Al Gore, the story of a descent into madness

Once upon a time in a land very close to us, chads saved the country from being violated by a true lunatic.  Not just any chads, but “hanging chads.” These improperly completed voting slips changed the results of the election for better or for worse and the nation hung on just for a bit longer.  Or maybe we can thank Florida for in actuality for selecting a better man for the office.  Hate him or love him, George W. Bush was a much better president than Al Gore could have ever been.  I personally do not like George W. Bush very much, but on the other hand, the alternative here was much worse.

picture courtesy of: http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/al-gore-loses-the-plot-his-world-is-crumbling/

On the other hand, some people say that it was not chads, but a conspiracy and yet others still claim that it was the fault of the US election system that was to blame.  Recount upon recount occurred, but as we all know the story unfolded as we know it did.  The first time the supreme court of the US ever decided an election for itself.

The rest of this article is going to be rather surprising.  I am not going to focus on criticizing the man or otherwise deriding him like most people would and since this happens enough anyway, I think it is clear to put this thought forward: Al Gore has serious issues.  Since he never got help for any of these issues in the past, he goes on as if he has no problems and will not face his demons.  We all have our demons and it is important to recognize them and to deal with them.  From there, we can move on and live functional lives no matter what life throws at them.  People may claim that Al Gore never faced a real life, but I will throw this in here right now: he has from one event lived the worst of the worst and we should recognize that the man does deserve to be ridiculed for a lot, but on the other hand we should be trying to get the man help too.

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Obama and Krueger attempt to save the economy, part Deux

First off, we were promised the “grand plan on how the president was going to save the economy” at the end of last week or “at the very latest by the start of this week.”  Being Wednesday at midnight I assume the plan is not being released anytime soon (although we are promised Thursday now).  So since nothing is being said, job numbers are still in the toilet and to boot every single one of President Obama’s initiatives have failed to add real jobs to our economy.  As I posted earlier, perhaps this time is different if you believe in unicorn farts saving your face from the effect of ageing and other weird stuff.

Photo source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-jobs-20110906,0,3610220.story?track=rss

As this photo shows, the president is not having an easy time of things.  I will say one thing in defense of the president: there was nothing he could have done from the start to make our economy any better.  The entire QE (which I discussed in an earlier post to death) episode has probably just prolonged the recession and possibly made it worse.  The only purpose of QE ever is to stop a depression from starting and to “theoretically suffer a longer recession but avoid a depression.”  That is just one of the things the president has tried to turn things around.  And he has tried, but everything he has done has either had little effect or the opposite effect, and to boot instead of focusing on jobs which is what the people of this country care about, he has still maintained his other political agendas which actually as I showed take away from the job market.  The reason for this is that the primary purpose of the president’s political agenda has nothing to do with creating jobs, his purpose is to simply achieve his political goals regardless of the cost.

Australia’s political turmoil continues

As I explained in the previous blog entry, and as I link to the source once again,

http://libertygibbert.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/parliament-on-a-knife-edge-part-iii-julias-haute-couture/

the politics of Australia continue to heat up and various movements and counter-movements have now resulted in a combination of censorship from Julia:

who is the current PM of Australia.  This type of censorship of scandal surrounding a person in power is nothing new and we witnessed this indeed in the US a couple of time in recent years first with Richard Nixon and finally with Bill Clinton.  This is what makes this incident so interesting.  notably, the threats of lawsuits and libel complaints against anyone who reports news is rather telling and the fact that it took media outlets a day to get the truth out is also slightly perplexing, but at the very least the media relented and decided to print the news anyway.

Alan Krueger and Obama attempt to save the economy

The man who is slated to save the economy as being the head of the jobs commission (CEA) with President Obama:

Photo from: http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/29/alan-krueger-obamas-new-top-economist/

Will he be able to save the country and still keep the president’s motivations and political ambitions as he wants him?  Or the better question I tend to seriously think that applies: Does any president ever believe they can actually “Create” more jobs than they destroy?  Whether you increase defense spending or stimulus spending, you end up in every case destroying more jobs than you could ever hope to create due to the fact that Government is ALWAYS going to be less efficient than private enterprise.

