Corporate Cash For S&P500 Swells To $1.5 Trillion

Story here:

Amid a lackluster earning season that has featured many companies missing sales expectations, cash balances have swelled 14 percent and are on track toward $1.5 trillion for the Standard & Poor's 500, according to JPMorgan. Both levels would be historic highs.

Neither ObamaCare Nor Ben Bernanke Go Away If . . .

Neither ObamaCare nor Ben Bernanke go away if . . . you vote Democrat.

It is astonishing that Republicans are not saying this more loudly, which is a good and strong reason to doubt their sincerity about getting rid of either ObamaCare or Ben Bernanke. But it is what it is.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the ideal.

There are no lost causes, because there are no won causes.

Obama had a complete grip on power for two years and squandered it, and the Tea Party stopped him cold in 2010.

You can do it again in 2012.

Obama Displayed His Servility To Foreigners Already In 2005 In Ukraine

I had forgotten this one, where Obama bows to Ukraine's then President Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko in 2005.

Transformation After Four Years: Lost AAA Credit Rating, 8.97% Average Unemployment, Average Report of GDP 0.825%, Housing Values Down 13%

"After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 2008, Columbia, Missouri

Fewer Jobs, And More Of Them Part-Time Because Of Obama

Population has increased 10.1 million from four years ago, from 304.5 million to 314.6 million.

Total civilian employment has decreased 2.1 million, from 145.1 million to 143.0 million.

Full-time jobs have fallen 4.5 million, from 119.7 million to 115.2 million.

Part-time jobs have increased 1.9 million, or 7.6%, from 25.1 million to 27.0 million today, and this number will continue to climb as employers turn full-timers into part-timers in order to avoid having to offer insurance to workers working 30 or more hours per week as required by ObamaCare.

'The question in this election is not "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" We know the answer to that. The real question is, "Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 2008, Canton, Ohio

And the answer is No.

ObamaCare Raises Taxes On Middle Class By $200 Billion A Year By 2020

So say James Capretta and Tom Miller, here:

The president wants Americans to believe that ObamaCare is painless and without cost for the middle class, but most Americans, using their common sense, don’t believe him. They are right to be skeptical. It is certainly true that ObamaCare expands the entitlement rolls to some 30 million additional people, and thereby reduces — at least on paper — the numbers of uninsured Americans. But there is a massive cost to doing this, running more than $200 billion annually by the end of the decade. Who will pay for this? The middle class, of course. They will pay higher taxes and higher premiums for health insurance and get less back from the Medicare program in retirement. An honest debate would acknowledge these facts.

I Got Your Legitimate Rape Right Here

It's called the income tax.

New Rasmussen Electoral College Map Moves FL And NC To Romney

The newest update to Rasmussen's Electoral College map has both Florida and North Carolina leaning Romney to bring the match-up with Obama to a two-point race with 7 states still toss-ups: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire.

As of this moment, Rasmussen is showing Obama ahead in 6 of those 7 states. Romney leads in Virginia. So the race is still Obama's to lose based on this arithmetic. 

The Original American Foreign Policy: Separate And Equal

The original American foreign policy was . . . "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle" us.

Not American hegemony, not American greatness, not American leadership of the free world, just our own place in the world like everyone else.

It's right there in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

It would be nice if there were someone left here who actually believed this.

It would mean two things: one, an end to endless war as in Afghanistan, and an end to numerous military occupations and deployments around the globe to protect people who long since have been able to afford to protect themselves; and two, a decent respect to the idea that since our country is our country and your country is your country, you should stay out of ours if we are to stay out of yours.

It's why Americans identify with people around the world who desire political independence of their own. We can help them get it, but in the end it's their job, not ours. It's also why it is intolerable that while we're fighting for who knows what in Afghanistan a Russian nuclear attack sub spent much of this last summer undetected in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening our sub-base in Georgia.

Heard On The Vienna, Austria, Metro: Is It Just Me Or Is It Hot In Here?

The HuffingtonPuffington Post reports:

Vienna's public transport system reacted laconically earlier this week to reports that a young woman on a downtown subway line was dressed in nothing but knee-high boots.

"We know that everyone has a different temperature comfort zone," the agency said in a statement. "But we do not think that our subways are so warm that one has to get undressed."

Some people just need more appreciation than others . . . and boy do they sometimes deserve it.

Top Tax Loss Expenditures Projected For 2011-2015

From the Joint Committee on Taxation's January 2012 projection, here are the top individual categories of lost tax revenue, commonly referred to as tax loss expenditures (the revenue value of tax deductions, tax exclusions, and tax credits), for the five year period from 2011, annualized:

1. Healthcare, healthcare insurance, long term care insurance = $ 145 billion

2. Mortgage interest = $ 93 billion

3. Dividends, long term capital gains = $ 91 billion

4. 401k plans = $ 75 billion

5. Earned income credit = $ 59 billion

6. Pension plans = $ 53 billion

7. State, local income, sales, personal property taxes = $ 46 billion

7. Capital gains at death = $ 46 billion

8. Cafeteria plan benefits = $ 40 billion

9. Untaxed Social Security and Railroad Retirement = $ 38 billion

10. Charitable giving = $ 37 billion

11. State and local government bonds = $ 36 billion

12. Medicare Part A = $ 35 billion

13. Child tax credit = $ 34 billion

14. Life insurance and annuities = $ 30 billion

15. Medicare Part B = $ 27 billion

16. Capital gains on sale of primary residence = $ 25 billion

17. Property taxes on real property = $ 23 billion

Red = housing related ($ 118 billion)

Green = health related ($ 247 billion)

Blue = investment related ($ 137 billion)

Yellow = retirement related ($ 196 billion)

Purple = social welfare related ($ 130 billion)

Black = state and local government related ($ 105 billion)                                    

A State Run By A Tyrant Is Beset With Fear And Full Of Convulsions And Distractions

"[A]ll his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Socrates

Rasmussen Poll Finds 'Tea Party' Label Most Negative, 'Liberal' Second Most

Here:

"[T]he latest national telephone survey finds that 44% regard Tea Party as a negative description for a candidate."

