Things I've learned

When we were remodeling our kitchen a few years ago, the electricians said we needed to put an outlet at the end of the snack bar. I thought it was a dumb idea, but they insisted on putting the wires in, but they didn't install the outlet.

Well, I was wrong and I later put the junction box and outlet in myself, with the wires the electricians put under the cabinets.

Turns out the outlet is really handy for slow cookers, grills, and other electrical appliances.

 

Narratives of the Establishment or How to Cover-up Their Role in the Problem

The recent Paris attacks were quite criminal and horrific. 

I do not want to see a repeat of the attacks, ever. That being said, a proper review of the backstory needs to be articulated and I had intended to do so, but David Stockman beat me to it. (He did it better than I could have, also.)

Therefore, please see this link to his article.

Do I think we will see more attacks like this? Certainly. Why? Because the Western Powers/Establishment/Elite/military-industrial-congressional-university complex benefit from all aspects of these horrors. Their power increases as well as their budgets. (sarc on) Plus it's a lot of fun to direct drone attacks in real time from half way around the world! (sarc off)

Milton Friedman, RIP

Once upon a time I believed what I was told about Milton Friedman (by the likes of the Economist, etc.), namely that he was a proponent of liberty and a free market economist.

Later, I learned that he help devise payroll tax withholding to fund WWII while he was working for the Treasury Department.

That seems like the opposite of freedom and liberty to me. So, thanks, Milton! 

We still have payroll tax withholding today, more than 70 years after you invented it for wartime expediency. A dedicated statist could not have done better!

When to Plant a Tree - When to Stop Meddling in Foreign Affairs

There's an old saw about when the best time is to plant a tree - 20 years ago.

When is the next best time to plant a tree - today.

When is the worst time to plant a tree - tomorrow. (Which in many cases turns out to be never because of procastination.)

I hope it is obvious why. Trees take time to grow until we can enjoy their shade and maybe have some fruit, assuming a fruit tree was planted.

Here's my new old saw about foreign policy:

When is the best time to stop meddling in other countries' affairs - 20 years ago. (Or 50 or 60 or 100 years ago)

When is the second best time to to stop meddling in other countries' affairs - today.

When is the worst time to stop meddling in other countries' affairs - tomorrow (which in the CIA's case is just about never).

I define meddling in other countries' affairs as:

assassination and assassination attempts
bombing
planting propaganda
comparing the leader to Hitler
destabilizing foreign currency
funding fake opposition groups
sending guns to opposition groups
blackmailing leaders
kidnapping
buying journalists
drone attacks
financial blackmail
freezing assets
torture
lying to the UN
planting evidence of WMD
buying political opponents
etc.
etc.
etc.
 


 
 

Reno!

When I was a kid living in Elko, Nevada I saw two planes heading to the Reno Air Races. The Red Baron was one of them. This is what it looked like in 1976. You can read about its history here.

The other plane was also a Mustang, called the Flying Undertaker. It was later destroyed in a crash, as was the Red Baron.

Since then, I have wanted to go to the air races and I finally did a couple of weeks ago. Here are some of the best photos I took .

 Dassualt Falcon 7x for the well-heeled

 Two Hawker Sea Furies, Dreadnaught and Sawbones

 A L-39 makes a turn around one of the pylons at nearly 500 mph.

I really enjoyed the Breitling Team in their L-39s. Good thing a lot of rich people pay way too much for a watch, so I can see the Breitling planes! I'll stick with Timex.

Former astronaut, Hoot Gibson won the unlimited class in this highly modified P-51 Mustang, called Strega.

 This was the pace plane for the unlimited class racers.

A close up of Rare Bear's engine.

Thanks to my dad for going with me!

Here are the final race results: 

RENO, NV – The 52nd Annual National Championship Air Races came to a close Sunday, Sept. 20, with Robert “Hoot” Gibson as the winner of the Unlimited Gold Race with a speed of 488.983mph in “Strega.”

Stewart Dawson flying “Rare Bear” was second (471.957) and Dennis Sanders in “Dreadnought” was third (420.361).

Steve Hinton, flying “Voodoo,” and who had won the Unlimited Gold Race the last six years in a row, did not finish the race.

Gibson, 68, is a former American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, and a retired NASA astronaut, as well as a professional pilot who currently races regularly at the annual Reno Air Races.

