Doug Short makes our point: Part-time surged because of the recession, not because of ObamaCare

Here:

"With regard to Obamacare and part-time employment, the surge in part-time employment was triggered by the recession, not by the Affordable Care Act, as the next chart clearly illustrates."

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After studying the issue since 2010 we first began to express doubts about the meme that ObamaCare part-timed the country in July of 2013, here.

In August 2013 here we realized a part-timing trend, to be real, would have to show up in the hours data and wasn't.

By September 2013 here we were calling the meme a myth, and here we identified the part-time statistics as incapable of capturing such a trend due to the high bar set by the government definition of part-time as less than 35 hours worked.

In October 2013 here we blamed the part-time explosion on the recession.

In February 2014 we noted here that The Atlantic had finally caught on.

Mish started to catch on in September 2014, here.

Now Doug Short joins the party.

Hooray.

I still want my Pulitzer.

Reason dot com caves to the tyranny's censors

Libertarianism doesn't really believe in what it says it believes in, and can't save you from what's coming. They fold like a house of cards.

Seen here:

"Wielding subpoenas demanding information on anonymous commenters, the government is harassing a respected journalism site that dissents from its policies. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York claims these comments could constitute violent threats, even though they’re clearly hyperbolic political rhetoric. ... Reason has since removed the offending comments."

Newspeak from the Orwellian president: Ending ObamaCare would punish millions with higher costs of care

Oldspeak from the true born sons of liberty: ObamaCare has already punished millions with higher costs of care, when they can find it.

Here.

A clear majority of Americans has a stupid view about Vladimir Putin

Seen here:

It helps [Republicans] that the 62-year-old former KGB officer is deeply unpopular in the United States. A survey by the non-partisan Pew Research Center in February said Putin was viewed unfavorably by 70 percent of Americans.

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Russia is nominally a Christian country, like the United States. It is ethnically northern European, like the United States whose single largest hyphenated population remains German. Both countries share an interest in countering an increasingly aggressive Communist China as well as radical Islam, especially in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Both powers share an interest in a free, demilitarized and prosperous Europe with which both can trade to everyone's benefit.

It should be a no-brainer for the West to embrace Russia. Once China moves on Taiwan and the South China Sea that may become easier, if then is not too late.

Matt Latimer forgets that the Clintons win only by pluralities

In other words, Clintons win only when they can successfully divide the opposition, usually along the conservative/libertarian fault lines of taxes, sex and trade. Right now, however, it is Hillary who is more than decisively on the wrong side of an issue which divides her side. She's been dumped before for the better candidate, and can be again.

Here:

Much is now being made of a CNN poll finding that a majority of Americans—57 percent—do not believe Hillary Clinton is honest or trustworthy. But is that really news? Roughly half of the country has felt that way for a long time. Forty-three percent of Americans said that a year ago. And forty-six percent said that back in 2007. Under the headline, “Hillary Clinton’s honesty problem,” an earnest reporter for The Hill newspaper asks, “Is it possible to win the White House if more than half the electorate thinks you’re dishonest?” Uh, of course, it is, people. The Clintons do this all the time.

Democrats broke nearly every promise about ObamaCare

Jack Kelly here:

Nearly every promise Democrats made has been broken. The average family pays more (some much more) for insurance, not $2,500 less. About 9 million Americans (so far) have learned they couldn’t keep the health plans they had if they wanted. Or some of their doctors.

Federal spending for health didn’t go down. It’s zoomed upward. So have emergency room visits. Overhead costs are exploding.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will lower full-time employment by 2.3 million in 2021, compared with what might have been without reform.

The ACA has hurt millions more than it’s helped. The worst is yet to come. President Barack Obama delayed or altered (mostly illegally) unpopular provisions at least 50 times. If they’re implemented fully, up to 100 million who get insurance from their employers could have their policies canceled, the American Enterprise Institute has estimated.

