Friday, March 23, 2018
Republican spending bill re-empowers agencies, not just courts, to decide if someone is competent to buy a gun or possess one
Reported here:
Unfortunately, the spending bill passed Thursday allows the ban to be reinstituted because it reauthorizes the 2007 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act. This act allowed government agencies, not just the courts, to determine if someone is mentally incompetent to buy or possess a gun.
House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said during testimony late Wednesday that he was “disturbed” that the bill would undo part of Republicans’ good work. But by Thursday morning, the House leadership had decided to go ahead with the measure.
Despite the name Fix-NICS, the bill is likely to cause more problems than it is worth.
Nancy Pelosi is quite content for Trump to think he's getting his wall, and urges him to sign the spending bill
Quoted here:
". . . if you want to think you're getting a wall, you just think it and sign the bill."
Spending bill is a giant FU to Trump, prevents him from using any of the new border wall prototypes
Reported here:
But, crucially, the bill specifically prevents the Trump administration from using any of the new wall designs it commissioned and tested in California last year. All money has to be spent on “operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017” — a bill Trump signed on May 5, 2017.
If President Trump cared less about his wall than about a wall, this wouldn’t be an issue. But everything we know about the president indicates that’s not the case, and that this is a blow to his ego — he reportedly upbraided congressional Republicans this week for not supporting it, claiming they “owed” him for his support for the tax bill and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The bullying tactics do not appear to have worked. ...
Trump wanted 1,000 new ICE agents; he’s getting barely 100, and none of them are the field agents responsible for arresting unauthorized immigrants. (Instead, ICE is getting more staff for investigations and mission support.)
And when it comes to immigration detention, Congress isn’t just refusing to give the White House the 20 percent increase in detention Trump asked for — it’s rebuking ICE for overspending and expecting Congress to bail it out.
h/t Mickey Kaus
Jobs Americans won't do: Ruthlessly efficient Hungarian soldiers, prisoners, unemployed built 110 mile razor wire border fence in mere weeks for $80 million
Reuters, dateline Sarok, Hungary, Sept. 23, 2015:
Built in a matter of weeks by soldiers, prison laborers and cadres of the unemployed, a vast new wall along Balkan frontiers is a monument to the ruthless efficiency with which Prime Minister Viktor Orban has mobilized Hungary against migrants. ...
While Europe dithered over a collective response, Hungary took matters into its own hands, shutting off the route with a new fence along its entire 175 km (110 mile) border with Serbia, topped with razor wire and guarded by helmeted riot police.
It was erected at a cost of 22 billion forints (about $80 million), a rare example of efficiency in a country which built its last underground metro line ten years behind schedule at triple the projected cost.
The government says it put the military in charge of the construction so that it could act more quickly. By swiftly mobilizing state resources, the authorities also managed to turn the fence into a national project, immensely popular at home even as it is denounced by European partners. ...
In just days since it shut the Serbian frontier, Hungary has already moved even faster to shut the border with Croatia, which is inside the European Union but outside the Schengen zone.
A 41-kilometre temporary fence was thrown up within four days. Work is already underway on a permanent barrier, with machines clearing the land, fence posts driven into the ground and razor wire rolled out.
Equivalent cost for 2,000 mile US southern border wall using soldiers, prisoners and the unemployed for labor: $1.45 billion. Actual US estimates of the cost run north of $20 billion and of the timeline to complete many years.
Where there's a will, there's a way, but we obviously don't have the will, or the imagination, Trump included.
Senate passes massive spending bill in the middle of the night, sends it to Trump
CNBC reports here:
The Senate passed a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill in the early morning hours of Friday, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.
Congress approved the more than 2,200-page legislation swiftly with a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline looming. The plan was released only Wednesday night. The House approved the bill Thursday afternoon by a 256-167 vote with bipartisan backing. ...
[Trump] reportedly threatened to veto it days ago, but tweeted his support for it Wednesday night after a discussion with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. ...
