From Bloomberg:
Christie’s Atlantic City Revival Seeks Halt to 30% Casino Plunge
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is bucking voter skepticism and pushing ahead with his plan to revive the Atlantic City gambling resort, where casino revenue has plunged the most since the first one opened in 1978.
Christie, a first-term Republican, took control of the tourism district in the 48-block-long coastal city of 40,000 last month and relieved the 11 casinos there of some regulations. He redirected gaming fees to clean up and promote the area, and provided tax breaks to help restart construction of the $2.5 billion Revel casino that stalled in 2009.
The intervention may come too late, even with Revel opening in 2012, said Dennis Forst, a gaming analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. Gambling revenue in Atlantic City, the second-largest U.S. casino market, is down 30 percent from 2006. Older betting parlors may close as Sands Casino Resort in Pennsylvania, Dover Downs in Delaware and other rivals draw gamblers from Philadelphia and New York, he said.
“Outside competition is only going to increase,” he said during an interview in New York. “Atlantic City had 30 years to work this out, to make themselves indestructible, and they’ve wasted all of those years,” said Forst, who has covered the industry for 40 years. He received top rankings of analyst polls in the Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor and Forbes magazines, according to KeyBanc.
…
New Jersey is seeking to halt a drop in the 8 percent tax on casino revenue that funds programs for seniors and the disabled. The industry gives another 1.25 percent of revenue to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which helped fund $1.8 billion of projects since 1984, including airport expansion and housing for casino workers.Atlantic City’s gambling houses employed 33,272 as of last month, down from more than 45,000 in 2004, according to state data. The 8 percent gaming tax netted the state $260.9 million in 2010, down from more than $400 million in 2006.
AC infrastructure and layout is archaic. Take it all, eminent domain, bulldoze 15 blocks back from the ocean, across the entire ocean front strip. Start all over from scratch. Build everything shiny and new. Don’t forget about an off-shore cruise port with ferry either. The town doesn’t need another casino, it needs to be a destination.
Vegas East? You’ve got to be kidding. Strip mall casinos in Vegas are nicer than AC.
From Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs’s Hatzius Says U.S. Housing Market Near Bottom
The U.S. housing market is “close to the bottom,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.
“The valuation of real estate is much more reasonable now,” Hatzius said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Over the next few years, the housing sector is going to improve.” For now, “there’s still a lot of excess supply out there,” he said.
sigh… I still have to go back and read yesterdays thread…. I was lost in the pit yesterday..
Happy belated St. Patrick’s day to all…
Saturday GTG at the sl’s? Short notice so it’s a toss up if we’ll have it depending on availability/interest.
sl
Since AC already has a boardwalk, would bike paths be redundant?
From HousingWire:
RE/MAX: February home sales down 3%
February home sales dropped 3% from one year ago, but increased from January, according to the RE/MAX national housing report.
It’s the first time in four months that the yearly difference did not improve from the previous month.
Prices were also down, according to the report. Home prices fell 5.9% below the mark last year, the largest yearly drop since April 2010, when prices showed an 8.5% decrease from the year before. Homes spent more time on the market in February as well. On average, a home took 103 days to sell, up from 92 one year ago and 99 from the month before.
In February, the housing inventory reached a 9.3-month supply in the 54 metro areas, up from 8.8 months one year before. A balanced housing market usually holds a six-month supply of homes.
The economy hurt Atlantic City but not nearly as much as competition. I am guessing that the total casino revenue from AC, Delaware and the nearby PA casinos exceeds AC’s 2006 revenue. The gambling dollars are still there to be taken and Christie’s proposal does nothing to capture those dollars.
I am not in favor of a casino complex in the Meadowlands, but that is the obvious move if one is serious about the race for casino revenue.
Re#6 30Yr “Not in favor of a casino in the Meadowlands….”
Hey they gotta use Xanadu for something!
#2 another bottom call, still threw in that caveat “there’s still a lot of excess supply out there,” CYA. Valuation based on what, pie in the ski 05,06 prices. Call me when we breach the long term trend line to the down side & let us add the almost doubling of property taxes in the last 10 years into the metric.
serenity (7)-
Internment camp.
“Hey they gotta use Xanadu for something!”
Homeless shelter.
use your brain Chris and legalize prostitution in AC. sex sells. the mustang ranch east how a nice ring to it
Mike sounds good.
“Hey they gotta use Xanadu for something!”
Guantanamo North
The U.S. housing market is “close to the bottom,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.
BWAAHHAAA!!! Close to what? $12,500 in property taxes for a $629,000 split with internal wrought iron railings leading to a “sunken” living room and pink and black tiled bathrooms? Hey Jan, here’s a f*cking clue for you: when the corpse has turned blue and green, the body is pretty much dead.
“The U.S. housing market is “close to the bottom,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.”
Must have slept thru his call regarding the bubble/top.
#3 Still
Why not have a kyack party, that stream beside you still has some nice fast flow.
gary (13)-
I like to think of the whole state of NJ as Gitmo North.
I’d rather take a waterboarding than pay the tax bill sitting in front of me.
Clot previous thread
We are still trying to get rid of the smell of our last visitors. Is is just the Mackems or is it all the teams in the north.
Debt – in case you have friends in wine industry looking 4 work
They are looking for sales training people in several large markets.
http://www.montesquieu.com/
Xanadu would make a great self-storage facility, good for storing entire households after foreclosure.
Grim,
I have said for years that AC beds a fast ferry. Folks from NY and Providence etc could start gambling as soon as the ship got 3 miles out and the trip becomes part of the experience.
A fast train from NY should have gone in 30 years ago and that is when the bulldozing should have sztarted.
I guess too many connected people had their hands in the cookie jar.
The nail in the AC coffin will be $5 gas, I suspect.
Debt (18),
Paying taxes is for suckers. Only little people pay taxes. Mail them a return and tell the clip artists you’re waiting for hope and change before you pay. Better yet, tell them you’re good friends with Timmy, that should render you exempt.
Winning!!
toast (20)-
Very interesting. Thanks!
shore (21)-
Dunno about that. Most people who get foreclosed & evicted- then store their stuff in self storage places- eventually default on the storage contract.
gary (24)-
What I’d like to mail them is something with a timer attached.
This house sold for $295,000 in 1999 and they’re asking $595,000. 3.5% annual appreciation would bring a list price of $400,000. Where are they getting this 595K number from? The sale price on this house should be around $385,000. And with the exponential property tax increase, that’s being generous.
http://www.trulia.com/property/3030961935-78-Cypress-St-Millburn-NJ-07041
gary (29)-
Some wealthy Japanese family coming here to flee the devastation will pay full price or higher for this house. They will then enroll their brilliant children in NJ’s #1 high school.
I know this is so. I read it on Kannekt.
I hear that in order to move to Millburn, you must show proof that you made at least one purchase from Balanciaga, Gianvito Rossi and Vivienne Westwood in the past month.
Sounds like a law firm.
Reuters headline; Libya accepts U.N. resolution, decides to halt all military action: Libyan Foreign Minister.
Wow.
“Graydon, make sure you bring your Pineider leather gloves to school with you, I understand there will be a chill in the air. You know, the ebony carpinchos ones, not those reddish brown deerskin things!”
Shore for the mob
Yes they accept it and are ceasing operations to all non-combattants to leave so eyes can ” deal with the criminal traitors.”
It is not a serious offer.
There is no hing called the mob, just a bunch of unfairly-maligned businessmen who are subject to terrible stereotyping by law enforcement, right?
finally.. Fannie Mae was worse than Paul Krugman advised Enron, but since the execs were from the right political party they have been immune so far. Jamie Gorelick should burn in hell.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-moves-toward-charging-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-executives/2011/03/17/AB535zm_story.html
SEC moves to charge Fannie, Freddie execs
The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving toward charging former and current Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with violations related to the financial crisis, setting up a clash with the housing regulator that oversees the companies, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The SEC, responsible for enforcing securities laws, is alleging that at least four senior executives failed to provide necessary information to investors about the companies’ mortgage holdings as the U.S. housing market collapsed.
#29 gary,
If it has a miele dishwasher that house is a bargain.
#36 – shore- It is not a serious offer.
Oh, I wasn’t expecting them to stop shooting at the rebels, I’m just surprised at how quickly they decided to play possum.
Ebony carpinchos. Does one serve them with Bearnaise sauce or with white wine and shallots.
Tosh,
He remembers that we bombed his tent.
The whole debate on the nuclear issue is absurd. It’s still the most viable and pragmatic way to create energy. The media and talking heads are just a bunch of noise and once again, they totally miss the real discussion. Use common sense, ingenuity and technology to create a generating plant with layered redundancies. How did we become so retarded in this country? Build the reactor hundreds of feet underground, encase it in composite walls of impervious material. If we’re not gonna do that, then frack and drill and understand the risks involved with this method and just shut the f*ck up. No process to create energy comes without uncertainty. Case closed.
It’s just a flesh wound, really! Who holds the CDS on TEPCO?
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday that the government has been disclosing all the information it has on the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant according to Reuters. “We have been honestly saying that the situation with the nuclear plant accident remains very serious,” he said in a televised address to the Japanese people marking one week since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan. At this point we are willing to believe him: judging by the increasingly improvised Japanese response to the catastrophe nobody has any idea what is really going on or how to handle it properly. Which is why very expect to hear increasingly more about the “Chernobyl solution” – or the shotgun “resolution” of the problem by literally burying it in sand. From Reuters: “A “Chernobyl solution” may be the last resort for dealing with Japan’s stricken nuclear plant, but burying it in sand and concrete is a messy fix that might leave part of the country as an off-limits radioactive sore for decades. Japanese authorities say it is still too early to talk about long-term measures while cooling the plant’s six reactors and associated fuel-storage pools, comes first. “It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete, but our priority right now is to try and cool them down first,” a Tokyo Electric Power official told a briefing on Friday.
-TEPCO Says Reduced Pressure Levels Inside Pressure Vessel Of Reactor 3 Indicates Possible Leakage
gary (43)-
Whether wittingly or unwittingly, we will deposit ourselves right back in the 15th century, where the only energy concern will be tending bonfires at night so that they don’t burn out of control when everyone passes out from drinking too much rotgut homemade mead.
Gary,
Politics is probably the root cause of the issues in the nuke industry. From a purely technical standpoint, you probably wouldn’t be building water cooled reactors, but gas cooled and potentially liquid core, if not pebble bed reactors.
Now for a RE comment. I would be very interested to see a break down of the average towns use of tax receipts. The obvious target is the over paid administration and excessive amount of administration in schools, but there has to be a lot more pork in there as well.
#46 – but there has to be a lot more pork in there as well.
As for pork*; Why not look at police budgets?
* Lots of joke potential here.
Shore
Is entombment of the reactors realistic without access to the cores? If you don’t have access to the cores of the reactors it would seem you may be creating a very large dirty bomb due to heat and pressure building up from decay/criticality of the core.
They also can’t just entomb and abandon these reactors without significant long term risk. They are built on a beach that is inherently unstable in the long term due to wave action and tsunami risk. Entombment doesn’t prevent migration of radioactive isotopes into the ground water and local ocean over time. Especially considering that reactors 2 & 3 are both reported as having primary containment potentially compromised.
Tosh 47
Good point. Isnt the average pay for cops in NJ in the 70K – 100K range without including benefits and crazy overtime?
Debt (45),
Corn syrup and salt dominating the shelves in the grocery store, 3rd grade reading levels for adults and ponzi schemes the new financial models for Amerikan business: are we not back to the 15th century already?
Shore,
At Chernobyl they had direct access to the core (what was left of it), so entombment was an obvious answer.
Use it for spent nuclear fuel….the state needs green energy initiatives to create more jobs…..
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:58 am
Xanadu would make a great self-storage facility, good for storing entire households after foreclosure.
YES!
Elie Tahari manager exiled to New Jersey demands $2M for ‘anguish’
By JAMIE SCHRAM and DON KAPLAN
For this fashion maven, going to New Jersey was worse than wearing white after Labor Day.
A top manager for ritzy design house Elie Tahari gripes in a $2 million claim against the company that he suffered a mental breakdown partly because his bosses banished him to outposts in the Garden State.
“It was the smog. It was depressing driving to Jersey,” said Thomas Horodecki, 36. “The traffic was horrendous on Route 4, and they are pretty bad drivers. The stores are kind of cheesy for the most part.
“New York City has everything when it comes to fashion, especially Saks. And when it comes to styling, let’s just say Jersey is difficult. Fashion it is not!”
Horodecki — who also managed the designer’s in-store shop at Saks Fifth Avenue in Midtown — said in an arbitration claim filed Wednesday that he was snubbed for raises and promotions because he is Polish and not Jewish.
Horodecki, a Christian, alleges that his supervisor, Israeli-born Sagit Halperin — married to Tahari head designer Kobi Halperin — passed him over for less senior female Israeli staffers. He claimed the women would all vacation together in Israel.
His complaints got him exiled to Tahari’s in-store boutiques at the Hackensack branches of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, and at Neiman Marcus in Paramus, he said.
“Mentally, I just started going crazy. I had a breakdown. I was crying to my partner,” he said. “Depression set in. I couldn’t go to work anymore. I’m presently seeing a psychologist and [I’m] on Zoloft.”
