Commentary Magazine Defends Reagan's Liberalism

Peter Wehner, here:

"[I]magine the Norquist and Shirley standard being applied to Reagan in the 1970s. If Jeb Bush’s comments unleashed heated attacks, even given his sterling anti-tax record, think about what Reagan’s support for unprecedented tax increases–including higher taxes on top rates, sales taxes, bank and corporate taxes, and the inheritance tax–would have elicited. The Gipper would have been accused of being a RINO, a pseudo-conservative, unprincipled, and a member of the loathsome Establishment. Fortunately for Reagan (and for America) the temptation to turn conservatism into a rigid ideology was not as strong then than it is now."

Let's face it.

Reagan was a Democrat in recovery who brought a substantial number of Democrats in recovery to the Republican Party, where they met fellow liberals with whom they could forge an alliance around the liberalism bequeathed to them by Wilson and FDR, without the communist fellow traveling. Conservatives got pushed to the side, or taken for a ride.

Reagan defended the welfare state but on a scaled back basis with emphasis on less reliance on government and lower income taxes. The New Deal was not scaled back, nor was The Great Society. Even the ramped up Cold War to defeat the Soviets was interventionist and therefore arguably anti-conservative in its basic impulse. The resulting glorification of the US military would horrify the founders who feared them as instruments of tyranny in the hands of an American Caesar.

And now here we are with an enlarged welfare state in OBAMACARE, and actually having a public kerfuffle about an administration which resisted abjuring the use of said military on American soil to snuff out people it and it alone decides are a threat. You know, like gun owners. Are we really supposed to be charmed by the likes of the Krauthammers of the world who insist what Obama has been doing is entirely consistent with the model of Abraham Lincoln who put fellow Americans Confederates to death based on a private interpretation of the constitution?

Nothing's changed, except for the worse. His truth keeps marching on.

Another Observer Notices The Broken Link Between The Monetary Base And Markets

Kopin Tan, who otherwise believes the Fed has been juicing markets, for Barron's, here:

"[W]hile the Fed tripled its balance sheet, not all that money gushed through to the real economy—one reason why inflation is just 2%—as banks funneled the money to mend their balance sheets, corporations hoarded cash, and Americans paid off loans and saved more.

"Between 1960 and 1999, ratcheting up the supply of money often directly lifted stock prices. In the 1970s, for instance, stocks' annual returns were 70% correlated to the growth in money supply. But that link has recently broken down: year-over-year growth in money supply slowed in 2009 and 2012, but stocks rallied in both of those years."

John Hussman Warns Correlation Is Not Causation

Here in "Two Myths and a Legend":

'This first myth is embodied in statements like “since 2009, there has been an 85% correlation between the monetary base and the S&P 500” – not recognizing that the correlation of any two data series will be nearly perfect if they are both rising diagonally. As I noted last week, since 2009 there has also been 94% correlation between the price of beer in Iceland and the S&P 500. Alas, the correlation between the monetary base and the S&P 500 has been only 9% since 2000, and ditto for the price of beer in Iceland (though beer prices and the monetary base have been correlated 99% since then). Correlation is only an interesting statistic if two series show an overlap in their cyclical ups and downs. ...

'In the case of quantitative easing, much of what we observe as “causality” actually runs the wrong way. Market declines cause QE in the first place, and the result is a partial recovery of those declines.'

Depression In Oil Consumption Continued In 2012 At 18.56 million Barrels Per Day

US Petroleum Consumption '80-'11, eia.gov

Reuters had the story here on Feb. 27:

Oil demand for the year was at 18.56 million bpd, down 2.08 percent compared with 2011, with petroleum use falling in every month in 2012 except May.

Consumption in 2011 was 18.95 million bpd according to the Energy Information Administration, here.

Peak consumption was in 2005 at 20.8 million bpd, so 2012 is still 10.8% off the high reached eight years ago.

Consumption in 2012 is almost equivalent to consumption in 1997 when it stood at 18.6 million bpd.

The decline in 2008 to 17.06 million bpd represented a decline in petroleum consumption of a whopping 18%.

TSA Feels Up Claire McCaskill, Senator Upset

Story here.

Airports, where even the senators get treated like criminals by the TSA. But in that case the TSA would be right.

Corporations Have Been Considered Persons Since At Least 1775

And not only have corporations been considered persons since at least 1775, the original 13 American Colonies were considered corporations who like individuals subject to their king also owed everything to him.

To wit, one Samuel Johnson, harmless drudge, in "Taxation No Tyranny" (1775) here:

An English colony is a number of persons, to whom the king grants a charter, permitting them to settle in some distant country, and enabling them to constitute a corporation enjoying such powers as the charter grants, to be administered in such forms as the charter prescribes. As a corporation, they make laws for themselves; but as a corporation, subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that authority they continue subject. ...

