That, or people are overreacting to news that almost all the non-essential workers have already been fired, and there has been an influx of temporary jobs programs funded entirely by future tax obligations (stimulus) ... not to mention Wal-Mart alone hiring over 10,000 seasonal workers who get laid off on Jan. 8.

The number of people who have been unemployed for more than half a year rose by 293,000. A staggering 5.9 million people, or 38.3% of the unemployed, have been without work for more than six months. And the number of people looking for full-time work but can only find part-time work remained steady at 9.2 million in November.

I simply don't get how these people can't see the forest from the trees, but as John Maynard Keynes said: The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Here is video of the floor testimony I wrote about yesterday:

Kidding. it's just rare to see people say they were dead wrong, I know that. I was wrong. Believe me, I'm probably less likely to write that than most of you. Always feeling I am correct is a huge character flaw, but things have changed, and I was dead wrong.

For years, I had enough sense, and that's what I saw it as ... "sense", to lean toward the side of the scientific community in regard to AGW (climate change). Let me preface by saying I'm not a "denier", and I sure as hell wasn't skeptical. If anything I was pissed libertarians spent so much time siding with "cranks". That's the problem here ... and a lot of people aren't getting that not only is a failure to adequately address the problems hurting their cause ... if they keep it up, they'll drag down the wider field of "science". Murmurings that evolution is subject to the same fudging are beginning to run rampant online. This has got to stop. AGW supporters, like me need to realize and admit when they are wrong. The damage being done by supporters is becoming *far* worse than the leak itself. It's spreading beyond climate science into people trying to imply the same problems exist in the study of evolution, and that's the fault of people who refuse to see what is staring them in the face regarding Climaquiddick. I've been reading now on this for hours and hours each evening, for a week and a half, and I've realized two things:

1. I was right in always speaking as a layman, and saying I'm not "sure", ass covering really ... but I was wrong about a lot. Namely, everything regarding climate science.

2. There is no hope of containing this to only climate science at this point (unfortunately). Never mind salvaging climate science itself to anyone who didn't already treat it as a religion of sorts. It's dead. Face that. Trust me, I've read for *hours* about this at this point, and was once a True Believer. It's dead.

For years, I've come down on the side of AGW, while all the while knowing I don't know enough about the science (or didn't, I should say) to really be certain. Even knowing the marginalization Austrians see in academic circles, I wasn't familiar with the real depths of the problems with AGW. As proof I'm not some denier (unless one is even more conspiritorial than David Icke followers, and thinks I've been waiting to do this for 10 years):

In 2005-2006, I made a couple posts I googled up. I knew I'd mentioned how silly people are who are deniers.

http://rightc0ast.livejournal.com/4716.html

In a usenet group in 1999, I said that people are merely falling into the trap of oil-driven hedgemony and US empirical goals when they deny global warming.

As recently as 11 days ago, I said:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/a6zdw/summary_of_notable_emails_from_the_cru_hacking/c0g57cs

and:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/a6zdw/summary_of_notable_emails_from_the_cru_hacking/c0g5aj1

I was speaking about the emails alone at the time, and you know what? That isn't even the problem. The data is the problem. The code is the problem. I've done my best to research this myself, even though I haven't even seen fortran since the 90's. I get programming well enough to see the reality here though. Especially when you pair it with the extensive look ESR (Jargon file, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Art of Unix Programming, fetchmail, emacs editing mode, ncurses, etc) has given the code, and the extensive insight in the comment sections there. Or alternately, a link to other source analysis, my take on the code, other code reviews, and a link to further comments in ikilled007's LJ. That thread alone is an excellent resource.

The links here, and others within the linked pages comprise a more than damning picture. It's stake through the heart bad, and frankly, anyone who says different, at this point, is working purely off of faith. The people saying AGW isn't debunked are simply not reading what I am, or they are unwilling to do what I had to do ... open their mind and take in the idea they have been wrong for ten years.

The only reason this post exists is for the reader. So they can see it's OK to be wrong. They won't be the only one who was. It happens.

We are human, after all.

Edit: I posted this to reddit, in case friends were wondering why I'm getting replies from anon.

I don't think there would be video somewhere yet, since it only happened a little while ago. I'm watching Bloomberg TV though, and Sen. Jim Bunning laid into Bernanke like something I've never seen. Even Paul doesn't do this, plus as much as I like Ron Paul, his speech delivery sucks. No timing, bad politician, etc. Makes him a good human, but doesn't make for great TV.

Bunning though, that guy just lit Ben's ass up. Here are some tidbits, as I remember the quotes anyways. Paraphrase disclaimer. :)

I'll post a vid if I see it later, it was that good.

"The AIG bailout you pushed should by itself earn you a one way ticket back to college"

"Look, everyone knows I was a baseball player, and where I come from we punish failure, we don't reward it. You are a failure."

"Without your personal help, zombie banks you propped up would have failed. You seem proud of that, but really you are the very definition of moral hazard."

