Is the US Dollar Dying?

One of my regular reads is the online edition of the Daily Telegraph published in the United Kingdom.  It was interesting to see what the most read stories were today and I think you will see a unifying theme in them:

1. Barack Obama accused of making 'Depression' mistakes
2. China alarmed by US money printing
3. UN wants new global currency to replace dollar

Then on the other side of the page was Gold hits $1,000

With the Obama administration printing more green to buy government bonds because the Chinese won't, you know something is wrong.  Then you hear that the Chinese are moving slowly over to gold in order to keep their investments from deprieciating radically and off in the distance alarm bells begin to ring.  Finally, there has been talk between Russia, China, and India about starting a new currency because the dollar isn't looking sound, but hey, that's just a bunch of wannabe's talking, right?  Except now the UN is talking the same proposal a few week later.  Yeah, there is something seriously wrong with the US dollar when the biggest holder of US debt is publicly complaining and planning to move to something else.

Is the dollar actually dying?  Time will tell, but one thing is certain -- it is very, very ill.

The Irony of Labor Day and Czars

One has to appreciate the irony of naming a holiday after work.  Yes, yes, I know that the holiday is a paean to the "worker" of Marxist theology, but it still is amusing.

Speaking of Marxists, Van Jones resigned from the position of Green Energy Czar this weekend.  If you are a reader of the New York Times or Washington Post, or an NPR listener, or broadcast networks viewer, you probably have no clue who he is or what happened. The media censorship on this has been profound, with only Fox News, talk radio, and bloggers (imaging that) covering his radical positions for the past few weeks.  In fact, the NY Times is still covering up what happened.

Essentially, Jones is a stated communist who has made racist statements against whites for years and when called out by Glenn Beck, had his organization start a boycott against Beck's television show. But what sunk him is he is a "truther," a person who believes the 9/11 attacks were either deliberately allowed by the Bush administration or were actually committed by the government.  Van Jones signed a petition indicating his belief in the first scenario.

Personally, I find his other beliefs far more appalling.  The following link is very NSFW (not safe for work or family viewing) but I feel he needs to be exposed.  This video Van Jones produced and appeared in shows what kind of people are being appointed as "czars" with no Senate approval by Obama. They are people who hate America and put on masks to gain power over the country.

Now another irony I find is that Obama and his fellow devotees of socialism are using the term 'czar' with great fanfare.  Lenin & Trotsky must be rolling over in their graves, that whole Russian Revolution thing must not be hip enough.  Instead, the modern Marxist in America is using the title of the dictator the Reds overthrew.  Doesn't get more ironic than that!

Oh the proletariat, what has happened to you?

An Eggcellent Guide

There seems to be a strong streak of silly running through model builders, with an almost fanatical devotion to Monty Python quotes for example.  Another thing that makes modellers happy is books that feature an insane amount of detail about a given aircraft, tank, or ship. 

This is what happens when the two meet.

Demented silliness at its best and a tribute to the sillier kits that Hasegawa puts out: the eggplane.

Captain Al

Continuing a series of posts about my late friend, Al Ulven.

As I've written before, Al loved to have fun and was pretty good at making his own if there wasn't any already in sight.  That skill served his desire for entertainment well, even as it occasionally exasperated others. Some of my more exasperated moments came as a direct result of Al fulfilling his retirement dream of owning his own boat.

I can remember him calling to say he had bought a boat which turned out to be a used Bayliner 2155 21" cruiser with trailer.  My father and I went to see Al's dream and Al gleefully showed off his first command -- Captain Al had been born. He even had a captains hat with the golden scramble eggs. It didn't phase Al that he didn't know much about boating or safety regulations. What mattered is that he had his ticket to fun in the sun on the Mississippi River.

It was love at first sight when Captain Al found his Bayliner and he adored the vessel over the years he owned it, though maintenance was far from his strong point.  It gradually faded from its initial glory, as he didn't have enough crew to regularly swab the decks and Al was slowing down a lot. We ended up assisting him on that and my dad did most of the maintenance work, especially during the spring and autumn when the Bayliner was either coming out of storage or going into storage.

While Al may have been slowing down physically, there was one thing he always liked:  moving at high speeds.  Fast cars entranced him, but were a little scary for him personally.  But the river looked open for miles upon miles and there he could race the wind.  At least until his deteriorating eyesite scared him one too many times.  More than once he had me get the Bayliner planing at high speed and enjoyed the ride, his face red from the wind and laughing gleefully the entire time.

On that image, I'm going to finish, for his various adventures on water require their own entries into the log.

Whoa! IRS to Run National Health Care?

The IRS will be the agency to determine who has acceptable health care under ObamaCare.

The IRS has been a loose cannon for a very long time, without any proper oversight.  Having them hunt down and punish people for having insufficient health insurance sounds great, doesn't it?  It would require a massive increase in personnel and power for this to be implemented.  Given their propensity to go after small fish and let the big ones off the hook when conducting audits, I doubt they would be any more fair dealing with health insurance regulation.

Does anybody rational think this is an intelligent idea?

The Creeping Cost of Bureaucracy or Baumel's Cost Disease

I'd never run into Baumel's Cost Disease before, but I find it most intriguing as it explains much of the runaway costs associated with healthcare, education, and government.  It also calls into question of how much we can cut from health care costs, especially when huge increases to the bureaucracy running it are proposed.  More paperwork means more labor, which means more money required, with any costs cut through other methods most likely negated.  Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the increased costs of managing health care would dwarf all savings from streamlining other aspects. 

The intimidating thing about Baumel's Cost Disease is that it applies to education and all forms of government.  The more rules and regulations piled on will increase expenses that will never go down.  Eventually, you get to a place where you can't afford any of it.  Sound familiar?

Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

A Suprising Newspaper Promotion

You would never see this in the USA these days.  The Daily Telegraph is giving away a voucher to pick up a free 1/72 Revell Spitfire Mk. II kit in the Saturday editon and another in the Sunday Telegraph for a 1/72 Revell Hurricane Mk. 1!  This warms my heart as it should any scale model builder and I hope parents take advantage of this opportunity across the pond.  Those two fighters were the backbone of the Royal Air Force in WWII, so a great chance at a history lesson is there besides teaching the joys of model building.

If such a thing were done here, it likely would cause a bunch of gray haired gentlemen to fight over the newspapers, I'm sad to say. The loss of hobbies where boys use their hands has been one of the more distressing changes in our society, as more passive forms of entertainment have taken over. You don't see that many youngsters building kits, they would rather be playing video games or watching movies.

As soon as my room is repaired and everything moved back in, I'll be eagerly getting back to finishing some kits myself.