Sensor Drift, A New Weapon In The Green Scare Or Just Henny Penny Coming Home To Roost

Why is it that every time there is a malfunction of some kind in environmental science methods, the error is always on the side of global warming? I'm just saying, from the hockey stick graph to forgetting the role of the sun in the Earth's climate, a conspiracy-minded individual might start to get suspicious.

The problem is that it's not the environmental scientists that are catching the errors...it's everyday folks looking at the data. OK, by folks I mean science geeks who work in windowless rooms and can looks at thousands of fields of data without getting drunk first.

Case in point. The National Snow and Ice Data Center was forced to admit that the maps they have been making this year of Arctic sea ice were grossly underestimating actual sea ice. The problem, something called sensor drift. The really big problem. A 5-year old could draw the edge of the sea ice better than the NSIDC.

A statement from the NSIDC clears things up:

As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February. Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality control measures prior to archiving the data. See below for more details.

We have removed the most recent data and are investigating alternative data sources that will provide correct results. It is not clear when we will have data back online, but we are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

So by quality control, you guys at the NSIDC mean the random chance that a reader catches your mistakes.

The money quote from NSIDC:

On February 16, 2009, as emails came in from puzzled readers, it became clear that there was a significant problem: sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as open ocean...Sensor drift is a perfect but unfortunate example of the problems encountered in near-real-time analysis.

In other words, real-time data is great when it is used to gin up end-of-the-earth stories in the New York Times, but real time data "is what is is" when it makes you look like Henny Penny.



Obviously environmental scientists just don't get the BIG PICTURE. Credibility is king for researchers. Eventually, eventually the truth wins out. Real science will win out. And if you are not willing to participate in the actual scientific process, someone else (probably with a lot less grant money and fewer Hollywood friends) will expose your research for what it is. And when that happens, sensor drift (and all of the other excuses) will be exposed for what it is.

Researcher bias.

And by Henny Penny, I mean Henny Penny. Check out Prof Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) and his "death spiral" - global warming hyperbole.

Subsidizing Irresponsibility

The old adage has never been more true: You want more of something, subsidize, it. Less of something, tax it. This country is subsidizing irresponsible behavior like a meteor is going to wipe out the earth in a matter of weeks.

Self reliance is dead. It's dead as a concept. It's dead as a romantic idea. It's dead dead.

Item. The oct-tot mom from California. The poster child of irresponsibility. She is the this generations' Alex DeLarge of aimless self gratification. A "disabled" worker using a phony settlement check and tons of government assistance who goes on plastic surgery trips so she can look like a fat and very poor man's version of Angelina Jolie. All the while sprinkling the hospitals with a score of her offspring. Which of course means we have to sell several more millions of dollars worth of t-bills to some nameless chi-com.

She has been walking around with her middle finger pointed at the country for years. Sure. Sure. We know you don't have time to read the meter, you are just here for a little invitro.

Maybe Kubrick was right. A sick society is responsible for creating the "little Alex's" and Nadya's of the world. But that really wasn't his point was it?

Maybe Nadya is doing exactly what the government wants her to do? I mean how many tax payers will it take in 20 years to pay for the social programs AND the next handfull of stimulus/bailout programs.

The only way this Ponzi scheme works is if we get hundreds of millions of new suckers to pay taxes. Nadya may just end up being the most patriotic woman in the country.

"White Male Worker" Is The New N Word And The New Segregation Era

Robert Riech had a Freudian slip and almost no one noticed. But for those of us in the struggle, we hear the code talk. We know what you mean when you say "white male." Because you say it like a dirty word and then say you "got nothin' aginst us."

Tell me Obama, is this stimulus plan separate but equal?

Instead of separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, "white male workers" get separate government programs. We have to ride in the back of the new economic bus.

As explained, there are many ways to keep that damned dirty white males from filthying up the stimulus plan. "We" can have conditions or criteria that will exclude those who have worked hard to become "skilled."



Maybe if I tell 'em that my Grandma was Ethiopian?

13 Sets Of Rules And One Outcome For The One

The Obama Administration announced they were going to support letting states go it alone when it comes to auto emission and mileage standards. From CNN.

