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Gearing Up To Bear Down

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Firewood stacked: check. Fresh water jugs stacked: check. 500-gallon propane tank filled to the brim: check. Extra batteries: check. Two AM/FM radios with WX: check. Outside hose bibs disconnected and protected: check. Deck cleared: check. Canned goods: check. Good. Ready for more Global Warming.

This happens to be the earlierst snowfall I’ve had in my memory. Occasionally I’ve had a snowy Christmas or two — even that has been somewhat rare. The heavy snows usually begin in January.
Earlier this week I wanted to get up to my cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I work in Sacratomato and my wife lives there as well. However, the three-day storm which occurred last weekend took down trees and power lines, then froze all snow and water. I’d had a wonderful spiral-cut ham in the freezer which we’d planned for Thanksgiving. Though I worked Thanksgiving that wasn’t going to stop dinner. The day before, with a break in the storm, I drove up to my cabin; PG&E trucks were festooned everywhere. Obviously, this did not bode well for returned power. Like a game of Pac Man, slowly I drove around the parked and outrigged blue trucks with their accompanying booms and buckets — again, literally everywhere.
My street had been cleared, so I crept along the ice downhill, losing traction and beginning to slide sideways until I hit a clear bit of asphalt now and then. The hill to my cabin is fairly steep — to the point where kids going up frequently push their bicycles. I thunked my right front tire into a bank of snow like a naturally-chocked wheel. Another frozen bank of snow occluded my gate. A small bent and frozen tree fell across the steps to my door. I could see, around the left corner of my big deck, about a 6-inch wide tree had fallen over the railing. The deck itself was covered by a lump of white rock about 5 feet deep.

So far, I thought, no broken windows, no snapped power or phone lines to the house, no big downed trees. Those things, of course, have happened before. Two years ago a chunk of frozen snow came down from a redwood and put a 12″ dent into the fender of my RAV-4.
Once I sussed out how, I managed (yes, even at my bulk) to climb over the fence and gain access to the side door, shutting it behind me. Flip-flip. No power. I threw open the blinds for interior light and made more checks. Nice, clean house (thanks Kathy!). Interior warm (propane heat). Water running. Toilets flushing. Ooops. Refrigerator. Dare I?
My senses are predominantly gone. I am color blind. My taste buds provide little action. I have killed various audio frequency bands after years of wearing headphones in radio in my tender and ignorant youth; going to Black Sabbath, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Status Quo concerts didn’t help much either. My olfactory senses are, at best, almost completely absent. I could linger on old and vile homicide scenes much longer than my partners.
So when I opened the door for but a moment and could actually smell the refrigerator — including freezer — I somehow sensed this was not a good thing.
Losing power for a good seven days will do that, I concluded.
I chipped and dug a path back out to my SUV, unloaded some gear and crossed my fingers that power would be forthcoming. But not before I hiked around the corner to a scattered conglomerate of huge PG&E crane trucks. It was only then that I observed massive chunks of freshly-sawed tree trunks behind the trucks a property or two away. Yes, dearest readers, your humble blogger was the very last to acquire power within a 20-mile radius because a large fir had fallen and not only sliced through the power cables but smacked into a pole, causing more lines to snap. Lucky me.
The crew foreman chatted with me for a few minutes. Yes, PG&E trucks were everywhere. He himself had been called and responded from Bakersfield. Other power agencies from outside Fornicalia had responded as well. I would have power, he said, by later that afternoon. He was both correct and incorrect. I thanked him and his crew for their hard work and slided/hiked back to the cabin. Aaaah, nice heat. It was 22-degrees outside.
I waited some more. Hours passed. Nothing. I re-loaded the RAV-4 and clawed my way back up the hill to leave. The PG&E trucks hadn’t moved. At the T-intersection I noted: hey, the house on the right has its porch light activated! I saw a big blue truck now behind me. Coolio, I thought, maybe I have power.
Finishing my U-turn, I again stopped in the snow berm. My own porch lights were on! (Insert chorale of angels here.) I unloaded my junk again (three trips) via the recently-chunked-out path through frozen snow, down the steps, to the door. I began to further unload some food purchases, books, and my mail. Five minutes into detailed unloading — a distant boom from outside the house. Total darkness. Cat piss!
I crawled the RAV-4 up the hill once again and sojourned carefully down I-80 to Sacratomato, no spiral cut ham in tow. That was the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. We had to punt.
Following work my wife and I had a Mexican Thanksgiving. She cooked chicken in mole over rice. So tender the chicken fell right off the bones. Great meal!
It’s 10 am now on Sunday, and I have a couple days off in succession. Once I publish this post, I plan to head back back up I-80 to the cabin. Chain control is just past the exit to my cabin, so I should safely make the journey. I’ll re-assess the house then. I expect I’ll be making a large food run, cleaning out the fridge, and bagging things you wouldn’t want to see.
Just another day in God’s country. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
BZ
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Ireland: An Example of What Works and What Doesn’t