To their charters the colonies owe, like other corporations, their political existence. The solemnities of legislation, the administration of justice, the security of property, are all bestowed upon them by the royal grant. Without their charter, there would be no power among them, by which any law could be made, or duties enjoined; any debt recovered, or criminal punished. ...

It is, say the American advocates, the natural distinction of a freeman, and the legal privilege of an Englishman, that he is able to call his possessions his own, that he can sit secure in the enjoyment of inheritance or acquisition, that his house is fortified by the law, and that nothing can be taken from him but by his own consent. This consent is given for every man by his representative in parliament. The Americans, unrepresented, cannot consent to English taxations, as a corporation, and they will not consent, as individuals. ...

A corporation is considered, in law, as an individual, and can no more extend its own immunities, than a man can, by his own choice, assume dignities or titles. ...

That corporations, constituted by favour, and existing by sufferance, should dare to prohibit commerce with their native country, and threaten individuals by infamy, and societies with, at least, suspension of amity, for daring to be more obedient to government than themselves, is a degree of insolence which not only deserves to be punished, but of which the punishment is loudly demanded by the order of life and the peace of nations.

So in one sense the American revolution was a throwing-off of the corporate yoke and the deliberate breaking of a business contract the terms and conditions of which had fallen into dispute, with the added overlay of political philosophy lately inclined to view monarchy as tyranny.

And we thought crony capitalism was a late invention of fascist Italy when America was actually born of it.

New Food Stamp Record Set In December 2012: 47.79 Million Americans

Libertarian Mish Apologizes For Spelling "Dike" "Dyke"

Gee, that's a first. Of all the misspellt wurds on Mike Shedlock's improbably famous blog which he has never apologized for let alone corrected, and they are LEGION, he not only apologizes for this one, but corrects it. As I've pointed out over and over again, people who can't spell are dangerous.

Libertarians would not be caught dead offending dykes, but the rest of us English-spelling-Nazis have to take it, well, like men! 

Here in "Not Enough Fingers to Contain the Leak in the Dike":

"Apologies for originally misspelling dike as dyke. It was not intentional. I rushed a post, heading out the door for a party."

Dykes everywhere agree: there are never enough fingers.

Nancy Pelosi: Let's Make Elections Less Important!

The anti-democratic Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi strikes another blow against that sorry thing, the American voter, here:

“All of us come here to get a job done for the American people, and certainly that is the case with the president of the United States,” Pelosi told CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley. “I think that these meetings are not something to say, ‘Well, I’ll do this with you now and do that with them later.’ I think it is, ‘Let’s get some things done together to make elections less important.’”

Elections with less importance are elections which are easier to win. You know, as in if the election isn't that important, we don't really need your votes. Which is just voter suppression of the opposition. Damn straight she'll get her side out.

Democrats. Always trying to impose their vision:

"We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit." -- Nancy Pelosi, March 2010, here

And Bill Kristol says worrying about tyranny is kooky.

Jeb Bush doth protest too much.

Jeb Bush appears on five or six shows on Sunday and accuses the media of being obsessed with politics.

Uh huh.

Only Kooky People Say America Is Hurtling Toward Tyranny

So says, who else?, Bill Kristol, here:

"On the other hand, Paul’s political genius strikes us as very much of the short-term variety. Will it ultimately serve him well to be the spokesman for the Code Pink faction of the Republican party? How much staying power is there in a political stance that requires waxing semihysterical about the imminent threat of Obama-ordered drone strikes against Americans sitting in cafés? And as for the other Republican senators who rushed to the floor to cheer Paul on, won’t they soon be entertaining second thoughts? Is patting Rand Paul on the back for his fearmongering a plausible path to the presidency for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz? Is embracing kookiness a winning strategy for the Republican party? We doubt it. ...

"And while Obama’s a bad president, and America’s got many problems, it isn’t, as Paul sometimes seemed to suggest, hurtling towards tyranny."

A substantial part of the English speaking world in 1776, notably in America itself, found the following sentiments from the Declaration of Independence equally hyperbolic:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. ... In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

It's good to know who's the loyalist, and who the patriot.

Rep. Amash Is A Fake Conservative

Rep. Amash is getting increasingly bold in his use of code words which show that he is a fake conservative. I think he's triangulating in this way in order to get ready for a Senate run.

He stresses "independence" to distance himself from the Republican brand discredited among the young and to find support among people who thus vote Democrat by default.

