Friday, February 14, 2014
Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 14, 2014
Man, oh, man... the flower growing and flower delivery business is sure as hell gonna take a hit this year!
AND the insurance companies!
Hey... folks... any "global warming" - man-made global warming - fanatics still out there...?
Back to economics... ya know how I bitch and moan each time "the authorities" lose their collective minds and close down... life... because it's either snowing or may snow? Well... notice also... you don't see much news analysis of the economic effect when schools are closed... when roads are closed... when government workers are told not to go to work, but to stay home... when private employers give workers the option of whether to come in or not...
Whether I'm too hard core for you or not, think about it... the push for economic growth... the push for employment expansion... what's happened to it where nowadays the media doesn't even pretend to try and connect the dots and cover - at the very least - the economic effects of voluntarily "pausing" our nation's economic engine again and again and again.
Next...
God bless Glenn Beck, folks! He's really pounding "Defund the GOP." I pray to God that Rush Limbaugh joins him. Mark Levin is already there... he was ahead of the curve in fact! Folks... we've got to keep the pressure on! We've gotta keep on reaching out to the likes of Sarah Palin and other "conservative" movers and shakers and convince them that as long as the likes of Boehner and McConnell control the GOP... well... then we might as well just announce that America is a single-party dictatorship and that's the way they like it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/24723401/canceled-airlines-scrap-record-number-of-flights#axzz2tJJHSKV1
The relentless snow and ice storms this winter....
* WE'VE HAD WORSE!
...have led to the highest number of flight cancellations in more than 25 years, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
* AS I SAY, KIDS... WATCH THE TRENDS!
U.S. airlines have canceled more than 75,000 domestic flights since Dec. 1, including roughly 14,000 this week. That's 5.5 percent of the 1.35 million flights scheduled during that period, according to AP calculations based on information provided by flight tracking site FlightAware.
* NOTE: NO MENTION OF THE ECONOMIC EFFECT.
* NOTE ALSO: http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/02/14/storm-was-mid-atlantic-regions-9th-biggest/
The National Weather Service says the snowstorm that buried the Mid-Atlantic region was the ninth biggest in recorded history by one measure.
* THE NINTH... NOT THE FIRST... NOT THE LARGEST... AND YET... RECORD FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/13/massachusetts-obamacare-exchange-granted-federal-extension-as-director-gently-weeps/
* JUST... SICKENING.
* THESE ARE OBAMA'S PEOPLE... HIS BEST AND BRIGHTEST...
* JUST READ THE ARTICLE; I CAN'T BEAR TO CUT AND PASTE...
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/foreign-policy/198359-gop-lawmaker-demands-text-of-iran-deal-from-obama#ixzz2tEf4NlxS
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) this week called on President Obama to release the text of the Iran nuclear agreement.
* WHAT'S THE DIFFERENT BETWEEN A TREATY AND AN AGREEMENT? IT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC UNDER THE RULE OF LAW AND A MONARCHY. GOOGLE "TREATY + CONSTITUTION" (HEY... AND FOR YUCKS... GOOGLE "HITLER + STALIN + AGREEMENT")
That agreement, which took effect in January, requires Iran to reduce its uranium enrichment activities in return for a loosening of international sanctions. But Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, said Congress has no way to judge its implementation, unless it has a copy of the agreement.
* NOR DO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Her letter says Obama has only released some of the details of the agreement, "while keeping the rest shrouded in secrecy." It adds that there are some reports that Iran has developed centrifuges that will help them speed up the uranium enrichment process.
"In order for Congress to properly perform its oversight functions and for the American people and our allies to have a full and open debate on this issue, I respectfully request that you make public the full text of the Joint Plan of Action," she wrote in her Feb. 12 letter.
She said releasing the entire text would let Americans "judge for themselves the merits of this deal."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/14/vladimir-putin-team-usa-united-states-olympics/5479173/
Russian President Vladimir Putin dropped in on USA House on Friday, defusing lingering tensions over President Barack Obama's choices for the U.S. delegation for the Sochi Olympics.
* CLASSY GUY! (PUTIN - NOT OBAMA!)
Putin arrived at 6:40 p.m. in a black limo with Russian flags.
* BEING PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA AND ALL...
He was met at the door of USA House by USOC chairman Larry Probst, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak. There was a toast, a clinking of glasses and then Putin sat down to chat over coffee.
(*THUMBS UP*)
Probst presented Putin with three gift bags, each containing the silver Nike jacket that U.S. athletes wear on the medals podium. Putin also was given the Team USA Valentine's Day pin, red with six tiny hearts and "Happy Valentine's Day Team USA" inscribed on it.