The weekly trips to New Jersey weighed heavily on Horodecki.
“Mentally, I was exhausted from everything. It absolutely contributed to my breakdown as time went along,” he said.
Horodecki’s attorneys, Michael Borrelli and Alexander Coleman, said “it is outrageous to treat employees disparately based on their national origin and/or religion.”
Horodecki claims that in December, his depression drove him to leave work on disability, and just days after he left, Sagit Halperin announced at a staff meeting at Tahari’s main showroom on West 42nd Street that Horodecki had been canned — even though he had not been.
Horodecki said he is still employed and remains on disability leave.
Tahari VP Scott Currie said, “We do not comment on current employees.”
jamie.schram@nypost.com
Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.
I enjoyed checking out your blog today and I will be back to check it more in the future so please keep up your good quality work
Dollar looks like a bag of hot garbage today.
Verizon Android continues to suck, and this HTC incredible phone is truly that: incredibly bad. This morning, it shut down and rebooted while I was typing. Sooooo not impressed, Google.
Bid on JPY= is 80.90…. that didn’t last long.
“The Pentagon prepares to send up to 450 radiological and disaster specialists to the site.”
There are allegations coming from Japan new media that Golfer in Chief held back for more than a week know, apparently we were negotiating with the Japanese to basically SALT the remaining reactors with BORON and agree to dismantle them before we would send ANY help.
We should have flown in generators from our bases in Japan last Friday from day one to keep the coolant system running BEFORE they exploded.
Now our own people are going into the HOT zone, this is bad bad bad.
Comrade, ATT I phone 3gs has been doing a great job
Juice,
it was alos reported that the Navy immediately offered gensets to keep the battery backup for the cooling system operational and the offer was declined. After the local diesel generators went down due to the tsunami, there was a battery backup that kept eh pumps going but it ran out of power. The gensets initially offered by the US Navy were report to be big enough to keep the battery system charged.
It will probably take years before we get the full story and even then it will probably be questionable. All you can saw is that this appears to have been mismanaged all the way from the design stage of the facility ( using non-water tight diesel gensets???) to the response phase of the disaster.
Juice,
the demand to salt the reactor might actually make sense if military intel (i.e. thermal satellite imagery, etc) already showed that the reactors could be compromised due to the quake. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but if we already knew of or suspected critical damage to the reactors, then most other options would have ended up where we are now regardless.
Then again, perhaps we just made some really stupid demands.
Chifi, guess he couldn’t deal with the saddle river yentas and the hackensack ghetto rich. On the other hand, fruit cake got Sunday’s off . NJ only the strong survive to be taxed into extinction.
“Dollar looks like a bag of hot garbage today.”
Al,
Today?
gary – I have never heard of any of these placesL
” you made at least one purchase from Balanciaga, Gianvito Rossi and Vivienne Westwood in the past month.
“
Watch out, now the masses are going to get cranky!!!
-“The aftermath of the Japanese earthquake may cause logistical disruptions and supply shortages in Apple Inc.’s iPad 2, which employs several components manufactured in the disaster-stricken country—including a hard-to-replace electronic compass, the battery and possibly the advanced technology glass in the display, IHS iSuppli research indicates.
re #62- Atoms for peace was a US program under Eisenhower. The Japanese readily sighed up for it. Their thirst for energy driven by an ideology of a resource poverty and a general optimism about their technology prowess trumped their concerns over earthquakes and tsunamis. Some now long dead executives and politicians probably made the decision to put the reactors right on the beach instead of one of the nearby hills, a combination of perhaps, Feng Shui, beachfront is apparently cheap and Hubris that I am sure that many future generations are going to be paying for.
At this rate of failure of three reactor complexs every 30 years or so how many generations before we run short on uncontaminated land? Nuke Power using Uranium and Plutonium is not the only option. It is time to break up the Uranium Nuclear Cartel and build the next generation power on Thorium designs.
ricky_nu (65),
Either you’re not eligible to live in Millburn or, if you already live there, you’re under the grandfather clause. :)
Gary – That’s just regular Millburn. Wanna be Short Hills. Heck, it’s practically in Maplewood.
Juice 67
Germany developed a gas cooled pebble bed (uranium) reactor design in which the containment building itself was capable of passively radiating enough heat to provide for base cooling needs in the case of ALL active cooling systems failing.
The designs are out there but would be disruptive to entrenched interests.
Pain, 63
No one can deal with the Saddle River Yentas… worse are the psycho MILs….
can.not.wait.to.move.away.from.here!
There. I said it.
sl
re # 70 – yes but they may make some headway with Thorium now.
http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/
#14 gary; How about over $9,000 in taxes for a 2 bed/1 bath??
SL – Bummer. No can do Saturday. But we really should plan something soon.
I’m guessing LA smog is still more dangerous at this point.
(Reuters) – Very low concentrations of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected on the U.S. west coast, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The level of radiation was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said.
Still at least your in a career that can find work in a nice area. I mean if you wanted to go ER doc in a NH ski town you can. Other than NC, Kalifornia and here I’m stuck until I can go pro, but that is some time off. All hype and I were chatting about it a couple of weeks ago, it rots
re: # 75 – go long eggs, bread and milk.
3b,
Where have you been!!?
SL – I’m up for some type of GTG, but it would have to be a bit more in advance as this Saturday is a no-can-do.
gary: Took a break from the blog for over a year. Although I did lurk from time to time. Nobody missed me!!!
3b – thought you might have moved back to a 5th floor walk up off of Jerome Ave.
WOW A Kodak Moment today!!! Most Jap Camera Companies have shut down production.
With spring wedding/communion/graduation season upon us good time to be only one making digital cameras!
#81 Nah. I would go closer to Mc Lean or Katonah; buildings there have elevators.
#78 gary: Actually I took a break form the whole real estate thing. Although a quick look this morning tells me that asking prices in the areas I used to follow, have dropped significantly. But taxes are through the roof!!!
#82 – Most of Nikon’s and Canon’s non-pro lines are manufactured outside of Japan, so that portion will be ok. I’m not sure on Sony (nee Minolta) Olympus, Fuji, etc. in terms of the dispersion of their manufacturing facilities. This will certainly hit the likes of Nikon and Fuji pretty hard, less so Canon and Sony who have other, non-photographic business lines that can still generate cash.
Nikon was expected to release at least 1 and probably 2 new ‘pro’ level cameras this year. That is certainly on hold.
Time line showing rad spikes at the plant. Any German speakers?
http://www.grs.de/sites/default/files/Messungen_Japan_17.03_18Uhr.pdf
At the rate the Japanese are selling dollars to repatriate yen, I doubt any rich Japanese are going to be bailing out foreign real estate markets.
re # 85 – I bet every steak house in NY is taking Wagyu or Kobe Beef off the menu.
re: #87 – DL – last two days on Bloomberg radio the pundits have been saying that has not been happening.
Basel II meh…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/18/us-usa-banks-stresstests-idUSTRE72H4SI20110318
gary (29),
People just are desperate to live in Milburn. The buyers get granite countertops! What I cannot understand is a big six-burner gas range vented only by a whimpy microwave. That’s not going to work in real life. They needed to put a real hood above those burners, but then a microwave would be taking up that precious granite countertop space.
Ref 86: “Gemessene Dosisleistungen an ausgewählten Messpunkten
Fukushima Daiichi – Daten des Betreibers TEPCO” = Measured dosages from selected data collection points Fukushima Daiichi – Data from the operators TEPCO; “erneutes Venting” = renewed venting; “Explosion und Brand in Block 4 im Bereich des BE Beckens” = explosion and fire in Block 4 in the area of the reactor rod pool; “Weitere Explosion” = additional explosion; “Freisetzungen aus Block 2 und 3” = release from block 2 and 3; “Messpunkt” = data collection point; “Neuer Messpunkt Hauptgebäude” = new data collection point in the main building; “Neuer Messpunkt
Westtor” = New data collection point at the west gate;
Juice; I’ve read the reason the yen is soaring against the dollar is because of the repatriation effect. I’m no expert in currency markets but if that’s not the reason, then we really ought to be worried because it says more about the dollar then it does about the yen.
#93 – FTAlphaville had a discussion on just this subject earlier.
Ket,
I don’t know. Perhaps a boron slurry could fill the spaces between the intact fuel rods and cover the melted material at the bottom of the pressur vessel an then one could either encased the thing in a huge mass o concrete or rig up a cooling system external to the pressure vessel to deal with residual heat.
Ideally, I would think that dismantlement would be the best course but given all of the reactors involved, it may just be out of the quesztion for several years.
With an eye torwardx dismantling the reactors, I would go with theb boron slurry and notb foreclose the possibility of removing the fuel rfods later.
Back to the boron mine.
re # 93 – yes and it is not happening, it’s market manipulation at it’s finest.
Zieba 86
Enough german to read the chart, although if you dont need to know the exact events then you dont need to read german. Y-axise is in microSv/hr and the X-axis is time &date.
For comparison a chest X-ray is in the ball park of 3000 – 5000 microSv.
1 Sv = 1000 mSv (millisieverts) = 1,000,000 μSv (microsieverts) = 100 rem = 100,000 mrem (millirem)
Some examples of dose impacts when received in a 24hr period
* 0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None
* 0.25 – 1 Sv (250 – 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen damaged.
* 1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
* 3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.
* 6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
* Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.
Zieba,
Anyone who has been consistently working in close proximity to the reactors appears to be seeing exposure equivalent to about 1 chest x-ray per hour. but could easily receive more depending on their activities. it is also way more complex then that because it also depends on the type of exposure and the route said material is absorbed. For any reasonable guess you would need to talk to a nuclear medicine specialist.
for the many above commentors. blogs and forums could be far better to read when you can keep your feedback little and to the stage
gary (50)-
In the intellectual realm, the 15th century kicks the modern day’s ass.
…even with the occasional autos da fe.
Somerset County, January 2011 (from the Sheriff’s website):
New sheriff sales scheduled: 22
Sheriff sales completed: 0
Sheriff sales postponed: 7
The backlog is now so deep, scrolling through all the houses on the list will give you a finger cramp.
Shadow inventory? Yeah…the shadow cast by a giant, wooly mammoth.
50-100 years for RE markets to normalize. The hidden losses and fraud will take generations to purge.
Dollar getting hammered. Next stop 71. Bwahahaha!
Babs: read ’em and weep…..
by Adam Winer
April 2011
1. Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies
The Meanest Fans in America
Over the years, Philadelphia fans have booed Santa Claus, their own star players, and most absurdly, the recipient of America’s very first hand transplant, whose crime was dribbling in a ceremonial first pitch—thrown with his freshly transplanted hand. Boooo! Admittedly, there are some things fans have cheered. Like Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury and a fan being tased on the outfield grass. Things reached their nadir last season, when Citizens Bank Park played host to arguably the most heinous incident in the history of sports: A drunken fan intentionally vomited on an 11-year-old girl. The truth is this: All told, Philadelphia stadiums house the most monstrous collection of humanity outside of the federal penal system. “Some of these people would boo the crack in the Liberty Bell,” baseball legend Pete Rose once said. More likely, these savages would have thrown the battery that cracked it.
3b,
Welcome back. Where the hell have you been?
So anyone want to wager when America starts its next war in Libya?
I am thinking a Sunday night showdown. Wee hours of the morning. The usual Tomahawks first followed by some B-2/B-1 and then the F-18s.
America F-ck Yeah!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI
#105 Chifi
I’d be angry at the world too if I lived in the Philly area.
#106 lone: I took a sabbaticial from real estate, the economy, and all the rest, for about a year; hence my new handle So whatwho cares?? There is absolutely nothing we can do about all of the madness that is going on..
Some schmuck with a toy gun holds up a gas station, and gets 10 years. The banker gangsters bought the entire system to its knees, and not one went to jail, so what who cares!!!!
Americans need to understand we are not that special place any more. We are no better or worse than alot of other countries, however we keep telling ourselves and the world that we are the best and special; we are not. I have made my peace with that.
http://translate.google.com/
This should do you some good for simple phrases. It is improving all the time due to user communities. There are some problems with some languages since there are not a lot of contributors to correct errors but it looks like it did a pretty good job with the german phrases.
Explosion und Brand in Block 4 im Bereich des BE Beckens
– Explosion and fire in Block 4 in the area of the basin BE
Freisetzungen aus Block 2 und 3
– Releases from Block 2 and 3
Weitere Explosion Block 2
– Another explosion Block 2
Explosion Block 2 Beschädigung KoKa?
– Block 2 KoKa explosion damage?
erneutes Venting Block 2
– Venting again block 2
Messpunkt
– Measuring point
Messpunkt Haupttor
– Measuring Point main gate
Neuer Messpunkt Westtor
– New measuring point west gate
Neuer Messpunkt Hauptgebäude
– New measuring point the main building
re: – #107 – USS Enterprise is still in the Red Sea.
http://web.stratfor.com/images/northamerica/map/031611Naval_Update_03_16_11_800.jpg
However the flagship of the French Navy Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is in the area , has 40 Dassault aircraft. If it does not bust a propeller it may be the first to attack.
Let the English, Italians and French deal with it, they are only a country of 4 million so what could go wrong?
“Americans need to understand we are not that special place any more…we keep telling ourselves and the world that we are the best and special; we are not.”