It would put $1.57 billion in new funding toward fencing along the border with Mexico and border security technology such as aircraft and sensors. Trump had sought billions more in funding for a physical barrier on the border after he promised to build a wall as a candidate.
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Limbaugh predicts the omnibus spending bill will make Trumpists go wobbly
Well, they should since it's a total betrayal.
Republican profligates happy to spend an obscene $1.3 trillion, but none of it on The Wall
Fully-funding The Wall would come to just 1.7% of this gargantuan spending bomb. Republicans don't give a damn about border security, so I no longer give a damn about Republicans. Our new country isn't going to be great.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Facebook users have only themselves to blame
Bloomberg, here:
Reporters were calling this a breach, but it wasn’t, because users freely signed away their own data and that of their friends. The rules were clear, and Facebook followed them.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Laugh of the Day 3.0: Facebook outraged it was deceived!
Outraged, I tell you.
From the story here:
Facebook said Tuesday that CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and their teams were "working around the clock to get all the facts and take the appropriate action moving forward" regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
"The entire company is outraged we were deceived," Facebook added. "We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information and will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens."
Obama campaign 2012 hoovered up Facebook data too, but was lauded for it
So says Investor's Business Daily, here:
In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.
According to a July 2012 MIT Technology Review article, when you installed the app, "it said it would grab information about my friends: their birth dates, locations, and 'likes.' "
The campaign boasted that more than a million people downloaded the app, which, given an average friend-list size of 190, means that as many as 190 million had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent.
If anything, Facebook made it easy for Obama to do so. A former campaign director, Carol Davidsen, tweeted that "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized that was what we were doing."
More at the link.
Laugh of the Day 2.0: "Stepford wives cost me the election"
 |
| Joanna stabs "Bobbie" |
Hide the knives, folks, Hillary's on the hunt!
FedEx package screening fails, bomb in shipment headed to Austin explodes at San Antonio sorting center
The story is here but is stupid for focusing on race and Donald Trump's supposed lack of an adequate response. The victims of the tripwire bomb were white.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Laugh of the Day: Constituent asks Long Island Dem. Representative "What's the Second Amendment?"
New York values, folks.
From the story here:
Rep. Tom Suozzi made the remark to constituents at a town hall last week, saying that folks opposed to Trump might resort to the “Second Amendment.” “It’s really a matter of putting public pressure on the president,” Suozzi said in a newly released video of the March 12 talk in Huntington. “This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would you do? What would we do?”
A listener then blurts out, “What’s the Second Amendment?” The left-leaning Democrat says, “The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms.” The spectators laughed — some nervously. Republicans were not amused.
Joe diGenova is joining the Trump legal team
Joe long predicted Hillary would be indicted because the FBI had too many good people in it for it to turn out otherwise.
It turned out otherwise.
The story is here.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Obviously Trump softened his anti-immigration positions in August 2016 after Bannon took over because that's what the data analytics told them to do
Trump turned on a dime in August 2016 after Bannon assumed leadership and it immediately got him in hot water with his core supporters after the Hannity Town Hall in Arizona. But it didn't matter to Trump. Trump knew that was the way to broaden his base because most Americans are forgiving and morally weak, supporting amnesty for the DACA "children". It didn't hurt, either, that softening those positions dovetailed with the libertarianism of the Mercers and their money. Trump was telegraphing to the libertarian money men of the Republican Party that he was in fact "flexible".
There's no there there, folks.
And there's no Wall, either, only a snake (remember the story of the snake?) who is willing to bite by trading a DACA amnesty for The Wall.
The Christopher Wylie story is fascinating but isn't really bombshell news: Ted Cruz used the same firm Wylie worked for
The really hysterically funny thing about it all, once again, is how Facebook and its millions of idiot users are the real chumps.
From the story here:
. . . Wylie offers a unique, worm’s-eye view of the events of 2016. Of how Facebook was hijacked, repurposed to become a theatre of war: how it became a launchpad for what seems to be an extraordinary attack on the US’s democratic process.
