Filling the bowl

I grew up in New Orleans so I thought I was pretty expert on avoiding living in places that will flood relentlessly once a single levee breaks, or a heavy rain falls.  Unfortunately I didn't think the current house through completely, we bought a house on the edge of a bowl.

The flood control plan for Houston was designed to protect downtown from Buffalo Bayou dumping all of it's water near it's delta near downtown.  They utilized two low areas near Katy, TX and channeled BB and several other streams into those low areas, then built a levee on the south edge with flood control structures that allow releasing water into BB.  That way all the water flows into these reservoirs (Barker and Addicks) during floods, and not straight into downtown.  The suburb of Katy grew, and they built neighborhoods around the edges of this reservoir (also George Bush Park), and at some point your idiot bought a house at the northern edge of this park.

Unfortunately, it's been raining relentlessly, without mercy for the past 4 days and that reservoir has filled until the water is only several feet below the top of the southern levee.  Even though the rain stopped long enough for the street flooding to go down and allow your intrepid author to escape up to Dallas, the rain, will not, freaking stop.  The poor people downstream of Buffalo Bayou are already flooding, and the only reason it's not full Katrina is local people and the Cajun Navy are out rescuing people in boats.  Meanwhile, I'm watching on facebook as street by street the neighborhood is submerging as the bowl fills.  Much more cold-blooded then the downstream folks, how much water we end up with depends on how full the dam holds, and how accurate the contour line on the topographical map really is.  At work, drilling horizontal wells +/- 2' is pretty accurate.  Here that accuracy will decide our fate.  (not so bad really, we're safe, put my in-laws on a plane this morning and the nightmare scenario of dragging my family on top of a toy inflatable boat to a rescue area didn't happen.)

Pray for Houston.  It's going to get much worse because so many people that have never flooded are going to flood, and the government isn't doing as much as it could.  (they should be convoying in every 2 1/2 ton truck in the southern USA to Texas,  I only saw one humvee during the entire exodus from Houston.

You're welcome, first draft

I've watched Moana a couple of times, and someone in the house learned to make Alexa
play songs from Moana (and Trolls).  Maui sounds so much like Obama when I hear him I see
Obama:

Who has 2 thumbs and told the IRS to lie
When you were only yay high – This Guy

Who gave Iran $10 billion in cash and gold
Allowing the ayatollah to be bold, you’re looking at him yo!

I let our embassy burn, they killed our ambassador and I let
Libya turn.  I drew a red line in Syria, then let ‘em cross it so
More terrorists are near ya as they cross the sea.

What can I say except your welcome, for racial hatred and cities
that burn.  What can I say except your welcome, when I shit
on allies who for freedom yearn.

What can I say except you’re welcome, for ISIS that grows
Every day and are gonna make you pay.  What can I say except you’re
welcome, I think I’m great even though my feet are made of clay

I destroyed the healthcare and made it harder to get the care you need.
I freed al-Qaida from Guantanamo and smiled when they legalized weed.
I let Russia lead, gave up Crimea and planted the seed.
Of our destruction, our destruction.

Now it’s January 20th and I’m gonna take that boat, now it’s the end of my term,
And my only life skill is to gloat

You're Welcome

Global Warming, the beach and risk

Barry Ritholz had a blurb on his blog asking people to lay down
a marker by buying coastal property if they thing AGW isn't
a real problem.
Several years ago we bought a condo on the beach in Florida.
I worry about hurricanes, and I've followed weather and hurricanes
since I could read and my father gave me a book on the history of
hurricanes by the corp of Engineers.  (around 1975)  One of things postulated
in that book and by Nash Roberts (famous New Orleans Hurricane guy)
is that hurricanes peak in 30 year cycles.  That cycle is probably related
to the PDO cycle, but meteorologists in the 70's didn't know about the
PDO cycle, Nash would say throughout my childhood that we were in the
low part of the cycle.  Things picked up in the 90's with Andrew, then
were roaring until 2008 and have pretty much stopped for the past 8 years.

We made a bet that the risk to owning a beach condo for the next 10 years
or so is pretty low due to low hurricane activity.   I also have a side bet with
someone who expects it to flood due to rising sea levels.   I know a little about
geology and know that barrier islands with active beaches should grow
if there is a source of sand and rising sea levels.  The real risk is that the beach
will grow so long that it will be too far to walk back to replenish beers.

