Chicago Officials Put an Anti-Gun Sign on Buildings: It Shows Spree Killers Where No One Will Shoot Back

Well it seems Chicago officials are up in arms out over signs depicting a "no guns allowed" sign.

Some school officials aren�t happy about the stickers because they contain a very basic image of a gun.

�It is bothersome to have to post a sticker of a gun that says, �Hey, folks, leave your guns at home,�� Theresa Nolan, principal of Tinley Park High School, told the SouthtownStar.

Nolan stressed that she is very concerned with �safety and security� and concerned that, somehow, someone could wrongly interpret an image of a gun emblazoned with the universal sign for prohibiting something.

�I think the general public will be alarmed by it and wonder if people have been allowed to bring guns to school in the past,� Nolan also fretted.

She said she would prefer �something more subtle.�

�You can�t look at this (sticker) and not think about Sandy Hook,� the principal added.

Well the next Adam Lanza can now look for the no guns allowed sign and know that security guards or teachers with concealed carry will not shoot back.

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Yet Another Problem with Sochi: Hackers They Be Hacking Everything in Sight

Well, I hope our Olympic Team and spectators don't have anything interesting on their smart phone, laptop or tablet because it seems they will lose it within minutes of logging into any free Internet.

To illustrate his point, Mr. Engel brought two new laptops to Sochi. With the help of an American security expert, he uploaded a fake identity and fake contact list onto the computers�both were hacked within the day. "It had taken hackers less than one minute to pounce," he said, "Within 24 hours, they'd broken into both computers and started helping themselves to my data."

Mr. Engel also conducted an experiment wherein he took a new smartphone to a restaurant, and started browsing the Internet for Olympics news. "Malicious software hijacked our phone before we even finished our coffee, stealing my information, and giving hackers the option to tap and record my phone calls." he said.

Wow now that must be a record for someone to steal your data. I love this "way to protect yourself" as well.

Mr. Engel concludes by describing the cybersecurity environment as a "minefield," and suggests that the best way to protect your data is to leave your devices at home.

In other words unplug from the digital world for a few weeks just so you can watch Shawn White to a 720 mctwist or whatever. Um sorry the Putin Games will be a big fat disaster and depending on what those hackers do it might be much worse.

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It Seems the Hotels Are Not Ready in Sochi

I guess if you like yellow water and wi-fi routers dangling from the ceiling then Sochi is the kind of place for you. I guess $51 billion doesn't buy you what it used to:

Sochi officials say that the city's hotels are 97% complete on the eve of the Olympics.

But given the nightmare travel stories rolling in from reporters in Sochi, that 3% difference goes a long, long way.

There are reports of rooms without light bulbs or doorknobs. There are stories about unfinished hotels without lobbies or working elevators or running water. There are anecdotes from people who've checked into their rooms, only to find them occupied by stray dogs or construction workers napping in between shifts.

The venues and Olympic Village all look perfectly fine, and we haven't seen any complaints from athletes. But the hotels, specifically media hotels, aren't finished yet and it's a total mess.

The worst part is that these media dorks have access to Twitter and are going to slag the crap out of the Olympics and Russia whenever they get a chance. They have long days ahead and if they come home to a room full of stray dogs or have to use yellow water to shower with then it will be a long Olympics indeed.

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Sony to Sell the Viao Line in Japan and Potentially Shutter the Brand the US

Well, it seems that the Viao PC is yet another casualty of the long slow Death of the PC.

Sony Corp is in talks with investment fund Japan Industrial Partners to sell its loss-making Vaio personal computer division, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

A new company would be set up by Japan Industrial Partners to take over the Vaio brand's operations in Japan, according to the plan under consideration, the source said. Financial details and stakeholdings in the new entity were still being discussed.

Sony is also considering a withdrawal from overseas PC markets, the source added.

No sense chasing after the shrinking market share of slowly dying dinosaurs like Dell and HP.  I'm not sure about the Japanese PC market but you figure an investment fund can keep them in offices for some time. I think the Japanese salaryman would rather do his daily work on a PC rather than a smartphone or tablet for the time being.

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Now Dems Joining the Fight To Approve Keystone XL

I guess the coalition of the obstructionist environmentalists are starting to fray at the seams.

Five Democrats joined Republicans at a Capitol news conference to urge President Barack Obama to approve the pipeline following a State Department report last week that raised no major environmental objections. The $7 billion pipeline would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. The project has lingered for more than five years and has become a symbol of the political debate over climate change.

What is hilarious about the Hollywood types against the pipeline is this fact.

Foes say the pipeline would carry "dirty oil" that contributes to global warming. The State Department report says oil derived from tar sands in Alberta generates about 17 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional crude. But the report makes clear that other methods of transporting the oil � including rail, trucks and barges � would release more greenhouse gases than the pipeline.

Those methods are also more likely to cause spills than an pipeline. There have been several rail disasters already in Canada trying to ship that oil out to the coast. I mean Canada is not going to stop drilling for this "dirty oil" anytime soon and will find a way to get it to a refinery.