* I BET HE WOULD HAVE PREFERRED BOTTLE OF THE BEST "MADE IN AMERICA" VODKAS!
Obama's decision to skip the Sochi Games and instead appoint three openly gay athletes – Billie Jean King, Brian Boitano and Caitlin Cahow – to lead the U.S. delegation was considered an insult to Putin and the Olympic hosts.
* IT WAS.
* TYPICAL. OBAMA GOES FOR THE SHORT-TERM DOMESTIC NOD FROM A SPECIAL INTEREST CONSTITUENCY GROUP AND TO HELL WITH BROADER U.S. FOREIGN POLICY INTERESTS.
Obama has been open about his disapproval of Russia's anti-gay propaganda law, which Putin supports.
* I JUST WISH WE HAD LESS PRO-GAY PROPAGANDA HERE!
Not only did Obama handpick gay athletes to represent the U.S., it was the first time in more than a decade that the president, vice president or first lady was not part of the Olympic delegation.
* DOUCHE...
Probst and the USOC tried to stay out of the fray, saying members of the delegation were Obama's choice. But the snub also rankled members of the International Olympic Committee, who don't like seeing their games used for political purposes.
* YEP... (BROADER U.S. FOREIGN POLICY INTERESTS BE DAMNED!)
But Putin asked U.S. officials on Thursday if he could stop by, and the Americans quickly put a reception together.
(*THUMBS UP*)
Among those attending were Israeli IOC member Alex Gilady, plus former U.S. athletes Evan Lysacek and Eric Heiden, a member of the delegation.
Hours before he arrived, members of his security detail arrived at USA House to approve of the preparations. The head of Putin's security even tasted the drinks that were to be used –red and white wine, Budweiser beer and water – and sampled the brownies.
* BUDWEISER...? REALLY...?!?! WITH ALL THE OUTSTANDING AMERICAN MICROBREWS...? (FOR SHAME...)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/2014/02/11/end-of-the-line-for-the-welfare-state/
The more liberal the welfare state, the greater the disincentive to work and the more ruinous the impact upon a nation’s work ethic.
The CBO has just given us a statistical measure of that truth.
The ObamaCare subsidies, it said, will cause some to quit work, others to cut back on the hours they work, and others to hold off going to work, so as not to lose the benefits.
The cumulative impact of all these decisions will be equal to the loss of 2.5 million jobs by 2024.
The CBO has put a number of what everyone knows to be true: If people don’t have to work to provide the needs of their daily lives, some will drop out and become permanent charges on the public purse - deadbeats.
The father of modern liberalism, FDR, never disputed this. As he warned in 1935, welfare is “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
This used to be called common sense.
If ObamaCare alone will cost the equivalent of 2.5 million lost jobs to the U.S. economy, what is the impact of our entire welfare state on the vitality and dynamism of the U.S. labor force?
* PONDER THAT QUESTION, MY FRIENDS... PONDER IT...
The federal government runs more than 80-means tested programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Government spent $916 billion on these programs in 2012 alone, and roughly 100 million Americans received aid from at least one of them, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. (That figure doesn’t include Security or Medicare.) Federal and state welfare spending, adjusted for inflation, is 16 times greater than it was in 1964.
* ONE... MORE... TIME...
Federal and state welfare spending, adjusted for inflation, is 16 times greater than it was in 1964.
* ASK YOURSELF, FOLKS, WHICH WAS/IS THE GREATER AMERICA, 1964 AMERICA OR 2014 AMERIKA?
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
If we judge the Great Society by its goal, providing the poor with their basic family needs so they can go out into the marketplace and find jobs and join their fellow Americans, it has been, writes Rector, “a catastrophe.”
Scores of millions of Americans are today less able to achieve self-sufficiency through work than were their grandparents.
And...
* AND...
...by providing for all the needs that the father used to provide for his family, the Great Society has helped make fathers superfluous. We have created a system where a teenage girl who becomes pregnant can have all her basic needs met by government.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
This is a primary cause of the rise in illegitimacy in America from 6% of all births in 1963 to 41% today, and to 53% among Hispanics and 73% among African-Americans.
* IF THERE IS SUCH A THING AS "BLACK AMERICA," CLEARLY IT IS BROKEN... DYSFUNCTIONAL... PERHAPS BEYOND REPAIR. LIBERALISM HAS DONE WHAT RACISM COULDN'T.
And that record illegitimacy rate is directly tied to the drug use rate, the dropout rate, the crime rate and the incarceration rate.
* DUH!
