Bits Bucket for February 6, 2015
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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What’s the over/under on the amount of times we’re going to see the term “shrink the size of government to where you can drown it in the bathtub” in today’s Bits Bucket? 20?
Sorry man, was just trying to make a point about alleged conservatives and their hypocrisy when it comes to American foreign policy
And now back to your regularly scheduled Drudge Report links
P.S. so far the “war on terror” has cost over $1.6 trillion dollars
And speaking of how taxpayer dollars are spent
http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/02/another-u-s-backed-scheme-to-defeat-netanyahu-exposed/
The World Net Daily website is really cool, they have books there for sale titled:
“Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation”
“The Islamic Anti Christ”
and my favorite
“When a Jew Rules the World: What the Bible Says About Israel in the Plan of God”
Forward
Washington Post has a link titled “Obama warns of those who use religion to wage war”
I didn’t click the link
Instead I clicked on some World Net Daily links and I voted for the candidate that Sheldon Adelson paid for
And then I got some “boots on the ground”
Who doesn’t love boots on the ground?
Sigh, forward
Comment by rj chicago
2015-02-05 14:46:57
Because Barry O - ahole knows everything and is omnipotent I will raise you a mohammed for your Jesus!!1 This never ends well - religious wars never - hear it - NEVER end.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150205/us–obama-prayer_breakfast-f3b989dcc5.html
Thanks! I have to keep posting about the severe budget to my bloodthirsty Christian armchair warrior conservative friends. They stay silent when I bring it up.
That is a good sign, IMO, that they have no argument against the insane cost of being world cop. Being the world’s policeman is really the invention of progressives. Wilson kept trying to push demobcracy on the world. Progressives love “democracy.” Democracy is a much bigger scam than Republic form of government because they use it to show the citizens “consent” to the rulers.
Conservatives are too shallow to realize this. They are played for fools by progressives.
“my bloodthirsty Christian armchair warrior conservative friends”
+1000
That’s exactly who that stupid “shrinking the size of government” Grover Norquist quote is directed at
$80 billion a year on food stamps and Scott Walker (who is calling for boots on the ground) says that the government safety net has become a “hammock”
But $1.6 trillion dollar wars? No problem!
That’s interesting. The other day you told me to Google the word democide. The first sentence on the Wikipedia was the following:
Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as “the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder
It turned out that Professor Rummel was big fan of democracy. This is from his Wikipedia page:
He concluded that democracy is the form of government least likely to kill its citizens and that democracies do not wage war against each other;[3] that is the Democratic peace theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Rummel
I guess he forgets that Hitler was voted via Democracy.
The Democracy that elected Hitler consented to Hitler.
Was that democracy or a republican form of government?
Hoarder -
Correct and go and look up the definition of ‘democracy’ as derived from the Latin and get back to us. The word democracy is what we live with today in this nation - not how it was originally founded or intended to be.
I agree with you on the difference between ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ if I read behind your comment.
We as a nation were founded on a Constitutional republican form of government - not a democracy for a very good reason. Every time I hear anyone use ‘democracy’ to describe or substitute ‘republic’ my head explodes - This just shows the inanity of anyone who uses the word democracy to describe the founders intent only to demonstrate how uninformed they really are about the foundation on which our republic was founded.
RJ, you may be mistaken about those definitions. If you go to http://www.dictionary.com and enter democracy, the first definition listed is this:
government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system
and the when you enter the word republic, you get this:
a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
So according to these definitions, a republic is a type of democracy.
rj,
Yeah. And I certainly notice the only average people these days marveling about “democracy” seem to be progressives. Things are about the same as 100 years ago I guess. But I’m sure neo conservatives reach for the term in emergency to say they have consent to be militaristic.
I heard the term “representational democracy” - something like that, to define the American way of government.
It’s a mixture of “republic” and “democracy,” albeit less “republic” these days than when women could not vote, when blacks could not vote, and the voting age was 21 and above.
Comment by MightyMike
2015-02-06 13:06:35
Was that democracy or a republican form of government?
MightyMike - that’s actually a really interesting question. I think you can argue both because it was the representatives in the German Parliment(Reichstag? Not sure what the governing body was referred to after the fire) that ultimately granted then Chancellor Hitler dictatorial powers via the Enabling Act of 1933, with the Catholic Center Party carrying the swing vote. Thanks a pantload for that, btw.
Up until that time the representative were elected democratically making their form of government at that point a democratic republic.
Same form of government the USA has, incidentally.
Let’s just hope our congresscritters don’t get the idea to grant/allow dictatorial powers(executive orders?) for some Hollywood actor, or former head of the CIA, or his kid, or…..oh wait
Up until that time the representative were elected democratically making their form of government at that point a democratic republic.
Same form of government the USA has, incidentally.
That was the point I was making by citing definitions of the two words. When people say, as RJ did, that the founding fathers wanted a republic, not a democracy, the implication is that they’re two separate things, which is not the case. Unless, of course, he’s referring to the fact that the vote was largely limited to white male landowners.
So the difference between a democracy and a republic is that a republic has slaves, doesn’t allow women to vote, and sends men to fight in wars while saying they’re too young to vote? Sounds like republics are pretty lame.
Semantic debate. Democracies can have slaves too - just ask the Greeks.
The difference is mainly semantic. If you call something a republic it implies a small group making decisions on behalf of the whole, Democracy in its purest form is “mob rule” where everything is voted on.
In the first one, if the small group is democratically elected you basically get the clusterf*ck we have now.
The second one gives you President Kanye, Vice President Kartrashian, and secretary of State Bruce Jenner.
You’ll have to decide which one is better, but I recommend watching the movie “Idiocracy” before you do.
Mighty Mike, that is the point I was hoping to make implicitly, that we have the same form of government as that which brought Hitler to power. Add to that bloodthirsty conservative Christians and they are begging to be ruled by dictatorship.
Semantic debate. I’ve heard that technically we are a democratic republic.
A democracy can have slavery - ask the ancient Greeks. It just means “mob rule” in Greek.
A democratic republic basically is a small elected group making decisions for everyone else. That gives us the cluster we currently have as it lends itself to corruption or even requires it to function as some have suggested.
