Survival

I think the Turks on the other side of the island are giggling

In the Pearl of the Middle Sea banks have reopened at last. For what  little good that does you if you're out of oats and your donkey is hungry. The Cypriot politicians get to decide how much of your money you can reclaim from their Russian Mafia Laundromat.

But the Cypriot man on the street is less than panicked, and leave it to England's Fleet Street to live-blog the stiff upper lip:

Cypriots are not only taking their money out of the banks, they are also depositing it.

Kyriakos Vourghouri, owner of a minimarket, waved a deposit slip showing an amount of €678 euros as he emerged from the bank.

"I didn't withdraw any money. I deposited money," he told AFP. "The problem is not in Cyprus, it is in Europe, which has become gangrenous."

I doubt I'd have used the word "gangrenous." I think "monetarily diarrheatic " might be closer.

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Can't happen here, of course, what with our commitment to free enterprise and sound money.

Bernanke takes Econ. 101

If I didn't already know who Peter Schiff is, I'd probably just go along with John McCain and figure him as a libertarian kid in a dorm room.  In fact, of course, he's a grown-up libertarian long past his dorm-room days. Not to mention he has a record of being right about economic trends.

Here he is suggesting again that the warp-speed printing presses tended by Ben Bernanke are likely to complete the destruction of the American Greenback, also known far and wide as the "Federal Reserve Cartoon."

"Nope," says Ben, cuz this year the dollar is actually rising against that ubiquitous "basket of currencies," that is, against other country's cartoons  which also masquerade as wealth.

But Ben tries to be fair, so he signed up for one of my economics seminars here at Camp J.  I served him fresh-squeezed orange juice from a silver ewer, just so he'd feel at home. Then we gamed his rising-dollar theory.

We stood next to a picnic bench and eyeballed our relative height. We agreed I'm a little taller. Then we each stepped up onto the bench and again eyeballed our relative height.

"Dr. Bernanke, would you agree I'm still a little taller?" I asked.

"Well I'll be a sonuvabitch!" he exclaimed. "Yes. I believe your are."

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It' a start, but I'll believe that the lesson sunk in when I hear the presses slow.

Whinny whinny

I woke up with the darndest urge to buck somebody off and crap in the middle of the street.  In broad daylight, mind you.

it took a minute to clear my mind and remember that I supped on Swedish meatballs from IKEA.

Poor Trigger.




I conclude that the Swedes sequestered a bunch of krona, forcing the layoff of all their royal meat inspectors.

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Loophole report in, mostly, .22 LR

Scads. Hordes. Gobs. That's a former reporter's finely-honed estimate of the Saturday morning crowd size at the 80-table loophole over in Estherville. You could imagine yourself at Phoenix or Las Vegas, trying to (politely) elbow your way to the tables.

We talked with a number of people who probably never would have acted on a vague urge to "get a gun someday" were it not for the antics of Feinstein, Biden, Schumer,  &  Obama, Inc. I wonder if those clowns really know what they have done?

The psychology may be quite simple. Tell an American citizen he can't do some perfectly innocuous thing and he will grin and do it -- if only to remind the government,  "Who the Hell is in charge around here, anyway?"

We didn't notice much traffic in assaultish-looking rifles Only a few  were there, and they met resistance at the $2,000-plus askings.

But my oh my was it a different story with the Glocks and other hi-cap 9mms made of coal tar and Gorilla Glue. They moved out as fast as dealers could fill out 4473s and call NICS. (Note to Diane: These forms and the calls are how we evade the law and loophole most of our guns.) 

At our three tables, we had no truck with the 21st Century.  Two were resplendent  with the work of Genius Jeff, the gunsmith, who displayed an assortment of Lazarused Marlin lever guns, Winchester .22 pumps, and, especially, Stevens single rifles. 