3b, welcome back but I don’t like this type of gratuitous america bashing. its vague and I have no idea what you mean, specifically. I happen to love the country, warts and all, its been good to me and my family. Do you like china and switzerland better? What’s your beef, exactly?
As I said DL not repatriating YEN yet.
Canada and its allies in the Group of Seven nations are taking a stand against the currency traders who pushed the yen to a record high this week, a destabilizing surge that risked hampering Japan’s efforts to recover from last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Acting on orders from their governments, central banks in Japan, Europe, the United States and Canada banded together Friday to attempt to alter the course of currency trading for the first time in a decade.
“This is a surprise,” said Mark Chandler, a fixed-income analyst at Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto. “The odds were that the G7 would wait for clearer signals. There is obvious concern there.”
G7 officials kept details of their plan to a minimum to gain the advantage of surprise on traders who have been bidding up the yen in anticipation of Japanese cashing in billions of dollars in overseas investments to pay for reconstruction.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/currencies/g7-takes-on-the-currency-speculators/article1947341/
#112 I stand by what I have said. It has nothing to do with bashing or love.
For anyone interested:
The TRADER JOE’s in Shrewsbury is open….no liquor…
Got to say that this is still the greatest country on earth overall, of course I haven’t lived in every country. But we’ve got a strong organized system of laws, flourishing financial and technology sector and we even have one of the strongest manufacturing bases too. Best of all there’s freedom of speech which is great to see people protesting taxes and anything else they disagree with. Also respect our shift toward alternative energy, which is happening in a massive way this very moment. I guess I just love this country dearly.
Shore, Juice
Pic of SPF at reactor 3
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/18/article-1367524-0B3B46E800000578-690_964x641.jpg
Juice, Shore
This article has the first pic and a before pic of the SFP
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/Nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-Japanese-finally-admit-radiation-leak-kill-people.html
The end is nigh (Public Transportation Edition):
skip to minute 2:00 if needed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjUOUnbAJII&feature=player_embedded
Juice box don’t worry the French pilots are trained to make an immediate 180 degree turn for the shores of france upon launch, drop their bombs on ususpecting tuna in the Med and promptly waive a white flag once upon the shores of the bleu, blanc, and rougue.
Anyway the Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard, Dassault Rafale other than having great ship to ship weapons are crap even against Mig-21’s of the Libyan variety. They are terrible air superiority aircraft. So looks like the British and us will do the heavy lifting. Hell I don’t even think the French employ effective wild weasel tactics, which would significantly increase the retreat rate once a few of their cheese powered craft get knocked out of the sky.
Veto 116
organized system of laws, flourishing financial sector
That’s amusing!! And by flourishing I assume you mean successful at nuking the the worlds primary financial systems through debt leverage devices and creative accounting.
Kettle according to you we defaulted on our treasuries and s&p 500 is trading at 2. Seriously its dilusion.
Stu/Gator,
You mentioned something about the curriculum in the public school not being challenging for your kid. Does it have any unintended consequences — like the kid becoming completely bored with school and any habits picked up then becoming more difficult to unlearn in the longer term?
Is there merit in preemptively dumbing down the kid? :)
S
veto,
Our system of laws may be organized but it is enforced selectively.
Veto,
I dont recall claiming we have defaulted.
i like it Tear it total down, quick spring all over | New Jersey Real property Report at offering im your rss reader
“I dont recall claiming we have defaulted.”
So you admit to thinking that the s&p is trading at 2?
#116 Flourishing financial and legal system??? Well If you choose to believe that, that is of course your right. To me it is a sham. As far as some of your other points, free elections, free to protest, its all just Christmas decorations IMO. Nothing changes, and it never will
We had the hope and change, and yes we can candidate, all just an illusion. Nothing changed. Banker/Gangsters are now his top advisors.
Yet we still portyray ourselves as the best, and insist the world should follow our version of democracy. I say we are no better or worse than many other places. These last few years have convinced me of that.
3b,
Welcome back. Glad to see you have made peace with oblivion. Most here have. Might I suggest some gold and silver for those uncomfortable nights when doom beckons?
I agree that the financial system is a sham. Eventually they will be hung. Historically its either the House of Lombard = exile or “off with their heads” 1789 France.
Treason should be punished and in my opinion its best left to the disgruntled masses to inflict that punishment.
Either way good news. Last time I was in bestbuy they were doing a blow out on Kodak Cameras. Since I owned the bonds I asked why are they going BK or something. Guy said no Kodak is clearing inventory they put a lot of money into R&D and have all new cameras coming out in a last ditch effort to bring the sales back. If Kodak can get a whole new 2011/2012 set of models out while the Jap cameras have three year old models on shelf big advantage.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:24 am
#82 – Most of Nikon’s and Canon’s non-pro lines are manufactured outside of Japan, so that portion will be ok. I’m not sure on Sony (nee Minolta) Olympus, Fuji, etc. in terms of the dispersion of their manufacturing facilities. This will certainly hit the likes of Nikon and Fuji pretty hard, less so Canon and Sony who have other, non-photographic business lines that can still generate cash.
Nikon was expected to release at least 1 and probably 2 new ‘pro’ level cameras this year. That is certainly on hold.
Ref 116: “Got to say that this is still the greatest country on earth overall, of course I haven’t lived in every country. But we’ve got a strong organized system of laws, flourishing financial and technology sector and we even have one of the strongest manufacturing bases too. Best of all there’s freedom of speech which is great to see people protesting taxes and anything else they disagree with. Also respect our shift toward alternative energy, which is happening in a massive way this very moment. I guess I just love this country dearly.”
Neander: What we have is the best people on the planet. In a pinch, there is no one I’d rather be with than Americans. We are more practical, more resourceful, more willing to help, have a better attitude, and better to be around than any other folk. As far as the country goes, our quality of life is crap. Our cities are third world. There are a dozen other countries and systems that are less corrupt, better managed, and that provide better services, infrastructure, and quality of life.
#130 – If Kodak can get a whole new 2011/2012 set of models out while the Jap cameras have three year old models on shelf big advantage.
The Kodak’s point-and-shoots are, almost universally, rebodied/rebadged versions of someone else’s camera… which will most likely have been made in China or Malaysia. Sorry.
Kodak does make the sensor for the M9 and H4D series. You could run down to Best Buy and pick one up!
(116) Have you thought about enlisting? We need a steady stream of true believers to fight our continuous wars.
http://www.flextronics.com/
Kodak designs cameras and flextronics in China makes them. They outsourced the actual production of cameras to china.
Kodak invented cameras. Jap cameras are rebadged knock off Kodaks.
country is run by the bankers period. they rotate in and out of the gov.jobs to keep control. take a look at what’s going on with the banks, some of the largest should have been in a BK court along with GM but got bailed.
#135 Banker/Gangsters
133. Soccer Dad
ARE YOU A CITIZEN?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTz9nIUkGc
Plenty of ways to support your country without joining military. But im proud of our military too. They’re keeping certain regions stable, securing nat resources for our people. Would much rather our military do that as opposed to russia/china’s. Im sure you agree.
Our military is not the same as , lets say 20 years ago, much weaker , the good guys have bailed .
The Agency is far stronger than 20 yard ago.
Neander: Our military is without peer. Like it or not, we have weened a world where everyone would prefer we do the dirty work and we’re only too eager to oblige. Germany is strongly in favor of a Libyan No-Fly Zone; it just doesn’t want to send aircraft to enforce it. And France, as always, is right behind us.
Dl,
Behind us and behind the sandbags.
Dl,
Our logistics and command and control systems leave everyone in the dust.
The GM/GMAC bail out was not a banker driven bail out. One million blue collar workers jobs, pensions and medical would be wiped out. Also GM/GMAC sold tons and tons of stupid “Smartnotes” in 1k denoms to widows and orphans at par that no banker would ever buy. Wiping out the common was also a spanking to fund managers paid on performance. Also anyone who had ever been in the “middle” of the USA knows there Chevy, Chrysler or Ford Dealer is life blood of community and provided decent jobs and supports all the towns bs stuff.
I admit that bail out makes no sense. But that was done for very different reasons than Citi, AIG or BAC. Wall Street could give two hoots if Detroit unemployment skyrocketed.
← QE3… QE4… QE5… The bailouts aren’t going to fix the housing market.
Tear it all down, start all over
Posted on March 18, 2011 by grim
From Bloomberg:
Christie’s Atlantic City Revival Seeks Halt to 30% Casino Plunge
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is bucking voter skepticism and pushing ahead with his plan to revive the Atlantic City gambling resort, where casino revenue has plunged the most since the first one opened in 1978.
Christie, a first-term Republican, took control of the tourism district in the 48-block-long coastal city of 40,000 last month and relieved the 11 casinos there of some regulations. He redirected gaming fees to clean up and promote the area, and provided tax breaks to help restart construction of the $2.5 billion Revel casino that stalled in 2009.
The intervention may come too late, even with Revel opening in 2012, said Dennis Forst, a gaming analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. Gambling revenue in Atlantic City, the second-largest U.S. casino market, is down 30 percent from 2006. Older betting parlors may close as Sands Casino Resort in Pennsylvania, Dover Downs in Delaware and other rivals draw gamblers from Philadelphia and New York, he said.
“Outside competition is only going to increase,” he said during an interview in New York. “Atlantic City had 30 years to work this out, to make themselves indestructible, and they’ve wasted all of those years,” said Forst, who has covered the industry for 40 years. He received top rankings of analyst polls in the Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor and Forbes magazines, according to KeyBanc.
…
New Jersey is seeking to halt a drop in the 8 percent tax on casino revenue that funds programs for seniors and the disabled. The industry gives another 1.25 percent of revenue to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which helped fund $1.8 billion of projects since 1984, including airport expansion and housing for casino workers.
Atlantic City’s gambling houses employed 33,272 as of last month, down from more than 45,000 in 2004, according to state data. The 8 percent gaming tax netted the state $260.9 million in 2010, down from more than $400 million in 2006.
This entry was posted in Economics, New Development, New Jersey Real Estate. Bookmark the permalink.
← QE3… QE4… QE5… The bailouts aren’t going to fix the housing market.
143 Responses to Tear it all down, start all over
grim says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:11 am
AC infrastructure and layout is archaic. Take it all, eminent domain, bulldoze 15 blocks back from the ocean, across the entire ocean front strip. Start all over from scratch. Build everything shiny and new. Don’t forget about an off-shore cruise port with ferry either. The town doesn’t need another casino, it needs to be a destination.
Vegas East? You’ve got to be kidding. Strip mall casinos in Vegas are nicer than AC.
grim says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:11 am
From Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs’s Hatzius Says U.S. Housing Market Near Bottom
The U.S. housing market is “close to the bottom,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.
“The valuation of real estate is much more reasonable now,” Hatzius said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Over the next few years, the housing sector is going to improve.” For now, “there’s still a lot of excess supply out there,” he said.
still_looking says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:17 am
sigh… I still have to go back and read yesterdays thread…. I was lost in the pit yesterday..
Happy belated St. Patrick’s day to all…
Saturday GTG at the sl’s? Short notice so it’s a toss up if we’ll have it depending on availability/interest.
sl
safe as houses says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:26 am
Since AC already has a boardwalk, would bike paths be redundant?
grim says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:29 am
From HousingWire:
RE/MAX: February home sales down 3%
February home sales dropped 3% from one year ago, but increased from January, according to the RE/MAX national housing report.
It’s the first time in four months that the yearly difference did not improve from the previous month.
Prices were also down, according to the report. Home prices fell 5.9% below the mark last year, the largest yearly drop since April 2010, when prices showed an 8.5% decrease from the year before. Homes spent more time on the market in February as well. On average, a home took 103 days to sell, up from 92 one year ago and 99 from the month before.
In February, the housing inventory reached a 9.3-month supply in the 54 metro areas, up from 8.8 months one year before. A balanced housing market usually holds a six-month supply of homes.
30 year realtor says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:48 am
The economy hurt Atlantic City but not nearly as much as competition. I am guessing that the total casino revenue from AC, Delaware and the nearby PA casinos exceeds AC’s 2006 revenue. The gambling dollars are still there to be taken and Christie’s proposal does nothing to capture those dollars.
I am not in favor of a casino complex in the Meadowlands, but that is the obvious move if one is serious about the race for casino revenue.
serenity now says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:56 am
Re#6 30Yr “Not in favor of a casino in the Meadowlands….”
Hey they gotta use Xanadu for something!
Mikeinwaiting says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:56 am
#2 another bottom call, still threw in that caveat “there’s still a lot of excess supply out there,” CYA. Valuation based on what, pie in the ski 05,06 prices. Call me when we breach the long term trend line to the down side & let us add the almost doubling of property taxes in the last 10 years into the metric.
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 5:59 am
serenity (7)-
Internment camp.
Mikeinwaiting says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:02 am
“Hey they gotta use Xanadu for something!”
Homeless shelter.
Mike says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:35 am
use your brain Chris and legalize prostitution in AC. sex sells. the mustang ranch east how a nice ring to it
Mikeinwaiting says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:37 am
Mike sounds good.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:40 am
“Hey they gotta use Xanadu for something!”
Guantanamo North
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:45 am
The U.S. housing market is “close to the bottom,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.