Under the alternative - pure democracy - we would have President Kanye, Vice president Kardashian, and Secretary of state Bruce Jenner.
Which is better? Who knows. See “Idiocracy” for some insight.
Stupid people shouldn’t vote. Neither should those dependent on government benefits.
Then today must be the alleged liberals’ turn to have their hypocrisy pointed out?
New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC = Obama
And now back to your regularly scheduled Drudge Report links
Such a shame that your walk score sucks so bad….
Hours to go 30 miles in order to recreate in the mountains. Way to add to the brown cloud, buddy.
So what is it? Walk score is admirable when enables you to be a condescending, elitist jerk, but suddenly it isn’t admirable once you want to go on a ski trip and you’re inconvenienced?
Next time, grow a pair and walk the 30 miles.
If you see something, say something. Ads still in running.
‘If you see something, say something’
And if it’s Brian Williams?
It will be seen, said, then quickly ignored because he’s on the right team.
Silly me, I thought that “Republicans and Democrats were all the same Republicrat duopoly” etc. At least HBB tells me this every day. So wouldn’t Brian Williams just be on “the” team and not on a particular side? Or do you separate the two sides only when it’s convenient?
brian williams was framed for his conservative views and being a nascar dad.
They are all the same when it comes to government, in the pockets of the rich. When it comes to reporting on their misdeeds? Not the same at all.
They are two sides of the same coin but they have some bitter and often brutal intramural fighting over which side of the coin is heads, and which is tails.
no problem.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
I think the Banking clan analogy is the best one I’ve seen here yet.
The Federal Reserve
Counterfeiting OperationBank was ostensibly given to private control as a way to keep it separate from the influence of politics.Unfortunately this road paved with good intentions led us to the point where this separation paradoxically ensures that the people have near zero input to that most critical piece of governance - monetary policy - while at the same time the vast amounts of fresh fiat money winds up in hands that (thanks to Citizens United and other institutionalized corruption) then use it to effectively purchase influence/control over the government.
I suppose since central bank shareholders are technically people one could argue that we do in fact have “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but somehow I don’t think that’s what they meant.
Ben Jones, there was a 1996 policy paper by the Project for the New American Century that said a “Pearl Harbor event” was needed to pass a law like the PATRIOT Act
“… a ‘Pearl Harbor event’”
Ah, yes. What a wonderful, absolutely wonderful, day that was.
“If you see something, say something. Ads still in running.”
Those same ads were in Pravda in the 1970s, but in Russian, not English.
From The Hill dot com:
Top Israeli official suggests Boehner misled Netanyahu
Senator says Gitmo detainees can ‘rot in hell’
Top Black Dems to skip Netanyahu speech
GOP rep: White House hypocritical over Netanyahu ‘protocol’
Obama: ‘No god condones terror’
Are you hanging on for dear life, financially speaking?
The question from now on and for the next decade will be this:
WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY GO?
http://goo.gl/s2FNU6
How can anyone have any confidence in the value of an asset that is levitated by a hype and a printing press?
I look at some of these stocks out there and I feel if I were to buy them they would eventually collapse to zero cause there is no value there.
The incredible shrinking middle-income household
Published: Feb 6, 2015 6:03 a.m. ET
By Quentin Fottrell
Personal finance reporter
Middle America is holding on for dear life.
The share of Americans who are part of middle-income households has plunged to 51% in 2013 from 61% in 1970, according to new research by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. And from 1990 to 2013, the share of adult Caucasians and Asians living in middle-income households decreased the most of any ethnic group, from 58% to 53% (for Caucasians) and from 56% to 50% (for Asians). The decline was less pronounced among Hispanics (from 48% to 47%) and African-Americans (from 47% to 45%).
Over the same period, the share of the country that qualifies as ‘lower-income’ has also grown: they make up 29% of all households in 2013, after comprising 25% of all households in 1970. The share of upper income households, on the other hand, rose from 14% in 1970 to 20% in 2013. (To fall in those categories in 2013, household incomes had to be: $166,623 a year for upper income, $71,014 a year for middle income, and $23,659 a year for lower income.)
About one-in-four white and Asian adults are upper income versus just one-in-10 Hispanic and black adults, and there was “no meaningful change in these gaps in the past two decades,” Pew found. What’s more, the median incomes of all households fell by 7% during the “lost decade” of 2000 to 2013. In the last three years (between 2010 and 2013), however, the share of middle-income families has remained steady. “While the muddled recovery has yet to bolster the middle, this flat trend might actually be good news because, for now, it stems a decades-long slide,” it concluded.
Not everyone sees this as a reason for celebration. “Marching in place after the recession is a bit like saying, ‘We survived.’ But who has thrived?” says Mark Hamrick, Washington, D.C. bureau chief at personal finance website Bankrate.com. “The problem is that the middle class hasn’t made much headway over the past decade or so.” High-earning Americans have fared better than Middle America, he says. “Ultimately this is an economic problem that presents itself thoroughly across our society. It helps explain why the interests of the middle class have not been well attended to.”
“Car sales are strongest at the high end and low end of the price spectrum,” Hamrick says. Similarly, “luxury home and condo sales flourish, but the broadest cross-section of the housing market is weak.” For autos, transaction prices reached a record high in 2014, averaging $32,386 per vehicle, up from $27,561 a decade ago, according to a recent report (pdf) by Edmunds.com. It cited disproportionate spending at the higher and lower end of the market, leaving very few consumers paying the so-called “average price.” And, for the first time, builders sold more homes above $400,000 than below $200,000 in 2013.
Middle income families aren’t the same as middle class, and it changes based on family size (dollars go farther in smaller families). Middle income families, according to Pew’s definition, earn as much as twice the median income or as little as two-thirds the median. This gives a constantly moving range of $40,667 to $122,000 in annual salary for middle-income households of three in 2013, but this has varied over the years. While middle income households in 2013 earned virtually the same as they did in 2010, they made more in 2000 (between $43,691 and $131,072) and less in 1990 (between $38,887 and $116,660).
…
how many years did it take for radio shack execs to bleed off the equity in the company and leave shareholders with a big goose egg?
Ditto SHLD?
