A Good Way To End The Week

OS really did mean to work today, honestly.

But it's the first Friday of autumn, both he and Mrs. OS have been running with the physical and emotional throttles wide open for the past couple of weeks.

We put the youngest child on the plane Wednesday, sending him off to college. Not just the college of his choice, but the one of his dreams. It was a proud moment, but the silence in the empty nest can be deafening

So, OS played hooky, and is so glad he did. Lunch at a lovely small restaurant owned by a brave young couple. Then a visit to the Mennonites, who run a bakery way off the beaten path, followed by a visit to a Mennonite-owned nursery. Filled the back of the car with purple asters.

We had fun, just for its own sake. Hell's-Bells, OS even drank most of a beer with his lunch, and Mrs. OS enjoyed a glass of white wine. A complete departure from our lives of industrious and productive sobriety.

It was a good day. It made OS grateful for all his many blessings of family, friends and occupation. It also made him aware how wonderful are our freedoms.

Off to bed. Another day in a wonderful part of the world to awaken to.

Another FARC Narco-Gangster Bites The Dust: Jorge Biceño, Alias 'Mono Jojoy'

Announcement made this morning.


Colombian security forces killed Jorge Briceno, alias Mono Jojoy, one of the top commanders in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, striking a major blow to the leftist guerrilla group, Caracol Radio reported Thursday.

Briceno was killed in combat in Meta, in the south of the country, the radio station reported on its website.

Briceno's death marks one of the strongest military successes against the FARC, which has seen its leadership decimated in recent years as a result of a security crackdown by the government.

This is a setback for Chavez of Venezuela as well, one of FARC's active backers. OS now awaits the propaganda machine of the left to begin depicting the drug-trafficking FARC as the victim and the elected government of Colombia as the villain. Just give it a few days, the drumbeat will begin to sound.

A Heroine For Our Day: Eileen Nearne, British Spy In WWII France

As we are treated to the daily avalanche of words, sounds, and images lionizing public women like Lady Gaga, MichelleMaBelle, BigSis, Eileen Kagan, Oprah(how can we forget Oprah?)--the depressing list just goes on and on, OS hopes we'll take a moment to remember a very private woman, Eileen Nearne, whose service and sacrifices made it possible for us to live in a world not run by the Nazis.


From the New York Times Obituaries this week:

After she died earlier this month, a frail 89-year-old alone in a flat in the British seaside town of Torquay, Eileen Nearne, her body undiscovered for several days, was listed by local officials as a candidate for what is known in Britain as a council burial, or what in the past was called a pauper’s grave.

But after the police looked through her possessions, including a Croix de Guerre medal awarded to her by the French government after World War II, the obscurity Ms. Nearne had cultivated for decades began to slip away.

Known to her neighbors as an insistently private woman who loved cats and revealed almost nothing about her past, she has emerged as a heroine in the tortured story of Nazi-occupied France, one of the secret agents who helped prepare the French resistance for the D-Day landings in June 1944.

On Tuesday, the anonymity that Ms. Nearne had cherished in life was denied her in death. A funeral service in Torquay featured a military bugler and piper and an array of uniformed mourners. A red cushion atop her coffin bore her wartime medals. Eulogies celebrated her as one of 39 British women who were parachuted into France as secret agents by the Special Operations Executive, a wartime agency known informally as “Churchill’s secret army,” which recruited more than 14,000 agents to conduct espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines.

The rest of the story is harrowing, as she heroically endured suffering for her nation and for freedom. In real ways, she never recovered from the experience, and her death at age eighty-nine was a release from suffering.

OS sits here, able to live his wonderful life in the US, because English women like Eileen faithfully served during their lifetimes.

It receives so little mention these days, but there is a large quiet slice of British society that has always quietly gone about its business of living with great courage and generosity in the face of daunting odds. It continues quietly today, and as a matter of fact, OS was the direct recipient of some of that grace this morning. Someday, in about five years, OS will be able to tell this remarkable story. For now, only silence will do.

Yes, we've got us a biiig economy problem, but a bigger cultural problem, which has to be tackled before the economy has a chance of turning around.

It's about the culture we choose to build by the lives we lead, and the heroes we emulate.

It's the culture.

It's the culture.

It's the culture.

OS prays daily that the Eileens of this world will prevail over the Lady Gagas. His children's futures depend upon how we choose.

The Best Reason EVER To NEVER Overturn 'Don't Ask-Don't Tell'

HT Inside Higher Ed.

The President of Harvard University assures us that ROTC will be welcomed on campus once the military abandons 'Don't Ask-Don't Tell'.

Harvard University, which expelled ROTC four decades ago, will welcome the military training program back to campus only when the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members is repealed, the university’s president said yesterday.

Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, speaking the day after the US Senate declined to take up a measure that would have repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy, said vestiges of antimilitarism on campus dating to the Vietnam War are largely gone and she would now welcome the opportunity to “regularize our relationship’’ with the armed forces.

“We are very much looking forward to the end of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ’’ Faust said. “It will be a very important moment to us when that happens.’’

Let's think about this, ya'll! Harvard has contributed geniuses like Obama, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan--just to name a few recent stellar examples--to the current leadership of our fair country. Do we really really really desire the injection of Harvard ROTC grads into the officer corps of our military?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Please.

OS Just Received A Creepy Phone Call...

...from an organization calling itself the Police Protective Fund. The caller ID displays the number 1-727-863-5033.

A brusque, rather wise-guy, voice called OS by name, and asked how things were going at the home address, which he quoted accurately. OS broke into his script by asking for the purpose of his call, and he attempted to remain on script. OS broke in again, inquiring the reason for the call.

He was soliciting donations from everyone in this little town, so that 'everyone will have that police support sticker' displayed on their car. OS responded that he pays taxes for police protection, and doesn't believe he should need a window sticker for that service. The voice on the phone said, 'Well, this is for widows and children, you know', to which OS responded, 'I don't care, I won't be 'donating' for this'.

The voice turned icy, 'well you don't care then', and hung up.

OS thinks he just received one of those 'This is a nice little house you got here. Be a shame if someone were to BURN IT DOWN! Right, Gino? Right Vito?' sorts of calls.

Very unsettling.

A quick search for 'Police Protective Fund' turns up some results, and none of them look too promising.

This is very unsettling. OS posts it so it will be somewhere searchable for the future.

Barney Frank May Have Reason To Worry: GOP Candidate Sean Bielat Beginning To Draw Close

Lessee...we've got an aging, obese, spluttering, inept, and likely corrupt cartoon character Barney Frank as the incumbent, who chairs the House Banking Committee.

Then we've got a challenger, young, lean, calm, and apparently competent Sean Bielat. A Marine officer, with degrees from Harvard, Georgetown, and an MBA almost complete at Wharton. He thinks Barney is part of the problem, that Congress is out of control.

An interview with him is found here.

Hmmm...

The Wit And Wisdom Of Barack Obama's Auntie Zeituni

Ain't family jes' wonderful, ya'll? I mean, if you git to know some of the older folk, you understand why the younger folk are the way they are.

Fer example, our President, The Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Now, he hadn't actually done anything, like stop a war, to earn it. But that's ok, he had not a moment's pause in accepting it. After all, it's, well, Himself; and that's all you need to remember at a time like that. Understood?

Now, we find out his Auntie Zeituni has been a major influence upon Himself, and upon the course of modern history, from her free apartment in South Boston, collecting $700 a month from the gubbermint, and managing to pay for some expensive lawyering from Cleveland. All while living here as an illegal alien from Kenya.

She has given an interview to the local CBS affiliate in Boston, where she reminds us that she, by gum, is the real victim of the evil American system.

The quote of the day from Auntie Zeituni: "If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen."

Isn't family wonderful?

Well, That Worked Out Well! Larry Summers Heads Back To Harvard

Now only TurboTax Timmy is left of the original quartet of Romer, Orzag, Summers and TT.

Wasn't it about eighteen months ago that anyone who raised his hand and said, 'Maybe it's unwise to double the federal deficit in one year--just sayin'...' was considered a lower life-form, not worthy of consideration. You know, one of those creatures who watches that NewsNetworkThatWe'llJustPretendDoesn'tExist. One of them.

Things have not worked out well in the interim. The banksters got bailed out. The UAW got bailed out. Everybody else (and old fashioned ideas like the Rule of Law) pretty well got hosed.

So, Larry, This Bud's For You. You can head back to the ultimate academic bubble of Cambridge, MA, write your book about why it was all Bush's fault, do some consulting, pretend to read grad student dissertations, and generally be a Pooh-Bah.

You'll be amongst friends, fellow Citizens of the Bubble, like the guys who declared that the Great Recession is officially over.

Whew! That was close! You get to leave on a high note. Real unemployment's about 20%, one in seven are on public assistance, and no one in his right mind will even think about launching a small business.

But, that's OK. You saved the country from recession.

Best Suggestion Of The Year: Pastor Peters--A Hymnbook In Every Home

OS continues to maintain that our woes are cultural, and that the cure has to address the culture.

Pastor Peters hits the ball out of the cultural park when he reminds us of the obvious: Every home should have a good hymnal, in use, not on the back shelf.

And, the best 'accessory' for your hymnal is a piano. Lots of them on the market now, at bargain prices.

He is heartened to hear the news that this particular Lutheran hymnal has sold over a million copies since 2006.

