The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.
-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Funny how Enlightened England became hostile to American Presbyterianism, and so ruined itself
The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.
Buzzfeed attacks Disqus for its alt-right hangouts
The marginalization war continues, and the herding instincts of the targets makes them easy prey. The irony of their ghettoization is lost on them.
Here:
A number of pro-white and alt-right users have created their own bloglike communities inside Disqus’s platform in order to share stories, comment, and coordinate influence trolling campaigns (which the trolls dub “raids”). One channel called Mickey’s Clubhouse — whose popular topics include Jews, Holohoax, Censorship, White Genocide, and Jew World Order — appears to be home to a number of users coordinating the infiltration of comment sections on Breitbart and other conservative publications. The goal, as evidenced by their comments, is to flood conservative-leaning publishers with pro-white and anti-Semitic content in order to win hearts and minds and indoctrinate others to their politics.
Jim Goad's just upset because readership at takimag has dropped off a cliff
Like Rush Limbaugh, he blames his base:
'I’d like to cheerfully suggest that you take that finger you’re always pointing at others and stick it up your ass. With the way you’re always talking about “degenerates,” you’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?'
Saturday, June 9, 2018
SECDEF Mattis explicitly states US troops in South Korea are not a bargaining chip in North Korea denuclearization talks
Quoted here:
However, Defense Secretary James Mattis said recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that any discussion about U.S. military presence in South Korea will be "separate and distinct" from the negotiations with Pyongyang.
"That issue will not come up in the discussions with [North Korea] and as you all recognize; those troops are there as a recognition of a security challenge," Mattis said.
Friday, June 8, 2018
Just 16% of junior US Navy officers completely competent at ship-handling
But I'll bet the rest know everything there is to know about equality between the sexes and sexual preference.
The story is here.
More US Navy shame, more proof China's our enemy: Chicoms successfully hack 614 gigabytes of highly sensitive data from contractor
WaPo reports here:
Chinese government hackers have compromised the computers of a Navy contractor, stealing massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare — including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020, according to American officials. ...
In September 2015, in a bid to avert economic sanctions, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to President Barack Obama that China would refrain from conducting commercial cyberespionage against the United States. Following the pact, China appeared to have curtailed much, although not all, of its hacking activity against U.S. firms, including by the People’s Liberation Army. Both China and the United States consider spying on military technology to fall outside the pact.
For failure to understand "not-in-labor-force" it's hard to beat Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King
The only segment of this pie chart which could reasonably be expected to be hiding missing labor is the not-working-aged-between-16-and-64.
Trouble is, 37.4 million of the 45.7 million in the group are in high school and college. That leaves 8.3 million from this group who could possibly work, many of whom are homemakers,the idle rich, people who have just given up finding a job, volunteers, etc. The government says only 5.2 million of them in May 2018 "want a job now".
The idea that we should think about putting old people and the disabled to work is crazy on its face, while there is something to be said for putting prisoners to work.
Why King isn't rebuking Republicans for wanting to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers ought to be the issue. So-called record job openings go unfilled because they can. The unemployed at 7.2 million plus the 5.2 million represent 12.4 million who would work, if only business paid enough.
Thursday, June 7, 2018
A DACA "fix" is a recipe for more illegal immigration
"Congress itself has been the culprit. ...
Congress continues to refuse to mandate the well-tested and widely-used E-Verify system. The outlaw employers in construction, manufacturing, hospitality and other services, of course, don't use it. Thus, parents worldwide, at this very moment, are enticed to illegally cross borders and overstay their visas while starting their children on the path to the long-term illegal-status life that Dreamers say is untenable. ...
As soon as amnestied illegal immigrants become U.S. citizens, current law allows them to petition for their parents to also obtain lifetime work permits and permanent residency. ...
But in the lifetime of a young Dreamer given an amnesty today, there would likely be time not only to obtain lifetime work permits for the original chain of extended family but for that Dreamer's grandparents (as parents of the Dreamer's parents), aunts and uncles (as siblings of the Dreamer's parents), and cousins (the children of the Dreamer's aunts and uncles).
The chains don't stop there. Every one of those adults could immediately bring their minor children and their spouse. Every spouse can start the same chains in his or her families.
All of them could receive lifetime work permits to compete for jobs with working-age Americans who don’t have a job, nearly one-in-four Americans, according to government data.
That’s the reality of DACA amnesty that Congress needs to face."