The third, mine, was resplendent with what the unkind might call junk, leftover (or never wanted in the first place) shooty stuff and other items for field and stream jocks. I often set up that way because (a) it generates interesting conversations and (b) it nearly always yields enough small-denomination Federal Reserve Cartoons to finance some pleasant acquisitions. To wit:

The long drink of water is a hi-cap (16 rounds or  more) Remington Speedmaster, probably from the 60s. Didn't need it, but for an amazingly small amount of FRC "money" and a brick of .22s, I couldn't resist something so pretty.

Miss Short is, of course, a Browning Challenger, Belgian, an early piece but I don't know how early yet. Those waggish gnomes of Herstal like to get together, slurp pilsner to excess, and giggle at one another. "Hey! I'm bored. Let's make our serial numbering system even more obscure."

She joined my arsenal for a very modest dowry, but I'm afraid I stretched a sacred rule: "It is a mortal  sin to sell a gun."  I confess to  venal error. The Colt New Police  (.38 Colt /.38 SW) lives elsewhere. I rationalized the trade  --  I could shoot the Colt only by reloading for yet another caliber. Balderdash! Too many diameters already. The Browning will be shot and shot and shot.  I've coveted one for years.

Hmmm. Lots of .22s moved here lately. At least I'm ready for a gopher apocalypse.

I think I'm jealous

The Atlantic reports with slightly amused horror that the government of  Zimbabwe is down to its last $217.

Okay, but if that's a real $217, in some sort of hardish money, aren't they  at least $217 better off than Uncle Sam?

Mali: The next great American adventure

Reuters drops the big secret this morning. If France wants to send some French  soldiers adventuring in Mali, it calls Uncle Sam.

"PARIS (Reuters) - The United States has started transporting French soldiers and equipment to Mali as part of its logistical aid to French forces fighting Islamist militants in the north of the country, a U.S. official said on Tuesday."

Two points:

This can send a fellow's mind skittering across the past 99 years of American history. He's thinking of all the wars, beginning with Black Jack Pershing's anti-Kaiser campaign and continuing through our "lend-lease" to Churchill, to Vietnam, and the various bloody Sand Box errors. You try to think of U.S. overseas wars which did not begin with benign "logistical aid."  Not many. "It's only money folks. We ain't agonna put even one American boy in harm's way." *

And because our client this time is la Belle France, the same fellow is likely to recall a certain arrogance of late  20th Century Paris. "F--k no you can't fly your evil, imperialistic planes through our air space."

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*There a difference this time. In most of the other crusades we owned the money we gave away. Here in 2013, we'll need to secure an increase in our MasterCard limit. Call Peking.

Lifting hair at the gun shows

A mega-gun show happened in Phoenix this weekend, and my friend John of the GMA attended, noting prices with a glazed amazement.

John can reduce complexity to its essentials -- make six words worth 10,000 pictures.

"Somebody needs to get a grip."

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Travis McGee, economist

I can't recall which adventure, but in one of them Travis and Meyer have rescued a beautiful young widow from villainous clutches and recovered some of her money. They discuss how to invest it for her. (In those days it was well understood that the little gals shouldn't bother their pretty heads about such stately matters.)

Travis remarked that the portfolio should carry some equities which might ameliorate the inflation bite against the day "when a new Chevy costs $40,000." 

And we all giggled and snorted at John D. MacDonald's wild imagination and sense of the ridiculous.  I was as guilty as anyone, having in that era purchased a brand new Plymouth Volare station wagon for about $4,700. (Excuse: wife, two kids, dog, long commute, scuba tanks. I was such a damned Republican.)

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Of course the trillion dollar coin would be absolutely and precisely identical to pixie dust.  So what? What the Hell do we think that hundred-dollar bill we keep stuffed in our wallet's secret compartment represents?

The diversity cliff

Good gawd. I think my electric teevee -- like Tam's car radio -- has been hijacked by a transmitter from Planet Zongo.

Because I've learned from  CNN and MSNBC that National Problem Number One is that we are doomed because His Ineptness, the partially black president, is a racist for appointing adult white males to his cabinet. A diversity cliff.