He stresses "moderation" to distance himself from conservative social issues which are increasingly viewed as extreme, rebranding them as "federal" issues to escape criticism from the Christian right.

The past has nothing to teach us, especially "positions that were popular in the 1990s". Will he soon repudiate the Two State Solution? I'm sure that will please voters in Dearborn.

"Individual liberty" is code for moral license, which includes same sex marriage and legalized drugs, flying under the banner of states rights.

And perhaps most importantly, what better way to get some street cred with Democrats and liberals than to play the race card against Sen. John McCain? A wise man might have let the senator simply self-destruct. But an ambitious, grasping man, on the other hand, sees an opportunity in piling on. Who is the has-been Sen. McCain to the lowly Rep. Amash, anyway? Wouldn't Justin Amash be happier in the Democrat Party where race is at the center of politics? That's where libertarianism comes from, after all. Success to libertarians is defeating Republicans, and taking over the Republican Party and not the Democrat Party from which they came. When's the last time a libertarian defeated a Democrat, anyhow? But in 2012 libertarians gloried in defeating a number of Republicans.

If Republicans were smart they'd wise up and realize they have a little fifth column problem. But they won't. They're the stupid party, after all.

February Unemployment Rate Drops To 7.7%

The full BLS report is here in pdf.

The official number of the unemployed has dropped from 12.8 million a year ago to 12.0 million in February 2013.

Multiple job-holding is up 4.5% year over year. Full-time with an additional part-time job is up 10% year over year. Part-time with another part-time job is up 5.6% year over year.

Total non-farm employment remains 3 million off the January 2008 peak of 138 million even though today the country is larger by 11 million souls.

The depression in employment continues.

Sen. Lindsey Graham Must Be A Prophet: He Is The Wrong Guy

The prophet, Sen. "Illegal Alien" Grahamnesty, speaks, here:

“If I can’t go have dinner with the president of the United States to talk about the problems that face our nation, I shouldn’t be running,” Mr. Graham said. “If you want to elect me and for me to promise you I’ll never talk to any Democrats or to the president about solving our problems, you’re voting for the wrong guy.”

For all his faults, Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster over the drone threat to America was right, and Sen. Graham's and Sen. McCain's opposition to it was wrong.

While Sen. Paul was on the Senate floor doing his job, his Republican colleague squishes were yucking it up with Obama.

FoxBusiness Is Full Of Baloney About The Monetary Base

Throughout 2007, when the stock market reached its previous all time high in October of that year, the adjusted monetary base of the United States was very stable and averaged just $851 billion.

During the financial crisis month of September 2008, however, the base leaped up from that vicinity between September 10th and September 24th to $949 billion, and by Thanksgiving 2008 had skyrocketed all the way to $1.5 trillion, near which level it remained even as late as March 2009, when the stock market plummeted to its historic lows since 2002-2003.

The increase in the monetary base was a whopping $718 billion, most of it in response to bank failures and panic on Wall Street during a narrow window of two months in the fall of 2008, but the stock market tanked 56% from the October 2007 highs anyway by the following spring.

Now FoxBusiness is arguing, here, that the increase in the monetary base from March 2009 to today, $1.3 trillion, is somehow responsible for "juicing" the stock market's remarkable 134% rise since that low.

Nevermind the stable and relatively low monetary base had nothing to do with the 2007 highs, nor did the rapid expansion of the base by $718 billion forestall the dramatic collapse of the market in 2009, but FoxBusiness wants you to believe anyway that piling up the monetary base since March 2009 by $1.3 trillion is the reason the stock market is at its lofty heights today, $11.2 trillion higher in total market cap than in March 2009.

That's embarrassingly wrong. The expansion of the monetary base has been irrelevant to the stock market, but it is an important part of keeping the banking system solvent, which is what this entire episode has been about but no one really wants to discuss anymore even as the velocity of money makes new lows, for the obvious reason that if the banks go under, everything goes under, so ixnay on the anksbay, OK?

This Is Obama's Driver For Jobs

Rush Limbaugh Still Blames The Republican Base, Not The Candidate

Here, yesterday:

"That's why we're losing, 'cause we keep nominating moderates.  You know, Mitt Romney is one of the most decent men ever to run for the presidency in my lifetime, and probably in many people's lifetimes, a totally decent guy.  But four million Republicans didn't vote in 2012.  Four million fewer than did in 2008.  The Republican conservative base stayed home.  Had they voted, we wouldn't be talking about Obama's second term.  There wouldn't be one."

Why blame conservatives for not voting for liberals, Rush?

The margin of victory wasn't 4 million. McCain lost the election in the swing states, by 1.4 million votes. Romney cut that in half, losing by 770,000 votes.

