Liberals still imagine conservative Democrats just evaporated when they actually became Republicans

Liberal Peter Beinart admits Republicans hate Obama because he's a Democrat, not because he's black, but still can't accept it that the Democrat Party left the southerners, not southerners the Democrat Party, here:

I’m not claiming racism is irrelevant to Republican opposition to Obama. Race is a constant presence in American politics, and it’s impossible to understand either political party without it. But the right’s strategy of militantly opposing, and sometimes delegitimizing, Democratic presidents stretches back two decades now. It has its roots in the end of the Cold War, which stripped Americans of a common enemy; in the fragmentation of media that once spanned ideological divides and now exacerbates them; and in the near-extinction of the southern conservative Democrats and northern liberal Republicans who once helped broker political compromise.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

And you'd think he'd see the victory in this instead of the defeat, because Democrats joining the Republican Party have done far more to liberalize it, and the nation as a whole, than Republicans have done to "conservatize" the new arrivals. The constant leftward drift of politics since the Reagan era proves that, especially in the realm of social policy.

Conservative traitor Bush 41 ACCEPTS JFK Profile in Courage Award for breaking no new taxes promise

To Democrats the only good Republican is the traitor to his own kind. It is enough of an insult that George Herbert Walker Bush was given the award, but the real outrage is that he accepted it.

Story here:

"Candidly speaking, my grandfather didn't want to raise taxes," Lauren Bush said as she accepted the award. "But ... he felt he owed the American people action and results. Compromise is a dirty word in Washington today. ... But once we get back to realizing the importance of actual governance, I suspect this too will pass.". . . The award is named for Kennedy's 1957 book, Profiles in Courage, which tells the stories of eight U.S. senators who took unpopular stands.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The farce of the award is that the Kennedy clan still doesn't have the courage to admit that JFK didn't write it:

John F. Kennedy is credited as its author, but there are credible allegations that most of it was the work of his speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen.

The loyalty of libertarians, as with other ideologues, is to something other than borders, language and culture

Mike "Mish" Shedlock, here, who has no home, no country, no roots anywhere which are not exposed to the withering glare of libertarian "principle":

According to Gabrielė "From soap operas to ballet performances, the Russian government is doing everything to influence the cultural life of Eastern Europe, and to maintain a stranglehold on the mentality of the people."

Let's assume that is true. Here is an equally true statement "From soap operas to ballet performances, the EU is doing everything to influence the cultural life of all of Europe, and to maintain a stranglehold on the mentality of the people."

Here's another "The US is doing everything to everyone globally, and by military force where necessary, to maintain a hypocritical stranglehold on any country that dares go against the vision of the United States."

It's time to treat the rich like equals: Dean Kalahar speaks up for proportional taxation

Here, although the ahistorical reading of Scripture by liberals on behalf of progressive taxation is hardly new:

Proportional taxes actually meet the equity and ability to pay principles of effective, efficient, and "fair" taxes. With a proportional tax everyone pays the same percentage but those who earn or spend more pay more. For example: if you buy a $50,000 car and the Fair/proportional tax is 10%, then you pay $5,000 in tax. If, on the other hand, you buy a $5,000 car, your tax is $500. By paying the same percentage, everyone is offered the dignity of being treated equally, and those who afford more pay more. Isn't that what liberals are always demanding?

"We have to raise the progressive tax rate so the "rich" pay their "fair share."

In reality, progressive tax rates, like the federal income tax, might meet the ability to pay principle but not the equity principle. Progressive taxes have varied tax rate percentages depending on income so taxpayers are not treated equally. Currently the top 20% of income earners pay more than 90% of the income taxes, while the bottom 50% pays less than 3% of the income taxes. Who's actually "paying their fair share?"

Robert Tracinski has been reading The Bible

It turns out Robert Tracinski is both an atheist and a libertarian, which makes perfectly good sense. I think he gets just one mention here on the blog before this. It turns out he's been reading the Bible.

Story here and here.

