Author: Kate

What Goes Up

More Money Than Brains 68 Comments

Via Captain Capitalism;
housing.gif
The always thoughtful Maxed Out Mama has been on a “road trip” ;

What this looks like on the ground is that housing seems generally on a downward trend, but the real change is what is happening in stores. The contrast between parking lots filled with very nice large vehicles and customers sifting carefully through aisles is quite remarkable. Food pricing, especially, seems to be bonking around like a ping-pong ball. This is a sign of very severe inflation moving through the system. No matter what happens, in normal times you just will not see prices for frozen food items doubling in a matter of a month or two, but that is what I saw in several stores. The best run seem to be trying to keep something on sale, and I noticed a real shift in brand shelving, especially on frozen items.
One of the big surprises was in Bucks County, PA, which borders Mercer County in NJ. In the slightly outlying portions of Bucks, a whole lot of small commercial property (storefronts and land) was on sale. A lot of empty stores. Closed or closing dealerships. Big price drops on services, such as labor at auto dealerships and office visits for some medical providers.
[…]
Up and down the East Coast, restaurants seemed to be feeling the pressure. Fast food restaurants are definitely moving more towards more low-price options on menus. There is some competition emerging in gas prices at concentrations of gas stations. I talked to what looked like senior staff members when I could, and they confirmed that business wasn’t great. At banks in off hours, you get kidnapped and dragged into offices if you walk in and ask a teller about CD rates! I started wondering if some of those branches had installed a silent alarm system for sales prospects. It’s difficult to escape.
I usually try to buy a lot of the local newspapers. There’s a lot of personal stuff for sale. More houses for sale, obviously. Less jobs, relatively. Construction equipment, trucks, boats, campers.
Georgia, aside from being on fire (literally, not metaphorically), seems to be relatively prosperous. There is an awful lot of building still going on in these southern states. When it will stop I don’t know. It is possible that the relatively healthy looking Georgia might in part be due to a Florida exodus. Nonetheless, the car dealerships still look pushed. I drove around Valdosta (close to Florida border in central GA) this weekend, and wasn’t all that surprised to see a 72 month 0% APR financing sign up on a Chevrolet dealership.
Overall, I was surprised to see more rural areas areas looking healthier than I suspected and more urban/wealthier areas looking more pressured than I expected. Is this a sign of extreme overleverage among the higher income brackets? I don’t know, but I am beginning to suspect it.

And this warning from Jeremy Grantham;

“…the man Dick Cheney, plus a lot of other rich people, trusts with his money. Grantham, chairman of Boston firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, has been a voice of caution for years. But he has upped his concerns in his latest letter to shareholders. Grantham says we are now seeing the first worldwide bubble in history covering all asset classes.
Everything is in bubble territory, he says.
Everything.

Given the schemes being hatched under climate change hysteria, I was tempted to title this post “Recession To The Rescue”. A natural downturn in the economy may be the best hope we have to wrestle the fate of our long term economic fortunes from the politically motivated media whores and crazy people currently driving the news cycle. Of coiurse, that’s easy for me to say – my home is paid for.

“The chance to offer hope to the world”

What He Said 20 Comments

From the Murder Capital Of Canada;

You declared you were “not going to sit around anymore and do nothing”. Well, you did something after the murder on Magnus. You went on vacation.
And you had your spokesman blow the citizens of Magnus off with a stirring claim of you commitment to their welfare.
He said YOU HAD A LIST. Yes, a real list of crack houses and sniff houses and booze cans that should be closed down. Sometime, when there’s resources and money and… hell, have you folks heard about the Museum for Human Rights?

The Secret To Being A Liberal Hysteric

What He Said 27 Comments

QOTW;

No secret: just treat adults like children, and treat children like adults. Require adults to ask the government “mother may I” for every least little thing, from hair-braiding to leaf burning to motorcycle helmets to whether or not you want an explosively-inflating airbag in your passenger seat, thus denying your own children the pleasure you had as a child of “riding shotgun”. And call the police, file suit, and start expulsion proceedings if a kindergartner hugs a classmate, or if a first-grader draws a picture of a relative in the service, or if a third-grader points a chicken finger and says “bang”.

More – from Canada’s smartest columnist.

