Dang.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Find out how noisy is your address in the United States
The interactive map is here. Simply type in your complete street and city address and the tool will take you straight to your location. Government doing something useful for a change.
New York City's 311 gets 50,000 calls a day, the number one complaint being noise
From the story here in the Janesville WI GazetteXtra:
In a city whose cacophony can reach 95 decibels in midtown Manhattan — way above the federal government’s recommended average of no more than 70 decibels — the commotion over all that racket involves irate residents, anti-noise advocates, bars, helicopter sightseeing companies, landscapers and construction companies, as well as City Hall. The city’s 311 non-emergency call service gets 50,000 calls a day, and the No. 1 complaint is noise.
Pew study says $1.4 trillion in state pension promises currently can't be paid, a new record
From the story here:
The annual report from the Pew Charitable Trusts finds that public worker pension funds with heavy state government involvement owed retirees and current workers $4 trillion as of 2016. They had about $2.6 trillion in assets, creating a gap of about one-third, or a record $1.4 trillion.
Sunday, April 22, 2018
White privilege, otherwise known as the 1990s phenomenon of everyone classifying Bill Clinton's misdeeds as peccadillos
Bill Clinton, America's first black president.
Reuters/Yahoo News can't bring itself to say China's Xi Jinping is a dictator who's enemy is freedom of speech
Tut tut, looks like enemy propaganda.
Here in "China's Xi says internet control key to stability":
Chinese regulators have been driving a sweeping crackdown on media content, which has been gaining force since last year, spreading a chill among content makers and distributors.
No shit, Sherlock.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Mark Levin is elated that the DNC has sued the Trump campaign
The DNC idiots have thereby unwittingly opened the door to discovery, "the compulsory disclosure, by a party to an action, of relevant documents referred to by the other party".
Friday, April 20, 2018
Our Chinese enemy, lyin' Xi Jinping
Bill Gertz, here:
China has deployed electronic attack systems and other military facilities on disputed islands in the South China Sea and is now capable of controlling the strategic waterway, according to the admiral slated to be the next Pacific Command chief. ...
"In the South China Sea, the PLA has constructed a variety of radar, electronic attack, and defense capabilities on the disputed Spratly Islands, to include: Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Hughes Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef," Davidson said. ...
The militarization contradicts a promise from Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping not to militarize the South China Sea that is used as a waterway transit for an estimated $5.3 trillion in goods annually.
"These actions stand in direct contrast to the assertion that President Xi made in 2015 in the Rose Garden when he commented that Beijing had no intent to militarize the South China Sea," Davidson said.
"Today these forward operating bases appear complete. The only thing lacking are the deployed forces."
The occupied islands will permit China to extend its influence thousands of miles southward and project power deep into the Oceania.
"The PLA will be able to use these bases to challenge U.S. presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea-claimants," Davidson said. "In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States."
Well, at least the Minneapolis Fed President doubts the labor shortage narrative
Too bad he doesn't have a vote right now.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Total unemployment looks headed for a new cyclical low in 2018 similar to the year 2000
The year 2000 was also noteworthy for peak S&P 500, in August on a monthly average basis. The same may obtain for 2018. The market's average level in January already may have established the top for this cycle.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Maybe gasoline wouldn't cost as much if we didn't export 8% of our consumption
In 2017 our consumption of gasoline came to 3.40 billion barrels, but that year we exported 0.273 billion barrels, or 8% of that consumption, a new record. Consumption actually fell in 2017 from 2016 when consumption hit 3.41 billion barrels.
The news today says prices are climbing because of increased demand and tighter supplies. But as prices have risen in the last year, miles-traveled are down sharply year over year in January. Growth of miles-traveled had barely caught up with pre-recession levels in 2016 and 2017 and is now on the verge of recession-like conditions to start 2018.
We'll see if any of this continues, but one thing's for sure. Paying $3.00+/gallon this summer isn't what we voted for when we voted for Donald Trump.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
TrimTabs: 1Q2018 pace of corporate stock buybacks and deals outstrips pace of wage increases by 85%
For the five years previous to the Trump corporate tax cuts, buybacks and deals outstripped wage increases $4.9 trillion to $2.3 trillion. The pace increased in the first quarter to a projected five-year level of $6.1 trillion to $2.6 trillion, meaning the pace of stock buybacks and deals is up 24% but only 13% for wage increases. The difference between those two rates of increase is nearly 85%.