Among the wailers is Congressman Charlie Rangel who makes Page One by calling the latest cabinet picks "embarrassing as hell."  No, Charlie. The  national  embarrassment is that you still occupy a plush congressional seat instead of the cell next door to  Roddy Blagojevich.

I think Obama did it on purpose. If folks spend all their time thinking about the APL* and the dangle/dimple ratio in high bureaucratic circles, they'll be less likely to stumble across the notion that the trillion-dollar coin may become an everyday necessity for making small purchases.

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*Average Pigmentation Level

Jesus wept.

And so does the ghost of Thomas Jefferson.

The President of the United States, presiding over what could be a calamity in the American economy, summoned the television cameras  in this hour and advised our congress to have some egg nog and Christmas cookies to improve their attitude.

If that doesn't prove his mental bankruptcy I'll kiss Rudolph's arse under the tree in the White House Blue Room and sign a model release.

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Folks, I can't get too teary-eyed about Warren Buffet forking over a little more every April 15. But I also can't report that higher taxes on anyone will have the tiniest effect on the impending national bankruptcy.*

Not one cent of any new tax extortions will be applied to the deficit or the debt. Any fresh revenue extracted from productive use by private citizens will be used as an excuse to borrow more in order to facilitate vote buying from His Ineptness on down to the lowliest back-benchers in our legislative chambers.

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 *I don't refer to the made-for-teevee drama which we're calling the  "fiscal cliff."  That's a small pimple on the national butt. The reference is to the long-term, unannounced, devaluation of the United States dollar as a concious, planned policy of the political masters.

Thursday morning thumbnails

I'm working my way up to some major rants. But on this nice winter day TMR is in a preview mode. So here are the trailers::

--1. We already fell off the fiscal cliff. Pedants will insist on knowing just when we tripped. I'm still working it out. The earliest reasonable date in January 20, 1961, when the poseur John F. Kennedy promised the world that the United States of America would be pleased to bankrupt itself to put a Weber grill and a gaggle of Harvard lawyers in every back yard from Vietnam to Kaphukistan. (bear any burden, pay any price et al. oratorical nonsense).  The latest likely date is around the time Bill boffed Monica to celebrate passage of the revised  Community Reinvestment  Act, requiring banks to lend to people who could not  possibly repay and probably wouldn't if they could.

(The fall was often pleasant in in its early years  --  floaty, you might say, something like riding a very good hang glider, rising in vagrant thermals which mask the sure triumph of gravity.  Updrafts are rarer lately, and the descent accelerates, much like Poe's increasingly frantic prose as the Red Death approaches the ballroom door.)

--2.  We become broker by the day because we continue to do incredibly stupid things, large and small. One of the small ones is roiling my psyche lately because I drive by it daily -- a million-plus worth of "trail." It skirts the edge of my village , relatively harmlessly in the highway ditch for a while, then through a patch of wild land purchased by private citizens a decade ago and turned over to the Iowa DNR in order to save it from a housing development. The federal DOT, Iowa DOT, and local taxpayers are now financing a noticeable rape of that land. Some of the greenery will grow back, of course, but not on the paved strip which, by the way, is built to a standard just shy of that required to support Peterbilts. We wouldn't want a road bed failure to endanger the the strolling mom and her perambulator.  The significant point, however, is that hardly anyone actually uses these things.

--3. Kwee 4. The first one moved me to counsel  accumulating copper pennies; the second to acquiring large stocks of ammunition; the third to laying in pints of whiskey for barter. This latest QE persuades me we might as well just drink the whiskey.

The Perils of Pauline

Relax, Pauline. You're not going over the cliff. You are the succulent trough from which our Masters slurp, and they're smart enough -- just barely -- to keep you breathing.  Certainly they'll rip your petticoats and rape you a little bit,  but in due course you'll up and around, fattening yourself for the next episode. Which will end like this one, music at crescendo, another drama under the glaring Kliegs, and the most egregious case of political ham-acting since Marc Antony delivered extemporaneous remarks over the corpse of Caesar.