This is what happens to a movement which allows others to define it and co-opt it. With most of the Republican Party skeptical of the movement at best, threatened at worst, there was none to defend the Tea Party from the outrageous insinuations from the left and its allies in the media. It has died by a thousand paper cuts.

The Tea Party's present bad rap is in many ways its own fault. It assiduously refused to unify as a national movement around a platform of ideas and candidates. As a consequence, it was variously captured by elements of Ron Paul's libertarian movement here and individual Republicans and Republican front-groups there.

As a protest movement the Tea Party needed to change because the initial outrage and emotion which brought it to life is not a sustainable or proper vehicle for conservatism. If it is, then conservatism becomes indistinguishable from the demagogic enemy. Unfortunately for the Tea Party, it opted for the change it got not by choice but by default. Refusing to coalesce as a party around a platform of ending bailouts and cronyism, limiting government spending, and endorsing the candidates who supported that as a matter of the utmost importance all doomed it. Republican interlopers like Michael Steele (who failed), Rep. Bachmann (the Lone Rangerette of the US House), and Sarah Palin (who got the bailout religion very late) pounced early and effectively to steal the limelight.

Political originality is no easy invention, but Tea Partiers were ill-served by devotees of the two-party system when true originalism and enthusiasm for the constitution should have taught the Tea Party that proper political representation is the sine qua non of republican government. And in that struggle for representation it is the two parties as we know them who are most at fault for circumscribing it in a US House of 435 members which should by now consist in 10,267. The coin of the realm has Republican on one side, Democrat on the other, but in the middle is nothing but worthless metal. 

Democrats and liberals were entirely happy to jeer from the sidelines as the neophytes were neutered by their political betters in the Republican Party. As usual, it is the Republicans who do the dirty work of liberalism, not the least of which is collecting its taxes and advancing its social agenda incrementally. The reaction of the Tea Party to the radicalism of Obama was profound and deep, as was its dismay by the failure of Republicanism to step up to it.

May the Tea Partiers learn, lick their wounds, and begin planning for another day. Freedom needs them.

Conservatives Forget Romney's Family Was Long Opposed To Conservatism

So sfgate.com, here and here.

The liberal Republicans like Mitt Romney's father George Romney didn't support the conservative candidate, Barry Goldwater, in 1964, but they still expect us to support them in 2012.

That's what you'll read when you look up "chutzpah" in the dictionary.

h/t 'Nita

OK, So Just 3.4% Of Americans Are Freaks Of Nature

I'm glad we finally cleared that up. The part that worries me is the 4.4% who refused to answer . . . or don't know.

Gallup reports, here.

Tell Us, Governor, Why Don't You Care For 47% Of The Country?

Last question of the second presidential debate, picked by Candy Crowley, a hanging curve ball for the president:

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, I want to introduce you to Barry Green, because he's going to have the last question to you first.

ROMNEY: Barry? Where is Barry?

QUESTION: Hi, Governor. I think this is a tough question. To each of you. What do you believe is the biggest misperception that the American people have about you as a man and a candidate? Using specific examples, can you take this opportunity to debunk that misperception and set us straight? ...


CROWLEY: Mr. President, last two minutes belong to you.



OBAMA: ... 

I believe Governor Romney is a good man. Loves his family, cares about his faith. But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considered themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility, think about who he was talking about.

Folks on Social Security who've worked all their lives. Veterans who've sacrificed for this country. Students who are out there trying to hopefully advance their own dreams, but also this country's dreams. Soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now. People who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don't make enough income. ...

Kulaks For Romney

The Fix Was In On The Second Presidential Debate

Candy Crowley (pronounced, helpfully, like Crow) of CNN skillfully gave President Obama more time throughout the second presidential debate, and picked decidedly left-leaning questions submitted by lefties, and then sucker punched Governor Romney at the end by picking the important question to President Obama which allowed the president to attack Romney's remark in the spring about the 47%, but without fear of a response from Romney, so sorry. Getting the last word in these matters is paramount.

At least the nomenklatura will have that to console themselves with when they lose in November.

The choice is between more of such Democrat Stalinism, and Romney's Republican liberalism: more failed crony partnership with industry and suppression of the middle class by impoverishing them down to working class and continued aggravation of the class struggle through hatred of the rich on the one hand, or some vague status quo ante on the other. Since the last four year plan has been such a disaster, the next one can't be much better, so I'm guessing Americans will opt for the liberal instead.

Who wouldn't? When the choice is between the worst president in the post-war era and what passed for success under the second worst, only a masochist would choose the former.

The good bad old days may yet make another appearance. 

The Depression In Real GDP Per Capita: Still At 2004-2005 Level

Chart and data here. Last update was a year ago.

Peak observation was 1/1/07, from which we are roughly 3.5% down after having been down as much as 5.5%.

Capital Gains Income Averaged $497 Billion Annually 2000-2009

From a story in June by the Tax Foundation, here, on volatility in the sources of personal income.

Taxed at 15%, average capital gains income of $497 billion produces almost $75 billion in revenue annually, just shy of what the mortgage interest deduction "costs" the government. You could almost say the current capital gains tax pays for the mortgage interest deduction for everybody. Taxed at 20%, the same amount produces $99 billion annually. At 28% $139 billion annually. At 35% $174 billion annually.