President Obama signed a memorandum Monday requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider an application by California to set more stringent auto emissions and fuel efficiency standards than required by federal law.

If the EPA grants a waiver allowing California to set its own emissions standards, the nation's largest state will be allowed to require automakers to produce trucks and cars that get better mileage than what is required under the current national standard. Thirteen other states could take similar action.

A new era of States Rights!

No so fast.

Rather than take issues head-on and call them what they really are. Obama and his team play little Orwellian games with language to avoid a tough discussion.

Lets call this backdoor CAFE what it is. chickenshit. They know those controversial standards would not have passed without pissing off his blue-dogs who will lose more jobs to Japanese and Korean auto makers. Rather than make 13 or 14 different models of cars, the automakers will be forced to the toughest of the state standards. Presto, new CAFE without the headache of having to sell the nation on the idea.

Just like the chickenshit socialism being disguised as "stimulus" and chickenshit welfare being called "tax cuts," it seems this administration will be masters at the avoiding fights by selling things under new names.

It takes a willing media.

Of course it does. Without a lapdog White House Press Corps and every newsie gushing about Michelle's latest designer dress, none of this happens. Yeah, the same media that blasted Sarah Palin's nice threads during the campaign, are now praising Michelle's couture closet.

It takes a pretty damn stupid public too.

Of course all of this is obvious. Tax cuts for people who don't pay taxes. Energy independence by taxing energy producers. Stimulus via birth control. An infrastructure focused stimulus plan that spends 5% of it's moneyon infrastructure. If people are either too stupid to recognize the double talk or simply don't care anymore then we are truly fucked as a nation.

On the other hand. If the public is a mass of idiots and the media is in his back pocket, why resort to the games? Just say that paying $4 bucks for gas is good for them and let that be that. I'm not sure. Maybe there is a little nagging doubt about that middle 15% that really decides elections.

Obama is playing the cool kid saying you can do anything. That there is no limit to the money and the party will go on forever. Dissenting voices are being treated like the nerdy high school killjoy.

For now the answer is, print the money and sell the debt as fast as you can. We will all just take the blue pill and spend money in shopping malls until the government checks start to bounce.

You Can't Just Listen To Rush Limbaugh

At the end of an almost perfect week. A week that included more praise and adulation (bordering on worship) than any president in modern history, President Obama took time out of his busy schedule to notice that there was a person in the country not agreeing with him. The President warned Republicans that"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." I think this very little incident gives us an interesting glimpse into the man.


Richard Nixon had thin skin too.


Being too aware of your critics is one of the many personality traits that lead Nixon down his path of paranoia and self-destruction. Clinton had his rapid response team. I guess President Obama has a zero-tolerance of disagreement policy. Bush didn't respond to anything. It seems amazing that a President could propose the most massive spending program in history and not expect some dissent. Especially after we learned that the second biggest (the bank bailout known as TARP) become a political slush fund and was used by banks to buy other banks...all without oversight or accountability. But I'm sure this one will be different.


You can't just listen to Barney Frank either.


Barney Frank looks at TARP and stimulus like all of the other incumbents: Fast cash for friends and an easy path to reelection. Barney has the same trouble all politicians have with unlimited funds. From the Wall Street Journal:

Troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston didn't look much like a candidate for aid from the Treasury Department's bank bailout fund last fall.

The Treasury had said it would give money only to healthy banks, to jump-start lending. But OneUnited had seen most of its capital evaporate. Moreover, it was under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use.

Nonetheless, in December OneUnited got a $12 million injection from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. One apparent factor: the intercession of Rep. Barney Frank, the powerful head of the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Frank, by his own account, wrote into the TARP bill a provision specifically aimed at helping this particular home-state bank. And later, he acknowledges, he spoke to regulators urging that OneUnited be considered for a cash injection.

In other words. We are letting this congress pick winners and losers based on nothing more than political ties. More of the same old pay to play bullshit.


The answer is called the Resolution Trust Corporation.


