Documenting weirdness and criminality at OWS is Verum Serum's current business, and business is good.

The whole front page is OWS weridness today.

Older men had sex with a fourteen year old girl, a runaway, at Occupy Dallas. The Occupiers claim that they thought she was 19.

Ever talk to a 14 year old? It's pretty clear they're children.

Here's the Joker story. An interesting tidbit is that the Joker assailant is believed to be homeless. (But see the update; that's not well established.)

Assuming he is homeless, the Occupiers are learning that homelessness is not, as their college professors and media favorites instructed them, a status that strikes by complete random chance. There are reasons, usually, that someone has become homeless.

Mike Flynn at Big Government has been reading (and publishing) the minutes from the Occupy movement, and says that the tensions are boiling over. It's not just the Establishment Elite versus the Grassroots Drummers; the homeless "occupiers" thing is becoming a problem too, and people are dividing along other lines, too. (As Bryan Preston noted, the occupy encampments are reliving the arc of history as they establish ersatz societies and learn that no, not everyone can "just get along.")

Hopefully we'll soon see the "Bitter Strife" chapter of social development.

On the other hand, we're also seeing "Occupy Weddings."

Gay Patriot ;inks cuts from the "Space Hippies" Star Trek episode. It's funny how it's really just the same thing, over and over and over again.

Topless OWS! It had to happen.

And, unfortunately, it's about what you expected it would be.

Thanks to JohnE. for that. Sort of. Although the clip he sent was slightly less horrible.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (153)
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I don't believe him. I side with Monty and DOOM.

But it's nice to hear some optimism.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offers a lot of it.

He starts off discussing the America's increasing energy production through frakking. Then he turns to manufacture.

Meanwhile, the China-US seesaw is about to swing the other way. Offshoring is out, 're-inshoring' is the new fashion.

"Made in America, Again" - a report this month by Boston Consulting Group - said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the "default location" for cheap plants supplying the US.

A "tipping point" is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, and even furniture.
"A surprising amount of work that rushed to China over the past decade could soon start to come back," said BCG's Harold Sirkin.

The gap in "productivity-adjusted wages" will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US.

The list of "repatriates" is growing. Farouk Systems is bringing back assembly of hair dryers to Texas after counterfeiting problems; ET Water Systems has switched its irrigation products to California; Master Lock is returning to Milwaukee, and NCR is bringing back its ATM output to Georgia. NatLabs is coming home to Florida.

Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2m in total. This would take some sting out of the Long Slump.

If Chinese labor became too expensive, wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country? It's not like China is the only country capable of producing widgets.

Craziest of all, he notes that America is the only Western economy with a fertility rate above replacement level, and so could, conceivably, grow its way out of debt.

So there you go. Some un-Doom.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (152)
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Is this something? When Perry started talking about the Flat Tax, I thought, "I guess he wants Steve Forbes' vote."

I can't imagine this is a major thing. Maybe it's just me, but I've never been moved by Steve Forbes.

And, meanwhile, Perry isn't sure Obama's birth certificate is real.

Asked whether he believes Obama was born in the USA, Perry said he had no reason to think otherwise. But the governor said he a didnÂ’t have a definitive answer because he was not certain the document released by Obama was the real deal.

But you’ve seen his, the interviewer said. “I don’t know. Have I?” Perry asks.

Perry said the birth certificate came up at his meeting last month with Donald Trump and that the real estate mogul and TV reality show host doesnÂ’t think itÂ’s real.

“I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter,” Perry said. “He’s (Obama) the president of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.”

Ugh. Oh well. A lot of people have this soft "who knows" opinion. largely because, I think, they hear a lot about it and haven't investigated it themselves but take the common-sense (but often wrong) tact that "if so many people are talking about it, there must be something to it."

That's a rule of thumb that a lot of people employ. But it's just a rule of thumb. It is frequently wrong.

More: The cobloggers were talking about this. Gabe quotes further from the interview. It doesn't sound like Perry's making much of a statement here.

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I donÂ’t have a definitive answer, because heÂ’s never seen my birth certificate.

But youÂ’ve seen his.
I donÂ’t know. Have I?

You donÂ’t believe whatÂ’s been released?
I donÂ’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?
That came up.

And he said?
He doesnÂ’t think itÂ’s real.

And you said?
I donÂ’t have any idea. It doesnÂ’t matter. HeÂ’s the President of the United States. HeÂ’s elected. ItÂ’s a distractive issue.

