Sometimes I can't believe we've made it through another week. I'm being pushed and prodded along on my own plans and time is getting short. It's looking like we're going to try to move in November now. That may confine my movements with weather somewhat when we get there but I suspect a Texas winter is still better than an Illinois one. There will be some days available to advance the homestead along.
Before you read the Bunker Index today, I'd like to caution you to sit down and take a deep breath. If you're already stressed and angry, you might want to come back later today and read it. Or take it in small bursts. Consuming all 8 items at once may be more than your blood pressure can take.
If you survive the weekend, we'll see you on Monday with a new BI. We're still trying to do a Q&A Saturday, so if you have any questions you should feel free to send them to bunkerindex@hushmail.com and address them to either Kat or myself.
Have a good one!
1. Obama has made a new appointment to a commission on "White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans". There's a number of problems here. She's a pop singer from Colombia known mostly for dancing around in a skimpy bikini. She's NOT a U.S. citizen but rather a Colombian. She only took one course at UCLA and is self-described as an absentminded high-school student. She's described as smart and sexy, but I don't think anybody considers her an expert on educational excellence, and she CAN'T be considered as a Hispanic American because she's not a citizen. This is sort of like President Camacho's cabinet in the movie "Idiocracy".
2. Home ownership has crashed and has dropped to pre- Great Depression levels. That's sort of mindblowing to me. Less people own homes now than they did in the Great Depression. Who owns all these homes that surround us? Miles and miles of tract homes spreading as far as the eye can see. Who owns them? The banks? Maybe if we turned around our view of a home as more of a classical design instead of that modern, overpriced, clapboard and stick construction that is the only thing that passes "code" then we just might start seeing some real home ownership.
3. 103,000 new jobs were created in September but 45,000 of those are accounted for by striking Verizon workers returning to work. I'm somewhat surprised we'd been carrying them on unemployment. This puts us at a 9.1% unemployment rate. It would be pretty scary if we thought this was the bottom, but we're nowhere near the bottom. This is going to get a lot worse.
3. In Chicago's Cook County, tax bills went out this week and many homeowners are freaking out. 27% jumps across the board are the average. This is absolutely insane in an environment where many of those homeowners are unemployed and most of the homes have lost an enormous chunk of value in a downturned real-estate market.
4. NYC's police commissioner Ray Kelly warned that protestors in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement will be met with force if they continue messing with the police.
5. Hollywood is suffering financially as it seems the majority of conservatives are rejecting movies because of liberal stars. Good! Maybe next they'll start making better movies.
6. A California appeals court has approved cell phone searched during routine traffic stops, no warrant required. If you're pulled over in California, police may use a device that downloads all of your text messages, emails, phone call histories, and contact list to add it to their databases. Bye bye, 4th Amendment.
7. In probably the most alarming incident, an Amber Alert was issued when a baby turned up missing in a home. The FBI came in and sealed off entire neighborhoods with roadblocks and checkpoints and then began house-to-house searches in parts of Kansas City. I'd like to get more info on this one, but so far I've been unable to find anything other than kneejerk reactions from the media. Are you willing to cede your 4th Amendment rights in order to help the FBI find a missing baby? I'm not. Once you cede that ground, there is no going back.
8. A group of Democrats have introduced an act which will specifically seal Obama's presidential records. Who he met with, where he went, what he said to people in private ... all sealed. How's that for the most transparent administration ever?
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