Enjoy Pastor Peter's thoughts in the meantime, ya'll.

"Domingo Biojó", FARC Leader, Killed By Colombian Government Forces

Wanted in the US on several warrants, subject of an Interpol circular, and apparently informed on by people who decided they would rather have USD 555,000 in pocket, and a narco-terrorist sent to his reward.

Colombia, somewhere along the way, decided it was tired of the non-stop violence and disruption caused by the FARC, which is funded by drug money.

They're making progress. Compare and contrast to its neighbor Venezuela.

Which approach is working, and which one breeds poverty and chaos?

The New Wall On The Southern Border...of Mexico...

So, how come it's ok for THEM to build a wall to keep illegal aliens off their southern border, and we're heartless Yanqui monsters if we do likewise?

Hmmm....

HT to M3

We Are The Super-Rich: This One Is Making The Rounds

Jes' so Miz Nancy can't accuse this author of being some sort of nut-case-Astro-Turf-racist-Teabagger type, let's start with the author's credentials:

Todd Henderson received an engineering degree cum laude from Princeton University in 1993. He worked for several years designing and building dams in California before matriculating at the Law School. While at the Law School, Todd was an Editor of the Law Review and captained the Law School's all-University champion intramural football team. He graduated magna cum laude in 1998 and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, Todd served as clerk to the Hon. Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then practiced appellate litigation at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., and was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in Boston, where he specialized in counseling telecommunications and high-tech clients on business and regulatory strategy. His research interests include corporations, securities regulation, bankruptcy, law and economics, and intellectual property.

OK, Miz Nancy, now that THAT's out of the way, let's read what the gent posted on 10 September, 2010.

The rhetoric in Washington about taxes is about millionaires and the super rich, but the relevant dividing line between millionaires and the middle class is pegged at family income of $250,000. (I’m not a math professor, but last time I checked $250,000 is less than $1 million.) That makes me super rich and subject to a big tax hike if the president has his way.

I’m the president’s neighbor in Chicago, but we’ve never met. I wish we could, because I would introduce him to my family and our lifestyle, one he believes is capable of financing the vast expansion of government he is planning. A quick look at our family budget, which I will happily share with the White House, will show him that like many Americans, we are just getting by despite seeming to be rich. We aren’t.

I, like the president before me, am a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and my wife, like the first lady before her, works at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she is a doctor who treats children with cancer. Our combined income exceeds the $250,000 threshold for the super rich (but not by that much), and the president plans on raising my taxes. After all, we can afford it, and the world we are now living in has that familiar Marxian tone of those who need take and those who can afford it pay. The problem is, we can’t afford it. Here is why.

The biggest expense for us is financing government. Last year, my wife and I paid nearly $100,000 in federal and state taxes, not even including sales and other taxes. This amount is so high because we can’t afford fancy accountants and lawyers to help us evade taxes and we are penalized by the tax code because we choose to be married and we both work outside the home. (If my wife and I divorced or were never married, the government would write us a check for tens of thousands of dollars. Talk about perverse incentives.)

Our next biggest expense, like most people, is our mortgage. Homes near our work in Chicago aren’t cheap and we do not have friends who were willing to help us finance the deal. We chose to invest in the University community and renovate and old property, but we did so at an inopportune time.

We pay about $15,000 in property taxes, about half of which goes to fund public education in Chicago. Since we care the education of our three children, this means we also have to pay to send them to private school. My wife has school loans of nearly $250,000 and I do too, although becoming a lawyer is significantly cheaper. We try to invest in our retirement by putting some money in the stock market, something that these days sounds like a patriotic act. Our account isn’t worth much, and is worth a lot less than it used to be.

Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby so we can both work outside the home. At the end of all this, we have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive.

If our taxes rise significantly, as they seem likely to, we can cut back on some things. The (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center, but these are only a few hundred dollars per month in total. But more importantly, what is the theory under which collecting this money in taxes and deciding in Washington how to spend it is superior to our decisions? Ask the entrepreneurs we employ and the new arrivals they employ in turn whether they prefer to work for us or get a government handout.

If these cuts don’t work, we will sell our house – into an already spiraling market of declining asset values – and our cars, assuming someone will buy them. The irony here, of course, is that the government is working to save both of these industries despite the impact that increasing taxes will have.

The problem with the president’s plan is that the super rich don’t pay taxes – they hide in the Cayman Islands or use fancy investment vehicles to shelter their income. We aren’t rich enough to afford this – I use Turbo Tax. But we are rich enough to be hurt by the president’s plan. The next time the president comes home to Chicago, he has a standing invitation to come to my house (two blocks from his) and judge for himself whether the Hendersons are as rich as he thinks.

