Thursday, December 17, 2015

SAR #15351

The answer often depends on how the question was asked; 'Would you like to get married?' for example.
What's It All About, Alfie? The Fed announced it would move the federal funds rate up 25 basis points to 0.25% and 0.50%, on its way to 1.35% by the end of 2016, because of the imminent threat of wage increases er.. inflation. Oh, right; because the economy is doing so well. Elsewhere, US industrial production dropped 0.6% in November, the biggest drop in over three years, manufacturing employment and workweek were "the worst since 2009." Homebuilders around the nation reported "slowing activity". Globally, the number of container ships laid up will soon break 2009's all-time record. Hope this wasn't "a mistake that will be difficult to correct" on the part of the Fed.
Wheedling and Dealing: In an attempt to get Obama to include "side deals" for tobacco and big pharma in the TTP, Republicans are threatening to delay consideration of this piece of Obama's legacy until after the 2016 elections.
Safety First: The Department of Homeland Security (and the NSA, but that's a different complaint) monitors Americans' use of social media, but the State Department is too busy to check those same sites for posting by visa applicants.
Let's Play War! Turkey has detained 27 Russian commercial ships in retaliation for the 8 Turkish ships the Russians had detained in the Black Sea.
The Worst of The Worst: Ever wonder how the Bush administration decided who were the worst of the worst, those who needed to be held indefinitely in Guantanamo, and how they were captured? Turns out that 22 of these villains were religious refugees fleeing China who were turned into the US Military by Afghans who wanted the huge rewards the US was paying for candidates for torture and incarceration. After being held for years with no charges, they were finally let go. Makes one proud of our Justice system that their innocence finally prevailed.
Honor Guard: Republicans in Ohio want to require that any fetal remains from an abortion be buried or cremated, with the cost born by the abortion provider and presumably passed on to the patient.
Automatic Defrost Cycle: The ground temperature at the top of the permafrost on Alaska's North Slope has been rapidly rising, from 17.6ºF in 1988 to 28.5ºF toady. At the current rate of increase the permafrost will soon become the permathaw.
As I Was Saying... "When credit expansion gets ahead of productivity and the production of goods, services and income that support all borrowing, the only possible result is a repricing of debt, risk, collateral and assets–that is, a crash. The global central banks have pushed that repricing forward seven years by lowering interest rates to near-zero (or less than zero), enabling borrowers to add more debt even though their incomes have stagnated or declined. But enabling more debt does not reverse supply-demand imbalances or create income out of thin air. As a result, piling on more debt is not a solution... the eventual repricing will be even more severe because the debt load is now so much larger." Charles Hugh Smith.
Progress: 71% of Americans now accept that mass shootings are "just a normal part" of life in the United States. Stay warm.
Protecting and Self-Serving: Police unions in Chicago are fighting for the right to destroy decades of police records of misconduct and disciplinary investigations before they can be made public. They are afraid such disclosure might sully their good name.
As Is: “A Saudi millionaire was cleared of raping a teenager after telling the court that he might have accidentally penetrated the 18-year-old when he tripped and fell.” Repeatedly.

9 comments:

McMike said...

re TPP. are you sure this merely is the GOP seeking pork, or is it both sides looking for an excuse to push passage past the elections? The Dems, in particular (incl. their POTUS candidate), might not want to go on record with this thing during an election season.

re worst. So many truly horrific injustices to think about these days, perpetrated by our servants in our name, it's hard to know where to start being outraged about it all. Bob Dylan had it right: everything is broken.

re permathaw. We can at least hope that this disrupts arctic oil drilling, and the rigs and pads and haul roads all sink into the muck. There would be some ironic pleasure in that.

re normal. Odd that we can absorb weekly domestic mass shootings as normal, but we still scare ourselves stoopid over a once-every ten-to-twenty years actual foreign terror attack. Goes to show the power of framing.... or, in the words of Agent K: "People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

McMike said...

re pop up ads. FYI. Got one again today. This time it reactivated itself three times in a row as different ads, before I could get back to the site.

I realize that it follows me over to this site when I google this blog's name to get the url, and then I click on the google result. The click takes me to the site, but then immediately get hijacked by the full screen popup.

I run all the usual virus protections. This only happens on this site (and I surf all day). I wouldn't rule out google. But I'll run a scan anyway.

The ad is served by go.goadvs. I use firefox on a PC.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Dearest readers, is there anyone else out there that gets these pop-upps? If so, what is your usual track to the site?

Anonymous said...

Same thing yesterday and the day before, saved browser link in android default browser

Thank you so much for the site, all the best for the holidays to you and yours

Gegner said...

I am not troubled by pop ups (here) but they are suddenly everywhere. I have SAR bookmarked and use that link when I want to visit.

Gegner said...

Perhaps it's the 'tri-fecta', I also use google chrome...um, nevermind, just keyed the "I am not a robot" box and got a pop-up!

weird.

Okay, that was a bit of oddity from 'captcha' so the pop-up was relevant. (took dummy a few to figure out what was going on.)

McMike said...

The internets say I probably got a spyware from the go.goadvs bundled in with a "free" software download.

When you sleep with a free software, you sleep with everyone else they've ever slept with....

rjs said...

never had an ad popup here, ckm...i get here daily via a bookmark on my toolbar...

Anonymous said...

No pop-up here, but there are a lot of sites that by simply clicking on a link will inject a spambot onto an insufficiently protected phone, tablet or pc's browser. Suspect this is what's happened to your user, and it isn't your Blogger page, as looking at your code does not indicate anything untoward.

Alaskan have a lot of gas, particularly the ex-Gov. but nothing has the size of Russia's off-shore permafrost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD8hU-lbqpE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQotE