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The Morning Grumpy – 5/7/12

All the news, views, and filtered excellence that’s fit to consume during your morning grumpy.

Buffalo

1. Andrew Sullivan chimes in with some shocking analysis based on this chart from the NY Times built from Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

No administration has reduced aggregate government spending as a percentage of GDP as much as Obama’s in forty years.

If you look at the full chart, back to George H.W. Bush, you reach an inescapable conclusion: the biggest spenders and borrowers are Republicans and the most fiscally conservative presidents have been Democrats. Given the last two decades, the Tea Party, if they really want to shrink government, should be voting for Obama.

Paired up with record reductions in public sector employment under President Obama, this data certainly provides some food for thought.

2. Detroit is leading the rust belt pack in trying innovative concepts to solve their urban economic challenges. One such effort is called Challenge Detroit.

Challenge Detroit will invite 30 of tomorrow’s leaders to live, work, play, and give in and around the Detroit area for one year.

Can retaining and attracting 30 of the best and brightest innovative thinkers make a difference? Detroit is betting on it. Tomorrow’s leaders have intelligence, passion, and commitment. Combine this with a community-wide effort of highly connected, motivated, creative, innovative thinkers, and the formula will be explosive!

A Detroit TV station has more details.

900 people from all over the country applied, but only 30 will land one of the coveted spots.

They’ll work with one of [the] top 30 companies from our community. They’ll live in the city supported by a housing stipend. They’ll play in the region. We’ll have different social and cultural activities all the time for them and … the opportunity to give back,” said Deirdre Green Groves with Challenge Detroit.

Buffalo could use an influx of talented people with fresh ideas, new perspectives, and a lack of ingrained bias, don’t you think?

3. The math formula that destroyed the world.

By 2007 the trade in derivatives worldwide was one quadrillion US dollars – “10 times the total production of goods on the planet over its entire history.”

Withdrawal of real dollars from the economy against such fictitious asset bubbles leads, in part, to recession economics.

4. The jet that ate the Pentagon.

The United States is making a gigantic investment in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, billed by its advocates as the next — by their count the fifth — generation of air-to-air and air-to-ground combat aircraft. Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It’s no secret, however, that the program — the most expensive in American history — is a calamity.

The current appraisal for operations and support is $1.1 trillion — making for a grand total of $1.5 trillion, or more than the annual GDP of Spain. And that estimate is wildly optimistic.

It’s also way behind schedule. I know, you’re shocked.

5. The greatest Wikipedia page of them all, “Timeline of the far future“

50,000 years from now: According to the work of Burger and Loutre,at this time the current interglacial ends, sending the Earth back into an ice age, assuming limited effects of anthropogenic global warming.

Niagara Falls erodes away the remaining 20 miles to Lake Erie and ceases to exist.

So, we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

After the death of Adam Yauch last Friday, you may already be tired of overwrought tributes to The Beastie Boys, but suck it up, here’s one more.

The Beastie Boys were the soundtrack of my high school and college years and hearing their music is a trip on the nostalgia express for me. So, in lieu of the typical grumpy videos, here’s a couple of Beastie Boys videos to get your Monday started off right.

Shake Your Rump – “My man MCA gots a beard like a Billy Goat”