The RTC liquidated "toxic" assets without a lot of political interference in the 80's and 90's...like the TARP was supposed to do, but didn't. Why? It's not so hard to figure, there wasn't any money in it for the politicians. When RTC was done, it was dissolved. No one left to lobby, no kickbacks. The damn thing was too fucking efficient. Fast forward 15 years and it became blindingly clear we needed RTC 2, but congress recalled the efficient and unprofitable (for them) way things went before and decide to take a new path, one that morphed a 2 page bill into thousands pages of pork.


Why not just give everyone a check for one million dollars?


Really, how different is that from the philosophy that government can spend it's way out of a recession. Hell, it would probably be cheaper in the long run because it would teach people about basic economics. I can only imagine what a new car would cost by the end of the first week.

Hayek had it right, this is the road to serfdom.

Writing About Killing President Bush Gets You A Movie Deal...Or Two

Do the same about the not-yet-inaugurated Obama. You get arrested. Even if you do it on a website dedicated to aliens and UFO's.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Actually, this rank hypocrisy was easily predicted, but it's nauseating nonetheless.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Authorities on Friday arrested a U.S. man on suspicion of threatening to kill President-elect Barack Obama based on statements he posted on a website about UFOs and aliens, the Justice Department said.

Steven Joseph Christopher, in three postings to www.alien-earth.org, said he planned to assassinate Obama in Washington "as a sacrificial lamb," the department said in a statement.

"It's really nothing personal about the man. He speaks well ... . But I know it's for the country's own good that I do this," Christopher reportedly wrote.

Here is a clip from the flick that fantasizes about the assassination of Bush.


For web postings that mention killing the Bush, just use google. From Nobel Prize winner Betty Williams to online games and t-shirts, the list is expansive with almost no arrests.

Try to imagine the scenario where a similar movie is made about Obama...not that I would care to see it. But the point is that even if Obama is the worst failure ever, this would never happen.

Either we live in a country where it's acceptable to call for the president's assassination or it's not. Unequal application of justice is not political correctness, it's a form tyranny. Tyranny that is particularly alarming at a time when the government is expanding at the fastest pace ever seen. How long before justice is solely driven by what is acceptable and not what is lawful or unlawful?

We Should All Have Wings

After seeing an article in the Jerusalem Post I got a chuckle over a term I have long found ridiculous.

IDF troops in the Gaza Strip on Saturday targeted Hamas operative Amir Mansi, a senior member of Izzadin Kassam, the group's military wing.

The implication is that Hamas has a peace loving political wing that seeks a mutually beneficial relationship with Israel. In truth, the political wing is probably made up of the smarter guys from the military wing who have a thing about getting shot.

Having a military wing means never having to say you are sorry.

What a great concept. You send in your guys to shoot rockets, strap bombs on their backs or whatever and when bad things happen. Boom. Instant deniability. For, you see, it was our militant wing. And for all good people in the political wing, we just can't control those darn military wing guys.

Yassir Arafat used that militant wing vs political wing game with the PLO movement to great effect for years. I remember the IRA had the same setup. In any case, it's a game played by organizations that don't want total war, but don't want total peace either

It's like it never happened.

Hamas has been sending out their militant wing to shoot something like 3000 rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip during this most recent Egyptian negotiated "cease fire." And peace is assured as long as Israel doesn't shoot back. In fact the constant barrage of rockets became a boring daily event and the media stopped reporting on them, unless there was a body count. It was only when the Israelis started making noise that Hamas was about to get punished, that the world took notice of this again. Obama famously said, "...if someone was shooting rockets into the apartment where my daughters were sleeping...you bet I would shoot back..."

And so Israel has finally responded. Responded against people who don't wear uniforms. Shoot rockets from hospital roofs and school yards and religious sites. Predictably the media starts their "Israel is overreacting" reporting within days because everyone knows these rockets are coming from the "militants" and not the innocent civilians of Gaza.

All kids play this game of proportional retaliation.

When a younger brother tweaks a big brother on the ear after being dominated on the Play Station, he is playing the same game. Little brothers know that big brothers get in trouble for hitting little brothers. Big brothers know that too. But little brothers hate getting beat all the time. So they do the equivalent of firing a few rockets into big brothers' territory.

