August 2014: GAO report says Obama administration violated DoD Appropriations Act in Bergdahl prisoner swap, DoD also violated Antideficiency Act

Impeach the mofo.

Story.

Laugh of the Day: Christian Science Monitor suggests "alien invasion" could unite Americans, or "climate change"

Talk about being out of touch.

The latest invasion is on the way from Honduras as we speak and the last thing I expect to see is Democrats and Republicans unite to stop it.

Instead Democrats intend to welcome the invasion with open arms.

Here:

The parties could also unite to solve an overarching national goal. The problem here is, what? Absent an alien invasion requiring Americans to pull together, what goal would suffice? Some experts suggest climate change, but that would require Republicans to change position and favor more active intervention on the issue.

Donald Trump is a natural born citizen: His mother became a citizen four years before he was born

The Christian Science Monitor reported here last August:

'The couple had a son, Frederick, in New York City, in 1905. This was Donald Trump’s father. His birth in America, and subsequent automatic US citizenship, disproves rumors that The Donald is himself an “anchor baby” born to noncitizen US immigrants. ... In 1930, Fred Trump met a young Scot in New York on holiday, Mary MacLeod. They married in 1936. Born on the Isle of Lewis, Trump’s mother was proud of her Scottish heritage. Nevertheless, she became a US citizen on March 10, 1942.'

Wake up America: Russian Orthodox chaplains are embedded in most military units

Rebuilt starting in 1995, Stalin destroyed the original Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow in 1931

Reported here in The Christian Science Monitor:

'Not well known or understood in the West, the Russian Orthodox Church has been Russia's chief source of spiritual identity for most of its 1,000-year existence. Though it was nearly destroyed by the communists, it has since rebounded sharply to become once again the Kremlin's ideological bulwark.

'As that relationship has solidified, the church has also integrated with the military.  Russian media frequently run photos of priests blessing weaponry, including war planes, while Orthodox chaplains are embedded in most military units. And now, it is underscoring its enthusiastic backing for Russia's military intervention in Syria – a fight Father Chaplin dramatically describes as "a holy war against terrorism." ...

'About 70 percent of Russians identify themselves as Orthodox Christians.'

Flashback to Feb. 2012: Newt Gingrich was mocked and worse by Obama and company for saying $2.50 gas was possible, but it's happening right now

Newt, deservedly doin' The Mussolini

Obama called Gingrich's promise of $2.50/gallon gas a "phony election-year promise" in 2012 here. The White House spokesman lying shill Jay Carney chimed in calling it a lie, here. Pure projection syndrome.

Two and a half years later and everywhere across this country the price of gasoline is plummeting toward an average of $2.50 and lower because of the success of drill-baby-drill-fracking on private lands, and the Feds haven't had one damn thing to do with it.

The average price in Grand Rapids, Michigan, tonight is $2.539 with prices falling. Smart shoppers at Sam's Club here tonight can get gas for $2.469. Prices in many southern tier states of this great country are already paying well below $2.50, for example $2.20 in Texas City, TX, $2.25 in Memphis, TN, and $2.30 in West Monroe, LA. Go duck men, go.

Newt Gingrich was right. Obama and company are idiots.

Senate Dems Pull All-Nighter Talking Global Warming As Lake Michigan Posts All-Time High Ice Cover

The Christian Science Monitor reports here:

Twenty-eight Democrats and two left-leaning Independents, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his top lieutenants, are scheduled to speak in shifts until about 9 a.m. Tuesday. The event is not a filibuster, nor is it related to any legislation. The intent is to urge a divided Congress and nation to “wake up” on this issue.

Meanwhile Lake Michigan broke a record on Saturday for ice coverage at 93.29%, as reported here:

The National Weather Service says more than 93-percent of the lake was covered in ice on Saturday. A rapid build-up of ice came with a stretch of cold weather from late February into the first week of March. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory measured the ice cover at 93.29 percent. That's the most since record keeping started in 1973, breaking the record of 93.1 set in 1977.

Thank Former Reagan Bureaucrat David Stockman For Gestapo Tactics Of Today's Park Service

The Christian Science Monitor reports, here:

Under a 1981 memo by then-budget Director David Stockman, which is still in effect, the federal government in shutdown mode is allowed to keep policing and protecting “federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and other property owned by the United States.” Other essential services cannot be funded, however, including most of the primary mission of the Park Service: providing guidance and interpretation for visitors.

In that way, visitors coming into the parks could be seen as a distraction for rangers providing basic protection, land policy experts suggest.