Wylie oversaw what may have been the first critical breach. Aged 24, while studying for a PhD in fashion trend forecasting, he came up with a plan to harvest the Facebook profiles of millions of people in the US, and to use their private and personal information to create sophisticated psychological and political profiles. And then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup.
“We ‘broke’ Facebook,” he says.
And he did it on behalf of his new boss, Steve Bannon.
“Is it fair to say you ‘hacked’ Facebook?” I ask him one night.
He hesitates. “I’ll point out that I assumed it was entirely legal and above board.”
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Friday, March 16, 2018
For the cost of California's LA to San Fran bullet train, we could have THREE border walls
One with Mexico, one with Canada, and one with DC.
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Hillary blames married white women for her loss, and James Comey's re-opening the investigation into her
In India, quoted here:
"Democrats, going back to my husband and even before, but just in recent times going back to Bill and our candidates and then President Obama, have been losing the vote, including white women. We do not do well with white men and we don't do well with married white women," Clinton said.
"All of a sudden white women, who were going to vote for me and frankly standing up to the men in their lives and the men in their workplaces, were being told, ‘She's going to jail. You don't want to vote for her. It's terrible, you can't vote for that.' So, it just stopped my momentum and it decreased my vote enough because I was ahead. I was winning, and I thought I had fought my way back in the ten days from that letter until the election. I fell a little bit short," Clinton said.
Trump to name the brain dead Kudlow to replace Gary Cohn at National Economic Council
The brain dead Kudlow, who served during the Reagan Administration but can't remember a better month for jobs than the 313,000 reported for February 2018, is reported to be Trump's choice to head the National Economic Council.
The story is here.
Once again the libertarian pests throw an election to the Democrats
They live for this sort of thing.
If it were a jobs boom we wouldn't STILL have a deficit of 6,437,680 jobs in February 2018
The difference between civilian employment at 60% of civilian non-institutional population in February 2018 and the 62.6% average before the Great Recession is 6,437,680 jobs.
Call me when Trump gets it up.
Hooah Jim Geraghty!
Here:
Government doesn’t louse up everything, but it sure louses up a lot of what it promises to deliver:
from the Big Dig to Healthcare.gov;
from letting veterans die waiting for health care to failing to prioritize the levees around New Orleans and funding other projects instead;
from 9/11 to the failure to see the housing bubble that precipitated the Great Recession;
from misconduct in the Secret Service to the IRS targeting conservative groups;
from lavish conferences at the General Services Administration to the Solyndra grants;
from the runaway costs of California’s high-speed-rail project to Operation Fast and Furious;
from the OPM breach to giving Hezbollah a pass on trafficking cocaine.
The federal government has an abysmal record of abusing the public’s trust, finances, and its own authority. Now some people want it to take on a bigger role? If you want to enact a massive overhaul of America’s economy and government to redistribute wealth, you first have to demonstrate that you can accomplish something smaller, like ensuring every veteran gets adequate care. Until then, if you want to live like a Norwegian, buy a plane ticket.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Trump acts like he had nothing to do with appointing the people who oppose his own policies . . .
. . . just like Obama acted like he had nothing to do with country's unemployment, low GDP and home foreclosures for years after he was first elected.
Monday, March 12, 2018
There is no jobs boom: Full-time in February 2018 is still 6 million behind where it ought to be
For the ten years before the Great Recession, full-time averaged 51.4% of civilian non-institutional population.
In February 2018, we're still down in the basement trying to climb our way out. After ten years! Currently just 49.1% have full-time jobs.
The pre-recession rate applied to the present population level would yield six million more working full-time than there really are. We should have 132 million working full-time. Instead we have 126 million.
There is no jobs boom, just more of the same slow recovery. At this rate it'll still take many more years for full-time to recover to pre-recession levels. The odds of a recession intervening first are high.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
So-called National People's Congress of China votes 2,959-2 to remove term limits for Xi Jinping, with 3 abstentions
The story is here.
So, our two main rivals in the world are now each ruled by perpetual dictators, as they were in the past.
And to think from 1992 some in the West foolishly accepted the idea of the end of history, "that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government."
Not even Francis Fukuyama believed it for more than three years.