The CNBC story, "Tax cut riches have gone to execs and investors over workers by nearly 3-to-1 margin", is here. The headline exaggerates the 1Q2018 ratio of buybacks of $305 billion to wage increases of $131 billion, which is actually 2.3:1.
Liberal math, but still. The Trump tax cuts are going to top managers and stockholders overwhelmingly compared with the masses of ordinary wage earners.
This explains the resilience of the stock market indices near their record highs. The tax cut cash is flowing into stocks, boosting and supporting prices.
Monday, April 16, 2018
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Congress may end up getting rid of Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein if Trump won't
The window for that, however, closes if Republicans lose the House in November. Reps. Jordan and Nunes ought to consider that the Department of Justice will continue to slow-walk this just enough to get them there.
From the story here:
Although the DOJ cooperated with the lawmakers Wednesday, the department has still failed to fully comply with congressional subpoenas for thousands of documents. Thus, Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Lausch of the Northern District of Illinois to speed up efforts to deliver documents lawmakers have been seeking for months. But if the process drags out too much longer, [Rep.] Jordan said there would be severe consequences for Rosenstein, Wray and Sessions.
"My attitude is just like [Nunes']. If things don't change dramatically — and I'm talking days, not weeks or months — if they don't change dramatically, then impeachment and contempt and resignations should all be on the table," Jordan warned. "Because we're tired of it, and more importantly the American people are tired of it."
Two US guided-missile destroyers never fired a shot, Syria attacked instead from three other directions
Bloomberg reports here in "Warship Ruse and New Stealth Missiles: How the U.S. and Allies Attacked Syria":
While both vessels carry as many as 90 Tomahawk missiles -- the main weapon used in the Friday evening strike on Syria -- neither ship in the end fired a shot. Instead, according to a person familiar with White House war planning, they were part of a plan to distract Russia and its Syrian ally from an assault Assad’s government could do little to defend itself against.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Miloš Forman has passed away at 86
The Czech director of Amadeus (1984, won 8 Academy Awards) and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975, won 5 Academy Awards) had made his American home in Connecticut.
The LA Times has the obit, here.
SECDEF Mattis has called the joint missile strike on Syria a "single shot", not an opening salvo in a war
Reported here:
Mattis said the strike was a “single shot” aimed to deter the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons. Whether the United States and its allies will pursue further action in Syria would “depend on Mr. Assad should he decided to use more chemical weapons in the future," the secretary said.
Critics will no doubt say the April 2017 missile attack was a one-off, too. How many one-offs does it take before we're at war?
US, France and Great Britain attack Syrian chemical facilities after 6th Russian veto at the UN on Tuesday
From the veto story here:
Washington (CNN) -- Russia vetoed a US draft resolution at the UN Security Council Tuesday that would have established an independent investigation into the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria. ... In November, Russia blocked the renewal of the independent panel investigating chemical weapons in Syria, and British Ambassador Karen Pierce reminded the council that Tuesday's vote marked Russia's sixth veto related to chemical weapons in Syria. Seven nations -- including the US -- voted against a Russian resolution that would have set up an investigation overseen by the Security Council. According to Haley, that draft was designed to give Russia a chance to approve the investigators who were chosen for the task and allow the Security Council to assess the findings of the investigation before any report was released. A second Russian resolution that only supported the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons fact-finding mission in Syria also failed to pass. The organization is made up of an international team of investigators but it cannot on its own determine who was responsible for the attack.
Friday, April 13, 2018
If we really had full employment in America, we wouldn't be missing 7.6 million working
The difference between 63.2% working before 2009 and 60.2% working in March 2018 is 7.6 million.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Former British Ambassador to Syria says first responders to gas attacks on which the West relies are themselves Islamic fanatics who beheaded their enemies
Watch here.
He says the video evidence is unverified and probably staged and that the West should get inspectors in there.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
150 big spending House Republicans gave away the store in December 2015 in exchange for lifting the oil export ban
Since the vote on Dec. 18, 2015 what we got in return is US debt to the penny increasing by $2.33 trillion through 4/9/18, or 12%, and the price of a gallon of gasoline climbing by 65-cents, or 33%.
Way to go, Brownie!
Hungary completes second border fence with Serbia in less than two months for 120m Euros
The second fence was begun in late February, according to Politico here.
The 3-meter high 155km barbed barrier is already finished, according to Reuters here.
That's 96 miles in two months for the equivalent of $149 million.