The reality is that man has leveed the rivers so that most sediment is transported
too far offshore to be caught in the alongshore current, so beaches are eroding but
are being built up just as fast by the county dredging sand from offshore.

We'll probably look at selling in 3 or 4 years or maybe moving to a higher floor
or increasing our insurance, the hurricane activity should start ramping up then.
Sea level will continue to increase as it has for the past 200 years, rebounding from
the little ice age.  The answer to that problem will be less control of natural rivers,
accepting flooding in some areas (Mississippi Delta) to build land from sediment.

Slip sliding away

"Make myself response-able, only I can control how I respond."-Stephen Covey
"Measure twice, cut once"-Dad
"Be prepared to modify your plan" - Chinese Fortune cookie 4/22/04
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts". Winston Churchill
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit-"The day will come when even this
ordeal will be a sweet thing to remember." -Virgil
"Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. - Carl Spackler
"E pur si muove" - Gallileo
"Enjoy every sandwich." - Warren Zevon
"It is impossible to predict the future, the best we can do is to invent it" Dennis Gabor


Just some notes from my corporate profile at work.  Whenever I came
across a good quote that was apt for situation I'd paste it in there.
I think I was supposed to include more statements on how I'd shift
my paradigms to create two quarters for the company.  Anyway,
as of today, as they say in New Orleans I ain't dere no more, so I paste them
here until blogger deletes all of the blogs that don't make money.
(lightbulb - add some ads)

In theory if the oilfield comes back by the end of the year they will
rehire me.  I have my doubts.  Unless Saudi Arabia and Iran nuke
each other, we're in for several more years of downturn.  I don't think
economists take into account how much of the economy depends on
the energy industry.  Each well takes hundreds of tons of steel for
casing and tubing.  Mud, fluids and machined equipment for completions.
Wellheads.  Cabling.   Plus all of the equipment needed to drill the wells
and the associated service companies.

I'd bet that a big portion of the economic improvement since 2008 was
driven by the energy industry, and without it the economy will be on
a more Obama-like flat to decreasing trajectory.  The amount of oil needed
and the amount provided will parallel each other until the decline of
production finally brings us back to shortage.  Fortunately for the long
term viability of unconventional oil, the decline curve doesn't seem to be
as steep as it was claimed.  It appears that will take 4 or 5 years to get
back to 2008 production levels, which is bad for my employment prospects,
but good for the economic viability of shale wells.

Oh well.  I've seen enough to believe Virgil's words.  What seems like
tough times and hard things to get through, when you are 20 years older
seem sweet like new wine.

Horse Soldiers

I was just watching the Horse Soldiers with John Wayne.
it's a so-so John Wayne movie, I like it because I've heard about
it since I was young.   My father was a recruiter in Natchatoches, La
when that movie was made there in in the late 50's.  Because he was
the highest ranked (only) federal official, he had to be there to supervise
the filming on federal land.

He got to meet John Wayne at the location, and my dad pointed out
that the fencing all had barbed wire, but barbed wire wasn't invented
until after the civil war.  John Wayne said that 'people like you are
what make movies so expensive.'   But they added split rails to all
the fencing.  Some of it in the movie looks more like they just wired
some branches to the existing barbed wire to cover it up.

My dad did get to meet John Wayne again in town.  He needed to buy
a present for a son or nephew and my dad took him to the store where
they sold model toys and helped him find what he needed.
He was a down to earth kind of guy, no entourage or assistants needed.

My parents lived there in Natchotoches to have a few of my siblings there,
then moved up to Newfoundland Canada to have a few more.  It's really
beautiful there.  If I was going to live in Louisiana I'd live in Lafayette
just to get a good lunch every day, or in New Orleans if I could get an
apartment in the quarter, but Natchotoches would be a good backup
retirement spot.

 

Sum of all fears

I've said before on this blog that Tom Clancy was a little too
close to the truth in his novels.  I'm watching the Sum of all
Fears on TV, where they massacred the book and made the
bad guys some neo-nazi group instead of the islamofacist
group in the book.  I'm sure they changed that to be politically
correct, but it was a major mistake because if they had left it
as originally was told it would be a much more timely movie.