As Republicans and Trump prepare legislation granting a DACA amnesty, illegals are swarming the border with Mexico
These idiots are, well, idiots! They're just sending the same old message: If you come, we will let you stay.
Nay, Nay! They cannot stay! Illegal aliens must go away!
From the story, "Illegal immigration rises for third straight month despite Trump crackdown", here:
Total arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border topped 40,000 last month, according to the [DHS], which is used as a benchmark for understanding the level of illegal immigration occurring at the border. ... The crackdown has seemed to have little effect on the overall numbers of immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, as the arrest numbers have been steadily climbing since January, though some of the rise can be attributed to regular seasonal workers.
Jan Hatzius is hysterical: Unemployment rate set to move into overheating territory
Quoted here:
"We are still creating a lot more jobs than the long-term trend which we would put at 100,000 (each month), so when you are adding 200,000, that means the unemployment rate is set to move into overheating territory," Hatzius added.
The 62-year trend for total nonfarm (Jan 1939 - Jan 2001) is 138,143 jobs/month. Since 2001 through Jan 2018 we're off that trend by 46%, with a monthly rate of just 74,014 jobs added a month. Go back 18 years from May 2018 to incorporate present-day job-creation and the monthly rate goes up only to 76,597 jobs/month.
For workers, the last 17-18 years have absolutely SUCKED!
Nothing is overheating here except Jan Hatzius.
For him recovering the missing 13 million + jobs since 2001 would be a catastrophe . . . for the profits of Goldman Sachs.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
We have 16.1 million total unemployed in May 2018, and 16.8 million new legal immigrants since Bush 43 was elected
Legal immigration into the US has been out of control since Bush 41 succeeded Reagan
Kinder, gentler America, my ass.
More like multicultural hell.
Are you paying attention, Mr. Trump?
Brian Wesbury thinks job growth of 2.3 million to 2.4 million is great when we're really just treading water
Here, in "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs":
"[W]e’ve rarely seen a job market this strong. ... Nonfarm payrolls grew 223,000 in May and are up 2.4 million in the past year. Civilian employment, an alternative gauge of jobs that better measures small business start-ups, grew 293,000 in May and is up 2.3 million in the past year."
Where has Brian been? Living under a rock?
Between 1991 and 2000 annual average total nonfarm grew by 2.6 million a year for nine years straight.
How about between 1983 and 1989? Annual average total nonfarm grew then by almost 3 million a year for six years straight.
Payroll growth right now of 2.4 million a year is barely adding 100,000 net new jobs annually with population increasing at a rate of 2.3 million a year.
We have 16.1 million total unemployed as it is.
At this rate it'll take 161 years to put them all back to work.
What that means is the economy has effectively, and permanently, shrunk.
What that means is the economy has effectively, and permanently, shrunk.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
Rush is right: On the eve of Election 2016 the American Bar Association Journal was speculating whether Hillary could pardon herself
The assumption was she would win.
The BS headline about jobs the open-borders fanatics keep repeating: Job openings outnumber available workers
The unemployment level is currently 6.06 million. The part-time who want a full-time job currently number 4.87 million. The number not-in-the-labor-force-want-a-job-now is 5.18 million in May 2018. Add 'em all up and there's 16.11 million people right here in America for the 6.55 million job openings. The employers don't fill the jobs because they can, otherwise the situation wouldn't persist.
Not enough workers? Like hell there aren't.
Euphoric employment headlines are absurd, signify an economic top
So says macromon, here:
Yikes! Those euphoric headlines signal an economic top to us, they always do. Furthermore, they are completely absurd.
Correctamundo.
Not one month in to his ambassadorship to Germany, Richard Grenell is throwing his weight around like Ernst Röhm
All of Trump's problems begin with personnel, because he picks them.
From the story here:
Richard Grenell had taken up his diplomatic posting in Berlin on May 8, and immediately irked Germany when he tweeted on the same day that German companies should stop doing business with Iran as Trump quit the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.
He stoked further outrage over the weekend with reported comments to far-right website Breitbart of his ambition to "empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders".
Grenell also raised eyebrows with his plan to host Austria's arch-conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz -- who the US envoy describes as a "rock star", for lunch on June 13.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Sorry Jonathon Trugman, one month does not a full-time story make
Here he is, without data:
"Yes, folks, things really are looking better for full-time employment."
It's true that the percentage of the population working full-time in May 2018 is up, to 50.1%.
Unfortunately the average for the first five months of 2018 is only 49.3%, the same as for the whole of 2017. Despite the surge in May, the average indicates no progress over 2017, yet.
