The Broad Market Of Bonds Has Lost 4.88% Of NAV Since July 2012 High

The Vanguard Total Bond Market Index net asset value has declined from a high of 11.25 in July 2012 to 10.70 yesterday after the close, a decline of 4.88%.

Obama, Red Diaper Doper Baby, Calls George Osborne "Jeffrey" 3x

Jeffrey and George Osborne, twin brothers of different mothers

Oops. World's smartest president strikes again, three times calling the British Chancellor of the Exchequer "Jeffrey" instead of "George". Who knew George moonlights as an R&B singer, stage name "Gideon"? 

Oh, sorry Vladimir, I vaporized your Moscow by mistake. I meant Moscow, Idaho. My bad.

Story here.

How To Write To Your Democrat Senator On Immigration

Dear Senator,

I don't understand how you can support conservative Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's Senate immigration bill.

The bill undercuts the wages of working people by exempting people receiving legal status for the first time from the Affordable Care Act provisions. Employers will have added incentive to hire them at a lower cost instead of currently unemployed citizens.

I urge you to vote against the Republican bill. It is not in keeping with the Democratic Party's liberal ideals of equality.

Sincerely,

How Do You Round Up 11 Million Illegals For 462 Million English Classes?

ESL Meets Tu/Th/F 10AM-NOON For 3 Months

If we can't round up millions of illegals to deport them, we are supposed to believe each one will show up multiple times for English classes? At a cost of $330 million?

The English as a Second Language class highlighted at the left, chosen at random, met for a total of 42 times between late January and early May in 2013.

That's only 462 million class sessions for 11 million illegal aliens.

Like that'll happen.

Michigan Fuel Prices Fall 20 Cents Below National Average On Flood Of Supply

The lowest price in Grand Rapids, Michigan as of this hour was $3.39/gallon, which is 20 cents below the current national average of $3.59. Just weeks ago we were paying $4.29/gallon in many places, with discount retailers like Sam's Club charging 20 to 25 cents per gallon below that. Refinery delays in Joliet, IL and Whiting, IN were to blame, combined with a refinery fire in late April in Detroit, MI, drying up supply.

Gold Tanks Below $1,300 Overnight In HKG After The Bernank

Almost another 4% after the NY close.

Bond Market Broadly Down 4.4% Overall In Less Than A Year

The recent carnage commencing just six weeks ago continued today, reaching tonight below this chart's lower bound.

We Spend 4x More On Spying Than On Controlling Foreign "Visitors"

Customs, Immigration & Border most recent year: $18 billion

Estimated National Intelligence budget (secret):     $75 billion

Ve Haf Vays Of Makingk You Pay!

Why Critics Are Unpopular: They Don't Exaggerate Our Virtues

 

A critick is a man who, on all occasions, is more attentive to what is wanting than what is present.

 

 -- Joseph Addison

No One Likes A Rat, Even When He's Right

Which is why critics remain unpopular.

Story here:

A CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning indicates that 52% of the public disapproves of Edward Snowden's actions, with 44% saying they approve of the leaks by the former government contractor who worked for the National Security Agency. ...

Fifty-four percent of those questioned in the poll, which was conducted Tuesday through Thursday, say the government should attempt to bring Snowden back to the U.S. and prosecute him for his leaks.

Let that be a lesson to you would-be whistleblowers out there: "No good deed goes unpunished".

Senate Amnesty Gooses Crossings: Build A Magnet For Illegals And They Will Come

Apprehensions of illegal crossers have shifted big-time to Texas, and soared, up 55% from a year ago.

The New York Times reports, here, and here (notice the politically correct terminology "migrants", and the appeal elsewhere in the story to "scholars" who deny the Senate amnesty has anything to do with the new surge):

Several parts of the border, like one 25-mile stretch west of McAllen, are at times not being watched, so the number of migrants who cross from Mexico without getting caught is surging, too, three agents said in interviews last week.

“It’s really demoralizing because there’s so much traffic passing through here and we can’t do anything about it,” one agent said Friday while on patrol, asking that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “And when you try to do something and they won’t let you do it,” he added, having been ordered during recent shifts not to drive his truck, “it’s just really demoralizing.” ...

Mike Salinas, an alderman in La Joya, Tex., a tiny city on the Rio Grande, said border agents there were frequently outnumbered. Last week, a single agent tried to round up a group of 20, most of whom he watched scatter and get away.

“People are just crossing without fear,” Mr. Salinas said, recalling crowds right in his backyard in recent weeks.

Reduce Nuclear Weapons. Use Them On Hollywood.