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It Seems Obamacare is a Jobs Killer After All: A Little Late CBO

Well it seems the CBO revised their estimates and Obamacare is looking even worse than a bad website.

CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor � given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive. 

The reduction in the numbers of hours worked projected by the CBO will lead to the equivalent of 2 million fewer workers in the labor force in 2017. That number will rise to about 2.5 million in 2024. Previously, the CBO had estimated the equivalent of 800,000 fewer workers by 2021.

Just when the economy was picking up it seems that Obamacare will shave 2 million more workers from the workforce by 2017. Obamacare is the failed government program that keeps on giving.

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With Bridgegate Destroying Christie's Presidential Chances; Paul Ryan Moves Forward: I'd Vote For Him

Well it seems that Paul Ryan is moving into the lead in Presidential contenders for 2016.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Ryan for now is the top choice of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents for the 2016  nomination with 20 percent --  followed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush with 18 percent and Christie 13 percent.

A trio of automatic losers to Hillary trail the pack:

Three freshmen GOP senators with strong Tea Party backing � Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida -- bring up the rear among the potential Republican contenders. They scored 12 percent, 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

I'm sorry Hillary would trounce these guys but would have the fight of her life against Paul Ryan. He is burnishing his bi-partisan bona fides and looks like the "adult in the room" more and more. He also seems young and dynamic and not a plutocrat like Romney. Even Hillary looks long in the tooth compared to Ryan.

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Maybe the Rich Won't Get Eaten. I Agree with this "Nothing to Worry About" Assessment

Yeah I think America or the world is just not set up for another Bolshevik/French Revolution no matter how large the wealth gap becomes.

There certainly is precedent for too much wealth concentrated in too few hands leading to revolutionary change. Yet those changes usually required a dramatic triggering event, which hasn�t happened in modern times. �I don�t think we�re all that close to a tipping point yet,� says Joseph Thorndike, a historian with Tax Analysts who also teaches tax policy at Northwestern University Law School. �It really takes a crisis to make something happen.� Some may think the 2008 financial meltdown qualified as a crisis, but that was tame by historical standards.

The French revolution was caused by massive debt and a financial crisis due to the Seven Years War and helping us with our Revolution. There was also famine, drought, and harsh winters which made food prices much higher then they were normally. That second thing might happen but there is just so much more food being grown than there are people to eat it. People's waistlines attest to that fact.

While the Bolshevik Revolution was due to massive death and destruction caused by Russia fighting in WWI. If Russia stayed neutral during WWI there might have been a chance that the Romanovs would have survived until today.

So in both of these cases we had an economic crisis caused by large and costly wars. That sort of thing will probably never happen again in the next 50 years. The only belligerent powers that are large enough to cause massive disruption would be North Korea vs. South Korea/USA, China vs. Japan/USA or India vs. Pakistan. Any other wars like Syria are regional problems and would not cause that sort of destruction that would bring on a revolution. Even the USA dabbling in Iran and Afghanistan was fairly affordable compared to WWI or the Seven Years War.

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Eat the Rich? It Seems the 1% Are Starting to Fear Just That

Way back when the Occupy Movement first started I had a fear that they would morph into something like the rich are fearing in this article.

President Barack Obama and the Democrats have pivoted to income inequality ahead of the midterm elections. Pope Francis has strongly warned against the dangers of wealth concentration. And all of this follows the rise of the Occupy movement in 2011 and a bout of bank-bashing populism in the tea party.

The collective result, according to one member of the 1 percent, is a fear that the rich are in deep, deep trouble. Maybe not today but soon.

�You have a bunch of people who see conspiracies everywhere and believe that this inequality issue will quickly turn into serious class warfare,� said this person, who asked not to be identified by name so as not to anger any wealthy friends. �They don�t believe inequality is bad and believe the only way to deal with it is to allow entrepreneurs to have even fewer shackles.�

Okay maybe they have their fear in the right place. Think about a bunch of 20-somethings that have been sold a bill of goods by their parents that college is the ticket to a good job. They have now graduated with no job in sight and they are fearing that their future has been stolen by the 1% percent and their mortgage crisis.

The banksters and the bling-bling crowd were all bailed out but the the middle class and the poor paid the bill for the Great Recession. These 20-somethings are mired in student loan debt and no possibility to pay it back in 20 years or more. Maybe they feel helpless and taken advantage of and will lash out violently against the 1% who he perceives as the cause of his problems.

Maybe that 20-something might throw a brick through the window of a Mercedes or punch a rich guy in the face a la "the knockout game?" The "Knock out the Monopoly Guy" game per se. They won't steal the guy's wallet but just commit violence for violence's sake. There might be a very thin line between someone breaking the window at the Gucci store to a Wall Street guy being pushed onto a subway track simply for wearing a $2k suit. After all the French Revolution started in part because of extreme income inequality. The rich and the powerful were murdered because too many people were starving and blamed the rich for what was happening. Hmm, maybe some bodyguards will not go astray if you are part of this 1%.

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Hey we Grew 3.2% in the 4th Quarter. The US is looking up!

Despite all the gloom and doom it looks like the recovery is moving apace.

