Migrant crisis creates test for idea of borderless Europe.

I think all those people have finally figured out that no one is going to come to save them.  Or even lift one finger to help them. You think they are going to live in refugee camps forever? It's got to be costing the host countries incredible sums of money.

Eventually they are going to want to try to find a better life. That means trying to get into any country they can. I guess when you ignore things - it doesn't go away. Huh.

Trump is living inside the Republicans heads rent free.

Right now I think the whole Trump thing is pretty effing funny. I never could have predicted how spineless he could make the whole Republican field look. And it has to be messing with their heads because for about seven years the Republican party has been beat to death with a bloody stub about how horrible it is that mean old white dudes are running this country. Their passivity is a reaction to that. Right? I mean, they are like jellyfish!

Trump is the meanest of whitest of old dudes! And frankly - that's funny.

I don't really find his appeal that surprising honestly. Trump has an odd following with guys. If you went to any construction site in the US - those guys would say exactly what Trump is saying. Trump is actually talking the Union label.

Honestly, if Trump spent the whole administration beating up on the press - that would make me pretty happy. And the press reacting to him is going to be a laugh riot. The media should start studying the Trump roasts if they want to get under his skin.

Some of the meanest people have roasted him. Anthony Jeselnik. Lisa Lampanelli. I mean, brutal stuff. He's going to make the Obama press cry! Watch the Trump Roast on youtube if you haven't seen it. I really thought it would be hilarious if Jeselnik was the press secretary. The rest of the world might not find it so funny. Yet, I don't find a lot of things about the world very funny right now. So there's that. You have to sit through like 5 seconds of ads before you can skip through. Sorry.

Better reading ahead.

I wasn't going to talk about this until I left, but a lot of my time lately has been taken up trying to plan a trip to see both of our families. His is in Ohio. Mine is in Illinois. We decided to drive. Gas is cheap Yo!

Plus, I just think the next year is kinda going to suck. The world is in horrible shape. I think it's a good time to recharge our batteries so I have the strength to put up with all the bullshit to come. You don't think things look this bad, and it just goes away quickly do you?

So far Amarillo Tx is the only known stop outside of the target states. It's kinda quirky city and you know how I love that. I have to squeeze down into Texas to get some BBQ. It's the one of the things I miss about Texas. I mean, I really miss it. This time I'm going to make sure to get some Cincinnati Chili.

I've been to Ohio a bunch of times but never got to a place that served it. I'm eating my way across the United States. Why not? I'm sure there will be a million posts about how I've fallen in love with a new city which leads me to finding out how much their houses cost. It goes a little like - I love this place. Lets move here.

I do have a few tech shows coming up, and hopefully that will provide something good to blog about. Tech has kinda sucked this year. 3D printing is so caved out. Which makes me sad. Wearables - meh. It's just been a suckage summer for tech on all sorts of levels. A lot of wasted time really. I hope that changes soon.

I guess someone woke up today and realized this weekend marks the end of summer and we are floating on oil. 

How do you flatten a squirrel, yet miss the tail?

At least those trees will stop hogging all the water.

A few days ago I noticed the city landscaping crew had started painting the tree stumps of trees they'd pulled out from the drought this summer. I figured it was to make it so the lawn mowing guys didn't accidentally run over them while they were mowing which would be a bummer. But then I noticed all these other trees marked with an orange line and realized these were mean to go.

Everything looks pretty brown these days, so I wouldn't have noticed this driving by if it weren't for the lines.







Pine tree's have fared especially bad. And as you can see, some of them are so large that I couldn't give them a full hug if I were a tree hugger - which I'm not.







Some they haven't even marked yet. You can see from the park, it isn't that big and doesn't have that many trees. I would have guestimated about 50. But I didn't count every one, so lets be generous and say 100.

13 trees were marked for elimination. That's like 13%. Can you imagine if we lose 13% of our trees? I think they've been mismanaging out forests for a long time now. They used to go in and clean them out and sell the lumber. Now everything has to be a pristine forest and then eventually the fires come and just burn them down. Then nobody wins. But it makes the douchies feel great about themselves.

All I know is that this year if we get any storms with rain ~and~ wind, you are going to start hearing some crazy damage out of California. Last winter we got a little rain, but it never came with any wind really. Now there are all these trees that are pretty weak. I know one house that has two giant trees that are now dead and they haven't pulled them yet. It's going to be a nice little Christmas bill for them I bet. Pulling a 50 foot tree can cost you a few bucks. Times 2.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, ~and I'm not~, but I play one today.

Last night Mr S. and I were talking about China and I said to him - boy, China is really spending a lot of money to prop up their markets. I hope we don't get a margin call.