Eventually big brother hits the little brother, who then runs screaming to mom. Dad is forced to intervene. No matter the punishment, it was worth it to the little brother because it's his only way to release his frustration.

Is it any wonder newspapers are dying?

The media will spend weeks finding out if Sarah Palin was really pregnant two years ago, while a ploy designed by 8 year olds is beyond their comprehension. And once again "world opinion" and editorial pages are insisting that Israel back off. One more time. So we can have a "cease fire" that now seems defined as Israel not shooting back.

This cycle is going to end in one of two ways. Little brother is going to mature and find other things to occupy him or there will be total war.

The question is, what could individuals do with their militant wings? Not pay taxes? Steal? Cheat on their spouses? What about those camera speed traps? We could say, I wasn't driving that day, it was my militant wing. That guy refuses to slow down and your ticket is a total overreaction to me...the law abiding political wing of me.

Emmanuel Jal - War Child

I just finished reviewing a first copy of this young man's life story for Amazon and it was an amazing journey. A real life Long Walk. He is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, a jenajesh, and was conscripted into the SPLA to fight the Muslim government army during the Sudanese civil war in the 1990's. Most of the 2 million dead were Christians from his home in southern Sudan. He was separated from his family at age 9 and survived countless military attacks, refugee camps and a prolonged military campaign...all before he was 18.

He is now a music artist and his story, detailed in the book War Child will be released in early February.


A sample.

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Whatever Happened To Acid Rain And Why Didn't It Have Any Staying Power

I saw some dead trees on the edge of a swamp the other day and recalled the iconic "acid rain" forest pictures in the 1980's. Back then, anywhere there was a patch of dead trees, people automatically thought...hmmm acid rain is killing the earth...making us sick.



Looking back, acid rain hysteria ended up as a footnote sandwiched between global cooling and the ozone hole. A lousy place historically if your job required research money. (Side note: An interesting bit of research would be finding out what those acid rain PhD's are publishing today...any guesses?)

I'll admit, I'm a child of the 80's. So looking back at that era can be tough sometimes. The clothes were awful. And now I have to admit that our attempts to terrorize the public through research were just as bad as the hair.

It started well enough with articles such as Likens (1984), "Acid rain: the smokestack is the smoking gun." That's good stuff on the face of it, Al Gore used the same imagery to great effect.



We had people out there chasing acid rain snowstorms and acid rain thunderstorms. We had tipping points, mass extinction predictions. Everything was in place. My generation was about to do something that would be remembered forever. Then...

The 1990's.

That first big Nirvana CD should have been a clue. The public was craving something more serious. We offered them the death of a salamander and the 1990's gave the public the whole damn world in peril.

I can't blame the public for taking to global warming the way they did. You are not going to make movies with acid rain showers chasing frogs. But ice hurricanes chasing actors! Whew. That's good stuff.

I guess acid rain never really stood a chance. Sure, the data never matched the claims. And the earth has natural balancing systems we didn't know about when we chose acid rain in the first place, but that has never stopped global warming. I'm not bitter (OK, a little). I just have to admit that global warming is a better product and we had a nice little run back in the day.

Just don't expect me to be sorry when you fail global warming.

The Trouble With Rubles

The big bluff is almost over. For the last several years Russian leader Putin (I'm not sure what he is calling himself these days) has put on a show of force - promising a return to Russian greatness. From warships in the Panama Canal Zone to attacks in Georgia, the Russians have been everywhere trying to reassert their old influence. And there have been the assassinations to intimidate and punish political rivals and enemies.

The growing problem for Putin is that his economy is a one trick petro pony (they have lots of other mineral resourced too, but that didn't work well with pony). All of it: minerals, crude oil have sharply declined in value and while the Russians are putting up a bold face, the economic reality will have them mothballing those ships and watching their currency devalue further.

To illustrate, the following graph shows how many rubles a dollar would buy. It's a 180 day graph and it shows the accelerating problem since August. Built at exchange-rates.org.



In some cases, workers are not getting paid and the protest in Vladivostok is an ominous sign for the Kremlin...especially since starting in that area is always a good strategy in Risk.