"Under your leadership, the Fed has lived up to it's roots as "The Creature From Jekyll Island".

Are you shitting me? Did a Senator just name-drop G Edward Griffin's book ...

Yep, he sure did.

Goldman Sachs execs are getting NYC firearms permits to protect themselves during a populist uprising.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ahD2WoDAL9h0

JohnGaltFla wrote a series called The Day The Dollar Died. Just remember for whatever reason it is posted in reverse on the roundup page. So chapter one is at the bottom, then you scroll up to chapter 2, etc. I just read it, and it's pretty good.

Useful : http://geoipweather.com/

Funny: http://www.thefuckingweather.com/

A truffle of some sort? I've never even seen a truffle, so I don't know. The beagle went apeshit and dug it up on a walk in the woods.




Better pic, full size:

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/3144/s2010219.jpg

Edit: Looks like it's a poisonous Earthball mushroom. I just never saw one I guess.

Also, Roger's mushrooms is the best mushroom site, glad I found it:

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/gallery/DisplayBlock~bid~6768~source~gallerychooserresult.asp

I never pay attention to when the shuttle is landing in FL, and when it does, I damn near dive under the desk *every* time. Sonic booms are loud.

No? Good. Stay home. Just got done charting some for today, and looking at a sizing up shitstorm. Black Friday. I wouldn't want to look back one day soon and have to remember being the person out buying useless shit on "Black Friday".

In 4 years, I think it's going to look like the day the Greatest Depression really started. You'll see something happen for sure, with everyone suffering the slap in the face by Dubai.

Today that something is looking like:

The Fed and Treasury have to come out with a premarket promise to drive the stake into the dollar and attempt true bubble creation ...

or:

Kaboom.

or.

Both.

It's going to be a crazy morning.

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Crashing a state dinner at the White House apparently takes a security breakdown as well as some kind of nerve.

The Secret Service is looking into its own security procedures after determining that a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, managed to slip into Tuesday night's state dinner at the White House even though they were not on the guest list, agency spokesman Ed Donovan said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091126/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_state_dinner_uninvited_guests

LMFAO!

Any goodwill gained with India is out the door. Despite assurances to the public that everyone went through metal detectors, I assure you, Indian officials are not that stupid. Despite the couple shaking hands with the VP and Rahm Emmanuel on their facebook page, and getting who knows how close to the Indian Prime Minister and POTUS at a dinner with, I would assume, steak knives at the very least present ... they sent out the "no big deal" for public consumption.

I can name any number of highly effective weapons that can be brought through detectors, in addition to the knives that were everywhere, obviously ... but when you have your arm draped over the VP's neck, minimal training means you are 1/2 second away from a dead VP, weapon or no weapon.

That's what the Indians take from this, I'm sure.

LMFAO. Morons. I should kick the next person who asks me to take off my shoes in the nuts. In fact, I call on all Americans to begin our anti-nutsack jihad against useless security thea...

BRB, van pulling up.

So, the guy who said:

Fiscal imbalances are not a problem in Iceland: quite the opposite, with Iceland having an excellent fiscal position with low government net debt (less that 10% of GDP) and a fully funded pension system (with assets amounting to more than 120% of GDP). Monetary policy has also been successful in keeping inflation low and near the inflation target, particularly when housing prices are excluded from the inflation measure, as is the case in the United States and the eurozone.
Research on multiple equilibria suggests that self-fulfilling prophecies are unlikely to occur when fundamentals are strong, as they are in Iceland.

The analysis in our study suggests that although Iceland’s economy does have some imbalances that will eventually be reversed, financial fragility is currently not a problem, and the likelihood of a financial meltdown is low. Iceland is an advanced country with high-quality institutions. GDP per capita (adjusted for PPP) ranks fifth highest in the world; longevity is the highest for females and second highest for males; unemployment is almost non-existent and way below the natural rate; net government debt is almost nil, labor force participation among older workers the highest in the world, and of women the highest in the OECD (almost 80%, compared with 56% on average in the OECD).

Noteworthy among Iceland’s country rankings for quality of institutions is that Iceland ranks fifth in economic freedom, first in terms of the lowest corruption, seventh in terms of competitiveness, first in the percentage of population connected to the Internet (ADSL or ISDN), and the first in terms of freedom of the press, compared with number 113 for Turkey and 59 for Thailand [and 666th for America].

These rankings are of course sometimes arbitrary, but they clearly illustrate that Iceland is a well run, advanced Nordic country that has little in common with emerging market countries, a fact important to recognize when we start discussing financial stability in the next section.

As for Liesman's question of how would an audit threaten the Fed's indepence, it gets the following response: "Having an audit ... is going to be extremely, extremely problematic. You want transparancy, but it can go too far. The full monty here is not the way you want to go." Thank you for protecting us from our stupidity Fred. The people of Iceland thank you for your brilliance as well.

