Jesse Bickel dot com

Listen to the optimists arguments and listen to Schiff’s arguments. This is a good battle from July of last year about the state of the economy and what is going to happen.

Apparently there’s a memcache problem with Google App Engine. Renaming my memcache key caused my app to work.

This is all in reference to my post a few days ago where I mentioned my Google App Engine Bullion Value Calculator.

Update 2008-06-17: The problems came back, so I surrounded the problem spots with try/except blocks and had it clear memcache if it had any problems. Also catching another exception. The app should seriously be working now. I mean it this time. Try it out.

Again, more checkpoints. And getting people used to having our cities feel like Baghdad. Hopefully some court somewhere will make a ruling against these checkpoints.

Story.

Two pieces of excellent news today that are very encouraging.

One: the Supreme Court ruled (pdf) that the executive and legislative branches might actually be bound by the US Constitution. And that the Constitution means what it says when it says “the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended” and that the Constitution might say what it means. Bbc’s story. Thank God habeas corpus is partially restored. Those of you who don’t understand the big deal or are in opposition to my point of view, please understand that asking “why am I being detained?” deserves an answer no matter what. Indefinite detainment without charge is simply not the American way. Terrorists are criminals and can have due process via criminal courts. If there is reason to detain, detain and charge and try. We cannot assume that anyone is able to read people’s minds and predict crime. Use reasons and charge with crimes.

Two: Ron Paul will launch the Campaign for Liberty tonight. A similar effort has been underway here in Georgia with r3volt but we haven’t gotten quite as far along.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Python meetup and went through some of the Google App Engine tutorial. It wasn’t long before I started making a tool that I’ve looked for but haven’t found. The tool probably exists somewhere, but I took the opportunity to make the simple tool and learn Google App Engine at the same time.

Bullion Value Calculator

Enter the amount of gold, silver, and platinum bullion you would like to find the current market value of (according to Kitco’s New York data). Click Submit. It tells you the spot price value of your hoard. It is not currently doing the per-user thing, but eventually you’ll be able to log in using your Google account and then when you visit I’ll pre-populate the fields with the last ones you used. Maybe one day I’ll make it look like a real Web page too.

Ye who be coders, this is a pretty simple example of using Google App Engine. I am using Google’s urlfetch to get the data from Kitco, using Google’s memcache to avoid pounding Kitco’s site, and I have some of Google’s user and db functions in there but those aren’t yet fully functional. See non-pretty py source and the insignificant yaml source.

P.S. This app was working, and now isn’t, but works locally with the SDK so I’m hoping it will just start working again.

The dollar started the week at 7.85 millibarrels and even climbed up above 8.17 millibarrels. But today alone it has fallen over a half millibarrel. Source of today and source of earlier.

Even more checkpoints are showing up. Earlier this week we heard about Operation Rolling Thunder beginning in Georgia.

Is it just coincidence that there are roadblocks and checkpoints popping up all over the place? Terry at Checkpoint USA was telling us more than six months ago to expect checkpoints and roadblocks across the country.

The interesting part is the scope and reasons given for these checkpoints. The one 40 miles north of the border in Arizona is said to be an “immigration checkpoint.” That sounds reasonable, but why 40 miles north of the border on a road running parallel to the border? I’ll grant that it’s still close to the border. But why are there drug dogs sniffing trucks too? Border patrol agents operated checkpoints 100 miles from the border in Vermont, and probably still are.

Look at the reasoning for the completely interior checkpoints.

From Operation Rolling Thunder AJC report:

Paulding County, with 27 traffic deaths in 2007 and 10 so far this year, ranks 7th among Georgia counties for highway fatalities, according to the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, which is coordinating the task force. Bartow, with 31 fatalities last year and five so far this year, ranks 9th.

From DC checkpoints AP report:

The checkpoints come as police try to combat a spike in the number of homicides, which rose 7 percent in the city in 2007 after several years of decline.

Those statistics don’t look alarming enough to suspend the fourth amendment. The alarming part is at the DC checkpoint citizens will have to prove residence or provide reasons for being there. The alarming statistic is the growing number of checkpoints for all manner of reasons. First terrorism. Then illegal immigration. Drugs. Drunk driving. Growth in murder rate. Growth in highway fatality rate. We are not under threat from a foreign occupation, we’re under threat from domestic enemies of the constitution.

American hero Terry over at Checkpoint USA added some recent videos of internal suspicionless checkpoints. Here’s my favorite one.

If you think the video is pointless or if you are trying to figure out why he doesn’t just answer the question, please do me a favor. I know it’s cliche but do it anyway. Re-read the fourth through tenth amendments.

While we’re on the topic, another one of my favorite resources is Papers, Please! It really isn’t hard to decline showing ID. If you’re not doing anything wrong, why do they need to see it?

“The CFTC has been under pressure from U.S. lawmakers to crack down on speculators they blame for pushing energy prices to record levels.”

Thank you lawmakers.

If the energy prices have been pushed unreasonably high by speculation, thank God! That means they will drop back to appropriate levels given some time. If the prices are ridiculous and will be corrected, why waste your time and our money probing? Adding regulation and oversight is essentially blaming freedom. Is it really freedom’s fault?

Crude oil bubble?

Someone pointed me to cnn money the other day but I found Benn Steil’s testimony more interesting. And now today I found another article by Steil from last year. While I don’t agree with him on everything, he appears to have a handle on history and the current situation. Plus he quotes Hayek.