Thursday, January 4, 2018
Screw the will of the voters: Marijuana is poison and government should fight it
Sessions’ plan drew immediate strong objection from Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, one of eight states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use.
Gardner said in a tweet that the Justice Department “has trampled on the will of the voters” in Colorado and other states. He said the action would contradict what Sessions had told him before the attorney general was confirmed and that he was prepared “to take all steps necessary” to fight the step including holding up the confirmation of Justice Department nominees.
Read the whole thing here.
Scott Rasmussen thinks 15 million will drop Obamacare because now they can, and 6.5 million others already pay a fine
From the story here:
Last year, an estimated 15 million Americans would have dropped out of Obamacare if they could. Now they can. Another 6.5 million paid a fine rather than sign up for coverage. This means that more than 20 million people directly benefit from the repeal of the mandate.
NONE of the increase to working age population aged 25 to 64 since 2005 has gone to household formation . . .
. . . either as renters or homeowners in their own right. They've ALL (and then some) gone to doubling-up on net, mostly with family.
The face of the declining middle class in 2016 was concealed as 15 million more lived in doubled-up households than in 2005
Zillow reported (here) in December that working age adults in 2016 were living in doubled-up households at a rate of 30% compared with 21% in 2005.
That works out to roughly 32 million in 2005 at the 21% rate vs. 50 million in 2016 at the 30% rate, using the Working Age Population data from FRED.
Had the rate remained 21% in 2016, just 35 million would be living doubled-up instead of 50 million.
That's 15 million more adults who can't afford to buy, and can't even afford to rent, thanks to the feckless performances of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama.
h/t Jeffrey Snider, Alhambra Investments
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for December 2017
Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for December 2017
Max Temp: Actual 61, Mean 53, 2017 Max 96, Mean Max 94
Min Temp: Actual -12, Mean 4, 2017 Min -12, Mean Min -7
Av. Temp: Actual 24.4, Mean 28.3, Annual Actual 50.3, Annual Mean 48.2
CDD: 2017 Actual 719, Annual Mean 690
Rain: Actual 1.96, Mean 2.43, Annual Actual 39.43, Annual Mean 34.52
Snow: Actual 32.9, Mean 16.2, Season to Date Actual 33.5, Season to Date Mean 22.9
HDD: Actual 1252, Mean 1131, Season to Date Actual 2443, Season to Date Mean 2488
The warming need as expressed by Heating Degree Days thus far into the cool season increased considerably in December and is now running just 1.8% under the mean to date overall.
The year 2012 remained the warmest full year on record by average temperature at 52.8 F going back to 1898, followed by 1931, 1921, 1998, 2016, 2010, 1938, 1939 and now 2017 at 50.3 F placing ninth. The cooling need in the warm season as expressed by Cooling Degree Days was 4.2% above the annual mean. 2017 actual average temperature exceeded the annual mean average temperature by a similar value, 4.35%. The record year 2012 exceeded annual mean average temperature by 9.5%.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Yahoo and HuffPo call this "normal" winter weather: It's not
Here. But hot summer temperatures evoke global warming headlines.
The mean monthly lowest minimum temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan in Decembers is +4 F. With today and tomorrow to go, we're already at - 12 F, the third coldest on record.
Average temperature in December 2017 so far ranks 32nd coldest out of 126 Decembers, the 75th percentile. Normal would be the 50th percentile. So it's definitely colder than normal, while not absolutely record setting.
Climate shmimate. These idiots can't predict bupkis three days out let alone from month to month and century to century. All year long average temperature has been running warm, until December ruined their little global warming narrative.
Bwaaaaaaahahahahaha.
Let this be a sign unto you: The era of libertarian looting ushered in by Reagan now reaching apogee will be followed by another FDR-like "progressive" era of welfare statism
Bernie tapped into the amorphous socialism clamored for by today's young people who face dim job prospects while saddled by large college debts for degrees incommensurate with what's available in the job marketplace. This is the direct result of the takeover of public education from bottom to top by the left. It never delivers what it promises, except for hope.
As "millennials" replace the Baby Boom at the polls, their vote will transform America, and already has. Obama and Bernie were signs of this. Expect a return to high taxation of the rich, even larger federal government, and the transformation of existing welfare state programs into universal systems.
