2Q2014 GDP comes in at 4% in first estimate, 1Q adjusted again in the comprehensive annual revision to -2.1%

Reuters points out here that growth in the first half now comes to . . . 0.9%:

"The economy grew 0.9 percent in the first half of this year and growth for 2014 as a whole could average above 2 percent. The first quarter contraction, which was mostly weather-related, was the largest in five years."

Note that expectations at fxstreet had bumped up from 2.9% earlier to just 3.0% before this morning's BEA release, which will probably end up being closer to the truth two months from now in the final estimate than today's 4% print.

Recall the saga of the first quarter:

Advance estimate +0.1%

2nd estimate -1.0%

Final estimate -2.9%

Comprehensive revision released today -2.1%.

So now the terrible winter quarter to kick off the year was actually only 28% less bad than we thought a month ago, 110% worse than we thought two months ago, and 2200% worse than we thought three months ago.

That's progress!

Steven Goddard wants it both ways: the US temperature record is the best long term record but has been massively altered, nevermind CET is 355 years old and getting older

Attention Drudge readers: Anthony Watts booted "Steven Goddard" from WattsUpWithThat some years ago

Seen here.

Drudge recently linked to a "Goddard" (a nom de plume) story about the summer of 2014 being the "coolest summer on record" in the country, through like July 23rd, which it certainly is from the point of view of extreme summer temperatures, i.e. the annual frequency of 90 degree F or above on a percentage basis. For his story showing the chart of the NOAA data, see here. Extreme summer temperatures have been in decline for most of the last century, contrary to the alarmism of the global warming crowd, a point "Goddard" doesn't seem to have emphasized.

There is no reason to doubt his presentation of the facts that I can detect, except that it could be argued from a chart of the other extreme, the annual frequency of below zero temperatures, that for the same period, about eighty years, there has been a slight decline in the frequency of that metric, too. So there may be a decline in extremes also on the cold side if confirmed. So far "Goddard" has not supplied the trend line for that chart in the comments section. But if confirmed, that would suggest a general thesis that climate extremes have been declining within a minor warming trend which may or may not be reversing now. That's big news since climate alarmists keep telling us the warming trend will produce "extreme weather". It isn't. It's producing ameliorating conditions.

  

Justin Amash thinks the Republican future lies with just 3% of the population

Quoted here:

"I am trying to grow a new generation of Republicans that includes more gays and lesbians . . .."

Grand Rapids Press Laughably Says Justin Amash Opposes Corporate Special Interests, Praises His Evolution Toward Democrats

You mean like the DeVos family's special interests, or his own family's, or the Club for Growth's which has spent nearly $400,000 attacking Amash's challenger, Brian Ellis? What a joke.

Here:

"But Amash has, during his two terms in Congress, started to evolve. He has worked with Democrats, most notably to try curtailing federal spying programs. He also promises to never outright vilify Democrats as a party, a welcome approach during a time of toxic political discourse. Amash has built a broad following at home and nationally. He also remains staunchly opposed to the outsized influence of corporate special interests."

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

Justin Amash is as bought and paid for by powerful outside interests as any representative in America.

New IRS 1040 clearly shows you'll owe ObamaCare TAX liability on line 61 if you don't have coverage

So in addition to lying about getting to keep your health insurance if you like it, Obama also clearly lied about not raising taxes on anybody making less than $250,000 a year.

Bank Failure Friday: GreenChoice Bank, fsb, Chicago, Illinois, failed tonight

GreenChoice Bank, fsb, Chicago, Illinois, failed tonight, costing the FDIC $14.2 million.

The bank is bank failure number 14 in 2014, and number 506 since February 2007.

Justin Amash represents DC's Club For Growth, not Michigan's Third District

Justin Amash must be worried about his reelection prospects.

Amash is blanketing Michigan's 3rd Congressional District with a barage of anti-Brian Ellis radio ads and mailings even though Amash claims an overwhelming lead against his humble opponent based on his own polling data. Why waste the money if he is so far ahead? Well, maybe it's not exactly his money.