If anyone is to blame, it's the libertarians, the followers of Ron Paul and Sean Hannity, who were not on board, not the conservatives. And we haven't heard one conservative pundit say so yet even though libertarians were responsible for big losses for Republicans in Senate and House races in 2012. 

Have FoxBusiness And EMAC Gone Just A Little Bit Nuts?

Elizabeth MacDonald writes here that FoxBusiness has proof, proof!, that the Fed is juicing the markets.

Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?

We're supposed to believe that the value of the total stock market is up $11.2 trillion since March 2009 because the Federal Reserve expanded the monetary base by . . . $1.2 trillion during that time?!

Talk about a money multiplier. That's a ratio of 9.3:1. Obviously the Congress should get us on this program right away. They could have taken our nearly $3 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund and turned it into $28 trillion by now. Pikers.

Between Sequester Cuts And Payroll Tax Hike, Expect 41% Hit To Nominal GDP

Between the sequester spending cuts and the payroll tax rate going back up by 2 percentage points, I'm expecting a decline in nominal GDP of as much as 41%.

The sequester cuts come to $85 billion.

The payroll tax hike will remove conservatively $96 billion from American paychecks. Based on payrolls in 2011 of $6,239 billion, about $1,459 billion was exempt from Social Security taxation. Taking 2% of the remaining $4,780 billion yields a payroll tax hike of $95.6 billion using 2011 payrolls, the last available from SocialSecurity.gov.

Nominal GDP increased between October 2008 and October 2012 by $1,769.5 billion. That's been an average of $442 billion a year, nominal, over the last four years.

Subtracting the sequester cuts and the payroll tax increase (conservatively $181 billion) from that means cutting nominal GDP by about 41%.

Radiation Conditions Near The Fukushima Reactors Almost 2 Years Since The Accident

Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) here provides a useful summary of daily radiation conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex.

A series of 8 monitoring posts recently measured an average air radiation level of just over 5 microsieverts per hour along the perimeter from north to west to the south end of the facility.

On March 4, 2013, the level in the air at the west gate was measured at 6 microsieverts per hour.

At the main gate, the level increased to 20 microsieverts per hour.

On the south side of the main building for the power station, the level leaped to 200 microsieverts per hour, varying little throughout the day, between 191-201 microsieverts per hour. Working at that last location outside for 8 hours a day for just under 4 days would give an American a typical ANNUAL dose of radiation.

Radiation In Namie Town, Japan, Almost 2 Years After Fukushima Meltdowns

The pdf of the latest readings of radiation in the areas surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (marked with an X on the map inset) may be viewed here.

Namie Town remains the hardest hit with one startling sampling point as high as 21.1 microsieverts/hour, which totals to about 185 millisieverts/year. Normal there is 1 millisievert/year.

Americans typically get about 6 millisieverts/year from all sources environmental, travel- and medical-related. In a long lifetime of 80 years one wouldn't accumulate 500 millisieverts, but in Namie you could have theoretically already come close to that if you had stayed there for the two years since the accident because the levels were much higher in the immediate aftermath. 

The Bush/Obama Depression In Electricity Consumption

Between 1990 and 2000, US electricity consumption per capita grew at a rate of almost 17%.

But since then, between 2000 and 2010, electricity consumption actually FELL at a rate of 2% despite growth in population at a rate of nearly 10%.

By 2010, consumption was still 2.3% below the 2005 peak achieved under George W. Bush.

The trend is probably due mostly to the transfer of manufacturing capacity to China, and to some extent to energy efficiency efforts in the US.

Meanwhile in China, the decade of the 1990s witnessed growth in electricity consumption per capita of 94%, and in the decade to 2010 of 196%. Overall, since 1990 Chinese growth in electricity consumption has outstripped the US growth rate by 33 times.

The House Should Pass A CR Of $2.983 Trillion And Drive The Blade Home

Now that Republicans have Democrats off balance with a small spending cut, the up-coming vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year presents an opportunity to drive the blade home.

I propose going back to the status quo ante in 2008 when outlays were at $2.983 trillion, and freezing spending at that level until revenues have in fact caught up. In 2013 revenues are estimated to be just under that level, at $2.902 trillion.

Since it was Democrats who abandoned the statutory budget process after 2009 and funded the government through continuing resolutions at the new much higher level laid down that year, nearly 18% higher in 2009 than in 2008, two can play at that game.

If Democrats in the Senate, and Obama, don't like the new diet of $249 billion a month, they can say no and be responsible for shutting down the government.

Just don't telegraph the plan. Keep Democrats off balance as before, demanding Senate action on a budget. We all know they won't pass one, and when they don't, just pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at the last second and adjourn. The procedure will probably have to be done monthly, and probably indefinitely.

