USA Today today reports:

July’s climate: Chilly USA
Mother Nature has thrown [global warming proponets] yet another curve: July 2009 was officially the coldest July on record in six U.S. states, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Specifically, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Not one of the coldest, mind you, but the absolute, rock-bottom, chilliest on record. Records go back to 1895.

Meanwhile, four others – Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kentucky — had their 2nd-coldest July ever recorded.

Now I could stop there but to be fair the article does state that other areas of the globe recorded record highs. I hate when partial data is used to promote a point so I had to put that in.

Now that I’ve stirred the pot, I’ll ask the question I always ask with this global warming data. Are we in a natural climate cycle or is mankind really creating long term impact?

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

All this talk about “stimulus packages” and “bailouts”…
A billion dollars…
A hundred billion dollars…
Eight hundred billion dollars…
One TRILLION dollars…

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I’d take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

We’ll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slightly fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…

And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…

Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?
It’s pretty surprising.

Ladies and gentlemen… I give you $1 trillion dollars…

(Oh, did you notice those pallets are double stacked!)

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about.

I wonder if this promotes responsibility? I wonder if this will teach the lesson not to take on more debt than you can handle? I wonder what good can come out of allowing someone who can’t afford their house to stay in their house?

Oh yeah, I get it! Those that couldn’t afford their houses get a loan modification so when the house prices begin to go back up they can get even more from their homes while I am still upside down.

Capitalism or socialism?

First a small history lesson to add to the vast amounts of trivia stored away in my grey cells. Guantánamo Bay Naval Base at the southeastern end of Cuba has been used by the United States Navy for more than a century, and is the oldest overseas U.S. Navy Base and the only one in a country with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations. Since 2002, the naval base has contained a military prison, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, for persons alleged to be militant combatants captured in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Originally the bay was offered to the U.S. on Febraury 23, 1903 by treaty, giving ultimate sovereignty to Cuba but complete jurisdiction and control to the United States for “coaling and naval station purposes.” A 1934 treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year, to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars, and made the lease permanent unless both governments agreed to break it or the U.S. abandoned the base property.

Since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, the Cuban government has refused to cash all but the very first rent check as a sign of protest. Supposedly the first check was an accident due to turmoil in the newly formed government.

I can’t tell you in what month the U.S. writes its annual check to Cuba, but it appears we have close to 50 years of uncashed checks sitting in the former desk of Fidel Castro.

Sure gas prices have been rising steadily for the last 5+ years and other related costs as well, such as food and anything that needs transported between two locations. The new unemployment filings has cycled up and down, but always within a range, for decades, so I don’t put a lot of stock into that until it hits abnormal highs. The housing market has tanked and worse. Major lenders are failing. The bursting dot com bubble preceded these events and ended an era of unreasonable speculation and major corporate corruption. It’s not surprising that the economy, which was on sluggish footing, is grinding down even more as unreasonable speculation permeated the financial lending markets. It all seems like a natural progression to me.

But now it’s official, we’ve been in a recession for a year.

True, the looming financial crisis could sent huge ripples throughout the world if it’s not closely managed. But BEFORE all this came to light a few months back we were told time and again that the “economy is in the toilet.”

In the midst of the current economy we were warned by the media that Black Friday (the busiest shopping day of the year) would be the doomsayer of our poor economic times. Black Friday came and went. It saw a boost in sales of 3%-7% year over year. Those figures don’t bode well as a doomsayer of our times, so let’s say how these confusing numbers are no longer the indicator we thought they were.

Come on, either they are valid or not. I have no problem with the validity of any given statistic changing over time. But get real. If the statistic was valid one week ago it’s valid today. It’s convenient how something that is espoused as a fact can be overlooked or minimized when it doesn’t match the point trying to be proved. Of course the point I am referring to is proving how bad our economy really is. It’ll make the “recovery” even more dramatic!

Keep it up media, maybe you can actually start the panic you’re trying to incite and we can see “a downturn to rival the great depression.”

My friends, we have — we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.

A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratulate him … on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

…

Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.

Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer him my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day. Though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.

Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.

It is natural. It’s natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.

…

Tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Senator Obama — whether they supported me or Senator Obama.

I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

…

Americans never quit. We never surrender.

We never hide from history. We make history.

Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you all very much.

Let hope that the next four years create more unity rather than division. It’s the division that has more chance of tearing this republic apart than ideologies and opinions.