If the goal of the Great Society was to turn America’s tax "consumers" into taxpayers, it has been a total failure. We have now a vast underclass of scores of millions who are dependent upon government for most or all of their basic needs, a class among whom many, if not most, have lost the ability to survive without government money, food and shelter. This is something new in America, something we did not know with the Irish boat people of the 1840s, the Okies in Dust Bowl days or during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Monday’s New York Times reveals a relevant and startling fact: Only 8% of the cab and rental car drivers in New York City are native-born Americans. Three times as many yellow cabdrivers in New York were born in Bangladesh than in the USA.
What is happening in America is that the vast cohort of working men and women, immigrants, illegal and legal, who have come in recent decades, 30 to 40 million, have displaced, have dispossessed, the native-born.
* FOREIGN RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES DISPLACING AND DISPOSSESSING NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN MINORITIES. HOW IS THIS GOOD...???
But we may be coming to the end of the line. From Detroit to Greece to Puerto Rico, government’s ability to expand the benefits of the welfare class by taxing the working and middle class is reaching its limit.
* IF DESPERATE PEOPLE DON'T GET WHAT THEY NEED VIA VOLUNTARY MEANS... WHAT COMES NEXT? IS THE AMERICAN WIMPTOPIA OF 2014 REALLY UP TO THE JOB OF PROTECTING "LAW ABIDING PRODUCTIVE CITIZENS?" I WONDER HOW LONG TILL WE HAVE TO FIND OUT THE HARD WAY. IT'S ONE THING TO LOSE THE BLUE CITIES. IT'S ANOTHER TO LOSE THE BLUE SUBURBS. THE "KNOCK OUT GAME" IS BUT A SYMPTOM. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY TRY AND TURN THE WELFARE SPIGGOT OFF? (OR... WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY DON'T...?)
Taxpayers are rebelling, budgets are falling dangerously out of balance, and the welfare state is beginning to buckle under the load.
Perhaps T. S. Eliot was right: “This is how the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.”
* HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED WILL HAVE NONE OF THIS! (*SNORT*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.steynonline.com/6093/the-future-is-another-country
* BY MARK STYNE
On The Hugh Hewitt Show this week, we discussed Sid Caesar and Shirley Temple and Magna Carta and King John. And in passing I said the following: "I mentioned before, I think a couple of weeks ago on your show, Hugh, that the Canadian Constitution and the Jamaican Constitution and the Australian Constitution, they just say you know, 'Executive power shall be vested in Her Majesty.' And everything else is nothing, there's nothing else written about it. And here, you guys decided to do it differently, and you wrote it all down. And yet you're the ones who've wound up with an absolute monarch in which the King wakes up in the morning and decides which clauses of ObamaCare are valid that particular day. And Congress, which supposedly officially controls the power of the purse, the House of Representatives, does nothing about it."
With hindsight, I might be being a bit unfair to absolute monarchs. The American republic has hitherto been an exception to the general rule in the western hemisphere that republics are presidential republics - that's to say, Latin-American republics where the only guys who matter are the president and his cronies. That's where the U.S. seems headed, and very fast.
* I AGREE. MY DAILY NEWSBITES OFFER MY CASE. TO ANYONE WHO DISAGREES... WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU BASE YOUR DISAGREEMENT ON?
Speaking of our descent into Latin-American dysfunction, my fellow Rush guest-host Walter Williams writes: "There is no material poverty in the U.S. ... What we have in our nation are dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives aided and abetted by the welfare state.
That's correct.
* YES. THAT'S CORRECT!
Because Big Government pushers want junkies, not citizens.
Which is why the benevolent bureaucracy actively recruits dependents.
Fifty million Americans on food stamps is a good start, but we can always do more! Hence, those US Department of Agriculture ads pitching food-stamp eligibility to Mexicans in Mexico.
* I'VE BROUGHT THESE TO YOUR ATTENTION BEFORE...
In an age of computerization, globalization and long-term unemployment, how many more unskilled immigrants does America need? Ten million? Twenty million? Forty million? The Democrats are importing voters, and the Me-Too wing of the Republican Party is stupid enough to think it can win a bidding war for the affections of the ever swelling ranks of the Undocumented-American community.
* THERE'S A REASON THE GOP IS CALLED "THE STUPID PARTY."
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Ann Coulter puts it this way: "With all the smirking on the Left about their electoral victories, it's important to remember that Democrats haven't won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed "the people.""
* DAMN STRAIGHT!
"If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn't turn, you poured vinegar into it. Similarly, liberals changed no minds. They added millions of new liberal voters through immigration ... Immigration is the 'single issue' that decides every other issue. If this country were the same demographically today as it was in 1980, Romney would have won a bigger victory in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter."