What the voters probably don't realize is how much of Amash's anti-Ellis attack is financed by the Club For Growth, a libertarian organization founded by a former editor of The Wall Street Journal who is now employed by The Heritage Foundation, one Steve Moore (Heritage, it will be remembered, gave us ObamaCare long before Obama came along, as their answer to HillaryCare). Like Heritage, Club For Growth is based in Washington, DC, not in Michigan's Third. Amash gets the benefit of their negative attack ads while being able to claim he has nothing to do with them.

So far in the campaign, Club For Growth appears to be responsible for almost $400,000 of spending in attack ads against Brian Ellis, who by contrast is in large measure underwriting his own campaign with a remarkably similar amount of his own money. It is notable that Ellis is pledging to overturn ObamaCare, which in Michigan is causing health care workers to lose their jobs, while showcasing his endorsements by Michigan Right To Life, veterans groups and other conservatives upset with Amash's failure to walk the conservative talk.

Amash has an excuse on Facebook for every vote which he has failed to deliver on behalf of social and economic conservatives in his own district, just as Obama can always point to someone or something for why he never gets anything accomplished as president.

Republicans ought to consider the similarity and ask themselves if those two aren't really just cut from the same cloth.

h/t Detroit Free Press

Another wild week in jobless claims, this time down 78,215 not seasonally adjusted

Last week claims were up 47,079.

Not seasonally adjusted, claims in the last four weeks are averaging 323,000 per week or 16.8 million annualized. That would ordinarily be a pretty good level, except for the fact that the labor participation rate is so low, 63.4% not seasonally adjusted. It averaged 66.1% in 2007, when annual claims actually were at a similar level. When fewer people are participating as today, the level of job losses feels worse because it is experienced by a smaller work force.

Brian Wesbury is already making excuses for 2Q2014 GDP

Here:

"The 2.9% drop in real GDP during the first quarter was a fluke caused by a brutal winter and some one-off events. With much of the monthly data in for Q2, it looks like the US will see that drop almost completely reversed.

"Normally, we would expect a bigger bounce as pent-up demand (lost to the weather) returned and added to growth already in train. But, not this time. In recent years, tax rates have been hiked, regulations have increased and government spending has expanded. All of these are a burden on the economy that creates slower potential growth."

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

Almost completely? Does that mean "not completely"? As in less than 2.9%?

Excuse me, but government spending boosts GDP, and with divided government spending growth remains flat to non-existent with Republicans in control of the purse strings in the US House. Brian Wesbury can't have it both ways, later acknowledging that real government purchases will add .4 to 2Q GDP. Which is it, a drag on growth or a contributor? Meanwhile Canada grew in the first quarter in real terms. We did not. Winter. My. Foot.

Funny how fxstreet has a consensus estimate already yesterday of 2.9%, same as Wesbury's.

Safe, very safe.

Mirror Mirror: Consensus for first estimate of 2Q2014 GDP, just eight days away, is +2.9%

That's a complete mirror image of 1Q2014 GDP from the third and final estimate at -2.9%.

HaHaHaHa...Ha. The average of the two is still nutin honey.

Libertarian insanity from Kevin Williamson at National Review

Here:

"The foundation of classical liberalism, and of the American order, is not the rule of law, a written constitution, freedom of speech and worship, one-man/one-vote democracy, or the Christian moral tradition — necessary as those things are. The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous, decent, liberal, stable society is property. ... But we do not have any property."

Precisely. Bang head against a wall. Repeat.

If your liberty depends on something which can be taken away by another, you didn't have any in the first place. The march of liberty throughout history is the record of the instantiation of what appears to be a fiction but whose basis is apprehended in the transcendent moral order, and for that reason is more real than the reality. Hence the slave can grow to be actually free even though he remains in the bonds of servitude. Such a man makes his master the true slave, and himself the real master. And when a community of such men decides to bind itself together by laws, constitutions and rights, they do so on a qualitatively different basis than do those who do not know liberty, for they look up to the One, not out at the many, which way lies chaos, injustice and servitude. "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Maybe Kevin Williamson should join the conservative movement and say goodbye to his sect of classical liberalism.

Stupidest thing P.J. O'Rourke ever wrote

Here:

"Imagine trying to make the Ten Commandments into laws."

Hm. I thought we already had.