BWAAHHAAA!!! Close to what? $12,500 in property taxes for a $629,000 split with internal wrought iron railings leading to a “sunken” living room and pink and black tiled bathrooms? Hey Jan, here’s a f*cking clue for you: when the corpse has turned blue and green, the body is pretty much dead.
Lone Ranger says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:49 am
“The U.S. housing market is “close to the bottom,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.”
Must have slept thru his call regarding the bubble/top.
Fabius Maximus says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:51 am
#3 Still
Why not have a kyack party, that stream beside you still has some nice fast flow.
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:53 am
gary (13)-
I like to think of the whole state of NJ as Gitmo North.
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:53 am
I’d rather take a waterboarding than pay the tax bill sitting in front of me.
Fabius Maximus says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:56 am
Clot previous thread
We are still trying to get rid of the smell of our last visitors. Is is just the Mackems or is it all the teams in the north.
NJ Toast says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:57 am
Debt – in case you have friends in wine industry looking 4 work
They are looking for sales training people in several large markets.
http://www.montesquieu.com/
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:58 am
Xanadu would make a great self-storage facility, good for storing entire households after foreclosure.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:04 am
Grim,
I have said for years that AC beds a fast ferry. Folks from NY and Providence etc could start gambling as soon as the ship got 3 miles out and the trip becomes part of the experience.
A fast train from NY should have gone in 30 years ago and that is when the bulldozing should have sztarted.
I guess too many connected people had their hands in the cookie jar.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:08 am
The nail in the AC coffin will be $5 gas, I suspect.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:08 am
Debt (18),
Paying taxes is for suckers. Only little people pay taxes. Mail them a return and tell the clip artists you’re waiting for hope and change before you pay. Better yet, tell them you’re good friends with Timmy, that should render you exempt.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:09 am
Winning!!
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:16 am
toast (20)-
Very interesting. Thanks!
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:17 am
shore (21)-
Dunno about that. Most people who get foreclosed & evicted- then store their stuff in self storage places- eventually default on the storage contract.
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:18 am
gary (24)-
What I’d like to mail them is something with a timer attached.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:22 am
This house sold for $295,000 in 1999 and they’re asking $595,000. 3.5% annual appreciation would bring a list price of $400,000. Where are they getting this 595K number from? The sale price on this house should be around $385,000. And with the exponential property tax increase, that’s being generous.
http://www.trulia.com/property/3030961935-78-Cypress-St-Millburn-NJ-07041
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:31 am
gary (29)-
Some wealthy Japanese family coming here to flee the devastation will pay full price or higher for this house. They will then enroll their brilliant children in NJ’s #1 high school.
I know this is so. I read it on Kannekt.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:40 am
I hear that in order to move to Millburn, you must show proof that you made at least one purchase from Balanciaga, Gianvito Rossi and Vivienne Westwood in the past month.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:42 am
Sounds like a law firm.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:45 am
Reuters headline; Libya accepts U.N. resolution, decides to halt all military action: Libyan Foreign Minister.
Wow.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:45 am
“Graydon, make sure you bring your Pineider leather gloves to school with you, I understand there will be a chill in the air. You know, the ebony carpinchos ones, not those reddish brown deerskin things!”
Painhrtz says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:46 am
Shore for the mob
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:49 am
Yes they accept it and are ceasing operations to all non-combattants to leave so eyes can ” deal with the criminal traitors.”
It is not a serious offer.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:52 am
There is no hing called the mob, just a bunch of unfairly-maligned businessmen who are subject to terrible stereotyping by law enforcement, right?
jamil says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:52 am
finally.. Fannie Mae was worse than Paul Krugman advised Enron, but since the execs were from the right political party they have been immune so far. Jamie Gorelick should burn in hell.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-moves-toward-charging-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-executives/2011/03/17/AB535zm_story.html
SEC moves to charge Fannie, Freddie execs
The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving toward charging former and current Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with violations related to the financial crisis, setting up a clash with the housing regulator that oversees the companies, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The SEC, responsible for enforcing securities laws, is alleging that at least four senior executives failed to provide necessary information to investors about the companies’ mortgage holdings as the U.S. housing market collapsed.
safe as houses says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:53 am
#29 gary,
If it has a miele dishwasher that house is a bargain.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:53 am
#36 – shore- It is not a serious offer.
Oh, I wasn’t expecting them to stop shooting at the rebels, I’m just surprised at how quickly they decided to play possum.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:57 am
Ebony carpinchos. Does one serve them with Bearnaise sauce or with white wine and shallots.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:58 am
Tosh,
He remembers that we bombed his tent.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:00 am
The whole debate on the nuclear issue is absurd. It’s still the most viable and pragmatic way to create energy. The media and talking heads are just a bunch of noise and once again, they totally miss the real discussion. Use common sense, ingenuity and technology to create a generating plant with layered redundancies. How did we become so retarded in this country? Build the reactor hundreds of feet underground, encase it in composite walls of impervious material. If we’re not gonna do that, then frack and drill and understand the risks involved with this method and just shut the f*ck up. No process to create energy comes without uncertainty. Case closed.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:01 am
It’s just a flesh wound, really! Who holds the CDS on TEPCO?
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday that the government has been disclosing all the information it has on the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant according to Reuters. “We have been honestly saying that the situation with the nuclear plant accident remains very serious,” he said in a televised address to the Japanese people marking one week since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan. At this point we are willing to believe him: judging by the increasingly improvised Japanese response to the catastrophe nobody has any idea what is really going on or how to handle it properly. Which is why very expect to hear increasingly more about the “Chernobyl solution” – or the shotgun “resolution” of the problem by literally burying it in sand. From Reuters: “A “Chernobyl solution” may be the last resort for dealing with Japan’s stricken nuclear plant, but burying it in sand and concrete is a messy fix that might leave part of the country as an off-limits radioactive sore for decades. Japanese authorities say it is still too early to talk about long-term measures while cooling the plant’s six reactors and associated fuel-storage pools, comes first. “It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete, but our priority right now is to try and cool them down first,” a Tokyo Electric Power official told a briefing on Friday.
-TEPCO Says Reduced Pressure Levels Inside Pressure Vessel Of Reactor 3 Indicates Possible Leakage
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:05 am
gary (43)-
Whether wittingly or unwittingly, we will deposit ourselves right back in the 15th century, where the only energy concern will be tending bonfires at night so that they don’t burn out of control when everyone passes out from drinking too much rotgut homemade mead.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:08 am
Gary,
Politics is probably the root cause of the issues in the nuke industry. From a purely technical standpoint, you probably wouldn’t be building water cooled reactors, but gas cooled and potentially liquid core, if not pebble bed reactors.
Now for a RE comment. I would be very interested to see a break down of the average towns use of tax receipts. The obvious target is the over paid administration and excessive amount of administration in schools, but there has to be a lot more pork in there as well.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:19 am
#46 – but there has to be a lot more pork in there as well.
As for pork*; Why not look at police budgets?
* Lots of joke potential here.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:20 am
Shore
Is entombment of the reactors realistic without access to the cores? If you don’t have access to the cores of the reactors it would seem you may be creating a very large dirty bomb due to heat and pressure building up from decay/criticality of the core.
They also can’t just entomb and abandon these reactors without significant long term risk. They are built on a beach that is inherently unstable in the long term due to wave action and tsunami risk. Entombment doesn’t prevent migration of radioactive isotopes into the ground water and local ocean over time. Especially considering that reactors 2 & 3 are both reported as having primary containment potentially compromised.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:22 am
Tosh 47
Good point. Isnt the average pay for cops in NJ in the 70K – 100K range without including benefits and crazy overtime?
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:22 am
Debt (45),
Corn syrup and salt dominating the shelves in the grocery store, 3rd grade reading levels for adults and ponzi schemes the new financial models for Amerikan business: are we not back to the 15th century already?
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:23 am
Shore,
At Chernobyl they had direct access to the core (what was left of it), so entombment was an obvious answer.
chicagofinance says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:29 am
Use it for spent nuclear fuel….the state needs green energy initiatives to create more jobs…..
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:58 am
Xanadu would make a great self-storage facility, good for storing entire households after foreclosure.
chicagofinance says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:32 am
YES!
Elie Tahari manager exiled to New Jersey demands $2M for ‘anguish’
By JAMIE SCHRAM and DON KAPLAN
For this fashion maven, going to New Jersey was worse than wearing white after Labor Day.
A top manager for ritzy design house Elie Tahari gripes in a $2 million claim against the company that he suffered a mental breakdown partly because his bosses banished him to outposts in the Garden State.
“It was the smog. It was depressing driving to Jersey,” said Thomas Horodecki, 36. “The traffic was horrendous on Route 4, and they are pretty bad drivers. The stores are kind of cheesy for the most part.
“New York City has everything when it comes to fashion, especially Saks. And when it comes to styling, let’s just say Jersey is difficult. Fashion it is not!”
Horodecki — who also managed the designer’s in-store shop at Saks Fifth Avenue in Midtown — said in an arbitration claim filed Wednesday that he was snubbed for raises and promotions because he is Polish and not Jewish.
Horodecki, a Christian, alleges that his supervisor, Israeli-born Sagit Halperin — married to Tahari head designer Kobi Halperin — passed him over for less senior female Israeli staffers. He claimed the women would all vacation together in Israel.
His complaints got him exiled to Tahari’s in-store boutiques at the Hackensack branches of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, and at Neiman Marcus in Paramus, he said.
“Mentally, I just started going crazy. I had a breakdown. I was crying to my partner,” he said. “Depression set in. I couldn’t go to work anymore. I’m presently seeing a psychologist and [I’m] on Zoloft.”
The weekly trips to New Jersey weighed heavily on Horodecki.
“Mentally, I was exhausted from everything. It absolutely contributed to my breakdown as time went along,” he said.
Horodecki’s attorneys, Michael Borrelli and Alexander Coleman, said “it is outrageous to treat employees disparately based on their national origin and/or religion.”
Horodecki claims that in December, his depression drove him to leave work on disability, and just days after he left, Sagit Halperin announced at a staff meeting at Tahari’s main showroom on West 42nd Street that Horodecki had been canned — even though he had not been.
Horodecki said he is still employed and remains on disability leave.
Tahari VP Scott Currie said, “We do not comment on current employees.”
jamie.schram@nypost.com
state of puerto rico map says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:36 am
Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.
south carolina map with cities says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:40 am
I enjoyed checking out your blog today and I will be back to check it more in the future so please keep up your good quality work
Al Mossberg says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:48 am
Dollar looks like a bag of hot garbage today.
Comrade Nom Deplume says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:52 am
Verizon Android continues to suck, and this HTC incredible phone is truly that: incredibly bad. This morning, it shut down and rebooted while I was typing. Sooooo not impressed, Google.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:54 am
Bid on JPY= is 80.90…. that didn’t last long.
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:56 am
“The Pentagon prepares to send up to 450 radiological and disaster specialists to the site.”
There are allegations coming from Japan new media that Golfer in Chief held back for more than a week know, apparently we were negotiating with the Japanese to basically SALT the remaining reactors with BORON and agree to dismantle them before we would send ANY help.
We should have flown in generators from our bases in Japan last Friday from day one to keep the coolant system running BEFORE they exploded.
Now our own people are going into the HOT zone, this is bad bad bad.
nj escapee says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:57 am
Comrade, ATT I phone 3gs has been doing a great job
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:02 am
Juice,
it was alos reported that the Navy immediately offered gensets to keep the battery backup for the cooling system operational and the offer was declined. After the local diesel generators went down due to the tsunami, there was a battery backup that kept eh pumps going but it ran out of power. The gensets initially offered by the US Navy were report to be big enough to keep the battery system charged.
It will probably take years before we get the full story and even then it will probably be questionable. All you can saw is that this appears to have been mismanaged all the way from the design stage of the facility ( using non-water tight diesel gensets???) to the response phase of the disaster.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:05 am
Juice,
the demand to salt the reactor might actually make sense if military intel (i.e. thermal satellite imagery, etc) already showed that the reactors could be compromised due to the quake. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but if we already knew of or suspected critical damage to the reactors, then most other options would have ended up where we are now regardless.
Then again, perhaps we just made some really stupid demands.
Painhrtz says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:07 am
Chifi, guess he couldn’t deal with the saddle river yentas and the hackensack ghetto rich. On the other hand, fruit cake got Sunday’s off . NJ only the strong survive to be taxed into extinction.
Lone Ranger says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:14 am
“Dollar looks like a bag of hot garbage today.”
Al,
Today?
ricky_nu says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:19 am
gary – I have never heard of any of these placesL
” you made at least one purchase from Balanciaga, Gianvito Rossi and Vivienne Westwood in the past month.
“
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:22 am
Watch out, now the masses are going to get cranky!!!
-”The aftermath of the Japanese earthquake may cause logistical disruptions and supply shortages in Apple Inc.’s iPad 2, which employs several components manufactured in the disaster-stricken country—including a hard-to-replace electronic compass, the battery and possibly the advanced technology glass in the display, IHS iSuppli research indicates.
