A Third Federal Court Strikes Down Obama's Recess Appointments As Unconstitutional

Reported here:

A third federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Obama violated the Constitution last year when he made recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, adding more weight to the case as it goes before the Supreme Court in the justices’ next session.

Rep. Paul Ryan Hasn't Been Conservative On Immigration Since 1994

From Boston.com, here:

Ryan is hardly a newcomer to the issue. In 1994, when he worked with Kemp, he wrote a 4,000-word rebuttal to proponents of Proposition 187, the California ballot initiative that denied benefits to immigrants in the country illegally. He backed the immigration overhaul bill crafted by McCain and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., that nearly became law in 2007.

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The demographic problem of Baby Boomer retirement didn't yet exist in 1994 as it does now but Ryan was still in favor of cheap illegal labor for American business at the expense of legal citizen labor then. Paul Ryan is not a conservative and never has been. If he were, he would stand for the rule of law against the ineluctable fact of illegality.

That betrayal of the rule of law, now enshrined in the Senate immigration bill which gives legal status to law-breakers, is no different from Obama's selective enforcement of American law, which means his deliberate breaking of the law himself, from deportation rules to his own ObamaCare law and the now defunct DOMA.

They are all, Republican and Democrat alike, unfit to serve in their present positions, let alone in any future position. They are traitors to their own country and what it stood for but no longer does.

Spineless Republicans Cave On Cordray Nomination, CFPB Spying On Citizens

Republican Sens. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Susan Collins (Maine), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), John McCain (Ariz.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted with Democrats to confirm Cordray. ... Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee ... pointed out that Republicans want to replace Cordray's director position with a bipartisan “board of directors with staggered terms.” He also expressed concern over recent reports that the bureau is conducting “unprecedented data collection.” “The CFPB [Consumer Protection Financial Bureau] is collecting credit card data, bank account data, mortgage data and student loan data,” Crapo said ahead of the vote. “This ultimately allows the CFPB to monitor a consumer’s monthly spending habits.”

More here, if you need to puke.

Sen. Harry Reid wins.

So, George Zimmerman Was The Victim Of A Hate Crime . . .

. . . because Trayvon Martin picked a fight with what he thought was a homosexual rapist.

Video here.

There's Your Regular Run Of The Mill Cracker . . .

Jimmy Savile

. . . and then there's your pedophile cracker, affectionately known as the Crazy Ass Cracker.

Black Teens Assault Hispanic Man Shouting "This Is For Trayvon"

We're ALL Creepy Ass Crackers To Them

The Baltimore Sun reports here:

"They were just yelling and calling him names as they ran after him, but once they were hitting him and after that they started yelling, 'This is for Trayvon, [expletive],'" said Dudley, who heard the chant repeated multiple times.

Do Nothing Congress Increases Revenue, Spends Less

So says Molly Ball, here:

But the ironic thing is that, by virtue of its very do-nothingness, the do-nothing Congress got a big thing done. First, in the fiscal-cliff deal struck around the new year, wealthy Americans’ income-tax rates went up, a policy change long sought by the president and his party. Then, in March, the budget ax known as sequestration fell, chopping $1 trillion from federal spending over the next decade—a cherished goal for fiscal conservatives. More revenue plus less spending equals a lower deficit. A much lower one. Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimates that these changes, combined with the domestic-spending caps imposed by the 2011 debt-ceiling deal (and counting savings on interest), will reduce the deficit by $3.99 trillion through 2023. That’s enough to stabilize the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio, meaning that the debt will no longer be growing faster than the U.S. economy. In short, the deficit has been tamed.

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She doesn't mention that both ideas were Obama's. Funny, Obama doesn't mention it either.

"House Republicans are doing the people’s business by obstructing"

So says Jerry Shenk for PennLive.com here:

Reacting to Democratic overreach, American voters chose gridlock over “productivity” by awarding Republicans the House of Representatives following the 2010 mid-term tsunami and preserving their majority in 2012. House Republicans are doing the people’s business by obstructing the ambitions of President Obama and Washington Democrats.

Just 6% Think Immigration Reform Is Our Number One Issue

"barking up the wrong tree"

So reported Bloomberg a week ago, here:

In a June 1-4 Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans named either the economy or employment and jobs as the No. 1 issue facing the U.S., while 6 percent said immigration topped their list of concerns.

