3Q2014 GDP revised up to 3.9% on surge in net exports (refined petroleum) and government spending (war on ISIS)

Today's second estimate of 3Q2014 real GDP surprised to the upside, rising to 3.9% from 3.5%. Consensus estimates had GDP declining to 3.3%.

Personal Consumption Expenditures contributed 1.51 points, hardly much above the average contribution for the three years 2011-2013 at 1.48. The people are spending about the same.

Likewise the contribution from Gross Private Domestic Investment was only slightly below average at .85 points. During the prior three years this had contributed to GDP annually on average just .94 points. So you could say investment activity is steady to declining.

No, the major contributions to GDP came from the huge reversals in net exports and government consumption expenditures. The former has contributed on average just .08 points annually 2011-2013, the latter -.45 annually. That's right, the net export category has been entirely inconsequential to GDP for the last three years, and that in a heretofore moribund dollar environment, while government spending has actually been a subtraction from annual GDP because the GOP takeover of the US House in 2010 arrested spending in its tracks.

But in today's report net exports contributed .78 points and government spending .76 points as  1) refined petroleum exports from the US shale boom help to pressure oil prices lower, making imported oil cheaper (imports thus are less of a subtraction from GDP at the same time), and as 2) the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria ramps up military spending. Without those contributions to GDP and the other things being equal, growth was more like 2.36%.

Same old same old, except the dollar hit a 52 week high yesterday at 88.44. How long exports can help us in this rising dollar environment is anyone's guess, as is the tolerance of the American people for more spending on yet another foreign war.

How to stimulate the economy and deport illegal aliens in the United States at the same time

In 1954 the Eisenhower Administration employed 750 agents who rounded up and deported 1.1 million Mexicans illegally in the country in what was called Operation Wetback. It took them one year.

With full-time employment in the United States still flat on its back with 3 million fewer working full-time than at the 2007 peak at 123.2 million, there is a plentiful number of people here which could be usefully employed at the federal level in the effort to enforce current immigration law and help secure the border.

Those who say we could never round up 11 million illegals fail to appreciate that the ratio of the agents to the deported in 1954 was 1:1,466. A deportation force of 7,500 Americans employed by the federal government, therefore, should be able to round up and deport 11 million illegals today. And if you paid them $50,000 each, the cost to the Treasury would be less than a half billion dollars. Peanuts in a $4 trillion dollar government.

We just have to want to do it.

But why stop with just 11 million illegals when there may be as many as 30 million here illegally, from places like Ireland, France, Poland and you name it? Triple the budget to employ 23,000 and you could really start to clean the place up and restore law and order, once and for all, and JOBS.

We owe it to ourselves. 

Who does Cosby think he is anyway, Bill Clinton?

Seen in the comments to the story here. WaPo articles have the best drive by shootings by conservatives almost anywhere.

Excellent visual gag from P.J. O'Rourke and The Daily Beast today about Senator Crockagewea

Here, and I made sure that I didn't ruin it for ya.

Keith Koffler says Obama really went to Vegas to play golf: round number 204

Here:

Is This The Real Reason Obama Announced the Order in Vegas?

President Obama today is playing golf at the Shadow Creek golf club in North Las Vegas, reputed to be the nicest golf course in Vegas. It’s 55 degrees and mostly sunny.

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"The object of government in a tyranny is the good of one man only." -- Aristotle

It's November 22 . . .

. . . anyone know where Obama is hiding?

The Republic isn't dead until the last patriot is

Wolverines!

Republicans sweep House and Senate, and suddenly the IRS finds the "lost" Lois Lerner emails

Hm, funny how that happens.

From the story here:

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever.

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the [Lois Lerner] emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system. ...

In June [IRS Commissioner] Koskinen told Congress the emails were probably lost for good because the disaster recovery tape holds onto the data for only six months. He said even if the IRS had sought the emails within the six-month period, it would have been a complicated and difficult process to produce them from the tapes. ...

There are 250 million emails on the tapes that will be reviewed. Officials said it is likely they will find missing emails from other IRS officials who worked under Lerner and who said they suffered computer crashes [too].

Another suggested opening line for Obama's State of the Union Address

Hands up don't shoot!

And while we're at it, it's the president's job to enforce the immigration law

In case you missed it in Obama's Constitutional Law 101, the Congress not the president sets the rules on naturalization

Oh, the teacher skipped that part?

November isn't over and already Grand Rapids, Michigan, has more snow than the old record in 1895

Last chance for Democrats to prove they are patriots ...

... by repudiating Obama's executive action, 8PM tonight.

More ObamaCare Lies: Enrollments inflated by a million by adding in dental plans

Lying is the modus operandi of Democrats under Obama, as in: You can keep your health insurance, you can keep your doctor, and you will save, save!, on average $2,500 per year! All lies of course, but now this, just a minor detail really, but indicative of the fraud at the heart of the Obama presidency from the beginning.

From the story here:

Blending dental and medical plans let the administration assert that enrollment was more than 7 million. The move also partly obscured the attrition of more than 1 million in the number of people enrolled in medical insurance.

News networks to help Obama by not broadcasting his unconstitutional plan to break the immigration law

There's no sense in riling up the people unnecessarily over such a trivial issue, after all. Note that this blackout includes so-called conservative Fox News Network, which is co-opted by its open-borders libertarian owner, Rupert Murdoch (Australian-American naturalized in 1985).  

"If anyone assumes the government by fraud [hello ObamaCare] this is a tyranny. ... To preserve a tyranny ... guard against everything that gives rise to high spirits." -- Aristotle

I've had so many facelifts you are actually kissing my ass

h/t Theo

Obama to throw strapped Americans under the bus and help illegals instead: Too bad what's going to happen in Vegas isn't going to stay in Vegas

"Keep the people poor!"

"The guards of a tyrant are foreigners!"

S&P500 Milestone: Closes today above all-time inflation-adjusted high set in August 2000

The all-time inflation-adjusted high occurred way back in August 2000 at 2046.21. Today's close was 2051.80.

Yippee, the bear market is officially . . . dead for a day.

Some Adviser Gruber who Obama said "never worked on our staff" visited White House and Obama 21 times since 2009

The Hill, here, placing Gruber multiple times at the scene of the crime:

MIT professor Jonathan Gruber held a series of high-level meetings with administration officials beginning in 2009 and extending through June of this year.

During the height of 2009’s ObamaCare debate, Gruber met repeatedly with former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, and Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform, among other officials. He also participated in a meeting of economists with President Obama.

In subsequent trips, Gruber received tours of the West Wing and the residence, and had breakfast at the White House mess, an exclusive West Wing cafeteria. He also met with Jason Furman, who now chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House's point person on ObamaCare’s implementation.

The visitor logs, which are publicly available but were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, show Gruber has visited the White House 21 times during the Obama presidency. Some of the records are incomplete — missing details about when Gruber entered or exited the complex — so it’s possible that some of those visits did not occur.

A precise tally of America's stupid: 65,918,507