Clunker GDP Data.....

This chart ought to tell you something......

The just-announced 3.5% increase in 3Q GDP is fake. We are not out of the recession. This is not over. In fact, its going to get worse. That spike on the chart above is going to correct lower....much lower.

And when it does, they're going to say that it was "surprising".

They're lying to us. Politicians. Media. All of them.

This is too good.....

....to not post.

h/t: Mætenloch over at Ace's Place.

Is it premature to ask if....

....the alternate headline here would be "Dodd Thrown Under A Bus"?

"Oversight panel to subpoena Countrywide info"

"...Oversight Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) issued a statement saying: "It is my goal to work through this matter in a bipartisan fashion and conduct a complete review of the role of mortgage companies in the current financial crisis. As part of this, we need to clarify unanswered questions about Countrywide Financial's VIP program, so I am issuing a subpoena to gather information about how that program worked and whether it provided special benefits to government officials. I am prepared to issue additional subpoenas if other companies fail to respond to our document requests."

Notably, Towns added that "the subpoena to Countrywide covers records that could show special treatment for Members of Congress," and that if such information is produced, the Oversight panel will forward it to the House ethics committee for consideration...." [my emphasis]

And, oh-by-the-way, did you notice that this announcement came on a Friday afternoon? Not that the R's aren't equally good at doing this sort of thing, but Friday afternoon is becoming an important time of the week to be paying attention to what they don't want you paying attention to.

h/t: Riehl World View.

Hoookay.....

Just when you think you've seen just about the dumbest thing ever, along comes someone else plumbing a new depth.

How to Build a Bluetooth Handgun Handset for your iPhone.



I guess the question of "Why" doesn't occur here.

Darwin awaits, fool.

h/t: hell in a handbasket

Saw this a week ago....

...And if I had been 'bloggin' then, I'd have remembered where the h/t ought to go (Gerard, perhaps?). As it is, I stumbled on it again over at the videos at Strategy Page. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

A little late at....

....Getting to this, but Chris Muir nailed things down pretty securely with this one....

[Click image for a better view.]

Geez, Geez, Geez.....

There are some very smart people out there on the intertubes who can speak of horrors coming our way beyond imagination.

The Virginian: Protection against hyper-inflation. Do read the whole thing, but here are a few quotes....

"...In the middle of 1914, just before the war, a one pound loaf of bread cost 13 cents. Two years later it was 19 cents. Two years more and it sold for 2 cents. By 1919 it was 26 cents. Now the fun begins.

In 1920, a loaf of bread soared to $1.20, and then in 1921 it hit $1.35. By the middle of 1922 it was $3.50. At the start of 1923 it rocketed to $700 a loaf. Five months later a loaf went for $1200. By September it was $2 million. A month later it was $670 million (wide spread rioting broke out). The next month it hit $3 billion. By mid month it was $100 billion. Then it all collapsed...." [Dollars have been substituted for Marks, but the point remains.]

"...People’s savings were suddenly worthless. Pensions were meaningless. If you had a 400 mark monthly pension, you went from comfortable to penniless in a matter of months. People demanded to be paid daily so they would not have their wages devalued by a few days passing. Ultimately, they demanded their pay twice daily just to cover changes in trolley fare. People heated their homes by burning money instead of coal. (It was more plentiful and cheaper to get.) The middle class was destroyed. It was an age of renters, not of home ownership, so thousands became homeless.

But the cultural collapse may have had other more pernicious effects. Some sociologists note that it was still an era of arranged marriages. Families scrimped and saved for years to build a dowry so that their daughter might marry well. Suddenly, the dowry was worthless – wiped out. And with it was gone all hope of marriage. Girls who had stayed prim and proper awaiting some future Prince Charming now had no hope at all. Social morality began to collapse. The roar of the roaring twenties began to rumble. All hope and belief in systems, governmental or otherwise, collapsed. With its culture and its economy disintegrating, Germany saw a guy named Hitler begin a ten year effort to come to power by trading on the chaos and street rioting. And then came World War." [my emphases, obviously.]

And that is my fear.

Family Traditions.....

Awright....I'm back to bloggin'.

Such as it is.

The computer is functional. But let me qualify that.....I use Vista. I've still got some "housecleaning" items to take care of, and in a perfect world, I'd have Quicken up and running, and that may take some work to make happen, but mostly, I'm back.

But tonight, we went to LJ's Pizza for dinner.



So, anyway, I've never really liked the pizza at LJs. I don't really like the Chicago deep-dish style, but I do like a more "bread-y" crust than LJs puts out. Its like a big cracker.

And their meats are greasy, which is beginning to become a bigger issue for me than it used to be. Not the best pizza, in my opinion. They've got a crappy salad bar, and they serve soft-serve ice cream for dessert.

However......

It is a family favorite none-the-less. We had a bit of good news to celebrate tonight, and Wifeof- and Sonof-Azlib both like the pizza. Wifeof- went to high school with the current owner, who is the son of the original owner. She's been eating at this LJ location (it has been located elsewhere many years ago) since she was 18. They cater to an older crowd, and being in my 50's, it is sorta weird to be one of the youngest people in the place. The atmosphere is what I call "small-town cheese-y". Not really much interesting in the place, but neither is it overwhelming. Tonight, they had a New Orleans jazz band, The Cats and Jammers, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.

Anyhoo...bad pizza, lame salad bar, cheesy band all made for a good night.

But speaking of....

The intertubes, and linkery, and my meager readership, I was looking through my readers, and found a guy who came to me through Theo Spark (who has kindly, and inexplicably, included me on his blogroll).

I'm not much of a "totty-blogger". I don't mind looking every now and then, but really don't focus on it too much. That said, I had to have a chuckle at this book shown in a post at Theo's house.



Yes, there are things better than boobs, but damned few. October, of course, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and who doesn't love breasts? Even bad breasts are good.

I'm not fully....

...up to speed yet with this computer, but I am making progress. I prefer to use Firefox, so all my bookmarks are yet to be restored, and I've got other improvements to make with this thing.

Other impediments to my active writing here include....

• What I believe is either a cracked tooth or inflamed sub-mandibular salivary gland, which is absolutely killing me, and which makes most everything else I attempt to do more difficult than it ought to be.
• A very busy first half of the month, followed by a trip to Dallas for a school I need to attend, then a trip to California to see my dad, and ending the month with a trip to NYC to see our daughter run in the New York Marathon (And no: I can hardly believe it myself either).
• A growing interest to work up the nerve to actually exercise. I've had the P-90X program for almost a year now, and may finally be ready to start it.

I do, however, remain amazed at even the very few readers I attract here. Dunno what brings you here (usually a picture I've snatched somewhere), but I do hope you enjoy things.

OK....

OK. The laptop is (finally) back in business, but that doesn't mean I'm back in business yet.

I've got a very short weekend, a ton of stuff to do around the house, a daughter to see for the first time in weeks, a possible trip to an IDPA match in the afternoon, and bunches of stuff to reload on this thing. The best I figure, I've got 36 hours of stuff to do in the next 24.

Prolly not going to get back to this bloggin' thingi in the next couple of days.