The Swiss Overwhelmingly Want To Be Home Owners But Aren't

And the famous Robert Shiller really doesn't care, here:

Consider Switzerland, which by several accounts has had one of the lowest rates of homeownership in the developed world. In 2010, only 36.8 percent of Swiss homes housed an owner-occupant; in the United States that same year, the rate was 66.5 percent. Yet Switzerland is doing just fine, with a gross domestic product that is 4 percent higher, per capita, than that of the United States, according to 2011 figures produced at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s not that the Swiss inherently prefer renting. A 1996 survey asked a sample of Swiss whether, if they could freely choose, they would rather be homeowners or renters. Eighty-three percent said homeowners.

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To hell with what people want, right? Just keep property values so high only the likes of David Niven, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Tina Turner can afford to own there.

Krauthammer On Big Sis' Resignation: "Her Record Was The Underwear Didn't Explode"

Here.

The Price Of Gas Is 147% Higher Than It Was 11 Years Ago

The price of gasoline today is 147% higher than it was eleven years ago, but the CPI is up just 29.15%, May on May, 2002 to 2013 (latest available figures). So gasoline in Grand Rapids in July 2002 at $1.51 per gallon adjusted for inflation measured on "all items" arguably should be just $2.13/gallon today.

Instead gasoline's cheapest price today in GR is $3.73/gallon, 147% higher than in 2002.

What, oil companies weren't making a profit eleven years ago?

How A Good Central Banker Is Supposed To Behave

not like this under Greenspan and Bernanke

David Merkel, here:

A good central bank fights the politics of the nation of which it is a part and tries to preserve purchasing power, ignoring labor unemployment. It tries to be a paper "gold standard." That has not been the Fed for 25+ years.

Bernanke Contradicts Himself

So says Jeffrey Snider, here:

Chairman Bernanke stole the show yesterday, certainly by his accommodative and now contradictory stand. I suppose that is the danger in trying to talk “markets” toward “targets”, much like Greenspan in the late 1990’s. Toward that end, he made at least one prediction that will likely come true (in sharp contrast to the Fed’s history), namely that the unemployment rate understates the weakness in the jobs market. ... As to the potential for tapering, that has always been about the rock and the hard place; the rock being asset bubbles in housing, credit and, yes, stocks vs. the hard place of lackluster, at best, economic performance. Given the problems of real time economic tracking and the dubious record of ferbus and other econometric models in use it would make sense that the FOMC appears to subscribe to each and every possible outcome concurrently. The committee both backs the accommodative approach (employment might be weaker than indicated) and the taper approach (things are getting much better) all at the same time.

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Still, it's an odd way to behave if you are being shown the door in a few months.

Rep. Cantor Divines New Founding Principle Which Just Happens To Lead To Dream Act

Here:

"One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents."

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Well, if anyone should know about founding principles, it's Eric Cantor:

"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." -- Exodus 20:5

Bernanke Reverses Himself With More "Accommodation", Tanks Dollar Over 2%

Someone must have found out something about The Bernank. Was it with the help of the NSA? In May bald Ben broached the topic of tapering just two days after Obama effectively fired him by saying Ben had been at the Fed too long just like Mueller has been too long at the FBI (a total slap in the face to Ben), and when Ben doubled down on the tapering again in June to show that he was really serious opinion broadly ridiculed him. Bonds took it in the shorts, and savers lost a lot of money. Now he's completely reversed himself all of a sudden, stocks are flying to new heights and the dollar erases its gains. He's either a manic depressive, or Obama's got something on the guy.

Obama Thinks He's King James II

Michael W. McConnell of Stanford Law School and the Hoover Institution says as much, here:

President Obama's decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.

Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.

This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II's use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that "the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal."

To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.

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I'd say rather that this episode raises grave concerns about Obama's commitment to the role of the executive in our system of government. He understands it well enough, and wants to dispense with it. We therefore should dispense with him.