Unfortunately the George W. Bush administration, in its ignorant hubris, did.
But here we now are, having squandered the intervening years, and Trump is just fine with the new dictatorships. He admires them no less than Obama did. They are grandiose, like he is, like Obama is. He wishes he could be one of them, too.
When was the last time you heard a statesman from the West call on these rival powers to throw off their chains and embrace freedom?
I can't remember, either.
Freedom as we have known it in the world is in great peril, and we hardly care.
Therefore we will lose it, sooner rather than later.
Freedom as we have known it in the world is in great peril, and we hardly care.
Therefore we will lose it, sooner rather than later.
Laugh of the day: Trump's goal is reportedly 208,333 new jobs every month for 10 years
So says the story at The Daily Caller here.
Har har HAR........dee har har.
After 16 months (November 2016 inclusive through February 2018) the actual monthly rate of gain has been 182,500.
If you prefer from inauguration month instead of election month (January 2017 inclusive through February 2018), 14 months, the actual monthly rate has been 177,214.
February 2017 inclusive, first full month of presidency, through February 2018, 13 months, the rate has been 175,461.
From the post-recession low in February 2010 (not inclusive), exactly 8 years ago, through February 2018 the actual monthly rate of gain has been 192,197.
So by no measure of Trump's performance is he yet anywhere near the actual average performance post-recession of 2007, let alone near his own goal.
The best overall performance in living memory was under Bill Clinton when monthly gains averaged over 242,000 monthly over 8 years. But this coincided with the peaking of the Baby Boom in 1957 clocking in 20 years in the labor force by the end of the Clinton era, in 1999. The Baby Boom fueled the Clinton boom in every way, from jobs to housing to GDP, and also the stock market.
It's been all downhill from there.
Since peak total nonfarm employment in February 2001, just before the recession of that year through February 2018, the economy has added only 75,500 jobs a month.
Good luck to Mr. Trump, but the demographic odds are not in his favor, on top of the headwinds from his own immigration policy.
In this context Trump's stated goals do not reflect knowledge of reality or self-knowledge, only hubris.
Saturday, March 10, 2018
Larry Kudlow is brain dead and he's on the radio
Like Rush Limbaugh, Larry Kudlow doesn't accurately remember the Reagan era.
It's embarrassing coming from these self-appointed spokesmen for Ronald Reagan.
Unlike Limbaugh, however, Kudlow actually served in the Reagan Administration so he really ought to know better, but today on the radio he kept saying that the jobs created in February 2018 (313,000) don't get any better than that.
Flashback to February 1984: jobs added 481,000. Or February 1988: jobs added 453,000.
Need more?
June 1983: +379,000. July 1983: +418,000. September 1983: +1.115 MILLION.
1.115 MILLION!
IN ONE MONTH!
Do I need to go on?
Yes, I think I do.
November 1983: +353,000.
December 1983: +356,000.
January 1984: +446,000.
April 1984: +363,000.
June 1984: +379,000.
July 1984: +313,000.
November 1984: +349,000.
March 1985: +346,000.
July 1986: +318,000.
September 1986: +347,000.
April 1987: +338,000.
July 1987: +347,000.
October 1987: +492,000.
June 1988: +363,000.
September 1988: +339,000.
November 1988: +339,000.
The current jobs boom isn't a boom, not yet, not by a longshot, and is NOTHING like the Reagan era, and Kudlow is doing a disservice to the historical record in which he played a part.
You've become a political hack, Larry.
Pace Ann Coulter and The NY Times, core employment in February 2018 still hasn't recovered to the 2007 peak
In February 2018 core employment, ages 25 to 54, is 100.1 million, peak was 100.7 million, 11 years ago.
Count 'em.
Spare me the Rah! Rah! Trump! until there's something significant to cheer about.
Xi Jinping being mocked as Xi Zedong in China and around the world
From the story here:
The government’s censorship apparatus had to spring into action after the term limit proposal was unveiled, suppressing keywords on social media ranging from “I disagree” to “shameless” to “Xi Zedong.” Even the letter “N″ was blocked after it was used as part of an equation for the number of terms Xi might serve. ...
