Thursday, August 22, 2024

This conservative outrage machine story yesterday and today about Commerce Secretary Raimondo has got to be the dumbest one I've heard in a long time

 She was asked an ignorant question.

Why would the Commerce Secretary have something timely to say about employment revisions released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Labor Department?

It's not her area. I wouldn't expect her to know anything about it, and if I had a brain I wouldn't bother asking her.

Commerce and Labor are two separate cabinet level departments and have been since 1913.

I don't expect the Commerce Secretary to have the latest labor information anymore than I expect the Labor Secretary to be able to respond to the latest GDP report produced by the BEA at the Commerce Dept.

But all the ignorami on the right, but I repeat myself, are up in arms over this. It's embarrassing.

What's really going on here is outrage over the size of the revision, which is the largest since 2009.

Republicans want to say Biden and Harris have been lying about the jobs numbers for a year to make themselves look better.

That's a crock. The initial benchmark revisions occur every year around this time, and their size should be no surprise since the Employment Situation Summary every month contains revisions upon revisions upon revisions of prior months. This happens all the time, and if you know you know that this year the numbers have been particularly susceptible of large revisions, criticism, and expressed suspicions from the FOMC members on down.

But total nonfarm payrolls have always been this way. They are quick and dirty on any day. I gave up following them in favor of other measures precisely because it involves securing jello on a galley plate in high seas, and I have better things to do.

Full time employment, measured with other data, around 50% of population under Joe Biden hasn't been great, and it hasn't been awful either. In my arrogant opinion, following total nonfarm and its endless stream of revisions is a fool's errand.

Even more foolish to get upset about it when plenty of other indicators show that employment up until this summer has been "secularly tight", as one economist likes to put it. Continued claims for unemployment have been steady as she goes since late 2021.

The slight recent elevation in these claims numbers is consistent with a softening of employment, which I have noted elsewhere in regard to full time jobs.

The bloom is off the rose it seems, but the preliminary total nonfarm benchmark revision down 819,000 is a problem with that model, not a sign of a sudden problem with employment. 




 





Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Joe Biden feels your pain

 

Harris-Walz campaign has two propaganda czars, one whose job is to say Walz misspoke in the past and one to say Harris dissavows her past beliefs

 


If one border wall doesn't work, add a second one

 


Tim Walz lies about absolutely everything: My wife and I used I.V.F. to start a family

 


A million dollars in cash weighs about 22 pounds, in gold about 27

 10,000 $100 bills vs. one 400 troy ounce gold bar.

 



Phony, baloney, plastic banana, good time rock n' rolla Barack Hussein Obama told Republicans to go sit in the back of the bus in October 2010, just before Republicans ate his lunch and swept the House

 In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Monday 25 October 2010.

Video.

Stories:

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-to-gop-%E2%80%98they-can-come-for-the-ride-but-they-have-to-sit-in-back/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-tells-republicans-to-sit-in-back

https://www.today.com/news/rove-reacts-obama-saying-gop-should-be-back-wbna40024583

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2010/10/25/obama-assails-gop-on-clouded-final-campaign-push/

https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2010/10/26/obama-assails-gop-in-races/26396696007/


 

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Joe Biden to Democrats, July 8: We had a Democratic nomination process, the voters have chosen me, do we now just say this process didn't matter, that the voters don't have a say?

 Yes.

 


Kamala Harris, phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla, astroturfs event at Pittsburgh restaurant Saturday, kicks out all the patrons at 4pm and brings in her own using over a dozen vans


 

Staff told patrons that they would have to leave due to a ‘private event’ which turned out to be a campaign stop for Kamala Harris. ...

‘They kicked us out of Primanti Brothers,’ one man commented as a person in the crowd filmed a caravan of over a dozen unmarked Ford Transit vans arrived to the location.

More.

I saw this on X and thought it couldn't possibly be true and dismissed it over the weekend.

This story was published yesterday.

You'll be told in media and ads that she has strong support in Pittsburgh. 

POLITICO correspondent surprised DNC convention is just like Pelosi saying you have to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it

 



Pretty amazing that Democrats did this to President Biden, pretty amazing that he just let them

 




Kamala and I are committed to strengthening illegal immigration

 


Monday, August 19, 2024

Just a reminder that a putsch is OK when Democrats do it

 



Maureen Dowd of The New York Times: Joe Biden was pushed out by Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries, and their handprints are on his back, and Trump will still win


It was a jaw-dropping putsch, she says, a coup even.

Pelosi knifed her pal, she says.

Obama has now sidelined Joe Biden twice, she says.

Everyone's mad at one another at the DNC in Chicago, she says.

"Top Democrats are bristling with resentment".

Read it at The Irish Times.

Democrats profiting off the little guy: Corporate profits at 12% under Bidenflation have been much better than under Trump at 4%

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The dirty little secret about corporate profits: they've been much better after 13 quarters of Biden than they were after 16 quarters of Trump, averaging 4.14% yoy under Trump and 12.13% under Biden.
 
This is a great little arrangement between Democrats and big business. Democrat-aligned business makes off with your cash while politicians pretend to do something about it in exchange for campaign contributions, with the important benefit that inflation inflates away the cost of their spendthrift deficit spending.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which did no such thing and Democrats said would cost nothing, is estimated to cost the taxpayers nearly $800 billion by 2031 according to the liberal Brookings Institution.

This is your fascist America.
 
Shielding price increases by blaming them on inflation has been the modus operandi of the period. Price gouging is real, but gimmicks which address only symptoms won't solve the problem, which is caused by increasing the money supply and deliberately increasing other costs as a matter of policy, like energy and regulation, which businesses also can plausibly blame.
 
But Harris knows the demagogic value of running against price gouging.
 
Price controls poll particularly well. You can fool most of the people most of the time.
 

 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Real Clear Politics' No Toss-Ups Map moves AZ back to Trump, Trump Electoral College lead up: 287-251

Here.

Kamala Harris' crime

 Kamala Harris' crime was failure to inform the American people of Joe Biden's mental incapacity, and to invoke the 25th Amendment with the pledge that she would not run for president.

Once again the Constitution is shown to be a worthless barrier of parchment, whose only power to maintain freedom comes from those who assent to it and enforce it. The former is meaningless without the latter.

Invoked a year ago, her candidacy by approbation today would have legitimacy. As it is, it does not.

Instead she kept silent until just the right moment, in order to grasp the ring presented to her by a political party which cared nothing for the primary votes of millions of Joe Biden's supporters.

Democracy has been murdered in broad daylight by Democrats, and y'all just stand by and film it.

She is a usurper, a power hungry snake, without an ounce of integrity.

You will rue the day you elect her president.

O baseness to support a tyrant throne,
And crush your freeborn brethren of the world!
Nay, to become a part of usurpation,
T' espouse the tyrant's person and her crimes.

-- John Dryden
 

 

 


Inflation is over, gold hits new high lol

 CNN: The war on inflation has been won. It’s OK if you’re still angry

The headline inflation reading falling below 3% for the first time since 2021 is incredible.

 

CNBC: Gold rallies to record high on softer dollar, rate-cut expectations

Spot gold was up 1.5% to $2,493.66 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,500.99 earlier. U.S. gold futures rose 1.6% to $2,532.10. Bullion has risen 2.6% this week.