She's right about that. Pundits always drone on about how Republicans have to adjust to "changing demographics", as if they're occurring naturally. But they're not! They're the conscious result of government policy pushed by Democrats and the bipartisan saps across the aisle! And the changes are so non-natural they're occurring at a rate you usually need a civil war or Black Death for.
As I wrote the week after Mitt's defeat: "According to the Census, in 1970 the "Non-Hispanic White" population of California was 78%. By the 2010 census, it was 40%. Over the same period, the 10% Hispanic population quadrupled and caught up with whites."
That doesn't sound terribly "natural" does it?
If one were informed that, say, the population of Nigeria had gone from 80% black in 1970 to 40% black today, one would suspect something rather odd and unnatural had been going on.
(*NOD*)
Twenty years ago, Rwanda was about 14% Tutsi. Now it's just under 10%. So it takes a bunch of Hutu butchers getting out their machetes and engaging in seven-figure genocide to lower the Tutsi population by a third... but... when the white population of California falls by half ”that's natural."
* NOPE. METHINKS NOT. (MEKNOWS NOT!)
But it happened to America because the political class chose to let it happen.
* BOTH PARTIES! THE OLIGARCHS! THE DEMPUBLICANS AND THE REPUBLICRATS...
Ann Coulter again: "We're living in a different country now, and I can't recall moving! Had I wanted to live in Japan, I could have moved there. Had I had wanted to live in Mexico, Pakistan or Chechnya - I could have moved to those places, too. (Although maybe not. They all have stricter immigration policies than we do.) I'm sure they're lovely, but I wanted to live in America. Now I can't. At the current rate of immigration, it won't exist anymore.
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/02/and-the-real-us-jobless-rate-is/
Fed Chair Janet Yellen thinks the big drop in the labor force participation rate since 2007 is “mostly structural” rather than cyclical — but concedes it’s tough to apportion causality.
In a new research note, Citi takes its best shot at determining how much of the drop in the jobless rate is due to a structural vs. cyclical declined in the LFPR.
We define a shadow unemployment rate due to certain types of underemployed workers who are not counted as part of the official unemployment rate. In addition to the unemployed themselves, it includes part-time employees working fewer hours than they would wish, as well as workers who very recently left the labor force but stand ready to reenter when conditions improve. We provide a more refined approach than existing broader measures of unemployment (like the BLS’s U-6, for instance) by pinpointing how many of these underemployed workers are cyclical as opposed to frictional or structural.
Our estimate of the current shadow unemployment rate is 7.1%, which is ½ percentage point above the official rate.
While a 50 basis point adjustment is not trivial by any means – i.e., it increases the gap between the official rate and the long-run natural rate of unemployment by almost 50 percent – it is also far smaller than suggested by other broader measures of unemployment.
All told, our deep investigation of these sources of underemployment reveals surprisingly little cyclicality over and above standard measures of the unemployed. As a result, the shadow unemployment rate will likely provide only a moderately sized buffer to wage and inflation pressure as the economy continues to improve.
* MY TAKE? I'LL STICK TO U-6, WHICH WAS 12.7% IN JANUARY. (FOR CONTRAST, U-6 WAS 7.9% IN DECEMBER OF 2006, THE LAST MONTH BUSH HAD A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS.)
* MY TAKE? "AS THE ECONOMY CONTINUES TO IMPROVE...???" UH-HUH...
Here is Goldman Sachs on the same LFPR issue:
The labor force participation rate has dropped sharply since 2007 and has only recently begun to show signs of stabilization. Economists generally agree that about half of the post-crisis decline is due to demographic factors but disagree on how much of the remainder is due to cyclical, as opposed to structural, factors. In today’s comment we examine the participation rate of the young and the old to shed new light on this issue.
For young individuals, we show that “continuing with school” accounts for almost the entire drop in the participation rate of the 18-24 year olds. The decline in their participation rate relative to the long-run trend therefore appears both cyclical and reversible. For old individuals, stock market performance matters to those who are near retirement age. But given the cyclicality of stock prices, the division between “cyclical” and “structural” factors is blurred.
Taken together, the evidence presented above is broadly consistent with our view that a significant proportion of the participation rate decline was driven by cyclical factors and that the unemployment rate understates the extent of slack in the labor market. But our analysis also highlights that the uncertainly about the size of labor market slack is considerable.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371111/hillary-relentless-and-shameless-editors
he phrase “Clinton fatigue” entered the political lexicon during the previous century; by this point, we surely must have entered the age of Chronic Clinton-Fatigue Syndrome.