Other race results:

UNLIMITED CLASS
Speed: 488.983
Plane: Strega
Pilot: Robert “Hoot” Gibson

JET CLASS
Speed: 502.370
Plane: Vampire
Pilot: Pete Zaccagnino

T-6 CLASS
Speed: 238.073
Plane: Midnight Miss III
Pilot: Dennis Buehn

SPORT CLASS
Speed: 377.403
Plane: Blue Thunder II
Pilot: John Parker

BI-PLANE CLASS
Speed: 245.109
Plane: Phantom
Pilot: Tom Aberle

FORMULA ONE
Speed: 239.432
Plane: Endeavor
Pilot: Steve Senegal

RECORDS BROKEN
Tom Aberle broke the speed record in his plane, Phantom, in the Biplane class in a qualifying race on Monday, September 14, with a speed of 284.454 mph. The previous record, set in 2014, was 274.091

 

My Favorite Photos from Our Oshkosh Adventure

I picked my favorite photos from our first family trip to Oshkosh. Six of us went in the party van and drove almost 4,000 miles. Are we a little nuts? Yes, before we even started. My wife, dad, two sons and one daughter went with me.

One of the front tires developed a bulge (and a bad vibration) and had to be replaced in Rawlins, Wyoming with two new front tires. That was the only real mechanical issues we had.
 

 Crazy after 10 hours in the van.

 The EAA Museum is really top notch.  I loved the Pitts in the entrance.

 The Mustang has always been one of my favorite planes and the polish job on this one is beautiful.

Martha and Carolina

 After the Little River Band Concert

 After our ride in the Ford Trimotor over Lake Winnebago

 Eagle Base - we called this home for a week. We only had to deal with one severe thunderstorm on our first night that blew away the canopy and almost one of our tents. The van was our refuge from the rain.

 

The new Goodyear Blimp was really cool. It could fly sideways in a cross wind!

Here I am with my wife,Carolina and one of my other favorite planes, the De Havilland Mosquito - sleek and fast and made of wood with 2 Rolls Royce Merlin engines! Who could ask for more?

Oh, and our trip took us to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see our daughter, Sophia graduate from the U of M.

 Pre-graduation dinner at Cardamom

 The happy grad!

Financial Predictions from David Stockman

David Stockman is one of the favorite economic writers (Gary North is another one). They both write from an Austrian Economic perspective. That basically means that they oppose central bank manipulation of money and credit, I agree. Here is what Stockman recently said:

But here's the thing. Maybe 100,000 people "live large" off the casino. By contrast, according to the Social Security Administration's wage records, there were 100 million workers, or two-thirds of all Americans who held any kind of paying job during 2013, who earned a collective total of just $1.65 trillion that year.That amounts to the incredibly small sum of just $16,500 per average worker.

In short, full-time wage workers have been on a treadmill for decades; average pay for the overwhelming share of jobs celebrated by the talking heads on payroll Friday is pitifully low; and the central bank keeps its heavy foot on the monetary accelerator as it witlessly inflates a $95 trillion financial bubble that it stubbornly denies. I have called this a tale of two graphs. But what it really describes is a clear and present danger to American capitalism fostered by an unelected monetary politburo in thrall to its own lust for power and mesmerized by its own doctrinaire group think. The tragedy is that nothing can stop them except the thundering crash of the gargantuan bubble they have single handedly enabled.

The Federal Reserve Bank of the US has distorted markets to such an extent that unavoidable financial disaster lies ahead. Janet Yellen and the rest of the jedis at the Fed have created a Death Star weapon of mass financial destruction.

Here is what Gary North says about the looming financial and default of the feddle gummint.

That is when corporations will start laying off workers. The working people are going to get hammered, not by the fall of the stock market, but by the contraction that follows. That was what happened, beginning in 1930, and extending throughout the 1930's. The little people did not lose their money, except the money they had in banks -- 9,000 small banks. The rich got less rich, but they became paranoid. The government expanded, and investment ceased. When the rich get paranoid, and refuse to face the challenge of uncertainties, and they see salvation in terms of cost-cutting, that is when innovation slows, unemployment rises, and economic growth disappears. It happened in the 1930's, and I think it is going to happen again. It is certainly going to happen for the common wage earner.

Rich people are counting on their pensions. Pension hopes will be smashed in the next stock market crash.

Common people trust Social Security and Medicare, and these will be defended for as long as Congress can defend them. But, at some point, the money will not be there. The great default will call into question all of the dreams of the common people. At that point, all over the Western world, there would be massive competition for explanations as to why it happened, who did it, and what must be done to recover from it. That will be a time of great entrepreneurial opportunities for Austrian School economists.

Here where I present the explanation that North talks about. 

The Market - we should actually try it instead of just talking about it. No more centrally planned economic policies, no more banksters, creating trillions out of thin air to save their friends in a kind of heads we win, tails you lose arrangement.

Also, the reason for the coming great default and crash is the monetary manipulation by the Fed over the last 4 decades.