Democrat Senator Manchin to has-been House Democrat: You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers

The Fed fiddles with the red line while the blue line burns

Canada's PM Justin Trudeau comes out as a Democrat

Trump shill Andy Puzder complains of non-existent labor shortage, suggests more legal immigration while 3 million teenagers sit idle

Labor Shortage May Imperil Growth:

[T]he tight labor market is the elephant in the room. ... In July, the most recent month for which we have data, job openings stood at 7.2 million—nearly 1.2 million more than the number of unemployed. ... [A]t some point the economy will need more workers to meet that demand.

That means job training is increasingly important, particularly for discouraged workers who want to re-enter the labor force. ... Higher levels of merit-based legal immigration—as opposed to immigration based on distant family connections—could also relieve some of the pressure.

Both business owners and jobs data tell us the same thing: To sustain the recovery, the U.S. needs more workers.

The real elephant in the room is idle teenagers.

In 1978, 8.1 million American teenagers aged 16-19 had jobs, on average. That was 48.5% of their population of 16.7 million teens at the time.

In 2018 just 5.1 million teenagers worked on average, out of an equally matched population of 16.8 million aged 16-19. That's just 30.4% working.

Apply the 48.5% rate to today's average teen population and presto! 3 million more instantly working than are.

We don't need more immigrants. We need parents to kick their kids' butts, kids who increasingly fail to launch because they are in desperate need of job experience to help them grow up, become responsible and fly straight.

And it would also help to eliminate the minimum wage. What grocery store wants to pay some kid $7.25 an hour to corral shopping carts, restock returns and take out the trash? And adjusted for inflation from 1938, the minimum wage in 2018 should be closer to $4.45 an hour anyway, nearly 39% less than it is.

The higher than it should be minimum wage is a tax on teenage employment. And as with all taxes, the more you tax something the less of that something you get. That's one reason high levels of illegal immigration remain so persistent. It's a natural response to an unnatural situation created by hypocritical politicians who claim to believe in the free market but don't really.

And it's nothing new. We just hoped Trump & Co. would be different. 

       

Gasoline price gouging in the wake of the attack on the Saudis: As if the pump nozzle here is directly connected to the tank there

Joe Biden has one hell of a serious plan for every lonely man out there

In 2013 Ilhan Omar let it slip that her father is also the father of her . . . husband

She has deleted the tweet wishing her father a happy Father's Day after being exposed by the imam of peace.

Ew. Just ewincest.

Christine Ford ally Leland Keyser actually thinks Ford's story about Kavanaugh is not believable, told FBI she was pressured and threatened with a smear campaign

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TNR puts fake Indian Elizabeth Warren high on the authentic politician spectrum, which is pretty bad news for all the other fakers

Trump treats foreign policy like it's a restaurant where the customers are foreign nations who tell the waiter, America what to bring

This Russian spying scandal primarily populates four years of two no-scandal Obama terms

And they say the Jews don't run the world

Guess what the currency is.

In addition to silencing the voices of millions of babies, Planned Parenthood is trying to silence its former president

Max Stier, latest Kavanaugh accuser, has possible political motive, omitted by NY Times in addition to omission that victim has no memory of the incident

The New York Times prints a story fit for the bottom of a bird cage.

Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg must be in really bad shape.

Department of Energy reverses Obama administration overreach on lightbulb rules

Fred Upton's damn lightbulb law remains on the books, of course, but at least the Trump administration is calling a halt to making all lightbulbs even more expensive than they already are because of it.

My wasteful, liberal neighbors, but I repeat myself, here in Michigan routinely leave all their outdoor lights on all day as well as all night, but I have to pay more and more for energy efficiency. They also leave their garage doors wide open most days in winter.

Freedom which wastes cents makes no sense.

Energy Department Moves to Roll Back Light-Bulb Restriction:

A final rule set to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday allows the continued sale of four types of incandescent and halogen light bulbs: three-way lights, recessed can lights, candle-shaped lights used in chandeliers and round bulbs often found above bathroom mirrors. The rule is expected to be challenged in court.

The Obama administration, just as it was winding down, published a rule that eliminated exemptions that were part of the 2007 law. Under the Obama rule, the four types of light bulbs would be subject to the efficiency standards set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2020.

The Trump administration’s rule restores exemptions granted to the four products. The Energy Department said the Obama administration’s decision was “not consistent with the best reading of the statute.”

The department also said it doesn’t intend to move forward with new standards to improve the efficiency of the pear-shaped light bulbs called general service incandescent lamps. The tighter standards are “not economically justified,” according to the proposal, which is open for a 60-day comment period.

Horror show, part deux: These people are so obsessed with white they either flaunt it or flout it

Horror show: On Friday the 13th Trump is still orange but Liz Mair is white

Last night Joe Biden said nobody should be in jail for a non-violent crime

The contagion of the record low 10-year Treasury yield of July 2016 has spread to the 30-year in August 2019

U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yield Closes at Record Low:

The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note settled at 1.367% Tuesday, breaching the previous close low of 1.404% set in July 2012 when investors rushed into haven debt amid the depth of the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. Yields fall as bond prices rise. ...