Marco Rubio's Immigration Bill Is A Magnet For Many More Illegals

Marco Rubio and friend

Peter Kirsanow for West Virginia Gazette Dot Com, here:

"The immigration reform bill has the potential to make things even worse. Not only will the bill grant amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants, it will act as a magnet for future illegal immigration and substantially increase the number of legal immigrants. It is conservatively estimated that the bill will result in 30 million to 33 million additional immigrants over the next 10 years."

Forbes Article Smells Pandering From Sen. Rand Paul

To which I say, excellent sense of smell.

Sen. Rand Paul panders on many issues, from abortion to right to work, and uses them to fund-raise, because that's what libertarians do: they have something to say about everything because the world does not conform to their ideology. It's why Obama also politicizes everything. There is no place where the light of his ideology does not pry.

If you thought the days of George Bush were over, where you fight ideology with a better ideology, you would be wrong. A spokesman for conservatism in politics eludes us still.

Story here.

Sen. Marco "Rube Goldberg" Rubio Thinks Fines On Illegals Will Pay For Border Security

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Quoted here:

“We need to register them as soon as possible, not just to keep the problem from getting worse, but we’re going to require them to pay a fine, and that’s the money that we are going to use to pay for the border security,” Rubio explained. “If we don’t get that fine money from the people that have violated our immigration laws, then the American taxpayer is going to have to pay for border security.”

Here's the most wildly optimistic estimate of total revenue from fees and fines on 11 million illegal aliens from The Christian Science Monitor: $2,000 per illegal over a decade. And good luck with that given all the work-arounds to fines and fees in the Senate bill. But, make the wild assumption you'll collect the full amount, and you get a paltry one time total of $22 billion.

The cost of security just on the Mexico border in 2012 was $11.7 billion according to BusinessWeek here. America is going to spend well north of $120 billion for border security over the next decade, and along comes Rubio telling us we need to flush the illegals out first before we secure the border in order to finance the security, otherwise the taxpayers will have to pay for it.

What a joke. We're going to pay for it anyway, big time.

In 2011 Republican Governor Rick Perry of Texas was quoted in The New York Times here saying a fence alone would cost $30 billion and a decade to build:

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, claiming superior experience as the leader of the state with 1,200 miles of the border, advocated a more complex strategy, combining fencing and surveillance technology with “a lot of boots on the ground.” Mr. Perry said that building a border-length fence would take “10 to 15 years and $30 billion” and would not be cost-effective.

Whatever the answer is to illegal immigration, the Senate amnesty-first bill ain't it.

Lois Lerner: Sen. Dick Durbin's Government Attack Dog Since 1996

George Will, here:

In the fall of 1996, at the [IL Senate] campaign’s climax, Democrats filed with the Federal Election Commission charges against [Al] Salvi’s campaign alleging campaign finance violations. These charges dominated the campaign’s closing days. Salvi spoke by telephone with the head of the FEC’s Enforcement Division, who he remembers saying: “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.” He was speaking to Lois Lerner.

After losing to Durbin, Salvi spent four years and $100,000 fighting the FEC, on whose behalf FBI agents visited his elderly mother demanding to know, concerning her $2,000 contribution to her son’s campaign, where she got “that kind of money.” When the second of two federal courts held that the charges against Salvi were spurious, the lawyer arguing for the FEC was Lois Lerner.

More recently, she has been head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, which has used its powers of delay, harassment and extortion to suppress political participation. For example, it has told an Iowa right-to-life group that it would get tax-exempt status if it would promise not to picket Planned Parenthood clinics.

USA Today Might As Well Call Obama A Liar, Because He's All That, Every Day, 24/7

Here:

When news broke last week that the government has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, President Obama said he "welcome(s) the debate" over whether his administration has struck the right balance between national security and privacy.

That's questionable. If Obama really wanted this debate, he could have begun it when he first took office and learned in detail what has been going on in the name of keeping Americans safe from terrorists. Instead, the administration has worked to keep citizens in the dark for four-and-a-half years, and members of Congress have repeatedly killed proposals to let Americans know more. The only reason there's a debate now is because it was started by a leaker.

Hm. IRS Cancels Spy "Equiptment" Order For Some Reason.

Here.

Still can't spell, though.

DNI Clapper Lied To Congress And To Us And Pre-Meditated That Lie, Plain And Simple

The Clapper

The New York Times, here, which says Clapper is now in an awkward position (yeah, like being caught in flagrante delicto):

At the March Senate hearing, Mr. Wyden asked Mr. Clapper, “Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

“No, sir,” Mr. Clapper replied. “Not wittingly.”

Mr. Wyden said on Tuesday that he had sent his question to Mr. Clapper’s office a day before the hearing, and had given his office a chance to correct the misstatement after the hearing, but to no avail.

In an interview on Sunday with NBC News, Mr. Clapper acknowledged that his answer had been problematic, calling it “the least untruthful” answer he could give.