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It's fun to watch the posturing, like an evening at Bedlam, but it's too easy to have moments of taking these apes seriously. Resist that. Pay attention to the fine print projected hazily on the scrim:

"What liars these political things be." 

For those lacking time or motivation to follow the link, the historical evidence shows governments as perpetual payday loan clients.  Give them a new dollar and they will spend it, plus some -- $1.04 to $1.80, depending on how you slice and dice the survey data.

Gun porn, incomplete

Too late, after I locked them back up, it occurred to me that that I was one gun shy of hilarious vulgarity.  There's 38 on top, descending to 22. The shot needs another 38 below, but I don't feel like  re-opening the safe.

The Police Positive is sort of a B-cup  D-frame -- in .38 Colt New Police, equal to .38 S & W. There's no real difference, but originally there was an up-front variance. Colt got caught with its pants down in the revolver ammo wars of a century ago, so it stole the .38 Short Wimp. It gave up when no one was fooled by the cosmetic difference, a flat bullet rather than the sensuously curved Smith and Wesson nose. 

It's 1918 vintage. Someone  later dressed it in beautiful Colt OEM walnut bloomers. They would be lovely adorning any of six or eight other D-frame models, just not this one. Anyone with proper hard rubber care to swap?

There's a small stash of .38 SW here, but I'll probably want to shoot  more than that. I can reload with the .38 Special dies (albeit possibly with some crimping challenges). The .357* cast bullets will work well enough,  and in extremis for brass I can trim .38 Special cases to fit. (Probably, anyway.  I haven't looked into the rim-thickness question yet.)

The Hi-Standard Sentinel is one of those comfortable mid-grade guns that just "is" -- not special, no particular history or other distinction, but a kick to shoot. We pulled onto K's personal air strip on the way home and ran a few cylinders offhand just for the pleasure of listening to the noise and watching dirt fly around the only handy target, a corn husk 20 - 25 feet off. I nailed it a time or two double action and figure I scattered the rest over a dinner plate area. A big dinner plate.

But Jim, you damned fool, you already got enough guns and, besides, you ain't made of money.

Quite true, but let me explain it this way: "Bugger off."

Alternatively, take the $xxx Federal Reserve Cartoon  price and calculate how few zillionths of a nanosecond it will take Ben to create xxx new ones out of thin air.  He can't make Colts or even Hi Standards at all, even if we give him a 3D printer.

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*The .38 SW caliber spec is .361.  The Brits designated the round .38-200. It used a 200-grain bullet which gave Tommy's leftenant leisure for a spot of tea before it became time to see if his projectile had yet struck the Hun.

The latest gun market report

At a small country auction this morning in Northwest Iowa:

 Mossberg Model 185D-B 20 ga. bolt action, 2 3/4" chamber;  $160

Winchester 3030 Model 94, used very little; $900 and note that this was recent production, routinely available NIB at near half the hammer price.

Marlin Model 19G, 12 ga. pump shot gun w/long barrel;    c. $125

Marlin Model #37 -22 pump rifle; $210.  I dropped out  at $150 due to condition; the butt stock was too trashy.

Colt DA 32  (sic) w/case & US issue holster, was Jim's dad's WWI issue;  $500.  My "sic" was sic.  It was a .32 Colt, an old 4-inch Police Positive,  and undoubtedly a POW rather than an "issue" revolver. The holster was issue but too long for this piece and likely intended for the earlier GI Colt .38.

Colt Huntsman 22 long rifle, auto;  $500. Arguably reasonable, but I considered the condition to be low-average and the price too high for a shooter.

Rohm 22 Magnum Model 66;  $160. Junk in any condition, and this one was about average.

