350 Radioactive Water Storage Tanks At Fukushima Have Rubber Seals, Not Welded, Just Like The One That's Leaking

There's a line in Heartbreak Ridge which updates snafu. That's Fukushima, except there's nothing normal about pools of leaking radioactive water throwing off 100 millisieverts per hour. 

Story here, by Fukushima Diary, and here by the BBC, which regrettably didn't put Mochizuki on the radio.

Hillary Has More Sooty Baggage Than A 90-Car Freight Train

So says Camille Paglia, here:

'It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts. I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi.'In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was. Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. It’s even a key motif in “King Lear.” As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood.'

Detained In London Limbo Land, David Miranda Didn't Have The Right To Remain Silent

Glenn Greenwald's "wife" detained to intimidate him

As explained here in the UK Guardian:

The reality about schedule 7 of the 2000 [British terrorism] act is that it is a legal power tailored to the half-world of ports and airports. It gives police powers to do things to people in that half-world that they could not do in the real one. In the real world, legal checks and balances apply – in America, ironically, some of these go under the name of "Miranda rights". In the half-world, people can be held and questioned, searches carried out and property confiscated without particular suspicion or legal safeguards. There were 69,000 such stops last year, only a handful of which led to arrests.

And here:

"They even asked me about the protests in Brazil, why people were unhappy and who I knew in the government," said Miranda. He got his first drink – from a Coke machine in the corridor – after eight hours [of detention and interrogation] and was eventually released almost an hour later. Police records show he had been held from 08.05 to 17.00. Unable immediately to find a flight for him back to Rio, Miranda says the Heathrow police then escorted him to passport control so he could enter Britain and wait there. "It was ridiculous," he said. "First they treat me like a terrorist suspect. Then they are ready to release me in the UK."

Sen. McCain Couldn't Find His Own Ass With Both Hands. Neither Could USA Today.

From the most ridiculous editorial about NSA abuses I've read yet, here, in USA Today Away, quoting the senator whom that dope Sarah Palin helped reelect:

"[W]e need more congressional oversight. We need more information."

You mean from Senator Feinstein who is in charge of the oversight in the Senate, who never even had the May 2012 NSA internal audit detailing its own abuses, let alone read it?

Both senators belong in a retirement community, far away from Washington, D.C., reading lifetime subscriptions to that birdcage liner.

UK PM Cameron Joins United Stasi Of America, Tells UK Guardian To Destroy Snowden Files

The Financial Times has the story, here:

"[I]f the material was not handed over or destroyed, the government would try to stop the Guardian’s reporting through a legal route."

30 seconds of truth

Kim Dotcom punks the US Embassy in Berlin July 2013

TBSOL: McCain Has No Credibility In The American World

(seen at Drudge)

Under Harry Truman Federal Spending Was Slashed More Than Two Thirds

Between fiscal years 1945 and 1948 inclusive federal spending declined 67.85%, from $92.7 billion in 1945 to $29.8 billion in 1948. By the end of fiscal 1952 spending increased back up to $67.7 billion, but still 27% lower than in 1945.

Real GDP declined 9.4% from January 1945 to January 1949, but rebounded 28% by the time he left office four years later.

Who says we can't cut the size of government dramatically and still grow like gangbusters?

Kudlow Is Right That Obama's Glorious Immediate Post-War Never Existed, But Completely Misses The Spending Cut Angle

Larry Kudlow, here:

[S]peaking in Galesburg, Ill., this summer, Obama served up a convenient historical fairy tale: "In the period after world War II," he said, "a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity." Presumably he was thinking of a time when high taxes on the rich and industrial-union rule had the middle class soaring. The trouble is, Obama's history is wrong.

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Arguably, government spending cuts were the engine of post-war prosperity.

While Truman's record is second only to JFK/LBJ for real GDP growth in the post-war period, it occurred under special circumstances of extraordinarily deep government spending CUTS, which is little appreciated today when politicians and Keynesian and monetarist economists stress the importance of government spending for GDP. The truly remarkable thing under Truman is how the economy soared as spending decreased by TWO THIRDS from 1945 to 1947, as Arnold Kling reminded us here last year. Funny how Kudlow doesn't mention this. I guess they don't teach that at Princeton.