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:28 am
re #62- Atoms for peace was a US program under Eisenhower. The Japanese readily sighed up for it. Their thirst for energy driven by an ideology of a resource poverty and a general optimism about their technology prowess trumped their concerns over earthquakes and tsunamis. Some now long dead executives and politicians probably made the decision to put the reactors right on the beach instead of one of the nearby hills, a combination of perhaps, Feng Shui, beachfront is apparently cheap and Hubris that I am sure that many future generations are going to be paying for.
At this rate of failure of three reactor complexs every 30 years or so how many generations before we run short on uncontaminated land? Nuke Power using Uranium and Plutonium is not the only option. It is time to break up the Uranium Nuclear Cartel and build the next generation power on Thorium designs.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:31 am
ricky_nu (65),
Either you’re not eligible to live in Millburn or, if you already live there, you’re under the grandfather clause. :)
NJGator says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:33 am
Gary – That’s just regular Millburn. Wanna be Short Hills. Heck, it’s practically in Maplewood.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:34 am
Juice 67
Germany developed a gas cooled pebble bed (uranium) reactor design in which the containment building itself was capable of passively radiating enough heat to provide for base cooling needs in the case of ALL active cooling systems failing.
The designs are out there but would be disruptive to entrenched interests.
still_looking says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:49 am
Pain, 63
No one can deal with the Saddle River Yentas… worse are the psycho MILs….
can.not.wait.to.move.away.from.here!
There. I said it.
sl
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:51 am
re # 70 – yes but they may make some headway with Thorium now.
http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:53 am
#14 gary; How about over $9,000 in taxes for a 2 bed/1 bath??
NJGator says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:53 am
SL – Bummer. No can do Saturday. But we really should plan something soon.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:53 am
I’m guessing LA smog is still more dangerous at this point.
(Reuters) – Very low concentrations of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected on the U.S. west coast, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The level of radiation was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said.
Painhrtz says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:56 am
Still at least your in a career that can find work in a nice area. I mean if you wanted to go ER doc in a NH ski town you can. Other than NC, Kalifornia and here I’m stuck until I can go pro, but that is some time off. All hype and I were chatting about it a couple of weeks ago, it rots
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:00 am
re: # 75 – go long eggs, bread and milk.
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:00 am
3b,
Where have you been!!?
gary says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:02 am
SL – I’m up for some type of GTG, but it would have to be a bit more in advance as this Saturday is a no-can-do.
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:09 am
gary: Took a break from the blog for over a year. Although I did lurk from time to time. Nobody missed me!!!
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:14 am
3b – thought you might have moved back to a 5th floor walk up off of Jerome Ave.
JJ says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:16 am
WOW A Kodak Moment today!!! Most Jap Camera Companies have shut down production.
With spring wedding/communion/graduation season upon us good time to be only one making digital cameras!
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:17 am
#81 Nah. I would go closer to Mc Lean or Katonah; buildings there have elevators.
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:19 am
#78 gary: Actually I took a break form the whole real estate thing. Although a quick look this morning tells me that asking prices in the areas I used to follow, have dropped significantly. But taxes are through the roof!!!
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:24 am
#82 – Most of Nikon’s and Canon’s non-pro lines are manufactured outside of Japan, so that portion will be ok. I’m not sure on Sony (nee Minolta) Olympus, Fuji, etc. in terms of the dispersion of their manufacturing facilities. This will certainly hit the likes of Nikon and Fuji pretty hard, less so Canon and Sony who have other, non-photographic business lines that can still generate cash.
Nikon was expected to release at least 1 and probably 2 new ‘pro’ level cameras this year. That is certainly on hold.
zieba says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:27 am
Time line showing rad spikes at the plant. Any German speakers?
http://www.grs.de/sites/default/files/Messungen_Japan_17.03_18Uhr.pdf
DL says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:27 am
At the rate the Japanese are selling dollars to repatriate yen, I doubt any rich Japanese are going to be bailing out foreign real estate markets.
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:31 am
re # 85 – I bet every steak house in NY is taking Wagyu or Kobe Beef off the menu.
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:32 am
re: #87 – DL – last two days on Bloomberg radio the pundits have been saying that has not been happening.
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:34 am
Basel II meh…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/18/us-usa-banks-stresstests-idUSTRE72H4SI20110318
A.West says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:40 am
gary (29),
People just are desperate to live in Milburn. The buyers get granite countertops! What I cannot understand is a big six-burner gas range vented only by a whimpy microwave. That’s not going to work in real life. They needed to put a real hood above those burners, but then a microwave would be taking up that precious granite countertop space.
DL says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:42 am
Ref 86: “Gemessene Dosisleistungen an ausgewählten Messpunkten
Fukushima Daiichi – Daten des Betreibers TEPCO” = Measured dosages from selected data collection points Fukushima Daiichi – Data from the operators TEPCO; “erneutes Venting” = renewed venting; “Explosion und Brand in Block 4 im Bereich des BE Beckens” = explosion and fire in Block 4 in the area of the reactor rod pool; “Weitere Explosion” = additional explosion; “Freisetzungen aus Block 2 und 3″ = release from block 2 and 3; “Messpunkt” = data collection point; “Neuer Messpunkt Hauptgebäude” = new data collection point in the main building; “Neuer Messpunkt
Westtor” = New data collection point at the west gate;
DL says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:45 am
Juice; I’ve read the reason the yen is soaring against the dollar is because of the repatriation effect. I’m no expert in currency markets but if that’s not the reason, then we really ought to be worried because it says more about the dollar then it does about the yen.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:51 am
#93 – FTAlphaville had a discussion on just this subject earlier.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:51 am
Ket,
I don’t know. Perhaps a boron slurry could fill the spaces between the intact fuel rods and cover the melted material at the bottom of the pressur vessel an then one could either encased the thing in a huge mass o concrete or rig up a cooling system external to the pressure vessel to deal with residual heat.
Ideally, I would think that dismantlement would be the best course but given all of the reactors involved, it may just be out of the quesztion for several years.
With an eye torwardx dismantling the reactors, I would go with theb boron slurry and notb foreclose the possibility of removing the fuel rfods later.
Shore Guy says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:52 am
Back to the boron mine.
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:58 am
re # 93 – yes and it is not happening, it’s market manipulation at it’s finest.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:03 am
Zieba 86
Enough german to read the chart, although if you dont need to know the exact events then you dont need to read german. Y-axise is in microSv/hr and the X-axis is time &date.
For comparison a chest X-ray is in the ball park of 3000 – 5000 microSv.
1 Sv = 1000 mSv (millisieverts) = 1,000,000 μSv (microsieverts) = 100 rem = 100,000 mrem (millirem)
Some examples of dose impacts when received in a 24hr period
* 0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None
* 0.25 – 1 Sv (250 – 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen damaged.
* 1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
* 3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.
* 6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
* Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:07 am
Zieba,
Anyone who has been consistently working in close proximity to the reactors appears to be seeing exposure equivalent to about 1 chest x-ray per hour. but could easily receive more depending on their activities. it is also way more complex then that because it also depends on the type of exposure and the route said material is absorbed. For any reasonable guess you would need to talk to a nuclear medicine specialist.
eyaculacion prematura says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:10 am
for the many above commentors. blogs and forums could be far better to read when you can keep your feedback little and to the stage
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:26 am
gary (50)-
In the intellectual realm, the 15th century kicks the modern day’s ass.
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:26 am
…even with the occasional autos da fe.
Debt Supernova says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:52 am
Somerset County, January 2011 (from the Sheriff’s website):
New sheriff sales scheduled: 22
Sheriff sales completed: 0
Sheriff sales postponed: 7
The backlog is now so deep, scrolling through all the houses on the list will give you a finger cramp.
Shadow inventory? Yeah…the shadow cast by a giant, wooly mammoth.
50-100 years for RE markets to normalize. The hidden losses and fraud will take generations to purge.
Al Mossberg says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Dollar getting hammered. Next stop 71. Bwahahaha!
chicagofinance says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Babs: read ‘em and weep…..
by Adam Winer
April 2011
1. Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies
The Meanest Fans in America
Over the years, Philadelphia fans have booed Santa Claus, their own star players, and most absurdly, the recipient of America’s very first hand transplant, whose crime was dribbling in a ceremonial first pitch—thrown with his freshly transplanted hand. Boooo! Admittedly, there are some things fans have cheered. Like Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury and a fan being tased on the outfield grass. Things reached their nadir last season, when Citizens Bank Park played host to arguably the most heinous incident in the history of sports: A drunken fan intentionally vomited on an 11-year-old girl. The truth is this: All told, Philadelphia stadiums house the most monstrous collection of humanity outside of the federal penal system. “Some of these people would boo the crack in the Liberty Bell,” baseball legend Pete Rose once said. More likely, these savages would have thrown the battery that cracked it.
Lone Ranger says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:08 pm
3b,
Welcome back. Where the hell have you been?
Al Mossberg says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:12 pm
So anyone want to wager when America starts its next war in Libya?
I am thinking a Sunday night showdown. Wee hours of the morning. The usual Tomahawks first followed by some B-2/B-1 and then the F-18s.
America F-ck Yeah!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI
safe as houses says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:23 pm
#105 Chifi
I’d be angry at the world too if I lived in the Philly area.
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:28 pm
#106 lone: I took a sabbaticial from real estate, the economy, and all the rest, for about a year; hence my new handle So whatwho cares?? There is absolutely nothing we can do about all of the madness that is going on..
Some schmuck with a toy gun holds up a gas station, and gets 10 years. The banker gangsters bought the entire system to its knees, and not one went to jail, so what who cares!!!!
Americans need to understand we are not that special place any more. We are no better or worse than alot of other countries, however we keep telling ourselves and the world that we are the best and special; we are not. I have made my peace with that.
Nicholas says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:32 pm
http://translate.google.com/
This should do you some good for simple phrases. It is improving all the time due to user communities. There are some problems with some languages since there are not a lot of contributors to correct errors but it looks like it did a pretty good job with the german phrases.
Explosion und Brand in Block 4 im Bereich des BE Beckens
– Explosion and fire in Block 4 in the area of the basin BE
Freisetzungen aus Block 2 und 3
– Releases from Block 2 and 3
Weitere Explosion Block 2
– Another explosion Block 2
Explosion Block 2 Beschädigung KoKa?
– Block 2 KoKa explosion damage?
erneutes Venting Block 2
– Venting again block 2
Messpunkt
– Measuring point
Messpunkt Haupttor
– Measuring Point main gate
Neuer Messpunkt Westtor
– New measuring point west gate
Neuer Messpunkt Hauptgebäude
– New measuring point the main building
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:40 pm
re: – #107 – USS Enterprise is still in the Red Sea.
http://web.stratfor.com/images/northamerica/map/031611Naval_Update_03_16_11_800.jpg
However the flagship of the French Navy Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is in the area , has 40 Dassault aircraft. If it does not bust a propeller it may be the first to attack.
Let the English, Italians and French deal with it, they are only a country of 4 million so what could go wrong?
Neanderthal Economist says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:53 pm
“Americans need to understand we are not that special place any more…we keep telling ourselves and the world that we are the best and special; we are not.”
3b, welcome back but I don’t like this type of gratuitous america bashing. its vague and I have no idea what you mean, specifically. I happen to love the country, warts and all, its been good to me and my family. Do you like china and switzerland better? What’s your beef, exactly?
Juice Box says:
March 18, 2011 at 12:55 pm
As I said DL not repatriating YEN yet.
Canada and its allies in the Group of Seven nations are taking a stand against the currency traders who pushed the yen to a record high this week, a destabilizing surge that risked hampering Japan’s efforts to recover from last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Acting on orders from their governments, central banks in Japan, Europe, the United States and Canada banded together Friday to attempt to alter the course of currency trading for the first time in a decade.
“This is a surprise,” said Mark Chandler, a fixed-income analyst at Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto. “The odds were that the G7 would wait for clearer signals. There is obvious concern there.”
G7 officials kept details of their plan to a minimum to gain the advantage of surprise on traders who have been bidding up the yen in anticipation of Japanese cashing in billions of dollars in overseas investments to pay for reconstruction.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/currencies/g7-takes-on-the-currency-speculators/article1947341/
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:05 pm
#112 I stand by what I have said. It has nothing to do with bashing or love.
chicagofinance says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:06 pm
For anyone interested:
The TRADER JOE’s in Shrewsbury is open….no liquor…
Neanderthal Economist says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Got to say that this is still the greatest country on earth overall, of course I haven’t lived in every country. But we’ve got a strong organized system of laws, flourishing financial and technology sector and we even have one of the strongest manufacturing bases too. Best of all there’s freedom of speech which is great to see people protesting taxes and anything else they disagree with. Also respect our shift toward alternative energy, which is happening in a massive way this very moment. I guess I just love this country dearly.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Shore, Juice
Pic of SPF at reactor 3
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/18/article-1367524-0B3B46E800000578-690_964x641.jpg
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Juice, Shore
This article has the first pic and a before pic of the SFP
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/Nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-Japanese-finally-admit-radiation-leak-kill-people.html
chicagofinance says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:34 pm
The end is nigh (Public Transportation Edition):
skip to minute 2:00 if needed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjUOUnbAJII&feature=player_embedded
Painhrtz says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Juice box don’t worry the French pilots are trained to make an immediate 180 degree turn for the shores of france upon launch, drop their bombs on ususpecting tuna in the Med and promptly waive a white flag once upon the shores of the bleu, blanc, and rougue.