The Chicago Sun-Times ignores the fact that people HERE haven't answered for ONE DAMN THING

Edward Snowden has already answered for what he has done. He's sacrificed everything, and lives in exile for defending a principle called the Fourth Amendment.

The conclusion of the stupid effing Sun-Times editorial here:

"Edward Snowden, for all the undeniable good he has done, still has much to answer for."

Crackpot Rand Paul thinks proportional justice is putting James Clapper and Edward Snowden in the same jail cell

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Snowden's already in a jail cell. It's called exile. He gave up everything to defend a principle Americans used to believe in.

Meanwhile Clapper lied under oath and obstructed justice, did not lose his job, and will not lose any of his taxpayer-funded retirement, but the government's violation of Americans' fourth amendment rights continues unabated.

Video here.

Does that suit Hillary's wearing come with a helmet?

Quick! Find my helmet!

Deep sea diver suit, or space suit?

Whichever it is, she looks like she's out of oxygen!

Russia's Sergey Lavrov: Obama is failing because he hates Assad more than terrorism

Quoted here:

"If people continue to acquiesce with what is going on, and continue to acquiesce with those who categorically refuse to start the political process until Bashar Assad disappears then I am not very optimistic for the future of this region," he said.

"Because these people put the fate of one person whom they hate on top of the fight against terrorism," Lavrov said.

"We have been through this repeatedly. Saddam Hussein was the one person after whom the United States went and they ruined the country."

"Gaddafi is the same," he said, referring to Libya's fallen dictator.

Grand Rapids, MI, 2015 temperature anomaly through May: 18 degrees F below normal

May 2015 was 2.2 degrees F above normal in Grand Rapids, MI.

The total anomaly for 2015 to date contracted from 20.2 degrees F below normal in April to 18 degrees F below normal in May.

The total anomaly for 2014 January through May was 24.2 degrees F  below normal, 34% colder than presently to date.

Security Theatre still the rule at airports: DHS punks the TSA 95% of the time

Sneaking through explosives and weapons.

And forget about baggage screening.

From the story here:

"In addition, the review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time."

It would have been all right if Hillary Clinton had flown nearly a million miles . . .

. . . if they all had been in the same direction and away from the Earth.

Americans are drowning in Obama's GDP toilet and all Republicans can say this weekend is . . .

Comment of the day: "I'm sick of hearing about Greece . . . Greece is a country that peaked in 450 BC"

Larry Kudlow, today on his show on WABC Radio.

A jury could indict a ham sandwich

OK, two ham sandwiches.

The guy was being blackmailed for crying out loud.

Smells just like how Obama got the courts to discredit his Democrat and Republican opponents in his race for the US Senate.

Lefty "Hope" artist says Obama hasn't come close to living up to his promise

What promise?

He did promise transformation. You just didn't know he meant from rich to poor. Stupid Trotskyite.

Delusional Rand Paul might as well run as a Democrat, blames Republicans for creating ISIS

Rand Paul, quoted here:

"ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb Assad, which would have made ISIS’ job even easier. They created these people."

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ISIS wouldn't exist if Obama hadn't pulled out of Iraq, had not opposed Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria and the state of Israel, and let ISIS' leader out of Camp Bucca.

Hysterical Glenn Beck makes hysterical liberals, well, hysterical

It's hard to keep all the hysteria separate at The Daily Beast, where libertarian hysteria meets liberal hysteria and proves what we knew all along: hysteria is a defining feature of both liberalism and libertarianism.

Glenn Beck:

'“I would open it up to all drugs [potentially being legalized],” and leave it up to the states.'

The Daily Beast:

'In Beck’s telling, the main consequence of this police escalation and the war on drugs was not the mass incarceration of millions . . .."

The one exaggerates what society can stand, the other what it can't.

Beer, wine and liquor have a long record of being more or less controllable while opiates do not. No one with much experience of the latter is clamoring for their wider use.

On the other side 2.3 million adult incarcerates barely qualifies as millions in a society of 321 million people. The only people demanding the release of the duly captive are Democrats and other racists.

