Black Friday…Indeed!

Radio reports are that shoppers viewed 18% fewer items on-line this Black Friday that the year before — but bought 15% more. (Not yet determined if that is in volume or dollar value.)

But the conclusion is inescapable: Shoppers are getting more sophisticated, and can home-in on what they want and where to get it without fumbling around.

Technology sophistication is growing.

I suppose that there are still people who drive to stores and pay outrageous taxes — not to mention “killing the planet” — and getting dings in their cars (if they can find a parking place) while pressing the flesh, literally, with several thousand of their closest friends.

I guess the economy has recovered because we could not find a luncheon spot yesterday.

Tried something new called Tango in Escondido (closed), drove down the street to the always excellent Vincent’s (closed). My luncheon partner suggested The Inn at RSF, (his hangout, not mine,) but gave me the choice and I said Bentley’s in Encinitas — it too was CLOSED!

Don’t restaurants know that even shoppers must eat? (COSTCO knows THAT!)

I Must Be Thick…

Thieves always have reasons/excuses/rationalizations that make sense to them! It also makes sense to those who get the crumbs from their collectivist plates.

When you have no alternatives…then even people who LOVE public transit still use the freeways they hate, and those who would prefer private educations should not be condemned for using existing — but trying to reform — public education.

(Similarly, there are those who would prefer electric cars, but rationalize using Finite Filthy Fossil Fuel in the meanwhile. If that rationalization is valid, so is using freeways and public education, or accepting Social Security while opposing the very existence of the concept.)

I still don’t see that “social contract.”  If they can post a 2,000 page ObamaCare Bill, surely they can post a “social contract.’

at the Holiday Season when we should all be more personally generous, that there is no honor in being “compassionate” with other people’s money.

I have always wondered where there is amorality shift: When a man takes money by threat of force from another man, he goes to prison. When 1,000 men do the same thin, we call the 1,000 “compassionate.”

Never understood. Still don’t.

TSA is El Gropo

The judicious use of dogs, combined with interviews by highly educated and highly trained people would give us more security with far less personal invasive methodology.

Yes, with the volume of air traffic in the US, it would take more interviewers — perhaps far too many considering need for higher education such as the Israelis use — but we have a huge number of unemployed college graduates these days and better to pay them to work than to pay them to mot work as we currently do.

If we find that methodology to be unsupportable logistically, we can easily cut the people being interviewed by not repeatedly interviewing children, women over 75, active and retired military, police and fire, etc.

Yes, everyone should be interviewed once, and then randomly, and target ages every time.

When combined with the judicious use of dogs, who can probably sniff anyone who has even been around explosives, we can do this. Technology is a great thing, and while it eventually can develop better mean we can find less intrusive methods than we are currently using.

We may find out that while there are few protests now from people with tickets bought long ago, there will be far fewer tickets in the future with today’s methods in place. Better to employ more unemployed college graduates than to end flying as we know it.

Dominos Falling

Spain is in the debt cross-hairs — with a GDP of about twice Ireland, Portugal and Greece combined — and the bondholders are selling, not buying Spain’s bonds.

The Euro has been sliding for weeks because of one economy after another that has needed help. One of the reasons that Europe and Asia have not kow-towed to the US in the past few months is that Europe and Asia have the usual losers envy/hatred for the rich (as displayed constantly on these pages) but international haters are smarter than the home-grown variety, and understand they need a strong US not just for military protection but to provide bridge loans and bond buying. A weak America can’t prop up the iMF.

So, the may hate us through their envy, but they know they need us. President Obama bore no gifts, and got dissed.

Spain’s Socialist minister says they will not need EU or IMF bailouts, and having decreased their deficit by 50% through serious budget cuts, and half their debt is owned internally, but the sharks smell blood and they are relentless.

Germany is nervous, and they are the underpinning of the Euro.

Rich Uncle Sam can’t help.

Filed Under: Sounds Like TEA Party Talk to Me!

AP
FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair says the US needs austerity plan.

“The US needs to take urgent action to cut its debt in order to prevent the next financial crisis, which may start in Washington, Sheila Bair, chair of the Federal Deposits Insurance Corp. (FDIC) wrote in an editorial in the Washington Post.

The federal debt has doubled over the past seven years, to almost $14 trillion, and the growth is a result of both the financial crisis and the government’s “unwillingness over many years to make the hard choices necessary to rein in our long-term structural deficit,” Bair wrote.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40378597