The attacks in Paris just happened in Paris 3 days ago, I'm guessing we'll
be seeing more of the same in Europe.  ISIS would be fools to
attack in the USA, we currently have a dope/inept/apologist in
charge, and if something major is tried before the election it would
sway events away from the inevitable Hillary towards one of the
republicans.

Much more likely they are working on a deeper game or bigger
attack similar to the Sum of all Fears.  God protect us from smart
terrorists.

It really matters not a whit what the Republicans or Tea Party
think we should do to Isis.  At some point either the problem will
be fixed by the Europeans, or some terrible event will happen and
rest of the country will rise up and demand war to the knife.

Watching the videos of the president in Turkey today, he sounded
like the most inept high school debater in southern louisiana.  Even
CNN's Armenpour was talking about how inept he sounded.

I never expected to see Clancy's fictional presidents portrayed in
real life.  He had several presidents beyond reality in novels, and
each one was more venal than the last until Ryan took over.  The
current president is similar to a Tom Clancy character, likely
to get his comeuppance in the 3rd act.

Seasickness and other problems

I have a limited ability to travel by boat.  I set the record for shortest
time to being seasick on a crewboat when I walked onto one at the dock,
entered the crew area and smelled that crewboat smell of diesel/lysol/cleaned
vomit and turned around to puke on the dock.

My dad had an iron stomach (still getting used to writing that in the past
tense :( ).   When we were on lake Pontchartrain in his 14' aluminum boat
trying to catch shrimp in 4' waves I was already asking to go home and
he was focused on doubling our catch from one to two shrimp.  He told
us the story of when he was on the LST going from Morocco back to
New York they were in the tail end of a storm and the waves were the
same height as the wheelhouse.  The sailors were short handed and my
dad was one of he few people that could stand a watch so he stayed up
in the wheelhouse during the storm.  Even the captain had to turn and puke
in a bucket, but my dad stayed standing tall.

The LST made it's way to New York and they arrived at some ungodly
hour and were dumped off the ship.  The USO should have taken care of
them to get them some place to stay on liberty until they could draw pay,
but they were no help, a guy from the salvation army drove them from
brooklyn to manhatten and got them a place to stay.  My dad never supported
the USO after that.

He ended up being roped into working with shore patrol, paired with
a NYC police officer and had his nose broken in a bar fight.  He described
his nose as a Roman nose (it roams all over his face).  I look enough like
him that the priest stopped me on the way out of the church to say that it's good
that I got his looks and his other fine qualities, but I would never have the
guts to wade into a bar fight.

Sadness and stories

My Father passed away a couple of weekends ago.  He rode home in an ambulance
for hospice care, then died the next day.

It only hit me later that my father's stories about how his father died were similar.
My father moved to New Orleans as a boy from the country in Avoyelles Parish.
They were sharecroppers there, but due to the depression they lost the farm they were
on and moved to New Orleans where there were jobs available as world war 2 was
beginning.  My grandfather had Tuberculosis, and he passed away when he was 42
and my Father was only 12 years old, but he didn't want to die in the hospital in the
city, and they paid for an ambulance to take him from New Orleans up highway one
to Moreauville in Avoyelles Parish, where he passed away.

My father apparently always had a fear that he would die when he was 42, and
strangely enough when I was a boy and heard the story about my grandfather, I
was afraid that he would die when I was 12 years old.  Events don't repeat exactly,
but things do seem to echo down from the past.  (I was tremendously relieved
when I became a teenager and nothing bad had happened.)

Because my Grandmother was in debt to pay for that ambulance, they had to rent
out rooms or at least beds to people working in the war factories in New Orleans.
My father and Uncle Garner were in a house that was full of beds, most of the people
that were staying there worked at a cardboard box factory, others worked at Avondale
shipyards across the river (my Aunt's husband was one of those).  Enough people were
staying there that they had to hot-bunk, and they were paying for a bed and meals.