Blame the libertarians for handing Romney his loss in 2012, not conservatives

Third parties bled away over 60% of the few votes Romney lost by in his failed eastern strategy in Election 2012.

Mitt Romney's bid to win the White House failed by 64 electoral college votes, all of which he narrowly lost in an eastern strategy in just four states by a total of only 429,522 popular votes:

Florida, lost by 74,309 votes, where third parties garnered an unbelievable 90,972 votes;

Virginia, lost by 149,298 votes, where third parties garnered 60,147 votes;

Ohio, lost by 166,272 votes, where third parties took a whopping 101,788 votes;

and New Hampshire, lost by 39,643 votes, where third parties took 11,493 votes.

That's a loss for Romney of 64 electoral college votes, enough to have taken him from 206 to 270 to take the presidency, losing 429,522 total popular votes in just four states where third parties all told took 264,400 votes, 61.5% of the total needed by Romney to win.

This isn't to say that those were all necessarily Republican votes which went third party, but fully 50.5% of the 264,400 were cast for the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who had been a Republican candidate for president until late 2011 when he was excluded from the Republican debates. At that point he bolted to the Libertarian Party, and openly stated his intention to play a spoiler role:

“I hope that I would get labeled as a ‘spoiler’ from the standpoint of people actually focusing on what it is I am saying, and that this changes the way whoever wins governs,” Johnson told Sunshine State News in an exclusive interview Saturday at the 2012 Ron Paul Festival.

Combine the pique factor around that with the natural alienation felt by libertarians toward a Mormon candidate who was himself socially conservative in his habits and loathe to exercise himself on behalf of libertarians' usual limited government ideas and you can make a case that it was libertarians who cost Romney the election, by casting spoiler votes, staying away from the polls entirely, or even voting for Obama out of spite.

This is a better explanation for the Romney loss than some mythical 4 million conservatives staying away from the polls in 2012 as Rush Limbaugh keeps saying. The numbers themselves disprove that, as Romney garnered 1 million more votes in 2012 than McCain in 2008. It was a much closer election than the (mostly libertarian) punditocracy wants you to know.

Conservatives, most of whom are Christians, aren't put off by abstainers like Mitt Romney the way libertarians might be (many Christians are abstemious too), and Christians find it much more morally problematic to stay away from the polls, or to vote out of spite, in a way which libertarians would not. Christian voters are nothing if not preoccupied with their moral and social responsibility, but libertarians care little for that.

In fact, withdrawing from social responsibilities is elevated to the level of a moral principle by libertarians. Staying away from the polls is a John Galt tactic straight out of the playbook from Ayn Rand. It's an ongoing and adolescent fantasy of theirs. It's not a Christian tactic, which is to say it's not a conservative tactic. Conservatives love their country too much to let it go down the drain, and they actively admired Mitt Romney for his commitment to and long record of public service even if his religion and social policy positions bothered them.

It remains a question if Republicans can expect to succeed in future with a brood of vipers in their party such as the libertarians. Republicans should reconsider their tilt toward libertarianism and seriously ask themselves whether things might not go better for them if they more actively pursued the social conservative vote. From the Christians Republicans can expect forgiveness, but from the libertarians only vindictiveness. Isn't that how the Bushes got elected after turning their backs on the Reagan revolution? Isn't that the conceit of moderate Republican presidential aspirants still today?

Why isn't that an easy call? After all, the libertarian Ron Paul who bitterly lost to Romney in the Republican primaries never left the Republican Party, but he never endorsed Mitt Romney either: "I don’t fully endorse him for president,” he said, as late as August 2012, less than three months before the election. Message to libertarians: good ahead, stay home, see if I care.

Call it an ironic payback to Romney, whose moderate Republican father likewise wouldn't endorse the conservative Barry Goldwater after losing to him in 1964, but it's also another sign in a long list of signs that libertarians have more in common with liberals than with conservatives.

They're content if they too can defeat Republicans.