There will be wailing, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Table of federal receipts and outlays here. 

Barack Obama: Chester The Sequester Taxpayer Molester

According to The Des Moines Register here, Pres. Obama told two of its editors just two weeks before the 2012 election that he was COUNTING ON the sequestration cuts which he now says are going to hurt middle class Americans, and that he was COUNTING ON the expiration of the Bush tax rates, in tandem "to implode the partisan gridlock" referred to by his interlocutor at The Register (full transcript at the link), to which the following was part of the reply by the president:

"In the short term, the good news is that there’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it?

"So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit -- but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business."

In other words, Obama said he was counting on the sequestration gambit and the expiration of the Bush tax rates gambit to accomplish his "balanced approach", which is tax rate increases combined with spending cuts "to reduce the deficit". Notice how he likes "force" especially when he can distance himself from it, and how that force can impose an ideological conclusion for which he otherwise is reticent to take responsibility. The man isn't really up to being the tyrant.

President Obama all along has wanted this sequestration event to occur, and any tax increase he could get along with it. The forced spending cut idea was his idea from the beginning according to Bob Woodward, but Obama could only welcome the forced expiration of the Bush tax rates idea. He's just sorry he was not the author of it. As it turned out, he got some tax increases on the rich in the year end tax deal ($60 billion annually), but more importantly he got the reset of the Social Security payroll tax ON EVERYBODY without so much as a shot being fired by anyone in Washington. The latter comes to about $100 billion annually. Add in a few spending cuts now on the backs of all these people he's been parading as victims, and Obama is as happy as a clam.

Yes, some of the American people are being actually molested by the president's policies, but they just don't know who the perp is because the creep can make himself invisible. Unfortunately for them, because they are mostly denizens of government, private sector Americans who have been living in greatly reduced circumstances for four years now because of Obama's on-going depression just aren't sympathetic to their plight.

The trouble is, neither is Obama.

I Know! Let's Get The Sequestration Cuts From The Banks!

In an editorial on February 20th, here (which has caused quite the hubbub), Bloomberg.com maintained that most big banks are not profitable because their preferred rate to borrow from the government amounts to a gift roughly equal to their stated profits:

The top five banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. - - account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits . . .. In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry -- with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy -- would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.

No one seems to be inquiring too deeply, however, why the banks are not profitable without continuing massive taxpayer support ($83 billion annually -- remind you of anything beginning with the letter "s" and starting today?).

Gee, could it be because of all those bad mortgages on and off the books which are not performing and cutting into their capital? Ya think?

And maybe, just maybe, the Fed's policies are trying to repair this one thing only, while telling us it's to help with employment, housing, the stock market even, blah, blah, blah, pissing down our backs and tellin' us it's rainin'?

If this were really a free market economy with a private banking industry, we'd have had the equivalent of $85 billion in sequestration spending cuts for years already by not subsidizing these losers.

And another thing we wouldn't have is these big banks. They would have failed already.

Warren Buffett, Amoral Crony Capitalist, Bought An Indulgence From The Left

So says Daniel Mitchell of The Cato Institute, here:

"If you’re an amoral person with political connections, it’s possible to make a lot of money.

"Warren Buffett lined his pockets by making a government-subsidized investment in Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis.

"The rest of us suffered and he got richer, but the left seems to be okay with that perverse form of redistribution because he supports class-warfare tax hikes. Sort of like buying an indulgence in the Middle Ages."

I really like that analogy with the church because it speaks to the failure of all idealist conceptions to deliver on what they promise. This is as true of socialism as it is of capitalism, of fascism as it is of Christianity. All offer a promised land which never seems to arrive, but you have to ask yourself who thought this stuff up.

Like beer to Homer Simpson, it is we who are the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems.

The Founders Got Many Things Wrong, Especially The Role Of Their Own Rationalism

Here:

"American politicians and those who serve them think that they’re ducks, and although they aren’t, they are likely to continue to quack ideologically. [I]t is doubtful that a non-ideological politics, which emphasizes both the limitations and the necessity of political activity—the need for real consensus, the need to address actual not 'potential' problems, etc.—could succeed in the United States."

Not to mention the rise of political factionalism, the declining influence of religion and morality, and the power of parchment.

Even In September 2009 Obama Showed He Didn't Understand The Size Of The Country

From his speech to Congress, here:

"First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have."

Well, what if you are not among those "hundreds of millions", eh? Then you are out of luck in his mind, evidently. Who could he possibly be referring to?

It is customary to speak of tens of millions when speaking of up to 100 million.

It is customary to speak of a couple hundred million when speaking of up to 200 million.