Our Radio Shack store has recently gone the way of T-Rex. I guess Sears still has a pulse, but one has to wonder when the ventilator will be removed.
exactly dude
my point is we bloggers can sit here and see the companies are running on fumes by burning up cash and selling assets to make up for declining sales.
Instead of liquidating and returning money to shareholders they keep the doors open as long as possible so the equity goes into the pockets of executives.
You know it is happening. JCP comes to mind also.
I always thought than when the execs were done milking mervyns for all the equity they started over by opening up KOHLS. Pretty much the same store with new marketing.
Caveat emptor!
Our Walmart super store has been slowly squeezing the economic air from its nearby competitors as the areas consumers cast their dollar votes.
I guess Sears still has a pulse, but one has to wonder when the ventilator will be removed ??
The ventilator for Sears is their real estate holdings…They own much of the property that their stores are on unlike the other big retailers…
I never got the fascination with wallymart, unless its the only place big enough for super obese people to ride their scooters.
I doubt i spent $1000 in my lifetime at wally…..mostly go there and sears for dickies industrial work type support crew socks in black, almost everywhere else has only white…
“The ventilator for Sears is their real estate holdings…They own much of the property that their stores are on unlike the other big retailers…”
A friend sent a long and detailed piece about this. I haven’t read it, but I suspect the real estate falls largely into two broad camps:
1. Since Sears has been around for so long, some of their stores are going to be in great locations, where land has appreciated over the decades, and they’ll be sell at really high prices to someone to redevelop the site to higher density, or re-lease the building. These stores will sell for eye-popping prices. I think one just sold in Cupertino for a very high number.
2. Since big boxes are VERY out of vogue, many of the Sears stores may be so outdated they will be traded for very low number.
Overall, I bet that if Sears is an interesting play because of their real estate, it’s because they are carrying it at a very low number since they’ve owned it for so long.
Aren’t most Sears stores (other than automotive) attached to malls and therefore owned by the owner of the mall? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a free-standing Sears store.
Probably, but many free-standing Sears stores existing in most of the older U.S. cities. I’ve been in several, with maybe about 10 having the old wooden/linoleum stairwells, sometimes akin to Macys but without escalators.
That’s right. They don’t have much real estate regardless of their claims.
Sad but amusing article from November by Radio Shack employee:
A eulogy for RadioShack, the panicked and half-dead retail empire
attached to malls and therefore owned by the owner of the mall
??
Just because they are attached to a mall does not mean they do not own the land underneath it including large parts of the parking lot…The Cupertino site that rental watch opined about is owned by sears and there are two other owners of the mall…
ignore HA…He enjoys being an antagonist…Its what he is best at…
SHC Realty (the real estate business unit of Sears Holdings) is one of the largest corporate real estate organizations in the world, with a portfolio of retail locations that is second to none.
Dave,
Your word for word marketing cut and paste from http://www.shcrealty.com/ does little to distort the truth. The reality is Eddie Lampert has collaterized 90%+ to keep the dying dog Sears alive. There is nothing left of it.
Nice try though.
OMG. My first w-2 job ever was Radio Shack during my early college years. I got the job because I had a familiarity with electronics and computers. My experience was a little different because it was one of those independently owned franchises, but essentially the same.
I was eventually fired because I simply refused to put up with the kind of bullshit he describes, just on a slightly smaller scale and with a little more pettiness.
To me, RS had a place for people that wanted to do-it-yourself electronics. They could have saved themselves if they continued that path - cellphones and computers with modular parts that could be easily replaced. Cracked screens, battery that won’t hold a charge etc.
Instead they just tried to become another retailer like everyone else and thus were forced to compete on price, return convenience, etc and got their asses handed to them by the Walton Family, Target, and similar retailers that had a no-hassle policy on returns.
That shit about “give us your name, number, and address” for every purchase did them in for me. They backed off that in recent years but the damage was done.
I mentioned that to my then-manager and owner of the franchise and he said that on average each of the flyers they send out in the mail generate something like $1.79 in profit. I asked him how long he thought that would continue if we keep pissing off our customers and he copped out insisting it was good business.
I checked and that store is out of business now.
I was right Ken, you obsequious toad.
It seems like much terrible news and underperforming is being ignored in the earnings reports being released.
People are still chasing yield. They are in dangerous territory when people start caring about the underlying value of these companies.
They just hold their nose and buy in hopes of handing it off after a quick buck.
When will the music stop?
Once the momentum turns your paper wealth can be lost overnight.
RS would have been gone long ago if money wasn’t easy. It’s another example of how low interest rates and QE are deflationary. Too many companies sharing the same pie, keeping prices lower than they otherwise would be.
that is true too Borrow cheap to keep the doors open and pay off expiring debt.
It would be interesting to see RS’s stock buyback record since 2008.
If you owned this companies shares you deserved to lose your money.
I’m sure some retail investors bought it cause it was cheap.
It seems like these corporations have become big players in the stock market while running their business.
Has anyone ever tried to buy product for resale from a company like proctor and gamble? What are the requirements for them to sell to you?
Seems retail is being able to buy in high volume cheap and then marking it up 200% once you get it on the shelf.
Why are these transactions from company to retailer so secret? They always talk about pennies on the dollar markup.
“Marching in place after the recession is a bit like saying, ‘We survived.’ But who has thrived?” ??
Reminds me so much of the Volker recession of 1981….It crushed, and wiped out so many people….Good people with families…Hard working people with conservative business acumen…Many have never recovered even to this day…
They were all neck deep in debt then. Just like they are now.
Buckle up.
The middle class sheeple are voting for their own destruction.
People who are looking for a journalism “source” that is critical of Obama and the Democrat Party fall right in the laps of sh*tbags like William Kristol, Sheldon Adelson, and Lindsey Graham, often without knowing what they are reading….
Don’t people just want unbiased down the middle objective reporting of the facts as good as they can get it without spin and shading?
Critical of Obama when he needs to be criticized or McCain when he needs it, etc?
Some people want that. A lot of the people who watch Fox News, listen to Limbaugh, etc. do so because it makes them angry. That anger apparently feels great.
I imagine it’s the same reason why others listen to Michael Moore.