My father worked as well.  He worked as a paper boy for the Item (or maybe the
states-item, now the paper is the times-picayune-states-item), and he didn't start learning
english until they had moved to New Orleans.  He told one story of how he met
Carlos Marcello.  He was standing on a street corner selling papers, but it was raining
so hard, like a "cow pissing on a flat rock" that his bag of papers were mostly mush.
A young well dressed guy came out of the corner bar and offered to buy all of his ruined
papers, the young Marcello was carrying the take from the slot machines in the bar
and it was a bag of coins.  He told my father to reach into the bag of quarters and grab
as many as he could hold with both hands.  That was several dollars more than the cost
of the ruined papers and was enough of a windfall that when the news showed Mafioso
Carlos Marcello on trial my father responded with that story.  He couldn't be such a
bad man.

My father also worked at a pharmacy (all of this happened uptown, close enough to still go
to St Aloysius high school on Esplanade),  The pharmacist was willing to pay my
father's way to Tulane to study to become a pharmacist, but the family needed money
and he enlisted in the Navy instead at 16 by fudging a birth certificate.  I don't think
it mattered much anyway, he had already graduated high school, H.S was only to the
11th grade at the time.  He should have gone to Tulane, he was smart enough that
he was a good student even though he had just learned english as a teenager.

My father served around the world in the seabees.  In Guantanamo bay Cuba, Trinidad,
morocco, Newfoundland, Spain, as a recruiter in the USA in Northwest Louisiana and
Virginia, at bases in Norfolk and Providence, RI, and finally in Jacksonville fl.

He retired there on a disability after 20 years and reaching Senior Chief Petty officer (E-8)
We were always told growing up that he had emphysema due to smoking and sandblasting without breathing protection in Spain.  Just in the last year we learned that it wasn't emphysema that he had, but while he was in Spain there was an accident where an idiot moving some gas cylinders filled with Chlorine gas dropped them off
a forklift.  One cylinder hit the edge of a concrete pad and sheared off the valve, gassing
everyone in the warehouse and killing a couple of spanish workers and injuring several
other people including my father.   It was classified due to that fact that they were working
there as part of the Palomares nuclear bombs that were lost when a plane crashed.
One was lost at sea, and that one was part of the movie with Cuba Gooding Jr, the ones
on land were broken and scattered radioactive material across the area.  The seabees
were scooping up contaminated dirt and moving it, and he was injured as part of that
operation, so the idiots in the navy classified it and my father never told us about it
until 50 years had passed.  (he was honorable even to people that treated him poorly).

The Navy was good enough to send an honor guard to the funeral, with the full 21 gun
salute.  When taps played the rain changed from an occasional drizzle to a full sad downpour.

Morocco

We went to Morocco for work a few years ago, I was curious to
go because my Father had been there working on the US Navy
base and I grew up hearing stories about his time there.

We were in the hospital this morning and I was trying to talk about something
to get my father interested in talking.  As he ate a few bites of the apple fritter
I smuggled into the ICU I mentioned that we went to Morocco a few
years ago, and we even went to Marrakesh.  My Father perked up
a little and said, "I went there too,  we went in a truck".  Which must
have been a crappy trip, because we went on a crappy train ride
from Casablanca and it took all day.   I can't imagine a ride in a 2 1/2 ton
truck in that heat.

[I know he's told me where his base was,  but I don't remember where
or how to spell it.  (quick google and it's Port Lyautey, and I would have
never spelled it like that, I remembered Port Liotee.)]

My father was in the Seabees and they went to Morocco on an LST
in the mid 50's.  It was after my Father's unit spent several years in
Cuba and Trinidad.  , and he had already made Chief.

The barracks that the French had left them were up on a hill, and the
rebels were shooting out the lights on the base and occasionally hitting
the barracks.  The MCB commander told my dad to take apart the
barracks and move them down the hill.   Since the buildings were built
up on skids, or had two big 4x4's along the base of the long axis,
my dad suggested they just disconnect everything and drag the buildings
down the hill.

It worked.  They had a big d-4 bulldozer, cut all the water and electricity
and dragged the buildings down to new foundations, pulling them in one
long train to avoid multiple trips up to the top of the hill.  He was quite
a clever young guy in the seabees.

