Get Over It: Santa's Been White Since 1881

Actually, he was white before 1881, but this image by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly in 1881 became dominant in America from that time.

Bank Failure Friday: The 24th Bank To Fail In 2013 Is In Texas

Texas Community Bank, National Association, The Woodlands, Texas, failed today, costing the FDIC $10.8 million.

6,891 banks remain in the insured system of FDIC banks and savings institutions.

Over Two Times As Many Getting Stuck With Medicaid Vs. Insurance Under ObamaCare

"Coverage" does not equal care.

The Detroit News reports here:

Nationwide, 1.9 million people completed online applications in October and November, but just 365,000 selected an insurance plan. Those planning to buy on the health insurance marketplace — healthcare.gov — must enroll by Dec. 23 to have a policy in effect by Jan. 1. ... An additional 803,077 Americans were found eligible for Medicaid or the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program. That number includes 7,363 residents of Michigan, one of 25 states and the District of Columbia that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Wow, Jobless Claims Surge +146,241 To A Level Worse Than This Week Last Year: Sudden ObamaCare Effect?

The report is here.

This number is stunning. We haven't seen a level like this in 2013 except for once in July (410k) and three times way back in January to start the year.

Are companies letting people go in advance of ObamaCare kicking-in full-force about a year from now, to comply with the one-year look-back period?

Major market indices declined for a third straight day on the news, the DOW by 2/3rds of a percent.

Military Retirees Under 62 Screwed Under House-Passed Ryan/Murray Budget Deal

As reported here:

The Washington Free Beacon reported that under the budget agreement crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D., Wash.), military retirees younger than 62 will receive 1 percentage point less in their annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). ...

A loss of one percentage point in their COLA translates into thousands of dollars in lost retirement income. ...

If an E-7 retires at 40, they would lose $83,000. Commissioned officers could lose much more. Lieutenant colonels and commanders (an O-5 rank) who retire at 40 would lose $124,000.

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Senate Republicans who oppose the cuts to military retirements are saying so loudly but will most probably be defeated in the Senate next week when the budget deal comes up for a vote in the Democrat controlled chamber.

Roll Call Magazine's 218 Blog Embraces The Oligarchy

"218: Because it's the only number that really matters in the US House."

Yeah, and that's the problem.

Current population: 316.8 million.

Implied representation on the constitutional formula rejected by the anti-Federalists: 10,560 US Representatives in the US House.

Preferred level: 21,120 in the US House. Let 'em camp in tents on FedEx Field.

Rush Limbaugh's comments on the pope have been nothing if not lazy, so what's new?

Rush Limbaugh's comments on the pope have been nothing if not lazy, which most of his comments are in this late period of his career, and which is why one week after he made them on the pope we are still hearing about them in the media and on his own radio show. If Rush is being talked about, it's there on the show that you're sure to hear about it, because relevance was never so hard to keep up as it is in these days.

Here's Rush this very day in fact, claiming Reuters translated "unfettered capitalism" from the pope's remarks when Reuters hadn't done any such thing, one of the many little half-truths which are the stock in trade of The Rush Limbaugh Program; that phrase "unfettered capitalism" was never in quotation marks in the original Reuters story:

Now, what I had was a Reuters story that was reporting via the translation of the Holy Father's remarks, and in that translation were "unfettered capitalism," a huge, huge hit on what the pope was said to have called "trickle-down," and a plea for leaders of the world to do something about "income inequality" and about poverty and so forth, as though no one's been doing that.  I remember when I saw it, I was really shocked.  I could not believe...

Here's the original Reuters story speaking of unfettered capitalism but not in quotation marks:

Pope Francis called for renewal of the Roman Catholic Church and attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny," urging global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality in the first major work he has authored alone as pontiff.

The fact is Reuters skewed this story in the direction of "unfettered capitalism" while the pope never used the words "unfettered" or "capitalism", choosing instead "the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation" as the "new tyranny".