I wonder how long it will take him to discover that his own conception of Western-style individualism is also the product of a madman. 

Under Democrat rule the level of America's core workers aged 25 to 54 remains 5.662 million below the 2007 peak

The peak level of workers aged 25 to 54 was 101,083,000 in November 2007. In April 2014 the level was 95,421,000.

Under 6+ years of Democrat rule, full time employment remains 5.146 million below the 2007 peak

Peak full time employment was 123,219,000 in July 2007. Almost seven years later full time stands at 118,073,000. If we are lucky this summer full time will hit 120 million.

Not seasonally adjusted, total nonfarm employment remains 1.115 million below the November 2007 peak

Peak was 139,443,000 on November 1, 2007. On April 1, 2014 the level stood at 138,288,000.

The agony under rule by Democrats: 75 months later, 6.25 years, employment remains 113,000 short of the previous peak in 2007

For a graph and discussion, see Calculated Risk, here:

"This shows the depth of the recent employment recession - worse than any other post-war recession - and the relatively slow recovery due to the lingering effects of the housing bust and financial crisis." 

For a second graph and discussion, see here:

"This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms - this time aligned at maximum job losses.  At the recent pace of improvement, it appears employment will be back to pre-recession levels next month (Of course this doesn't include population growth)."

Unemployment plummets to 6.3%, 288,000 jobs are added in April and the stock market just shrugs its shoulders

The employment situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for April 2014 is here.

806,000 people dropped out of the labor force in April (seasonally adjusted), many of whom likely caused the unemployment rate to plunge 0.4 points to 6.3%. Fewer people not counted as unemployed even though they were unemployed makes the headline number drop. The not-seasonally-adjusted number leaving the civilian labor force was 782,000.

People are making too much of this data point, however. Granted, the drop was large for a March to April cycle. But key is that the civilian labor force level always peaks in July each year and then declines and rises again to a new high. It is not appreciated that a new all time high in the civilian labor force level was reached just last July at 157,196,000. True, the pace of achieving new peak levels was arrested after July 2008. Adding about 1.5 million to the labor force each summer as in the past would mean we should have been at about 163.8 million in the summer of 2013. We were off that pace by 6 million. The April 2014 level, however, was higher than the April 2013 level, which was higher than the April 2012 level, which was higher than the April 2011 level. The point is the civilian labor force level is climbing out of its hole, and the peaks and valleys prove it. When they stop proving it we should be concerned.

The 288,000 added to payrolls in April stands in vivid relief against the 190,000 average added to payrolls per month in the preceding twelve months. The employment level of those who are 25-54 years old surged 321,000 to 95,421,000, still almost 6 million under the November 2007 high. At 288,000 per month for a year, one could easily add almost 3.5 million to payrolls and in two years return the levels of those of prime working age to the previous peak.

Per hour earnings for all employees did not rise and remained flat. That is concerning, but at least production and nonsupervisory employees saw an increase.

The Case Shiller Home Price Index Shows Housing Prices Almost 20% Above The Long Term Mean Level

The current level of the Case Shiller Home Price Index is 152.48 and the mean level is 127.51.

About 140 on the index looks like the historical high water mark beyond which housing appears to be in a bubble, meaning we are in one.

Given the scale of the recent extreme housing bubble, housing should not have been prevented from correcting fully, probably well below 120, in order to reset the market on a surer basis. That might have prevented the current escalation in prices, which are unaffordable to almost everyone beneath upper middle class income levels of around $76,000.

Recent tirades against income inequality forget that the bottom half of the population typically has most of what wealth it has tied up in housing and is not well diversified. Loss of homes and home equity have been major drivers of income inequality under Barack Obama, compounded by loss of employment and housing policy inattention, even as stock markets have been driven higher by nominally positive policy through Obama's Federal Reserve chairs.

Obama sent money, after all, to Aunt Zeituni's family to help with her funeral, but he did not attend, and went golfing instead.