Like it or not, that's the future. Patriotism will take the form of socialism for Americans instead of for the world.
Now that Republicanism has thoroughly committed itself to globalism, libertarians are advised to take the money and run.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Michael Savage, crackpot: Emphasizes "wildlife and the earth" at dinner with President Trump
Recounted here.
Trump got elected on the issue of illegal immigration. There has been no progress on the wall in a year, and Savage decides to use his valuable meeting time with Trump to talk about . . . environmentalism. As if environmentalism will be important politically in the midterms.
What a nitwit.
We're being overrun and Savage decides to get all wet.
We're doomed I tell you.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Alt-right critic Amanda Marcotte says white supremacists are harder to see at the end of 2017
Everyone's harder to see right now. They're all inside because it's like - 11 degrees F outside.
Here:
White supremacists may be harder to see at the end of 2017, but the problem they represent is not going away any time soon.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Uh oh: A North Korean soldier who defected to South Korea this year has anthrax antibodies
UPI reports here:
South Korean authorities did not identify the soldier, who was either exposed to or vaccinated for anthrax, but did confirm he had developed immunity to the deadly disease before he defected, local news network Channel A reported Tuesday.
Monday, December 25, 2017
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas commandeers woman's first class seat on United flight
Then claims racism when the woman complains.
Story here, where Yahoo doesn't name the congresswoman in the headline. In fact Yahoo doesn't name her until paragraph ten. But it does provide photos of the obese black idiot.
Read it and weep, suckers: Trump tells his rich friends at Mar-a-Lago that they just got a lot richer
'The president himself on Sept. 13 -- long before the bill was finalized -- said the wealthy would not benefit from the GOP tax overhaul.
'"The rich will not be gaining at all with this plan. We are looking for the middle class and we are looking for jobs -- jobs being the economy," Mr. Trump said.'
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Laugh of the Day: What's the difference between Tiger Woods and Santa?
Santa was smart enough to stop at three hos.
Saturday, December 23, 2017
Trump is scrambling to deal with a not physically fit Navy he inherited from Obama
From the story here:
The Navy will grant a clean slate to nearly 50,000 sailors with fitness failures in their records, part of new shakeup for fleet-wide fitness rules announced Thursday.
A new Navy-wide message instructs commands to immediately stop discharging sailors for fitness failures and to cancel any pending discharges for sailors slated to be kicked out after March 31. The change applies to both enlisted and officers.
The message also unveils a new set of rules for the Physical Fitness Assessment, bringing to an end the rules forcing sailors to leave the Navy if they failed two fitness assessment tests in a three-year period. ...
The new Physical Fitness Assessment rules are part of a broader effort to keep more sailors in uniform at a time when the Navy is trying to increase end strength by over 4,100 by the end of the current fiscal year in September 2018. ...
As of July 2017, the end of the last official PFA cycle, more than 43,000 sailors have at least one failure in the past three years; another 5,477 have at least two failures on the books, according to the chief of naval personnel.
The McLaughlin Group is coming back in 2018, with Tom Rogan as moderator
The old show worked because of the tag team of John McLaughlin and his longtime pal Pat Buchanan from the Nixon White House days. Both were excellent communicators with skills honed over many years, playing off the opinions of the assorted others.
Rogan brings nothing similar to the show, only affection.
Count me out.
Story here.
Friday, December 22, 2017
More betrayal from Trump: Commutes sentence of the poster boy for employing illegal aliens
Trump on Wednesday commuted the sentence of kosher meat producer Sholom Rubashkin, serving 27 years on 86 counts of bank fraud and money laundering.
From the story here:
President Trump issued his first prison commutation Wednesday to a man whose business was caught employing 389 illegal immigrants in a single shift, dismaying anti-illegal immigration advocates and a former prosecutor on the case. ...
Prosecutors said at sentencing that Rubashkin was found to have "cheated a bank and others out of a staggering amount of money — more than $26 million." His conviction on 86 federal counts was upheld on appeal.