You see, for a little while I've been feeling like we could have an "accident". Meaning that something happens in the market that is so out of the Fed control that rates actually spike by a lot without the Fed doing anything. Then we went on to have to long discussion about what happens if China were to actually start selling all those treasuries they bought from us. It's like a triple layer chess game trying to figure out how that might play through the market. And I don't understand bonds as well as I'd like.

Not too long after that Mr S. went over to Zero Hedge and saw that we are kinda getting a margin call. Here. They talk about it again today.

Mr S.'s theory was if China did start selling too many bonds into an illiquid market the Fed might actually have to raise rates to attract buyers. I don't know what the probability of this is, but it's not zero right now.

All that money China is spending has to come from ~somewhere.

President Honey Badger don't care.

I would have never considered Trump a serious candidate. I thought the electorate would have freaked out by half the things he says. But honestly, the whole thing gives me a weird sort of hope.

This election is going to be the ultimate battle against socialism and capitalism. Trump vs Sanders. There is nothing more black and white. The fact that he is still in the running makes me think things are still tilted for good.

I don't know what it means yet.

Source.

I remain convinced the Fed will raise. If they were not going to raise, they could have projected that a long time ago and the dollar wouldn't have caused so much carnage across the world. Oil is bought in dollars. When our dollar is strong - it puts a lot of pressure on other economies. Ironically putting more upward pressure on the dollar.

When China started throwing everything but the kitchen sink at their problems, obviously the presumed outcome is that the dollar will strengthen. It's the whole reason China is devaluing their dollar after all.

So I was a little surprised when I looked at the dollar chart this morning. I've only been paying attention to every gyration from the dollar for about 6 months because of the whole oil thing. It was trading in the 97.48 range when I first started watching. Now it's in the 94.44 range. A few cents might not seem like a lot, but normally the dollar doesn't fluctuate that much.

I find the whole situation ironic because now all the traders are freaking out. Not only do they think there will be no rate hike, but they are screaming for the Fed to restart the printing presses because all of a sudden "the dollar is killing us"! A little late to the party I'd say.

Presumably the reason to print is to devalue the dollar.  But something in the market is already on the job.

We all knew this day would come. We just didn't know when.

Forced perspective bubbles.

From the sweet spot.

I'm really starting to like you Canadians.

My car sugar wasn't low enough from my carabetes, so I had a hard time finding something to post about from the car show today. But,I did find you this super interesting thing out of British Columbia. For some reason a lot of Canadians drove down for the Good Guys Car Show in Pleasanton. I thought this (I don't even know what to call it exactly) was the coolest truck ever. I would have died to see it on the road.

It was sort of a bitch to get shots of though. I'm slightly overexposed because it's super long and reflecting the tree from above. There was a mob around this thing like you couldn't believe and it's as long as two cars at least. It was super hard to get a full shot of it. The other thing I found really cool about it was the steering column. The woman said it came out of a 1961 Chrysler. I hope I'm remembering that right.. I thought it looked super futuristic an a Brasil sort of way. Its the most creative thing I've seen in a while.

So envious. This is the best licence plate in the world.

Bit rot wiki.

Oh - the dollar suddenly matters?

"Chinese growth is slowing, Hong Kong's Hang Seng is officially in a bear market, Greece is heading into elections, and emerging markets around the world are feeling the strain of the strong US dollar." Marketwatch.

Around the start of earnings season this quarter I started reading all these articles about how companies were blaming the strong dollar for their own inadequacies. At the time I thought my head would spin off because I don't have a degree in finance, but thought these people were the deepest levels of batshit stupid. I almost blogged about it a few times, but I bitch about so much stuff, and I don't have a degree in finance. Even I could figure out we were in for some huge trouble. We are an export driven economy.

One writer at Marketwatch actually said the following: "Maybe Caterpillar Inc. should stop blaming a stronger U.S. dollar for its woes, and start applauding it. " Source.  This article in particular is etched in my brain because it pissed me off so hard. In my head I was like she is going to eat those words. But you never know what the Fed is going to do, and did I mention I don't have a degree in finance? I can't even believe you have to understand currency trading to figure out the market these days. It's stupid. But we have mutually insured destruction in the markets, and you have to take the world as one market.

Another said: "Move over, harsh winter weather. This earnings season, companies have a new whipping boy for any weakness on either their top or bottom lines. It’s the dollar." Source. This writer goes into detail about how the strong dollar doesn't do anything to stocks. Which to be honest, who knows if it does? But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that the strong dollar was hurting US companies bottom line and eventually that has to translate into a stock problem.

Still - there is the Fed - so you can't be sure what is going to happen. So, lets say in a normal world the market would go down because earnings were getting hit. The whole tone of these articles at the time was mocking in nature.

Who is laughing now?

I still bet the Fed raises no matter what the market looks like.