Are Democrats fanatical about abortion rights for unstated racist reasons?

Seen here:

New Jersey city council chairman and mayoral candidate Marie Strumolo Burke was caught on tape lamenting her city’s descent into a “fucking nigger town” — and nearly all media reports failed to identify her as a Democrat. Burke is chairman of Belleville, New Jersey’s city council and is running for mayor in the town’s June election. And yes, she is a member of the Democratic Party. In an undated recording of a voicemail left by a former council chairman, Burke’s voice can be heard in the background “discussing” proposed changes to the town’s tax rates. “This is terrible. This is terrible,” she can be heard moaning in the background. “This is gonna be a fucking nigger town!”

Catastrophic Q1 2014 GDP report at 0.1% makes 21 quarterly reports under Obama averaging just 1.76% each

The latest GDP report is here.

The decline in GDP in Q1 to 0.1% annualized was from 2.6% annualized in Q4 2013, a whopping 96% free fall. In other words, the economy did a panic stop, slamming on the brakes and hitting the wall.

Blaming it on the winter, for those of us who've seen more than fifty of them north of the Mason-Dixon Line, is laughable beyond belief. We don't hibernate like bears up here. We get up early and blow the snow off the 200 feet of driveway and get on with our day.

Here's the truth: Quarter on quarter durable goods consumption crashed over 70%, nondurable over 95%. Real nonresidential fixed investment was a catastrophe, the spread plummeting 136%. Residential investment added a decline of 5.7% to the previous quarter's decline of 7.9%. Exports went deep sea diving, the spread down 180% quarter on quarter, and the spread for imports was down even more, 193%. A slight uptick in government spending kept GDP barely positive.  

Five years of GDP reports under Obama have averaged just 1.24% per year, so the sixth year is off to a terrible start at 0.1%.

Eight years of GDP reports under Bush averaged 2.13% per year, pretty lame all by itself but 1.7 times better than Obama so far.

I'd take it in a heartbeat.

Obama's awful GDP explains lower incomes, long term unemployment, government dependency and loss of confidence

So says Investors.com here:

Had his recovery matched Ronald Reagan's growth rates, U.S. GDP would be $2 trillion bigger today. Had it matched John Kennedy's, it would be $3 trillion bigger. These aren't just abstract numbers. Obama's weak recovery explains why household incomes are lower than they were when the recession ended, why millions are long-term unemployed and millions more have given up looking for work, why government dependency is at all-time highs and why confidence is so low.

----------------------------------

Which is why our propagandists in the media have buried the most important story of our time. America's first black president is an abject failure.

MSNBC dingbat tries to tell the world Animal Farm wasn't aimed at the Soviet Union

Her name? Krystal Ball.

(With a name like that shouldn't she be doing the weather somewhere, or maybe the traffic? No, I know! Market futures!)

Here she is in all her dimness, trying to frame George Orwell's fairy story as a screed against capitalism:

Animal Farm, hmm. Isn't that Orwell's political parable of farm animals where a bunch of pigs hog up all the economic resources, tell the animals they need the food because they're the makers and then scare up a prospect of a phony boogie man every time their greed is challenged?

Sorry, no. The original capitalist pigs were the communists, which is why the communists like "Krystal Ball" work so hard to make you think the opposite:

One publisher during the war, who had initially accepted Animal Farm, subsequently turned it down after an official at the British Ministry of Information warned him off. The publisher then wrote to Orwell, saying: "If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators [Lenin and Stalin], that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. "Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are."

In Orwell's London Letter for Partisan Review dated 17 April 1944 he stated how it was "next door to impossible to get anything overtly anti-Russian printed" because of the US, UK, Soviet alliance.

What's next from old Krystal? The OSS (formed in 1941) murdered Trotsky?

