Nemesis is coming, Draco is coming

 

Nemesis comes for old soldiers Tom Brady, 44, and Aaron Rodgers, 38

 Both quarterbacks were defeated in the NFL divisional playoffs by field goals in the closing seconds of their respective contests.

Pure poetry.

Anal cancer cases and deaths explode in USA 16 years after Supreme Court overturns anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas

The United States is experiencing a “dramatic and concerning” rise in the rate of new anal cancer cases and deaths from the disease . . . The incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the anus — the most common type of anal cancer — rose 2.7 percent PER YEAR over a recent 15-year period, while anal cancer mortality rates increased 3.1 percent PER YEAR during that time [emphasis added]. At this rate, the disease can be considered as one of the fastest accelerating causes of cancer incidence and mortality in the U.S. ... “It’s really hard to understand what might be causing the rise in incidence and mortality,” [the study’s lead author Ashish Deshmukh] added.

Political correctness kills, as does Nemesis. They might actually be the same thing.

More here.

The current secular bear market in stocks matched the length of the Reagan secular bull in September 2018

Average investors since August 2000 have underperformed the great Reagan secular bull market by nearly 70% annually through September 2018, but the current secular bear marches on.

Average investors aren't just severely underperforming the Reagan bull, however. The average 5.77% per annum return since August 2000 also underperforms the S&P 500 annually from 1871-1982 . . .  by 29%.

When the current secular bear ends is anyone's guess. While already long in the tooth, there's nothing that says it can't last even longer.

But you'll know it's over when stocks are universally shunned, as they were in the summer of 1982. Unfortunately, that would mean the S&P 500 would have to fall, and fall hard and deep, from here. In a worst case scenario that would mean to a level of, say, 283, which is today's inflation-adjusted level of the S&P 500 in July 1982, 89.6% south of yesterday's close at 2728. That's what it would take to match that buying opportunity, not just of a lifetime but of the whole history of the S&P 500.

On an inflation-adjusted basis a more likely future washout range would include a level something well north of 283, however, say between December 1987 at 527 and March 2009 at 898. The feeling has always been that the catastrophe of 2009 was arrested by draconian interventions, and that the market wasn't allowed to do its work and destroy the weak as it should have.

The Reagan secular bull was an extreme outlier in the history of the market. Nemesis is still lurking out there somewhere in its relentless quest to revert to the mean. Best not to stand in its way. 

A very small John McCain reduced to role of courier for the Trump opposition fake news machine

From the story here:

"Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue."

Gold bug Ralph Benko thinks Richard Nixon had to resign over the closing of the gold window!

I like Ralph Benko. Ralph Benko often makes important arguments on behalf of the gold standard. But when he tries to force everything in the universe to be interpreted through the lens of it you know you have met an ideologue who has become unhinged from reality. Which is why Forbes is a good place for him.

His latest screed here is a mere flight of fantasy, imagining Richard Nixon was forced to resign over the closing of the gold window in 1971. Had he presented it as such, it would have entertained and illumined, even pleased. Instead, its talk of correlation only annoys, the way a chart reader plots two things on a graph and yells 'See! See! They both go up together!' Against Benko, Pat Buchanan may be forgiven for ignoring what didn't exist, just as Nixon's enemies ignored it, except in the fever camps of utopianism.

Benko makes Thomas Paine's opinions about gold a prophecy reaching 200 years into the future where gold becomes Nemesis and the end of Bretton Woods Hubris. Covering up Watergate? Well, simply an instrumental little detail:

"The House Judiciary Committee’s charges and the Connally indictment uncannily fulfill a prophecy by Tom Paine. ... Connally was acquitted on the charges of graft and perjury.  Later he underwent bankruptcy before dying in semi-disgrace.  Nixon resigned rather than undergoing impeachment, also living out his life in disgraced political exile.   The spirit of Paine’s declaration was fulfilled in both cases. Connally and Nixon engineered this violation, abandoning the good, precious-metal, money contemplated by the Constitution. Nemesis followed hubris. The closing of the 'gold window' was based, by Connolly, on deeply wrong premises.  It was sold to the public, by Nixon, on deeply false promises."

Methinks Tom Paine himself would be a little embarrassed at the almost religious regard with which some of his present day followers come to what he has left behind for us on paper.

He'd probably call them Burkeans.

Yves Smith, Stalinist Heroine Of Naked Capitalism, Comes Out For Michael Mann Never Once Mentioning His Nemesis Mark Steyn And National Review

The opponents of what is "right" do not exist, you see: If they were in the picture they'd remove them, but it is better to never have them in the picture in the first place.