Man. No bullshit, my wife has been on the phone since 11 AM with a friend she hasn't talked to for a few months. A falling out of some sort, when the friend left her husband and kids for some guy at work.

"I was angry, and bitter, you cut me out of your life and stopped calling like when you left your husband no one you used to know mattered" ... "I stood by your side for 12 years!" "You changed, you aren't you any more!" "I'll be here for you always and forever!" blah blah.

It's truly amazing to behold. I wouldn't say some of this crap to my wife if she left tomorrow. Never mind the approaching-8-hour hour-emo-fest I am watching here today. It's hilarious to watch. They've cried like 4 times.

I guess it beats whipping her ass ... Or a shared observation of how nice a former acquaintances boobs were, and a high five back tap combo. Which are the ways I can recall my falling outs with dudes ending. It's still funny though. Oprah has nothing on my house today.

At 5:45 or so, a boy got lost in the woods a few miles north of here. His name is Kaleb Carelli, and his mom was in the back yard, on their multiacre plot, and the boy supposedly disappeared. Mom remembers hearing the dog bark and run, and she went over to the area a couple minutes later, and no dog or boy to be found. An hour or so later, the dog came home without the boy. Lots of woods, lots of places to get lost. It's warm at least, and here is to hoping he's found out there soon.


The part that makes this very unusual, aside from being local to me and my having dogs and boys out back doing boy stuff all the time so it hits home, is that as of right now at 10:10 EST, there is literally *nothing* I can show you to show you this has happened. Not only does every news site and Google News/searches have nothing, the damn Sheriff just came on the 10 o'clock news and said THEY DON'T HAVE A PICTURE TO SHOW ANYONE OR THE SEARCHERS YET.

Are you kidding me? Really? I'm speechless.

EDI: 10:31 pic and story went up.

http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/11/19/boy_5_missing_from_deleon_springs.html

Take a look at this Google maps link. They have a lot of woods to comb through. The dogs headed up to the northeast of the A pinpoint in the bottom left corner:

http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=2545+Place+Pond+Road+deleon+springs,+fl&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=2545+Place+Pond+Rd,+De+Leon+Springs,+Volusia,+Florida+32130&gl=us&ei=SRAGS6-0FMfU8AbPmtG3Cw&ved=0CAoQ8gEwAA&ll=29.206866,-81.196003&spn=0.12901,0.209255&t=h&z=13

EDIT 2: Yay, one of the locals found him hiding out in the brush near a game trail just outside the wildlife mgmt area. What good fortune that if this had to happen in mid-november, that it was like 70f tonight instead of 50f

http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/11/19/boy_5_missing_from_deleon_springs.html

Watt's that you say? You got pwned? To bad you bankster whore.

Yeah. I'm excited. Sorry. this is fantastic news, for a bill that was all but gutted two weeks ago, with every penny the banks could muster being thrown at the committee no less. My Congresscritter (Kosmas) is on the committee, and got multiple visits from many of us here. I don't trust Grayson, but being able to drop the name of the rising democrat rockstar is helping immensely. Lew is right, and Helicopter Ben is crying in a beer right now.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/043238.html

Well, it's busting in spectacular fashion. In this video, you can see UCLA students go absolutely **Apeshit** and nearly riot after finding out about a 32 percent tuition hike. 14 Arrested, 1 Tazed...

Ark. police officer uses Taser on 10-year-old girl

http://www.southernbread.org/police-have-gotten-out-of-control/

Points for style I suppose, but officer Dustin Bradshaw falls short of the youngest ever tasering by four years. Maybe next time, slugger. I'll recognize the near-record, and help Google archive it for you, officer. You're welcome.

Bonus points, the idiot mother who called the cops because her 10 year wouldn't take a shower? The Arkansas Times reports she is a part time county dispatcher, and county jail officer.

The one kid in NY is expelled for having a mini knife in a kit in his truck, and now this kid is getting harassed by SEIU goons for his dastardly good deed. If they could be fired, or lose their government gigs, it would sure be bad PR. Luckily it doesn't matter. Whew, close call. Back to tracking down boy scouts to harass.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Union-Bullies-Boy-Scout-for-Dastardly-Good-Deed-70285552.html

( Pics behind the cut )

Good old ANSWER and south Florida Party for Socialism and Liberation and Socialist Party USA members doing what they do best. Use force to get what they want. In the youtube comments in a display of candor, the Vice Chair of SPF (Socialist Party of Florida) actually says this ...

I was there the fascist camera man decided to get in the face of the wrong Socialist. The SPUSA and PSL were there it wasn't just an ANSWER event. The socialist party of Florida, which i am vice chair of also supported this event.

commenter 2: amsterdam, which one in the group are you, ...

I was the mother fucker about to pull out my mace, but stopped when the camera man fell underneath a larger SPUSA comrade. I believe the two fascists got there heads bet on by the PSL and SPUSA members.

There is the law of force, the only law any self respecting communist follows.