Evidently the American people are so poor under Obama that . . .

. . . they can't even pay attention.

Look who's stupid now: Neither Rush Limbaugh nor his caller remember the chronology and politics of ObamaCare

It's been only four years and already the basic facts are forgotten.

The Supreme Court didn't even take the ObamaCare case until a year after the 2010 elections, in November of 2011, and ruled the mandate a constitutional tax on June 28, 2012. The Court had simply nothing to do with the 2010 landslide victory of the Republicans, but neither Rush's caller nor Rush remember that.

From today's transcript here:

CALLER:  Yes, Rush.  Thank you so much for taking my call.  I really appreciate it, and if you don't mind me taking the liberty, I'd like to give a shout out to James Marshall Timberlake, he's my first grandson born November 2nd.  But I thank you.  The reason I called is that I believe there's an American who has been vilified who really is a hero concerning Obamacare, and that is Chief Justice John Roberts.  Had he done what all of us expected him to do to find it unconstitutional, you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2010; you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2014; you would not be talking about Jonathan Gruber today. ...

RUSH:  I want to know where it started that the way we win is to have liberalism implemented so that everybody can learn how rotten it is.  When did that start?  "John Roberts did a great thing by letting this thing be proclaimed constitutional.  That way we've exposed these people for who they really are."  We didn't need this!  If Roberts had found this thing unconstitutional the 2010 elections would have been the same because Obama would have stayed the same.  He would have found a way to get this done some other way.  He wouldn't have just taken his chips and gone home and cried about it.

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Add two to Jonathan Gruber's pile of stupid American voters.

Rush Limbaugh keeps trying to expunge Heritage Foundation's guilt for ObamaCare mandate

In the first hour today, after which the first caller of the day almost hit the third rail when he pointed out that Jonathan Gruber may have his "stupid voters" but Rush Limbaugh has his "low information voters".

Nevermind the two leading Republican candidates for president in October 2011 agreed they got the idea from Heritage (transcript here).

ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.

GINGRICH: That’s not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.

GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: And you never supported them?

GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I’m just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn’t true.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?

GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.

ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?

ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That’s what I’m saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.

GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.

ROMNEY: OK.

So far ObamaCare's Jonathan Gruber from MIT has called us stupid "off the cuff" THREE TIMES, but you forget he wrote the (comic) book

From the story here revealing there are now at least three episodes of Jonathan Gruber defending work-arounds to hide the truth from the easily gulled masses, meaning his opinion of the people is anything but "off the cuff":

After the first tape surfaced -- prompting Republican outrage -- Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret. On Tuesday, he said: "I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments."

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As I recall, not a single Republican in either chamber in 2010 was stupid enough to vote for ObamaCare, but every Democrat was.

Nevertheless liberal condescension was palpable from the beginning, and Gruber actually memorialized it with his comic book about ObamaCare early in 2012. The American people reelected Obama anyway, which must in Gruber's mind vindicate his low estimation of the people's intelligence to this day.

Well . . .

You were warned.

Alibrabra: Miss Big Tits is going to cost you a lot more than that other chick

Seen here:

Alibaba came across a curious trend: women who bought larger bra sizes also tended to spend more . . .. Dividing intimate-apparel shoppers into four categories of spending power, analysts at the e-commerce giant found that 65% of women of cup size B fell into the “low” spend category, while those of a size C or higher mostly fit into the “middle” or higher group.

The problem is that the long-term eventually shows up

Seen here.

Chicoms call Obamao (conveniently absent on Veterans' Day) an "idler"

Reported here:

"We made this meeting so luxurious, with singing and dancing, but see Obama, stepping out of his car chewing gum like an idler," wrote Yin Hong, a professor of journalism at Beijing's Tsinghua University, on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo micro-blog service. Twitter, like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, is banned in China, whose censors fear such services could aid political protest.

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. . . idler or bungler or both he is willing . . .

Cesium 134 has made it to within 100 miles of Eureka, California

Reported here:

The group found traces of cesium-134, a radioactive element released by the [Fukushima] power plant [in 2011], 100 miles off the coast of Eureka, California. The amount of radioactive chemicals in the water is still below levels that are harmful to humans and is 1,000 times below limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution predicts contaminant levels could increase over the next two to three years.