For them not to raise would be admitting the economy is not doing as well as they have been trying to convince everyone it is. And I doubt they are going to do that.

Additionally I still refuse to believe they will raise in an election year. The Fed is a political machine. Not a monetary machine. It's this year or nothing.

After projecting a Sept hike for months, things will get super crazy if they don't hike. No mater what the circumstances on the ground are. The Fed is ALWAYS behind the curve. Always.

Lykan Hypersport from W Motors.

This is one of only seven made. Also it has swarovski crystal's in the headlights. Lykan Hypersport home.

It's taken a lot longer for 2009 to get here than I expected.

Empire State manufacturing activity collapses to lowest since 2009.

In January I wrote an article titled, It's 2009 all over again. 

When all your news stories compare current financials to 2009 - you are pretty much effed.

BAC Mono North America.

This car has been out for at least a couple of years, but it's the first time I've seen one. It was featured on Top Gear I guess in 2013.

I saw it on the links at Pebble Beach and really didn't think much of it. So I was pretty glad Mr S. spotted it downtown Carmel.  That way you could walk around it. On the links they have it roped off. It looked much better in a natural environment. BAC Mono home page.

Wow. I guess China shook the world up like a show globe today.

All the things I didn't get for you.

I was going to get you car stuff last weekend, but Pebble beach is this weekend and I've been going to a lot of car shows lately.  You see - I have carabetes and I wanted to make sure my car sugar was low enough so that I wasn't bored. That means swearing off car shows that might have anything exotic.

Then we decided to go to Pebble beach because the beach is my reset button. The other Pebble beach in Santa Cruz. Because I found that funny. But when I checked the tides, by the time we got there - it would be nothing but the tide coming in. Scratch that. It's not as fun exploring when the waves are stalking you.

So we decided to have no fun at all and do some domestic stuff. The end.

You aren't on my side. You are one of them.

Today I had to go in an handle some insurance stuff. As soon as the girl looked through my account she realised I have a rental and asked if it was open. I told her is wasn't, but the conversation we had sort of terrified me.

You see - the rental market..... hold on.. let me center myself. The stories I have been reading are off the chart crazy. If you tell anyone you have a rental these days - they know someone who is looking for a place.  And the rents? I have a rental and I'm floored all the time by the way rents are skyrocketing. This girl was paying 2100 a month for a place under 1000 square feet. Her lease is up in Oct, and she's already started looking and I'd have to say - it doesn't look good. She went on to indicate that we should have rent control. Which wouldn't mean much but another Bay Area City just enacted it. With the way rents are skyrocketing - I'd guess this movement might try to gain steam.

I've lived in a rent controlled building though when I first started out. It was all I could afford in East Palo Alto. There is a tiny sliver of EPA on the Palo Alto side of the freeway. I was basically at the border of EPA and Palo Alto. The freeway saved you from the worst of EPA.

So I know a little about what happens in a rent controlled building. The landlords basically do not fix anything. It also disincentivizes other people to rent because if you can't raise the rents - why would you go through all the pain of renting to someone? It just creates a shortage.

I told her about some of the horror stories I had. I was in court probably 5 times a year because the landlord would always be in trouble for something. Rent control only encourages higher rents because no one wants to rent if they can't raise the prices. Rent control sounds good. But if you live in a rent controlled building you find out real quick why it isn't.

I tried to help her by giving her my property managers number to help her find a place, but her switch had already flipped off. I think she decided I wasn't trying to help her. I was one of those asshole landlords. Which maybe I am. I'm definitly a bitter landlord. Every time I hear someone complain about how high the rents are - I wonder if they "strategically" gave up their houses during the recession. I went through five years of some pretty intense pain because of them. There were a lot of people who were in bad siutations, but there are tons of them that also who would have afforded their places, but chose to give them back because everyone was doing it at the time.

That lady should be mad at them. Not me. They are the reason they haven't been building enough for seven years now. A year and a half ago I predicted this. Read: A new housing crisis looms. A shortage.

Walmart learns about Gravity.

Nothing makes me happier than people learning about how socialism really works. You see, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions however ignore basic human nature. That's why I laughed and laughed and laughed at this article this morning about how Walmart workers are now getting all upitty about the recent minimum wage increase.

Apparently when you receive something not based on merit, the harder workers get a little shitty. Who could have known?!? Oh wait. I would have because this is classic human nature. Why should I work hard when you assholes are getting a raise for nothing? And so it goes. Walmart is now getting Dan Priced. (The guy who raised his minimum wage to 70 grand.) I think I just turned him into a verb.

Read: Unintended Consequence of Wal-Mart’s Raise: Unhappy Workers.

"When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chief Doug McMillon announced plans to boost store workers’ minimum wage earlier this year, he said the move was intended to improve morale and retain employees.