Economics of oil and the American Dream

A new hurdle has been passed for the Keystone Pipeline, as expected it was ran through on a Friday Afternoon when DC and New York City was evacuating for an incoming hurricane.  Seems they save “bad” decisions for the environment for when news will not report it.  Typical to say the least:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/transcanadas-keystone-pipeline-clears-hurdle-2011-08-26?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Picture courtesy of http://www.oilempire.us/tarsands.html

But let’s get out of the gutter and talk facts.  I like facts.  They are the bread and butter of reality and they paint a picture which will never be wrong.  For instance, in the above picture some people see evil.  I see jobs, taxes, and production.  Some people see hell.  I see human ingenuity, environmentalism, and above all else a work ethnic from Canada.  We can argue over the semantics all day long, but what you see in production is up to the person.  But the reality here is that these oil sands have produced a vibrant economy in a location in Canada that is exploding in population growth, and other jobs are making this the most prosperous of the Canadian provinces.   What is it that you see when you see that picture?  I will leave that for now and go on to explain how its irrelevant whether this pipeline is built, the oil will still be sold and someone will buy it.

We may be able to pick the reality we see from pictures such as this, but human ingenuity should never be questioned and the right of people to work should never be up to activists who spend their time just trying to take apart jobs and dismantling economies all in the name of the “Greater Good.”

Politics down under, what is happening in Australia!?

I think its time to spread the word on what is going on halfway across our globe in the land down under.  For most Americans, these issues are probably unheard of, but I think this is important as it shows how politicians the world over are all the same.  Same type of person, halfway across the world….

First off, I like this article about recent scandals: http://libertygibbert.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/parliament-on-a-knife-edge-part-ii-end-this-nonsense-now/

From that same story:

Apperantly, using a Labor credit card, a sitting member of parliament has been bailed out by his political party and they have allowed this certain individual to continue to pay for other things not just sex.  This is because under law a sitting member of parliament can NOT be bankrupt.

And some interesting back-story to fill in the details of why this apparently minor scam matters:

A discourse on the current recession and on economic cyles

Economics is one of my favorite subjects.  (namely macro-economics mind you.)  This is because trends can be found and you can use these trends to make numerous predictions and better yourself especially if you do not get too greedy and realize that above all else no matter how you invest money, it’s a risk.

Now we as a country (US) are in a recession that looks to be getting worse.  But I want to take a moment an analyze what recessions are in general and what causes economic activity to bottle up so to speak in cycles.  This will explain everything that we are seeing and I will explain to everyone what I think the future holds.

And the Elephant in the room is…..SS

Today,  both the US’s credit rating was down-graded and the stock market took a rather swift tumble.  Here is a news story (The first found by google on this subject.) to perhaps explain the daily events better than I care to.

http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/Stocks-fall-after-credit-downgrade/Y7EKi_p9w0y41YLgLOOhvw.cspx

This was rather expected.  After numerous countries around the world had their stock-markets take serious tumbles since the end of last week when the growth reports for Q2 were released, we have seen rather big drops.  Add to this the credit rating downgrade and you get the perfect scenario for a big drop in stocks.  This by all means probably shows that the next weeks is going to see overall a near reproduction of this over a 4 day period.  The question of the hour then is obviously what is the Government going to do about it?

A Time to Kill Civilization – Part 2

In my previous post, I went into the philosophy of AGW (catastrophic) and how it emphasizes the destruction of our society for some far-out fantasy.  This is the basis of healthy scepticism on CAGW and I think its key to note 2 things in particular:

1) Until you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that man is “destroying the planet” you can not radically transform society.  That is just illogical.  So therefore the big mistake in simply believing because we can not prove it wrong.  This turn evidential procedures on its head when normally new theories in science have to displace old theories and old ideas.  To put it into perspective, to say that the climate changed naturally before man and then suddenly it stopped changing is so silly as to be comical.

2) Any transformation must be quantified and otherwise explained as to why we are making these changes and what it is we are going to accomplish.  We can not afford to remake society in such a drastic method as the greens want us to.  The UK for instance on their quest are going to spend just short of 1 TRILLION pounds and for this they are not going to save the world.  This huge expense is not justified by science, but by a belief that man is inherently evil.

Jevons’ paradox

As a note, parts of this post are from an older essay I wrote awhile back which was in reply to a recent Obama initiative at the time to put huge amounts of money into “making cars more efficient” or perhaps “increase their MPG” is the better way to phrase it.

Either way, it’s not that cut and dry.  Jevons’ paradox goes back to 1865 when economist William Stanley Jevons noted then that coal efficiency improvements had not just increased the amount of work done, but had actually increased the overall amount of coal used as well.  This process is rather well-known in that although increases in efficiency will result in more efficient usage of energy, it will almost always result in more usage of the said resource needed due to lower costs that in turn drives economic progress.

William Jevons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PSM_V11_D660_William_Stanley_Jevons.jpg