This is the conservative equivalent of “you got Grubered”
Best to stick with the Big Networks then…oh and MSNBC. And CNN for a more “moderate” approach.
Drudge Report and Breitbart report on domestic news that the liberal media won’t touch like black on white crime, but when it comes to American foreign policy, they never stray from the AIPAC plantation…
‘One could write an entire book about how Williams is nothing more than a government megaphone, along with his network, NBC. One chapter in that book would be the story of the Pentagon program of promoting “military analysts,” such as Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who appeared on NBC and other networks to give the government-approved “spin” to events in Iraq. Williams covered that one up as long as he could, and then issued a perfunctory denial.’
‘The man, in short, is a confirmed liar – but the confirmation took place years before being caught out in this latest prevarication.’
‘What’s more: Williams is not alone in his fraudulence. His “mainstream” media colleagues are largely complicit in the systematic deception that they call “reporting,” and are no more adversarial in their relationship with the political powers-that-be than the Soviet media was in relation to the Kremlin.’
GovCorp Media makes TASS and Pravda look amateur.
“Fraudulence”. I like it. It’s like flatulence, but from the mouth.
“Fake…but accurate”
– Dan Rather
Life is a lot easier now that I had my brain surgically removed and I only think the thoughts that Sheldon Adelson buys for me
media colleagues are largely complicit in the systematic deception that they call “reporting ??
I actually had a conversation with my tile guy yesterday related to this…He goes to his homeland portugal every year for 8 weeks..We were talking about the Ukraine mess…He told me that we, in America, see very little from the media on what is really happening…He said they don’t show it on TV…He said in Portugal, they show everything…Then went on to describe what everything meant…Not having ever been out of the USA myself, other than Porto Rico, I was just unaware of this…
People have short memories about the MSM…I remember when NBC rigged trucks to explode, then reported it as faulty vehicles. Must have been maybe 1990.
CraterRage® Photo Of The Day
http://goo.gl/i19ZEW
http://www.picpaste.com/IMG_20150206_064555_046-piemKEkw.jpg
Seven dollar grease tube.
Four dollar grease tube
And by the time I’m done with the toilet later this morning it’s gonna look like a psychedelic battlefield like Picasso’s “Guernica”
Forward
Too cubic. Maybe you want Pollock?
Eat a salad. Chipotle has them and they are delicious and healthy and pretty cheap. Don’t worry about sodium, that is being found out to be the same BS as the lowfat kick was.
See Mighty Mike post above about anger and Rush and Fox!!! Bwahahahahahah!!
The unspoken political mission of “progressives” is the extermination of white people
And now back to your regularly scheduled Drudge Report links
Ben Jones, I wanted to change my HBB username to “shrinking the size of government to where you can drown it in the bathtub” but there is a character limit on usernames?
Instead, I want to change it to “boots on the ground”
This will be a long-term change so don’t think I’m spamming your blog
Regards,
boots on the ground
talk about bathtubs and drowning:
Bobbi Kristina is on life support and these two idiot members of the Brown family decide to have a throwdown at their hotel.
How classy. What a bunch of idiots.
https://www.yahoo.com/music/s/bobbi-kristinas-family-gets-brawl-atlanta-hotel-050036842.html
Region V - City of Sh*tcago Mayor race update……
As Real J says - Racists gonna race…..
But Fioretti argued Emanuel’s boasts of not raising property taxes in the city ignored increases by the mayor-controlled school board and Park District. “He has raised property taxes,” Fioretti said.
And Garcia maintained Emanuel’s focus has not been on the city’s neighborhoods.
“I believe Chicago can come together if we have a strong downtown and neighborhoods that experience vibrancy and new opportunities,” he said.
The debate unfolded after Wilson earlier in the day delved into the issue of race, long a hallmark of Chicago politics.
Speaking to a primarily African-American audience, Wilson decried as “scandalous” black aldermen whom he said voted “100 percent” on Emanuel’s side on issues. He labeled them “sellouts.”
Then Wilson, who earlier said he always “speaks from the heart,” directed a comment at the small number of white people who attended the City Club of Chicago event, largely consisting of the media in the back of the room: “To the whiteys here, I want to let you know I ain’t prejudiced, alright?
“I’m going to call it like it is. Alright?” said Wilson, who came in fourth in a recent Tribune poll on the race.
After the debate, Wilson said he didn’t think he used the term, but if he did, it wasn’t “from the heart.”
“Maybe it’s the way I speak or something of that nature,” said Wilson, who has noted he grew up in rural Louisiana, has a seventh-grade education and has a drawl. “It could have been my pronunciation, and it certainly wasn’t meant to be that way.”
At the City Club event, Wilson and campaign aides repeatedly maintained his candidacy was not racially based.
we need to keep printing more money so stocks and homes go up and value and people have equity to buy other overpriced things like new cars.
The chinese can make our stuff as we inflate asset prices. Seems like a wonderful plan.
“This was the “Rubicon” moment: the instant at which Central Banks gave up pretending that their actions or policies were aimed at anything resembling public good or stability. It was now about forcing reality to match Central Bankers’ theories and forecasts. If reality didn’t react as intended, it wasn’t because the theories were misguided… it was because Central Bankers simply hadn’t left the paperweight on the “print” button long enough.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-05/marked-beginning-end-central-banking-system-we-know-it
The Huffington Post has an article titled “Democrats Aren’t Sure What They’re Going To Do About Bibi”
The Huffington Post also has an article titled “The Lone Wolf Terror Trap”
Salon dot com headline is titled “Fox News’ Blood-Lusty Low”
Salon dot come also has an article titled “Science doesn’t mean much when it comes to arguing with climate deniers”
The New York Times has an article titled “Critics Seize on Obama’s Remarks at Prayer Breakfast”
The New York Times also has an editorial titled “Global Warming Changes Everything”
And MSNBC’s top story right now praising King Obama is titled “Strong Work: The U.S. economy added 257,000 jobs in January”
There is a link on the Drudge Report website from some other internet website called the Gateway Pundit titled “Number of Full-Time Jobs as Percent of Population Is Lowest It’s Ever Been”
See also: title of MSNBC article posted above
That’s highly unlikely. That percent value was almost certainly lower 60 years ago when most married women didn’t work outside the home.