She's got an Occupy Wall Street Movement sash on the right of her page, might as well put up a Joe Stalin sash on the left.

Here.

Moochelle Shovels It In At Inaugural Lunch Like She Hasn't Eaten In Days

Mabel, Mabel, strong and able, get your elbows off the table. This is not a horse's stable, but a first class dining table.

And shouldn't the First Lady finish chewing and swallowing before shoveling in the next fork full?

Meanwhile everybody else is talking about the eye-rolling, while the president seems genuinely affable toward his nemesis.

Video here.

Whatever Ann Coulter is, it isn't Conservative

Whatever Ann Coulter is, it isn't conservative.

At least since her endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2008 we've had, on the other hand, some good clues about what she in fact is.

For example, she was willing to endorse Hillary Clinton and campaign for her were Hillary the candidate for the Democrats for president. The reason? Because Senator John McCain, the Republican, was determined to end the practice of waterboarding prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Now she has endorsed John McCain's one time nemesis from 2008, Gov. Mitt Romney. And Gov. Romney has just put his foot in it twice only days after winning the very same Florida primary McCain won four years ago, and shown us thereby that he isn't a conservative, either.

Proclaiming himself content with the social safety net for the very poorest Americans, Gov. Romney pledged on one day to expand it in the event it becomes inadequate to the task.

On the very next he announced his commitment to the federal minimum wage, and indexing it to inflation.

This is the same Gov. Romney Ann Coulter predicted would lose to President Obama, and therefore the Republicans had better nominate Gov. Chris Christie instead. Also the same Gov. Romney now endorsed by . . . Sen. John McCain.

Thus Ann Coulter is on record in support of a vigorous and muscular government, one which tortures prisoners of war, further entrenches entitlements which create a class dependent on the dole, and interferes in the free marketplace so that the unemployed, and especially the young, gather no useful work experience because employers cannot afford to pay large numbers of them the minimum wage.

In keeping with this unlimited government philosophy, Ann Coulter now defends RomneyCare in Massachusetts on the grounds that government compulsion is quite American:

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.

To the likes of Ann Coulter, "government is" evidently means "government ought."

Nevermind that conscription was resisted and unsuccessful from the beginning of the country. Fewer than 9 percent of Civil Warriors were drafted. The vast majority were volunteers. And volunteers alone comprise our Armed Forces today and have since 1973.

No one is compelled to marry, only to fulfill certain basic requirements if they choose to. Those who remain single aren't obliged to get blood tests. And those who cohabit forego them entirely without fear of the blood test police knocking down their doors.

Yes "we" pay for public schools, that is, we who own property, but the non-propertied classes do not. But no one forced me to buy a house which is taxed to fund schools.

It's in our interests to comply with government which clearly secures our interests, which is why we support property laws which guarantee clear title and oppose shortcuts which undermine them, like the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, a colossal assault on the most basic of all rights we look to government to safeguard but hasn't.

We also expect government to regulate banking to protect the integrity of our savings and of our currency, but it has done neither.  

And no, I didn't have a six hour wait at the DMV. I mailed my check and got my driver's license renewal in the mail. So what if the picture is four years old? But my mother killed the neighbor's prize sow with a car when she was 16, and never drove again. From then until she died at the age of 93 no one forced her to stand in line at the DMV to get a license she would never need.

To hear Ann tell it, we might as well castrate and sell our young, or even eat them because these things were said to be the custom once upon a time, as adultery, incest and sodomy manifestly ever are:

Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.  -- John Locke

Is this the reason Ann Coulter is friendly with sodomites today? Because they exist? Or should Thomas Jefferson's advice to castrate sodomites carry more weight?

Did someone hit Ann Coulter with a rock? And is she now living under it? More than half of the country hates ObamaCare because it is compulsory.

The animus against compulsion is as old in America as the revolt against taxation without representation. And older still for refugees from religious compulsion.

If Ann Coulter were alive in 1776 with her present views she'd be a loyalist who would have ended up fleeing to Canada. And in 1861 she'd have gladly plunged the country into a war which killed hundreds of thousands of fathers and brothers because some South Carolinians killed a Union mule at Ft. Sumter.

Ann Coulter's way of thinking has a long pedigree. It's called tyranny.

The Answer: Because He's Going Golfing For The Rest Of His Life For Free

The Question: Why Is Obama So Calm Right Now?

Jonathan Cohn for The New Republic has a different answer, however, here:

"I keep thinking back to that email that circulated in late 2008, when Obama was behind in the polls. It had a picture of him speaking at the convention with the caption 'I’ve got this.' Part of me thinks he still does. And part of me doesn’t."

Meet Nemesis Jonathan, starting today.