told its central bank to print money until they reach an inflation rate of 2%. That means anyone holding those bonds will be losing money as the interest rate will be less than inflation. It also assumes that the Japanese Central Bank can target an inflation rate and not overshoot it.

There is a positively enormous amount of Japanese debt out there.

Source.

When the Japanese bond holders decide they can find better returns elsewhere, and it won't be hard to beat a return of -1.2%, they will sell. They will sell at a loss. That will trigger others to make the same decision, resulting in a cascade effect with everyone trying to escape the stuff and the government with no options but to print huge piles of Yen to buy them up, resulting in more inflation, resulting in worse net yields for the remaining bind holders.

Good thing we're not primed for the same thing here.

Forward.

Just Look At What Those Maniacs Are Up To Now

There are no words to describe how totally out-of-touch those fundamentalist, racist Rethuglicans are with America. Just look at this.

House Republicans have agreed to demand that the Senate pass a budget as a condition of any “long-term” debt-limit agreement. “Unless the Senate acts, there will be no consideration of a long-term debt-ceiling increase,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said in a statement Friday after GOP meetings in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Don't submit to their crazy demands, President Obama! Forward!

Video Of The Month

This one is fantastic. Thank you, Blackstone Films.

Sneering At The Goldbugs

... is the theme of this piece by Noah Smith. It's worth reading and the comments are enlightening. Here's tiny tidbit.

If it's obvious that central bank money-printing will drive up the value of gold, why isn't that fact already incorporated into gold prices? In other words, the only central bank actions that should make gold prices rise are surprise actions - like printing even more money than people thought.

Now, Zero Hedge and the whole "goldbugosphere" tries to push the idea that they understand macroeconomics better than everyone else out there - that what is "obvious" to them is not obvious to most of the world, which is still in thrall to (Keynesians, neoclassical econ, Xenu, take your pick).

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes a continuous model of the economy and that there are no inflection points where the equations and/or constants change in a discontinuous fashion. I would argue that just such a discontinuity occurred when we began to monetize debt at the $1T+ rate. As far as I know, we've never done that before, at least not over a prolonged period of time and nations that have done it in the past have all come to ruin.

I'm open for counterexamples.

In the comments are links to a trio of regression charts showing the linkage between M2 money supply* and the price of gold. For some reason, the machine I'm on isn't opening them, but here's a similar chart from Uncommon Wisdom.

There's definitely an inflection point and a correlation after the inflection point. Before the inflection point in money supply, I wouldn't take any bets on a linkage. To me, that says there are two distinct models of the economy at work, one pre-monetization and one post-monetization. That's exactly what you'd expect from looking at the history of other countries who've tried the same thing - late Bourbon France, the Confederacy, Weimar Germany and recent Zimbabwe.

My final take is one I left in the comments of that post: Noah's position seems to be that monetizing debt to the tune of a trillion dollars a year with no end in sight has not been a problem yet and won't be and the gold bugs position is that it has not been a problem yet, but will be.

I'm still not a fan of gold, but I'm certainly not going to sneer at those who are.

* - M2 is the amount of money in circulation in notes and coin plus non-interest-bearing bank deposits, building-society deposits, and National Savings accounts.

Did You Need Me?

One one side of the curtain is warm sunshine. On the other side is a cold bedroom. Our Maximum Leader had tucked herself on the sunny side of the curtain and peeked into the room when I came in.

Escaping The iTunes Prison

One of our sons completed his escape from the iEcosystem yesterday when we bought him a Galaxy S3 for his birthday, replacing his iPhone 3s. A month earlier, he had ditched his MacBook for a Windows 8 laptop so he could run his engineering software. He feels that the move, even using the much-maligned Windows 8 OS, has been extremely positive.

One of the best parts for him has been the move off of iTunes and onto Google Music. On the way home from Costco last night, where we had bought the phone, he was cranking up the car stereo, playing his music from the cloud over his S3.

He originally got into the Apple ecosystem because it was cool. He liked that the MacBook because it came with Garage Band and iMovie. When he got into his harder EE classes at school and needed to use circuit design software, cool didn't matter any more. Besides, he'd never really used Garage Band anyway.

His move makes 5 out of 6 of us in the family in the Google / PC world. Apparently, we're not all that uncommon.