America Becomes France, Shrugs Shoulders Over Disastrous Q1 GDP Of 0.1%, News Media Avoid Story

No major news outlet makes the disaster of GDP under Obama, who owns the absolute worst record in the post-war, the lead story this morning except for business news outlets like CNBC and Marketwatch. ABC's story is a one line headline from AP. That's it! You have to actively go looking for the GDP story under "Money" or "Business" or "Economy" to find it just about everywhere even though it is the story of our time because it's the reason there are no jobs, no income growth, declining living standards and growing income inequality. All brought to you by Barack Hussein Obama, hm hm hm, who has turned America into a slum.

Q1 2014 GDP 0.1%: Consensus 1.2% Only Overestimated By 1100%, That's All!

The median priced existing home is affordable only to the highest reaches of the upper middle class

From an interesting discussion recently about what it means to be middle class, here:

One helpful yardstick to judge whether you're middle class: Median household income was $51,017 in 2012, according to the most recent U.S. census data. Robert Reich, a professor of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor, has suggested the middle class be defined as households making 50 percent higher and lower than the median, which would mean the average middle class annual income is $25,500 to $76,500.

If you're in the middle of the middle, however – not lower or upper-middle class – that would be an income range between $39,764 and $64,582, says Aaron Pacitti, an assistant professor of economics at Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y.

Again, it isn't official. Nobody gets a membership card to the middle class.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The former spread, $25,500 to $76,500, comes to about 53 million individual wage earners in 2012 according to Social Security wage statistics, out of almost 154 million total. This spread looks like it comes from dividing the total workers into thirds and seeing where the income lines fall . . . in other words, not a wealth driven measure but grading on the population curve. This means a third of wage earners (about 50 million) make less than $25,500 and a third make more than $76,500.

The latter spread, between $39,764 and $64,582, comes to just 20 million individual wage earners in 2012.

Typically, working couples must combine such incomes to enjoy middle class life styles, which usually means homeownership.

Perhaps a better way to measure membership in the middle class is through housing affordability. Often housing is deemed affordable at about 2.6 times earnings on an historical basis, which implies an existing home price to the $39,764 earner at $103,400 or lower, and $167,900 or lower to the $64,582 earner.

Unfortunately the US existing home median sales price in March 2014 was $198,500, which presently requires an income of $76,300 to be affordable. In other words, you've got to have extreme upper middle class household income just to afford the median priced existing home.

But the median household income in 2012 was just $51,017. That only supported an affordable home at $132,600 or less, not much of a home.

Three Cheers For Dana Rohrabacher: Christian Love Is Furthered By Individual, Not Government, Action

Quoted here at 218, the blog of the oligarchy:

"No. 1, a policy of legalizing the people who are here, the sort of easy way out, would in the long run put 40 million new people into our country, which would change the nature of our country, and that would be a bad thing, not to mention breaking the bank, etc."

“Also, my response was that Christian love is not furthered by advocacy of government policy but instead by individual action and commitment."

“Individual commitment is not individual commitment to changing a government policy, it is to come out and help specific people and people who are in need, and if [the pastors] really wanted to help people who are here illegally or in bad situations they, they want to pay for their health insurance and everything, then I would be saying how wonderful that is. But if they are advocating that the government do that, then it will break our bank and destroy our country.”

If Hillary Doesn't Run, Her Marxism Dictates That Chelsea Must . . . For Something: How About Ambassador To Libya To Get Her Started?

Libya accepts pregnant ambassadors, right?

Mickey Kaus, here:

The Clinton mode of production, then, is running for office or serving in office. That is the material basis for the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton lifestyle and the whole Clinton institutional structure. In order to keep this mode of production from breaking down, the Clintons–one of them, at any rate–must be at least potentially in the running for a powerful office at all times. If Hillary doesn’t really want to run, she can’t admit it in public. She must maintain the facade of candidacy until the last minute–or else the Foundation will have to cut back and Ira Magaziner might need to find a job. If it looks like Hillary might not run–perhaps because of health reasons–the model would predict that another Clinton, presumably daughter Chelsea, would start making noises about launching a political career. Voila! Data point confirmed. The theory is off to a good start. …

h/t Chris