That would come to $3.1 billion for the equivalent of 2,000 miles of US barbed barrier with Mexico. To match the Hungarian pace the US would need to finish the 2,000 miles in 3.5 years.
Somebody tell Trump the election is 2.5 years away.
Fine, Mueller's had bupkis all along, but unscrupulously rummaging through information privileged between client and attorney might lead elsewhere
That's why someone has to stop Mueller.
Law and order costs money, which implies taxation and government
And that's this morning's reason why I'm a conservative, not a libertarian.
We wouldn't need to increase law and order if men were increasingly demonstrating that they were angels, but because they are not, we do. Simple as that.
Now, on to my coffee.
Violence on the right: Takimag author floods the zone with the bilge of his own irrationality
He's no different than Antifa. Giving up on reason is never the answer.
Here:
Anyone who, like me, has spent a lot of time in discussion and argument with other people can easily see how little the rational avails. ... And that is precisely why we need a civil war. ... There are so many bad ideas, and such moral rot, that only war can rid us of the many pathologies that obviate culture and democracy alike. Only war can bring us to a state of affairs in which people, having serious problems to face, will have a more reasonable perspective and stop griping about safe spaces, white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and all the tiresome rest. Only war will send our politicians the message that Americans will not abide their cynical manipulations and refusal to do what is best for us.
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, But down in the bilge, and with just one foot, Pumping away was Chris DeGroot, says Johnny.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Levin calls for Sessions to step down as AG in wake of FBI raid on Trump's personal attorney
Dershowitz for his part called the raid dangerous for the future of attorney-client privilege.
The whole thing makes us want to puke. The affair is completely out of control, and there's no one in the amusement park to turn off the ride.
Don't be fooled: Our communist enemy Xi Jinping Pong is still after our high-tech
Quoted in the story here:
"We hope developed countries will stop imposing restrictions on normal and reasonable trade of high-tech products and relax export controls on such trade with China."
Monday, April 9, 2018
Laugh of the Day 2.0: Holocaust survivor born in 1938 or 1939 warns America under Trump feels like 1929 Berlin
Here in "Holocaust survivor: America under Trump feels like 1929 Berlin".
The story references Newsweek as the source, here:
At 79 years old he is among the youngest of the Holocaust survivors still alive. But Jacobs can remember life in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald; what the Nazis did to him, his family, his friends. ...
“It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Jacobs says, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 on Thursday.
Laugh of the Day: What happens to your ad copy when it's proofread by the Chinese
New lightweight cookware "provides price control of the cooking process".
Precisely. Price control is always at the top of my list when I'm trying not to overcook the scrambled eggs.
So-called Alt-right Takimag commits suicide, drops popular Disqus Comments after three month slide in Alexa traffic rankings
And that's after the big decline from the summer of 2017 after the loss of the popular Gavin McInnes. Replacement with a dark, combative author in his place hasn't helped, either.
The celebrated comments section, a veritable maelstrom of unparalleled wit, wisdom and waywardness, was unceremoniously ended over the Easter weekend, scattering its loyal denizens like ants.
They have been welcomed by Disqus' Jewel Box and Channel Z, but will be m o d e r a t e d.
Rotza ruck.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
The dumbest headline of the day comes from The New York Post
Headline:
Paragraph six of the story:
The biggest beneficiaries of the new tax structure are those earning between $300,000 to $733,000, according to the analysis. They’ll see an average tax cut of about 3.4 percent, taking home an extra $11,200 this year on average.
I guess the Post doesn't know that 90% of individual wage earners make less than $100,000 per year.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Immigration raid sends shockwaves through packing industry happy to hire people from shit-hole countries
Neil Munro reports for Breitbart, here:
The raid is sending shock-waves through the meatpacking industry which is being caught between marketplace pressure to keep costs low and the federal laws barring the employment of cheap foreign migrants.... For many years, the industry has relied on a mix of immigrants, illegal migrants and legal refugees from Syria, Somalia, and other unfortunate countries. The resulting marketplace pressure is pressuring reluctant meatpackers to raise their salaries. ...
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.
But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting roughly 1.1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
Fake jobs boom: Just 23,000 full-time jobs were added in March 2018
 |
| We're still missing about 6.2 million full-time jobs . . . |
 |
| . . . and the pace of additions has slowed to recession-like levels. |
Friday, April 6, 2018
YouTube shooter was Iranian refugee, follower of Baha'i faith
The LA Times reports here:
Aghdam entered the country as a refugee roughly two decades ago, a family member said. In one of her videos, she said she was born in Urmia, Iran — where she and other members of her Baha'i faith face discrimination — and that her family had spent a year and a half in Turkey.