It is customary to speak of a few hundred million when speaking of up to 300 million.

But "hundreds of millions" refers to far more than 300 million, especially if you are not lucky enough to be among them. By analogy with 100 million, you could be speaking of up to 1,000 million. That's 1 billion for those of you in Rio Linda.

Anyway, all those extra people in the "hundreds of millions" category must be those people you didn't know about from the 57 states Obama says he visited during the campaign "with one left to go", not counting Alaska and Hawaii! Densely populated states, those in excess of the 50 states, they must have been, too, which begs the question why he hadn't visited them yet!

The US population at the time of the speech was about 307 million. So by September of 2009, seven months after having been sworn in, Obama had had plenty of time to figure out the size of the country, but he hadn't.

The guy's a moron, and you know it. He wasn't even "learning on the job". Toking on the job is more like it.

Rep. Maxine Waters Is A Complete Moron, Just Like Rep. Hank Johnson

Rep. Maxine Waters obviously has no idea about the size and scope of the American working population. She states here that 170 million jobs will be lost if tomorrow's spending cuts go through.

If you simply check here, you'll discover that there are fewer than 152 million Americans working at all jobs as far as the Social Security Administration is concerned. Pretty shocking for an elected US representative not to know that, and pretty shocking that she thinks we'll all be without jobs in an instant because of a puny spending cut. By her reckoning, the WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY will become unemployed tomorrow because we cut 2% from federal spending. Even more shocking is it that this gets reported with a straight face. But then you remember that we have a congressman from Atlanta who thinks Guam might tip over if we station too many troops on one side of it, the estimable Rep. Johnson.

Second Estimate Of Q4 2012 GDP Revised Up To 0.1%

The BEA reports here, with the big takeaway that the average upward revision of 0.5 utterly failed to materialize this time, meaning the economy is really in the toilet already in the fourth quarter, pre-Social Security tax rate resumption, pre-tax increase on the rich, pre-ObamaCare taxes starting to kick in, etc., etc., the economy having hit a huge brick wall after Q3 GDP of a more respectable 3.1%:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, real GDP declined 0.1 percent. The upward revision to the percent change in real GDP is smaller than the average revision from the advance to second estimate of 0.5 percentage point. While today’s release has revised the direction of change in real GDP, the general picture of the economy for the fourth quarter remains largely the same as what was presented last month . . ..

If Only Rush Limbaugh Were This Right Every Day

Yesterday, here:

"But the one thing that the Republicans are reluctant to try is draw the contrast with what liberalism is, what Obamaism is, what his intentions are.  They do not effectively make the case for the alternative. ... There's a big move on now to just totally eliminate any concern over the social issues whatsoever, because we gotta save the economy.  The economy is where your kids' future is, the grandkids' future.  And that's exactly right.  But all this stuff is interlinked. 

"Social issues and economic issues are linked by something, and it's called morality.  And it's morality that's missing here, and while Obama runs around and claims the country was founded immorally and unjustly, the truth of the matter is that they're doing everything they can to eliminate morality.  There are no guardrails. There are no limits.  And there will be no judgments.  Nobody has the right to say something is wrong.  Nobody has the right anymore to say something is right.  Nobody has the right to say something shouldn't happen because it's destructive and detrimental.  You don't have that right.  Who you love, who you want to live with, how you want to live, where you want to get your money from the government for a job, it's nobody else's business. 

"And so morality is being eliminated, and this country was founded on the basis of it.  This country was founded on the premise that if morality is ever eliminated, this country can't exist as it was founded."

“Human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” -- President John Adams

AP Story On Auto Delinquencies Gets Peak Wrong, TransUnion Doesn't Seem To Care

The AP story here, "Late Auto Payment Rose in the Fourth Quarter: TransUnion", was picked up and dutifully reproduced at at least 900 websites containing the error "The national late-payment rate on auto loans peaked in the first three months of 2000 at 2.39 percent, the firm said":

The rate of auto loans with payments late by 60 days or more was 0.41 percent in the last three months of 2012. That's up from 0.38 percent in the previous quarter, but down from 0.46 percent a year earlier, TransUnion said.

Turek noted that the company always sees a slight uptick in the auto loan delinquency rate during the fourth quarter. The financial pressures of holiday shopping can lead some borrowers to delay or skip a loan payment — a dynamic that also leads to higher late-payment rates for credit cards and home loans.

Even so, the fourth quarter's late-payment rate remained near the lowest rate on TransUnion's records going back to 1999. That record-low rate, 0.33 percent, was recorded in the second quarter of last year.

The national late-payment rate on auto loans peaked in the first three months of 2000 at 2.39 percent, the firm said.