Yet for some of the hundreds of thousands of workers getting no raise, the policy is having the opposite effect.

In interviews and in hundreds of comments on Facebook, Wal-Mart employees are calling the move unfair to senior workers who got no increase and now make the same or close to what newer, less experienced colleagues earn. New workers started making a minimum of $9 an hour in April and will get at least $10 an hour in February.

“It is pitting people against each other,” said Charmaine Givens-Thomas, a 10-year veteran who makes $12 an hour at a store near Chicago and belongs to OUR Walmart, a union-backed group that has lobbied for better working conditions. “It hurts morale when people feel like they aren’t being appreciated. I hear people every day talking about looking for other jobs and wanting to remove themselves from Wal-Mart and a job that will make them feel like that.”

The world still does work the same way I think it does.

There ain't no sunshine until he's gone.

I've been a pretty bad blogger lately. Some weeks it's just harder to embrace the suck than others. It's a pretty bad sign when pretty much everyone else is more negative about the world than I am.

I mean, this is a slow motion train wreck finally seems to be at our doorstep. I keep having to remind myself that deflation is a very rare occurrence. It's not that great that I will get to experience this twice in my lifetime - because normally that is a once in a lifetime event. We used to be able to hold up the whole world because we rejected socialism.  I only wish more people understood that.

This morning I found interest rates at 3.67% when just a little more than two months ago everyone was crowing about how the deflation trade was unwinding. They told us the "reflation hammer" was coming down with crushing force. No really. At that time you almost couldn't find an interest rate below 4%.

I've probably said about a hundred times that 4.25% is the pain inflection point and every single time it hits that - rates cave. Every - single - time.

I predict Google will be sued over their Nest smoke alarms.

I want to start out saying that we bought our Nest smoke alarms because my family was in a fire. I lost my cousin in the accident. I happened to be sleeping away with my boyfriend that night and came back in the morning to a team of fire trucks in front of my house. So, as you can imagine - I have some super big issues with fire.

The Nest smoke alarm had the feature that it told you which room the smoke was coming from. Which I thought was an extremely valuable feature considering you can die very quickly in a fire. Your house can be fully engulfed in two minutes. It's helpful to know where the fire might be before you go searching or to trying to escape. It also had the wave off feature so that you didn't have to get a ladder to get the thing to stop screaming. This was disabled almost immediately after we bought our first unit. I wasn't really happy about it, but it still had the other features.

Fast forward to this morning and my second false alarm. The first happened at 6 in the morning and I'm barely getting to sleep by 2am, So it had been a long time since anything had been cooked in the house. Since we sleep on the top floor I immediately start trying to smell for smoke. It's an automatic response with the family history and all. The frustrating thing is these alarms all start talking to each other. Even if the other unit doesn't smell smoke. I've read this is because if the one alarm dies, the other will keep you aware the fire is still alive. But when there is no fire it just wakes up the neighbors.

This morning the alarms went off at about 3 in the morning. But it sounded more like it went into test mode. Boing it said. There is smoke in the house. The alarm will sound. It will be loud. Or something to that effect. You are in a full panic when you are awoken from a dead sleep to a fire alarm. And I have to say, now I'm a bit pissed honestly.

What if this happens when it not the middle of the night and I'm not home. First I'm sure I will get a notifier on my phone where I will completely panic that my pet is being burned alive. Good times. Second, will my neighbors freak out and try to have the fire department break into my house? I don't know.

All I know is that I bought a product for piece of mind, and now I'm about as anxious about this product as I can get.

There are apparently tons of people with multiple false alarm stories. Here is a video to kinda give you the experience. It's a little annoying at the end because he could have just gotten a screw driver and taken the batteries out. But when your alarms (all of them!) are going off - you are just in a panic really. They should have made the batteries easier to get out.

This is what happens when you try to manufacture wage inflation.

Industry Insiders: 1,000+ Walmart Layoffs Coming.

No one seems to think this has anything to do with recently announced pay hikes./sarc

You could really tell this was crony capitalism at it's best. If real wage inflation were taking hold - it would be taking hold in the skilled labor section of the economy first. Ya know - like engineers and the like. Wage inflation in non skilled labor was because of political force, not because you had a bidding war for McDonalds workers.

Flat black BMW i8.

I wouldn't expect too many car posts until after Monterrey. There isn't much that is exciting me right now, so I have to wait for my car sugar to get low again. This car wasn't in the best area to take great shots. In the shade. Boxed in by a wall on one side.

The Christie platform. I'm going to start prosecuting you like it was the 1970's.

I don't really get what Christie is doing. I think the whole weed train has left the station and almost everyone is all aboard. Even I smoke weed. I'm not even sure how you put that genie back in the bottle at this point without an enormous amount of force.