Wonkette
- Obama is just pretending to have any sway within the Obama/Hamid Karzai powercouple. [New York Times]
- A bunch of people in the Army were very encouraging of Nidal Hasan’s religious phase, and some even suggested he take college courses about Islam. Should we purge the Army of anyone who self-identifies as a “supportive friend” too?? [Washington Post]
- The Malevolent Balloon People of Colorado will plead guilty when they are charged with being the worst parents ever not even in the usual hyperbolic sense. [CNN]
- Americans might not buy as much useless garbage for their loved ones this holiday season. [AP]
- Obama may dip into TARP funds to help out with the huge deficit. [WSJ]
- The weak dollar has consequences other than all the rich Europeans coming to New York to shop “because it is so cheap here”: oil prices could go up, like way up. [Reuters]
There will never be peace on this planet until we’ve systematically purged humanity of everyone who disagrees with me. Call in an air-strike, NOW, Goddammit, NOW!
What! You seem to miss the greatest from HillBuzz! Some Hillary supporter’s switched sides…!
http://hillbuzz.org/2009/11/10/thank-you-former-president-george-w-bush-and-former-first-lady-laura-bush/
Secret bin Laden Tape Reveals Al Qaeda Strategy to Infiltrate U.S. Military
http://satiricalpolitical.com/2009/11/11/secret-bin-laden-tape-reveals-al-qaeda-strategy-to-infiltration-army/
The war on Xmas just keeps starting earlier and earlier. What has happened to tradition in this country? Tsk tsk etc.
This is when actually having a job sucks, because I’ve got no excuse not to find some expensive crap to buy for the family.
rabblerouser42: Dammit, what’s this blogwhore still doing here? Juli, Jim, it’s time to bring the banhammer down!
Not only oil, but just about every other commodity is going to go through the roof when the inflation shit storm hits.
Buy gold, silver, and bullets (to protect the gold and silver).
I agree with Bill on this, we’ll never be able to kill ALL of the supportive friends too.
If I am ever cornered by an enraged grizzly bear, I will read it that Reuters article, which should drop it like a high-powered rifle.
My family stopped buying Christmas presents a few years ago (’cept for the kids — they still get GI Joes & stuff). Since then, we’ve had more money to spend on booze, and everyone’s been happier for it.
Honestly, as bad as the balloon people are, they aren’t the WORST parents ever. That woman who killed her daughters and put their bodies in the freezer is worse, for instance. There are others, sadly.
C’mon, Cleavon Little can’t solve Afuckedupistan alone. He needs to team up with Alex Karras. Mongo will punch those fuckers in the neck.
Mild Midwesterner: “Since then, we’ve had more money to spend on booze, and everyone’s been happier for it.”
Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!!!
The CNN story somehow led me to watch the video of Carrie Prejean lecturing Larry King and then pulling off her mike but NOT LEAVING. The woman is nuts.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/11/11/lkl.prejean.upset.cnn
Terry: When I lived in South Carolina, there was a story on the news one day about a guy who had killed his mother-in-law, chopped her up, and put her head in his freezer. The local TV station was interviewing a neighbor. I missed the first part of what she said, but, I swear, I did hear her say, “He was in the field, a-playin’ with the head.”
Don’t know if he was a father, but he wasn’t a very good son-in-law.
True Story.
Mild Midwesterner: Now that is the way to celebrate, and I will be suggesting it to the extended family.
PsycGirl: Mike says he likes it when girls pull him off and then don’t leave. Time to cuddle and talk in whispers.
The guy was in the Army for 20 years — that’s nearly a normal career and time to retire! If religion was his problem, it would have been his problem a long time ago, too. He flipped out, went berserk with a gun, the way lots of Americans flip out. Were he part of a terrorist plot, it would all have been more coolly planned out. A car bomb would have killed far more than a couple pistols!
proudgrampa: Learn to raise your own potatoes and onions.
Americans might not buy as much useless garbage for their loved ones this holiday season.
Wow, there really is a Flying Spaghetti Monster and He wants us to have a Real Christmas.
proudgrampa: Honest question here, buying gold and silver, sure, but what happens when that IS the currency and everyone is spending it like mad to make house payments and shit, won’t the value collapse as it floods the market?
Terry: What a story and her relatives were a piece of work as well. Too bad there wasn’t some serious media coverage of her family earlier.
zhubajie: I saw a book at the thrift store yesterday- it was all about raising potatoes.
Katydid:
““He was in the field, a-playin’ with the head.””
He must have been from Kafiristan originally.
A little Kipling reference to brighten your day.
