Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this website!

Representative Lamar Smith (TX-21), here:

"Given the distressing testimony we heard at the Science Committee’s hearing about Healthcare.gov, there is only one reasonable course of action. Mr. President, take down this website."

Ritholtz doing The Mussolini

5 Million Get Insurance Canceled, Obama Claims Over 100 Million Sign-Ups In First Month!

The red diaper doper baby in chief strikes again, in a conference call to supporters, quoted here:

Boasting of his administration's skill in encouraging taxpayers to buy health insurance policies through public marketplaces, he claimed that 'in the first month alone, we've seen more than 100 million Americans already successfully enroll in the new insurance plans.' ...

It's likely Obama meant to initially take credit for 100,000 success stories, rather than 100 million. But his mangling of the statistics put him off-track by a factor of 1,000.

And even the smaller number relies on a flexible definition of what counts, and what doesn't, as an Obamacare subscriber.

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Off by a factor of 1,000, which pretty much sums up everything about the last 5 years.

This is what you get when you put the son of Cheech and Chong in charge of the country. You know, intercontinental railroads, military corpse-men and three proud words ("made in the USA"). 

Justin Amash Isn't A Conservative, Just An Ambitious Climber

People keep calling Rep. Justin Amash, Republican (MI-3), a conservative, but he isn't. What he mostly is is ambitious, like most politicians, despite what his own campaign website continues to say.

Conservatism is a tool in the hands of this tool peddler's son, which he has used to advance his career in elections but has set aside when it comes to votes on say abortion, energy and the budget where he has made the good the enemy of the perfect. This is surprising from someone who claims to be a moderate.

By his own admission to George Will last April, when the prospect of throwing his hat in the ring to vie for the seat of retiring Democrat Senator Carl Levin was still tantalizingly real, Justin Amash demonstrated that his conservatism is merely part of his calculated "mix of positions", not the center of who he is:

“Tell me how a Democrat is going to attack me on the social issues.” Republicans, however, might take up that task. Nevertheless, he thinks that he could win a Republican primary and that “my mix of positions is best for winning the general.”

“Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

Republicans take note.

Justin Amash doesn't moderate his positions for the sake of Republican votes, but for the sake of Democrat ones. But God help you if your positions as a Republican don't toe his libertarian line, then he won't budge an inch.

A clearer picture of the practical meaning of libertarianism you will hardly find: They are Democrats in disguise.

"The only way ObamaCare pain stops for Democrats is if they repeal it."

So says John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics, just now on the Larry Kudlow Radio Show.

The NY Sun Reminds Yellen Congress Regulates The Value Of Money, Not The Fed

The wimps in the Senate are rolled yet again, but The Sun shineth, here:

What needs to be confronted is the scandal of Federal Reserve independence. Where in the Constitution does it say that monetary policy is supposed — or permitted — to be independent of politics? If the Founders of America had wanted the monetary power to be given to a body independent of politics, they could have given it to the Army or the Navy or the Supreme Court. But they sat down in Philadelphia and gave the power to “coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin” to, in the Congress, the single most political institution in the entire constitutional system.

Vanguard's VTSMX Posts Record High Of 45.46 Yesterday, The 44th New High In 2013

This fund, Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index, has posted new all time highs in every month this year save June: one in January, six in February, six in March, three in April, NINE in May, six in July, two in August, two in September and six in October. They really bought in May and went away, but only for a month.

Yesterday's new high is the third in November.

Students of  log-periodic bubbles as described by Didier Sornette are paying close attention.

"Most Investors Will Hold All The Way Down"

John Hussman, here, last Tuesday:

'While we can make our case on the basis of fact, theory, data, history, and sometimes just basic arithmetic, what we can’t do – and haven’t done well – is to disabuse perceptions. Beliefs are what they are, and are only as malleable as the minds that hold them. Like the nearly religious belief in the technology bubble, the dot-com boom, the housing bubble, and countless other bubbles across history, people are going to believe what they believe here until reality catches up in the most unpleasant way. The resilience of the market late in a bubble is part of the reason investors keep holding and hoping all the way down. In this market cycle, as in all market cycles, few investors will be able to unload their holdings to the last of the greater fools just after the market’s peak. Instead, most investors will hold all the way down, because even the initial decline will provoke the question “how much lower could it go?” It has always been that way.'

"The Harrisburg Patriot and Union" Newspaper Was Right The First Time About The Gettysburg Addresses

Stories here and here:

"But the Secretary of State is a man of note. He it was who first fulminated the doctrine of the irrepressible conflict; and on the battle field and burial ground of Gettysburg he did not hesitate to re-open the bleeding wound, and proclaim anew the fearful doctrine that we are fighting all these bloody  battles, which have drenched our land in gore, to upset the Constitution, emancipate the negro and bind the white man in the chains of despotism."