Ruger .22 auto .22 long; $310. A routine Ruger Standard, 6-inch, which are all over the loopholes here at c. $210-220.

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I believe I mentioned that our agripersons stagger under the load of Obama/Bernanke/Congressslug cash and tend to get somewhat "excitable" when  under the thrall of a good auctioneer offering blue steel. I apologize for the poor characterization and should have written that they get galactically freeken hysterical.  

The cost of Sandy: zero or so

The cabal news networks on the electric teevee are running out of human interest stories. (Tell me, Elizabeth, did it make you cry when you lost your dolly and saw your pretty little kitty drown right in front of you?)

So they're forced to move on to higher-IQ journalism --- Cost of Sandy $50 billion, OMG!!!

Of course it won't be $50 billion. That's a number plucked from bureaucratic butts in order to persuade us proles that our leaders are on top of things and have some foggy notion of what they're talking about. It will be higher, much higher with Obama's promise to "ignore red tape" and give every New Jersey tax-sucker everything he asks for.

Just for giggles, let's pretend the actual Sandy loss is $85 billion. So what? That's just what Ben Bernanke and the Feds spend every thirty days in buying debt that even a Lehman Brothers trader wouldn't have touched. Kwee 1, Kwee 2, Kwee 3 et seq.

You argue back that the Fed doesn't have any money to buy anything, not even enough to replace a single tassel on its Guccis? You forget. The Fed is allowed to make money. And we mean "make," not "earn."

It works like this. Every 30 days Ben strolls into his office about 9 o'clock. He rings for his administrative assistant who wheels in the cart with his fresh-squeezed orange juice in a silver server. He smiles at the first sip, starts humming zippity doo dah zippity day what a wonderful job. The he turns to his Cray and taps a few keys. Presto, $85 billion in nice new money.

The only difference this month is that he'll have to do it twice. Once to routinely buy the unrepayable debt. Once more for New Jersey pols and their neighbors.

So he puts in for overtime?

Ammunition shortage, politics, and other Mad Monday mIscellenia

1. I cleaned out the local WalMart supply of bulk-pack .22 long rifle hollow points yesterday. Which is to say I bought one pack, Federals, at $19.97 plus tax, and consider myself lucky to get that. My WalMart has hired a rarity, a personable sporting goods clerk.  I asked about the dearth of .22s. She said there's a run on the stuff, that when she re-orders it can take three weeks to get any at all, and it disappears in a day or two.

(This large, pretty woman is especially treasurable compared to the usual Wally munchkins  whose default response to any question is a shrug and a grunt. I came perilously close to proposing marriage.)

The mania to buy ammunition is, of course, a vox pop phenomena, better than any other poll.The people say His Ineptness will be swept into power again, carrying a valise full of greater flexibility.

2. Joe Scarborough and his supporting cast are having quite a party down in a Florida cafe this morning, setting the scene for the debate-like teevee program tonight.  A lot of parents were in the place,  getting their existence validated by waving their hands and babies at the teevee cameras. Joe and Mika each held some racially balanced kids. It was cute for a couple-three minutes, then not. I  knelt before the porcelain throne, brushed my teeth, and switched to a C-Span channel where...

3. C-Span was interviewing college kids about the great issues to be decided this evening. Back to the throne. Look, dammit, kids are in college to learn something about grown-up life. By definition they're a few years shy of knowing what the Hell they're talking about . Giving them teevee time to advise adults on adult topics is presumptuous at best, but "stupid" is a more accurate term.  (There are a few exceptions, of course, but I've already talked too much about my grandsons.)

4.  The Sunday gun auction was astounding. Fine classic handguns at prices phenomenally greater than I and my comrades are willing to pay, even in Bernanke's Federal Reserve Cartoons. (More anon, assuming  any ambition remains after my light-heavyweight bout with leaves. Damn, I love trees,  but my adoration fades every October when I rediscover the annoyance of living downwind from 400 acres of them.