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As I wrote earlier, Ireland is in the throes of its own economic downfall.

It’s caught in a vise of its own making, but not in the fashion you might think.
DUBLIN | Anger and fear about Europe’s seemingly unstoppable debt crisis swept through the continent Wednesday. Striking workers shut down much of Portugal, Ireland proposed its deepest budget cuts in history and seething Italian and British students clashed with police over education cuts.
The Irish Stock Exchange saw a bloodbath in bank stocks as investors pushed the panic button and bond traders were betting that it would only be a matter of time before Portugal and possibly Spain would be the next countries begging for outside help.
While Irish bank shares plummeted for a third straight day amid fears investors would be wiped out, yields on Portuguese and Spanish government debt shot up sharply because of rising concerns that their debt loads will prove unsustainable and put them next in line for European bailouts.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen announced Wednesday he now expects the EU-IMF bailout loan to total 85 billion euro ($115 billion). Some experts accused Ireland of minimizing the true scale of its financial disaster, saying Ireland probably needs a bailout of 130 billion euro ($175 billion) because of looming defaults on residential mortgages.
“The government is completely in denial about the amount of money they’ll have to borrow,” said Constantin Gurdgiev, a finance lecturer at Trinity College Dublin.
But let’s review:
What brought Ireland “back from the dead” in the past decade? Yes, that would be massive tax cuts and regulatory cuts on the island. All in the name of attracting businesses — which they did. In spades. Ireland profited.
Even now, they don’t want their own bailout.
It is other members of the EU who wish Ireland to take the bailout cash.
With some of the caveats being: you must relinquish your tax cuts and regulatory relaxations on business. Taxes must go up. Further regulations must be installed.
Why? you ask. Because Ireland was in fact “getting all the business.” Tax and regulatory cuts work. For the first time in decades Ireland was coming around. You can only rely on sheep-herding for so much . . .
As Dr Peter Morici wrote on November 18th:
Ireland, not the EU, regulates and ensures the solvency of Irish banks.
Dublin’s Treasury does not have the ready cash or borrowing capacity to adequately recapitalize troubled Irish banks, without pushing interest rates on its sovereign debt so high as to make its national budget woes wholly unmanageable.
Without an EU rescue, Ireland’s banks default, its government defaults, or its citizens face cuts in government services likely too draconian to be possible.
If Ireland still had its own currency, it could print money to recapitalize its banks-that is exactly what the Treasury and Fed can do for the FDIC, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other financial institutions.
Printing money would push down the Irish pound against the dollar and other European currencies, result in some inflation and lower Irish living standards, as bank losses were spread over the entire economy. Over several years, however, Ireland’s trade balance would improve, and absent other Celtic missteps, the Emerald Isle would work out of its mess.
Lacking the power to print money, Dublin must accept aid from the European Central Bank and stronger EU governments. This creates much political embarrassment for Irish politicians and leaders in donor capitals, resulting in theatrics and arduous negotiations.
Dublin makes the usual claims that it can handle its own problems, flight from Irish debt follows as well from the debt of other weak EU governments, and the euro weakens against the dollar.
Quick, decisive action becomes impractical when it is most needed, and nervousness abounds about contagion and the euro zone breaking apart.
So why, in fact, did Ireland go down, and why does it face such a crisis now?
Easy to answer: because its government decided to bail out the banks.
And from there they tanked.
Does this sound somehow vaguely familiar, ladies and gentlemen?
BZ
P.S.
Of course, Ireland succumbed to the siren song of the EU and the IMF. It is, after all, money.
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Russia & China Quit the US Dollar!