What the media wants (wish they wanted for months and months) is for Republicans to swear, as if in court, that Obama was born in the United States.

Frankly, no one "knows" this in a courtroom sense. No one being asked has any personal, firsthand information about this. Even Obama couldn't actually testify to this in court because no one remembers anything from their first several years of life.

This has gotten to be akin to a Loyalty Oath for the media.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (233)
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I see a story from AP that says "Solar power is beginning to go mainstream" because the price of solar panels is beginning to drop. They make some questionable statements to support their premise. Because this is the internet I will do no research to support my disagreements* - this is all adlib, baby!

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:24 AM | Comments (131)
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When I was in college, I had a deadbeat roommate who borrowed $100 from me and never paid it back. In retrospect, the fault was mine: he had no job, no prospects of getting a job, and no wealthy relatives to sponge off of. But he assured me that his intentions were honorable, so I went ahead and loaned him the money. Credit card companies are making the same mistake I made, only for a vastly larger sum of money. Good luck collecting on that debt, guys. I've been waiting on that loaned-out hundie for more than twenty years now.

The big Eurozone summit over the weekend didn't accomplish much. If you read between the lines and parse the language in the carefully-phrased public statements, it's pretty clear that nothing of substance was achieved. At base, the issues are intractable: what's good for Germany and the more industrious northern nations of Europe is disastrous for the less productive south, and vice versa. The problem is inherent in the very design of the Eurozone, and cannot be "fixed".

Where do the Europeans plan to get the funding for their beefed up EFSF, by the way? Their eyes are turning to China and Brazil. But investors there can read a balance-sheet and see the demographic trends, so if I were the European finance ministers I wouldn't hang my hat on that avenue of funding.

Two eternal verities:

1. Without economic growth, you cannot have a social safety net.
2. Governments create nothing, and are not productive.

Debt securities: it all started in Florence, Italy. FYI: Italy spends 14% of its aggregate output on pensions for public-sector retirees. That's going to be a familiar number for nearly every level of government here in the US as our public-sector healthcare and pension costs continue their inexorable rise.

I don’t think this was the “positive sign” that so many investors were hoping to see out of the EU talks.

The red state in your future? I would be careful with this absolutist narrative: demographic trends are likely to play out in unpredictable ways going forward. I think it is a given that citizens will flee from the high-tax, socially dysfunctional "blue" states -- but they will carry their dysfunctions right along with them when they enter the "red" states. (Remember that as recently as the 1960's, California was as "red" as Texas.) It's silly to think that the massive financial problems in a state like California, Illinois, or New York (or even Rhode Island) can be safely fenced in.

Pretty little lies.

LetÂ’s be crystal clear about this. To tell a 50 year old pretty lies about the soundness of a pension plan is one of the most wicked and irresponsible things you can do without actually shedding blood; people who believe these phony promises will not make the extra savings, work the extra years or otherwise take steps to protect themselves until it is too late.

From the NYT article about Rhode Island:

Until this year, Rhode Island calculated its pension numbers by assuming that its various funds would post an average annual return on their investments of 8.25 percent; the real number for the last decade is about 2.4 percent.

Note to Thomas "Porn-stache" Friedman: the world is far from flat.

Why China copies instead of innovating. R&D is expensive and time-consuming, and often leads to unproductive dead-ends. Also, entrepreneurship and invention require a certain individualism and non-conformist mindset that does not come naturally to many Chinese people. China is also in a hurry to get rich before their demographic bulge kills them, and copying is a lot faster (and cheaper) than inventing. Much of China's long history is composed of almost getting to be a world power, but not quite making it. Some of this is simply historical accident, but much of it has to do with Chinese culture and character as well.

[Anecdote: I remember reading an essay a few years back about an American professor who taught in a Chinese business school for a semester. He assigned a final project to his class full of hopeful future Chinese MBA's: come up with a unique business-plan and present it to the class. As an example, he took the class through the creation of a plan for a fast-food franchise. Later, when everyone turned their projects in? More than half were business plans on how to start a fast-food franchise, and others in similar fields like restaurants or convenience stores.]

The OWS protesters? Short version: they're idiots. Stinky, hairy, flabby, noisy idiots.

Hyperinflation: can it happen here? We're fools if we think we're somehow immune from the same folly and lack of foresight as other nations and empires throughout history. Even sober-minded central bankers can be panicked by events over which they have no control, and they are exquisitely prone to pressure by politicians. The notion of a purely independent central bank is nonsense; the whole conception of a central (national) bank is political, and central bankers are political animals whether they wish to admit it or not. This is doubly true in the age of fiat money.

