… to everything on the ground, above it, and below it:

A battle is brewing between the Saskatchewan government and First Nations over the province’s potash riches.
Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd says the government’s position is clear — it is happy to work with First Nations, but potash and other natural resources are under the exclusive control of the provincial government.
A group of First Nations preparing to launch legal action on the matter says the issue is not so black and white. Led by former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) chief Perry Bellegarde, they say First Nations never surrendered any resources below the “depth of a plough” in the treaties.

Previous

The rats are slinking away:

Mr. Soros, a champion of liberal causes, has been directing his money to groups that work on health care and the environment, rather than electoral politics. Asked if the prospect of Republican control of one or both houses of Congress concerned him, he said: “It does, because I think they are pushing the wrong policies, but I’m not in a position to stop it. I don’t believe in standing in the way of an avalanche.”

I don’t think they’ve removed “Stand up for Canada” from the CPC bus:

“The next election is going to be a choice…When the next election does come the entire future of this country is at stake… Let’s be blunt: A far left coalition’s only priority seems to be shutting down Alberta energy industry and putting thousands of Albertans out of work.”

Coalition or us … how does that work for you?
via

Hillier:

“What crap!” Hillier writes in the new edition of A Soldier First, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.
“The National Defence Act is clear — our sons and daughters need to have direction from the leaders that Canadians have elected, and they need to have that direction passed through the Chief of Defence Staff without interference from bureaucrats who have no preparation or training for this task, and no responsibility for those lives.
“Any governments who permit anything different should have their rear ends booted out of office by moms and dads of those serving sons and daughters.”

By Delingpole:

1. Encourage Daddy to convert his Aston-Martin or Kenneth-Noye style Range Rover to biofuels, like the Prince of Wales has. Biofuels are great for the environment because they lead to higher food prices and starvation in the Third World. And the more people who starve to death in the Third World the better it is for nature. Because remember, overpopulation is the real problem.

… rest of the list.

The above chart shows a 20 year rolling average in RGDP growth contrasted with the 20 year rolling average standard deviation of that growth.
English translation – Economic growth is going down, BUT so is the volatility of the growth. It implies we’re sacrificing economic growth for increased stability.
Why?
Regulation
Increased taxation
Larger public sector
Feminization
Equalization
Wealth transfers
Tony Stark would never make it in this economic environment.

… of foreclosure fraud:

More than two-thirds of state attorneys general plan this week to launch a joint probe into charges some banks used fraudulent paperwork to kick struggling borrowers out of their homes, a source familiar with the effort told Reuters on Sunday.

Morality:

Actually, as the communists proved in 1917, the Nazis proved in 1933, Europeans prove with hate-speech laws and Islamists prove the world over – and as history has consistently taught – ideological conquest is, has been and always will be the case. The story of man is one of spiritual, cultural, political and physical warfare, and each chapter has victory and vanquishment. Zoroastrianism was extinguished by Islam, the Ainus have largely been subsumed by the Japanese, and the Maldives’ native Giraavaru culture is now only a memory. Just like animals, countless languages, cultures, beliefs and peoples have become extinct, often the victims of invasive entities that, through superior morality or might, won that inevitable battle.
And that is the battle for civilization. It may sound very noble to say, “. . . believe what you want to believe – I’m ok with that. After all, I am a Libertarian,” but when enough people believe the wrong things, you will not be OK with it. You will be living under a regime that enshrines those things in law – you’ll be living in tyranny.
Like it or not, imposing values is what arranging civilization is all about. And like it or not, you’re part of this process. The only difference among any of us is in what and how much we impose – and in that some of us actually understand this is precisely what we’re doing.

Rick Santelli is often given credit for inspiring the Tea Party movement.  He’s given us a few deliscious rants over the past couple of years, but he also offers sobering and informed opinions on how the US government is dealing with recession. You can find the interview audio HERE:
Glossary for those not sure of some terms:

CPI – A consumer price index (CPI) measures changes through time in the price level of consumer goods and services purchased by households.
QE – Quantitative Easing is a monetary policy used by central banks to increase the supply of money by increasing the excess reserves of the banking system.
Monetization is the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender. It usually refers to the printing of banknotes by central banks, but things such as gold, diamonds and emeralds, and art can also be monetized. Even intrinsically worthless items can be made into money, as long as they are difficult to make or acquire. Monetization may also refer to exchanging securities for currency, selling a possession, charging for something that used to be free or making money on goods or services that were previously unprofitable.
Securities – Securities are any form of ownership that can be easily traded on a secondary market, such as stocks and bonds. It also includes their derivatives, such as futures contracts, options, or mutual funds.