Yep, That Could Be Obama's Boy Alright

"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

The (Loser) Republican Establishment Is Behind Immigration Amnesty, Not Conservatives

The newest ad campaign supporting the immigration amnesty bill from the US Senate is from American Action Network, according to the Chicago Tribune, here:

“This is the tough border security America needs,” said the television ad, the first to specifically target the House from American Action Network, whose Hispanic Leadership Network has sought to educate lawmakers about immigration. It notes that the surge is supported by conservative leaders, including what is essentially a who’s who of potential 2016 presidential contenders: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the former vice presidential nominee. The ad will run nationally in prime time this week on the Fox News channel.

The founders of American Action Network are Fred Malek of Nixon administration Bureau of Labor Statistics "Jewish cabal" infamy and ex-Democrat Norm Coleman, who lost his US Senate seat to that formidable foe, Stuart Smalley. The sister organization to the Network is American Action Forum headed by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, of losing John McCain campaign fame. Evidently Messrs. Rubio, Bush and Ryan don't mind it one bit being mixed up with these retreads, but then again, Rep. Ryan knows all about hooking up with losers.

Malek managed the losing reelection campaign of Pres. George Herbert Walker Bush, and was co-chair of the John McCain presidential campaign finance committee. Oh yeah. In a civil fraud action brought by the SEC in 2003 Malek reportedly paid a personal fine of $100,000. Unlike President Obama, Malek has denied having any taste whatsoever for barbecued dog.

Obama And NSA Are The Equivalent Of The Stalinist Stasi, But Globalized

So says Daniel Ellsberg, here:

[Edward Snowden] found that he was working for a surveillance organization whose all-consuming intent, he told the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, was “on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.” It was, in effect, a global expansion of the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security in the Stalinist “German Democratic Republic,” whose goal was “to know everything.” But the cellphones, fiber-optic cables, personal computers and Internet traffic the NSA accesses did not exist in the Stasi’s heyday. ... What he has given us is our best chance — if we respond to his information and his challenge — to rescue ourselves from out-of-control surveillance that shifts all practical power to the executive branch and its intelligence agencies: a United Stasi of America.

Temporary Employment Is No Worse Today Than Before ObamaCare

Temporary employment is lower today than it was at its peaks in 2000, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Temporary employment is no worse today than before ObamaCare.

Peak was 2.767 million in October 2006, and crashed below 1.8 million in the panic of 2008-2009.

The level of temporary employment today is 2.689 million. You could almost call that a recovery, and almost a full one.

Update: Oh yeah. You could almost call it a leading indicator of coming recession, too.

Forbes Contributor John Goodman Uses "Reactionary" Like A Marxist

John Goodman, here:

"[T]he topic du jour on the left these days is inequality. By inequality they mean inequality of income. And they want government to do something about it. ... [W]hy are intellectuals on the left so obsessed with money inequality instead of the inequality of life’s blessings that people value much more? Certainly in their own lives they don’t act as though money is the most important value. They’re all writers and professors when they could have earned a lot more by getting a law degree or an MBA. I believe the answer is that they are reactionaries. They’re living in the past."

Well, when else would the topic du jour be du jour if not "these days", hm? And if advocates of classical liberalism like Goodman aren't reactionaries by his own definition, I don't know who is:

"Throughout the entire 20th century, what did the left consider its intellectual rival? Classical liberalism. That was the political philosophy of our founding fathers. It was classical liberalism that eliminated slavery from the civilized world, gave us women’s suffrage, and extended economic and political freedom to people all over the globe. The contrast between these two worldviews could not be more stark. The classical liberals believed the state should be the servant of free men. The 20th century left believed that men should serve the state. The results are in. The 20th century was the century of economic instability, depression and war. The 19th century was the century of price stability, economic growth and relative international peace. The 20th century was the century of dictatorship and genocide on an unimaginable scale ― with 125 million people killed by their own governments! The 19th century was a century of liberation and increasing personal freedom."

The problem with our side in these discussions is that we continue to accept the redefinition of the categories foisted upon us by a victorious left. It was the Marxists who successfully made "reactionary" into a dirty word, despite attempts like Paul Elmer More's in the early 20th century to steal that weapon from the Marxist arsenal aimed against us. What the continued use of the term "reactionary" in the perjorative sense by the right shows is that the right, for all its vindication by experience, evinces a shared world view with the left which is mistaken, and because it is mistaken is impotent in face of the challenges facing the West.