I didn't get much more today, just "we went to marrakesh in a truck
and it was terrible".  I should have been taking notes as a teenager
when I worked with him on his camp and the stories came thick and fast.
:(

No money for NPR

I listen to the NPR station a lot.  One of the things I really missed
when we lived outside the USA was NPR and the calming voice
of all of the people from the Northeastern universities.  It never really
bothered me how slanted it was, they normally interviewed enough
primary sources that it was easy to tell what had really happened, even
if all of the interviewees are lesbians it is still better than the normal
voiceover reporting of the other networks.

Now we are back in Houston and I can listen to NPR while stuck in traffic on
I-10, or stuck in traffic on the beltway, or stuck in traffic on I-45.
What has changed in the past 9 years is the tone, before there
was a smirking sneering superiority over the 'bushies' and how
stupid they were.  That was frustrating but there was still a large
amount of non-political primary reporting that was better than
anything else on radio.  Now they are beyond slanted,  any viewpoint
against the current administration is reported as a conspiracy theory,
or those zany republicans trying to politically attack the president.
The switch might be slight, but they've changed from slanted to
active campaigning for the democrats.

It's bad, but now I have Pandora, and whenever a political story
starts I can switch over to a crappy 80's music mix.  Over the past
two weeks every time I turned on the radio NPR was asking for
money, but giving money to them would be like sending
a walmart card to ISIS.

On the Mustachians

I'm off work this week and not shaving, going by the rule of thumb
that if I'm not being paid why should I shave?  It's not working too well
though, I'm looking less like Tom Selleck and more like Santa Claus.

The oilfield downturn, forced days off and a high chance of being laid
off means most of my brain's clock cycles are being taken up by money,
what is our burn rate and how long until we have to take up residence under
the bridge.

It would appear that by cutting back our outflows, we could limp to an age
where I'd start to draw a pension so I've stopped scoping out sub-ponte living
conditions and I'm reading more on retirement.  The expert on low cost living
and early retirement is Mr Money Mustache, who's blog details living well
below your means, saving intensely then retiring young.

With very clear prose he details the main barriers to retiring young, which
are spending too much while you are working so that one's saving level is
too low, the main culprit being cars and driving, and if you need a high spending
level to exist then when you run the numbers on the really great retirement calculator
at FireCalc, the estimate will be you can never retire.   It's a very circular problem,
spend too much, save too little and use those same spending estimates to predict
retirement predicts working until you are 80, and that leads to pissing away
even more money when you think it doesn't matter either way.

Here in Houston living without a car would be unpleasant at best, with a high
likelyhood of being squished by a semi-truck at some point.  Living in Colombia
would be much cheaper and no car is needed, but being shot down in a hail
of gunfire is pretty likely as well, so I really need a more in-between type
place.   Not too hot, not too cold, low crime, good schools...probably doesn't
exist.  I guess I'll just enjoy my last two days of lay-off then work even harder
to stay on payroll as long as possible, the upturn should start in 6 months or so.
Just 2 or 3 more boom-bust cycles and I can retire with or without a mustache.

Fish swimming inside a bubble

A great article that describes the lay of the land:

You live in a bubble and you see no need for an open society or for maintaining the integrity of institutions such as journalism or the scientific community. The very idea of objectivity is at odds with your entire way of thinking because it presumes that there is some higher truth than the one propounded by the progressive reality-based community. And you know, with the casual faith of any born believer, that this is not possible.
As a journalist, you report a progressive narrative. The other side doesn't exist except as an obstacle, a stumbling block to the forward march of progress. They are only there to be ridiculed out of history. When you see numbers showing that very little of the country trusts the media, you disregard them, because what else are all those strange people in flyover country going to do anyway? Stop watching CNN? Stop reading Newsweek? And if they disagree, it's because they hate the truth. Truth being your ideology.

People are in their own bubbles and the bubbles don't generally mix, but
my bubble seems to be more correct, it's just that the other side's bubble
hasn't yet felt the wonders of a federal government controlled by the other
bubble.  Things are wonderful when a vengeful state can attack your 
critics, but when the shoe is on the other foot they'll be screaming
oppression.  

Anyway, go read the article, it clearly describes the fish that are swimming

in water but can't see it, when that water is gone they'll be stranded on the

bank wondering where all their air went.