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Expect hysterical warnings from the nothinkums.

Bloomberg puts 6 million aged 25-54 still missing in employment action

Here:

So far, the faster pace of job creation hasn't coaxed enough people back into the labor force. As of October, the seasonally unadjusted participation rate for people age 25 to 54 stood at 81.1 percent, up 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier but about 6 million people below the 10-year pre-recession average of 83.5 percent.

Every Democrat who didn't vote last Tuesday . . .

. . . voted Republican.

Democrats lost last week simply because voters tired of waiting for full-time jobs to recover

Examine the record here of full-time job losses in recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs recovered to their previous peaks in 2 years after 1969, 2 years after 1974, about 3 years after 1981, 3 years after 1990 and about 3 years after 2000.

But after 2007? Full-time jobs have yet to recover, over 7 years since peaking in July 2007 at 123.2 million.

It's true that total nonfarm employment recovered to the November 2007 high this June, after 6.5 long years, but full-time is still 3 million below the 2007 peak.

The voting public has been very patient with President Obama and the Democrats. They know this was the biggest jobs debacle in the post-war. From peak to trough between July 2007 and January 2010 14.442 million full-time jobs were lost, beating the 8.1 million lost from 1981 under Reagan by a wide margin, a 9.3% loss. The percentage lost from the peak was also highest in the post-war, down 11.7% in the recent catastrophe vs. the 9.6% loss of full-time jobs from August 1974, the previous most recent top episode for full-time job destruction in percentage terms.

So it's understandable that voters might have re-elected Obama and the Democrat Senate in 2012 on the presumption that such a serious episode would take longer to fix. But even so it was still a relatively close election.

Last Tuesday's nationwide blow-out of Democrats, however, from the US Senate on down through the US House, governorships and state legislative chambers shows that the patience of the country has run out. While full-time jobs have roared back in the last 12 months it is likely that the trend has peaked for the year and that it will be next summer before we see full-time recover fully.

That will be 8 years . . . 5 years too many for many of the millions who lost their jobs to put their lives back together and rejoin the middle class. Five years too many for those who lived in the 5+million homes lost to foreclosure. For them there remains the hope only of minimum and low wage work, food stamps, government disability assistance, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare and early death.

Obama will be remembered for attempting this hollowing out of the middle class, and some will correctly conclude it was intentional on the part of the country's first Bolshevik president.

"[T]he mass of middle class parasites which lived on the back of the old order is now, equally ready to live on the back of the proletarian State."   

WaPo claims to be scared Congress has more Tea Party radicals now, but P.J. O'Rourke knows better

And who better to really know than a fellow-traveling Tea Party libertarian?

Here:

[Scott] Brown lost the Senate race to Democrat incumbent Jean Shaheen because Scott once posed nude for Cosmo. “Naked male Republican” is not a thought anyone, Republicans included, wants in his or her mind, even if this particular one happens to be buff.

Most of the Republicans America just elected ain’t. And I’m glad of it. We’re seeing more of the old-fashioned establishment-type Republicans who keep their pants and pantyhose on. And who don’t get them in a wad over every little piece of legislation.

The 114th Congress is not going to be full of people who, every time a bill is brought to a vote, have to go dig up the grave of James Madison and ask Jim if the bill is Constitutional. ...

Never mind that young people, women, Hispanics, and blacks forgot to vote. In two years those young people will have done a lot of growing up. What happens when you’re a grown-up? You vote for someone named Bush. Women will probably forget to vote again. You know how forgetful women are. “Did I lose an earring?” “Where’s my purse?” “I could have sworn I left the car keys right here.” And Republican policies for robust job growth and business opportunity will have moved Hispanics and blacks to the top of the socio-economic ladder. Once you get an in-ground pool, you’re a good Republican.

Anyway, this good Republican can dream, can’t he?

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Ted Cruz and Justin Amash, call your offices.