Chart: Worldwide Smartphone Vendors Market Share, 3Q 2012Description: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker provides smart phone and feature phone market data in 60 countries and 8 regions by vendor, device type, air interface, operating systems and platforms, and generation. Over 20 additional technical segmentations are provided. The data is provided four times a year and includes historical and forecast trend analysis. For more information, or to subscribe to the research, please contact Kathy Nagamine at 1-650-350-6423 or knagamine@idc.com.Further detail about this tracker can be found at:http://www.idc.com/tracker/showproductinfo.jsp?prod_id=37Tags: Samsung, Apple, Research In Motion, RIM, ZTE, HTC, Mobile Phone, Smartphone, IDC, tracker, Q3 2012, mobile phones, 3Q 2012, market share, galaxy, iPhone Author: IDCcharts powered by iCharts

A Few Thoughts On The Opening Salvo Of The Debt Limit Debate

President Obama has come out and said he won't negotiate with the crazed fundamentalists who threaten to destroy life as we know it by holding the debt ceiling hostage while they make insane demands to cut government spending down to levels not seen since Ramses II was forcing the Israelites to drag huge blocks of stone around in the desert*. Simply put, his position is that since the spending is already cast in stone, so to speak, raising the debt ceiling so the government can borrow to pay for it is mandatory. One requires the other.

Speaker Boehner or Ramses II, I'm not sure which. I'll have to consult with Mut.

I have a few semi-random thoughts on the whole thing that, as I'm a blogger, I feel you simply must know in order to have a proper understanding of the whole thing. Here they are, in no particular order.

• Since both borrowing and spending are required for the cycle to complete itself, why does one take precedence over the other?
• It's only the House that's fussing over the debt ceiling. They've only got 1/3 responsibility for the spending. They had to compromise on the spending bills. Why doesn't he have to compromise on the debt limit?
• There's no budget even though it's required by law. The only group to have done it's duty and passed a budget are the crazed fundamentalists. Say what you will about their crazy craziness, at least they've done that. Do they get debate points for that?
• The President is required by law to submit a budget to Congress by the first Monday in February, but his people have already said that's not going to happen. I guess some laws are better than others.
• Since it's our debt and not his, is the President really on our side? There's one group of people who are trying to slow down the growth of how much I owe and another side who wants it unlimited. Why am I rooting for the side that wants to stick me with an unlimited bill?

* - I know these aren't his exact words. I'm paraphrasing here. Work with me.

Detroit, Illiteracy And Cultural Rot

First, let's clarify something. That well-publicized 47% adult illiteracy rate for Detroit looks to be bunk. As a more trustworthy figure isn't instantly available, let's just leave it at that. More broadly, Statistic Brain* reports the following table:

U.S. Illiteracy Statistics	Data
Percent of U.S. adults who can’t read	14 %
Number of U.S. adults who can’t read	32 Million
Percent of U.S. adults who read below a 5th grade level	21 %
Percent of prison inmates who can’t read	63 %
Percent of high school graduates who can’t read	19 %

More broadly still, when all the statistics are thrown about and the inevitable demand for more teachers or more schools or more programs, but always more More MORE money is made, the questions I have are these:

• When it's easier than ever to learn how to read, don't these numbers show that a large swath of America doesn't value literacy?
• Since reading is crucial for self-reliance in the 21st Century, doesn't this imply they don't see the need to be self-reliant? What kind of life can you make for yourself if you can't read?
• Why don't these people think they need to be self-reliant?

* - It's on the Internet, so it must be true! (I didn't verify the numbers.)

Sanctuary

We've had some weird moments in the Catican Compound recently. Not bad, just weird. There's a blog post in it somewhere, but not now.

When we went to Mass today, it was like dropping anchor off an island in the Pacific after a bad squall. Seeing the elderly, retired Monsignor greeting us at the door was so welcoming and reassuring and normal. I love that about the Church.

And it's good to see you, too, Father John!

Photo from here.

Tierrasanta Sunset

While out on training maneuvers with the Catican Guards in the local canyons, I found a place near home and easy to reach that offers a panoramic view of San Diego and the Pacific. We've had rain the last few days and that usually leads to perfect skies for sunsets. Yesterday was no exception. I left the photo pretty large, so it may be worth a click. I love the patterns in the low clouds right on the horizon.

Enjoy.

I Know It's Wrong, But

... I can't help thinking of this

every time I hear about Al Gore making about a billion dollars on carbon offset trading or $100M selling his failed television channel to Al Jazeera. The whole thing screams "LOOTING!" at me.

Blue States Are "Makers" And Red States Are "Takers"

There's a Bloomberg article out there today that correlates state fiscal performance with their political leanings. According to the article, in general, blue states are poorly run and have poor credit ratings. The comments dive into the standard talking point arguments, with the progressive side being the following:

One fact worth mentioning here is that, year after year, the deep blue states tend to be the largest net contributors to the federal government, while the deep red states tend to be large net recipients of federal spending. That's right - by and large, the blue states are the "makers," and the red states are the "takers."