Well, given how Europe has evolved in the postwar years, this is pretty much business-as-usual: smiles in public, backbiting and despair in private. It's really amazing how bad the political class is right now, both here and in Europe. I don't even think the motley collection of European rabble-rousers, tyrants, calcified aristocracy, and faded royalty during the runup to World War I were this bad. It doesn't bode well for the future.

The Four Horsemen of the (Financial) Apocalypse: Japan, Greece, Zimbabwe, and France. What's notable about all these examples of financial DOOM is that all were either caused by or exacerbated by political idiocy. Politicians of whatever nationality seem to be constitutionally unable to keep their fingers out of things. They think in a flawed syllogism: a) something needs to be done; b) X is something; c) therefore X must be done. (Whatever "X" is.) But sometimes, it's best to just do nothing. Inaction carries its own risks, of course, but sometimes it really is the best course of (in)action.

In case you forgot, Spain and Portugal are still boned.

The Keynesian notion of "aggregate demand" is nonsense. I've thought so for years. It's facile to think that if only we could stimulate demand for more N (where N is an arbitrary product or service) then more N would inevitably be produced. In theory more demand produces more supply, but it is not a linear or even particularly causal process. In reality supply is constrained in many dimensions that are not directly influenced by demand (the demand for N may be infinite, but in a world of scarce resources with alternative uses, there's only so much raw material, labor and capital to go around). Sometimes supply creates demand that didn't exist before (how many people knew they wanted an iPad before Apple invented it?). And the classical governmental action of favoring demand over supply -- price controls -- has failed utterly every time it has been tried. Instead of stimulating supply, it eliminates supply (because why would producers keep producing something at a loss?). Prices are how a free marketplace allocates scarce goods (and we live in a universe where nearly everything is scarce in one way or another). When that pricing signal is warped by governmental interference, the results are almost always harmful.

Even the Italians are turning sour on high-speed rail.

Times is hard when even brown liquor can't turn a profit.

UPDATE 1: Dividend stocks. There was a time when investing in this kind of stock was the norm.
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Posted by: Monty at 04:33 AM | Comments (315)
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When in doubt, sound confident---it confuses the guys who are about to wipe the floor with you.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (101)
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At a loss for tossing off casual but cruel insults because you ain't so good with the words?

Well never fear - with these tools you'll soon be breaking spirits and causing eating disorders with the best of them.

The Shakespeare Insult Generator

Easy enough for even the 'tardiest moron to sound edumacated.

But if that's a bit too foofoo for you, then you might as well go direct to the font of the nastiest, vilest insults available today - I speak of course of YouTube video comments.

And thanks to the YouTube Insult Generator you can enter any term and get insults direct from the Id of the intertubes:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:24 PM | Comments (436)
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I think this article sums up my feelings about this show. It's simply not that good.

However, like Allahpundit, I am going to keep watching and do my part for the cause.

It could be worse, like the World Series.

[Update] From Teresa in Fort Worth, TX. Sex and Zombies.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:52 PM | Comments (152)
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Ace and the cobs on Twitter.

Update: It's not your computer. Infomous went down.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 02:12 PM | Comments (381)
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Blame the streaker:

The brawl began near the end of the second half after a streaker dressed as a referee disrupted play sneaking on the field and disrobing as he ran around. The players, who were lined up across from one another, apparently began exchanging words, then pushes, shoves and punches.

Both sidelines emptied as secondary fights broke out and spread across the field before cooler heads finally prevailed.

So they're charging the streaker with a felony:

Jace Lankow, an undergraduate at the University of Arizona could face up to one and half years in jail after being charged with a class six felony for criminal impersonation.

He says he wanted to be a contestant on a show called Wipeout, and the application asked for a description of the craziest thing you've ever done.

Thay're charging him with a felony ostensibly because he wore a referee's uniform. He was wearing a referee's knickers with no socks. They don't wear knickers anymore, but even when they did their hairy legs weren't visible. That get-up was not very convincing, and there are probably a few people dressed like that at every football game.

I think they're just mad and embarrassed about the brawl.

Another thing to consider: The people charging this guy with a felony are likely part of the generation that invented streaking. It used to be that you couldn't watch any sporting event without a streaker showing up. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:08 AM | Comments (237)
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