* NOPE. UNFORTUNATELY NOT. AND WHO DO WE HAVE TO BLAME? GEORGE W. BUSH. REMEMBER... IT WAS "GOOD OL' DUBYA" WHO "REHABILITATED" BILL CLINTON AND FAILED TO UNMASK HILLARY CLINTON. INDEED, BUSH COVERED FOR BOTH OF THEM FROM THE MOMENT HE TOOK OFFICE. WHY? HE THOUGHT HE COULD USE THEM TO GAIN BIPARTISAN CRED. NOT ONLY DIDN'T THAT WORK, BUT AS PREVIOUSLY STATED, BUSH ACTUALLY BROUGHT THE CLINTON "BRAND" BACK FROM THE DEAD. (REFUSING TO ALLOW AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE MARC RICH PARDON WAS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG OF SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BUSH DECISIONS!)
But the recent making public of the so-called Hillary Papers — the notes kept by her close friend Diane Blair during Mrs. Clinton’s tumultuous White House years, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon — shed additional light on the character of the “co-presidents” who just will not go away.
It transpires to nobody’s great surprise that Mrs. Clinton was more than a passive victim in the sexual scandal that preceded her husband’s impeachment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. She was a callous political calculator who bemoaned not her husband’s mere infidelity but the lack of discretion he exhibited in initiating a dalliance with a “narcissistic loony toon” — her description of Monica Lewinsky — rather than limiting his adultery to somebody who would be easier to “manage,” in Mrs. Blair’s paraphrase.
* THE CLINTONS HAD/HAVE AN OPEN MARRIAGE. JUST ADMIT IT!
But Mrs. Clinton’s contempt was not limited to Miss Lewinsky: When Senator Bob Packwood found himself in trouble over allegations of sexual harassment — inconveniencing Mrs. Clinton, who had been counting on his support for her health-care scheme — the first lady complained that she had grown “tired of all these whiney women,” according to Mrs. Blair’s papers.
The Clintons are our national grotesques. At the height of the Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton, who had immovable support among black voters, began using black leaders as the political equivalent of human shields — Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus prominent among them — while his minions smeared prosecutor Ken Starr, characterizing him as a racist, a sex fanatic, and a monomaniac. President Clinton strutted into church waving a Bible the size of a telephone directory while Democrats painted his critics as the second coming of Roger Chillingworth, if not Padre Torquemada.
* BILL CLINTON WAS - AND I'M GUESSING STILL IS - A SEXUAL PREDATOR. MONICA WAS AN INTERN. SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN OFF LIMITS. AS TO JUANITA BROADDRICK AND KATHLEEN WILLEY... I BELIEVE BOTH WOMEN. BILL CLINTON... RAPIST... SEXUAL PREDATOR.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, after bitterly dismissing the cookie-baking, “Stand by Your Man” model of wifehood, did precisely that. (The chocolate-chip-cookie recipe she shared with Good Housekeeping was excellent; Bill would later plagiarize a cookie recipe for a cook-off against Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama.) After being humiliated by her husband, she apparently grew accustomed to humiliation: How else to explain such performances as her remarkable Stepin Fetchit impersonation — “Ah don’ feel no-waze tah-red” — for the benefit of the First Baptist Church in Selma, Ala.?
* WAS THAT EVER THE TARGET OF A SNL PARODY...? (AS IF "PARODY" APPLIES...)
Mrs. Clinton, an inevitable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, can be counted upon to use the Democrats’ “war on women” rhetoric to advance her cause, even though she was, according to the papers of a woman she described as her “best friend,” a main enabler of a very nasty campaign against a great many politically inconvenient women — not only Miss Lewinsky and those who endured Senator Packwood’s attentions, but all the women whom the Arkansas political mafia, commanded so ably by James Carville, portrayed as “sluts,” “trailer trash,” etc.
President Clinton used women for his own ends; so does his wife.
Senator Rand Paul, who has made a point of drawing attention to this new material about the Clintons, is right to do so. He is mistaken if he thinks that he can use this to knock the woman generally regarded as the most competitive Democrat out of the 2016 field. The fact is that Republicans could not beat the Clintons with this material back when the president was sodomizing interns in the Oval Office and semen-stained dresses were being spirited around Washington.
(*SIGH*)
The material will have even less political efficacy all these years later.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
It may be of some historical interest to have a few more grains on the scales with which we weigh out the measure of the Clintons’ personal and political corruption, but that judgment is long since past. Fortunately, Mrs. Clinton’s career in the Senate and, especially, in the State Department, where she was predictably dishonest but unexpectedly incompetent, provides much evidence in the ongoing case against her presidential campaign.
Post a Comment