caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Sitting on a Powder Keg

Things are very tenuous around the world, and there are two major hot spots. Western Asia remains volatile with with back and forth firing between Iran and the US...both claiming the other is breaking the ceasefire. Israel continues to occupy Lebanon and attack Hezbollah. The US and Israeli puppets that run the Lebanese government signed away their sovereignty. I don't think Hezbollah will comply, Israel sure isn't. The Ukraine proxy war accelerates with drone strikes targeting Russia with a focus on Crimea. Russian troops are steadily advancing toward the Dnieper. The question remains, will Russia target the drone manufacturing facilities in Europe? Meanwhile the entire world faces an economic disaster with the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Afternoon folks!

There's some great stuff this afternoon! Starting off, we've got New Orleans piano professor Champion Jack Dupree with material from a bunch of albums he recorded for the Blue Horizon indie label in Britain. After that, we've got a fine acoustic performance from Buddy Guy and Junior Wells live at Guy's club in Chicago. We go back to New Orleans for some funk from The Meters and then we go next door for some serious electric delta blues from the Jelly Roll Kings. Finishing up is a solo album from the Grateful Dead's keyboardist and backup vocalist, Keith and Donna Godchaux.

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Good morning, good people! I hope you are all in fine fettle and have done your best to stay strong and not succumb to the fear porn throughout the media that is trying to get you to hide in a cave.

An interesting thing happened to me this week. A client was looking for my office phone number and did a simple Google search consisting of my first and last name, followed by attorney. Up popped my Google Business Profile identifying me but there was an image blocking my contact info saying, Permanently Closed. She let me know. The profile had been edited. JtC fixed it, did his usual tech research, and we will never know who did that, as anybody could have made that edit. After he made the edit, my office phone started ringing off the wall with people wanting to hire me.

Hmmm...

I will check it from now on every few days. The decision for me to permanently close is mine and mine alone.

I am pretty sure it was the only other attorney with an office in my little town. Hmmm... Supposed to be a respectful colleague...

Happy Friday everyone. Welcome to Friday Night Photos your once a week escape from the day to day insanity of the world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music or whatever else you find of interest that helps tune out the madness.

This month the camera club went to the Palomar Observatory located atop Palomar Mountain (5470 ft. elev.) in San Diego's north county. It was a beautiful sunny day with temps in the upper 70s. Along with images of the observatory and telescope I've included images from around the grounds of the observatory.
A little history of the observatory.
https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/about/history.html

Giant Snow Cone - observatory dome

For the sake of brevity I'll condense the 1000 word screed I had in mind down to a few succinct thoughts.

• Has the federal government grown to be too powerful? In my humble opinion, the power out of Washington has become a leviathan that's out of control, both here at home and across the world. Would we be better off with decentralized governance, giving the power back to the states?
• Is the balance of power between the three branches of government out of whack? Forget the do-nothing houses of congress, they're worthless in my book. Has the prolific use of executive orders given the president too much power? If so, what about the judicial branch overturning just about everything the president proposes? The three branches were meant to be co-equal with separation of powers, were they not? Is this form of governance the new normal?
• Can you name a president that left the country in better shape than it was before he took office?

Bubble Pops Soon?

Matt Stoller recently put out an article about the AI bubble called 'What Would It Look Like If the AI Bubble Popped?'. He compares the possible popping of the AI bubble, and the consequent crash of the economy with a few other 'recent' bubbles, such as the 2008 financial crisis with its stupid bailouts of the big banks and not the little people (thanks Obama!) and the 2000-02 dot.com bubble bursting, which sent us into a recession.

Stoller notes:

'I think that an AI bubble popping could be worse than the dot com bubble, for a few reasons. The first is that we are a much more corrupt society, and so there will be less trust when a collapse happens and contagion is widespread. The second is the U.S. economy is less diversified today. We had a much stronger industrial base in 2000. Our financial markets are dependent on a few companies betting on AI data center spending. The counter-argument is that we are better at bailouts, so the Fed could stop contagion more easily. That’s possible too.

Not sure I agree with the counter-argument, because the bailouts aren't going to help the little people, are they?