David Frum is not a conservative
Here:
Ideas are not artifacts, especially the kind of collective ideas we know as ideologies. Conservatives in 1964 opposed civil-rights laws. Conservatives in 1974 opposed tax cuts unless paid for by spending cuts. Conservatives in 1984 opposed same-sex marriage. Conservatives in 1994 opposed trade protectionism. Conservatives in 2004 opposed people who equated the FBI and Soviet Union’s KGB. All those statements of conservative ideology have gone by the boards, and one could easily write a similar list of amended views for liberals.
Conservatism is what conservatives think, say, and do. As conservatives change—as much through the harsh fact of death and birth as by the fluctuations of opinion—so does what it means to be a conservative.
On the contray, conservatives believe in a transcendent moral order populated by eternal truths to which they seek to conform human affairs. Jews, for example, recognize these in the Decalogue, Platonists in the Ideas and Hindus in dharma. Infractions committed against the eternal truths do not change the truths, the infractions change us, sometimes for the better but more often for the worse.
Like the sophists, David Frum has chosen the worse, peddling his opinions in a world composed of mere opinion, as changeable as a pair of pants.
That's not conservatism.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
HaHaHa, HaHaHaHaHa: I got your "booming economy" right here, fella
 |
| The Reagan bull ended in August 2000 with final average nominal per annum return of 18.99%, real 15.28% |
When terrorism gives you lemons, make lemonade
It's not exactly affection shown for the terrorists, but hey, what do you expect from thorough-going materialism?
GDP actually DROPPED in the report out today for 3Q2017
Today's GDP report was the third and final estimate for 3Q2017.
A month ago, current dollar GDP was estimated at $19.509 trillion.
Today, it's $8.4 billion less: $19.5006 trillion.
Yeah, I know, big whoop, but don't expect anyone in Conservatism Inc. to point it out, because, you know, "the economy is booming".
Read it and weep: "The move to a territorial system opens the barn doors wide to corporate offshoring"
Read all about the new giant sucking sound, here.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Once again in the dead of night Senate Republicans pass tax reform for multinational corporations
The New York Times, here:
The Senate approved the bill early Wednesday morning.
The Senate voted 51 to 48, with no Republican defections and no Democratic support.
Under the final tax bill, the corporate tax rate would fall to 21 percent, from the current 35 percent, a move that Republicans are betting will increase economic growth, create jobs and raise wages. Individuals would also see tax cuts, including a top rate of 37 percent, down from 39.6 percent. The size of inheritances shielded from estate taxation would double, to $22 million for married couples, and owners of pass-through businesses, whose profits are taxed through the individual code, would be able to deduct 20 percent of their business income.
But the individual tax cuts would expire after 2025, a step that Republicans took to comply with budget rules, which do not allow the package to add to the deficit after a decade.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Republican tax reform for multinational corporations passes US House 227-203-2
The New York Times has the roll call, here.
Just 12 Republicans voted "No", most from states hurt by the $10,000 cap for deductibility of state, local and property taxes:
CA-48
Dana Rohrabacher
N
CA-49
Darrell Issa
N
NC-3
Walter B. Jones
N
NJ-2
Frank A. LoBiondo
N
NJ-4
Christopher H. Smith
N
NJ-7
Leonard Lance
N
NJ-11
Rodney Frelinghuysen
N
NY-1
Lee Zeldin
N
NY-2
Peter T. King
N
NY-11
Dan Donovan
N
NY-19
John J. Faso
N
NY-21
Elise Stefanik
N
Taxes are about precise numbers, which means Rush Limbaugh will make you cringe
He just said Ronald Reagan lowered the top marginal rate from 90% in the 1981 tax reform.
He didn't. John F. Kennedy lowered the top rate from 90% to 70%.
Reagan lowered the top rate from 70% to 50%.
Just about everything Rush says about taxes is imprecise, and wrong, including about what he has no excuse for not knowing, namely taxes under his hero Reagan.
But hey, he can't even get the old chestnut "whose ox is gored" correct. Today it's the goose getting gored, or something.
Take another pill, Rush. Just one more hour to go before you're off for two weeks.
Update: My bad. Rush will be back tomorrow, to celebrate the tax bill passing.
Update: My bad. Rush will be back tomorrow, to celebrate the tax bill passing.
