Good News/Bad News

There’s no real inflation.  EXCEPT on things that I buy.

The good news is that the price of technology is generally getting cheaper. Software, TVs, wireless, and new cars have all come down in price relative to the CPI. Clothing, toys, and furniture are also way more affordable than they were 20 years ago.

The bad news? Most of the above items are not the ones that really matter to most of us. The things we actually need to live healthy and fruitful lives – education, food, healthcare, childcare, and housing – are all skyrocketing in cost.

Tuition costs have soared 197%. Textbooks have more than tripled in price, going up 207% since 1996.

Taking care of our loved ones is more expensive. Healthcare and childcare costs have risen almost as much: 105% and 122% respectively.

Meanwhile, basic necessities such as shelter and food have increased at rates higher than the CPI as well. Housing costs are 61% higher and food is 64% more expensive.

Zero Hedge

Halloween vampires

It’s all about you isn’t it?

Crude, tasteless, inappropriate, NSFW

But makes sense.

Halloween is an opportunity to be really creative.

Judy Gold

Some people are born for Halloween, and some are just counting the days until Christmas.

Stephen Graham Jones

If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

Douglas Coupland

Wall Street Journal Finally Breaks

Meanwhile, as Fox News reported yesterday, according to an anonymous source within the FBI the "vast majority" of the people that worked on Hillary's case thought she should be prosecuted adding that "it was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked."

The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.

“No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.

A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.”

“It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”.

Zero Hedge

Cynically exploiting white guilt

This is how it begins. And that is how it ends. Nations are not destroyed by atomic bombs or economic catastrophes; they are lost when they lose any reason to go on living. When they no longer have enough pride to go on fighting to survive.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-end-of-columbus-day-is-end-of.html

Once I was a scuba driver in the sea of words, now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Nicholas Carr

Interesting essay by Peggy Noonan on the impact of the internet on politics and journalism. Or maybe the lack of ‘journalism’ i the classic sense.  I have noticed that reporters don’t investigate but raather repeat the press releases.

This year I am seeing something, especially among the young of politics and journalism. They have received most of what they know about political history through screens. They are college graduates, they’re in their 20s or 30s, they’re bright and ambitious, but they have seen the movie and not read the book. They’ve heard the sound bite but not read the speech. Their understanding of history, even recent history, is superficial. They grew up in the internet age and have filled their brainspace with information that came in the form of pictures and sounds. They learned through sensation, not through books, which demand something deeper from your brain. Reading forces you to imagine, question, ponder, reflect. It provides a deeper understanding of political figures and events.

Watching a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis shows you a drama. Reading about it shows you a dilemma. The book makes you imagine the color, sound, tone and tension, the logic of events: It makes your brain do work. A movie is received passively: You sit back, see, hear. Books demand and reward. When you read them your knowledge base deepens and expands. In time that depth comes to inform your work, sometimes in ways of which you’re not fully conscious.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/the-politics-of-the-shallows/

If you can’t read deeply you will not be able to think deeply. If you can’t think deeply you will not be able to lead well.

Peggy Noonan

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

Sinclair Lewis

If the US presidential campaign conveys a flavour of unreality, that may be because it is rooted in fiction. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis sat down to write a novel about political radicalisation and social upheaval in the depression-ravaged US. What emerged after four months of feverish work was It Can’t Happen Here, a runaway bestseller that quickly sold more than 300,000 copies.

Lewis was alarmed by what was taking shape in the country. The New Deal had delivered a false sense of optimism to the Federal Reserve, if not to the millions queueing at the soup kitchens. The money supply was tightened in anticipation of a sustained rally, government spending was cut and taxes were raised. As a result, the US was pushed to the cusp of a double-dip depression, with manufacturing back to its 1934 level and unemployment up by 5%.

Read the story at: The Guardian

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

Sinclair Lewis

The Democratic Party has turned its back on working people and now pursues policies that actually increase inequality

Thomas Frank

The first piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then, which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever see. Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.

Thomas Frank

It’s Settled!

Which way to go

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don't much care where –” said Alice.