On an intraday basis, the U.S. 10-year yield touched as low as 1.357%. It was 1.446% Friday and 2.273% at the end of last year. The U.S. bond market was shut Monday for a holiday.

Traders say the 10-year yield still has room to fall. Investors and analysts say bond yields are in uncharted waters now and that it is hard to predict how low yields could go in this environment.

Few in the financial markets have foreseen a period of negative interest rates touching off globally. The total of sovereign debt with negative yields jumped to $11.7 trillion as of June 27, up $1.3 trillion from the end of May, according to Fitch Ratings.

The pool is likely to expand further in the months ahead due to ongoing purchases of government bonds by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. ...

The 30-year Treasury bond has been the market darling, and the buying spree has pushed down its yield to record lows lately. The 30-year bond’s yield settled at 2.138%, falling below its record close low of 2.226% Friday.

The 30-year bond was usually the playground for pension funds and insurance firms. But it is now being bid up by a broader investor base due to the global hunger for income. Analysts say it wouldn’t surprise them if the 30-year yield falls below the 2% mark in the weeks ahead.

Three years later:

U.S. 30-year bond yields hit record low, curve inversion grows:

In late Wednesday trading, the yields on 30-year government bonds were 1.939%, down 2.2 basis points from late Tuesday. They hit an all-time low of 1.905% earlier Wednesday.

OK, this is pretty funny: Kamala Harris answers Andrew Yang's Universal Basic Income with Universal Basic Incarceration

Last night's Democrat debate was so bad . . .

. . . I couldn't find one tweet mocking it worth reproducing here.

There's exhaustion out there, people.

Tonight's Democrat debate

I'll say

Atlantic article totally soft-peddles how Obamacare's architects made millions vulnerable to estate recovery under Medicaid

The only reason Obamacare can be called successful reasonably is that it threw millions onto Medicaid, except that what is spent on you in life for your healthcare under Medicaid ends up coming out of what's left of what you owned after you die, if anything, including from the sale of your house, and even from the sale of granny's hand-me-down quilts.

America's first black president, Bill Clinton, signed estate recovery into law, and the second one then sold that bill of goods to millions of America's uninsured poor. He just bought himself a $15 million mansion to celebrate. 

Medicaid’s Dark Secret:

For many participants, the program that provides health care to millions of low-income Americans isn’t free. It’s a loan. And the government expects to be repaid. ...

One lawyer in Tennessee recalled a case in which a woman went to her late mother’s Medicaid auction to buy back quilts that had been passed down for generations. ...

One of the few times estate recovery has made headlines was earlier this decade, during the rollout of the Obama administration’s Medicaid expansion. As more Americans considered Medicaid as a health-insurance option, more came across the fine print. At least three states passed legislation to scale back their recovery policies after public outcry.

Gasoline consumers continue to pay bubble-levels, $2.571/gal on average under 2.5 years of Trump, as oil company profits soar

https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oil-companies-finished-2018-strong-despite-plunge-in-oil-prices-11549031069

How all of Afghanistan should have looked the day after 911, but didn't because we no longer have the stomach for real war

Jeffrey Snider explains the decline in bond yields to The Wall Street Journal's Andy Kessler, tells a clueless Fed what must be done

The Fed Can’t See Its Own Shadow 

Its asset purchases are squeezing nonbank lending and sinking long-term bond rates. ...

Shortages of long bonds—good collateral—are causing “relentless” demand and therefore lower yields. That’s why German long bonds have negative interest rates: not because losing money is a great investment, but because negative interest is the cost of doing business to get “pristine collateral” to use in repos.

This is how the global credit system—what Mr. Snider labels the Eurodollar market—now works. The Fed has become the lender of last resort for the global market, including banks and shadow banks. It’s about time its governors figure that out.

So what should they do? Encourage the Treasury to issue more of the long bonds the market is demanding: 30- or even 100-year. Feed the beast. Then stop quantitative easing: It doesn’t work and soaks up collateral. Next, stop paying interest on reserves. Maybe even create a nontradable “Treasury-R” to act as reserve currency elsewhere, freeing up more bonds. If history repeats, there are about 90 days until China repos roll over again.

God I miss the '50s

Republican beats Democrat in North Carolina 9 special by 50.74% to 48.66%, 2.08 points

The New York Times: It's some airplanes did something day

Thank you . . . wish I could say we've got your back

Ilhan Omar: It's somebody did something day

So-called conservative Drudge never misses a chance to mock the Cult of the Virgin Mary and Catholic superstition

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Peak Trump administration delusion: "Labor market hotter now than during any time in our history"

Median U.S. Household Income Showed No Growth in 2018:

The Trump administration pointed to the poverty decline as evidence that its economic agenda is helping the neediest Americans. “Employment is the best way out of poverty, and President Trump’s policies have made the labor market hotter now than during any time in our history,” said Tomas Philipson, acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

You don't say