Alimony paid will no longer be deductible, and alimony received will no longer be taxable
War on Men!
Expect a big decrease in amicable divorces! Women will have a YUGE incentive to stick it to the man.
So expect even fewer men proposing marriage in the first place.
And you thought the Republicans were the pro-family party.
Not any more it isn't.
Reported here:
In the new bill, however, these payments are no longer deductible for the payor. Nor are the payments included in the recipient's gross income. Instead, the money used for alimony will be taxed at the payor's rates.
This provision is effective for divorce and separation agreements signed after December 31, 2018.
Republican tax "reform" will make it harder for you to move, eliminating the relocation deduction
Reported here:
Are you thinking of moving across the country for a new career opportunity? If so, the tax bill won't let you deduct the cost of your move.
HELOC interest deduction goes away under Republican tax "reform": Expect loan consolidation
You know the one, the one you take to help buy a car, fund tuition, or actually fix up the house.
When the credit card interest deduction went away under Ronald Reagan, consumers opened up Home Equity Lines of Credit in response, the interest on which was deductible. Now that HELOC interest deductibility is going away, expect those HELOCs to be refinanced under new first mortgages to recapture that.
Also expect this to impact consumer spending, negatively.
Reported here:
Individuals who take out home equity loans will no longer be able to deduct that interest under the new bill.
Justice: Muslim who beheaded Oklahoma woman sentenced to death by lethal injection
We would have preferred the rope, say two years ago.
From the story here:
Alton Nolen, 33, was convicted of first degree murder in late September for beheading his coworker Colleen Hufford inside Vaughan Foods in September 2014. Following a two-phase trial beginning in mid-September, jurors recommended Nolen be sentenced to death in October. ... In court Friday morning, Judge Lori Walkley accepted the recommendation of the jury, sentencing Nolen to death by lethal injection for beheading Hufford.
Sunday, December 17, 2017
In unfree China, if you disrespect the mass murdering terrorist Genghis Khan you go to jail
Offenses against social stability will not be tolerated!
From the story here:
A Chinese man was sentenced to one year in jail after a video of him stamping on a portrait of Genghis Khan went viral, mainland media reported on Friday. He was charged with affecting social stability by prosecutors in Ordos, a city in Inner Mongolia, news website Thepaper.cn reported. ... Police in Inner Mongolia told the news site that they received complaints from residents in the province and deemed the video had caused disruption to society.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Sometimes Ann Coulter is an idiot, for instance when dissing federal encouragement of having children
You'd think someone who wants America for Americans would want to encourage anything which promotes Americans having more children instead of importing them, but you would be wrong.
Rubio's insistence on a larger child tax credit stops some of the damage being done by Republicans to people with families larger than four.
Abolishing the personal exemption meant parents lost those exemptions for all their children, and the increased standard deduction didn't go far enough to replace them, meaning they'd pay more in taxes just because they have more kids.
Coulter's indignation appears to be purely personal, an ugly intrusion of the irrational into her otherwise often rational positions.
She doesn't realize how libertarian she sounds (she hates them by the way). Americans who have children are making it possible that something like America survives into the future, which is a more sure and lasting contribution than any law which might be passed.
Some of the founders recognized that laws are a mere parchment barrier. When the pirates are attacking, you need a navy, which means sailors, not a bill of rights.
1986 was the last year domestic investment exceeded investment abroad, which is why everything REALLY SUCKS here now
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| NAFTA began with Canada in 1989, was expanded in 1994, China became a WTO member in 2001, but the 1986 tax reform really started the final leg down |
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Good dog: Battle Beagle has been thinking about Aristotle
The excerpt comes from Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance by Guillaume Faye (Arktos, 2011).
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Judge Roy Moore loses US Senate bid in Alabama by 20,715 votes, 1.5 points
Judge Roy Moore joins the Todd Akin club.
Republicans got the man they really wanted, Democrat Jones, who will give them the convenient excuse they need for not passing the Trump agenda without having to vote against it.
I sincerely hope more Republicans get what they want in future. They deserve it for not delivering on The Wall, an immigration pause, and tax reform which benefits individuals instead of corporations.
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