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“– so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you're sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Politics can deliver costly "favors," even when it cannot deliver quality education

Thomas Sowell

One hundred years ago, on October 2, 1916, a new public high school building for black youngsters was opened in Washington, D.C. and named for black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Its history is a story inspiring in many ways and appalling in many other ways.

Dunbar High School After 100 Years

If history is any guide

If history is any guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a cooling impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottom most layer of Earth’s atmosphere — and where we all live.

Meteorologist Paul Dorian

http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/717559/Earth-ICE-AGE-sun-goes-blank-sunspot

If you don’t read the papers you’re uninformed. If you do read them, you’re misinformed.

Mark Twain

Jihad is obligatory for the Muslims.

Abu Bakr

To fight against the infidels is Jihad; but to fight against your evil self is greater Jihad.

Abu Bakr

In John Mauldin’s Outside the Box, he sends an article that is thought provoking.  And often by someone who he does not agree with.

I thought long and hard about whether to send this to you. I know I will lose a few readers over it, and I always hate that, but sometimes we have to think about the hard things. Woody is normally a mild-mannered guy with a patrician view of the world, but his conclusions here are neither mild-mannered nor anything less than what most people would consider radical. However, ISIS and radical Islam are at war with the entire modern world, not just Christianity. They are True Believers and are simply not interested in negotiating.

Jihadists and game theory?  In the article by Dr. Woody Brock is thought provoking. Especially in view of the current US and European political climates.  You can access the article here: Mauldin Economics. Signing up for access is required but, his free weekly news letters are worth reading.  Most everthing is a focus on economics but also geopolitical essays.

What is it that makes these extremists so morally superior, and so hateful of the West? In part, their superiority stems from their absolute faith in the truth of the teachings of the Koran. But this is only the tip of an iceberg of hatred. For their religious convictions are amplified by their detestation of the cultural, economic, ethical, and political values of Westerners. At a deep level, their terrorism stems from their hatred of modernity itself. We in the West are seen as weak and morally dissolute. For not only do we possess no religious fervor, but we lack moral resolve of any kind due to the anesthetizing effects of our materialistic, welfare-based social system. Such ethical values as we have stem not from fear of any God, but rather from an attachment to mushy concepts of “fairness” ranging from the “right” to nine weeks of vacation, to the right to never be drafted to fight a war. In the US, citizens’ erstwhile chant of “give me liberty or give me death” has morphed into “give me liberty or give me latte.” All in all, ISIS’ conviction of holding the moral high ground is a major source of their power over the West.

Dr. Woody Brock

Radical Islam is not fighting Christianity – which anyhow is dead in Europe – but it is fighting modernity. Islam is frightened of modernity destroying their religion and culture how so ever unacceptable it may be to European liberals. It is concerned about pre-marital sex/contraception/homosexuality/adultery/ “unprotected” women etc....Europe thought – à la Merkel – that they can buy peace with radical Islam by “requesting” them to integrate. But integrate with what? Integrate with “immoral Europe” where women are exhibited as “open meat”[(in the words of the Australian Imam] who are “poisonous.” Idea of Europe is Dead

Professor R. Vaidanathan

We declared jihad against the U.S. government because the U.S. government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation.

Osama bin Laden

Brevity in email

But if everyone thought about email in the same way, what I’m suggesting wouldn’t be rude. Here are the basic guidelines that are working for me and, so, I propose for all of the world to adopt immediately:

• No signoff.
• No greeting.
• Brevity signals respect. Three sentences or fewer.
• Don’t let the inbox become a to-do list.
• Check only two or three times a day.

James Hamblin

The Atlantic

Uuggge

In case you haven’t seen it yet…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nQGBZQrtT0

It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do

That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon.  It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it.  How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but “regrettably necessary” holding actions?  And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer.  I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon.  But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

Hunter S. Thompson

300 tons of radioactive waste every day

However, Fukushima is having a bigger impact than just the West coast of North America. Scientists are now saying that the Pacific Ocean is already radioactive and is currently at least 5-10 times more radioactive than when the US government dropped numerous nuclear bombs in the Pacific during and after World War II. If we don’t start talking about Fukushima soon, we could all be in for a very unpleasant surprise.

Fukushima