OS passes this along, and has kept a hard-copy of it, lest it disappear down the Memory Hole in the future.

He hopes his readers will do the same.

Yep, The Recession Is Over! Just Ignore The Neighborhoods of St. Louis Being Torched By Thieves

Nothing to see here, just move along, now.

Law enforcement officials, politicians and historic preservationists here have concluded that brick thieves are often to blame, deliberately torching buildings to quicken their harvest of St. Louis brick, prized by developers throughout the South for its distinctive character.

“The firemen come and hose them down and shoot all that mortar off with the high-pressure hose,” said Alderman Samuel Moore, whose predominantly black Fourth Ward has been hit particularly hard by brick thieves. When a thief goes to pick up the bricks after a fire, “They’re just laying there nice and clean.”

It is a crime that has increased with the recession. Where thieves in many cities harvest copper, aluminum and other materials from vacant buildings, brick rustling has emerged more recently as a sort of scrapper’s endgame, exploited once the rest of a building’s architectural elements have been exhausted. “Cleveland is suffering from this,” said Royce Yeater, Midwest director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “I’ve also heard of it happening in Detroit.”

DidYewJestHearWhutISaid??!!! The recession's over! Get yerself somewhar' else, now.

Nothin' worth seein' heah! Goh-won! GIT!!

What Are They Smoking In Cambridge, MA? NBER Declares The Recession Ended In June 2009

Really...

They gotta be smoking something, likely the ObamaGanja, 'cuz if you ride the streets of Cleveland, or Chicago, or Memphis, or Nashville, or the small towns in between, you see a succession of boarded-up storefronts and empty businesses, a host of shabbily-dressed and discouraged looking people, along with a few people for whom life has never looked better.

The poverty/public assistance rate is now one in seven. And that's according to the gubb'mint, who knohz 'bout such thangs.

OS increasingly thinks that The Great Recession is a product of the era of The Great Disconnect, in which ThePeopleInChargeOfTheseThings in business, government, ecclesia, culture--all retreated into some sort of bubble of their own making. They tell themselves everything's just fine, and therefore it is.

Sort of like people who, well, smoke ganja all the time.

The NBER even tells us who's been inhaling, in case you're curious. A Who's-Who of the American Academic Bubble.

The current members of the Business Cycle Dating Committee are:
Robert Hall, Stanford University (chair);
Martin Feldstein, Harvard University;
Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard University;
Robert Gordon, Northwestern University;
James Poterba, MIT and NBER President;
James Stock, Harvard University;
and Mark Watson, Princeton University.
David Romer, University of California, Berkeley, is on leave from the committee and did not participate in its deliberations.

Deze boyz ain't been within shouting distance of reality since they left graduate school to take a cruise courtesy of their family trust funds.

OS's gotta go, so he doesn't wind up like those one in seven in Real America.

JDA Missed Her Calling

She should have been a preacher.

Really.

Sample this bit below, in which she illuminates the pronouncements of the luminaries who assure us that all is well.

Regulatory uncertainty has pretty much assured the employment situation will remain sketchy for the foreseeable future, or at least until we figure out the true real-world impact of genius moves like Obamacare, financial reform, consumer protection and accounting rule changes implemented in the midst of crisis as a direct result of the impact of old rules on the economy. That's called having to pay for that hamburger on Tuesday that you borrowed money for last week in case you aren't paying attention.

Banks are still clinging to crap assets and functioning as official money laundering machine for the US Treasury by borrowing money at 0 from Uncle Bernanke and stuffing it into Treasurys. That's all well and good but what happens if Bernanke grows a pair, hikes up interest rates and takes away the crack? How are banks going to breeze through new Basel capital requirements then?

I don't know about you all but I can't drive more than a block through San Francisco or any of our lovely Bay Area 'burbs without seeing vacant, for lease, for sale or otherwise "available" properties. Were I to try and come up with an estimate as to just how many I see on an average stroll through town I'd have to guess somewhere between a metric shit ton and a massive fuck ton, it's hard to say.

Is that a recovery? Does it feel like a recovery? Does it look like a recovery?

A recovery would imply a return to normal. Free money from the Fed is not normal. 10% unemployment is not normal. 99 weeks of unemployment is not normal. .1% returns on savings or CDs are not normal. Riots, protests, rallies and general civil unrest (be it mild at this point) are not normal. Trading volume of practically nothing for anyone except for HFT robots, hedge funds and the invisible hand is not normal.

Someone needs to get the Fed that memo so they can stop with this nonsense and I'd love to see their senior economists coming up with something far more useful than the same HOORAH WE'RE SAVED propaganda we have all heard and read since March of 2009.

You'll have to read the essay to get to her payoff line. Wouldn't wish to spoil it for you.

She's the wonderfullest when she gets her preacher on.