Moonage Political Webdream

Penn State University was checking into the ethics of Michael Mann after it was revealed his hockey stick theory was most likely contrived.  They announced their investigation.  Obama gave Mann $541,000 in stimulus money to do what he’s always done, no questions asked.  Penn State dropped their investigation citing lack of evidence.

Yesterday the headline was jobless claims much higher than expected at 480,000.  That helped lead to a sell-off on the markets, pushing Dow below 10,000, again.  So, imagine everyone’s surprise when we get today’s headline:

Jobless Rate Falls Unexpectedly to 9.7 Percent in January

Now, that means more people are filing claims, but fewer are collecting benefits.  Of course, Christina Romer at The White House was quick to point out this is the beginning of the recovery with bumps ahead.

It tends to lead me to believe some people have a lot less discretionary spending than they had last month.  And, that wasn’t much in the first place.

I’m going to bet the business environment is thinking more like I am.  The Dow Jones is tanking again.

But unemployment claims went up, again.  They were expected to drop to 460,000.  But, they came in at a revised 480,000.  That’s about 4% more than expected.

Obama, sensing there might be some bad news, cheerfully told people to not watch the “echo chamber”.  That’s cable news to most of us.

Then, the House Democrats passed a $1,900,000,000,000 debt increase.

Then, the Dow Jones tanked.  The psychological up of November 5, 2009 is gone, as right at 10k again.  The initial report was that was based on European debt.  I’m sure the US debt and job outlook didn’t help that much.

However, I don’t think too many people ignored the echo chamber.

I am expecting Obama to go on national television tonight to give a speech to both chambers of the House to blame it all on “a previous administration” and announce his recovery plan has saved another 6.3 million jobs and we should be very happy since it obviously could have been much worse.

And, I’m going to toss in the added factor of Obama being more than willing to piss off our largest borrower by meeting with the Dalai Lama.

That’s just one day.  Obama’s got about 1000 left for sure.

One thing everyone has to give President Obaam, he sure knows how to keep people guessing.

In the past, Obama has made it a sort of semi-habit to bow to some foreign heads of state.  Most usually, it’s to a head of state that bowing down to means absolutely nothing to.  Like, the Queen of England.  No other heads of state bows to her.  Obama does.  Go figure.  Last week Obama took it to a new level, bowing to the mayor of Tampa, Florida.  Now, at first I really didn’t care too much about the story.  It’s not like Obama bowing inappropriately is new or anything.

But, Ms. Iorio was on Fox this morning to discuss the bow.  The conversation went something like this.  I have to paraphrase because the script’s not online yet:

• Fox: Ms Iorio, why did Obama bow to you?
• Iorio: Because he’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: Yeah, but don’t you think that’s kind of strange?
• Iorio: He’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: Yeah, but bowing to Mayors is kind of odd dontcha think?
• Iorio: He’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: I mean, that’s a weird looking picture.
• Iorio: Yes it is, he’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: Did you say something nice to Obama or something?
• Iorio: He’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: Would he bow to me?
• Iorio: He’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: Now we’ll look at the mass death and famine in Haiti.
• Iorio: He’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.
• Fox: OK, Pam, we’re off-air now.
• Iorio: He’s very nice.  You should meet him sometime.

Now, I can see clearly what the problem here in this picture is.  Fox ain’t so smart.  Look carefully again at Ms. Iorio.

Done?

Got it?  She LOOKS Asian in this picture don’t she?  Had to be Buddhist.  But, she’s actually Italian.  So, I’m gonna guess she’s not Budhhist.  Once again, just a matter of Obama not getting proper background info.

But, really, the absurdity of all this is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, on a US military base, feels obligated to show subservience to the mayor of a US city.  At that point the miliitary guy standing right next to Obama should have arrested him for treason.   I’m not subservient to Tampa.  Great town, love it, used to have the best strip joints in the US.  But, they do their thing, I do mine.  I don’t answer to Pam Iorio or Tampa.  It’s just that simple.

The additional absurdity of it all is Obama was in Tampa to announce funding of researching building a train while simultaneously cutting NASA’s balls.  Ms. Iorio was thrilled he’s spending $8 billion researching what we already know.  She apparently wasn’t too concerned about her constituents who will lose their jobs due to NASA’s cuts.

So goes the year.

And January didn’t bode too well.  But, I wonder how accurate that actually is?  Here’s how the last ten years stacked up:

That tallies up to four years where if January declined the year declined, three years if January rose the year rose, and three years where January did not reflect the year.  The most noticeable being 2001 of course.  That comes out at about 70% accuracy.  Not too shabby as far as forecasting goes.

This is in reply to some articles I’ve been reading that basically predict another horrid year for the markets, Brian Dolan being today’s.  And given Obama’s very overt anti-business philosphy and agenda, I can’t argue with Brian even though he’s not citing the same thing.  I’m still in a buying mode, so that’s fine with me.  However, having a job makes buying modes a lot more enjoyable.

Barack Obama, when campaigning, promised he’d try international terrorists in civilian courts.  Holding up to that promise, he decided it should be downtown New York City.  You know, that place with something like 10,000,000 people living within the federal courthouse.  To be blunt, that’s just stupid.  It was the fact a terrorist was going to be tried in New York City in 1993 that got the World Trade Center bombed.  All the security in the world didn’t stop what the terrorists assured they would do.  Since a bomb didn’t do the job, Osama Bin Laden finished the job eight years later.