Here's as close as the pope comes to "unfettered capitalism" (this is easy to find online, but Rush cannot seem to), who only spoke of "unbridled consumerism" and never once mentioned unfettered capitalism, which comes as a surprise to Rush when callers protest as one did just today:

60. Today’s economic mechanisms promote inordinate consumption, yet it is evident that unbridled consumerism combined with inequality proves doubly damaging to the social fabric. Inequality eventually engenders a violence which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve. It serves only to offer false hopes to those clamouring for heightened security, even though nowadays we know that weapons and violence, rather than providing solutions, create new and more serious conflicts. Some simply content themselves with blaming the poor and the poorer countries themselves for their troubles; indulging in unwarranted generalizations, they claim that the solution is an “education” that would tranquilize them, making them tame and harmless. All this becomes even more exasperating for the marginalized in the light of the widespread and deeply rooted corruption found in many countries – in their governments, businesses and institutions – whatever the political ideology of their leaders.

The pope's message, after all is said and done, is really quite simple, as all ideologies are, the difference being that his is a heavenly one, not a terrestrial. He's obviously uncomfortable with American Catholics of the conservative persuasion who have been allying themselves with what is commonly called libertarian ideology, the devotees of which Russell Kirk famously named the "chirping sectarians" of the conservative movement, Rep. Paul Ryan being a prominent contemporary example thereof. For Kirk, it was their ideological habit of mind which marked them out as outsiders of the movement because they could not abide the persistent lack of conformity to principle which is endemic to fallen, human nature in need of salvation, and substituted for it a bastardized, immanentized eschaton of infinite freedom:

208. If anyone feels offended by my words, I would respond that I speak them with affection and with the best of intentions, quite apart from any personal interest or political ideology. My words are not those of a foe or an opponent. I am interested only in helping those who are in thrall to an individualistic, indifferent and self-centred mentality to be freed from those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking which is more humane, noble and fruitful, and which will bring dignity to their presence on this earth.

In the final analysis, conservatism represents an acquiescence to the sad predicament of human existence against which libertarianism never stops revolting, and Christianity represents a temporal and by definition incomplete response of God to life in that world. But for libertarianism, incomplete just isn't good enough.

Have Households Started To Borrow? Probably for cars.

PragCap thinks so here, but it's only been up $169 billion year over year. The monthly rate of vehicle sales annualized is up 1.6 million units over the same period. Could be that. Subprime, loan to value in excess of 100% and longer terms are all up in the space, according to Reuters here just in recent days.

The Passive Long-Term Investor's Dilemma: Both Equities and Treasurys Are Unattractively Priced

From John Hussman, here:

So passive buy-and-hold investors – who lock in a price and don’t alter their investment positions for a long period of time – should recognize that Treasury bonds are likely to outperform stocks over the coming decade, with substantially less risk. In my view, neither asset class is attractively priced, but in a world of zero returns on Treasury bills, our risk budget for passive investors would lean more toward bonds than equities here nonetheless.

Michigan Gov. Snyder Brags He's The Most Pro-Immigration Governor In The Country

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, someone who will never be president, here:

“I’m probably the most pro-immigration governor in the country and I’m proud of that,” said Snyder, who included farm workers in his call for opening the state’s borders to immigrants who can create jobs for the state’s economy.

Best comment on the story:

"I never see advertisements for farm labor." 

Government Logo On NSA Spy Satellite BRAGS "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach"

Pics here and here. Story here.

Remember the great vampire squid of banking?

Birds of a feather, er . . . cephalopods of a tentacle.

Obama Lies About Everything, Even The Small Stuff Like His Illegal Alien Uncle Omar

From The Boston Herald, here:

[I]n 2011 ... media outlets asked the White House if the two men had ever met. The answer was no. ... However ... Uncle Omar testified in court that his nephew had stayed with him for three weeks when he was at Harvard Law School . . .. And what do you know, the president confirmed his uncle’s story.

Full Time Jobs Are Still 6.344 Million Below The July 2007 Peak

There are just 116.875 million usually full time employees in the US nearly 6.5 years since peaking above 123 million in July 2007.

Obama's laser-like focus vaporized full-time jobs, which plunged from 120 million a month before his election in 2008 to below 109 million one year later.

Unemployment falls to 7.0% in November, the 60th straight month at that level or higher

That's five years for those of you in Rio Linda.

Today's report from the BLS  shows unemployment falling to 7.0% from 7.3%, quite a drop, with an average level of job creation monthly in the last year rising to 195,000 in November or 2.34 million in the last year.

Part-time for economic reasons is down to 7.7 million, while for non-economic reasons is up not even 300,000 in the last year (seasonally adjusted). Obviously the purported ObamaCare effect is not showing up. An important reason why the government can't measure the asserted phenomenon is because people who are working fewer than 35 hours are already classified as part-time by the BLS. If they get reduced to 29 hours because of ObamaCare, SO WHAT? They are still part-time, just as they were working 30, 32 or 34 hours.