Immigrant song

I watched the president give his talk on legalizing 5 million illegal aliens.
This is a repeat of the 80's, legalize a bunch of people that are here illegally
and that incentivizes another 5 million people to head this way.   The laws in
the 80's were supposed to be the final answer, no more people would come into
country, and Reagan and Bush gave a couple of executive orders that added
a few more million people, but that was supposed to be it.

These current executive orders are wrong for two reasons:  Constitutionally
because it's not expanding on a law previously passed, like Reagan and Bush did
to legalize the families legalized in the law of 1986, It's creating new agencies, employees and workflows.  Operationally it's wrong because we're repeating the same mistake again, legalizing everyone that is here without closing the border first.

It's a done deal at this point, and pretty much irreversible.  if they try and deport
someone in two years the news will be full of reports of boo hoo stories, deporting
children.  Pretty depressing really,  Romney's 47% is inching ever closer to 51%,
and that will be that.

Back in Houston

We finally made it back to living in houston.  Things are fairly different from 8 years ago, more people, more traffic and food is twice as expensive.    In 8 years I've gained about 70% in salary, but we are poorer here than when we left because of inflation.  Crazily enough, the government is claiming little to no inflation because ipads are getting better and cheaper, but once you've bought an ipad (or 2) food really is a lot more expensive.  I'm expecting real measured inflation to kick in once the government makes some program to relieve people's suffering, with mandatory wage hikes or COLA increases, or everything could crash and we'd have another 5 years of deflation and no growth or stagflation.  What has been so tiring about the past 14 years is being trapped in the tides of history.  I'd much prefer just working and saving my money and making 5% on investments, but to make any return I've been throwing the dice and risking a lot, and losing a crapload of money twice since the dot-bomb crash.  So who knows what's going to happen.

I'm only writing this because the building management is constructing offices from an area that used to be a conference room, and it's so noisy that I haven't yet been able to concentrate.  I thought i would try an old trick and start to write something here and hope that it carries over to what I have to write for work, or the carpenters will go smoke a cigarette for a little while.  Luckily  my spanish is good enough that I can follow what their plans are for the morning, and it sounds like they are leaving to go somewhere else.  huzzah.

Anyway, glad to be back home, back on my native heath.  Finally able to unpack all of my books and buy a lawnmower.

Cognitive dissonance and attack in Syria

The news media is gearing up for EastMed War I, who knows what will actually
happen, but it seems strange/funny/laughable that the same people that chanted
no blood for oil, etc will soon be supporters in another war.
Yet again without UN support, but this time without congressional support.

http://www.voanews.com/content/russia-warns-against-military-action-in-syria/1737159.html

Lavrov said military intervention against the government  without the approval of the United Nations would be a “gross violation of international law.”

He made the comments at a press conference only hours after Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC that an international response to the Syrian crisis would be possible without unanimous U.N. Security Council backing.

I really don't care if the UN supports an action or is opposed, but after all of the problems
in the oughts, the only way we should fight a war is by having a vote of congress that
specifically says "War". The congressional vote supporting the Iraq war turned into farce
afterwards when most people that voted for it said "I didn't vote for war".

It might be the morally correct thing to do to destroy tyrants and avenge people killed by
WMD.  I certainly thought so during the Iraq war.  But our political system doesn't
support war to the knife that is not in our vital interests.  Just bombing from a distance
is immoral, and if we don't have the will and resources to do the whole thing, then it's
better to do nothing.  (the whole thing being the beginning and the aftermath.)

Armies break things and kill people.  If we aren't willing to have things broken and killed,
even by accident, then we shouldn't use the army unless it's in our interest.  The way that
should be judged is by a declaration of war.

That the opposition to the war in 2003 was just politics is shown by the same people
(democrats, French) saying UN approval isn't needed now, but it was needed then.

Schadenfreude

I've been away from blogging for awhile, I really don't have time to do anything but work or family time,
so games and reading for pleasure have gone out the window this past year.  (Time in the bathroom reading has expanded, is my 'organimismo' worse or am I just stealing reading time).