Darkness: Well, I only know what I’ve read about this.
Gold and silver generally keep their value relative to things you would buy: an ounce of gold buys a good suit today as it did in 1900, for example. That’s because gold and silver can’t be printed the way fiat currency is - the recent Zimbabwe inflation, the Weimar inflation are examples of what happens when currency is printed (a barrelful of paper to buy a loaf of bread). And now we have governments not only printing money, but just creating it with easy credit on a computer. More and more paper chasing relatively scarce goods until the paper isn’t accepted because it’s worthless. History is full of examples of this.
As long as a currency is backed with a hard asset, it cannot inflate because of gold and silver’s relative scarcity.
Sorry, didn’t mean to rant. I’m not a gold bug, but the inflation problem is going to become a very big deal over time.
proudgrampa: My husband, who follows these things very closely, agrees with you about the inflation thing.
proudgrampa: I don’t get the whole “buy gold” thing - the stuff isn’t money anymore, it’s just material for jewelry and for the dowries of brides in Dubai and Kerala.
I mean, really, are you gonna drag a pillowcase of the stuff into the bank to make a mortgage downpayment?
Plus, it makes your mattress lumpy.
Not to mention the fudgy smugness gold buyers all seem to possess. Whenever someone tells me they’re buying gold, I immediately picture them sporting a Dirty Sanchez.
zhubajie: Unfortunately, I have a Black Thumb… Hell, I can’t even grow weeds.
proudgrampa: But inflation’s not a worry right now; with the high unemployment and lower wages, deflation is a much more likely problem. That, and the possibility that fear of inflation will lead to measures, like interest rate hikes, that will stymie economic recovery and job growth. Job growth is a lot more important for normal people than stopping inflation (indeed, it can help by decreasing the relative value of debts), but unfortunately the fed tends to be a lot more concerned with the interests of businessmen and stockholders than regular folks.
zhubajie: On NPR this morning there was a story about some of his colleagues in Virginia who debated amongst themselves whether he was psychotic. And they were psychiatrists too, so they were using the term in its clinical sense. Anyway, they decided the best course of action was to send him to Fort Hood (where there was an extensive psychiatric staff) and hope he disappeared.
proudgrampa: Gold and silver generally keep their value relative to things you would buy: an ounce of gold buys a good suit today as it did in 1900, for example.
Your example suggests gold is no better an investment than paper currency (since you first convert the gold to dollars to buy that suit, just as would back in 1900).
ph7: Well, that’s the point. It’s the PAPER that has lost its value. Relative to paper dollars, gold has gone up in value.
Think about it this way: how much did a postage stamp cost in 1980? Fifteen cents. Today, 44 cents. Like a 300% rise. From inflation.
An ounce of gold will get you a lot more paper dollars now than it did in 1900. Today it’s worth $1100. In 1900, it was worth $21.
I agree that the idea of carrying gold around in a pillow case is ridiculous, but if inflation gets out of hand, we’ll need the pillow case anyway for the devalued dollar bills we’ll need just to buy a loaf of bread.
JMP: I certainly agree. Inflation is not a real worry for us now. But the holders of our debt (mostly the Chinese) are getting worried that they are going to end up holding worthless dollars. They are using their foreign reserves to buy hard assets and commodities. If they decide to start getting rid of the dollars, there won’t be enough buyers to keep the value of the dollar up. Look out below!
Would someone explain to me just how the Chinese would “start getting rid of the dollars,” especially when we’re such a good customer for their exports and that’s what we pay in.
I’d also like an explanation of a “hard asset” that doesn’t make me automatically break into a fourth grade giggle.
GeneralLerong: “Is that a hard asset you got there, or are you just happy to see me?”
and
GeneralLerong: The Chinese have about one trillion US dollars in their foreign currency reserves. If you own something at the top of the market price, you start worrying if it will keep its value. As long as the Chinese feel that the dollars are worth something, they’ll keep them. If not, they’ll dump them.
OK. Enough economics for today. Thanks for listening!
GeneralLerong: Well, GeneralLerong, when a man loves a woman…
All I know is G. Gordon Liddy likes gold. He’s never steered us wrong in the past.
I’m still pissed they took down America’s Imam, Anwar al-Hocky’s website because of this. I hadn’t finished reading it, and the Way Back machine stopped archiving a year ago.
Those fucking Europeans have driven up the prices of everything in New York. My favorite boutiques have gotten so insanely expensive mostly because of the goddamn eurotrash that will pay exorbitant prices for everything. anyway, thank you for acknowledging my pain.
hyperbowl!