Elizabeth May Strikes A Blow For Intelligent Design

Climate Cult 78 Comments

The leader of the Christian left;

Preaching in London about the threat of climate change, Green party Leader Elizabeth May brought herself to tears yesterday, not for children who will inherit the Earth, but for the God she believes created it.
[…]
“This is a time for Christians to say we do believe in miracles, in the life-giving force,” she said.
The delicate balance God created is under assault as people increased exponentially their use of fossil fuels, unleashing carbon dioxide and destroying the forests that can return carbon to the Earth, she said.
“We’re playing with the forces that led to creation . . . we’re nearing the edge of the life force and we’re still playing around,” May said.
She said it’s as if the lessons of the Garden of Eden have been disregarded repeatedly and the results are already harming poorer nations.
“The first victims of the climate crisis are those who had the least to do with creating it.”
Unless we meet our moral obligation to restore the balance, our children and grandchildren will suffer, she said.
“Through the power of our Lord and Jesus Christ, we can meet this moral obligation,” she said.

And God bless Kyoto!

Melamine Spiking Longstanding Practice

Radioactive 23 Comments


Via Itchmo;

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create plastics and fertilizer.
But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially enhance the protein level.
“It just saves money,” says a manager at an animal feed factory here. “Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level.”
The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine, whose chemical properties give a bag of animal feed an inflated protein level under standard tests.
“If you add it in small quantities, it won’t hurt the animals,” said one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to protect him from prosecution.
The man – who works in a small animal feed operation that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas – said he has mixed melamine into animal feed for years.

Taliban Jack

Little Known Facts 40 Comments

Call your office;

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 26 — Infant mortality has dropped by 18 percent in Afghanistan, one of the first real signs of recovery for the country five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, health officials said Thursday.
Afghanistan faces many challenges, its health minister said yesterday, but he noted “clear signs of health sector recovery and progress.”
“Despite many challenges, there are clear signs of health sector recovery and progress throughout the country,” Dr. Muhammad Amin Fatimi, the health minister, told journalists here.
The number of children who die before their first birthday has dropped to 135 per 1,000 in 2006 from 165 per 1,000 live births in 2001, according to a countrywide survey by Johns Hopkins University, he said.
That represents a drop of 18 percent, and means that 40,000 to 50,000 fewer infants are dying now than in the Taliban era, Dr. Fatimi said. “Thanks be to God they are celebrating, laughing and smiling,” he said. “These infants are the future builders of our country.”

More good news of a different sort.

Dropping to 200ft, it swooped close to the motorcyclists – and the two men could not believe their luck: some of the passengers were holding the parts of a long-barrelled heavy machine-gun.
Six of the bikes slewed to a stop, their passengers leaping off and aiming their weapons at the helicopter in what appeared to be a well-practised drill, while the others took off across country. The Apache banked away to begin its attack run.

Don’t think of them as Black Hawks – think of them as flying neonatal units!
Update Uh oh. I don’t think this is the “spring offensive” the Taliban had in mind.
Update 2 More good news! The US Supreme Court rejects Khadr case.

“Al Qaeda is surging against us, and I think that’s happening globally.”

Terrorism 19 Comments

A Hugh Hewitt interview with Fred Kagan;

HH: You come back from Iraq, you see these changes, you talk with it, and then you hear Harry Reid declare the war is lost. What was your reaction upon hearing that, Frederick Kagan?
FK: It’s very disappointing. I think a lot of people, there is a lot of hyperbole, there’s a lot of exaggeration, and we really need to look this squarely in the eye, and recognize that most wars, you don’t know who’s going to win until the end. And there’s been, there were rosy optimistic scenarios from the Bush administration early on, and declarations of victory that were mistaken, and now you’ve got Democratic opponents of the war rushing to say that the war’s lost, and that it’s hopeless. And the facts on the ground just don’t support that. The war isn’t lost. We certainly can still win, and it’s really very disappointing to hear the Senator majority leader just throw up his hands like that.
HH: One of the things I read in Max Boot’s piece, which I had not realized, is that the Iraqi special forces are operating along with our special forces at night in recon type situations, and are devastating the bad guys. That’s a change of significance.
FK: There have been a lot of changes along those lines. Iraqi forces at all levels are fighting in a very determined fashion. And even sometimes Iraqi local police, which no one has put any stock in, but a former cadet of mine who is now up in Salahaddin Province north of Baghdad, told me a story about the Iraqi local police who were engaged by a bunch of al Qaeda fighters who thought they would just drive through a checkpoint, and the local police shot them up, drove them off, and seized one of their cars. It was amazing. These Iraqi soldiers, both special forces even down to some of the local police guys, are fighting hard, putting their lives on the line, taking casualties and killing the enemy.