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Get prepared, ladies and gentlemen, your world is about to change. And it won’t be comfortable.

Mr Obama purposely ignored the American people, and he ignored everyone at the recent G20 summit. Hence:
St. Petersburg, Russia – China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday.
Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.
“About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies,” Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.
The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities.
While the rest of America ignorantly conducts a Thanksgiving feast for nothing, forces around the world are planning for the demise of our country.
The bulk of Americans have no damned idea what this means, and what could result.
The precipice, my friends, it may finally be in front of our very faces. And our administration is veritably the least competent, the least capable of understanding and/or discovering a solution. Because it runs not on common sense nor on flexibility or transparency; it instead runs on doctrine, intransigence, rigidity, opacity.
This could be the actual fulcrum.
Thanksgiving this year, I submit, is a distraction.
BZ
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Salvadoran Found Guilty In Murder Of Chandra Levy:

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But what didn’t you read about the suspect?


The so-called “cartoon” says it all.

You want to really influence our national security, DC? More effectively than forcing innocent five-year-old boys to take off their shirts in public?

SECURE OUR BORDERS.

BZ

P.S.

THIS JUST IN:

Mr Obama and his administration are bound and determined to bring our transportation system to a complete halt. From The Hill:

Next step for body scanners could be trains, boats, metro

By Jordy Yager – 11/23/10 02:09 PM ET

The next step in tightened security could be on U.S. public transportation, trains and boats.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for U.S. vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary.

“[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,” Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on “Charlie Rose.”

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”

Of course, that will go over so well. All Liberals will lovingly submit to their own daily detailed shakedowns. Who needs aliens and anal probes? We have the TSA.

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North Korea Shells South Korean Island

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I know: let’s start the Korean War all over again:

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells onto a South Korean island on Tuesday, killing one person, setting homes ablaze and triggering an exchange of fire as the South’s military went on top alert.

In what appeared to be one of the most serious border incidents since the 1950-53 war, South Korean troops fired back with cannon, the government convened in an underground war room and “multiple” air force jets scrambled.

The firing came after North Korea’s disclosure of an apparently operational uranium enrichment programme — a second potential way of building a nuclear bomb — which is causing serious alarm for the United States and its allies.

Some 50 shells landed on the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong near the tense Yellow Sea border, damaging dozens of houses and sending plumes of thick smoke into the air, YTN television reported.

One South Korean marine — part of a contingent based permanently on the frontline island — was killed and 13 other marines were wounded, the military said. YTN said two civilians were also hurt.

I would posit: who is sitting in the veritable “catbird” seat now, as opposed to the ’50s? Why yes, that would be China, who happens to hold a bulk of our debt and told Mr Obama at the G20 summit to “stop spending.” And, despite his insistence that we “regain credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world,” he refuses to listen. That Mr Obama. The one who will be “concerned” and “monitoring.”

Question for my dearest readers: do you think we can fight three wars on three separate fronts? And can we fight China?

BZ

P.S.
As a reminder: what was done when a North Korean torpedo sunk a South Korean ship in March of this year, killing 46? Yes, that’s correct, absolutely nothing. Might this be an escalation similar to one we’ve experienced nine years ago or more?

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