When I listened to Mark Steyn's After America, I thought the breakup of the US was one of his crazier predictions. An example claim is that, given our current trajectories, why would Texas want to hang around to help absorb the fiscal collapse of Illinois and California? "Right, Mark," I thought. "That's really going to happen."
The Catalan regional assembly approved a resolution on Thursday afternoon to hold a referendum on self-determination, as its general policy debate wound down to a close...
The resolution, which comes after the announcement that regional elections will be brought forward to November 25, reads: “The Catalan parliament affirms the necessity of the Catalan people to decide freely and democratically their collective future and calls on the [regional] government to hold a consultation first and foremost within the next legislature.”
Catalonia is one of Spain's wealthiest regions and it includes Barcelona. They have their own culture and their own language. They've always had an independent streak and right now, they aren't all that enthused about sticking around to watch the place fall to pieces.
It's a new wrinkle in the whole EU debt crisis. Will regions of indebted countries exit the Eurozone as separate entities while the parent nations try to cling to membership?
I took this photo with my Galaxy S3 while out on a training exercise with the Catican Guards. I shrank it by almost half to save on storage, but the image is still beautifully clear. The camera in that little thing is great. Click on the image to see what I mean.
... so we can make room for Americans that ought to be doing migrant farm work.
Ready for some serious harshness on your Saturday mellow? Here we go.
Fruits and vegetables need to be picked. The work is back-breaking and of so little per-person value that pay is well below minimum wage. Right now, we bring in illegals to do it. Like these folks.
They should all be sent home. Instead, we need to slash social spending and start letting kids drop out of school. The dropouts can go pick the strawberries.
After back-to-school night at my daughter's public high school and conversations with her about her classes, it's obvious that many students place no value on education - theirs or anyone else's. And why should they? No matter how you behave, no one is expelled and even if you drop out, labor laws (not applied to illegals) and social programs ensure that you don't have to pick strawberries.
Kids learn that they can get away with anything in class.
As the really bad kids learn they can act up, the somewhat bad kids join when they see that it's all fun and no penalties. Mildly bad kids tag along and pretty soon, you get my daughter's Geometry class where learning is nearly impossible.
If you deported the illegals, you'd still need the fruits and veggies picked. If you did away with minimum wage laws, you could hire Americans. If you did away with the social spending, you'd have Americans who wanted the jobs. If you let kids drop out of school or expelled them for bad behavior, you'd have your workforce. At the same time, the other students would see there were penalties for not being serious about learning.
I would bet that in short order, you'd see massive improvements in education. It's win-win-win, except for the kids who drop out, but they aren't going anywhere right now anyway.
Inevitable: As Greece and Spain are showing right now, countries that borrow their way into insolvency to pay for lavish social programs end up like this as a matter of societal evolution. They may riot and burn and kill first, but in the end, they'll be out picking strawberries.
For the next few weeks, I'll be telecommuting most days as our office areas undergo some construction. I could conceivably still work there, but I'm guessing that the noise and mess will make a crowded office situation still worse for everyone, so I sent the lads home.
It feels weird.
I feel like a kid who's playing hooky from school, scared that mom will come home and find the chips and sodas all over the coffee table and Cartoon Network on the TV. That's not the reality, of course. I find myself getting to work way earlier than I ever did when I was driving in since my computer is right downstairs. The work environment is much more productive, too and I'm finally attacking things that required long-term thought and concentration.
Aside from the strangeness of the thing, the biggest thing I've picked up over the last few days is the need for chat. I'm a manager and even when in the office, I've not done a good job of staying connected with everyone. The fact that I could walk over and see someone removed the urgency from actually doing so. Now that I'm far away, I want that same ability and chat is the answer. Not everyone has it.
Yesterday, I did a 12-round email exchange with one of my folks that lasted a couple of hours. I did email instead of a phone call as I needed time to address each round, so a phone call wouldn't have worked well for me. Had we been on chat, it would have lasted 10 minutes, tops. At the same time, I would have felt like I was connected to that person and not so distant. You can't trade quips with someone over email while you work something out. Chat is much more human.