The hostile pose of the present toward the past means it can never really accept anything from it, and perhaps more to the point can and will therefore be deceived by the promise of the future. As long as people believe that human nature can be changed for the better, that its progress is inevitable, and that arrangements to check it are no longer necessary, they will no doubt face as they have before a future brotherhood of man as fraught with fratricide as any past we have ever experienced. Worldviews are not imposed from above, they spring from the inner conception of the self, and unfortunately for us, the prevailing inner conception remains servile, not free. If we cannot throw off this illusion of the present, we are doomed to be ruled by others instead of by ourselves.

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"Look over the whole creation, and you shall see, that the bond or cement, that holds together all the parts of this great and glorious fabrick, is gratitude."

-- Robert South

Did We Really Lose 240,000 Full Time Jobs Between May and June Due To ObamaCare?

That's what all the organs of political opposition to Obama and ObamaCare are saying in the wake of Friday's unemployment report.

Investors Business Daily is an example, here:

"It's even worse when you consider all of the net addition to June jobs - repeat, all - were part time. Compared with the 360,000 part-time positions created, full-time employment shrank by 240,000. Year to date, only 130,000 full-time jobs have been added to our economy. The rest of the jobs - 557,000 - have been part time. ... The No. 1 culprit, though, is ObamaCare. The added costs this monstrous piece of legislation has imposed on employers of full-time workers encourages them to hire only part-timers, who get few benefits and no health care."

That is a very one-sided presentation of the "facts", cherry-picked from the seasonally-adjusted numbers from the government's models of what's happening. The seasonally-adjusted chart of full-time for 2013 to date, for example, clearly shows a sudden 240,000 decline in full-time jobs. But the chart of the government's own raw full-time data for 2013 to date, clearly shows that full-time is up well over 3 million jobs for the first half of the year, not "130,000" as Investors Business Daily says. This chart also shows that the current level of full-time is over 1.2 million higher than the seasonally-adjusted model says it is, and that instead of a month over month decline in full-time of 240,000 jobs, we've just experienced an increase of 757,000 full-time jobs in June.

Why the discrepancy? The model anticipates events based on past history which may or may not occur. A case in point is modeling auto manufacturing jobs in the summer, which I think is what the 240,000 drop in the chart is all about. This is anticipatory, an expectation of plant shut downs this summer for retooling, which may or may not occur. The model tries to anticipate these events based on past history. But given strong demand for autos recently I'm guessing the shut downs may not materialize to the extent the model expects them to, introducing more noise into the seasonally-adjusted chart as the summer unfolds. At any rate, I say the chart is already noisy for this reason and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I say stick with the raw data, and chill out with political rhetoric.

Wall Street Journal Falsely Blames Part-Time For Economic Reasons On ObamaCare

"Imagine how much better [the US labor market] might do if ObamaCare weren't encouraging employers to hire so many part-time workers", crows The Wall Street Journal here in "Part-Time America" by Steve Moore, the lead story at Real Clear Markets this morning.

Too bad it's all a lie. I say "too bad" because I'd like to blame ObamaCare for everything that's wrong with the labor market, too, but it just isn't so. Employers aren't hiring "so many part-time workers" any more now than they were before ObamaCare was passed in March 2010, but you wouldn't know that from the charts presented in The Wall Street Journal because they don't go back before the recession began. The Journal is cherry-picking the data to show that the swings in the metric have been wild since ObamaCare passed. There's a reason for that. The long term charts show that the high level of part-time for economic reasons is an artifact of the recession, and has been trending lower ever so slowly since it ended. Equally disturbing is the Journal's attribution of a recent relatively small surge in the metric to ObamaCare when we've had much larger drops in the measure after the bill's passage. ObamaCare has had nothing to do with either, and it's transparently political to carp in this way. And it's embarrassing.

Print your story, Steve Moore, when part-time for economic reasons hits 9.5 or 10 million, and we'll talk then.

Mish Is Crazy For Saying "Massive Increase In Part Time" Due To ObamaCare

Mish says it here:

Digging under the surface, much of the drop in the unemployment rate over the past two years is nothing but a statistical mirage coupled with a massive increase in part-time jobs starting in October 2012 as a result of Obamacare legislation.