Stock markets remain closed on Sundays, Good Friday, Thanksgiving and Christmas. At least five states still explicitly prohibit car sales on Sundays, and most dealers elsewhere are closed anyway. Alcohol sales remain restricted or prohibited on Sundays in many places. Massachusetts still has a one-day-of-rest-in-seven statute. Most banks are closed on Sundays, along with many other businesses. Congress rarely works on Sundays, let alone Monday through Friday.

And then we have these trifles of the law which never seem to go out of style, unless you are a feminist, a banker or a politician:

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

That's the problem with libertarianism. It has no imagination.

Eastside Commercial Bank, Conyers, Georgia, failed on Friday, July 18th, 2014

Eastside Commercial Bank, Conyers, Georgia, failed on Friday, costing the FDIC $33.9 million. 6,730 institutions remained under the FDIC through March 31, 2014.

It's bank failure number thirteen so far in 2014, and number 505 since February 2007.

Michael Savage is as lazy as Rush Limbaugh: keeps saying WWI started in 1917 with assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand

World War I started in 1914 with the assassination of the Duke, not 1917. 

Savage has started the show today saying 1917 after having said the same thing all day yesterday.

He's had plenty of time to check his facts and correct the record, but hasn't.

Measuring the pain of jobless claims 2001-2013

In 2013 jobless claims not seasonally adjusted fell to their lowest level under Obama, totaling 17.8 million, just 100,000 more than two back to back years in the Bush administration when jobless claims not seasonally adjusted fell to 17.7 million after 2003. Which felt worse, 2013 or 2004/2005, since the level was nearly the same? One way to measure that would be to compare the level to the labor force participation rate. Using the not seasonally adjusted annual averages of that, if you divide the total jobless claims by the rate you get the following: 2004=.268, 2005=.268, 2013=.281.

How would you know which was worse? During the whole period under question, jobless claims hit their lowest level in 2006 at 16.2 million, when the labor force participation rate averaged 66.2%. Dividing the claims by the rate gives you .244, the lowest result for the period. The highest result for the period, not coincidentally, was .451 in 2009 when claims soared to 29.5 million and the labor force participation rate averaged 65.4. So it seems reasonable to suggest that 2013, the best year to date for aggregate claims since 2007, still feels worse than either 2004 or 2005. About 4.9% worse. Indeed, even if you assumed you had 100,000 fewer claims in 2013 to equalize them to 2004/2005 when you also had 17.7 million instead of 17.8 million first time claims for unemployment, not seasonally adjusted, you'd still get a result higher than .268, at .279, because the civilian labor force participation rate had fallen to 63.3 from 66.0. So just because a similar number of people is losing jobs compared to some point in the past doesn't mean things have returned to normal. If they had, right now fewer people would be making jobless claims in proportion to the smaller number of people participating in the labor force, and they aren't. Not yet.

Lowest high temperature ever for July 16th yesterday in Grand Rapids

71 degrees F.

CDC finds fewer than 3% of Americans say they are gay

WaPo reports here.

Pew study shows no religious group in America rates itself more highly than Jews do

Story here, except you have to figure it out from the table. The summary artfully skirts that conclusion:

"Evangelicals also hold very positive views of Jews, with white evangelical Protestants giving Jews an average thermometer rating of 69. Only Jews themselves rate Jews more positively."

No kidding. White evangelicals win walking away for a positive evaluation of Jews, except for Jews themselves. Jews nearest competitors in self-love in the study are atheists, white evangelicals and Catholics, but none of them come close to the Jews themeselves when it comes to rating themselves positively. Meanwhile Jews rate white evangelicals the lowest of any group, lower even than Muslims.

Where is the love, man?

Completed foreclosure activity in May 2014 still 2.2 times above pre-2007 levels

CoreLogic reports here:

According to CoreLogic, for the month of May 2014, there were 47,000 completed foreclosures nationally, down from 52,000 in May 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 9.4 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures were up by 3.8 percent from the 45,000 reported in April 2014. As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006. ... The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: New Jersey (5.8 percent), Florida (5.2 percent), New York (4.3 percent), Hawaii (3.1 percent) and Maine (2.8 percent).