Sen. Marco "Rube Goldberg" Rubio Thinks Fines On Illegals Will Pay For Border Security

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Quoted here:

“We need to register them as soon as possible, not just to keep the problem from getting worse, but we’re going to require them to pay a fine, and that’s the money that we are going to use to pay for the border security,” Rubio explained. “If we don’t get that fine money from the people that have violated our immigration laws, then the American taxpayer is going to have to pay for border security.”

Here's the most wildly optimistic estimate of total revenue from fees and fines on 11 million illegal aliens from The Christian Science Monitor: $2,000 per illegal over a decade. And good luck with that given all the work-arounds to fines and fees in the Senate bill. But, make the wild assumption you'll collect the full amount, and you get a paltry one time total of $22 billion.

The cost of security just on the Mexico border in 2012 was $11.7 billion according to BusinessWeek here. America is going to spend well north of $120 billion for border security over the next decade, and along comes Rubio telling us we need to flush the illegals out first before we secure the border in order to finance the security, otherwise the taxpayers will have to pay for it.

What a joke. We're going to pay for it anyway, big time.

In 2011 Republican Governor Rick Perry of Texas was quoted in The New York Times here saying a fence alone would cost $30 billion and a decade to build:

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, claiming superior experience as the leader of the state with 1,200 miles of the border, advocated a more complex strategy, combining fencing and surveillance technology with “a lot of boots on the ground.” Mr. Perry said that building a border-length fence would take “10 to 15 years and $30 billion” and would not be cost-effective.

Whatever the answer is to illegal immigration, the Senate amnesty-first bill ain't it.

Real Retail Sales Still Remain Below The 2006 Peak

Real retail sales still remain below the December 1, 2006 peak of $180.016 billion. The latest report of real retail sales for November 1, 2012 puts them at $178.51 billion.

Graph and data here.

We still remain in a consumption depression nearly six years since the onset despite extending the Bush tax cuts for two years beyond their original expiration date, and despite the first ever emergency reductions to the payroll tax, rolled back 32% for both 2011 and 2012 from 6.2% of each paycheck to 4.2%:

"[F]or the economy as a whole the payroll tax cut amounted to about $112 billion in 2012 – or the equivalent of at least $300 for each person in the US," reports the Christian Science Monitor, here.

Given the 100% propensity to spend everything in a paycheck, the expiration of the payroll tax cut will remove that sum from current retail spending levels. And going back to the Clinton era tax rates in less than two weeks, on January 1, 2013, will mean transferring about $235 billion annually from taxpayers to federal coffers, according the Congressional Budget Office, as discussed here.

Together that's a theoretical annual hit to spending by the American people of nearly $350 billion.

Yet Democrats cry Forward! to these tax rates of the past despite the damage they are likely to cause.

We're not going to get over the hump that way.

Libertarian Mish Is Happy Republican Mourdock Lost In Indiana

Mish is on the side of the Democrats, plain and simple, here, referencing a story at the Christian Science Monitor:

Yet this is what happens when views are too extreme. I am very pleased to report "'Red' Indiana sends Democrat to US Senate, as women fled Mourdock".

Of course Mish is happy the Democrat won in Indiana. Libertarians ran a spoiler candidate in that race to throw the race to the Democrat. When it comes down to it, social freedom is more important to libertarians than economic freedom. They cry "Freedom" all the while they mean only "License!"

Libertarians are not on the side of conservatives or Republicans. They are on the side of the Democrats, the party of death to the unborn, and soon the party of death to the elderly under ObamaCare, and eventually the party of death to the middle class, which will not long exist because of Obama.

The middle class stands in the way of the Alinskyites' real objective: the rich. Middle class people, after all, would like to be rich some day, too, not poor. So they must go first in order to get at the rich. If the middle class had any brains they'd understand that Obama's invective against the rich is primarily aimed at them because, compared to the poor, the middle class is rich. Unfortunately, they went to public schools. 

One thing at a time, making use of the useful idiots, the libertarians.

Both Romney And Obama Will Destroy The Economy By Destroying Housing

In November 2011 Romney told Hugh Hewitt, here, that it was not a good time to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction in view of the problems in the housing sector:

My own view is that the idea of limiting deductions in the way the Bowles-Simpson panel recommended makes a good deal of sense. I’d like to see us have lower tax rates, and have a broader base. And it sounds like their idea is looking for a way of doing that. I must admit, I don’t think that this is a great time to be eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction. We obviously have a lot of trouble in the housing sector right now, but I haven’t seen their proposal. It may work just fine, but I just haven’t seen it, so I wouldn’t want to comment on that. But the home mortgage interest deduction right now is something that I think we need to keep in place.