On Wednesday, International Women’s Day, law students at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing — Xi’s alma mater — hung red banners that ostensibly celebrated the school’s female classmates but also satirized national politics. “I love you without any term limits, but if there are, we can just remove them,” read one, while another banner declared that “A country can’t survive without a constitution, we can’t go on without you.” University administrators weren’t amused. A student witness said the banners were quickly removed and notices posted requiring campus shops to register students who use printers to make large banners.
Chinese studying overseas have been more blunt. Posts in recent days popped up at the University of California, San Diego, with Xi’s picture and the text “Never My President” and spread to more than eight overseas universities, said Lebao Wu, a student at Australian National University in Canberra.
Trump to dignify a vicious little tyrant by meeting with him, and they're calling it a victory
For the presidency, it's not:
Friday, March 9, 2018
Hey Rush, 95 million eating but not working in February 2018 under Trump!
Heh heh heh.
Why dontcha talk about it anymore, huh?
Nitwit.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Bill Clinton's oral sex legacy: About 7 million men and 1.4 million women are walking around with oral HPV infections
From the story, "Oral sex is causing an oral cancer epidemic in men by outwitting natural defenses", here:
HPV-related tumors, in contrast, have increased more than 300 percent over the last 20 years. The virus is now found in 70 percent of all new oral cancers.
About 13,200 new HPV oral cancers are diagnosed in U.S. men each year, compared with 3,200 in women, according to federal data. Treatment – surgery, chemotherapy, radiation – can have disfiguring, disabling side effects. About half of late-stage patients die within five years.
Oral HPV infection rates are skewed by gender, just like the resulting cancers. The latest national estimates of this disparity, published in October, come from Deshmukh and his University of Florida colleagues. They used a federal health survey that collected DNA specimens to estimate that 7.3 percent of men and 1.4 percent of women have oral infections with high-risk HPV types. That translates to 7 million men and 1.4 million women.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Sorry, ADP private payrolls aren't booming now and haven't boomed since briefly doing so in 2005-2006
The reading is +2.2% in February 2018 vs. +4.05% in February 2006, twelve years ago.
Count 'em.
"Corporations are people" is based on the 14th Amendment, except it wasn't
Adam Winkler of the UCLA School of Law for The Atlantic explains, here.
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
The fool of a president George W. Bush is as pathetic as Trump in seeking validation at this point in his life
George W. Bush was easily the worst post-war president until Barack Obama came along.
And a lot of water has to go under the bridge before the verdict is in on Trump.
Meanwhile, these presidents who constantly look for validation or constantly assert their egos are a reflection of the decline of America, not its greatness. Comparisons between them amount to nothing more than sorting out the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry.
Are there no real men left?
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for February 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for February 2018
Max temp 63, Mean Max temp 50
Min temp 7, Mean Min temp -2
Av temp 29.8, Mean Av temp 24.5
Precip 4.93, Mean precip 1.78
Snowfall 20.7, Mean snowfall 13.1
Snowfall season to date 66.8, Mean Snowfall season to date 54.5
Heating Degree Days 978, Mean Heating Degree Days 1136
HDD Season to date 4656, HDD Mean Season to date 4895
Using Heating Degree Days, the cool season to date has been 4.88% warmer than the mean.
Monday, March 5, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Broward County officials responsible for Cruz' crimes because none of his prior to the massacre were reported or prosecuted, ON PURPOSE
Ann Coulter, here:
When it comes to spectacular crimes, it's usually hard to say how it could have been prevented. But in this case, we have a paper trail. In the pursuit of a demented ideology, specific people agreed not to report, arrest or prosecute dangerous students like Nikolas Cruz.