Aside from that, I'm loving the telecommuting. The Catican Guards love having me around and our Maximum Leader spent some time yesterday snoozing right next to me. I could get used to this.
So the president went to the UN and sacrificed American free speech to the Islamists, prostrating himself over a video that had nothing to do with the Islamist attacks on our embassies that made him and Hillary wet their pants. Here's what the President of Libya had to say:
What's the point of rational conversation any more? This is simply insane. The President of Libya sits there and tells NBC News that it was a premeditated act of war while Obama behaves as if the video caused the attack. His progressive worldview is completely divorced from reality. The most amazing thing of all is that when he is confronted by contradictions from the real world, he doesn't change his thinking.
That's not an intellectual bubble he's living in, it's a hermetically sealed bunker.
Secondary thought: Talk about return on investment! In exchange for some mortar rounds and a few RPGs, the Islamists got the President of the United States of America to crawl to the UN and speak about how the Prophet is sacred and off limits, mouthing justifications for his actions that the simplest child can see are total lies. What sniveling worms these Americans are! Bloody their noses just a tiny bit and they completely capitulate.
Tertiary thought: I love the interviewer. She's performing a bisection search between two data points: Attacks occurred and they were premeditated. Were there mortars? How many mortars? How do you know they were there? Is this what leads you to think the attacks were premeditated? Jiminy Christmas, woman, the President of Libya is telling you your ambassador was assassinated in a coordinated military strike and you keep circling back to question whether or not it was really coordinated.
Over in Spain, they're putting the finishing touches on their annual budget. The write up in El Pais contains this gem:
Despite putting the austerity drive into fifth gear, overall spending is due rise 9.2 percent as a result of higher interest rates on public debt and Social Security system outlays, largely a result of unemployment benefits, with a quarter of the working population out of a job.
Umm, it's not austerity if the budget is increasing by nearly 10% and it's certainly not "austerity drive in fifth gear".
After quite some time spent blogging snarks about the Euros overspending and their inability to comprehend the connection between earning and having, we're now seeing anti-austerity riots like this:
That's not snarkworthy, it's pitiable and scary at the same time. Things are only going to get worse over there.
... that deserves a larger post later when I have the time.
With the Fed printing a trillion dollars a year, its contribution to Federal receipts is now close to equal to all the income tax paid by everyone across the country.
With the launch of the permanent common-currency bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), just around the corner, euro-zone member states are looking into ways to leverage the €500 billion ($647 billion) available to the fund, SPIEGEL has learned. But with Finland still concerned about the leveraging plans, it is unlikely that they will be initially included when the ESM is launched on Oct. 8.
The plan envisions the continuation of leverage instruments currently in use in the temporary euro bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Should they be applied to the ESM, the permanent fund could be able to mobilize up to €2 trillion instead of the €500 billion lending capacity it currently has -- a size that would make it easier to provide emergency aid to countries as large as Spain and Italy, for example.
Translation: They need two trillion euros to bail everybody out today*, but they only have 500 billion. So they're going to do what banks do and lend more than they have in deposits. This is called leveraging. It works when you are lending to people who can pay you back. In the case of the EU, since no one will ever be able to pay them back, they have a fallback plan.
Print. Print. Print.
Summary: They thought they could make do with 500 billion, but that was too small. They need 2 trillion. It's impossible to raise that kind of cash, so it's time for some flim-flammery and simply declare that 500 billion is equal to 2 trillion.
No, this isn't unstable. Not at all.
* - They're all socialists, so they will need additional trillions later. There's no way on Earth they're ever going to do anything but lose money.
Crazed Apple fanboys enraged at criticism of the iPhone.
I played with a new Apple iPhone 5 yesterday and I didn't like it.
There. I said it. I've made sure my insurance is paid up and I've got the Catican Guards on high alert in preparation for the iMullahs rousing of the iMob.
A friend of ours works at an Apple Store and got hers as soon as they shipped. She brought it over last night and I had a chance to compare it to my new Galaxy S3. There isn't any comparison at all as far as I'm concerned.