But by February 2012 it had become a good time to eliminate the deduction, at least for the rich, a position identical to Obama's, as noted here:

“In order to limit any impact on the deficit, because I do not want to add to the deficit, and also to make sure we continue to have progressivity in our tax code, I’m going to limit the deductions and exemptions, particularly for high-income folks,” Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, said.

Reiterated in April at a private fund-raiser as reported here, the idea suddenly had become toxic again, enough to merit walkbacks from his advisers, reported here:

Senior advisers to Mitt Romney said Monday that Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was merely tossing around ideas, not making policy announcements, when his chat with donors about some significant changes to the tax code was overheard by reporters at a fund-raiser this weekend.

When it comes to Mitt Romney, we all know that there's no there there on any number of issues. But it is especially disturbing that neither Romney nor Obama seem to grasp the scope of the damage their shared idea of eliminating the mortgage interest deduction for the wealthy would cause to the American economy.

Wayne Allyn Root explains, here:

If you think the housing market is in trouble now, wait until the home mortgage interest deduction is eliminated for upper income homeowners.

From Manhattan, Great Neck, and Scarsdale, to Boca Raton, Scottsdale, and Brentwood, home prices in upper class neighborhoods from coast to coast will drop by about 35% overnight. That 35% number is not a guess, it’s automatic.

Today, if you’re in the top bracket, you deduct 35% of your mortgage interest off your tax bill. If tomorrow you can’t, your home is worth about one third less.

That's how economics works.

Unless Obama manages to also raise the top income tax rate to 40%. Then, when you lose your mortgage deduction your home will drop by about 40% overnight. Can you imagine the carnage to the housing market if this happens?

Obama's economic theories just don't compute. He believes that if you take away more of rich people's income through tax increases, and take away their deductions so that the value of their net worth collapses, that will be good for the economy.

He thinks if you take away rich people's money, consumer spending will somehow increase. Even though the facts are that the top 2% of income earners produce over 30% of U.S. consumer spending, while the top 5% produce 40% of consumer spending.

Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, a tsunami wiping out values at the top end of the housing market can only swamp values at the low end.

Six years after the collapse in housing began, we still have no leadership on the most significant economic problem facing Americans at all income levels.

Dem. Sen. Patty Murray Is Willing To Throw Middle Class Under The Bus

Unless Sen. Murray and the Democrats get what they want, the middle class is indeed expendable.

All taxpayers would be punished by Democrats' unwillingness to compromise with Republicans, who were elected to get spending under control, but no one more so than those Americans who file at the bottom of the income ladder in the 10 percent bracket, if current tax rates are allowed to expire as the Democrats threaten. Those hapless souls at the bottom will have to pay in the 15 percent bracket in that event, a tax rate increase of 50 percent.

It is remarkable that Democrats are willing to punish the poor in this way if they can't punish the rich in theirs.

Republicans want current progressive tax rates for all taxpayers made permanent, but Democrats do not. In Democrats' opinion, the rich don't deserve to pay their currently much higher rates, but need to pay even higher ones to meet a definition of fair Democrats demand to write by themselves. Nevermind a tax increase of any kind anywhere in this economy will be negative for growth. As for the spending cuts, Democrats agreed to those in the face of a downgrade to America's bond rating, but they weren't enough, and the AAA rating went into the ashbin of history. If those cuts were going to be inadequate, why did Democrats vote for them, and why aren't they calling for steeper ones now in order to restore the country to AAA?

In France, new socialist government tax increases on the rich are driving the wealthy out of the country, taking their money with them to friendlier, lower-tax-rate neighbors, which will deprive France not only of the tax revenue, but of the investment capital.

Expect the same here if the Democrats get their way.

Here is Sen. Murray, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor:

With the US economy speeding toward a year-end fiscal cliff of some $560 billion in higher taxes and draconian spending cuts, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington bluntly laid out her party’s position on how Congress should handle the nation’s coming fiscal travails: Go big or go over the ledge.

“Millions of jobs could be lost through the automatic cuts, programs families depend on would be slashed irresponsibly across the board, and middle-class tax cuts would expire.  And once again, if Republicans won’t work with us on a balanced approach, we are not going to get a deal,” said Senator Murray,  the Senate’s No. 4 Democrat, in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Monday.

“[I]f we can’t get a good deal – a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share – then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013, rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus,” she said.

Rep. Amash, Other Opponents Of Spending, Cave To Avoid A Government Shutdown Crisis

 

 

The Tea Party in Congress is dead, if it were ever alive.

 

Its most ardent wannabes in the Congress have been now fully and completely co-opted by the Republican Party, which couldn't use a crisis to get what it wants if a Democrat spelled it out in an instruction manual. Republicans not only have no principles, they have no skills.