These were the parties to the Nov. 5, 2013, agreement that ensured Cruz would be out on the street with full access to firearms:
Robert W. Runcie, Superintendent of Schools
Peter M. Weinstein, Chief Judge of the 17th Judicial Circuit
Michael J. Satz, State Attorney
Howard Finkelstein, Public Defender
Scott Israel, Broward County Sheriff
Franklin Adderley, Chief of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department
Wansley Walters, Secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice
Marsha Ellison, President of the Fort Lauderdale Branch of the NAACP and Chair of the Juvenile Justice Advisory Board
Nikolas Cruz may be crazy, but the parties to that agreement are crazy, too. They decided to make high school students their guinea pigs for an experiment based on a noxious ideology. The blood of 17 people is on their hands.
Flashback: "The polls, they say I have the most loyal people . . . where I could . . . shoot somebody . . ."
The Des Moines Register, January 23rd, 2016, here:
SIOUX CENTER, Ia. — Donald Trump told a crowd in Sioux Center on Saturday that he could "shoot somebody" and not lose traction with voters.
“You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people," Trump said. "Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s like incredible.”
Trump doubles down on autocratic rule in China, says "I think it's great"
If you're not offended by Trump's casual flaunting of the seriousness of his role as "leader of the free world" by now, then you are as un-American as he is and deserve to be ruled by a dictator.
Watch for Rush Limbaugh to dismiss this as just yet one more instance of Trump trolling his mostly liberal opposition in order to dominate the news cycle.
The news cycle.
The news cycle.
That remark by the press during the 2016 campaign that Trump could shoot someone in the street and still get elected has drilled itself down into Trump's brain and has become a veritable axiom and exemplar to Trump about his invulnerability, which explains the freedom with which he has so many times gone off the reservation of his own supposedly strongly held beliefs: "They say I have the most loyal people -- did you ever see that? -- where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters".
Obviously, he doesn't have any strongly held beliefs, except the belief in his own greatness which his twisted sense of self has from the beginning latched on to in the flimsiest of quarters, the news cycle.
From the story here:
"He's now president for life, president for life. And he's great," Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump's remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday," Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
It is not clear if Trump, 71, was making the comment about extending presidential service in jest. The White House did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday.
U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat, said on Twitter that "whether this was a joke or not, talking about being President for life like Xi Jinping is the most unAmerican sentiment expressed by an American President. George Washington would roll over in his grave."
Friday, March 2, 2018
South African parliament votes to violate post-apartheid agreements and confiscate white-owned farms without compensation
The story is here.
South African GDP has contracted by a whopping 29% as black radical Marxists have gained the upper hand there since 2011.
The country is following the pattern of neighboring Rhodesia, which willingly embraced Marxist Robert Mugabe in 1980.
Keep letting into America 1 million non-whites a year and the same will happen here.
It's just a matter of time. In South Africa, it took just 24 years.
Keep letting into America 1 million non-whites a year and the same will happen here.
It's just a matter of time. In South Africa, it took just 24 years.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
How about no VOTE under 21, and no car, no job, no credit card and no COLLEGE LOANS either?
Grow up already you bunch of babies.
Story in The Atlantic cherry picks data about senior poverty
The Census Bureau's new (since 2011 but fiddled with again in 2013) Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) shows senior poverty in slight retreat since 2009, but you wouldn't know that from the story here (you'd have to look at the chart to the left here) which says it's up between 2015 and 2016, which it most certainly is, but hey, c'mon. The fact is, the "official" measure shows that senior poverty has dropped big time since the mid-1960s when the rate was knocking on the door of 30%, stabilizing in recent years in the 8, 9 and 10% range:
The problem is growing as more Baby Boomers reach retirement age—between 8,000 to 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, according to Kevin Prindiville, the executive director of Justice in Aging, a nonprofit that addresses senior poverty. Older Americans were the only demographic for whom poverty rates increased in a statistically significant way between 2015 and 2016, according to Census Bureau data. While poverty fell among people 18 and under and people 18 to 64 between 2015 and 2016, it rose to 14.5 percent for people over 65, according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is considered a more accurate measure of poverty because it takes into account health-care costs and other big expenses. “In the early decades of our work, we were serving communities that had been poor when they were younger,” Prindiville told me. “Increasingly, we’re seeing folks who are becoming poor for the first time in old age.”