Anyway the Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard, Dassault Rafale other than having great ship to ship weapons are crap even against Mig-21′s of the Libyan variety. They are terrible air superiority aircraft. So looks like the British and us will do the heavy lifting. Hell I don’t even think the French employ effective wild weasel tactics, which would significantly increase the retreat rate once a few of their cheese powered craft get knocked out of the sky.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Veto 116
organized system of laws, flourishing financial sector
That’s amusing!! And by flourishing I assume you mean successful at nuking the the worlds primary financial systems through debt leverage devices and creative accounting.
Neanderthal Economist says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Kettle according to you we defaulted on our treasuries and s&p 500 is trading at 2. Seriously its dilusion.
sas3 says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Stu/Gator,
You mentioned something about the curriculum in the public school not being challenging for your kid. Does it have any unintended consequences — like the kid becoming completely bored with school and any habits picked up then becoming more difficult to unlearn in the longer term?
Is there merit in preemptively dumbing down the kid? :)
S
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:42 pm
veto,
Our system of laws may be organized but it is enforced selectively.
Kettle1^2 says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Veto,
I dont recall claiming we have defaulted.
free crack adobe says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:45 pm
i like it Tear it total down, quick spring all over | New Jersey Real property Report at offering im your rss reader
Neanderthal Economist says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:53 pm
“I dont recall claiming we have defaulted.”
So you admit to thinking that the s&p is trading at 2?
So What /Who Cares!! (formerly 3b) says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:54 pm
#116 Flourishing financial and legal system??? Well If you choose to believe that, that is of course your right. To me it is a sham. As far as some of your other points, free elections, free to protest, its all just Christmas decorations IMO. Nothing changes, and it never will
We had the hope and change, and yes we can candidate, all just an illusion. Nothing changed. Banker/Gangsters are now his top advisors.
Yet we still portyray ourselves as the best, and insist the world should follow our version of democracy. I say we are no better or worse than many other places. These last few years have convinced me of that.
Al Mossberg says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:02 pm
3b,
Welcome back. Glad to see you have made peace with oblivion. Most here have. Might I suggest some gold and silver for those uncomfortable nights when doom beckons?
I agree that the financial system is a sham. Eventually they will be hung. Historically its either the House of Lombard = exile or “off with their heads” 1789 France.
Treason should be punished and in my opinion its best left to the disgruntled masses to inflict that punishment.
JJ says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Either way good news. Last time I was in bestbuy they were doing a blow out on Kodak Cameras. Since I owned the bonds I asked why are they going BK or something. Guy said no Kodak is clearing inventory they put a lot of money into R&D and have all new cameras coming out in a last ditch effort to bring the sales back. If Kodak can get a whole new 2011/2012 set of models out while the Jap cameras have three year old models on shelf big advantage.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:24 am
#82 – Most of Nikon’s and Canon’s non-pro lines are manufactured outside of Japan, so that portion will be ok. I’m not sure on Sony (nee Minolta) Olympus, Fuji, etc. in terms of the dispersion of their manufacturing facilities. This will certainly hit the likes of Nikon and Fuji pretty hard, less so Canon and Sony who have other, non-photographic business lines that can still generate cash.
Nikon was expected to release at least 1 and probably 2 new ‘pro’ level cameras this year. That is certainly on hold.
DL says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Ref 116: “Got to say that this is still the greatest country on earth overall, of course I haven’t lived in every country. But we’ve got a strong organized system of laws, flourishing financial and technology sector and we even have one of the strongest manufacturing bases too. Best of all there’s freedom of speech which is great to see people protesting taxes and anything else they disagree with. Also respect our shift toward alternative energy, which is happening in a massive way this very moment. I guess I just love this country dearly.”
Neander: What we have is the best people on the planet. In a pinch, there is no one I’d rather be with than Americans. We are more practical, more resourceful, more willing to help, have a better attitude, and better to be around than any other folk. As far as the country goes, our quality of life is crap. Our cities are third world. There are a dozen other countries and systems that are less corrupt, better managed, and that provide better services, infrastructure, and quality of life.
toshiro_mifune says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:20 pm
#130 – If Kodak can get a whole new 2011/2012 set of models out while the Jap cameras have three year old models on shelf big advantage.
The Kodak’s point-and-shoots are, almost universally, rebodied/rebadged versions of someone else’s camera… which will most likely have been made in China or Malaysia. Sorry.
Kodak does make the sensor for the M9 and H4D series. You could run down to Best Buy and pick one up!
SoccerDad (aka DeepThroat) says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:26 pm
(116) Have you thought about enlisting? We need a steady stream of true believers to fight our continuous wars.
JJ says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:28 pm
http://www.flextronics.com/
Kodak designs cameras and flextronics in China makes them. They outsourced the actual production of cameras to china.
Kodak invented cameras. Jap cameras are rebadged knock off Kodaks.
freedy says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:33 pm
country is run by the bankers period. they rotate in and out of the gov.jobs to keep control. take a look at what’s going on with the banks, some of the largest should have been in a BK court along with GM but got bailed.
veets (138)-
The military is a conduit for exploiting the poor who cannot obtain jobs or education and for guaranteeing a steady stream of younger people who are willing to get killed.
Too bad that waging endless war is not profitable for society in general. If it were, we’d be the wealthiest people in history.
When AQ brainwashes somebody to the point where he’s willing to kill himself, we call it fanaticism.
When the Marines brainwash somebody to virtually the same point, we call it “the few and the proud”.
I do know the difference…but the difference is not as great as many of us would care to believe.
144 Maybe so if you choose to reduce it to that. Lower middle class obviously have more need/incentive to utilize what the military offers, they probably make better soldiers too. But really, are our civilian jobs anymore glamorous?
50 nuclear power plant workers who stayed behind have the most guts of anyone I have seen in a long time.
#138 Keeping what regions stable?? Iraq? Afghanistan?? Natural resources for our people? To each his own I guess. You still want to believe I guess, which is of course your right.
146 debt, how can you draw such sickening parrallels between a us marine and aq? They’re fighting to the death for their right to impose martial religion and stone their own wives. The similarities between them and us are not even close.
Mason comes back to beat nova. Wife is gonna be pissed.
“Mason comes back to beat nova”
Made my day!
re # 188 – Kettle back of the napkin calculations say those tears may be enough. He is going to have to go on a PR Campaign of the likes that have never been seen. Only thing that comes close is the Enron commercials.
from your article
Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards. Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards.
Those are very high numbers death in a few months if you adsorb that kind of radiation. A very painful death.
Lone Ranger,
Mason – Nova — unbelievable game! I’m getting paid to stay home and watch four games in HD all day long. What a country!!
St. Peter’s – Purdue – 7:20 tonight – TNT
I bet we are enjoying one of the highest standards of living in this country’s history, even though its arguably still a recession. The farmers and factory owners who built this country worked 7 days with no vacations, unions or laws to protect them, and lived in homes that equated to 40 sq ft per person. Probably killed their own food too.. 2 or 3 generations later we are worlds only superpower but the ungrateful slobs forgot how to work, don’t know sacrifice, have committed to nothing, constantly feel sorry for themselves, complain about their own military and are miserable as all hell in 4,000 sq ft mcmansion with $3 gas and air condition desk jobs.
Juice
if those exposure levels are correct sepuku would be a mire pleasant way to go
Kettle brave firefighters from Toyko exposing themselves to 4,000 millisieverts an hour overnight at the plant to shoot water into Reactor #3.
Translation from a Japanese Bulletin Board.
Drainage for the Tokyo Fire Department No. 3
Tokyo Fire Department units were dispatched to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, using a water cannon that can fire from a special high position, with continuous discharge over 20 minutes at half past midnight for Unit 3.
。 The Tokyo Fire Department it plans to 19 noon, we decided to perform again for the Unit 3 discharge.
Tokyo Fire Department units were dispatched to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station,
。 From half past midnight, you can discharge from a height of 22 meters above ground “water cannon vehicles refractive tower” for flood control for storing the spent fuel pool at Unit 3 in a fire.
Tokyo Fire Department, received a request from the government’s headquarters, 18, 139 members sent a fire truck and 30 cars featured special Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continues to be a serious condition.
、 Of these, 18 pm, 13 people entered to the site members and five fire engines, hoses installed by hand about 300 meters,
。 To be able to discharge continuously in the discharge hose to the car being sent away to sea began at half past midnight from the discharge.
The discharge was carried out continuously for 20 minutes, from pulling the power line construction to make this after Tokyo Electric Power Co., Tokyo Fire Department completed a 50-minute once the water cannon at midnight.
Tokyo Fire Department, leaving the hose to draw water for the site and discharge to be performed again for the No. 3 prospect at noon on the 19th.
I picked George Mason over Nova. Sweet!
Veto
Quantity of possessions and boy fat % are not a reliable measure of happiness.
Measurement of happiness in itself is a luxury.
Measurements of happiness = I have expensive taste.
Yes. Don’t we all.
veets (147)-
Seems to me our military worked a lot better- and politicians were less eager to go to war- when we conscripted soldiers into service.
When we drafted soldiers into WWII, we also had to make good to the ones who came home with loans and the GI Bill.
Since our “all-volunteer” experiment began, we bring home junkies and PTSD zombies, give them enough money to buy 3 hrs/semester at community college and expose them to ridicule and scorn.
#64 No to mention the gang violence in the military. I was shocked to find out it exists, but apparently it does. I would have thought the military would be able to wipe that out.
Ok! Everyone. – I don’t mind hosting again if we can put a date together and a rough estimate of how many.
sl
Gator, 74
I’m game! shoot me an email of dates/times that work for you… okay?
sl
Sl,
There is a 747 full of Tokyo residents that is thrilled to hear that.
Shore. SL
don’t forget to rad scan at the door
Shore,
“The Agency is far stronger than 20 yard ago.”
Exactly. Daddy Bush built it. Unfortunately he is too old to be hung for treason but his son is not. Perhaps that is the reason the Bush criminal cartel owns 100,000 acres in Paraguay.
Debt,
“The military is a conduit for exploiting the poor who cannot obtain jobs or education and for guaranteeing a steady stream of younger people who are willing to get killed.”
I agree. It is foolish to let you well raised kids to be a pawn in the globalist game. My kid will learn to shoot but he will never serve in the military under this regime or any other.
150,
Neandrathal,
Who financed Al Qaeda? Who financed Hitler? Who financed Saddam Hussein? Who financed the Shah of Iran? Who financed Mubarak?
A.West says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:40 am
gary (29),
People just are desperate to live in Milburn. The buyers get granite countertops! What I cannot understand is a big six-burner gas range vented only by a whimpy microwave. That’s not going to work in real life. They needed to put a real hood above those burners, but then a microwave would be taking up that precious granite countertop space.
You’re probably right about microwave being to0 wimpy. Formula for determining proper ventilation is to add up total number of BTU’s then divide by 100. E.g: 6 burners @15,000 BTU each = 90,000 divide by 100= 900. So you would need blower that can vent at about 900 CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute). Microwaves usually vent in the 350 CFM range or so. Of course, in this example that means running all 6 burners at full blast – something most are unlikely to do so you can stay below the maximum range somewhat but not by so many deviations. Another thing, vents that are 600 cfm or higher can start getting pretty noisy- so better option in that case is to go with roof mount type blower-motor.
172 Al, wow. Those are some interesting historical facts there. do you do all of your research on youtube, or just most of it?
Well some Air Force special ops guys managed to get to Matsushima AB and Sendai Airport yesterday. The combat controllers followed and got the control towers operational. A rough landing area was cleared and a C-130 full of equipment and supplies landed. Those are the kind of airmen I knew and admired. I don’t know anything about the other folks you’re talking about.
Sepp & A. West –
you are making the assumption that the 6 burner is actually being used. It’s really a status symbol, I mean if you have a european car, you can have a mere stove.
Now when I see a true commercial hood with a heavily used Vulcan under it, I know it’s for go, not show.
can = can’t
“I bet we are enjoying one of the highest standards of living in this country’s history, even though its arguably still a recession.”
[156],
That’s a farce, worth a laugh though. Real incomes are lower than they were in 2000, 10m are in some form of foreclosure, 45M are receiving food stamps and close to 20% are unemployed/underemployed.
Let’s see; the housing market is recovering, jobs are flourshing, IB’s have cleared hundreds of trillions of derivatives and GS never experiences a loss. I get it; it’s never been better.
We are borrowing/printing .44 for every dollar we spend. High standard of living or zombification?
I would joint the Coast Guard. I think that they provide a great service and you get to serve your country close to the water.
174.
Neandrathal,
F_ck off you neocon piece of sh_t. Only thing worse than the democrats are pieces of sh_t like yourself.
Lone, 2000 was a bigger wealth bubble than the roaring 20s. Its done but still lingering in various forms. I don’t consider at 2000 and 2006 as two different bubbles, they’re one in the same to me.
Right. Nice talking to you as well.
Did someone call Alejandro? Ole!
“I don’t consider at 2000 and 2006 as two different bubbles, they’re one in the same to me.”