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But there has been no massive increase in part-time, whether due to ObamaCare or something else, which, by the way, passed in March 2010, not October 2012. The raw numbers are actually down from the beginning of 2010 before ObamaCare was passed. Is part-time down due to ObamaCare?

Part time not-seasonally-adjusted is lower than it was before ObamaCare

Measured with the government "model", part time is up since 2010, but you can't say massively so, as Mish does. The 300,000 to 400,000 increase in part time since the beginning of 2010 using this measure is a relatively modest variation given the wild swings in this category of a million or more.

What made this measure of part time decline for most of 2012? ObamaCare?

Frankly, I think Mish has a meme in his head which is not supported by the data and is just phoning it in. Well, he did just get re-married.

Sorry Zero Hedge, Full-Time Is Up 0.65% From May To June, Not Down

full-time government model is down a smidge

If you use the seasonally-adjusted government "model", you'll get a different result: full-time jobs down 0.21%. Big whoop, I weigh less too after I poop. That may be politically expedient to Zero Hedge, here, but the raw numbers paint a different picture of full-time employment increasing a little bit in the last month. Yeah, full-time employment remains in depression. That's obvious from either measure, but no one wants to say the truth because the truth is politically incorrect and saying it gets you marginalized as an extremist kook, a racist, or a political partisan. People who deny the truth are the kooks. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

full-time raw measure is up a little

Sorry Zero Hedge, Part Time Isn't Unequivocally At An All Time High

The high not-seasonally-adjusted was in early 2010

It's an axe to grind at Zero Hedge, here, that usually part-time is at an all time high. In the seasonally-adjusted category, it is. But not according to the raw not-seasonally-adjusted numbers.

What are you going to believe, the government's "model", or the raw numbers? 

Clearly it is politically expedient for Zero Hedge to follow the government model because it gives them something to say against the government today.

We don't need a number to say Obama sucks, who has sucked from the beginning when Zero Hedge voted for him and then kept on sucking.

The seasonally-adjusted high from early 2012 is now barely beaten

Gold/Oil Ratio Plummets To 11.75 On Rising Oil Prices, Surging Dollar

1212.70 divided by 103.22 = 11.75, another very strong technical buy signal for gold. But the signal is distorted by rising oil prices on Middle East instability because of the military coup in Egypt.

DoDoDoDo DoDoDoDo . . . Only 47% Of Adults Work Full Time

Sorry, the 47% just keeps turning up like a bad penny. Saw it again, here:

"Of the 144 million Americans employed last month, only 116 million were working full-time. Friday's report showed that 58.7% of the civilian adult population of 245 million was working last month. Only 47% of Americans, however, had a full-time job." 

June Unemployment Unchanged At 7.6%, 47% Of Jobs Added Year Over Year Low-Paying

Hm. There's that 47% again. I thought the answer to everything was 42.

June unemployment is unchanged at 7.6%, and the average addition to payrolls is now up to 182,000 per month year over year, or 2.18 million.

The biggest job gains have been in professional and business services with 579,000 job gains year over year, with low-paying administrative and support jobs comprising a net 316,100 of that year over year.

Leisure and hospitality jobs are up 505,000 year over year, with low-paying waiting tables and bartending jobs up a net 392,600 of that year over year.

Education and health services jobs are up 360,000 yoy, with 343,600 coming from the health care and social assistance category.

Low-paying retail trade jobs are up 307,500 yoy.

Construction jobs are up 183,000 yoy, while manufacturing is essentially flat with gains of just 33,000 yoy.

Finance, insurance and real estate jobs are up 114,000 yoy.

Hourly earnings are up 2.2% in the last year, so you now average $828 a week instead of $808.

So, arguably, at the very minimum in the last year 1.02 million of the 2.18 million jobs added are low-paying jobs, or 47% of them. Way to go, Brownie!

Full pdf here.

So When Will Obama Start Boasting He Just Delayed His Own Health Care Law Of The Land?

"I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message, ah, sort of, maybe in 2015"

After all, in 2010 Obama was boasting that health care reform was finally the law of the land:

"After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise," Obama said at an event after the signing ceremony at the Department of Interior. "It is the law of the land."

Funny how he doesn't like that law of the land enough now to let it go into effect come January 1, 2014.