Republican opponents of increased government spending have caved in to a plan to avoid a government shutdown crisis and accept a continuing resolution of at least six months, enshrining spending at the high levels they formerly opposed.

The mood is not dissimilar to the banking panic period around the election of 2008, when Republicans caved in to TARP in order to get past the crisis. They got past it alright, and deservedly lost everything in the process.

The whole point now, they say, is to get past the danger the upcoming election represents, and the lame duck session, periods when government is most responsive to, and most dismissive of, politics, and it is politics which the so-called conservatives now fear. It doesn't occur to them that one of the rewards of an election is the free hand given to the winners to do the will of the people. Gov. Scott Walker's victories on behalf of the people of Wisconsin evidently mean nothing to them. Fear of a lame duck session is simply proof that so-called Tea Partiers in Congress don't have the courage of their convictions.

The election, on the contrary, is the perfect opportunity to crucify the Democrats on the issue of spending, and especially their intransigence on it. Nothing focuses the mind like when your job is on the line.

Well guess what, Republicans? Your job is on the line, too. And I have a keyboard, and an internet connection.

Instead of postponing the issue to next March, outrageous spending should be front and center in October when Americans spend a few days paying attention to it for once. Republicans obviously have no stomach for such fighting. But Democrats do, which is why they win.

Making Democrats take the fall for increased spending and taxes may be difficult work, but if you can't figure out how to do that, then quit, but don't piss down our necks and tell us it's rainin'.

The truth appears to be that the so-called conservatives can see the handwriting on the wall. They have a candidate for president who won't cut spending if elected because that candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney, thinks cutting spending would put the country into depression. So-called Tea Partiers in Congress evidently agree with this Keynesian analysis. They'd rather look like they support this absurdity for political ends than do the right thing for the country. They don't want to continue in lonely isolation under a Romney administration. And they certainly don't want to be held responsible for a depression.

In taking this step, the conservatives no longer deserve our support, or our respect.

It's just one more reason why alliance with the Republican Party is the kiss of death for conservatism.

The Christian Science Monitor has the story, including these excerpts, here:

In a bid to avoid a potential government shutdown, several of the House’s most conservative Republicans say they would be willing to go along with a six-month extension of government funding, which is currently set to run out at the end of September, at levels they’ve voted against in the past. ...

The idea is spearheaded by Sens. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, the most prominent tea party figure in Congress, and Lindsey Graham (R), South Carolina's senior senator. It was laid out in a letter signed by 20 Republicans to House and Senate GOP leaders on Wednesday. But support for the move is wider than the initial signatories: Even Rep. Justin Amash (R) of Michigan, who voted against the Republican budget proposal in March because he said it cut too little from government spending, said he would vote in favor.

And here's a little news flash for you: Lindsey Graham is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Tea Party, or a conservative.

As for Rep. Amash, I guess your precious "consistency" has its limits, eh Justin?

Sarkozy v. Hollande: Their Only Difference (Small) Is Height

UMPS!

As observed by a supporter of Le Pen, quoted here in The Christian Science Monitor:

In a fiery speech to thousands of supporters waving French flags, Le Pen slammed Sarkozy's rhetoric on the need to strengthen borders and maintain a clear national identity as pure theatrics and labelled him and Hollande as lackeys of the European Central Bank, IMF and European Commission.

"The French have started their emancipation," she said, scorning the mainstream parties, the UMP and PS, or Socialists, as an indistinguishable "UMPS" bloc.

"The UMPS will not succeed," she said. "All of their efforts cannot stop us growing and cannot block our path to power."

Mockery of the two remaining candidates was a common theme among Le Pen's supporters:

"Sarkozy and Hollande, they are exactly the same," said an 18-year-old who gave her name as Justine. "If there is a difference between the two it's their height."

US Exports 600,000 Barrels of Gasoline Per Day To Higher Priced Markets

So says this story in The Christian Science Monitor, which provides useful links to the data:

“I think it is simply disingenuous to think exports of gasoline are not a factor in the prices,” says Ben Brockwell, director of data marketing and information services at the Oil Price Information Service, which provides petroleum pricing and information to the oil industry. ...

Brockwell says gasoline exports, on a four week average, are now running 600,000 barrels a day compared to 200,000 barrels per day a year ago. ...

“Instinctively, I understand the API [American Petroleum Institute] not wanting the American public to know so much is exported and tied to high prices,” he says.

The export level of 0.6 million barrels per day represents more than 7 percent of current domestic consumption, according to Bloomberg here, which says gasoline usage is up to 8.28 million barrels per day from an historic low not matched since 2004:

U.S. gasoline demand rose 3.4 percent last week to 8.28 million barrels a day from a record low, MasterCard Inc. (MA) said.