Maybe that's true and maybe it's not. The Federal government does so much that lumping all spending into one big pile and accusing a recipient of being a "taker" seems a wild oversimplification. In any case, forget that for a moment and let's just deal with what is.

So the red states are "takers." So what?

Budgets and spending have to deal with what is, not what should be or what would be in a perfectly just and fair world. If your neighbor earns twice what you do, but happens to be a worthless sloth, that doesn't absolve you of managing your finances. It's irrelevant.

If blue states are fiscally irresponsible, it's because blue policies aren't coping with reality. Neighboring states aren't forcing the blue states to spend more than they bring in. That's a choice the blue states make for themselves. If there's a correlation between political leanings and fiscal performance, it's a pretty good indication those policies are inferior.

Just to be clear, not all sloths are worthless.

A Tiny Thought On The Trillion Dollar Coin

TV talking head and Nobel Prize personality Paul Krugman has thrown his weight behind the trillion dollar coin idea. If you haven't heard, the idea is to mint a single coin out of platinum and say it's worth a trillion dollars. The government would then deposit it at the Fed and continue to spend as they wished without concern for the debt ceiling. Debate in Congress from there on out would be meaningless.

Throwing out all the rhetoric, the whole idea is to neutralize political opposition to unlimited government spending. It disenfranchises the half of the population that thinks the government is already too big through the use of a gimmick.

If that's not fascist, nothing is.

Forward!

There Are More Of Us Than You Think

We're out there waiting to be found by each other and connected through social media. Tmotofga, below, could easily be a guest blogger here at the 'Post.

Hmmm. That might be interesting. Any of the SLOBs want to try that? Find someone completely outside of your social circle who looks to have the same values and bring them in as a guest blogger? I'm going to look into that myself.

Connections to new people and groups bring support and strength. That's got to be a good thing.

Update: On Twitter, he's @tmotofga. Worth a follow, for sure.

We Don't Have A Spending Problem

... so saith President Obama, according to an interview with Speaker of the House John Boehner.

What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: "At one point several weeks ago," Mr. Boehner says, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' " ...

The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system".

I find that fascinating. How can that make any sense at all? If the problem is health care, then they must believe one or more of the following things about health care:

1. Private firms are making too much profit,
2. With more preventive care we can save enormously on later treatments and/or
3. Health care allocation is way out of balance.

To think that we can find a trillion dollars a year in government savings with those three things boggles the mind. #1 is not born out by the financial statements of the companies involved, #2 sounds like one of those Lean Six Sigma hallucinations about efficiency and #3 flies in the face of millenia of experience about central planning.

Focusing on the profit idea and looking at Aetna, one of our big health insurance firms and presumably a Vortex of Evil, it's net profit margin is 5.88%. That's not exactly robber baron territory right there. It's total net profit for 2011 was $1.98B. Stomping on one of our largest insurance companies and taking all of its disgusting profits would take care of less than half a day of government borrowing.

This is basic math. Does anyone in the White House understand basic math or have their PowerPoint presentations achieved such a level of sophistication that they no longer resemble anything in the real world?

Or is it that their boss thinks he knows more than everyone else and won't listen to reasonable voices so the math never reaches him or is dismissed out of hand?

“I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Thanks to Gateway Pundit for the image and the quote.

How About A Zombie Retrovirus?

That is, something that turns zombies into zombie zombies - zombies that want to eat other zombies. The end result would be quite interesting. Are the zombie zombies even slower than regular zombies? Can the living tell zombie zombies from zombies? If you shoot a zombie zombie in the head, does it die? (Why would you want to? Zombie zombies would represent the fastest way to finish off the zombie menace!)

Braaaiiinnnnsss!  Zombie braaaiiinnnnssss!

Photo from Soctt Beale of Laughing Squid.

Should Every American Understand Football?

My daughter finds football boring. She also doesn't understand the game, which might be why she finds it boring. The rest of us in the family are football fans to varying degrees and we all understand the game. Whenever we it turn on, she just goes upstairs and hangs out alone.

Today, one of our boys and I are going to watch the Seattle-Washington playoff game and my daughter is going to watch it with us. She'll have us as resources as well as The Complete Idiot's Guide To Football. She may suffer, but as sure as Bart Starr wore shoulder pads, she'll understand the game when it's over. I would argue that every American should.

In her case, imagine her boyfriend takes her to a playoff party at a friend's house. Instead of watching the game with everyone else, she sits there fiddling around on her phone. When asked, she tells everyone she doesn't understand the game. Plenty of people at the party would label her an idiot for not being able to figure out football. It's a social faux pas.

Football's part of our national cultural heritage. Even if you don't watch it, you ought to understand it. Agreed?