If the firm said that, I'd be very surprised.

Turek in 2010 previously stated, here, that the peak was in late 2008, at 0.86%, which is 160% higher than the all time low on TransUnion's scale:

"The good news is that TransUnion expects national auto delinquency rates to continue to be well below the peak of 0.86 percent -- a rate experienced during the heart of the recession in the fourth quarter of 2008."

TransUnion's own graphic shows that the scale of the national rate is measured in tenths and hundreths of a percent, while the scale measuring the worst delinquencies in the worst of times in the worst states doesn't even reach as high as 1.80%:

So something is really amiss with the AP story.

Separately, a story here from March 2011 indicates that auto loan delinquencies, measured using a different scale but with a similar difference between highs and lows in the neighborhood of 160%, were never higher than in 2008-2009, which rules out the year 2000 for worst year in modern times for auto loan delinquencies:

From late 2008 through 2009, dealers and consumers found themselves in the midst of the worst credit crisis in modern US history. Lending activity froze, thus limiting dealers’ ability to finance their inventories and provide consumers access to auto loans. With unemployment rising and home foreclosures breaking records during this time, auto loan delinquencies peaked as well. Normally, seriously delinquent (90-plus days past due) auto loans represent between 4% and 7% of outstanding auto loans. In the fourth quarter of 2008, however, such loans totaled $8.5 billion and 13.9% of outstanding auto loans. In the first quarter of 2009 that share climbed to a historic high of 15.9%. Fortunately for the auto-sales industry, delinquencies, in value and percentage terms, rapidly declined during the second half of 2010.

Messages left with two different individuals in TransUnion's media relations department in Chicago yesterday seeking confirmation of the AP story remain unanswered at this hour. 

Republicans Come Out To Publicly Oppose CA Prop 8

From The New York Times, here, the following Republicans have added their names to a brief opposing the 7 million people of California who passed the 2008 ballot proposition 8 defining marriage as between a man and a woman:

Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general under Mr. Bush;

Meg Whitman, who supported Proposition 8 when she ran for California governor;

Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York;

Stephen J. Hadley, a Bush national security adviser;

Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary to Mr. Bush;

James B. Comey, a top Bush Justice Department official;

David A. Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s first budget director;

Deborah Pryce, a former member of the House Republican leadership from Ohio who is retired from Congress;

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor, who favored civil unions but opposed same-sex marriage during his 2012 presidential bid;

Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey;

William Weld and Jane Swift, both former governors of Massachusetts;

Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who came out as gay several years ago;

Steve Schmidt, senior adviser to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona;

Seth P. Waxman, a former solicitor general in the administration of President Bill Clinton;

Reginald Brown, who served in the Bush White House Counsel’s Office.

I didn't leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me.

Four Republican Chump Senators Vote To Confirm Hagel

Story here:

The vote was 58-41, with four Republicans joining the Democrats in backing the contentious choice. Hagel's only GOP support came from former colleagues

Thad Cochran of Mississippi,

Dick Shelby of Alabama ...

Mike Johanns of Nebraska ... 

and Rand Paul of Kentucky. ...

[Other] Republicans ... challenged Hagel about a May 2012 study that he co-authored for the advocacy group Global Zero, which called for an 80 percent reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons and the eventual elimination of all the world's nuclear arms.

These men just voted to let a Republican take the blame for dismantling the American military.

They are not on our side.

Secretary Of State John Kerry Causes 11 Letter Pile-Up Between Kyrgyzstan And Kazakhstan, Causing Kyrzakhstan

The former senator from Massachusetts was not seriously injured in the accident, physically.

Story here.

h/t Chris

Retirement Investments Hit New High In Q3 2012: $19.4 Trillion

The Investment Company Institute has all the data, here.

The old high, before the financial crisis, was reached in 2007 at the level of $17.8 trillion. In 2008 the level of total retirement investments in all categories slipped to a total of $14.1 trillion, a decline of almost 21% as the stock market tanked.

By the end of 2010, however, all the losses were recouped as the level bested 2007 at $17.9 trillion. In 2011 the level climbed again, to $18.0 trillion.

The latest reading in Q3 2012 puts all retirement assets at $19.4 trillion, 9% higher than in 2007, not quite five years on.

The biggest pile of dough, $5.3 trillion, remains in Individual Retirement Accounts, followed by Defined Contribution Plans like 401k accounts, with $5.0 trillion.