Full-time peaks every year in July or August, so we'll see what happens. But when all is said and done, I'm expecting the full year to average about 49.8%, up about a half point.
In any event, we're still down in the basement trying to climb back to 52.1%, the pre-Great Recession average. To do it, we'll need another 5.1 million jobs, right quick like. If using the averages, 7 million.
But there is no driver for such jobs in this country, because we threw out the old one: housing. The whole economy was based on housing in the post-war, and once the Baby Boom bankers and politicians got their grubby little hands on it under Clinton and Bush 43, they managed to screw that pooch right along with everything else they've touched. A bunch of spendthrifts and squanderers are we.
Laugh of the Day: Supremes rule 7-2 on behalf of Christian cake-baker, CNBC calls it "narrow"
I guess they don't want us to get too excited about the Supremes slapping down Colorado's anti-religious hostility, which violated the defendant's religious rights, according to the story.
Try again. I'm so excited, I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.
The gap in full-time employment has closed by 1.8 million in the last year, but we're still 5.1 million behind the pre-Great Recession average
Full-time employment before the Great Recession averaged 52.1% of the civilian noninstitutional population over a 12-year period through 2008.
In 2017, the average was still 49.3%, meaning relative to the period before the Great Recession, 6.9 million fewer full-time jobs existed than could have, assuming a real jobs recovery to pre-recession conditions.
In May 2018, the actual percentage has risen to 50.1%. The difference between that and full-time at 52.1% is still 5.1 million full-time jobs.
Things are looking better, but we still haven't recovered from the appalling conditions which ensued upon the Great Recession, not by a long shot.
We still live in a shrunken economy.
Sunday, June 3, 2018
China's pledge to maintain Hong Kong's freedoms and institutions is as worthless as Xi Zedong's promise not to militarize the South China Sea
Bloomberg reports the threat of a crackdown on June 4 vigil participants, here.
Xi Jinping broke his promise in the South China Sea, and will break the one to Hong Kong as well. It's just a matter of time.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018
Max temp 94, Mean Max temp 86
Min temp 40, Mean Min temp 32
Av temp 64.8, Mean Av temp 57.9
Precip 5.64, Mean precip 3.46
Snowfall 0, Mean snowfall .2
Heating Degree Days 105, Mean HDD 252
Cooling Degree Days 108, Mean CDD 39
The cooling season has started off like a rocket, 240% warmer than mean to date based on CDD. With one month left to go in the heating season, the heating season as a result has now been 3.1% warmer than mean to date based on HDD.
Lee Smith says the Democrat narrative that Mifsud was working for the Russians doesn't pass the smell test
Here:
In an official report, Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asserted that “in their approach to Papadopoulos, the Russians used common tradecraft and employed a cut-out,” a “Kremlin-linked…Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud.” ...
Conversely, if [the FBI] did know Mifsud and thought he was a Russian agent, why did the bureau continue to send agents to teach at Link, with which he had been affiliated for nearly a decade by the time of the Papadopoulos affair?
Both the bureau and the CIA were constant presences at the school; surely they’d run across Mifsud before.
Many others that the FBI worked with knew him — from high-level British intelligence officials to members of the Italian cabinet. If Mifsud was a Kremlin-linked cut-out, why didn’t the FBI warn the U.S.’s European partners, or even U.S. government agencies, about the man who was at the center of Russiagate? ...
So why did the FBI not arrest Mifsud? The State Department declined to comment when RCI emailed to ask why it did not prevent its officials from appearing at an event with a “Kremlin-linked” figure who was key to Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election.
If Mifsud was a Russian spy, it’s unclear why after Papadopoulos’ July 27, 2017 arrest that no U.S. intelligence officials warned their European partners that they were hosting a foreign agent on their territory. ...
When asked if any action was taken to extradite Mifsud or even interview him further in Europe, the office of the special counsel declined to comment on an ongoing investigation.
The office also declined to answer why Mifsud has not been charged. Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for their involvement in a pro-Russian social media campaign during the 2016 campaign cycle. But the “Kremlin-linked” individual that is alleged to have passed the Trump team information about Russia’s interference in the election is at liberty.
Andy McCarthy is thinking about Joseph Mifsud, too
But not about his connections to Hillary, or how he might have been acting in concert with her campaign to subvert Trump's.
Someone really ought to find out where Joseph Mifsud is hiding.
Here.