Strawberry pickers earning 15K did not receive 700K mortgages in 2000. At the same time, you could not buy dot coms with zero margin in 2000. However, they are similar in one aspect; both fed induced bubbles that resulted in busts. Now, the fed is at it again, the biggest bubble of all time; paper. Who’s the common denominator?
the Ranger[184]
The problem is, we as a society deserved the quality of life we had in the 70s, less so in the 80s, yet less in the 90s and not at all in the aughts. One sees this from 40,000 ft – but when he gets down to earth he refuses to understand that the wealth of the society actually drops when the mall replaces the machine-building factory, and when the buildings that used to house corporate R&D are either retrofit for the office space, or razed to build McMansions. Unfortunately, now we are learning the hard way that society needs to produce something – stuff, software, technologies, but something other than financial products and marketing plans – to do better in a long term. Bubbles of the 90s and 00s were screening away the reality from the people…
Top manufacturing output by country in billions of dollars
Country 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007
USA 1,041 1,289 1,543 1,663 1,700 1,831
China 143 299 484 734 891 1,106
Japan 804 1,209 1.034 954 934 926
Germany 438 517 392 566 595 670
Russian Federation 211 104 73 222 281 362
Italy 240 226 206 289 299 345
United Kingdom 207 219 228 269 303 342
France 224 259 190 249 248 296
Korea 65 129 134 200 220 241
Canada 92 100 129 177 195 218
Spain 101 103 98 164 176 208
Brazil 120 125 96 137 170 206
cobbler (185)-
We do produce things in Amerika. Debt, inflation and fraudulent financial engineering.
Wanna talk recovery? We’ve taken close to two generations of our youth, and instead of educating them to enter a variety of professions, we’ve turned a disproportionate number into very sophisticated bank robbers.
I could find someone to create a bogus CDO or sell me a CDS in ten minutes.
I still can’t find a plumber who will show up at my house on time.
Debt , I know your far from me but if it is a decent size job I have good guys.
its astonishing just how many abandoned factories on contaminated sites exist in NJ alone this very day but i guess the manufacturing of everyday products with lead, industrial chemicals, and heavy metals does not create much wealth in a global economy and environmentally its a huge problem.
that reminds me to post this…
Forget Harvard and a 4-Year Degree, You Can Make More as a Plumber in the Long Run, Says Prof. Kotlikoff
Tech Ticker
Posted Mar 18, 2011
A new study from Princeton University shows that expensive college degrees are not necessarily worth the lofty price tags in the long run when you take into account one’s natural ability.
Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University agrees that an expensive education just isn’t worth it — much to his chagrin of course because tuition and fees at Boston University totalled $39,314 for 2010-11.
With unemployment still about 9 percent, on average, for college graduates under the age of 25, and total student-loan debt now topping that of credit card debt in this country, he tells Aaron in the accompanying clip, “If you think of education as solely a monetary investment, if we are not thinking about all the other benefits from education like learning things, and getting to hang out with me, and also just becoming a more cultured person, then we have to look at this very carefully.”
So, what does college tuition and room and board cost today?
Well, tuition is the most expensive it has have ever been, rising roughly 5.6 percent per year beyond the rate of inflation, reports the College Board.
In-state tuition and fees at a public four-year university were on average $7,605 for the 2010-11 term. When you tack on room and board, the total average cost jumps to $16,140.
Tuition and fees at a private four-year college were on average $27,293 for the same term. And, the total average cost with room and board amounted to $36,993.
That’s a lot of dough — especially when you multiply it by four years. It’s for that same reason James Altucher, founder of Formula Capital, made his case to Tech Ticker last year that kids should forget the degree altogether. (See: Rethinking College as Student-Loan Burdens Rise)
Kotlikoff has been doing a bit of his own research on the matter as president of Economic Security Planning Inc. He’s developed software that according to the website can “tell you if a job change, a housing move, a retirement account contribution, and a host of other financial decisions will raise or lower your living standard.”
Kotlikoff’s research aligns with Altucher’s credo. He has found that more often than not, people can have a better lifetime standard of living by choosing NOT to get an advanced degree. And, he says that people can be better off financially by not obtaining an undergraduate degree at all.
Professor Kotlikoff makes his case by comparing the livelihoods of plumbers and doctors. Yes, doctors have a bigger salary. But, doctors have to endure nearly a decade of expensive education before making any real salary, after which the doctor is hit by a very high progressive tax rate. Because of all the costs the doctor incurs, the taxes and the lost wages, he says, “plumbers make more, and have almost the same spending power over their lifetime as general practitioners.”
The high cost of tuition – and in turn high burden of student debt – is a key part to Kotlikoff’s findings.
“[This] is a debt a kid cannot discharge through bankruptcy,” he explains. “We have a lot of kids who are borrowing a lot of money that they can’t discharge through bankruptcy who are ending up basically in debtors prison for the rest of their life because they potentially made the wrong choice when it came to education.”
If parents are paying, Kotlikoff says, all bets are off. But, for those considering college, who have to pay for all the costs alone, his advice is to think not once, not twice, but three times over about the financial burden of future student-loan debt.
At least the middle east is calming down ;)
SANAA, Yemen – A massive demonstration against Yemen’s government turned into a killing field Friday as snipers methodically fired down on protesters from rooftops and police made a wall of fire with tires and gasoline, blocking a key escape route.
At least 46 people died, including some children, in an attack that marked a new level of brutality in President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s crackdown on dissent. Medical officials and witnesses said hundreds were wounded.
Buffett got paid $2B in interest plus stock options on $ 5 billion loan and the tax payers got $1B on a $10 billion loan through TARP.What does this all mean? We just gave GS over $1B dollars and the rich are asking the middleclass to sacrifice,while the middleclass are loosing their jobs.
Yo’me “What does this all mean?” Oblivion awaits.
Ket Not to worry it is all good. Translation, oblivion awaits.
Mike
Embrace the chaos! The key is not to worry about it, just sit back and enjoy the show. A few fire arms don’t hurt either.
Juice shore
good news for a change! They are reporting that they got the pumps on reactor 5 running again
and it’s BS when they say they don’t know the condition of each of those reactors. Spectroscopy and thermal imaging will tell you the conditions to high degree of accuracy
Does mikeintime = mikeinwaiting?
Unless there is a MASSIVE air assault on Gadaffi in the next couple of hours then our empty suit in chief in chief Libya
http://edititon.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/19/libya.civil.war/
Interesting thing about the chart at 186 is that 99% of cheap products around our houses are made in china, yet they are not #1. In a down economy people need less junk and more necessities which require quality production so i think the fact that they specialize in toys and chozckies is a negative for them.
Also interesting to me that they dont even make a decent car.
I guess with time they’re getting more sophisticated.
But the again so are we.
Ket,
When they say they don’t know the condition What hey mean is hat they don’t know that they want to reveal the condition.
Re: 198 – the Charles De Gaulle still in port, seems the French cannot find their way across the Med.
http://www.articlesbase.com/quit-smoking-articles/try-electric-cigarette-and-save-your-health-2761545.html Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time :-)
“cobbler says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:56 pm
the Ranger[184]
The problem is, we as a society deserved the quality of life we had in the 70s, less so in the 80s, yet less in the 90s and not at all in the aughts.”
“Quality of Life” becomes more distorted with the passing of each year. I cannot comprehend how people don’t get the fact that all their debt is a ball and chain around their ankle and for what, to impress or keep up with the Jones? Forget the Jones, their marriage sucks, their kids are screwed up entitled punks and they are stressed out at the end of each month trying to play a shell game with their cash because they can’t cover their bills. A friend who is a shrink at a high end school district sees the impact of this crap everyday on kids who get their little minds cooked in this environment. McMansion + Expensive Auto Lease + big credit card debt = miserable life.
toast[203]
Probably, I should have said monetary value of stuff we own rather than quality of life.
Toast,
Are you NJCoast? If so can you send email via grim? I have a question for you…. :)
(Nothing bad, just a request of sorts.)
sl
Beautiful, poignant article about Camden:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110319/ap_on_re_us/us_a_prayer_for_camden
Still, the place should be bulldozed.
SL – I am not coast
ok! thanks for clarifying that – -i can’t keep track of who is who anymore.
what handle is BCBob/Wantan using if anyone knows?
sl
Grim,
Can you email forward to NJCoast for me?
Thanks- I need to ask a question.
sl
Shore
which leads to the question, has a criticsilty event already pccureted given that they actually publicaly warned of one
Sl
bc bob = lone ranger
Officials have not yet come to grips with the fact that, especially with respectto nuclear accidents, one had to be upfront. Trying to manage events by dribbling out information just puts governments behind the eightball.
Ket Does mikeintime = mikeinwaiting? Yes another handle, not used here oops.
Ket 211 lone ranger is BC? and the artist formally known as 3b is who?
Christ people stop switching!
Mike
So What /Who Cares = the artist formerly known as 3b
New handle any feedback.?
ket,
Thanks! I can usually discern the change by the grammar/syntax/rhetoric. It’s just that I’m so f*cking busy lately that my time here is erratic, at best. Try to catch up daily but – with this much stress, I find I can’t sacrifice sleep as much.
Thanks!
sl (stillstill_looking – for real…. who the f*ck would have forecasted that??)
Shore 212
officials/ goverment have intentionally prevented the public from having the information they need to make educated decisions about their own well being. Anyone with a technical knowledge of nuclear medicine or nuclear physics is probably long gone from Tokyo. The Japanese goverment is sacrificing the individual well being simply to maintain face.
I am not saying that Tokyo is or will become uninhabitable, but a simple logical risk assessment by someone with a technical knowledge of the situation would probably error on the side of safety and leave. It was possible to evacuate Tokyo in an ordely fashion before things progressed this far if the government had asked for help.
Now the US government is playing the same game. They are making it next to impossible for individuals to make educated assessments due to information blackout. The ultimate westcoast impact will probably be low to minimal, but that should be for the individual to determine by the government providing the information need.
Yes, I am aware I am smoking crack if I actually think that will ever happen.
Kettle,
At any reasonably expected radioiodine levels on US West Coast many, many more people will be hurt if they thoughtlessly start popping KI pills, than by the radiation. During the whole of 1948-1963 (before the atmospheric test ban) the atmospheric levels of radionuclides were 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than before or after; so far, there is no statistical difference in the predominance of cancer of any kind in boomers v. older or younger generations.
Moon at perigee tonight.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – There’s a full moon Saturday, but it won’t be just any old full moon. It’ll be bigger and brighter. It will appear larger as it makes its closest approach to Earth in 18 years.
Scientists estimate the “supermoon” rising in the east at sunset will appear 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter at its peak.
Full moons vary in size because of the oval shape of its orbit, with one end closer to Earth. On Saturday, the moon will be 221,565 miles away – the closest to Earth since March 1993.
Breaking News:
French aircraft have destroyed their first target in Libya: military spokesman
When you’re like me, stir frying sichuan dishes with chili sauce, you learn that there’s never too much CFM in a hood. A lot of the people with money to buy in top school towns are Chinese these days, and if they’re like us, a gas range and a strong venting system is highly desired. The noise isn’t such a big deal, because for most of the stir-frys, the burner is going to be maximum hot, but only for a few minutes per dish.
In our recently bought house we installed a Sakura 767, not that expensive or “prestigious”, but was designed for the job at up to 680 cfm at max power and good grease handling/easy cleanout. Not super quiet, but tolerable in short bursts, and has a lower speed quieter mode for slower-longer cooking.
The end is nigh (Wines and Spirits Edition):
FOOD & DRINK
MARCH 19, 2011
White Is the New Brown
Don’t call it backwoods booze.
White whiskey has gone artisanal.
It goes by many names. White lightning. Moonshine. Hooch.
Call the clear spirit what you will, it’s simply whiskey that goes through little to no barrel aging. Yes, it may conjure images of mountain men concocting illegal booze using junkyard auto parts, but many artisanal distilleries have recently elevated the backwoods spirit to something worth sipping as you would a fine brandy.
“Our white whiskey has a very deliberate approach,” says Brian Ellison of Death’s Door Distillery. “We utilize a yeast that is better suited for wine. The result plays up a unique note of amyl alcohol found in good grappas, pisco and rhum agricole.”
It’s true: There’s a distinctive farm-like pureness to these whiskies that puts them closer to an earthy genever (traditional Dutch gin) or cachaça (a rum-like spirit from Brazil) than a bourbon. While traditional whiskey drinkers may still be snobs about the maturity of their Scotch, taste any of our favorites here and we think you’ll agree: Age is just a number.
Death’s Door White Whisky
Produced in Wisconsin with a mash bill of red winter wheat and organic malted barley. It will surprise you with its cinnamon and dark cherry notes. 40% ABV, $40
Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine
Don’t let the fact that it says “moonshine” scare you. This mostly corn-based whiskey packs a punch but has a refined, earthy quality. 50% ABV, $35
High West High Country Single Malt
A smooth sipper with a surprisingly delicate sweetness—the mash bill has a touch of chocolate malt. Brewed in Utah. 4 0% ABV, $33
Glen Thunder Corn Whiskey
Made by New York’s Finger Lakes Distilling. It’s like freshly husked corn on the first day of the summer—bottled. 40% ABV, 375 ml, $12
House Spirits White Dog Whiskey
Although this malted barley whiskey is from Portland, Ore., it has a funky, tropical taste like that of a rhum agricole. 50% ABV, $30
Cobbler 218
that’s my point. When you can’t trust the government to provide real info people tend to overreact or take less inappropiate action.
