Senate Democrats put Fast Track on the slow track

Story here.

One commenter wonders where are all the media accusing the Democrats of holding the bill hostage.

Heh, heh.

Why we're poorer: America is $10 trillion poorer since 1983 because of libertarian free-trade ideology

That's $10 trillion of GDP we're missing, because net imports are a subtraction from the calculation.

Imagine having an extra $333 billion every year for 30 years: In the last 12 months, GDP is up $670 billion, so we'd have 50% MORE in the last year. Instead we're exporting that GDP to others, building up foreign middle classes at the expense of our own while enriching the few owners at the top in our own country.

Traitors to America they are.

Sixty percent of the states still collect less revenue than before the 2007 recession

From an Associated Press story here:

A majority of states have failed to climb back to their pre-recession status, in terms of tax revenue, financial reserves and employment rates, said Barb Rosewicz, who tracks the fiscal health of states for The Pew Charitable Trusts. ... Nationally, total tax revenue coming to the states has been rising, but the pace has been slow as employment continues to lag pre-recession levels in more than half the states, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew also found that 30 states are collecting less revenue than at their peak.

Why did Senator No Pants Paul vote against subpoenaing a fraudulent congressional application to DC's health exchange?

Maybe there's less to Rand Paul than meets the eye.

The story is unpacked here.

Ted Cruz is showing his true colors supporting the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal

From the story here:

"The issue is shaping up as a major 2016 presidential campaign issue, and Sens. Cruz and Rubio join former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, alongside Democratic Party frontrunner former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as supportive of the deal. Graham, Paul, Dr. Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker haven’t taken positions on the matter yet.

"Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, real estate magnate Donald Trump, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina are all publicly against the deal." 

In defeat Nigel Farage realizes the problem is representation, as the American founding generation understood

Here:

"There is also the question of what is fair and reasonable. For so many millions of voters to have just one representative simply cannot be right – and I believe that whomever is the next Ukip leader has a major campaign to fight on this issue."

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He's referring, of course, to the fact that about 4 million Brits voted for UKIP yesterday but got only 1 MP out of it.

This coming from a country with much better representation than in the United States.

Here we have one representative in our parliament, the US House, for every 737,000 citizens. There they have what amounts to one MP for every 98,000 British citizens. That's seven and a half times better representation in Britain than in the US. Yet Nigel Farage complains.

Well.

The American libertarian P. J. O'Rourke visited South Thanet, evidently twice before the election and didn't find Farage there to interview, and today good ole Nigel is surprised that he lost in his own backyard. All politics is local, as we used to say. You have to work for it. Evidently Nigel Farage didn't work hard enough. 

In the US the people own not one such solitary seat as UKIP now owns in the UK, and never will until representation matters to them again as it did at the American nation's founding.

The system in Britain is more friendly to UKIP than Nigel Farage knows.

Who knew David Cameron is actually Britain's second Jewish PM, after Benjamin Disraeli?

"David Cameron's great-great-grandfather Emile Levita was a German Jewish financier and a direct descendant of Renaissance scholar Elia Levita, the author of Bovo-Bukh, the first secular work ever published in Yiddish. Emile Levita obtained British citizenship in 1871 and was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969. Through Levita, Cameron is a descendent of the Levites, who themselves claim to be descended from Moses. His wife, Cameron's great-great-grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family on her father's side."

Michael Savage gets history wrong again: says Ed Miliband would be first Jewish Prime Minister of UK

Today, in the first hour of the show.

Guess he never heard of Benjamin Disraeli.

84% of rich people suffer from wealth-denial and self-identify as middle class

Stephen "I don't feel like a wealthy person" Schwarzman is worth about $10 billion

Reported here:

"Fully 44 percent described themselves as middle class, and 40 percent said they were upper middle class. Only 4 percent described themselves as wealthy or rich, and 5 percent described themselves as upper class. ... Studies show that more than three-quarters of today's millionaires made their money themselves and started out in the middle class or lower. Wealth experts say these self-made millionaires may still see themselves as having middle-class values of hard work, humility and family despite their increased wealth."

Hillary: Fired for being too dishonest to investigate President Nixon

h/t th

Obama's been in charge for going on seven years and complains there aren't enough jobs

Look in the mirror, dumb ass.

Video here:

". . . too many young people don't have hope, they don't see opportunity, there are not enough jobs . . .." 

The Wall Street Journal defends Scott Walker's jobs record, with a backhanded swipe at the end

Here:

"The point is simple: After four years with Mr. Walker, more Wisconsinites are employed. That the state has outdone the nation on key economic indicators and moved ahead in key state rankings shows that his policies are working.

"Anyone looking to knock down the prospects for a Walker presidential bid had better look elsewhere—like, for instance, his recent comments about the economics of immigration. Gov. Walker hasn’t mastered everything about the way employment works, but his performance so far in Wisconsin has been much better than his critics claim."

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Open borders insanity is what really matters to The Wall Street Journal and Scott Walker has sinned against the religion by changing his position.

Bush's GDP in winter was 208% better than Obama's

Bush's nominal GDP record in winter, quarterly change from 4Q to 1Q, recessions excluded, coldest to warmest:

2003: 1.2%

2004: 1.4%

2007: 1.1%

2005: 2.0%

2002: 1.2%

2006: 2.0%

Average: 1.48%

Obama's nominal GDP record in winter, quarterly change from 4Q to 1Q, recessions excluded, coldest to warmest:

2014: -0.2%

2015: 0.1%

2010: 0.8%

2011: 0.1%

2013: 1.0%

2012: 1.1%

Average: 0.48%

Add in the recession winters in 2001, 2008 and 2009 and Bush's average becomes 1.15% in winter, 379% better than Obama's 0.24%.