“There is a link on the Drudge Report website”
You didn’t read that part, now did you?
BTW top headline on Fox News website is “The War Against ISIS: Obama set to ask Congress for authorization”
“60 years ago”
70 years ago most married women did work outside the home.
That was the result of the ultimate federal stimulus program, financed by massive deficit spending.
From a Breitbart article:
“On Thursday, Glenn Beck said the Tea Party movement must adopt left-wing tactics and change its name.
“We’ve got to find new language,” Beck reportedly said, according to the Blaze. “On the left, they’re shape-shifters. You have to constantly shift with them.”
It has to be a sign of the end times that this guy is on cable TV now.
Speaking of end times, I picked up Glenn Beck’s novel “Agenda 21″ from the library but I haven’t started reading it yet
I read Michael Savage’s “The Coming Civil War” on a plane Christmas weekend and it was pretty good
Forward
glen beck news has become a little springer like.
Awhile back he had all these conspiracies theories going.
a little springer like ??
A little ??
Neo-cons like Glenn Beck are devoid of any core principles or convictions, so shape-shifting to gain votes comes naturally to them.
Oil could go to $40 or lower: Oil trader Hall
Kate Kelly
1 Hour AgoCNBC.com
In his most recent investor letter, oil trader Andrew Hall discusses why crude oil could spiral toward new low points of $40 or even less in the coming months amid a glut of supply and seasonally soft demand.
…
“Prices at current levels (or lower) are not sustainable for very long,” Hall, the chairman and chief executive of the Southport, Connecticut-based hedge fund Astenbeck Capital, wrote in the note to investors dated Feb. 2. “Oil companies are slashing capital expenditure to conserve cash and this will in due course moderate growth in the supply of oil and bring the market into balance.”
…
Gas prices went up dude to the dead cat bounce we are experiencing in the oil markets.
I notice the price of motor or hydraulic oil didnt go down at all.
Hydraulic oil is not as volatile as gasoline.
What I find odd is the near-absence of any discussion of how gas prices might be rising due to the annual maintenance of refineries, which often takes place from February through May.
But with the striking workforce, refineries have reduced current production. The plan, from the grapevine, is that they intend to run without the seasonal turnaround.
Exactly. The striking workforce may be the primary driver of the dead cat bounce we are now seeing.
But how are those strikes gonna work out for them in the face of collapsed oil demand?
Very timely with oil back above 50.
This is the sound of boots on the ground:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NEM34RQ1zDA
Top post of the day was calling you out on overposting of garbage. I asked nicely… then first post of the day calls you out on it… I think the next step might be to award you an ADan trophy… meaning Ben gets as fed up with your nonsense as the rest of us and you get the ban hammer….
If you can’t make your point about boots on the ground in a single post, it means you are spitting mouth diarrhea, and not positively contributing to the discussion.. Really.. I asked nicely.. I said please.. The other posters are confirming what I’m saying.. PLEASE deeply consider curtailing your excessive garbage posting of invective and memes
You’re enraged.
“an ADan trophy…”
Now that seems a bit harsh. Sort of like piling on when the guy apologized. And then repeating yourself. And then speaking for the rest of us. And then repeating yourself in a louder voice.
You could add a little humor, like begging “please God, make the voices stop” or something.
Math Guys often lack in the humor department. Though I have known exceptions.
The thing you can’t see are the ADan posts which were censored. I have a feeling that guy’s uncontrolled rage did in his posting privilege, but that is just a conjecture, as only Ben knows what drove the decision.
Then there was the time Brian Williams and I went hang gliding through Hurricane Katrina while taking small arms fire from the Tea Party.
—————————————————————————–
ADVOCATE: NBC anchor Brian Williams’ comments on dead bodies, Katrina drawing criticism
The AdvocateFebruary 5, 2015 Updated 16 hours ago
More comments from NBC News anchor Brian Williams are starting to draw negative attention, this time concerning his experiences during Hurricane Katrina.
After Williams found himself the story Thursday — his credibility seriously threatened because he falsely claimed that he had been in a helicopter hit by a grenade during the Iraq war — comments he made about Katrina in 2006 are now being questioned.
Video of a 2006 interview with Williams has surfaced, and in the video, Williams said he saw a man floating by face down from his French Quarter hotel. The comment is drawing attention because the French Quarter was largely spared from Katrina’s flooding as pointed out by multiple news outlets such as the New York Times.
“When you look out of your hotel room window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down … when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country … I beat that storm. I was there before it arrived. I rode it out with people who later died in the Superdome,” Williams said in the interview.
Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2015/02/05/6056294_advocate-nbc-anchor-brian-williams.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
Who under the age of 60 actually watches “news” on television?
“Who under the age of 60 actually watches “news” on television?”
You’re just jealous because you weren’t with me, Sheryl Crow, Sinbad and Hillary when we were shot at in Bosnia.
——————————————————————
“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
–Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.
——————————————————————–
Sharyl Attkisson: Brian Williams Not Alone; Hillary Clinton Lied About Being Shot At In Bosnia
By Chris Stigall
February 5, 2015 11:28 AM
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — In the wake of NBC Anchor Brian Williams apologizing for a story that he has told a number of times in which he falsely claims to have been in a helicopter that was shot at by a rocket-propelled grenade, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson shared a similar story about presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton with WPHT morning host Chris Stigall in November of 2014.
“I had come home from an overseas trip vacation and my husband says, ‘when you went to Bosnia 12 years ago with the First Lady, were you shot at?’ and I’m like ‘No. I think that I would know if we were shot at.”
The trip was one in which the two women were with the First Daughter, Sinbad, and among others Sheryl Crow, and was one that Hillary had called a “work trip” and Attkisson remembers as “a lovely thing.”
“I mean it was a hostile area and they told us there was a slight chance there could be hostilities, but if anybody had shot at us, I mean, it wasn’t any place where she had to be. We would have landed somewhere else if someone was shooting at us. We wouldn’t have landed among sniper fire and ran to a car.”
