9/22/2013

Thoughts On A Sunday

This was another half-and-half weekend here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire – warm and partly sunny on Saturday; warmish, wet, and mostly cloudy on Sunday. It started pouring around 4AM Sunday which necessitated closing two of the windows in my bedroom.

It being the second of two NASCAR weekends at New Hampshire Motor Speedway trhis weekend, the weather was a big worry. The Weather GuysTM were saying all the raind and most of the cloudiness would be gone by noon, giving two hours to dry the track before the green flag.

We'll see.

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Bird Dog over at Maggie's Farm gives a brief tutorial on crickets and their welcomed chirping on summer/early fall evenings. The cricket found here in New England, the Black Field Cricket, can generally be heard from the beginning of August until the first hard frost.

I have to admit to a bit of melancholy when I can no longer hear them when I have my bedroom window open. What's almost worse is hearing a lone cricket slowly chirping away in vain after all of its kindred have died off. It can be one of the loneliest sounds you'll hear.

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The re-shoring of business from overseas back to the US continues, with yet another industry making a comeback, in this case textiles. The only problem is that the number of jobs that went overseas won't be the same number coming back as automation has reduced the number of mill workers needed, in some cases 90% less. Mills which in the past employed 2000 workers now have only 140 workers producing the same amount of fabric.

This trend is continuing in a number of areas, particularly in industries that have become more time and cost sensitive. When lead times were not an issue, going overseas made sense. But these days delays of weeks and months is not acceptable as demand can change rapidly. Bringing some of the needed manufacturing back to the US can reduce the lead times considerably. The next big factors driving re-shoring is transportation costs and transportation time. The first has been rising and the second one can be long if products are transported by cargo ship.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Some of the changes seen in our country, specifically how we structure businesses, is a shift from a heavily industrial society to something that incorporates some of the old industrialism with new technologies that makes the need for huge factories staffed by thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled laborers a thing of the past. It is the transition from America 2.0 to America 3.0, and it is not a smooth transition by any means. But then the transition from agricultural America 1.0 to industrial America 2.0 wasn't smooth either and it took 60 years to make the shift. I have no doubt the transition from America 2.0 to America 3.0 will take a little bit less time but will be just as disruptive as the transition to America 2.0.

This transition also has political implications as it will likely lead to a less centralized government (a legacy of America 2.0) and more control of social issues by the individual states. The days of One-Size-Fits-All national solutions to what are in fact regional problems will fade away. (An example: low flow shower heads and low volume toilets that make sense in arid parts of the US being applied where water supply is not an issue.)

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President Obama's lambasting of the Congressional Republicans refusal to give him what he wants in regards to spending without giving them anything in return merely shows that he still has the mistaken impression that his office somehow gives him the power of a king. He wants what he wants and that members of Congress are not willing to give it to him without question does not fit with his view of himself. It is obvious from his own words that he has no intention of compromising on anything. He hasn't yet learned that more often than not he has to 'give to get'. He doesn't ask, he demands, and when he doesn't get his way he acts like a spoiled child.

After 5 years in office he should know better.

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It may be a surprise to some folks, but not to me: CBO reports US is on “unsustainable” budget course.

I could almost have inserted “unexpectedly” somewhere in there as it seems the Obama Administration certainly didn't expect such a negative report from the Congressional Budget Office. But most folks with a modicum of economic sense understand you can't keep increasing the limit on the governmental credit card forever and that the debt has to be paid back at some point. Doubling down on something we already know isn't sustainable is a sure path to economic failure.

(H/T Viking Pundit)

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Some folks just can seem to catch a break. That's certainly true of Bogie as after a number of other misfortunes insult has been added to injury as her laptop died Saturday. That might not normally be so bad but she hadn't done any recent backups.

Ouch.

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Is it possible Obama will continue his losing streak and lose the fight over a government shutdown?

President Barack Obama, fresh from having his lunch money taken from him by Russia's Vladimir Putin, is flailing about trying to find someone he can shift the public's attention to.

He has chosen House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) as the person and the upcoming end of the U.S. government's fiscal year on September 30 as his verbal weapon.

I think that is the wrong fight against the wrong guy.

The House Republicans are trying hard to defund ObamaCare, something the American public didn't want to begin with (and still doesn't) but was shoved down their throats by a Democrat-majority Congress without a single Republican vote in favor. (24 Democrats also voted against it.)

If Obama thinks Congress won't dare let the government shut down, he should check the history of the Clinton Administration when the government was shut down for three weeks .

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The New England Patriots played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Foxborough today, beating them 23-3. While the score was lopsided it didn't show the Buccaneers' strengths, something I think they while put to good use as the become more cohesive.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of stock car engines has faded away, the sound of business jet engines has increased, and where the last day of summer has come and gone.