Someone should make him eat a copy, all 418,779 words of it.

US Postal Service Photographed Fronts And Backs Of 160 Billion Pieces Of Mail In 2012

Yeah, but don't use a return address when you write to me.

No wonder the mail is so slow. Timely coverage of ongoing US government spying on American citizens' mail through both Mail Covers and MICT, from The New York Times, here:

[M]ail covers ... is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images. ... In a criminal complaint filed June 7 in Federal District Court in Eastern Texas, the F.B.I. said a postal investigator tracing the ricin letters was able to narrow the search to Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress in New Boston, Tex., by examining information from the front and back images of 60 pieces of mail scanned immediately before and after the tainted letters sent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bloomberg showing return addresses near her home. Ms. Richardson had originally accused her husband of mailing the letters, but investigators determined that he was at work during the time they were mailed. ... For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance program, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests. ... Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases. ... Officials in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, have used the mail-cover court rulings to justify the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as a mail cover. ... The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In May 2012, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, was awarded nearly $1 million by a federal judge after winning a lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his immigration raids in Arizona, who, among other things, obtained mail covers from the Postal Service to track her mail.

This Texas Senator's Democrat Supporters Threaten Pro-Lifers' Daughters With Rape

The contemporary face of violence, in or out of the womb

"Death threats, harassing emails and phone calls and calls for their daughters to be raped are among the hate targeted at pro-life lawmakers from the small contingent of abortion activists upset that Texas would consider banning abortions on babies at viability."

More here.

Inequality! Obama Delays ObamaCare Penalties For Big Business, But Not For You.

Time reports here:

The delay deprives the federal government of a year of penalties that would have been paid by companies that do not meet the law’s requirements, with as yet unknown budgetary effects. Republicans had warned of a downturn in hiring as a result of the mandate.

The so-called individual mandate is unaffected by the rule change. That provision requires the vast majority of Americans to purchase insurance or pay a penalty, with tax credits provided to those who can’t afford coverage.

Obama Exercises Blatant Arbitrary Rule, Naked Lawlessness

So said we, and so says Jeffrey Anderson for The Weekly Standard, here:

In a blatant exercise of arbitrary rule, the Obama administration announced this evening that it has unilaterally decided not to implement a key provision of Obamacare on schedule.  By law, Obamacare’s employer mandate — its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally sanctioned health insurance — should go into effect next year.  By executive fiat, it won’t go into effect until 2015.

In addition to being a naked display of lawlessness, this action is an embarrassing setback to the Obama administration and — more importantly — to President Obama’s centerpiece legislation.  More than three years after Obamacare’s passage — a passage marked by such shady backroom deals as the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid — the administration is now admitting it has failed to get Obamacare up and running on time.

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Anderson wants the Congress to delay the entire law, which certainly is the constitutional way of going about it, but the fact of the matter is the president is acting unconstitutionally and should be impeached, tried, convicted and removed from office for the two-bit petty tyrant that he is.

That's what Independence Day is all about.

Obama Suspends Part Of ObamaCare: Equality Under The Law? Try Arbitrary Rule.

We call it tyranny, and the tyrant must be removed from office.

Story here.

Lying Weasel DNI Clapper "Apologizes", But Not Really

What a contemptible, lying weasel coward. He sends a letter on June 21, and claims he was confused.

We don't pay Directors of National Intelligence to be confused. We pay them to be intelligent.

Story here and here.

Record Bond Outflows In June Nearly Double Old Record

The old record was set in 2008 with $42 billion extracted from bond funds and bond ETFs during the panic of October. Outflows in June 2013 now clock in just shy of $80 billion.

Story here:

The rush out of bonds could be about to get even worse, according to the research firm, which says that more bond investors could take flight after receiving their quarterly statements in the coming weeks, noticing that their "safe" bond funds are delivering losses instead of gains. ... TrimTabs call the liquidation "unprecedented" after indicating last Monday that bond outflows had already reached records with a figure of $47.2 billion. In just one extra week that number has risen to $79.8 billion which it says is reversing 73 percent of the $109.6 billion inflows seen earlier this year.

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It was clear on June 8 here that many bond investors were already then a month too late getting out.