Attkisson still has the video from her story notes that compared what Clinton said happened vs. what she says actually happened.
philadelphia.cbslocal.com/…/ - 298k -
and I’m like ‘No. I think that I would know if we were shot at.”
She got fired by CBS because she talks like a 14 year-old girl.
“She got fired by CBS because she talks like a 14 year-old girl.”
“The 54-year-old reporter—who quit CBS in March after a 20-year career in the Washington bureau,”
Now The Senate Cares About Sharyl Attkisson
The former CBS correspondent’s lawyer says investigators looked at the wrong computer when concluding that she hadn’t, as she claims, been hacked.
Lloyd Grove
02.05.15
With the Inspector General’s summary officially in the record thanks to Sen. Whitehouse, it was suddenly a public document available to Washington reporters, who promptly proceeded to file stories unfavorable to Attkisson’s claims. “Watchdog: Attkisson wasn’t hacked, had ‘delete’ key stuck,” was a typical headline in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.
It’s difficult to know for certain how various members of the Beltway’s media-political complex found out about the Inspector General’s conclusions within minutes of Whitehouse’s action.
Perhaps they are just fabulously alert and primed to pounce on every nugget, no matter how small.
Or—here’s an alternative explanation—maybe a few enterprising staffers of the committee’s minority Democratic members reached out to select journalists and provided copies of the redacted summary along with some helpful framing, otherwise known as “spin.”
A few days after the initial media flurry, a piece on Monday in the left-leaning webzine Salon, written by a former staffer of the liberal press watchdog group Media Matters, carried the provocative title: “A right-wing hack undone: Sharyl Attkisson’s White House ‘hacking’ allegation takes a hit.”
Those pieces, and several others, gave short shrift to the Inspector General Office’s acknowledgement that CBS News refused to give government investigators any access to Attkisson’s workplace computer—the one CBS’s experts say was definitely hacked—or the related forensic reports.
A spokesperson for CBS News declined to comment on why the company refused to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigators.
But Attkisson’s Little Rock-based lawyer, Tab Turner, who is handling her lawsuits against the Feds, said the answer is obvious.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you don’t hand over your computer to the very people that you’re contending infected it to begin with,” Turner told The Daily Beast. He added, on the other hand, that his client will have access to both her erstwhile work computer and CBS’s forensic report.
As for why the Feds reached their decidedly unhelpful conclusions, Turner said: “It’s pretty simple. They didn’t look at the computer.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/…/02/05/now-the-senate-cares-about-sharyl-attkisson.html - 332k -
Comment by phony scandals
2015-02-06 10:53:34
Now The Senate Cares About Sharyl Attkisson
thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/05/now-the-senate-cares-about-sharyl-attkisson.html
Comment by phony scandals
2015-02-06 09:30:45
Sharyl Attkisson: Brian Williams Not Alone; Hillary Clinton Lied About Being Shot At In Bosnia
philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/02/05/sharyl-attkisson-brian-williams-not-alone-hillary-clinton-lied-about-being-shot-at-in-bosnia/
Who with an IQ over 60 actually believes the “news” they see on television?
Zombie foreclosed homes loom large across the nation
IRVINE
February 5, 2015 10:19pm
• One in four U.S. foreclosures are ‘zombies’ vacated by homeowners
• “They represent an increasing share of all foreclosures”
As of the end of January, 142,462 homes actively in the foreclosure process had been abandoned by the homeowners prior to the bank repossessing the property, representing 25 percent of all active foreclosures, according to a report from real estate information company RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine.
These are called “zombies” and like the movie version never seem to quite die off.
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=27707
Region V Zombie foreclosures…..
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-zombie-properties-0207-biz–20150206-story.html
How about a break from all this bearish doom-and-gloom on here? A little good news for a change?
Pretty Soon the U.S. Might Run Out of College-Educated Workers
The unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders is at a six-year low
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-06/pretty-soon-the-u-s-might-run-out-of-college-educated-workers
This Chart Just Screams Labor Market Liftoff
Kicking into high gear
“There’s a lot to like in today’s jobs report. The January gains were very strong. There were huge upward revisions to past months. Even wages beat expectations.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-06/this-chart-just-screams-labor-market-liftoff
I’m sure somebody will reply with the same old labor participation stuff…
Such a solid “recovery” that MarketWatch has an article titled “How to buy a home with almost no cash down”
How about a break from all this bearish doom-and-gloom on here?
NO
Hey boots, since you seem to enjoy highlighting Repub hypocrisy… the anti-immigration party wants to import more skilled foreign workers
“Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced S. 153 on Tuesday that would expand the number of H-1B guest worker visas for the tech industry …”
Just as college kids start to see some job prospects and higher wages, the Repubs want to insource cheap labor and sell our own American kids down the river. Thank you Sen. Hatch for your patriotism.
‘insource cheap labor and sell our own American kids down the river’
Well. Now who’s being a Negative Nellie?
LOL and … sigh… servitude to the Chamber of Commerce knows no party
Misread that one. Yeah you’re right.
Both parties want to bring in cheap immigrant labor. That’s because the corporate state requires wage slaves and mindless, docile serfs.
“Gloom and doom”? You’ve got your blinders on….
Falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels is positively optimistic and good for the economy.
Read and learn.
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” — President Barack Obama
http://www.wsj.com/articles/authorities-investigate-arson-and-looting-in-ferguson-unrest-1423177917
Washington Post - Islamic State guide for female jihadists says women can marry from age nine
I wasn’t sure how to react to this emotionally, but then I went and clicked on a bunch of Weekly Standard and World Net Daily links
And then I took my nine year old daughter boot shopping, because when she turns 17 and enlists, she’s gonna be wearing some boots on the ground to go liberate all those nine year old brides
The age of consent (for sex outside marriage) was 10 or so until the 19th century. You could get married younger than that. Your daughter could still get married at 12 in Massachusetts.
Good luck finding a bona fide member of the male species in Massachusetts.
Last post for a while today, because my dispensary opens at 10am and I have customers to take care of, but just commenting that my username has come full circle from 2011 in the wake of Scott Walker’s election as Wisconsin governor and 2brony’s posting about “goons”
And now this same Scott Walker wins some informal Drudge Report poll and gets all uppity thinking that he can become the 2016 Republican presidential nominee, and he starts talking about
“boots on the ground”
Farewell real journalists, and may we meet again in happier times.