Excerpts from Adrian MacNair’s first post upon his return:

…
For now, my foggy impression of Afghanistan is that it’s a country we’ll have to spend a generation and tens of billions of dollars [if not hundreds] to keep from becoming a failed state again.
On the military side it would be inaccurate to say we are winning. Not that NATO was ever losing any war against the nebulous, shadowy insurgency that continues to wreak havoc against the people of Afghanistan…

Young and confident Afghans in Kabul make up a demographic of modernized, literate, and progressive men and women like these two journalists working at Tolo TV [more here and esp. here in the New Yorker]. Oct.5, 2010.
Flying over the craggy brown mountains of southern Afghanistan’s sand heading for Kabul, the sporadic oases of greenery can be seen in the valleys of the inhospitable landscape below. One can’t help but think that the Taliban will never be extricated from the thousands of tiny nooks and crannies in a land that seems impenetrable to change.
Yet one is also left with the metaphorical impression that the lush valleys snaking through the mountains are symbolic of the resilience of an ancient people. The hardships of the past 30 years are but a footnote in the history of a people who still bear the genetic mark of Alexander the Great. Though Afghanistan is referred to as the graveyard of empires, it is a mistake to think that it has repelled all outside influences.
There is sincerity both in the work ethic of the soldiers who believe in a mission they are willing to die for, as well as the anecdotes of Afghans who seem to have more patience and optimism than the Canadian public. The latter, after all, have a much larger stake in this struggle than we do.”..

No, not that green revolution … this, green revolution:

Last year when the Green Movement started, many looked at it with doubt. We, who have fought for freedom allour lives look at it as a revolution. Most scholars and so-called Iran experts and Islamic Republic lobbyists insisted that it was a civil rights movement. There were those exceptional few among scholars and policy makers in Washington who understood that this movement was much more profound than what the IR lobbyists portrayed it to be. I am very proud to be sitting next to one of these insightful and brilliant individuals, Ken Katzman.
I would like to state my opinion clearly here. The Green Movement is unquestionably a revolution and the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic. I know that Americans are not strangers to revolution. One can say that they have experienced the most successful revolution in history and they succeeded to feel their revolution, and pass on its values from generation to generation. Iranians too are not unfamiliar with revolution. 104 years ago, Iranians were the first nation in the East to establish a parliamentary system during the Constitutional Revolution. Thirty one years ago, Iranians formed another revolution that was a new phenomenon in the modern world. We Iranians are very capable of surprising the world.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. We first mentioned Erle Stanley Gardner‘s classic Perry Mason detective fiction over at The Sagacious Iconoclast in reference to our collection of forty novels thereto in our essay on Pulp Fiction. There is now, for your delectation, a new Perry Mason page over there that contains a table showing links to the currently available Perry Mason videos at YouTube. These shows are from the 1957 through 1966 television series that was based on those novels and starred Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, Barbara Hale as Della Street, and William Hopper as Paul Drake.

10/10:

And thus I think we can better understand how a group of probably well-meaning activists and film-makers could create such crazy, totalitarian vision. In many ways, the film reminds me of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds,” which is a fantasy film about a group of jewish soldiers killing Hitler and his high command. Viewers are not offended by the bloodshed and brutality, because the fantasy is so delicious. The same must have been true for those who created and screened the 10:10 video prior to its release.
Rather than an isolated aberration, then, the 10:10 video can be seen as the end result of years of ad hominem attacks meant to marginalize skeptics and make it unnecessary to actually address their concerns about the science.

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now.

… the rest of the scathing letter.
via

Is this the final act before we put the financial crisis behind us?

This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago. Loans have representations and warranties that have to be met. In the past, you had a certain period of time, 60 to 90 days, where you sort through these loans and, if they’re bad, you kick them back. If the documentation wasn’t correct, you’d kick it back. If you found the incomes of the buyers had been overstated, or the houses had been appraised at twice their worth, you’d kick it back. But that didn’t happen here. And it turned out there were loan files that were missing required documentation. Part of putting the deal together is that the securitization professional, and in this case that’s banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, has to watch for this stuff. It’s called perfecting the security, and it’s not optional.

You just can’t make it up.

Worthless, non-Ivy-League loser economic analysis here.
I’m going to go drink heavily now.