Strong household spending and robust exports kept the U.S. economy on solid ground in the fourth quarter, but stagnant wages could chip away some of the momentum in early 2014.

Gross domestic product grew at a 3.2 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, in line with economists' expectations.

Wait until we start exporting natural gas and oil to China and hopefully building new power plants and manufacturing. I think salad days are ahead for the US economy.

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Idiot Ted Cruz Says "I Didn't Shut Down the Government"

What a fool this guy is.

Sunday, on CBS� Face the Nation, the junior senator from the State of Oblivion said�and I�m not making this up��I didn�t threaten to shut down the government the last time. I don�t think we should ever shut down the government. I repeatedly voted� to fund the federal government.�

What? More than any other actor in last year�s budget debacle, Ted Cruz is responsible. Just a cursory glance at the record puts the lie to his blatant blame-shifting. Beginning with his �not-really-a-filibuster� publicity stunt, Cruz whipped up the national Tea Party base, emboldened House GOP radicals, and cowed the Republican leadership. After his Green Eggs and Ham soliloquy, sanity left the building and a shutdown was almost inevitable.

He is back-peddling like crazy because any shot at President or VP went down in flames when his government shutdown gambit failed miserably. He knows he will be a one term Senator (unless someone in Texas gets a recall petition going) if he doesn't point fingers in all directions because he has damaged the already tarnished GOP brand. 

Hell, he single-handedly pushed me out of the Tea Party by threatening to default on our debt and destroy the world economy. I thought it was the idea behind the Tea Party was a good idea when it first started. Smaller government and less spending on stupid crap. But it morphed into destroying economic growth and the world economy to force spending cuts. He was the architect of that vision and he should have to live with it and enjoy the rest of his one term in office.

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55 Bodies found on the Grounds of a Creepy Shuttered Reform School in Florida

Now this sounds like the making of a very good movie starring Denzel Washington as an investigator trying to get to the bottom of this mystery.

On a hillside in the rolling, tall-pine forests near the Alabama-Georgia border, a team of more than 50 searchers from nine agencies last year dug up the graves to check out local legends and family tales of boys, mostly black, who died or disappeared without explanation from the Dozier School for Boys early in the last century.

The school, infamous for accounts of brutality told by former inmates, was closed by the state in 2011.

The University of South Florida was commissioned to look into deaths at the school in the Panhandle city of Marianna, after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced the presence of 31 official grave sites in 2010.

Have the movie flash back and forth between modern times and the turn of the century as clues are slowly put together. In any case I hope they find out how those 55 people died because it sounds like a serial killer to me.

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X-Men: Days of Future Past's Quicksilver looks Like a Crappy late 80s Dude

Holy attack of the Feldmans Batman. Quicksilver looks like ass. He could have come off the set of the movie Lost Boys circa 1987. Hmm, maybe Days of Future Past is set during that time so there is some method to this madness.

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Great Depression Scholar, Amity Shlaes Schools Paul Krugman

I love this kind of historical smackdown of irritating asshole Paul Krugman.

Just to get citizens into a suitably docile condition to receive the President�s State of the Union address, Paul Krugman reminds them in a recent New York Times column that they aren�t bright enough to criticize government policy.

Americans are especially thick, apparently, about the need for deficit spending. �It�s very hard,� Dr. Krugman confides, just as he might in a faculty lounge, �to try to communicate even the most basic truths of macroeconomics, like the need to run deficits to support employment in bad times.�

She goes on to say part of the reason there was a double dip recession in late 30s was because of the Wagner Act which was pro-union to the point of companies not hiring people. There was also something called the "undistributed profits tax,"which sounds absolutely draconian. In other words Apple would have gotten taxed on its cash hoard simply because they built up a cash hoard. I cannot even imagine what damage that sort of thing would have done in modern times.

She also points to one of the biggest problems of the late 30s which was uncertainty. No one knew what the government was going to do next so they hunkered down. That is pretty much what is happening today. People don't know what will happen when Obamacare spools out and what he will do next with his pen and phone. At least the threat of debt defaults and government shutdowns are off the table for a two years.

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It's Not Income Inequality but How the Rich Got Rich

Hmm this article makes a lot of sense.

Carney continues, pointing out that wealth obtained through markets is good. Such success creates a bigger pie and helps boost living standards for everyone.

But wealth achieved via government is cronyism, and that contributes to economic stagnation.
"When a country�s wealthiest got wealthy through market means, the resulting inequality has no negative effect on economic growth. This jibes with what we know about free markets. If people can get rich by providing valuable things at good prices, then society will get more valuable things at good prices�and people across the income spectrum benefit. But if people get rich by pocketing subsidies and using the state to crush competitors, then they gained their wealth at the expense of everyone else.

When the rich got rich by selling a product that helps people be more productive at a cheaper price then it helps everyone. IE the Steve Jobs effect. You cannot argue that Apple has made lots of money for lots of people and helped all sorts of regular middle class folks while doing it. I mean they have 80k employees that work for them but also helps people at other companies and just consumers in general. The virtuous circle of capital.

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