I can see some light at the end of the tunnel in the USA, it's just a glimmer but it is going to be getting stronger all year.  The real mistake the administration made was to spy on the AP, they could have spied on fox, or oppressed the tea party or smuggled guns to the zetas all they wanted, but spying on the AP might just crack open the door to a little bit of real journalism and that is all it would take to at least get Obamacare rolled back for a couple of years.   It was a dumb mistake, if they had left the AP alone they could have ground up Fox reporters to make their bread and it would have never been broadcast outside of Fox news and Rush Limbaugh  ("help us, they are grinding us up to make bread" ..."oh you racist right wingers at Fox")

So a small amount of reportage is happening and that is all to the good.  I doubt anyone will get duckwalked out of the whitehouse though, if the president can speak about the government like he's not in charge of the executive branch, just a regular Joe watching what the silling old government is doing and not be mocked, then the little bit of hope is just a little bit.

Let it Burn

Over at Ace of Spades there is a post by Drewm that advocates "Letting it burn".

After 2010 I had some hope that we might be able to turn this massive welfare state around. The full implementation of ObamaCare means that isn’t going to happen. At least not absent a total collapse of our fiscal house of cards.
Let It Burn isn’t an option, it’s an eventuality. The questions are will we be complicit in it any longer and do we want to delay it? I say no. Let the liberals own it. Very few things are made better by delaying the day of inevitable reckoning.  The sooner it burns, the sooner we can try and rebuild.

I agree with that sentiment, much better that it all collapses while i am still young enough to work another 25 years rather than have it all come down in 2025 and I'll just have a couple years to work and save up for cat food.   Here's what I posted as a comment over there:

I think we need to expand the scale of let it burn to: let it burn - worldwide.  It's too expensive to be the world's policeman, and the fire department, and trying to rebuild countries after we blow them up.

I find myself sliding towards being an isolationist as the only moral choice.  we can go and try to save other people, but 4 years later we lose an election and all is undone leaving people exposed to reprisals.  It's much better and moral to have done nothing, than to incite people to revolt and then not support them.

Problems in the balkans, sorry we are the friends of liberty everywhere, but only pay for our own.  Madman in Iran threatening us with nukes?  here, nuclear fire for you is very cost effective.

unfortunately starving the beast includes the defense budget, we need to choose what we really need.  Then cut back our foreign policy to match.  We can't afford a very moral precision defense policy where we invade a country and try not to hurt anyone, then rebuild the country under fire.  It didn't work and we can't afford to repeat it.

It probably doesn't matter, we'll continue to wiggle through problems until the fit hits the shan, then the consequences will happen.   The ironic thing will be it will come out much worse for places like Iran just because we can't afford to be nice.

Homesick

The instapundit links to some twits spouting off on twitter that if Romney wins they are going to leave
the country.  Good.  Go.

I've been hearing that for 10 years:  "If Bush fights an illegal war then I'll go to Canada" or if Bush gets reelected I'll move to Canada".   But they never seem to go. ( " You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... In the name of God, go!")

 Meanwhile when I tried to move back home a couple of years ago the chief twit shut down the oilfield for a year, no job for Joe there.  Thankfully they gave me a job here, but I do get homesick sometimes when I get to see two politicos on TV and one of them is frothing like a mad dog.  It makes me miss Louisiana.

Cautiously hopeful

It's  funny watching the liberal media in a panic about how the president performed in the debate last week.  I'm hoping that their astonishment will continue, then after the election I can post the picture of Cartman drinking the tears of his opponent, Romney will win and the Senate will flip Republican and it will be a new morning in America.

I do realize that it is just as likely that I'll be disappointed.  Romney's point about the 47% might be mildly offensive to some people but it is true, the president has a large percentage of the population on his side no matter what he does or says, and he just needs to convince an additional 4% in several swing states and he'll win.

That will be bad, but there is no way of knowing if that will be the worst possible outcome.  It might be already too late to stop the Titanic of the world economy from hitting the iceberg, and having Obama at the helm when it happens will discredit the big government idea forever.

Oh well, we'll soon see.  Perhaps the Saints can come back from 1-4 to go 10-6 and win the superbowl in New Orleans, and Mitt Romney can win the presidency and take just the right actions to stop the coming economic apocalypse from happening.  But if the Saints don't win and Romney loses it won't be the end of the world, it will just feel like it.