Putin will continue to crush dissent because he probably believes this downturn in commodity prices is short-term. Like Washington, Moscow is pumping cash into selected companies to try and buy their way out of this downturn. And also like Washington, these guys don't seem to understand that if you are willing to give your money away for nothing, it will have no value and the impact of all of this "stimulus" is deficits and a longer recession.

These troubles in Russia signal even bigger trouble for smaller countries built on the same strongman/petro economy. Venezuela has something like $65 barrel oil built into their budget. PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.), Venezuela’s state-owned petroleum company does not have the resources to develop their oil fields. Hugo has directed much of the PDVSA revenue to support his expanded social programs. Hugo will accelerate the problem if crude prices stay in the $30's for an extended period of time.

With a little perspective, one might see the positives of this global recession. Just one year ago, Putin and Hugo were looking to become regional, if not global, forces based solely on $140 oil. A 75% hair cut has funny way of curbing ambitions.

Oil prices will rebound. The global economy will recover and futures will turn up as soon as demand starts to rise - literally within days. The problem for Russia is the long-term impact to the structure of their economy. With each of these downturns, Russia is losing the social and industrial infrastructure that is not being replaced during good times because they do not have a dynamic or inventive system.

The best analogy of the economic situation in Russia is a real estate flipper being upside down on all of his mortgages. Even if, over time, the value of the homes come up to the prices you paid, the costs of holding the homes in the mean-time probably means you are bankrupt. So too with Russia. The fixed costs of the economy are established and Russia will print the Rubles it needs to run the government-owned economy. The result is further currency deflation and of course the inflation of real goods. A double whammy for an economy based on government spending.

There is probably something of a warning in there for the US as well, but why worry about Rubles? They don't hurt anybody.

Hugo: Drive By Dictator

Hollywood's 2nd favorite beloved leader was riding in his limo and spotted a nearly complete shopping mall in Caracas and said:

"They had already built a monster there," Chavez said. "I passed by there just recently and said, 'What is this? My God!"'

Which, of course, is Blago speak for "I don't remember getting any kickbacks on this project?"

Best quote from the AP writer (Via FoxNews), "[This] illustrates Chavez's tendency to govern from his gut, and to leap in when he thinks other government agencies — in this case city planners — aren't doing their job.

Of course with the ever expanding number of "Czars" we should expect similar "rule from the gut" kind of governance. Did I really see a middle class czar position named by Obama? Ugh.

Shrek Found Dead In New Jersey

Fox News has this one here.

A deer hunter discovered the man wrapped in the rug in a wooded area off the Atlantic City Expressway in New Jersey on Dec. 8, the Philadelphia Daily News reported.

Authorities have no idea who he is or who might have executed him.

"This was a very large man with very small, round, distinctive ears," said Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel during a press conference. "Somewhere, someone is missing this person."

Large man with very small round distinctive ears....




And some guy who looks like a real world Shrek.

The Wrestler...The Reviewers Are Blown Away

Mickey Rourke playing a washed up 80's wrestler with Marissa Tomei as his stripper girlfriend. I'm soooo there. Bill Simmons at ESPN got an advance copy and raved...here. With all of the crazy plastic surgery, Mickey looks like he has gone through 20 years of WWF abuse. Scripted or not, many of the old WWF guys are dead from the hell they put their bodies through.

More on Marissa. I really don't think she gets the credit she deserves. Is it the nude scenes? I don't know. But her performances in In The Bedroom, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and Welcome to Sarajevo proves she is getting better with age. Fox News had their 40 Hottest Women Over 40 list last week and she wasn't on it. Kelly Rippa was. Sarah Jessica Parker too.



Recent pic of Marissa.



Mickey...why?

Global Warming Is A Ticking Time Bomb Waiting To Go Off and Obama Has Like Minutes To Stop It

Well, that's the claim of the AP's Seth Borenstein. In his less than reasoned piece he makes the case that the Earth cooling back to 1992 levels is proof for how fast we are actually warming.

When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.

Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points."

"We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct."

U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.

The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.

Hysterical.

Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

Of course, real scientists are objecting to this kind of shark jumping histrionics.