Under Truman's successor Eisenhower, real GDP growth slowed dramatically because of onerous levels of taxation maintained primarily to retire the war debts, but Eisenhower spent almost as frugally as Truman at the same time, making them the two best presidents we've had when it comes to small increases in the US public debt. That said, only the two Bush presidents and Obama have turned in poorer GDP performances than IKE. Funny also how Kudlow mentions only the one Bush. He leaves out the other one. You know, the "read my lips . . . no new taxes" Bush who ended up raising taxes.

Interestingly enough for US public debt growth, JFK/LBJ come in right behind Truman and Eisenhower while introducing the tax cuts which might have made Eisenhower's GDP record better than it was. Despite the guns and butter era under LBJ, the presidents occupying The White House between 1945 and 1968 were the most fiscally responsible we've had in the post-war, and it was a dramatic resetting of the baseline for spending LOWER under Truman which was the foundation of that period's economic growth.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, Washed-Up Geezer, Thinks NSA Oversight Means Overlooking It

Senator Dianne Emiel Goldman Berman Feinstein Blum, I think

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) is supposed to be leading the oversight of the NSA in the Congress, but to her "oversight" means something more like ignoring it. Easy to do during naps.

Conor Friedersdorf for The Atlantic reports here:

The [Washington Post] got its hands on the [internal May 2012 NSA] audit -- more than a year after the fact -- before she did! And the trend? "Despite the quadrupling of the NSA's oversight staff after a series of significant violations in 2009," [Barton] Gellman reports [link added], "the rate of infractions increased throughout 2011 and early 2012."

ObamaMan Spooks "Bill And Hillary Clinton" On SNL Halloween Party In 2007

Video here.

Only we can mock ourselves.

The Immorality Of Keynesianism Explained In A Thought Experiment

From the conclusion of Jeffrey Dorfman for Forbes, here:

"Actions by private individuals that are not beneficial to society do not suddenly become so when the government does them. Ask yourself if government policies [of printing money and income redistribution from the rich to the poor through the tax code] would be legal and have a positive effect if a private citizen did the same thing [by counterfeiting money and robbing banks]. If the answer is no, using government to accomplish the same aims will not change the policy into a good one."

Bernanke's Crime Against The Elderly: He's Cut Their Income 88%

From Kermit Zieg for The Washington Post, here:

The major architect of the recovery of the past five years has been the Federal Reserve System. ... Everyone seemed to win, but that’s not so. Retirees were badly hurt — devastated, in fact. They have not benefited from lower mortgage rates because their homes generally are paid off. They are not in the stock market because of the volatility. They primarily live on savings and the interest earned on these savings. Ten years ago, a retiree could have earned $40,000 annually on $1 million of savings in a bank. Today, that same $1 million would be lucky to earn $5,000 yearly. If a retirement lifestyle was built on expectations of $40,000 in annual interest income and the reality today is $5,000, the improving economy has no relevance. Economic survival in a low-interest-rate market is the focus for retirees.

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It is always the defenseless who are the first to go under the bus in this country: unborn children, the unemployed and the old.

Who's The Conservative? Rush Limbaugh Or The Prophet Jeremiah?

Now, Steve Jobs' version of what [Ashton] Kutcher said in the last sound bite was this: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice." Don't let other people talk you out of believing in yourself.  Don't let other people talk you out of believing that what you want to do is valid and good and worthwhile. Don't let other people's structure and formula make you feel second-rate or inconsequential. "And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

He said just have the courage, believe and think for yourself, live for yourself. And he's also saying something there that is really true. Your heart will never lie to you.  Your head will all day long, but your heart won't. Steve Jobs said that when you grow up, you tend to get told the world's the way it is and that your life has to be lived inside that world. Try not to get into too much trouble. Get an education, get a job, make some money, have a family, but don't make waves. And Jobs said, to hell with that. Make waves. Everybody else made waves. Change the world.