-- Tuesday November 24, 1863

CHRONICLES' Roman Catholic Tom Fleming Goes All-In For Obedience To The Tyranny

When you hitch your wagon to the grandmothers of Bolshevism, you always end up in the ditch:

Not content with telling wives to obey husbands, slave to obey masters, subjects to obey the rulers, Paul makes obedience a general rule: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.  For there is no power but of God: the powers that are ordained of God.  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive unto themselves damnation."  So much for the right of revolution, civil disobedience, and, I might add, the myth of the Underground Railroad. ... In everyday political terms, then, we have to perform our duties as subjects or citizens.  "Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; [TAX RESISTERS NEED NOT APPLY], custom to whom custom [SORRY, PAUL IS NO FREE-TRADER], fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.  By the way, the word for honor is good old Greek word time, that implies that different men have a worth or price that must be paid in terms of respect.

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None of that good ole' Protestant "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" stuff for Tom Fleming, no siree.

It's nice to see that after all these years our disagreements about politics always end up being theological at their root.

Conservatives take note. The Roman Catholics now in control of most of the conservative movement are the reason America grows less and less free than it used to be. They will do nothing but continue to bow, but patriots will stand with the father of their country and refuse to kneel. 

Insurance Canceled By ObamaCare? Send A Copy Of The Letter To MyCancellation.com.

Hundreds already have.

Codepink Rips Drone War Architect Jeh Johnson, New Head Of Homeland Security

Story here.

ObamaCare: Gun To The Head Charity Designed To Shrink The Middle Class

The income redistributionist m/o of ObamaCare, which will execute the middle class, not the upper class, dawns on a New York Times op-ed writer, here, from which this excerpt about how she lost her plan, got a much more restrictive one in its place, and had to pay an extra $5,400 for it:

“Obamacare or Kafkacare?” I posted on Facebook as soon as I hung up with Anthem. I vented about the call and wrote that the president should be protecting the middle class, not making our lives substantially harder. For extra sympathy, I may have thrown in the fact that I’m a single mom. (O.K., I did.) ...

[President Obama] keeps apologizing while maintaining that it’s for the good of the country, a vast improvement “over all.”

And the “over all” might agree. But the self-employed middle class is being sacrificed at the altar of politically correct rhetoric, with nobody helping to ensure our health, fiscal or otherwise, because it’s trendy to cheer for the underdog. Embracing the noble cause is all very well — as long as yours isn’t the “fortunate” family that loses its access to comprehensive, affordable health care while the rest of the nation gets it.

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When it comes to spreading the wealth around, they mean the middle class' wealth, not the wealth of the rich.

Obama Job Approval At Real Clear Politics Hits A New Low Today

The previous low, shown on the graph, was 42.1. Today Obama falls to 42.0 in Real Clear Politic's composite data.

Whitehouse.gov still lies tonight about keeping your health insurance

You didn't build that, Obama did.

Obama Built That 2.0

Liars gonna lie

"Obama denies he made a promise that was videotaped two dozen times."

Feckless Obama Does Nothing About The Now 5.75 Year Long Employment Recession

Unemployment has ticked up to 7.3% in October as another 720,000 people bailed out of the labor force. 

An astounding 91.5 million could be in the labor force but are not. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, over 12 million people have left it, 11.7 million of which left it AFTER the recession ended in June 2009. 

You have to go back to 1979 to get a labor force participation rate as low as 62.9 like we have today. At 58.3 the civilian employment population ratio was last this bad back in 1983.

Job growth increased again to average 190,000 added per month in the last year as up-revisions to previous monthly reports were taken into account. At this rate it would take over five years to put everyone who left the labor force back into it, assuming you didn't also have to accommodate all the new entrees into the labor force from population growth. Many of those who left will simply never re-enter because they will reach retirement eligibility before they'll find a job.

The broadest measure of unemployment included 11.3 million out of work, 8.1 million working part-time for economic reasons (peak was in excess of 9.2 million), and 2.3 million marginally attached to the workforce, or 21.7 million total.

CalculatedRiskBlog's famous graph of this longest and deepest employment recession in the post-war now extends the streak to 69 months, or 5.75 years.

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be found here.

GDP For Q3 2013 At 2.8% Annualized In The First Estimate, Released Today

click to enlarge

The report in pdf from the Bureau of Economic Analysis may be found here.

The average report of GDP in 2013 now stands at 2.13% (1.1%, 2.5% and 2.8%), while growth measured in the 3rd quarter on an annualized basis is running at 2.8%.

Assuming GDP in the third and fourth quarters finishes sufficiently strongly enough to lift the year to a growth rate of 2.8% overall when next year's final estimate of GDP for Q4 2013 is complete, Obama's five year record will be an average report of 1.4%, still the lowest in the post-war behind George W. Bush's 2.1%.

But that assumption may be too rosy.

The GDP range for 2013 projected by the Federal Reserve in its June report is just 2.3% to 2.6%, so it remains very possible that 2013 GDP will finish the year at something less than the current 2.8%, especially as the ObamaCare Tax, in the form of higher health insurance premiums and other taxes, whacks the only people with the spending money in this economy.