An Amazing F-14 Tomcat Model

Check out this 1/144 scale F-14A Tomcat of VF-1 landing diorama.  Mind blowing, especially since it is a tiny scale and has extensive scratch building.  The afterburners are the highlight, no pun intended.

For Your Entertainment…

Were They Watching Animal Planet?

This is why I prefer reality to fiction.  It is nearly impossible to make something up as strange as this story about a deer running amok during Halloween. I would have loved to have seen the deputies’ faces.

Making Fun of the Air Force

For a good cause.  Though other branches of the armed forces would say it is always a good cause making fun of the men & women in blue.  My favorite demotivator is “Fundamentals.”

You can find out more about Project Valour-IT at Soldiers’ Angels along with other projects to help the troops.

But It Looks Like an Old PC!

Ever take one of those silly online tests to see what color you are?  Did you wonder what color the universe is?  Wonder no more! Here I thought it would be more of a taupe.

Mormon Swashbucklers

I haven’t been a fan of PSA’s (Public Service Announcements) since the classic Tennessee Trash anti-littering one of the 1970’s. But this one is rather sweet and I’m pleased to see it garnering an award.

Fathers are treated like dolts on television these days, so it is refreshing to see old fashioned parenting extolled in a PSA.  The father and son using homemade props and their imaginations to play with instead of a video game warms my heart.  That is what a childhood memory should be like.

Kudos to the Missionary Department at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for putting this out.

Virginia and New Jersey Go Red

No, not communist, but Republican as McDonnell and Christie win their special elections.  Virginia was a hat trick as governor, lt. governor and attorney general were all won by the GOP candidates.  Not all was rosy for it looks like the Democrat Owens will defeat the Conservative Party Hoffman in NY-23.

The irony of NY-23 is that the more conservative of the big party candidates will have won if the percentages hold up tomorrow morning.  How the local GOP could select a candidate further to the left than the Democrat running is beyond me.  They were the ones who blew it, in my opinion.

This was a big win for the Republican Party tonight, especially since New Jersey is a very blue state. Voter discontent appears to be high and that has to worry the party in power.

Insecurity

Just a trio of links for the weekend, hopefully I’ll get a movie review up later.  Been a difficult week, with a sinus infection making things fun.

This weekend’s topic is insecurity on three fronts, something to put Halloween fright into all you kiddies!

First up, more bank closings happened Friday.  This time it was FBOP Corp., better known as Park National Bank that collapsed.  With nine banks failed it only cost the FDIC 2.5 billion dollars.  What made it very interesting is the connection to the Obama administration, via Timothy Geithner.  Earlier in the day the community development part of Park National received $50 million from the federal government to stimulate investment in low income areas. Makes you feel secure in how the Feds are handling things, doesn’t it?

Over across the pond, a police force in Surrey, England think they have the solution to increased crime around Halloween.  I bet the locals feel safer already…

If you are reading this on the Internet, be afraid.  That means you are depending on what may end up being a digital house of cards.  Not many are aware of the kind of warfare that is going on in cyberspace, but it is picking up of late.  The latest player in the game is North Korea who have been probing our defenses.  Quote of the article:

The report concludes by noting that the US, with its heavy reliance on a digital infrastructure and information-based economy, has the most to lose if sophisticated cyber weaponry makes its way into the hands of less advanced nations or non-governmental organizations.

It would be devastating if we lost Twitter and Facebook, I wonder if our society would survive it!

But seriously, we have become very dependant on our electronic networking in every facet of society, from government to military to social to workplace environments.  If things go south internationally, we will see attacks on all of those.

Have I scared you enough, kiddies?

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

Many attribute the current recession to the housing bubble bursting.  Home financing and equity loans were the most glaring examples of the larger credit bubble problems that had built up.  This problem is not unique to the United States and has afflicted Europe as well.  Remember Iceland failing as the first indication of impending financial disaster?

Supposedly, things have improved in Europe, but this commentary in the Telegraph makes me wonder.  The M3 money supply contracted despite the dumping of stimulus money by U.S. and European governments in an effort to free up credit liquidity.  Instead, loans to the private sector decreased for the first time since 1983.  Reading the analysis and quotes presented is not an exercise for the faint of heart, as it presents a very gloomy picture for 2010.  Any time the word “deflation” is used, be afraid.  So much for converting dollars to Euros to hedge your bets, at least in the long term.
So stocks are now looking unstable if things don’t improve in the credit picture.  Where do you invest if you are one of the fortunate who has extra money or want to get out of the stock market?  Well, the gold bugs have pushed gold to $1,000 an ounce and there have been run ups in oil, copper, and eve lead!  A lot of people have moved their money into commodities but there is peril there as well. The key quote from this:

"It seems to us that if output declines, then input of materials ought to be down by a similar order," said High Frequency Economics economist Carl Weinberg.

I’m afraid logic has nothing to do with economic behavior these days.  Where to put your money is becoming like shooting a moving target in an increasingly faster carnival game.  I’d thought maybe the Euro for very short term and silver (as a bargain compared to gold) for longer term, but nothing looks safe.

Do you trust the Federal Reserve?  I’m beginning to think we have nothing but incompetency at the top of our financial and political institutions.  Finding out the shell game involving AIG being forced to bail out big banks such as Goldman Sachs doesn’t add to confidence in the system.  The cover up following that action destroys it.

So we have major problems yet to fully come into play and an utterly incompetent response to what has already gone wrong – all on an international scale, not just domestic.  No sector is seeing concrete growth, except for bigger government of course. Now is not the time to relax thinking we are in safer waters, rather it is a time to batten down the hatches and ride the coming storms out.

Is the Economy Really Growing Again?

The Feds announced the end to the recession today,  but dig deeper into what’s being reported and it seems premature at best.  Personally, I’ve never bought into the concept of a “jobless recovery” and much prefer the drier term “recalculation” to describe the employment situation.  To be blunt, if the jobs don’t come back and new ones are not being created, it isn’t a recovery.

Ed Morrissey (formerly of Captain’s Quarters) blogs at Hot Air about some of the hidden problems of the 3.5% growth rate, pay particular attention to the commercial property market quotation.  This is the other shoe waiting to drop in real estate, as I’ve posted before that banks are failing because of loans in this sector.  Most of the growth noted is based on Cash for Clunkers and tax credit breaks for homes that will go away in the next quarter, so I suspect we’ll see worse figures next quarter.  Negative growth wouldn’t surprise me, but there will be Christmas shopping to temporarily buoy things.

Meanwhile, the jobs are still vanishing and people are running out of unemployment. The stimulus is not doing much to help and to further exacerbate the problem the Obama administration has come up with a bogus figure of 30,083 jobs saved.  Even the AP had a hard time buying that and figured out that 5,000 of those don’t exist.  With work scarce and salaries being reduced, consumer confidence index is still poor at 47.7.  That bodes poorly for consumer fueled growth.

Oh and if you thought Cash for Clunkers was a brilliant stroke of genius, please read this and you may change your mind.  With the major downturn in auto sales following the end of the program, it is obvious this was a poorly thought out stunt for PR purposes by the administration.

Right now, I don’t trust anything this government is saying or doing about the economy.  Things are looking bleaker as more instability is appearing on the horizon. I’ll cover that in my next post.