Suggested opener for Obama's State of the Union Address

"My fellow Americans, the State of the Union tonight is fairly Republican."

Time for Obama to sit in the back after driving the bus into the ditch

The Gay Mafia funds so-called conservatives: Club for Growth, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Justin Amash just love pot-smoking queer billionaire Peter Thiel's money

And if you think there's no payback expected for that then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Reported here:

Peter Thiel is a pot-smoking gay man, which makes him the kind of person Cruz supporters would like to launch into some sort of Martian exile. But Thiel is also, crucially, a massively rich bussinessman [sic], which is enough for Cruz to shelve his Tea Party druthers and accept hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Silicon Valley luminary. Adjacent bigots have yelled at Cruz for pocketing Thiel's cash, but he has every reason to ignore them: last year, Thiel gave $2 million to Club for Growth, a SuperPAC that in turn poured over $600,000 into Cruz's (successful) senatorial run. Club for Growth is still a vocal supporter of Cruz as he's flailed and railed against Obamacare.

It wasn't a Republican wave, it wasn't a thumping, IT WAS A DELUGE

Republicans didn't just sweep the House, the Senate and governorships on Tuesday, they took enough legislative chambers to set records that go back to before the Civil War. They took 65% of open state legislative seats. Now if they only had a leader. 

Reuters reports here:

[The Republican Party] gained control of 10 chambers and could be on track to holding the largest number of legislative seats since before the Great Depression. ... With Tuesday's vote, Republicans took over the U.S. Senate, beefed up their majority in the U.S. House and won the governor's office in several key states. The vote also increased the number of state legislative chambers with Republican majorities to 67 from 57. Party control of the Colorado House and Washington House was still up in the air. The number of states with Republicans in control of both legislative chambers came to 27 ahead of the election and has now edged closer to the high mark of 30 in 1920 . . .. By contrast, Democrats will control the lowest number of state legislatures since 1860 . . .. Republican State Leadership Committee President Matt Walter said the party appeared to be on track to eclipse 1928's record high of 4,001 Republican state legislative seats. ... Voters on Tuesday were deciding 6,049 legislative races in 46 states, or nearly 82 percent of all state legislative seats.

Intermediate term bonds beat the S&P500 over the last fifteen years

The average nominal return from the S&P500 from September 1999 through September 2014 is 4.71% per year with dividends fully reinvested.

The nominal annual return from the intermediate term bond index fund VBIIX for the fifteen years to 11/7/14 is 6.37%.  

Food stamp recipient total falls only slightly in August 2014

Food stamps were taken by 46,484,828 people residing in America in August 2014, down from 46,486,888 in July.

The level is 2.5% lower than in August 2013.

The total benefit in August 2014 was $5.766 billion. The total costs in 2013 came to $79.9 billion.

The average total benefit was $124.04 per person in the program in August 2014, down from $133.07 per person monthly in 2013, and $253.69 per household on average in August 2014. 

Temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, Michigan, through October 2014 rises to -27.2 degrees F

The cumulative 2014 temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, Michigan, through October comes to -27.2 degrees F. That's the sum total of degrees below normal temperature for the year 2014 so far. Divided by ten that comes to an average anomaly of 2.72 degrees F monthly, falling from an average anomaly of 3.00 degrees F monthly through September.

In October temperatures were nearly normal, off just 0.2 degrees F, after a below normal September off 0.7 degrees F.

The S&P500 ends the week just 0.7% below the all-time inflation-adjusted high in August 2000

The current real price of the S&P500 is 2031.92, an all-time high in the nominal sense.

This level is just 0.7% off the all-time inflation-adjusted high, which was 2046.21 and occurred in August 2000.

Valuation is rich at 26.61 for the Shiller p/e, but well-off the December 1999 peak of 44.19. However, the market crash of 2008-09 was preceded by the Shiller p/e peaking at 27.55 during 2007.

The Shiller p/e has been in a never-never land of high valuation above 26 for extended periods since October 1996, coinciding with the famous onset of "irrational exuberance". You have to go back before that all the way to 1929 to find valuation at 27 and above.