-- Rush Limbaugh, yesterday here

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? "I the LORD search the mind and try the heart, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings."

-- Jeremiah 17:9f.

Jobless Claims Average Plummets Below 300k For First Time Under Obama

First time claims for unemployment, not-seasonally-adjusted, have now averaged just under 298,000 per week in the last four weeks, the first time that's happened under Obama. Today's weekly report of 280,502 is the third in a row below 300,000 and only the fifth time in 4.5 years under Obama that weekly first time claims have been under that level.

The report is here.

The seasonally-adjusted figure at 332,000 doesn't quite capture the current facts on the ground and exaggerates what's going on by over 11% in the latest report. Even so, annualized we're looking at between 15.5 million claims per year to 17.2 million in the last month, conditions which should make it possible to make real improvements in hiring. Under George Bush claims never got below 16.2 million per year.

But there appears to be no driver for jobs anywhere in this depressed economy, just a driver for a golf ball in the hands of the president.

My Bazooms Are Bigger Than Hillary's

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is headed to Iowa

Ben Bernanke Is A World Class Thief And Should Be In Jail

The average annual return to cash for the three years since July 2010 has been 0.04%, for example in VMMXX, Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund, but over that three year period inflation has absolutely raged at 7.18% overall, with the all items CPI soaring to 232.944 from 217.329. With about $10 trillion stuffed away in M2, returns to cash just keeping pace with inflation would have come to $718 billion to savers by now. Instead they've reaped just $4 billion (annually).

In a related note here, the contribution to GDP over the period from the Zero Interest Rate Policy and Quantitative Easing has mirrored the criminal returns to cash:

'But it turns out that the benefits of printing all that new money may have been negligible. According to a new study by two senior US economists, America's second programme of quantitative easing, nicknamed "QE2", boosted economic output by just 0.04pc.'

The rich have gotten richer the old fashioned way: they've stolen it.

Senator Rubio Fears Executive Orders Instead Of Fighting Them

He looks to his right, but to us it's left.

Sen. Rubio continues with his mission of disappointing the country and disappointing conservatives, here, expressly ceding his legislative authority to the executive:

“I have been saying now for over a year I believe that this president tempted, will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress he will be tempted, to issue an executive order like he did for the DREAM Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen,” Rubio said. ... “But we can’t leave it, in my mind, the way it is, because a year from now we could find ourselves with all 11 million people here legally through an executive order from the president, but no E-Verify, no border security, no more border agents — none of the other reforms that we desperately need.”

Bank Robberies: 2003-2011

We just had a bank robbery at a nearby bank this afternoon. The mope who did it is pictured at the left.

You would be wrong if you thought bank robberies are up because of the Obama depression. They are broadly down since 2003, almost 33%.

YEAR//BANK ROBBERIES

2003//7465

2004//7556

2005//6748

2006//6985

2007//5933

2008//6700

2009//5943

2010//5546

2011//5014

OK, there was a big spike up in 2008, but still nowhere near the 7556 in 2004.

It's kind of counter-intuitive. People rob banks 'cause that's where the money is. People had more money before the Obama depression. But after all the bank failures there were fewer banks and less money around, right? The FDIC had to come up with $88 billion to bail out all the failures. Anyway, it's still profitable to rob banks. Bank robbers get away with tens of millions every year, even now. That's why they do it.

(Data is from the FBI, here)

Present Savings To Business Of 5.5 Million Fewer Full Time Jobs

There are presently just under 118 million who work usually full time. In 2007 at the peak there were just over 123 million working full time. The difference is over 5.5 million.

Imagine all those workers not making the median salary from 2011, which was almost $27,000 per year. Or imagine all those workers not making the average salary from 2011, which was just over $41,000 per year.

The annual savings to business today in compensation alone because all those people are not working is somewhere between $149 billion and $228 billion. Add in the cost of benefits for each employee and then multiply by about six and you'll understand one of the reasons why stocks of businesses have done so well under Obama.