Where GDP Goes To Die

Edward Snowden Visited Here Yesterday

Yeah, we had Kentucky Fried Chicken and watermelon, but then he had to go.

States Still Owe US Treasury $30 Billion For Jobless Benefits Borrowing

The story was reported here in May:

"For decades, states have been offering benefit checks to the unemployed for 26 weeks. During recessions, Congress typically steps in and offers extended benefits for up to 99 weeks. States are supposed to build up their unemployment accounts during good times by taxing employers, based on wages. But their tax rates vary. Prior to the recession, most states lowered taxes on employers. Between 1995 and 2005, 31 states reduced unemployment insurance taxes by at least 20 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. That brought contributions down to 0.65 percent of total wages from 2000 to 2009 — a record low, according to NELP [National Employment Law Project]. ...

"Thanks to the 2009 federal stimulus law, states were able to borrow money interest-free to make up their gaps. But now Washington wants its money back. States now owe the Treasury $29.8 billion. That amount has actually dropped from $37.3 billion back in November 2011. ... 

"Employers pay unemployment insurance taxes based on wages — but not all wages. The federal government requires states to tax only the first $7,000 in wages, a standard that hasn't increased in 30 years. Some states, such as Oregon and New Jersey, impose taxes on more than $30,000 worth of wages. But the national average is about $13,000."

Banks Are Not Foreclosing On Hundreds Of Thousands Of Mortgages Nationwide?

That's still the suspicion of Keith Jurow, here, who maintains that the numbers on Long Island alone continue to put 35% there seriously delinquent, and in Chicago, and probably other major metros, a similar percentage:

"What this means is that the Greater Chicago metro looks rather similar to the shocking situation in NYC and Long Island. Here is my simple conclusion: When the banks finally begin to take action on these delinquent owners in the NYC and Chicago metro areas, home prices will start to collapse.

"Is this situation also prevalent in other major metros? I'm working on that. Stay tuned."

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This state of affairs would seem to be the best explanation for continued Federal Reserve policies of near zero interest rates and quantitative easing, long after the panic of 2008. The housing crisis remains a banking crisis requiring extraordinary leniency toward banks to give them time to repair their balance sheets. The dead weight of non-performing mortgage loans remains the elephant in the American living room.

Richest Will Benefit From Immigration Bill While Poorest Will Suffer

So says CNBC's John Carney, here:

What the CBO does get right is that return on invested capital is likely to increase under the bill. What this means is that the richest members of the economy will benefit from the bill even as the poorest members suffer. It will act as a sort of anti-Rawlsian law, delivering the greatest benefit to the best-off in society. Inequality will grow under this law, rather than shrink.

Rep. Amash Changed His Position On DOMA In 2010: Another Failure Of Libertarian "Consistency"

A former supporter of The Defense of Marriage Act just like former Pres. Bill Clinton who signed the law, Rep. Amash changed his position on it in 2010 saying government has no business defining marriage, changing his position just as Bill Clinton has now changed his, regretting his former support of the law, as reported here:

Early on in his career in federal politics, Amash was a self-described strong supporter of DOMA, which, until Wednesday, barred federal recognition of lawful same-sex marriages. Sometime in 2010, his campaign website was tweaked to replace that assertion with a more libertarian stance.

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Rep. Amash should switch to the Democrat Party, and take Sen. Marco Rubio with him.

Sleeper Story Of The Day: Q1 GDP Revised DOWN To 1.8% From 2.4%

While everyone was fixated on Supreme Court rulings involving homosexuality, the third and final report of GDP for Q1 2013 got buried in the avalanche. A good place for it, too, seeing how bad it was.

The BEA reported here:

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 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013 (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month.  In the second estimate, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.  With the third estimate for the first quarter, the increase in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was less than previously estimated, and exports and imports are now estimated to have declined (for more information, see "Revisions" on page 3).

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Poor growth is entirely apropos to the situation. Preoccupied by our own narcissism, we aren't PRODUCING.