Roughly 50% of the American population is not participating in this recovery of retirement accounts because they have nothing in stocks, which under Obama have posted their 4th best performance since World War Two. More precisely, the percentage is probably quite a bit higher than that since just 37% of the stock market is owned by "households", while banks own about 32% of the stock market, the two biggest players if "households" really meant retail investors like mom and pops. It doesn't. But that's another story.

h/t Bloomberg, RushLimbaugh

125 Million Americans Are "Close To The Edge Of Ruin"

Story here:

"Nearly a quarter, 24 percent, admit to having more debt on plastic than money in the bank, while 16 percent say they have neither credit card debt nor savings. That puts 40 percent of the population close to the edge of ruin while everyone else seems to be sitting pretty."

(The Three Stooges, "An Ache In Every Stake", 1941, here)

Obama Favors A Jim Crow Law

So says Dean Kalahar, here:

The precursor to the modern minimum wage law began in 1931 with the Davis Bacon Act; which allowed whites to discriminate against blacks in the workplace because it protected the wages of unionized white construction workers from competition with black workers. Stunningly, this remnant of Jim Crow is still on the books. The first federal minimum-wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938 under FDR.

Fast forward to today where President Obama asked for the minimum wage to be increased to $9.00 hour in his State of the Union Address. Let's get this straight; the first African American President of the United States advocates a Jim Crow law that increases unemployment to the very low skilled young minorities he claims he wants to help? When did a wage of zero become more of a "fair share" than a job and opportunity? That's just a shameful irony, Machiavellian politics, or shear [sic] ignorance.

Or maybe that's Obama's white half talking.

New York's Puritan Mayor Bans 2-Liter Pop With Pizza Deliveries

Story here.

It used to be conservatism and reaction which in 1950 were said not  to exist as real ideas but only as mere actions or irritable mental gestures. Now it's liberalism and progressivism occupying that role, but without actually resembling ideas. They represent emotions instead, usually of revulsion, especially for people who are fat, or of shame, especially for holding otherwise intelligent opinions critical of other people's culture, way of life and religion.

Rep. Justin Amash Is Poison For The GOP

Once again Rep. Justin Amash illustrates that he's not really a Republican. It's really hard to say what he is, actually. Who knows, maybe he's a Martian. His loyalties obviously lie elsewhere than with the Republican Party. Whatever he is, it's not a team player.

Consider that if it were really true, as he claims below, that the Republicans weren't really serious about any alternatives to the sequester, why would that be anything but good except for the political lying part, seeing that the sequester will force some real cuts to spending? I gather he's against those cuts because they aren't really real cuts because baseline budgeting increases spending automatically and we're just reducing the increase not the net spending year over year, or . . . they just aren't big enough cuts, kind of like voting to defund Planned Parenthood wasn't good enough because the bill didn't defund everyone like Planned Parenthood, so just vote to continue funding the nation's largest abortion provider. Interesting Republicanism.

Here he was at mlive: 

"They've been throwing this at the Democrats, saying we [Republicans] put two proposals on the table to replace the sequester," Amash told the gathering of 75-plus constituents at Gaines Township Hall. "No, we haven't."

The effect of this was nothing more than a poke in the eye to all Republicans, whom he'll never persuade if he keeps acting like that in public. God knows he'll never persuade Democrats in Congress. At some point you just have to shrug your shoulders at Rep. Justin Amash. He won't play nice and he can't persuade anybody, so . . .  what? We elected him so he could go to Washington and just play in the big Congressional sandbox?

Surely there's a good ole country boy up there somewhere on Capitol Hill who can talk some sense into the child. But somehow I think it's going to take more than talk to adjust his attitude.

The Banks Own 32% Of The Stock Market, Households 37%

This Bank of America chart from July 2012 seen here shows bank ownership of the equity markets at 32% in Q1 2012, a stunning number rivalling the household sector's share of 37%. In 1950 households (an elastic category including much more than simply retail investors) held roughly 90% of the market in their hands (admittedly far fewer retail investors than today, but that's another story).

So you've got to ask yourself why ultra cheap loans to banks by the Federal Reserve have gone into markets in such spectacular fashion? To help them recapitalize after the housing implosion, that's why. Banks can't make money the old fashioned way anymore because the owners' equity of household real estate of consumers is down to about 45% (it had sunk as low as 39% in 2010 and 2011), a decline of over 45% since 1950. Think cash-out-refis at artificially low interest rates and HELOCS and the housing market collapse. The banks are left holding the bag, or the Feds are, on 5 million repossessed properties in the last seven years, leaving a huge capital hole in their off-balance-sheet balance sheets. Having plundered John Q. Public by selling him the rope he hung himself with (HELOC reform 1986 Tax Reform, Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 2-Year Rule on Sale of Principal Residence, Repeal of Glass-Steagall 1999), the government-banking cartel has had to look elsewhere for profits. They're finding them.

Care to buy stocks?