———————————————————————-
By Michelle Malkin • February 4, 2015 07:32 PM
As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, NBC News anchor Brian Williams — a real journalist — finally admitted he has been lying about coming under RPG fire in Iraq in 2003. Fed-up troops called him out, but even after being forced to ‘fess up, he still clung to lies and “misremembrance.”
I am reminded of what this arrogant fabulist once said about us lowly bloggers in 2007 during a lecture at NYU’s journalism school:
“You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe,” said Williams. “All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.”
He added that it’s often difficult to judge the credibility of a blogger. “On the Internet, no one knows if you’ve been to Ramadi or you’ve just been to Brooklyn and have an opinion about Ramadi,” said Williams.
michellemalkin.com/…/ - 57k -
All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work…”
Funny has fast a list of credentials - padded or not - crumbles under the scrutiny of ethics and morality.
Credentials often amount to very little - and it’s high time people across the land wise up to that fact. Credentials don’t come close to proving someone has talent or smarts.
Or, more importantly, ethics and morals.
Credentials, years in the fabricating, moments in the loss.
Tom Brokaw wants Brian Williams fired
One longtime NBC employee who has worked with Williams on several occasions had a few dirty words to describe the celebrated anchor, calling him a “real pompous piece of s–t.”
“He’s an a–hole,” he fumed. “He’s not a journalist. He’s a reader.
http://pagesix.com/2015/02/05/tom-brokaw-wants-brian-williams-fired/
“He’s not a journalist. He’s a reader.”
Here’s the million dollar question. What does he read from when he’s doing the nightly news?
Whatever script the DNC and their corporate statist masters put into his hand.
Sour grapes. Brokaw is desperate to maintain relevancy. Give it up already. He is old and his ship has long since sailed.
As far Williams, who cares? He’s been irrelevant since the day he arrived on the scene.
Global Debt Nears $200 TRILLION
Governments, households in more debt than before Great Recession!
by Kit Daniels | Infowars.com | February 6, 2015
Total global debt is now a record $199 trillion, an increase of $57 trillion since the Great Recession, raising concerns a deep depression is coming.
Government, corporate and household debt have exploded at least 47 countries and “all major economies today have higher levels of borrowing relative to GDP than they did in 2007,” according to a report by McKinsey & Company.
“After the 2008 financial crisis and the longest and deepest global recession since World War II, it was widely expected that the world’s economies would deleverage. It has not happened,” the report stated. “Instead, debt continues to grow in nearly all countries, in both absolute terms and relative to GDP.”
The report house that 80% of all countries have higher household debt, government debt is up $25 trillion since the Great Recession and China’s debt has quadrupled in the past eight years.
“Unsustainable levels of household debt in the United States and a handful of other advanced economies were at the core of the 2008 financial crisis,” the report added. “Between 2000 and 2007, the ratio of household debt relative to income rose by one-third or more in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. This was accompanied by, and contributed to, rising housing prices.”
“When housing prices started to decline and the financial crisis occurred, the struggle to keep up with this debt led to a sharp contraction in consumption and a deep recession.”
And that’s not to mention the impending derivatives crisis.
A derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of an entity, such as an asset, index or an interest rate, so in other words, a derivative, unlike stocks and bonds, isn’t an investment in anything that actually exists.
To put it into perspective, imagine derivatives as bets on a horse race and Wall Street as a giant casino where all these bets are taking place.
And to really drive home the danger, here is a list of the top five banks in the U.S., comparing their total assets versus the exposure each bank holds in derivatives (Third Quarter 2014, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency):
Citibank
Total Assets: $1,377,620,000,000 ($1.4 trillion)
Exposure to Derivatives: $70,254,978,000,000 ($70.3 trillion)
JP Morgan Chase
Total Assets: $2,008,808,000,000 ($2 trillion)
Exposure to Derivatives: $65,307,835,000,000 ($65.3 trillion)
Goldman Sachs
Total Assets: $111,758,000,000 ($111.8 billion)
Exposure to Derivatives: $48,694,949,000,000 ($48.7 trillion)
Bank of America
Total Assets: $1,524,575,000,000 ($1.5 trillion)
Exposure to Derivatives: $37,505,160,000,000 ($37.5 trillion)
Wells Fargo
Total Assets: $1,482,815,000,000 ($1.5 trillion)
Exposure to Derivatives: $5,145,161,000,000 ($5.1 trillion)
Eventually, with this excessive amount of risk versus assets, these big banks will crash the market and the ensuring derivatives panic will completely destroy what’s left of the world economy.
“We are in worse shape economically than just before the ’08 financial crisis,” Peter Schiff, the investment broker who accurately predicted the 2008 collapse, said on the Alex Jones Show. “We’re in worse than we were in at the peak of the NASDAQ bubble in 2000.”
“We’re in worse than we were going into the great depression in the 1930s.”
“Governments, households in more debt than before Great Recession!”
Sounds deflationary!
Peter Schiff, the investment broker who accurately predicted the 2008 collapse
Uh, no. He was accurate about the housing market, but not much else. His clients had substantial losses. I attended an appearance of his here in Las Vegas in 2009 and plenty of people there were very angry. Others who were considering investing with him caught the drift and left. There was some shouting going on as I was leaving.
I recall a youtube by some guy who had lost everything, but still was still keeping the faith.
He was accurate about the housing market, but not much else.
he wasn’t right about the housing market for 2-3 years either. what else has he been wrong about (besides gold prices).
I attended an appearance of his here in Las Vegas in 2009 and plenty of people there were very angry. Others who were considering investing with him caught the drift and left.
people want result right away. went they got into his stocks matters greatly. in 2008 everyone lost money, including him. he admits it. but he can show you his documents gains in most other years. you were there in 2009, so naturally there were many angry people there.
jeez, let me try that last paragraph again..
—
people want results right away. when they got into his stocks matters greatly. in 2008 everyone lost money, including him. he admits it. but he can show you his documented gains in most other years. you were there in 2009, so naturally there were many angry people there.