Gold Miners Starting To Look Attractive As Gold Tanks To $1,230

A relatively diversified precious metals industry fund like VGPMX is starting to look like an attractive investment. The fund NAV has now fallen to within 4% of its March 2009 low of $10.04, trading at $10.47 last night. As a stock fund, however, I would expect this fund to take a further beating in a real stock market correction, which we have not experienced in quite a long time. Overall we are today only 5% off the current highs by broad market measures. One should keep in mind that this fund had once fallen to nearly $5 back in 1998 just before the long gold bull began. So you could get sliced and diced by the falling knives to the tune of 50% in a coming correction if you invest in this fund at current prices. That said, revisiting the March 2009 low certainly would make this fund very tempting from the long term perspective, seeing that between March 2009 and the highs in 2011 the NAV increased over 180%. The fund has the potential to make you a lot of money (NAV+685% 1998-2007), or hand you your hat when it's done with you (NAV-75% 2007-2009). The NAV is down 63% since April 2011.

Vanguard Total Bond Index NAV Down 5.77% In 11 Months

Vanguard shows one year performance, May on May, at 0.75%.

The Senate Immigration Bill Has One Basic Problem: It's Too Christian

The Senate immigration bill has one basic problem: Its desire to make illegal aliens legal with the sweep of a hand.

Forgiveness is fine in church, but America isn't a theocracy, and Jesus Christ isn't its Lord, unless you are willing to make thought-adultery and a host of other sins crimes, and turning the other cheek and loving your enemies civic duties. Hate crime legislation is already one sign we've gone over the deep end into this sort of thinking. We're the Christian antitype of Sufi Iran.

Amnesty makes a mockery of the rest of immigration law and a mockery of those who have obeyed it both in the past and now, just as it did in 1986. It is cheap grace personified, the epitome of Protestantism gone off the rails.

Unceremoniously Shown The Door, Maybe Bernanke Is Doing This On Purpose

The 10 Year Treasury falls off the cliff on Jun. 19

It is well known from almost every speech given by Ben Bernanke that he views Fed policy much more modestly than most of us do. A recent example was his address to the Economic Club of New York in November (pdf here) in which he said once again that Fed policy is only one part of what must be gotten right to ensure economic recovery. Both the Congress and the Executive must cooperate in his view to produce tax and spending policies which will not jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States nor continue to grow the long term debt relative to GDP.

Having been unceremoniously shown the door by an ungrateful, ignorant and politically bellicose president on Monday, June 17th, it should come as no surprise that Bernanke reacted the way he did on Wednesday, June 19th, doubling down on the "taper talk" of May 22nd. No one in Congress nor The White House has taken Bernanke seriously about the urgency of the long term fiscal situation since the onset of the crisis, and if they are not going to take the bull by the horns despite his patience, Bernanke can well be understood to have given up, taken his accommodative ball and gone home.

I don't blame him one bit.

What's Worse? Frequent Financial Panics Over Quickly, Or A Long Great Depression?

Unfortunately, you won't read about the Federal Reserve's role in the run-up to the Great Depression from Roger Lowenstein's discussion of the creation of the Fed beginning on this date 100 years ago, here in The New York Times:

One of the plan’s most strident critics, Representative Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., the father of the aviator, predicted that the Federal Reserve Act would establish “the most gigantic trust on earth,” and that the Fed would become an economic dictator or, as he put it, an “invisible government by the money power.”

Savers know the dictator. Executive Order 6102 in April 1933 made them hand over their gold at $20.67 for an ounce only to learn in May the price per ounce was "raised" to $35. Savers now experience the same trick in a different form because they earn nothing for a lifetime of trouble due to ZIRP. It is not a coincidence that Lowenstein just leaves out the fact that one of the world's most gigantic busts occurred not 17 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve, just as it is not a coincidence that the current bust occurred not 10 years after Gramm-Leach-Bliley undid the banking reform of Glass-Steagall which had to be passed to fix what was wrong with Federal Reserve banking.

Particularly insidious is Lowenstein's use of the terms Fed "framers" and Fed "originalism" in discussing the Federal Reserve's origins, which had nothing to do with the framers of the constitution or the originalism which seeks to recover their lost ideas, ideas which were already long lost in 1913. Apparently those ideas still need to be killed.

Methinks the liberal doth protest too much of "ghosts".

David Gregory, NBC's Fascist Tool

During his interview with NBC's Gregory, Greenwald declined to discuss where Snowden was headed. That refusal seemed to prompt Gregory to ask: "To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?"

Story here.