The real test for the part-timing of the nation is in average hours worked, which continue flat to rising modestly in the last year. There simply haven't been enough workers reduced in hours to impact this measure. Isolated industries may be heavily impacted, but overall workers are not  . . . at least not yet.

Still, unemployment under Obama sucks big time, now worse than under Reagan and therefore the worst record for a sixty month run in the post-war.

Reagan's average report, December 1980 to December 1985 (61 months): 8.3% unemployment.

Obama's average report, December 2008 to November 2013 (60 months): 8.7% unemployment.

Barack Obama's Unemployment Record Is Now Worse Than Reagan's

Having grown up in the 1960s and lived through the terrible employment situation which prevailed in this country off and on from 1975 arguably through 1996, Barack Obama now owns the dubious distinction of a worse unemployment record than even Ronald Reagan's, and that's saying something.

From the time of Reagan's election in November 1980 right on through December 1985, unemployment stayed at or above 7% for 61 straight months, with an average report of unemployment coming to 8.31%. The severity of it was highlighted in 1981 and 1982 by a string of ten months with unemployment in excess of 10%. It was a brutal time, especially for older workers with homes and families whose dreams for the future were arrested, and for young people who had to start their careers at the very bottom, just as many of their depression-era parents had had to do.

Hard as it may be to believe, unemployment under Barack Obama is now even worse than it was under Reagan. Obama's average report of unemployment over the last sixty months, none of which has been lower than 7%, the same as the case with Reagan but short of one month (we'll see if the 7% threshold is broken in the December figures come January), now stands at an incredible 8.67% even though there's been only one month, October 2009, at 10%. Combined with the housing, stock market and banking collapses, a bona fide if small depression with negative GDP in 2008 and 2009, and a much older, less adaptive population, the impact of unemployment on the psyche and fortunes of the nation this time around is understandably more acute.

From the long term perspective, unemployment took a systemic turn for the worse in America since the mid-1970s, shortly after we adopted the free trade mania which has done nothing except create a middle class abroad at the expense of the middle class at home. Our chief export has been the prosperity of the nation's vast middle, chiefly through housing which Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich helped Americans tap like an ATM to buy goods, mostly made abroad. Owner's equity in housing is half what it used to be in this country, squandered away by the squanderers, the Baby Boom.

If you want America to continue to exist, fix that by forcing people to save again, since no one seems to know how to do so for themselves, for the obvious reason. It doesn't really matter how we do it, but do it we must, or it's curtains.

(view the chart here at The Wall Street Journal)

Wow The ObamaCare Sham Guy

h/t Zero Hedge

White Hat Hacker Says Healthcare.gov Remains Insecure, Should Be Scrapped

Wow The ObamaCare Sham Guy

White hat hacker David Kennedy says despite Obama's claim that healthcare.gov has now been fixed, it's still not a secure website and your personal information is at risk.

"If you look at the report that was released, they had fixed 400 bugs. None of those were addressed on security. There haven't been any [security] fixes yet. You're trying to rush to keep the website—the front-end that we see everyday—up-and-running. Unfortunately when you do that and you don't do any testing around that, you introduce new exposures."

The complete story is here.

Second Estimate Of Q3 2013 GDP Rises To 3.6% From 2.8% In The Initial

The report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis is here, showing Q3 2013 real GDP growing at a 3.6% clip. 

1.68 points of the 3.6, however, represents building of massive inventories, meaning the underlying rate is 1.9%, down from last month's 2.0% after stripping out inventories. The first estimate of inventories had been off by 100%.

Falling demand from consumers in the third quarter was indicated as personal consumption expenditures (PCE) grew at a rate 0.4 lower, at 1.4% vs. 1.8% in the second quarter, a drop of 22%. In the first estimate PCE had been estimated at 1.5% in the third quarter. The decline confirms the ongoing weakness of the consumer economy.

Turley Says Obama Is Becoming The Very Danger The Constitution Was Designed To Avoid

Here:

The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he's not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He's becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. ... [W]e have had the radical expansion of presidential powers under both President Bush and President Obama. We have what many once called an imperial presidency model of largely unchecked authority.

Obama Affordable Veterinary Act

h/t Chris, who always seems to come through on a slow news day