Grand Rapids, MI, temperature anomaly for 2015 extends to 20.2 degrees F below normal through April

April in Grand Rapids was just 0.3 degrees F below normal, a tenth of a degree warmer than the anomaly for April 2014.

The total anomaly for January through April 2014 was 24.8 degrees F below normal, almost 23% colder than the same period this year.

Total crap: CNBC/Reuters blaming the weather for another GDP miss

The story is here.

Just how bad was the winter? Out of 69 winters in the post-war 2015 ranked 22nd worst for heating degree days, and all Obama could manage is 0.1% nominal growth over the prior quarter, $6.3 billion. But 1959 came in 21st and somehow America under Eisenhower could manage 2.0% nominal growth q/q in winter. And 1964 ranked 23rd and somehow America managed 3.1% nominal growth under JFK in winter.

The winter of 2014 ranked 10th worst, and Obama gave us a pathetic nominal growth of -0.2%, yet in 1977 which ranked 9th worst winter in the post-war Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter!, gave us +2.6% nominal growth. The 12th worst winter was in 1962 and again JFK gave us 3.4% nominal growth.

The story is the same for 2010 and 2011, 33rd and 35th worst winters, which is to say, not very bad. These winters appear in the warmer half of the record. Obama gave us just 0.8% and 0.1% respectively, flanked by winters of like severity in 1972, 1951 and 1957 posting nominal growth of 3.4%, 6.3% and 2.2% respectively.

2013? Only the 42nd worst winter. But 1967 was worse and we got 2.4% nominal then, thanks to LBJ. Obama gave us 1.0%. And 1950? 43rd worst, but it clocked in with 3.7% nominal growth.

2012? The warmest winter in the record at 69th. So the weather argument should have meant economic growth had been absolutely stellar by comparison with everything going before it, right? Instead Obama gave us 1.1% nominal. Well, that IS Obama's best performance in winter, so maybe the heat helped a little. But 1990, which ranked 68th, witnessed 2.3% nominal growth under George H. W. Bush.

You see the pattern here? Obama "underperforms" everybody around him in similarly situated weather. But actually his numbers are so bad in winter it's like he's not even in the game.

Average Obama score in winter outside of recession: +0.5%.

Everybody else in the same boat: +3.1%.    

Without the Protestant reformers, the USA had never existed

“I love and revere the memories of Huss Wickliff Luther Calvin Zwinglius Melancton and all the other reformers how muchsoever I may differ from them all in many theological metaphysical & philosophical points. As you justly observe, without their great exertions & severe sufferings, the USA had never existed.”

-- John Adams

What do you mean try finding one? Congress is full of the one type, and most of them are Republicans.

Nicholas Kristof, here:

'After all, American adults have, on average, one ovary and one testicle. But try finding such an “average person.”'

We don't have free trade WITHIN the United States: Companies in just 13 states get over 90% of $110 billion in government subsidies since the 1970s

We're talking over $100 billion of taxpayer money favoring companies, in descending order, in New York way ahead in first, then Washington, Louisiana, and Michigan rounding out the top four, Kentucky, Oregon, Indiana, Texas, New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Mexico over every other company in those states and throughout the states.

View the report here, and the state by state map here. For a shorter period involving additional federal subsidies adding another $68 billion to the above total see this report at the same site.

Forbes Magazine is not amused, here:

According to Good Jobs First, there are 514 economic development programs in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 245,000 awards have been granted under those programs. I ask again, where is the outrage? The system is antithetical to the idea of free markets. A quarter of a million times, state governments decided what is best for producers and consumers. That should make us cringe. First, the government is inefficient at providing public goods, and it is terrible at manipulating the markets for private goods. But more importantly, those 514 economic development programs are almost all the result of insidious cronyism. Narrow business interests manipulate government policymakers, and those interests prosper to the detriment of everyone else. Free markets be damned.

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For the top four, think Wall Street, aircraft, oil and autos.

Highly secretive trade deal negotiations with Pacific "partners" no doubt reproduce sweeteners all around no different from what has been going on within our own country for a long time right underneath our noses.

The first step to curtailing this cronyism is to stop calling the one free trade and the other free-market capitalism. We have neither.

They ought to know: Most WOMEN think Hillary Clinton is dishonest and can't be trusted

"American voters say 54 - 38 percent that Hillary Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, a lower score than top Republicans."

So says a recent poll taken by Quinnipiac University, reported here. 

The 10 Idiot Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Loretta Lynch as Attorney General

The 10 Republicans who think being in the majority is a sin:

Ayotte (R-NH) oh yes she votes. just. like. a. woman.

Cochran (R-MS) senile old codger

Collins (R-ME) gender before party

Flake (R-AZ) aptly named

Graham (R-SC) McCain's errand boy

Hatch (R-UT) competing with Harry Reid for Mormon infamy

Johnson (R-WI) used to be the Tea Party's Senator! Go Feingold! Go Feingold! Go Feingold!

Kirk (R-IL) soon to be replaced by another disabled person of the same political party

McConnell (R-KY) recently had unsuccessful testicle transplant surgery

Portman (R-OH) has never had any testicles according to anonymous sources 

The roll call vote is here.