I think the radiation exposure to the west coast Will probablybe minimal. So release the data of the US radiation detection network publically so you don’t have all the fear mongering
WSJ Editorial
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
MARCH 19, 2011
Elizabeth Warren’s Hit Squad Smearing journalists who disagree with them
Liberal conspiracy theories make life worth living, so we’ve been enjoying the latest Web sensation courtesy of the Huffington Post and Elizabeth Warren’s gang at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
These columns haven’t joined the rest of the press in treating Ms. Warren’s policy goals as gospel, and our criticism seems to have struck a nerve. Shortly after our latest editorial on the new bureau, Ms. Warren’s minions collaborated with the Huffington Post on an ad hominem smear of our colleague and Journal editorial board member Mary Kissel. The scandalous news? Before she turned to a career in journalism, Ms. Kissel worked from 1999 to 2002 at . . . Goldman Sachs.
How did the Huffington Post’s intrepid Zach Carter pull off this scoop? Well, perhaps he read Ms. Kissel’s bio on our website, OpinionJournal.com. For years we’ve posted the secret there in plain sight.
Our policy is not to disclose who writes specific editorials because they genuinely are the voice of the editorial board and a collaborative product. We do demand that our writers know something about the subjects they write about, so in our view having worked in finance is a useful credential for writing about finance. Financial knowledge is apparently not a requirement at the Huffington Post. As for the Goldman-is-behind-it-all view of modern life, we’d note only that Mr. Carter and his sources in the Obama Administration have now reached spiritual communion with Glenn Beck.
Mr. Carter quotes “a source close to Warren” as spreading the smear about us and our editorial writer, albeit without providing a name. For the record, while reporting our editorial we spoke with “senior spokesperson” Jen Howard, who handed us off to senior adviser Dan Geldon, who declined to speak on the record but whose colorful animadversions we would not print in a family newspaper in any case.
Perhaps Ms. Warren—or some adult in the Obama Administration—should ask who on her staff thinks it’s cute to smear journalists on the taxpayer’s dime.
Also Op-Ed excerpt fromHolman Jenkins….
Politics thus being the mother’s milk of the nuclear business, GE’s Institute of Ecomagination (aka our Washington lobbying shop) highlights a disturbing new correlation: Whenever President Obama endorses an energy option, disaster promptly ensues. His ringing support of expanded offshore drilling came just weeks before the BP oil spill. The Japanese reactor mess followed not long after he lauded nuclear energy as a weapon to fight global warming.
On the site Politico.com, George Mason University political scientist Jeremy Mayer recently opined: “I don’t think Obama’s cursed on energy policy, but this is a string of bad luck.”
We disagree. Though on the advice of PR we’ve stopped referring to it as the “Obama Black Swan Effect,” this powerful yet mysterious indicator is too important to ignore. Accordingly, this office recommends a new corporate strategy: Whatever Mr. Obama says, GE should do the opposite, starting with investing in coal-burning power-plants and health care reprivatization.
An engineering assessment of Fukushima:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/51115146/UCSB-Libya
chifi [224]
Well, WSJ should by definition be a voice of the Wall Street… But seriously, how long the real people contributing 10, 12, or 15% of their pay to 401K, and depriving themselves of the use of this money with the hope for it to sustain their twilight years, will tolerate it instead instantaneously converting into the traders’ bonuses and hedge fund managers’ untold billions? Actually, WSJ’s dislike of Liz Warren is a joke compared with the hatred reserved for Theresa Ghilarducci – taking the trough away (by ending 401K as we know them) is much more scary for the pigs than simply regulating the feeding hours.
Property tax woes forces small town into proposed merger
Burden of property taxes forces Loch Arbour to look into uniting with neighbor
LOCH ARBOUR — Towns rarely merge in New Jersey, where the last municipal union came in 1997 when Hardwick Township took in the six people still standing in Pahaquarry Township in Warren County, out by the Delaware Water Gap.
That brought the number of municipalities down by one to 566, where it stands today. Before that, the last merger took place in 1952, creating Vineland city.
But in this tiny seashore village of 194 residents (a total some argue is an undercount in the 2010 census), an April 6 vote could lead to Loch Arbour asking neighboring Allenhurst’s 496 residents if they will have them.
If the merger goes through, it will be a rarity in a state where the emphasis has been on getting towns to cut costs, not by fully merging.
Until about two years ago, Loch Arbour seemed to be holding its own after seceding from Ocean Township in 1958 because the township planners wanted to allow condominiums to go up on the beachfront.
The village persisted in finding ways to overcome high educational tax bills for a relatively small number of children that continued to attend Ocean Township schools. When it seemed increasingly burdensome in 1997, residents approved a nonbinding referendum to pursue a merger with a bordering town.
But Ocean and Loch Arbour officials made a deal instead that gave Loch Arbour tax relief, which lasted until 2008 when the Legislature said Loch Arbour had to go back to paying school taxes based on the value of its often upscale homes, rather than the cost per pupil.
The village has been in a tax crisis ever since. Residents have drawn both sympathy and criticism for complaining, but the reality is many residents did not have the money to pay a suddenly higher school tax bill. Taxes on a home assessed at $1,474,000, about the village’s average, increased from $9,172 in 2008 to $20,763 in 2010.
http://www.app.com/article/20110317/NJNEWS/103170322/0/NJNEWS/Property-tax-woes-forces-small-town-into-proposed-merger?odyssey=mod|lateststories
Fukushima:
A little duct tape to the rescue
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE72H21920110318?ca=rdt
It is about time with respectto Loch Arbour
Non,
After living with Android a few monthals it strikes me that android phones are intended for kids who text and not for serious people who do serious work.
shore, the kids present a much bigger market. Plus, they lose, drown, drop and step on their smartphones requiring the replacements.
And, clearly it would be a tragedy of episode proportions for Sea Girt and Spring Lake to merge or for Belmar and Lake Como to merge. Heaven forbid Brick and TR combine, the earth might stand still or for TR and the other towns that make up the school district. We could reducethe number of municipalities by two thirds without breakinga sweat.
Epic. Friggen android.
Jane, you ignorant…
Let me get this straight, radiation is flowing from multiple US-designed nuclear reactors, we are about to engage in hostilities in Libya and our empty Suit in Chief is shufflin of to Brazil to talk about trade? This could not wait a couple weeks?
Have the French found anyone to surrender to yet or are they waiting for orders to send troops in to surrender?
I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of folks are spending the weekend wondering if they should be in the markets right now. Unless we hear by Monday that Wacky Qaddafi was found dead in his tent, I am betting on a big down week next week.
I am getting to be like Clot and embracing the oblivion.
Shore, the attack on Libya will be short and sweet (no ground troops, just strategic air strikes via coordinated efforts with other nations). Sort of a nice development — yesterday evening a dem congresswoman from WI was ambivalent about this (“yeah, right thing to do, but we have two wars, blah…”)
I feel optimistic that the Japan nuke plant issues will be solved soon.
The focus on trade issues is pretty much reasonable. If something goes wrong, the pres can return to DC right away.
Don’t you think that the trade trip is probably much more important than an emergency congress session to “defund NPR” — before heading off for the weekend?
Nom, Clot seems to have become a pacifist — lamenting the lack of draft that would have resulted in fewer wars. And, mossberg has switched to conspiracy theories on W. May be there is an impact of radiation from Japan?
If irradiated food is good than radioactive food must be even better, right?
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/19/japan.radioactive.food/
Sastry,
I don’t believe that you really believen that congress doing what congress does and the CiNC leaving the country for an optional visit at a time we are just starting to commit warfighters to action (and don’t even try to tell me that mariners firing cruise missiles or airmen flying AWACS does not count as they are not boots on the ground, as each of them is a target of retaliation). Presidents frequently delay overseas trips when events dictate it. This is a situation where the appearance of disengagement is just wrong, wrong, WRONG.
When will the cruise missile camera footage be on youtube?
So, we are now at war with another arab nation, apparently over the concern of Gaffady being mean to his people (but Iran, NK and Syrian leadership can relax?).
Let me get this straight. Obama led US to war without congressional authorization with talk that campaign will be days, not months, guess we will will treated as liberators by Al-Qaida fighters in Benghazi too? Or is UN approval now part of “living constitution” ie replacement for that pesky Congress?
Looks like Senator Obama and Senator Biden, who shore-fanatically stated and voted few years ago that any action on war requires congressional authorization are now distant memory (or busy with March Madness?). Somehow I don’t expect this to be featured in State Media.
I’m sure our noted expert on constitutional law, Keith “Shore Guy” O can weigh in and explain why all this makes sense. Just like when Shore went ballistic and accused prev admin being threat to world when some mid-level DOJ analyst wrote memo stating that CINC has war-time powers to do pretty much anything. [Naturally, Dem presidents can wipe off civilian cities here and there, with or without nukes, and order warrantless executions of US citizens, but god forbid if GOP CINC or his analyst would suggest such. This is the kind of cra*p that goes unchallenged in MSNBC.
#241 Shore Guy,
Maybe the Japanese will actually start buying US rice now.
I hope this accident doesn’t have too big of an impact on their farmland. i don’t like to see the loss of farmland, and from a purely selfish point of view I like buying Japanese snacks, miso, and other items every time I go to the local Asian grocer, as well as going to the huge Japanese supermarket in Edgewater a few times a year to eat at the food court and load up on some Japanese groceries.
Jamil,
Don’t you see the difference between this and what Iraq (other than who’s the CIC)?
“This is an international military operation urged by the Libyan and people and other Arab nations,” Gortney said.
U.S. President Barack Obama said military action in Libya is not an outcome the United States had sought. “The use of force is not our first choice, and it is not a choice I make lightly,” he said in an audio message from Brazil. “But we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy and his forces step up their assault.”
He also said the United States will not deploy any U.S. troops on the ground on Libya. Obama emphasized that the United States was acting as part of a broad coalition of U.S. allies to enforce the U.N. Security Council resolution, and not unilaterally.
“The writ of the international community must be enforced,” he said. “We are answering the calls of a threatened people and we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world.”
Shore, you are right… “audio message from Brazil sounds a bit awkward”. Unless the administration wants to play this up as a “not a big deal”…
sastry, war was last option for Iraq war, too. Clinton has carried on low-scale years for years and US had 150,000 troops stationed next to Iraq to enforce no-fly zone. Saddam broke more UN resolutions and agreement ending the prev war than Gaddafy has been in violation of any UN resolution. International community and iraqis did ask the war to depose Saddam. UN does not represent “community” anymore than Gaddary “represent” Libyan people.
Gaddafy killed maybe 10,000 in the last weeks. Saddam killed millions and was also open enemy of the US. There is no way lefties can twist this narrative (not that they won’t try).
Sastry,
I am all for U.Spresidents traveling overseas. Why it took two years to get to Brzil astounds me. That said, tis is the wrong day to be traveling. Recall that the Empty Suit in Chief has inthe past postponed trips to Indonesia.
There is little a president can do in DC that cannot be done on the plane, but, the visuals are all wrong. Kind of like filling out an NCAA bracket.
Gadhafi is a festering boil on the Maghreb. He was lucky to survive Reagan’s attacks, even luckier to remain in power. With any luck, we will shatter Libya’s C3I system, starting with his body in a plain white linen sheet. Id he is lucky, he will get an opportunity to live out his days in riyadh, at least until the House of Saud crumbles into the desert sand.
id=if
http://www.suntimes.com/4405622-417/obama-orders-u.s.-tomahawk-missile-attack-on-libya
It will be interesting to see what is on the target list. I am assuming antiaircraft missiles and radars. If so, I suspect that tonight brings the real attack via B2s, B52s, etc. to degrade his armored/mechanized assets, ammunition storage, and fuel storage.
It will also be interesting to hear the BDA tomorrow afternoon.
yo (193)-
And, it will continue until some of us man up and decide to bust a cap on some of these crooks.
sastry (240)-
You are indeed clueless.
For the first time since jamil left a comment at NJRER, I find I agree with him.
The constitution is toilet paper for those in power and their supporters. So it was, so it is, so will it ever be. A nation of men, not law. This never turns out well.
oil leak in the gulf again?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kistner/oil-spill-reported-near-d_b_838019.html
220.
Yome,
Dam I was 24 hours early. I was convinved it would be a Sunday night action. A Tomahawk costs 1.2 million a piece. QE3. Book it.
240.
Sas3,
No doubt the Bush criminal family is the worst of the worst.
Hang the f_ckin traitors. All of them.
juice 256
Damn, I know i said embrace the chaos, but this is getting a little excessive. Is the entire west coat scheduled be engulfed by a mega-wildfire this summer too? Perhaps the New Madrid fault goes and we see middle America get wiped out? Since our finances are well in order and nothing interesting is going on right now, we should go start a war somewhere. Oh, we already did that?
This is starting to feel more like a game of simcity when you get board and start forcing disasters just to watch the population scatter and the city burn.
Excellent post, well written.
By 1930 the Claridge the citys last large hotel before the casinos opened its doors. The Million Dollar Pier opened in 1906 and is now opposite Caesars Casino and houses . Of all the pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk only the Claridge the Dennis now part of the now a large condo complex no longer owned by the Ritz-Carlton company known as the Ritz AC and the Haddon Hall now survive to this day.