Trump plays hardball with China, latest threatened tariffs impossible to match
Bloomberg reports here:
President urges levies on $100 billion more of Chinese goods . . . Were China to want to match Trump’s latest threat, it wouldn’t have enough American goods imports to target. It could take other measures like curbing package tours or student transfers to the U.S., or hamper American companies operating in China.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
And just like that The Atlantic fires Kevin Williamson
Reportedly, here, after learning that Williamson advocates that women who abort their babies should be hung for homicide.
Sounds more like a convenient "discovery" after The Atlantic realized it had made a mistake hiring him in the first place. One almost gets the feeling that Williamson was set up.
Meanwhile The Atlantic tolerates women who actually kill their unborn children, but not someone who merely thinks that's a capital offense.
John Gray identifies the apocalyptic faith animating Antifa
Here, in The Times Literary Supplement:
The hyper-liberal demand that public spaces be purged of symbols of past oppression continues a post-Cold War fantasy of the end of history.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Adam Winkler: The British colonies in America were created and governed by corporations
Discussed here at TNR as if this were news to them:
Winkler’s approach is different from the outset. He does not see corporate behemoths as a deviation from the ideal of a land of small entrepreneurs. Nor does he see the corporate form—the structure that allows a business entity to have a degree of independence from those individuals who found it—as inherently menacing. The British colonies, he points out, were settled by private organizations such as the Massachusetts Bay Company and the Virginia Company, entities that had stockholders and were governed by charters—essentially, by corporations. “Democracy and constitutionalism,” as he puts it, “were intimately tied up with the corporation from the very beginning.”
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Kevin Williamson laments the passing of classical liberalism, the soil in which libertarians got rich
Well, at least we finally know whose side Kevin is really on. His own.
Here:
[L]ibertarianism has benefited from the fact that American elites are notably more libertarian in their views than is the median American voter. That dynamic was explored by the economist Bryan Caplan under a typically bold title (“Why Is Democracy Tolerable?”) with a typically needling conclusion: “Democracies listen to the relatively libertarian rich far more than they listen to the absolutely statist non-rich … Democracy as we know it is bad enough. Democracy that really listened to all the people would be an authoritarian nightmare.” ...
[T]he United States is for the moment left with two authoritarian populist parties and no political home for classical liberalism at all.
Coulter after The Oval: I don't think we're getting The Wall
Here:
COULTER: . . . I said you're not doing what you promised to do.
Where's the end of NAFTA? Where's the wall? Where are the deportations? What are you doing talking about the DREAMers?
CARR: To which he responded?
COULTER: [Does Trump impersonation] I appointed Gorsuch.
That's all we're getting.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for March 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for March 2018
Max temp 56, Mean Max temp 66
Min temp 17, Mean Min temp 7
Av temp 34.3, Mean Av temp 34
Precip 1.16, Mean precip 2.45
Snowfall 4.9, Mean snowfall 9.1, Snowfall season to date 71.7, Mean Snowfall season to date 63.6
Heating Degree Days 943, Mean HDD 955, HDD Season to date 5599, HDD Mean Season to date 5850
Using HDD, the cool season to date has been 4.29% warmer than the mean.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Laugh of the Day: Snow for Easter
Snow for Christmas
snow for Easter
livin' in Michigan
frosts my keister
Friday, March 30, 2018
Maybe David Hogg would be accepted by more colleges if he learned how to write the English language
The redundant "only" is also indicative.
Treated I bad did they.
You sound like Yoda.
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Trannies for Kevin Williamson: National Review thinks Ta-Nehisi Coates' favorable opinion of Kevin Williamson is a good thing
David French, here:
If Ta-Nehisi Coates can see the virtues of his work, then perhaps there’s room for you [progressives] to open your minds. National Review’s loss is The Atlantic’s gain, but even more importantly, the marketplace of ideas benefits from his transition.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Coulter at Columbia: I knew Trump was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn't care
At a debate with Mickey Kaus.
Story here.
Trump lazy? Now you've gone too far, Ann Coulter, too far!
National Review's Kevin Williamson looks left and heads to The Atlantic
Where Kevin and his sneering elitism will find a larger audience. Slate's Jordan Weissmann pretends not to get it: "Above all else, Williamson is something fairly rare in U.S. media: an explicit, unrepentant elitist."