And a photo essay from Michael Yon;

The latest group of professional soldiers I had the honor of accompanying was the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas. They opened their doors in Baghdad and wanted me to tell the people at home the good, the bad and the ugly. They didn’t hold back; they provided plenty of all three. In one neighborhood where residents have been subject to a methodical slaughter, our people found an abandoned Christian college that had already proved itself the proverbial island in the storm.

The Challenge of Relativism

What He Said 57 Comments

This is a great piece by John Piper. A few exerpts;

Everyone knows in his heart that believing relativism to be true is contradictory, and everyone also knows intuitively that no one even tries to put it into practice consistently. Therefore, both philosophically and practically, it cultivates duplicity. People say they believe in it but do not think or act consistently with what they say. They are hypocrites. Relativism breeds hypocrisy and duplicity.
[…]
This is most obvious when relativists live their lives. They simply do not live them as though relativism were true. Professors play the academic game of relativism in their classes and then go home get upset when their wives don’t understand what they say. Why do they get upset? Because they know that there is an objective meaning that can be transmitted between two human beings, and we have moral obligations to grasp what is meant. No husband ever said, “Since all truth and language are relative, it does not matter how you interpret my invitation to sleep together.” Whether we write love letters or rental agreements or instructions to our children or directions for a friend or contracts or sermons or obituaries, we believe objective meaning exists in what we write, and we expect people to try to understand. And we hold them accountable (and often get upset) if they don’t.
Nobody is a relativist when their case is being tried in court and their objective innocence hangs on objective evidence. The whole system of relativism is a morally corrupting impulse toward duplicity. It is a great bluff. And what is needed in our day is for many candid children to rise up and say, “The king has no clothes on.”
[…]
The formula is simple: When relativism holds sway long enough, everyone begins to do what is right in his own eyes without any regard for submission to truth. In this atmosphere, a society begins to break down. Virtually every structure in a free society depends on a measure of integrity—that is, submission to the truth. When the chaos of relativism reaches a certain point, the people will welcome any ruler who can bring some semblance of order and security. So a dictator steps forward and crushes the chaos with absolute control. Ironically, relativism—the great lover of unfettered freedom—destroys freedom in the end.

h/t Alice The Camel.

Ghosts Of The Past: NDP Caucus Chief Resigns

Gopher News 17 Comments

fodey.jpg
CBC – Fodey said he immediately reported the matter to Regina police.”
Chief Cal Johnston disagrees,

stressing that the records show neither the confession letter nor the altered cheques were disclosed until nearly two years later, in September of 1994.
In fact, Johnston reveals that police first got involved not because the NDP contacted them, but because Davy’s car caught fire outside the legislature. Police then became aware she was wanted for fraud in the U.S., leading them to question Fodey about her employment. A couple of weeks later, Johnston says Fodey assured them the NDP’s auditor, “wasn’t concerned and that everything was in order.”
Johnston says that’s the reason police decided not to lay charges: because the NDP assured them there was no wrongdoing. He adds he isn’t sure if a new investigation will be initiated, saying there are still some documents to review.

Previous.

7/7 London Bombing Mastermind Captured

Media 30 Comments

Media still at large;

The U.S. announced on Friday that it captured the mastermind behind the 7/7/2005 bombings in London.
But you would not know it by reading the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Associated Press.
None of them mentioned the London bombings in reporting on the capture of the man who organized that attack, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (aka, Abu Abdallah).
Instead, reporters concentrated on where this major player in the war on terrorism was held after his capture.

Secret prisons! Gitmo! Oh, the humanity!
The same holds true for the CTV report and I can find no mention of the capture at all at the CBC website.
You have to go to the Times of London for the details North American media saw fit to omit;

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.
Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.

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