SAR #9343

When the choice is between uncertainty and denial, denial wins.

Lying Eyes: Who you going to believe, the BLS survey or the data taken from daily income tax deposits that show the US lost 255,000 jobs in November? If you want just the facts, read the Economic Policy Institute's data.

Full Faith and Credit: A number of pundits have discovered that the US dollar is a faith-based currency, backed only by Congress. This has been true at least since Nixon closed the gold window, if not since the creation of the Fed, so I'm not blinded by the light. These and other writers are also predicting the that the dollar will continue to lose value. Me, I'm surprised to see that people think the dollar will continue at all.

Mission Impossible: Without reaching for a reference, name 100 of the 192 nations gathered in Copenhagen to save the world.

Use It and Lose It: Aetna, which made a profit this year but wants to make even more next, plans to force 650,000 of their insured to drop their coverage and increase premiums on those it decides to let keep giving them money.

Another Big Brother: Did you know that if you don't log out of Gmail or Blogger or other Google accounts, Google can and will track your every move on the internet? Did you know that they plant cookies on your machine so that they can track you even if you do log out? Didn't think so. Apparently Googling something gives them your implied consent to continuous monitoring.

Motivation: Rising temperatures and melting ice promise enormous profits to those able to exploit the resources of a much warmer Arctic, where temperatures are increasing twice as fast as elsewhere on the globe. The profits will far exceed the cost of any global warming denialist campaign required to keep the melting going.

Know Thy Enemy: Corrupt officials and drug lords (ignore the overlap) smuggle about $10 million out of Iraq Afghanistan every day. Isn't it nice we're going to give them another $100 billion to plunder?

Rose Names: RAND Corporation says the US needs a 6,000 man paramilitary federal police force to deal with “insurgents and criminal organizations.” The propagandist have already picked out a name - “Stability Police Force (SPF)”. 'Storm Troopers' was dismissed as being too 20th century.

Just Wondering: Does it matter that a lot of the temporary new hires are folks who used to make $85,000 a year, or is a job a job to BLS statisticians?

Happy Days: The concern about CO2 is based on the assumption that we'll keep pumping out CO2 for many decades. But we won't. Serious and increasing oil shortages after 2020 and the economic slowdown that causes will reduce coal use and so we'll be saved from global warming by a worldwide economic collapse. Feel better?

Just As I Thought: America's annual potlatch is “a waste of money” because the happiness isn't near worth the cost. Economist Joel Waldfogel maintains that Christmas is “an orgy of value destruction that vaporizes $25 billion per year.”

Introspection: How long before individual Americans realize they're not the ones who screwed up the economy – just the ones being forced out of jobs and homes and the middle class by those who did... and decide that the lying and bailouts and hollow promises have gone on long enough and that what needs to be done does not include voting?

Numbers: In the Ukraine almost 50,000 people a day are coming down with the local version of H1/N1, and nearly 2 millon of the Ukraine's 42 million people are now infected. To date, about 500 have died. It appears to have spread to parts of Russia, where there are rumors of “disinfectant” being sprayed from planes and helicopters and the populace being told to boil water before drinking it.

Daring Prediction: In 2010, the Dow will go up if it doesn't go down.

Something's Happening Here: Himalayan glaciers now provide water to 1.3 billion people, but these glaciers are “melting at an alarming rate, threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent.”

Porn O'Graph: Where the jobs are.