Life Distilled

Communism works? Well, it does as long as you’re from a species with a sufficiently simple mind. And then it can produce something absolutely astonishing, as this video shows:

[Hattip: Takoyaki]

How amazing would it be to live the life of a flying squirrel for a day?

It’s easy to get lost in a mess of numbers when you hear about the bailout. $700 billion sounds like a big number, but then so does $1 million to most of us. So it helps to compare it to other government programs. $700 billion is more than the 2008 budget for any single government department, and that includes the big four: Defense, Heath and Human Services, Social Security, and Treasury (which includes our enormous debt interest).

But that’s not the whole story. The much touted $700 billion is the TARP program (or really the TERP since it’s being used to buy equities and not assets). The bailout thus far has well eclipsed that paltry figure. Some estimates put it well above $4 trillion, which would be much more than the budget for the entire United States government, and it is well known how bloated that is. Seeing the total bailout next to the entire fiscal budget really puts a little bit of light on how big of an action this all is.

Some folks put together a chart to graphically demonstrate how large the bailout really is compared to past governmental action that were considered gargantuan. Like that purchase of Louisiana, the Vietnam… well really all the wars, and all of freaking NASA. Hint: the bailout dwarfs them all…. combined…. inflation adjusted. Yikes.

Where does all the money put up in the bailout come from? More debt, on already over-debted nation, and/or just printed out of thin air, which just leads to out of control inflation.

These monumental actions are staggering. Empires have gone bankrupt over less.

Some overzealous patent issuing has led to trouble in tech world. Now companies can be sued for using technologies that never should have been patented in the first place. A recent court decision has brought some sanity to some patents, what about all the other crazy patents?

The market has answered. A company in San Fran named RPX is preemptively buying out stupid patents and promising to never use them to sue. Large companies who might be affected are paying RPX for the service. Not so much out of gratitude, but to help prop up the company and sustain their own defensive barrier. They’ve already got revenue from Cisco and IBM. Go RPX!

[flickr: needfire]

Real deflation is certainly a cause for concern. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen it… yet. All the deflation talk in the media is a bunch of FUD right now as far as I’m concerned. Food and Energy prices rose drastically over the last year or so, clearly unnatural to basic supply and demand. What’s that called kids? A bubble. The energy bubble has finally burst, and we’re seeing a correction in the overinflation of those prices.

The recently touted -2.8% growth in producer prices comes from data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But take a closer look at the numbers. After taking out energy and food prices, the PPI actually rose by 0.4% in October. Alone that doesn’t tell the whole story, but it certainly goes a way to prove all is not doom and gloom.

The BLS also provides some handy historical statistics for the other part of the story. Most of the drop in the PPI in October was due to the price of energy, which fell by a whopping 12.8%. But that drop just about balances out the single month rise in energy prices of 11.7% last November. The final nail in the deflationary fear coffin is in the trailing twelve month numbers. October’s “disastrous” drop in the PPI still leaves the index a full 5.2% higher that in was 12 months ago. That’s still inflation folks, and higher than normal at that.

Deflation could certainly turn out to be a problem, but let’s not actually call the sky to be falling until is actually is.

Contrary to popular belief, we live in a country of one party. In addition to having a very friendly big corporate stance, it also stands strongly on the position of war. War generates profits, war influences countries’ behaviors, and war makes one feel powerful.

Enter Obama. He rode in on a wave of change. The position of being anti-war was no small part of that. But even though that had already been proven untrue, a myth tends to have stronger staying power than reality sometimes.

If his pre-campaign legislative support of the war doesn’t convince you, let take a look at the only two executive decisions he’s made so far. First, Obama chose Joe Biden to join him in the White House, mainly due to his foreign policy experience. Biden was a staunch supporter of Iraq II, proudly voting to unconstitutionally hand over the power to invade Iraq to Bush. Obama’s second decision, that of appointing Rahm Emmanuel chief of staff, shows his continued disdain for an anti-war movement. Emmanuel publicaly supported Bush’s position on the Iraq war during his 2002 Congressional campaign.

If war upsets you, stop supporting the one party system. Find a third party candidate, or just don’t vote.

Here come some horn tooting. I don’t often do it, so cut me a little slack.

Since the media have finally called North Carolina for Obama, and so the final electoral tally is 364-174. Exactly what was predicted the Sunday before the election. Missouri and Indiana went the opposite way predicted, but the post had acknowledged they’d be tough to call (along with North Carolina). Luckily each state carried the same electoral votes (11), so they offset each other in the final tally. I am a little surprised that Missouri went McCain, but as I mentioned to some friends before the election, that was based mostly on superstition.

While on the topic of self-adulation, this site also felt Obama’s election was a forgone conclusion in February of this year, and predicted that he would eventually be president way back in June of 2005.

OK, I’m done. Back to self-deprecation.

[photo: Orbital Joe]

Here’s a map that describes roughly how I see the election results on Tuesday panning out. I generated it at the Real Clear Politics site.

Though they’ve been pretty close recently, I see the traditional Republican states of Montana, North Dakota, Indiana and Arizona going for McCain. All the campaigning in the hottest battleground states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania will benefit Obama the most as he comes away with all three. Obama’s offensive strategy of campaigning in the traditional red strongholds of Virginia and Colorado should net him those states as well. Georgia’s been swinging pretty close to Obama recently, but in the end the deep south roots should win McCain the state. Missouri’s been leaning McCain, but I think Obama should pull off the bellweather state too. Indiana and North Carolina have been going back and forth faster than the candidate’s positions recently, so they really are toss ups. I don’t know how to call them. I’ll just say one state for each, with Indiana going McCain and North Carolina swinging to Obama.

At the end of the day, that gives Obama a landslide 364-174. What are your predictions?