Region V news:
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/the-3-most-powerful-lessons-learned-from-the-2011-tax-hikes/
breaking news from real journalists at cnn reporting u.s. hostage killed by isis
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/06/world/isis-jordan/index.html
got boots on the ground? lolz
CNN? News? Woof?
got boots?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/06/isis-claims-jordanian-airstrikes-killed-us-aid-worker/
just for macbeth
http://www.walkscore.com
what’s your walk score?
How much did your walk score cost?
Can you rent a walk score?
Can you do a cash out refi on a walk score?
Can you lose your walk score to foreclosure?
————————————————————————–
Americans Pay More for Walkability
October 19, 2013, 9am PDT
Anna Bergren Miller
Preliminary results from a new study suggest that Americans are willing to pay about $850 more per Walk Score point when purchasing a home.
Emily Washington and Eli Dourado, the researchers behind the project, used revealed preference theory to uncover the extent to which walkability can inform a homebuyer’s choices. Walkable homes come with a higher price tag, Washington writes, because they are in relatively scarce supply. It follows that developers avoid building walkable housing not for financial reasons, but because of certain external regulations.
Washington says that research indicating Americans prefer single-family homes because there are more of them is built upon a false set of assumptions. “[L]ooking at the housing choices that Americans make while ignoring both regulations that limit the potential choice set and without considering the prices consumers pay is misleading, like saying Americans prefer Fords to BMWs because there are more of them on the road,” she explains.
Full Story: The Value of Walkability
Published on Thursday, October 17, 2013 in Market Urbanism
So MacBeth is right about walk score being elitist, LOLZ
p.s. my carbon footprint kicks your carbon footprint’s ass
It’s Friday. Crank it up and rock out Potsy.
http://youtu.be/LMcDg2HwOnM
We are making THC infused chocolate hearts for Valentines Day
Why????????
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-brit-discovers-why-americans-are-so-fat-2015-02-04
Weekend Edition February 6-8, 2015
The Real Reason Washington Feels Threatened by Moscow
The Fallujah Option for East Ukraine
by MIKE WHITNEY
“I want to appeal to the Ukrainian people, to the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the grandparents. Stop sending your sons and brothers to this pointless, merciless slaughter. The interests of the Ukrainian government are not your interests. I beg of you: Come to your senses. You do not have to water Donbass fields with Ukrainian blood. It’s not worth it.”
— Alexander Zakharchenko, Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic
Washington needs a war in Ukraine to achieve its strategic objectives. This point cannot be overstated.
The US wants to push NATO to Russia’s western border. It wants a land-bridge to Asia to spread US military bases across the continent. It wants to control the pipeline corridors from Russia to Europe to monitor Moscow’s revenues and to ensure that gas continues to be denominated in dollars. And it wants a weaker, unstable Russia that is more prone to regime change, fragmentation and, ultimately, foreign control. These objectives cannot be achieved peacefully, indeed, if the fighting stopped tomorrow, the sanctions would be lifted shortly after, and the Russian economy would begin to recover. How would that benefit Washington?
It wouldn’t. It would undermine Washington’s broader plan to integrate China and Russia into the prevailing economic system, the dollar system. Powerbrokers in the US realize that the present system must either expand or collapse. Either China and Russia are brought to heel and persuaded to accept a subordinate role in the US-led global order or Washington’s tenure as global hegemon will come to an end.
This is why hostilities in East Ukraine have escalated and will continue to escalate. This is why the U.S. Congress approved a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and lethal aid for Ukraine’s military. This is why Washington has sent military trainers to Ukraine and is preparing to provide $3 billion in “anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees, and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.” All of Washington’s actions are designed with one purpose in mind, to intensify the fighting and escalate the conflict. The heavy losses sustained by Ukraine’s inexperienced army and the terrible suffering of the civilians in Lugansk and Donetsk are of no interest to US war-planners. Their job is to make sure that peace is avoided at all cost because peace would derail US plans to pivot to Asia and remain the world’s only superpower. Here’s an except from an article in the WSWS:
“The ultimate aim of the US and its allies is to reduce Russia to an impoverished and semi-colonial status. Such a strategy, historically associated with Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, is again being openly promoted.
In a speech last year at the Wilson Center, Brzezinski called on Washington to provide Kiev with “weapons designed particularly to permit the Ukrainians to engage in effective urban warfare of resistance.” In line with the policies now recommended in the report by the Brookings Institution and other think tanks calling for US arms to the Kiev regime, Brzezinski called for providing “anti-tank weapons…weapons capable for use in urban short-range fighting.”
While the strategy outlined by Brzezinski is politically criminal—trapping Russia in an ethnic urban war in Ukraine that would threaten the deaths of millions, if not billions of people—it is fully aligned with the policies he has promoted against Russia for decades.” (“The US arming of Ukraine and the danger of World War III“, World Socialist Web Site)
Non-lethal military aid will inevitably lead to lethal military aid, sophisticated weaponry, no-fly zones, covert assistance, foreign contractors, Special ops, and boots on the ground. We’ve seen it all before. There is no popular opposition to the war in the US, no thriving antiwar movement that can shut down cities, order a general strike or disrupt the status quo. So there’s no way to stop the persistent drive to war. The media and the political class have given Obama carte blanche, the authority to prosecute the conflict as he sees fit. That increases the probability of a broader war by this summer following the spring thaw.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/06/the-fallujah-option-for-east-ukraine/ - 60k -
“At the same time, the phony 5.7% domestic unemployment rate reported this morning has nothing to do with full employment. The relevant number in the report is that there are still 101 million working age Americans who do not have jobs, and only 45 million of them are on OASI retirement benefits. And that says nothing about the tens of millions of job holders who are employed far less than a full 40 hour work week.”
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/a-very-pernicious-partnership-keynesian-money-printers-and-wall-street-gamblers/
B…b…but the talking heads on CNBC assured me oil prices were “stabilizing” after “bottoming out.” Does this mean…moar deflation and more pain for those overleveraged shale oil plays? Oh heavens, no!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-06/saudis-deepen-asia-oil-discount-to-a-a-record-low
phony scandals