After three revisions, 4Q2017 real GDP still comes up short at 2.9% annualized
That's up from 2.5% in the second estimate, but still down from 3.2% in 3Q.
That means that despite the holiday shopping season and all the expenditures of hurricane recovery, the economy still slowed down in the fourth quarter of last year. It should have been the best quarter yet if the economy were truly on the upswing.
To make matters worse, 1Q2018 is shaping up to be a horrible 1.8%.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Monday, March 26, 2018
While Rush Limbaugh keeps trying to find a way to rationalize Trump's signature on the omnibus, Laura Ingraham minced no words
On her radio show this morning she called this a betrayal.
And that's what it was.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Robert Shiller: Great Depression tariffs did not plausibly, directly affect economic growth in a major degree
Everywhere we turn we hear the opposite. It's standard operating procedure to blame protectionism for the Great Depression. Shiller knows it can't be demonstrated from the data. Hence the psychological argument.
Quoted here:
Shiller said he did not believe there would be a significant inflationary effect to the U.S. from steel and aluminum tariffs, but he warned that heated trade rhetoric from both sides could send the American economy reeling into a recession.
"When you ask about the size of the impact on the economy, I think a lot of it is more psychological than direct, unless they really slam on tariffs," he said. The Yale economist pointed to the "most famous tariff war of all" during the Great Depression, which he said did not "plausibly, directly" affect economic growth "in a major degree," but it may have helped "destroy confidence" and willingness to plan for the future.
"It's exactly those 'wait and see' attitudes that cause a recession," he explained.
Freedom who loves must first be wise and good
Freedom who loves, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.
-- John Milton (1608-1674)
Saturday, March 24, 2018
CNBC story on conservative anger with Trump deliberately omits the centrality of differences over illegal immigration policy
That's what Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter are all about, after all, but CNBC just dances around this as if it didn't really exist.
Ann Coulter only tweets almost every day a "border wall lack-of-progress" update.
Conservatives are outraged also that Trump would trade a wall for DACA-type amnesty. DACA is illegal. Obama's executive order was unconstitutional. Trump acts like it's no big deal, just like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin becoming dictators for life is no big deal to him, either.
Conservatives are outraged also that Trump would trade a wall for DACA-type amnesty. DACA is illegal. Obama's executive order was unconstitutional. Trump acts like it's no big deal, just like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin becoming dictators for life is no big deal to him, either.
It's a propaganda technique: Pretend something doesn't exist, and it doesn't. It's called marginalization. The communist Alinsky made it one of his rules for radicals. To talk about what your enemy wants to talk about is to assist your enemy by publicizing his issues, so don't do it.
See for yourself here.
There were 167 votes against the omnibus in the US House: 90 Republican, 77 Democrat
The House Roll Call is here, the Senate here. There were 32 votes against in the Senate: 23 Republican, 8 Democrat, and Bernie Sanders.
For all the previous action on HR 1625, see here.
87% of the Michigan Congressional Delegation, both Republican and Democrat, voted "Yea", except for good guys House Republicans Justin Amash and Jack Bergman.
Notable "Yea" votes included Republican goodfellas:
Kevin Brady of Texas, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, Duncan Hunter of California (ouch), Darrell Issa of California, Will Hurd of Texas, Peter King of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Kevin McCarthy of California, Michael McCaul of Texas, Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Devin Nunes of California, Peter Roskam of Illinois, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, of course, Steve "Bullseye" Scalise of Louisiana, and Joe "You Lie!" Wilson of South Carolina.
Say it isn't so, Joe!
The line of the week was Rush Limbaugh's: "Whenever you see the word omnibus, think trash can"
Here:
So on this, for example, this omnibus, whenever you see that word, folks, just think of a trash can. No! In fact, think of a Christmas tree with anything you want gift wrapped underneath it. That’s what omnibus means.
He had it right the first time. A conservative's trash can is a liberal's Christmas tree.
Mark Levin yesterday said he thinks we've reached the point of no return
If that's true then it's down to us or them.
Friday, March 23, 2018
Like all the other Baby Boom presidents Trump has squandered his power and opportunities
And his closest enemies sat quietly by and let him do so, convincing him that war is the father of everything.
Winning means you have political capital.
In Washington you either spend that as soon as you get it or you lose it.
For not delivering Trump is already finished, but he will be the last to know.
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