Joseph Mifsud, whose meeting with Papadopoulos was the pretext for the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump, admitted he was "With Her"
Here in November 2017:
Joseph Mifsud is the Maltese professor who, according to the rumors and anticipations of the Russiagate investigation, has approached George Papadopoulos, an aide of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, to help him to contact Russian authorities in the Kremlin, even for organizing a meeting between Trump and Putin. Mr. Mifsud is said to have given to the aide “dirty information” on Mrs. Clinton collected by the Russian. ...
“I am a member of the European Council on Foreign relations”, he adds, “and you know which is the only foundation I am member of? The Clinton Foundation. Between you and me, my thinking is left-leaning. But I predicted Trump’s victory as well as Brexit. Everyone of us wants peace. If the governments don’t talk each other, we citizens must keep talking”.
Saturday, June 2, 2018
China is so full of crap, says US freedom of navigation patrols constitute "militarization" of South China Sea
Here:
Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhou, of the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, suggested in a question to Mr. Mattis that the U.S. Navy’s maneuvers near the islands could also be called militarization.
Like the US, China is free to conduct freedom of navigation patrols same as the US. That isn't good enough for China. It lays claim, illegally, to the whole area, and seeks to prohibit freedom of navigation in the area to everyone else. Building islands out of reefs and occupying them illegally and then militarizing them is proof enough of that.
Military confrontation is inevitable.
You probably think the economy's great because, well, the stock market
It's a struggling swimmer, treading water.
Well whoop-de-do: Trump has "cut" federal employment by all of 0.6% since November 2016
It's statistically irrelevant, but Trump's cheering section is sounding it nonetheless.
Meanwhile the big-talkin' man had promised to cut the federal workforce by 20%.
Only 558,900 more federal workers to go there fella.
Like that'll happen, either.
Trump knows his own unemployment rate is fake, but touts it anyway. Sad.
Not-in-labor-force hit a new all-time high in May of almost 96 million.
President Trump used to think 223,000 jobs a month wasn't nearly good enough
Actually, to close the employment gap between today and pre-Great Recession America, we'd need 370,000 jobs a month for the next 50 months straight, four years.
Like that's going to happen.
Friday, June 1, 2018
If we had employment at the pre-recession percentage of population, we'd have 7.3 million more working in May 2018 than we do have
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| 162.7 million employed at 63.2% instead of the 155.4 million actual at 60.4% in May 2018 |
Like unemployment generally, black unemployment is so low because near record numbers of them aren't in the labor force
And presto! Down comes the unemployment rate when you stop counting them.
It's a numbers racket for blacks no different than for everyone else.
"Not working but still eating" soars to new all-time high of 95.9 million in May 2018, but don't expect Rush Limbaugh to talk about it
Not with a Republican in the White House, no sir.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Mueller's worthless investigation is costing us millions, masking gargantuan increases for DOJ
"Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has cost more than $16 million during its first year, according to the Justice Department."
This is small beer compared with what's really going on.
Trump's budget estimate for the entire Dept. of Justice for fiscal 2017 came to just $18 billion, but has swelled to $30 billion for both fiscal years 2018 and 2019, one of the biggest increases for any department. 67%!
What the hell are they spending the money on?
Trump's budget estimate for the entire Dept. of Justice for fiscal 2017 came to just $18 billion, but has swelled to $30 billion for both fiscal years 2018 and 2019, one of the biggest increases for any department. 67%!
What the hell are they spending the money on?
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
ABC should put Roseanne on The View next
She could reprise Ted Danson and see how Whoopi likes it now.
Laugh of the Day: Hollywood Reporter closes Disqus comments on Roseanne tweet story without showing even one
"This discussion has been closed".
What discussion?! (in my best Roseanne voice)
Cowards. You know everyone's laughing at Roseanne. Well, everyone with a sense of humor anyway.
What discussion?! (in my best Roseanne voice)
Cowards. You know everyone's laughing at Roseanne. Well, everyone with a sense of humor anyway.
Story here.
With every new story about JFK we hate him all the more, and his enablers and worshippers
From the story here:
“If the world had any idea how much of his time was focused not on NATO or Algeria or Vietnam, but on a hot date from Madame Claude, the perception of history would have been dubious, to say the least,” Stadiem writes.
Italy, the hysteria du jour
The Italian bond market, from the perspective of yields over the last ten years, is just shrugging. Yield on the short end is still negative:
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| 6-month |
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| 1-year |
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| 10-year |
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| 30-year |
Monday, May 28, 2018
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