The gain was the first in three weeks, according to MasterCard’s SpendingPulse report. The previous week’s consumption was 8.01 million, the lowest level in MasterCard data that began in July 2004.

Demand was 6.4 percent below the same week in 2011. It was the fifth week in a row that consumption dropped more than 5 percent from the year-earlier level.

Consumption is down because millions have no jobs to which to drive, nor income with which to buy the gasoline or the cars which need it. Total vehicle miles driven are again in decline back to 2009 depression levels.

Total vehicles in operation, though up in 2011, continue below the all time high reached in 2008 by about 1.5 million, according to RL Polk and Company here:

Here Come The Mexican Trucks

Unless Congress stops them by not ratifying the agreement.

Story here.

La Nina's Sudden Exit Three Months Ago Blamed For Brutal Tornado Season

Story here.

Confiscation of Your Retirement Funds is Unthinkable, Right?

Well, not in Europe, where private monies have already been taken by statist spendthrifts in Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland, according to this story in The Christian Science Monitor, originally posted at the Polish arm of The Ludwig von Mises Institute (here).

The same people greedy bastards in this country who brought you Obamacare are just as enthusiastic about taking your IRAs, 401Ks and the like, people like Democrat Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Political realities right now mean that the plan eyeing your savings will sit in some Democrat's desk until times change, just as Obamacare was really a bill long pre-dating him, sitting in Representative Henry Waxman's top drawer for over a decade until the moment was right.

The difference between liberals and Republicans in America is that liberals have a long term strategy to take over and transform the country, while so-called conservatives keep backing up, drawing new lines in the sand in a strategy of retreat, daring liberals to cross them, which they invariably do. The policies of these conservatives are offensive enough to liberals, but it is conservatives' cowardice which really inspires their contempt.

The failure to install gays in the military and Hillarycare in 1994 took 16 years to redress, but liberalism surely did so with its victories in 2010, overturning DADT and passing Obamacare.

Individual liberty, the foundation of which is in traditional values derived from revealed religion, has been under assault in America since the victory of Abraham Lincoln and the united States became the United States. The war between originalism and "a more perfect union" was decided long ago by force. The contemporary Republican Party will be a conservative party when it finally realizes this, but frankly, it doesn't have the nerve.

If Going Rogue Means Going Third Party, Obama's a Shoe-In in 2012

The failure of any other Republican save for Sarah Palin to generate enthusiasm among traditional Republican voters is one of the stupid facts of political life which wise party leadership would know how to exploit. Instead we have Michael Steele.

But Sarah had better not let it go to her head. If "Going Rogue" means she's open to going third party like Ross Perot or George Wallace or Patrick J. Buchanan, she's already finished, and so is the Republican Party, not to mention the cherished hopes of thousands of tea party members everywhere.

Sarah has the ability to unite both partisan and independent elements of the American electorate because her instinctive conservatism is economic, cultural and patriotic all at the same time, much as was Ronald Reagan's. But one important difference between them is that the Gipper spent years and years honing his message and his beliefs. And he could defend them, often eloquently.

Sarah will be successful in part to the extent that she can do the same. Her track record to date is mixed in this regard. She's already proven that she can hold her own with a glib old pol like Joe Biden, but the Katie Couric episode was a disaster. External events, however, can make a difference. And if the last twelve months are any indication, the country will be ready for a plain spoken, straight shooting family woman after four years of lies, damned lies, and (negative) statistics. As long as she's a Republican.

Patrik Jonsson writes "Sarah Palin will headline first-ever Tea Party Convention" at The Christian Science Monitor:

Almost 1-1/2 years since she shook up American politics with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is set to headline another landmark political event: the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn.

On its face, the gig would seem a step down for Ms. Palin, one of conservative America’s most popular and polarizing figures (not to mention major thorn in the side of the Obama White House).

But with an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll ranking a generic “Tea Party” as more popular than either Democrats or Republicans, and Palin herself rivaling the charming Mr. Obama in poll popularity, many experts see the Tea Party event as a potential milestone for a mounting, even transformational, force in US politics. ...

[T]he Nashville event is not about chartering a new political party to represent conservative ideals like low taxes and states’ rights, but more about unifying to take on “Obama, Pelosi and Reid this year,” writes Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, one of many Tea Party groups and the lead sponsor of a convention that will feature conservative firebrands such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota.

Already, tea-colored races are appearing around the country, including the looming matchup between Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (seen as Republican Lite by many conservatives) and Cuban-American conservative Marco Rubio, who has gotten the stamp of approval by Tea Party folks.

To read the rest of the story, go here.