Yes, the best analogy I have seen to date was presented by Justice Little, where he used rabbits running around a tree to describe monetary velocity, which is quite stagnant right now and the reason the Treasury and Fed are printing money left and right. here is how he describes it http://flmortgagereport.com/?p=1019
Browsing Posts in Real
Even as the Senate curtails the powers of domestic surveillance by the military, the Defense Department expands its efforts.
Spooks = Bloggers:
Earlier this year, former Army intel officer (and Defense Tech homeboy) Kris Alexander told our spooks to start blogging if they wanted to get serious about tracking terrorist-types. Afterwards, he got a flood of e-mails from government suits asking him for help to implement the idea. I’m not sure if CIA agents were among the callers. But either way, the agency seems to have gotten the message. The lead from a Washington Post article a few days back: “The CIA now has its own bloggers.”
Giving the U.S. Military the Power to Conduct Domestic Surveillance:
More nonsense in the name of defending ourselves from terrorism: The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world. The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts — including protecting military facilities from attack — to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage. The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. The police and the military have fundamentally different missions. The police protect citizens. The military attacks the enemy. When you start giving police powers to the military, citizens start looking like the enemy. We gain a lot of security because we separate the functions of the police and the military, and we will all be much less safer if we allow those functions to blur. This kind of thing worries me far more than terrorist threats.
Limelight for Pentagon Withdrawl Plan:
A week ago, this blog picked up on something the big media had all-but-ignored: a Pentagon plan to draw the number of U.S. troops down to about 92,000 by the end of next year. 
“I would think that the fact that the DOD announced we were lowering the number of troops in Iraq for 2006 would be huge news, but no one seems to care,” the site’s author, Pierce Wetter, e-mailed me. That was before Rep. John Murtha’s call to bring the troops home. Now, suddenly, withdrawal plans are all the rage. Especially ones “drafted by Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey, the two top U.S. commanders of the war,” as NBC notes. If Iraqi elections are successful in December and a new parliament seated by January, withdrawal could begin almost immediately. Military officials say it would be an incremental or phased withdrawal; beginning slowly at first, with one or two battalions; up to 2,000 troops at a time. Entire battalions of soldiers and Marines, now scheduled for duty in Iraq next year, would also be told they don’t have to go. Some American troops would be placed on temporary standby in neighboring Kuwait; ready to respond, if needed, to any major outbreaks of violence in Iraq.THERE’S MORE: In the comments, Murdoc says the 92K number doesn’t include Marines… And “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, addressing the renewed debate over American troops in Iraq, said today that any paring down of the forces there would depend on military and security conditions, and that current troop levels must be maintained at least until the December elections in Iraq,” according to the Times AND MORE: John Robb, as usual, has smart things to say about this. Particularly, about the natural consequence(s) of the isolation of US decision makers from the external reference environment. Instead of making connections, we severed them,“ he writes. This isolation… drove: Bad decision making. The willingness to accept flawed intelligence on Iraq’s WMD capabilities. The failure to stop the looting after the invasion. The decision to disband the Iraqi military. The failure to send enough troops. Ad hoc planning and strategy development. The lack of a plan to win the peace in the Iraq. The plethora of different military plans since then: build Sunni militias (Fallujah), stability for elections and a political solutions, aggressive counter-insurgent sweeps, clear-and-hold (oil-spots), etc.
FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations:
The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.
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How a supersonic speed freak snuck Soviet fighters out of Kyrgyzstan and started flying ‘enemy’ jets for the Pentagon. By Carl Hoffman of Wired magazine.
DUI Cases Thrown Out Due to Closed-Source Breathalyzer:
Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown out by Seminole County judges in the past five months because the test’s manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work.
I think this is huge. (Think of the implications for voting systems, for one.) And it’s the right decision. Throughout history, the government has had to make the choice: prosecute, or keep your investigative methods secret. They couldn’t have both. If they wanted to keep their methods secret, they had to give up on prosecution.
People have the right to confront their accuser. And people have the right to a public trial. This is the correct decision, and we are all safer because of it.
Shifts in Pacific Force U.S. Military To Adapt Thinking:
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — A dull-gray B-2 bomber sat poised in a typhoon-proof air-conditioned hangar, its bat wings stretching 172 feet across. The bomb bay was fitted for 80 GPS-guided bombs, at 500 pounds each, that could be delivered to any target in Asia within a few hours.
I think all of Mayor Nagin’s pomp and posturing is going to bite him hard in the near future as the lies and distortions of his interviews are coming to light.
On Friday night before the storm hit, Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center took the unprecedented action of calling Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of New Orleans and they said they’d take it under consideration. This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68′ waves before it was destroyed.
President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act). Just before midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up. He was told that they didn’t think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet. After the President’s final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.
Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation.
After a personal plea from the President, Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting and authorizing federal action. In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President’s legal advisors were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops – but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.
Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to New Orleans for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships. Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city’s website was never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or coordinating into any planning – though the document implies that they were.
The suffering people of New Orleans need to be asking some hard questions, as do we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the multi-state mutual aid pack activation documents until Wednesday which further delayed the legal deployment of National Guard from adjoining states. Or maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should have commandeered 500 Greyhound busses to help him when according to his own emergency plan and documents he claimed to have over 500 busses at his disposal to use between the local school busses and the city transportation busses – but he never raised a finger to prepare them or activate them.
This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of thousands more suffering, but it’s certainly not a time for people to be pointing fingers and trying to find a bigger dog to blame for local corruption and incompetence.
Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in the future.
George Ann Reynolds
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FEMA disaster website IE-only:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) online registration site for disaster help is Internet Explorer-only, throwing an unnecessary wrench into an already bad situation.
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Post-Katrina Images on Google Maps:
breadiu writes “ Satellite imagery of New Orleans taken on Wednesday, August 31st is now available on Google Maps. Enter ‘New Orleans’ in the search field at the top of the page, or drag and zoom the map to the area. A red ‘Katrina’ button will appear at the top right of the map, next to the existing map buttons. Older images for the area are still available too – click the ”Satellite“ button to switch to those.”
Here is another option for providing HELP other than just the Red Cross.
Companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are contributing expertise, money and equipment to help build voice and data communication systems and link them together.
Reuters
09:38 AM Sep. 02, 2005 PT
Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared. “The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around,” said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University.
CNN reporters create a Web hurricane:
Blog: A CNN meteorologist reporting on Hurricane Katrina has created a storm of his own, this one centered in the blogosphere. …
