Total nonfarm jobs up only 98,000 in March, but Trump made sure we're talking about Syria instead

And even more "just words" from Trump: Stay out of Syria! Rebels are Islamists, not allies!

6 September 2013

4 September 2013

12 September 2014

Just more words: Trump promised no involvement in the Middle East like Bush promised no nation-building

29 August 2013

31 August 2013

2 September 2013

Looks like Trump's tweets on Syria in 2013 were "just words": Everything he's said now is up for grabs

June 2013

August 2013

September 2013

Michael Savage just said "emacerated"

"Macerated" is a word, but not "emacerated".

Michael Savage obviously didn't get his PhD in English, but how do you get a PhD and make mistakes like that?

He also makes flubs like "you and I" when he means "you and me".

The way to Obamacare repeal is through repeal of the filibuster

Harry Reid's fateful end of the filibuster in 2013 for lower court and executive branch nominees looks set to be ended also for the higher court.

Once accomplished, nothing in principle stands in the way of removing the filibuster rule for legislation.

And that means Obamacare can be repealed with a simple majority of Republicans.

From the story here:

And now, with political polarization at an extreme, the Senate is on the verge of killing off the Supreme Court filibuster, the one remaining vestige of bipartisanship on presidential appointments. For now the filibuster barrier on legislation will remain, though many fear it could be the next to go.

Those who lament this development should look to themselves.

Popular election of Senators from 1913 has made the Senate little more than a Super House, where the filibuster ended in 1842. The continuance of the filibuster in the Senate is thus an anachronism and a farce in an age of rule by 535 demagogues.

If anyone wishes to imbue the Senate with the supposed august character of its past, start by rescinding the popular election of its membership, thus making the Senate once again the creature of the states the constitution meant it to be.

For such a Senate the filibuster might once again become appropriate, but not for this one. 

Barry Manilow: It Looks Like He Faked It

There once was a Jew named Pincus

who thought all along he'd hoodwinked us

He made the girls swoon as Manilow

but lived with a guy on the down-low

He's out now the queer, in his wrinkles.

Climate warmist Michael Mann tells Congress he's not affiliated with the Climate Accountability Institute

From the story here:

When asked directly if he was either affiliated or associated with CAI, Mann answered “no.”

Mann is listed among the CAI Council of Advisors here.

Rob Schneider's Laugh of the Day: People keep taking pictures of HillaryClinton in the woods like she's Bigfoot

Here.

Opioid epidemic is far more likely an effect of this depression economy than one of its causes

Jeffrey Snider, here:

What the cash flow and profit series tell us is that Economists once again have it backward. The opioid epidemic is far more likely an effect of this depression economy than one of its causes. If businesses are forced to utilize so much less labor, it is because there is no cash nor expectation for growth in profit by which to put more of it to productive use. ...

The problem is the erosion of the national basis for income, the jobs that the Trump administration has correctly focused upon in at least its economic rhetoric. The means to correct the deficiency so far proposed, however, will, in all likelihood, do little or nothing toward alleviating it. For as much as the Federal Reserve in 2017 will claim that this is now a purely fiscal problem, it is instead still a monetary one just as it has been all along.

AP Obama details Obama policies already reversed by Trump

1. Climate change

2. Internet privacy

3. Abortion/Family Planning

4. Keystone XL Pipeline

5. Dakota Access Pipeline

6. Fuel efficiency standards

7. TPP

8. Abortion/Mexico City Policy

9. Fiduciary Rule

Story here.

Owners' equity in real estate has hardly returned to the levels of more responsible times, barely at 2006 level

Lyin' Susan Rice is in the middle of the unmasking scandal

Reported here and here.

And right now the boob Rush Limbaugh is ranting against homeownership and its tax deduction

Rush says the mortgage industry lobbied to get the mortgage interest deduction, not realizing it's been there since the Income Tax became law in 1913.

It's like a conspiracy, this coordinated attack on homeownership today.

Real Clear Markets doesn't hide its libertarian bias, runs three anti-homeownership articles today

The American Dream That's Not Backed Up by History APRIL 1, 2017 10:00 AM EDT By Stephen Mihm

Is the American Dream Killing the American People? By Robert Samuelson April 03, 2017

Ilargi: Our Economies Run On Housing Bubbles Posted on April 1, 2017 by Yves Smith By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor of Automatic Earth

That last one is a doozy, from Occupy Wall Street friendly Naked Capitalism, showing to what depths libertarianism will stoop to advance its ideology. 

University of Georgia historian minimizes the magnitude of foreclosures during the Great Depression, missing their significance for the value of homeownership today

Stephen Mihm, at Bloomberg here:

While home ownership became increasingly popular in the early twentieth century, the U.S. was still a majority-renter nation in 1930, though by this time homeowners numbered 48 percent of the total population. But the Great Depression knocked that figure back down to 43 percent, roughly on par with late nineteenth century levels.

Things changed dramatically in the 1940s, when home ownership levels began moving toward unprecedented highs, hitting 66 percent by 1980. Economists are still arguing over why that happened, but the most compelling explanations are pretty banal and do little to support the sentimental blather associated with home ownership.

Does this guy even know that the nonfarm foreclosure rate nearly quadrupled between 1926 and 1933?

Through 1933 there were over 1 million completed foreclosures, about 1% of US population of the time. Compare that to the current crisis. We've had 8.5 million completed foreclosures since 2004, about 2.5% of population. 

Homeownership as a cultural value in the post-war was so high because so many people lost their homes before it.

And it still is today and will continue to be, despite what some people say with an axe to grind from the safety of their sinecures.

Robert Kuttner gets out there pretending there isn't already a shadow government

Here, ignoring Obama's Organizing for Action and the Deep State, which must be the point (oh look, a deer):

If this were a parliamentary democracy, there would be a leader of the opposition, and a whole “front bench” of opposition spokespeople, issue by issue ― a kind of Shadow Cabinet. ... Even better would be if a leading Democrat put herself forward now, as the presidential candidate for 2020. That way, there would be head-to-head comparisons and challenges, as well as almost equal coverage. 

Hey Trump, we're still waiting for you to repeal Obamacare "immediately"

Trump tweeted this about one month after Obama vetoed HR 3762.

Hey Trump, we're still waiting for repeal of DACA and DAPA "immediately"

Laugh of the Day: Guy named "Stone" wants Trump to back legal pot

Here.