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Once again Trump demonstrates that he has no principles: Confiscate guns without due process
It didn't take long for the office to go to his head, but go it has. The man is now a clear and present danger.
Who will stop him? Mike Pence? Paul Ryan? Mitch McConnell?
Here:
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida ... to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Some roaring economy: 4Q2017 real GDP revised DOWN today to 2.5% in second estimate
That's down from 2.6% in the first estimate.
3Q2017 real GDP was 3.2%, indicating the economy slowed down on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter by almost 22%.
Blame it on the hurricanes if you want, but growth for all of 2017 comes in at a paltry 2.3%. That's up from 2016's measly 1.5%, but so far, Trump's 3%-4% growth is nowhere to be seen.
And neither is The Wall.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Leader of the free world my foot: Trump White House says it's up to China if it wants to turn back toward autocracy
Li Datong, a former editor at the state-run China Youth Daily, posted a draft letter urging legislators to vote against the move -- which would abolish term limits set in 1982 under Deng Xiaoping to prevent a return to the decades of chaos under Mao Zedong.
"It was the highest and most effective legal restriction meant to prevent autocracy or putting individuals above the party and the state," said the letter. It was not sent to legislators but shared with hundreds of people in a private group on China's WeChat phone messaging app.
"Lifting the term limits of national leaders will be ridiculed by civilised nations all over the world and also sow the seeds of chaos for China," said the text posted on Monday. ...
"The president has talked about term limits in a number of capacities during the campaign and something that he supports here in the United States, but that's a decision that's up to China," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.
More here.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Supremes decline to rule on DACA ahead of court of appeals, could take another year to reach Supremes again
Illegality isn't an emergency to the Supremes. Neither is the challenge to the Executive branch's constitutional authority in the matter.
You live by the courts, you die by the courts.
If Trump had any balls, he'd ignore the courts and deport them all. Let the courts try to enforce their rulings.
Story here.
To Richard Brookhiser of National Review, illegal immigration isn't even a thing, and conservatism's biggest hypocrites are among the Religious Right
Here, where strong national defense, cultural and New York intellectual conservatives, and free-marketeers all receive his scorn:
Trump’s conservative admirers have had to abandon and contradict what they once professed to hold most dear.
The most egregious example is the religious Right. The religious Right is the latest version of an old model of American politics, variously incarnated by Puritans, abolitionists, and William Jennings Bryan. It, like its predecessors, has argued that America and individual Americans need to have a godly or at least moral character to thrive. Now the religious Right adores a thrice-married cad and casual liar. But it is not alone. Historians and psychologists of the martial virtues salute the bone-spurred draft-dodger whose Khe Sanh was not catching the clap. Cultural critics who deplored academic fads and slipshod aesthetics explicate a man who has never read a book, not even the ones he has signed. Followers of Harry Jaffa, the most important Lincoln scholar of the last 60 years, rally round a Republican who does not know why the Civil War happened. Straussians, after leaving the cave, find themselves in Mar-a-Lago. Econocons put their money on a serial bankrupt.
Poor fella. No one listens to him anymore.
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Laugh of the Day: Incompetent Sheriff Israel thinks he's Sheriff Joe
Quoted here:
"Jake, I can only take responsibility for what I knew about. I exercised my due diligence. I've given amazing leadership to this agency—" Israel started.
The tongue really had to lube the lips for that one.
Nikolas Cruz called the cops on himself, but not even they listened, or cared
Are you listening, America? To anyone?
The New York Times reports, here:
Mr. Cruz, 19, himself called the authorities just after Thanksgiving, describing how he had been in a fight and was struggling with the death of his mother. “The thing is I lost my mother a couple of weeks ago, so like I am dealing with a bunch of things right now,” he said in a childlike voice, sounding agitated and out of breath.
Saturday, February 24, 2018
The problem with Trump at CPAC is that he made it sound like the Second Amendment is negotiable
“By the way, if you only had a choice of one, what would you rather have — the Second Amendment or the tax cuts?”
More here.
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