Now, Obama wants a repeat.  That’s just stupid.  The mayor of New York City then handed the feds a $20,000,000 tab for securing the trial location.  Then Obama’s peeps started wavering a little.

I’ll take care of this whole problem.  We got a high security federal prison right here.  And, we got a new federal courthouse being built right here, right now.  Bring it here.

Now, for those not aware, I’m referring to McCreary County Kentucky.

They don’t have terrorists in McCreary County.  Terrorists are scared of places like McCreary County, Kentucky.  For good reason.  An Arab in McCreary County Kentucky is kinda obvious.  Now, we do have some Muslims here, but we know who they are.  Each and every single one of them.  That’s because small communities are tight.  We know who the Japanese are.  We know who the Chinese are.  The Mexicans come and go to some degree, but the ones that have stayed, we know who they are.  An Arab strolling down highway 27 with shackles on won’t make it very far.  Terrorists coming to blow up downtown Whitley City or Stearns won’t be hiding too well.  And, if we do figure out what they’re up to, there’s a mighty big forest real close to here.  And, if they do happen to blow up a truck load of fertilizer, they probably won’t do much damage.  And, probably would go unnoticed.  We like to blow things up a lot down here anyway.  Bottom line, we just don’t have any buildings that big.

For $20,000,000, we’ll make sure they’re tried, convicted, sentenced, and hung.  Guaranteed.  And, you won’t have to worry about a media spectacle.  I doubt much media would come.  By the time they found the place, the trial would be over.

What say you, Barack?  Deal?  You’re not going to close Gitmo any time in your presidency at the rate you’re going now just fussing over where to house them until we can convict them now are you?  Bring it here.  I double-dog dare ya.  I guarantee you’re not going to get a better offer than this one.

This one was probably first, just took a while to get his word out:

According to Bin Laden, because the US didn’t sign the Kyoto Agreement, the only way we can save the planet is to destroy the US.  Novel concept.

Additionally, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been instructed to quit reaching for the stars and spend more efforts studying climate change.

And of course, Danny Glover blamed Haiti on the failed COP15 talks.

Which one do you suppose is nuttier?

Yesterday on Fox, Senator Ben Nelson of Florida said there would be some incredible news today.  And, at first glance, so long as it’s a very quick one, he’s right.  However, anyone who thinks will recognize that it’s a shallow victory.

The main problem:

You’ve got a lag between borrowing and spending.  That’s a given.  However, in the past, disregarding a couple of very unusual circumstances, the borrowing was fairly consistent with growth.  You’d see the borrowing spike and ebb in an effort to keep GDP growing at a steady pace.  Starting in 2008 the wheels fell completely off that tradition.  Before anyone gets loony on me, that was a Nancy Pelosi budget, not Bush.  Sure, he signed it.  But it was either that or shut down the government with a declining economy.  Not smart.

So, you wind up with a situation where debt is now reaching GDP levels.  That hasn’t happened in a long time.  Given the fact nothing serious has happened to the country, like a world war, this bothers me.

In about a year and a half, we’ve gone from debt being about 65% of GDP, to 85%.

What that means so far is Obama’s return on investment is not panning out too well.

What it bodes for the near future bothers me too.  The sudden jump in GDP is based solely on a percentage of borrowed money.  However, a jump is a jump.  Is it inflation?

The CPI says no.  Is the economy heating up?  Unemployment says no.

The two factors most attributed to the GDP growing is factories paring inventory and increased government spending.  Neither reason is good in the long.  For that matter, it’s not really good for the short run.  I don’t think Ben Nelson needs to use such dramatic adjectives when describing what’s happening right now.  If the private sector heats up, then you’ve got something good going on.  However, that’s still not happening yet.

So I’m reading and deciphering the news that the economy grew at 5.7% last quarter and what that actually means in regards to how much money Obama spent to get that result.  But, I read this:

In the forth quarter, consumer spending contributed 1.44 percentage points to GDP.

Call me picky, but when reading an article numbers, it sure would make me feel better if they knew how to spell those numbers.  I mean, exactly which elementary grade did we learn how to spell “four”?

This weekend there was a rally in Washington, DC.  It was a pro-life rally.  There was also a counter-protest of abortion supporters.  CNN reported:

According to Rick Sanchez, both sides were represented. He couldn’t really tell which side was best represented. He was standing in a crowd of about 300,000 pro-lifers and a couple of dozen pro-abortion supporters. He then added:

“As far as we can tell, following this protest on this day, the bulk of the protesters that we have seen here – that doesn’t mean there aren’t others, because we haven’t gone out and counted them individually – seem to be anti-abortion activists. We’ve seen more pro-life signs than we have the others.”

The “bulk” was 99.99%. I’m not advocating one side or the other. What I am advocating is for media to get it right. CNN just can’t help themselves. They need to. Most of the polarization in this country is illustrated by CNN’s inability to report anything positive on a political position they can’t support. They can’t have two sides to any issue. That inability to accept what they don’t like is the problem in this country right now. This was a pro-life rally. Anyone would expect a huge majority supporting a cause to be at their own rally. Usually there will be a contingent counter-protesting. That’s the norm. This rally fit the norm. Rich Sanchez can’t even accept what is the norm. Pathetic.

HT: CMCSand