Otherwise you won't participate in moments like this.

How Much Do You Know About Michael Tomasky?

I'm in a hurry this morning, but I wanted to toss this one out in partial response to this blog post by WC Varones on the collaboration of the Fourth Estate with Obama's Peronist Administration. I want to posit what I think is the proper response to their propagandizing.

Mr. Tomasky has posted a piece in the Daily Beast describing how President Obama can "win" the upcoming debt ceiling fight. It's filled with sophisticated political strategems and shrewd analyses.

So what?

Unless Mr. Tomasky has inherited a pile of money or he's got a second career outside of journalism, the dude's going to be in a world of hurt in a very short while. Forget the politics, just focus on the money. Michael and the rest of us currently owe this much:

Learn more about us debt.

That's not someone else's debt, that's ours.

What's his plan for paying off his share? If he thinks he can soak the rich, he ought to look at Senator John Kerry's decision to house his luxury yacht away from Massachusetts' enormous taxes. If the True Believers among the idle rich aren't paying Mike's share, what makes him think anyone else will?

What happens in Mike's world as the Fed continues to monetize over a trillion dollars of debt each year?

In short, when will Mike start writing articles with Mike's best interests at heart? Does he want President Obama to "win" the debt ceiling fight?

How I Feel About Hanging Outdoor Christmas Lights

... is a function of the calendar.

She's Watching

There's a small landing at the top of our stairs just right for watching what goes on below.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Idea #1: Crush The Jedi

I thought this was pretty funny.

Stocks, Gold, Dave Ramsey And Inflation

... and real estate. The title was getting too long.

A while back, I linked to a zerohedge post that described the inflationary sweet spot for stocks which turned out to be in the 4% range. That is, as an inflation hedge, your stock returns were best when inflation was between 2 and 6%. I didn't like that analysis as inflation hitting 6% is going to be a way station to much, much bigger problems. Tiny increases in interest rates are going to obliterate the Federal budget through mammoth increases in debt servicing costs.

So stocks are not my favorite investment. How about gold? Well, I understand the arguments made by several of the SLOBs, but I'm not a big fan for anything other than small amounts of it. It's a rock. It just sits there. It's subject to manipulation. It only pays off when you sell it.

Where does that leave us? For me, it's rental property. Middle to low-end housing that you can rent out for a reasonable rate and hopefully keep occupied most of the time. The rent would have to cover at least the mortgage and repairs for starters so it would be cash flow neutral. It has the advantage of being a source of income and in inflationary times, the income would go up while the mortgage would stay the same.

This is where Dave Ramsey comes in. Buy with cash or almost all cash. If you need anything more than a small, fixed-rate mortgage, you are courting disaster. A rental property with an unemployed tenant can turn into a real money sink if you've got a mortgage. Here in California, it takes 6 months to evict someone, so that would be 6 months of mortgage paid with no rent to back it up.

Another issue with California property is Proposition 13. Way back when, the state government was endlessly raising taxes on property. Proposition 13 put an end to that. With the state facing a fiscal crisis and the Democrats having a super majority, there's no telling what will happen. If they can even partially rescind Prop 13, California property values will get whacked.

To me, that seems to suggest buying rental property in another state. Perhaps a retirement house you can rent out in the meantime. Paying cash for it, too. Sound good?

Actually, there are three other things you could invest in as well.

Three Thoughts On The Fiscal Cliff Settlement

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A Newer Commenting Policy

Suffering under a deluge of spam, I had changed my commenting policy to require you to type in those horrid  captcha words. I didn't want to do it, but there seemed to be no alternative. This morning, I went through the spam comments on the site and found a few things.

• Up until the middle of November, Blogger's spam catcher worked well. Why it fell apart then, I'm not sure, but up to that point, it was working fine.
• Spam comments come mostly on old posts.
• Blogger settings allow you to use comment moderation on posts older than a given age.

I've turned the captcha words off again and am using comment moderation on any post older than 7 days. I don't want my email larded up with the stuff, so I won't review comments on those older posts until I get around to looking at them in the Blogger dashboard. I'll try to be better about looking at them in a more timely manner, but I'm not able to make any promises.

Settings -> Comments

If some of your comments got caught in the spam filter, I'm sorry, but I'm just killing everything there. As I understand it, Blogger's spam filter is based on the spam comments you delete, not the ones simply marked spam. I've got more than 47,000 spam comments and there's no way I can go through each of them looking for your work. I'm flushing the whole thing without reading them.

I love comments. I love them more than hits. I want to make it as easy as possible for you to interact here on the 'Post. I'm hoping these new settings will help kill off spam while making the effort to comment as light as possible.