Guns galore

...and some nice ones. They go to auction this afternoon, so if you need me for emergency political or philosophical consultation I'm afraid I won't be here.

The queen of the hop is an apparently original Rem-Rand 1911A1.  The joker of sadness is a Colt GI issue .45. Chromed.  Add some Pythons to the mix and you at least have plenty of eye candy.

I seriously doubt I'll bring anything home. Auction prices around here have been astounding recently -- not just over the market, but off into the realm of stratobucks (thanks in part, of course, to Ben Bernanke's starship Kwee* Three Et Seq.)

I'll be leaving in about 90 minutes, so if you want to place a proxy bid...

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*Q.E., quantitative easing, i.e. the Charminization of the Greenback.

The harem masters square off

Everybody loved the debate. The electric teevee jabberwockies loved it more than most because it had drama and conflict. Well, I agree. I  haven't seen anything so exciting since I watched a couple of older parties get riled over a call in patty-cake badminton.

It was a cage fight between eunuchs.

If Eunuch A had cleared his throat and declaimed to Eunuch B , "Sir, you are a lying, pandering sack of yak droppings with an intellect substantially inferior to that of Yogi Bear,"  I might have become more interested.  Either could have said  it without straying far from strict truth.

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The debate was accurately summarized by Dr. Ron Paul some 12 hours before it occurred.  He was on CNBC and asked if he expected more substance in Debate 2  than he found in Debate 1. He said "no." Both Romney and Obama would simply promise fatter pick-a-nick baskets in the great Jellystone Park once known as the United States. Good call, Doctor.

Painfully to me, His Ineptness slithered slightly closer to the point at hand when he said something about long-term planning -- where the nation would be in 30 years or so. Unfortunately he uttered it only in a context of green energy -- solar and wind and ethanol mandates, all of those schemes touted by Mother Earth News  types 50 years ago. They would flood America with free pixie dust fuel by 1999 . Our troubles would end in a national group hug as Peter, Paul, and Mary grunted 69 choruses of Kumbayah.

So no real points for His Ineptness, just a nod to his mild suggestion that we might  want to give a thought to the fate of the nation in the decades after his personal interest in it ends, on January 20, 2013 or the same date in 2017. I mean, Hell, he knows he can fulfill his zillion-dollar book contract in Switzerland or Kenya or someplace.

Fairness requires me to say something equally nice about Governor Romney.  His hair stayed in place.

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It's the debt, Stupid. And the deficits. And Ben's printing press.

Why we're broke

Can't pay our bills, says battery maker A123, so lets all go to bankruptcy court.

You won't be invited, however,  because of the distinction between a big creditor with a hot lawyer and a taxpaying chump who probably didn't even know about this particular rat hole.

A123 has been around for about 12 years as the brain child of a professor -cum-business tycoon with ties to China. It has always been a snacker at the public trough, so it isn't wholly a partisan issue,

But, Solyndra-like, it discovered joy of big-time slurping under the Obama administration. The president's DOE handed the company $249 million in 2009. Many more millions were sucked from from local and state tax spenders. (Routing note: The money passes from you to a bureaucrat to a company that doesn't quite know what the Hell it's doing besides scarfing up your personal wealth and having a ball with it.)

A123 promised to create smarter batteries, and possibly it did. But some of them didn't work and had to be recalled. More important, too few private investors believed the proposition was viable enough to risk their own money. Not a problem, mate. We'll just tell a nice green story to Uncle Barack and he'll tell Tim to tell Ben to print a few million more C-notes and give them to us.

We've seen so goddam much of this that it seems almost futile to restate the honest man's premise: If a proposed enterprise holds out a reasonable degree of success, the money to finance it will be available in the free market.  If it's a sky-pie ploy to capitalize on politically fashionable adventures, only elected and appointed government officials can be gulled.

I'll bet you're not a bit surprised that the batteries that broke the company are for everyone's favorite cause, ta-da, electric cars.