First off, the iPhone has an industrial feel to it. It's not a friendly thing to hold in your hand. It's thick, heavy and metallic. The edges make you feel like it just came out of a machine shop. The S3 is sleek, light and soft to the touch.
I didn't know if the screen size would make a difference, but when you held them up side-by-side, it really did. Over the last week or so, I've gotten used to the S3's monster screen and looking at the iPhone, I couldn't imagine going back to something so ... small. A coworker once characterized customers with small computer monitors as "looking at the world through a tank slit" and that's the very first thing I thought when the two were turned on next to each other. The difference doesn't seem like much when it's written down, but in person, it was a big deal to me.
The new navigation on the iPhone is supposed to wow you, but when you finally get to the details, it's nothing more and probably something less than the Google Maps app Android users have had for a long time. The three dimensional view sounds like a cute idea, but I don't know how it helps me find where I'm going. When I need to glance at the map while in urban traffic, I don't think I want a smaller screen cluttered with cute models of the buildings. I just want to see the upcoming turns.
All in all, I'd say the Android phones have surpassed Apple's iPhone line. Riot all you want, but for the first time, I saw a friend with a brand-new, top-of-the-line iPhone and wanted to console them.
Just got back from a sprint to Merced. Very tired. Spending the day supine, watching EPL games. Please don't do or say anything interesting until tomorrow.
After visiting my daughter's high school on Wednesday night where everyone gets an A for effort because no effort is required, none of this should be a surprise. The arc of socialist failure can take 30-40 years to trace its way from initial experiment to inevitable crash meaning that generations grow up in the cuddly embrace of an ever-decaying government.
Jim Messina, likely a product of a school system like our own, is smiling above because he thinks he can have things because he wants them and nothing needs to be earned.
Were I to meet the lad, I'd tell him this: "Jimmy, my boy, you may have what you want and show your compassion by handing out all the benefits you like. Well, at least until printing money no longer works. After that, you'll have screwed us all."
After reading DDE and B-Daddy, you may come to the conclusion that we're just about there.
Last night we went to back-to-school night at my daughter's high school. Our sons all went to an all-boys Catholic high school, but for various reasons, she is going to the local public school. The difference was dramatic and as I sat there listening to the teachers, several things occurred to me. Here's a sampling, in no particular order.
Participation was low. At the Catholic school, about 90-95% of the parents attended. At the public school, it was 10-20%.
Most of her teachers have completely punted on homework. They don't give any. At all.
Some graded on attempting to solve problems rather than giving the correct answer. Note: at the Catholic school, there was very, very little partial credit given.
There was no feeling that the students or the parents were expected to provide anything other than a warm body to sit in a chair.
You would graduate imagining that someone will pay you for trying to do your job and you won't be expected to improve yourself on your own.
The literature and social studies syllabi seemed thoroughly leftist.
There is one auto shop class and a few art classes. Other than that, no trades are taught.
The English teacher talked almost entirely about helping the kids pass the high school proficiency tests required to graduate.
In general, it seemed as though the education system has surrendered. They're not even trying to succeed any more, at least not in any real sense. Instead, they have defined success down until it's all about getting the kids a diploma or GED.
Minimum wage is screwing these kids. From what I saw, many of the "graduates" will be worth far less than minimum wage plus mandated benefits plus the costs of government-mandated corporate support systems. I could only imagine what kind of workers the school is producing. No wonder so many of them end up unemployed.
Since the school expects almost nothing, the parents have to pick up the slack. It made me glad I've been forcing her to do well at soccer. It is the habit of working hard to be good at something that matters.
Backing up to a societal level, I felt that I could see the rot of deficit spending all around me. There was no sense of urgency at all. The system was producing graduates ill-suited for either college or the trades while the State has long since run out of tax money and taxable workers. In the midst of their own financial starvation, the teachers were producing a workforce unable to compete or even understand that competition existed.
It was nowhere evident that the teachers connected a lack of employable graduates with their own personal welfare.