Scientists skeptical of the assertion that climate change is the result of man's activities are criticizing a recent Associated Press report on global warming, calling it "irrational hysteria," "horrifically bad" and "incredibly biased."

They say the report, which was published on Monday, contained sweeping scientific errors and was a one-sided portrayal of a complicated issue.

"If the issues weren't so serious and the ramifications so profound, I would have to laugh at it," said David Deming, a geology professor at the University of Oklahoma who has been critical of media reporting on the climate change issue.

In the article, Obama Left with Little Time to Curb Global Warming, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein wrote that global warming is "a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid," and that "global warming is accelerating."

Deming, in an interview, took issue with Borenstein's characterization of a problem he says doesn't exist.

"He says global warming is accelerating. Not only is it continuing, it's accelerating, and whether it's continuing that was completely beyond the evidence," Deming told FOXNews.com.

"The mean global temperature, at least as measured by satellite, is now the same as it was in the year 1980. In the last couple of years sea level has stopped rising. Hurricane and cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere is at a 24-year low and sea ice globally is also the same as it was in 1980."

Deming said the article is further evidence of the media's decision to talk about global warming as fact, despite what he says is a lack of evidence.

"Reporters, as I understand reporters, are supposed to report facts,"Deming said. "What he's doing here is he's writing a polemic and reporting it as fact, and that's not right. It's not reporting. It's propaganda.

"This reads like a press release for an environmental advocacy group like Greenpeace. It's not fair and balanced."

I would love to hear Seth Borenstein order lunch, it would probably go something like, "look man, I'm hungry, the blue plate was supposed to be here in like 5 minutes. I don't have 20 minutes to eat. My stomach is already touching my SPINE! My god hurry that food!"

Hey Seth, are you saying that It Could Happen Tomorrow? At least their hurricane ice storms were interesting.

A Lie Too Big To Fail

How rich is this? Nancy Pelosi is offended by the leadership of the Big 3 because they are begging for money with no coherent plan to stay viable for the long term. Plus they had the audacity to ride around in private jets. She thinks their leadership should be removed before we give them another penny.

I agree with that sentiment.

And that goes all the way around, only it's a lot more serious than the rank hypocrisy of our Speaker of the House.

In fact, the Big 3 management teams and congress have made almost identical mistakes in the last 50 years. Philosophically, both have lived on short business/political cycles that promote short term fudges rather than long term solutions; all while executing long term plans that always outspent revenues. Gamblers suffer from the same eternal optimism even in the face of economic reality: the difference being the inveterate gambler has a day of reckoning that may involve a kneecapping instead of a bail-out check. Pain and the threat of death: the self-checking mechanism that prevents gamblers from running up trillions in debt.

I can see the wisdom in that system.

The thing that has surprised me is the absolute silence on social security solvency, even as we have just watched the perfect model for how big programs collapse. Will a future congress and president fain surprise when the first whispers emerge that social security checks will start getting smaller?

The government has been lying about social security for years, so that much is not new. What is new is the perspective provided by the financial collapse of the government-private mortgage industry. If this isn't THE needed wake up call to take a longer view then we surely won't hear another.

The big lie is exposed in this Government Accounting Office.

Social Security’s benefit costs will soon start to grow rapidly. In 2017,
Social Security is projected to pay out more cash in benefits than it receives
in revenues.1 As figure 6 shows, after that time, the gap between costs and
income grows continuously, and, unless action is taken to close this gap, the
trust funds will eventually be depleted in 2041.

Right now, the surplus is used to fund other parts of the government, so 2017 is a much scarier date than it would appear on the face of it.

Here's the money shot.

Starting in 2017, the Treasury Department will begin to redeem
trust fund securities in order to continue to pay full promised benefits.
Specifically, in order to convert the Trust Fund securities into cash, the
government will require increased government revenue, increased borrowing
from the public, or reduced spending in the rest of the government.

When the Treasury has to redeem securities some very tough things will happen. The GAO's projections are that everything (value of securities and willing buyers) will continue as normal for 40 years. That is the same kind of thinking that backed the sales of mortgage backed securities...i.e. that the value of homes would never go down for any length of time. We just saw what happened to those kind of eternally optimistic projections.