Month: February 2010

Economics Update

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In the “recovery, my tuchas” division, we have the latest ADP estimate as to job losses, which shows that yet again, private sector employment fell, though the panglossian financial “journalists”, are now expecting employment to grow this month.

I don’t think so, seeing as how this is when the so-called birth/death adjustment gets rejiggered for the new year (more on this later).

Along with this, the Institute for Supply Management’s index of nonmanufacturing activity continues to remain in the doldrums, which is better than it was early last year, but still does not point to employment increases.

In the nexus of real estate and banking, mortgage applications were up sharply this week, but this was refinance activity, not home purchases.

In the old favorites of currency and energy, the dollar rose on the ADP report, as well as concerns about the potential Greek meltdown, while oil fell slightly on reports of strong inventories.

Don’t Give to the DNC

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Contributions to the DNC Paid This Man to Sabotage Healthcare Reform

Here’s a shocker, the DNC just spent nearly ½ a million dollars for the Nebraska State Democrats to run a campaign commercial for Ben Nelson’s obstructionism:

Turns out, though, that it’s [see attached video] not a Ben Nelson campaign ad. It’s hard to read the disclaimer, but the ad was paid for by the Nebraska Democratic Party. It’s one of a series of ad touting Nelson’s “courageous” effort to bring down real health care reform. More of the ads can be seen here and here.

So, one wonders, where did the Nebraska Democratic Party get the money to pay for these TV ads?

We already know that they are doing nothing about LGBT civil rights, now we know that since Howard Dean has left the chairmanship, they oppose meaningful healthcare reform too.

Find your candidates, and donate to them. The DNC, DCCC, the DSCC, and OFA are going to spend your money on people like Ben Nelson.

OK, Count Me Disappointed

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I’ve generally been supportive of Chris Dodd. I think that he has been good on civil rights, particularly in his pushing back against torture and the PATRIOT act.

Additionally, I think that he was hung out to dry by Obama and Geithner over AIG.

Further, he was remarkably refreshing about why he dropped out of the Senate race.

That being said, his behavior on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) earlier, and now his opposition to the weak “Volker” banking reforms, has gotten me wholeheartedly agreeing with Barry Righoltz’s assesment of his behavior: “

Thus, Dodd proves that the only thing more corrupt than a congressperson whoring for a campaign donations to get re-elected congressperson not seeking re-election, whoring for a job.

See also here and here.

Why I Hate the World

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It makes te Gay, or so it seems

Because the folks at Christwire have put out a blistering screed against the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls” titled, “How One TV Show Turned A Generation Of American Boys Into Homosexuals.” (Their server is slow, so you may have to wait)

It makes me hate the world.

Why does it make me hate the world?

Well, it’s because, highlight the rest for my answer……………

It’s satire, only it took me a couple of hours to confirm this.

It’s what bothers me about The Onion. The parody is spot on, and should be funny, only all to often, I cannot tell the difference between satire and the real world.

The problem is that the real world is just too perverse and weird to be parodied. Truth is indeed stranger than the fiction of satirists.

We live in Bizarro World.

H/t Atrios.

Economics Update (a Day Late)

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Busy day yesterday, both good and bad, so this is short.

First, we have the personal bankruptcy numbers dropped 10% from December to January, but are up 15% year over year, and the American Bankruptcy Institute expects 2010 BK levels to be higher than 2009.

In real estate, pending sales of existing homes rose slightly in December, but the percentage of homes remaining vacant rose in the 4thquarter.

Real estate is not going to lead us out of the recession, and absent cram-down legislation, government action is not going to help.

Of Course They Were Trying To Steal Children

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For a few days, the Baptist missionaries currently detained in Haiti for trafficking in children has been in the news, and I have been marinating on this.

At its most basic, I think that this was a deliberate attempt to abduct these children, though I think that money was at the root of this evil.

These people weren’t just missing paperwork, they were moving children out of the country for a purpose: to save souls.

They believed that these children would go to hell unless they were raised as, and became, Baptists, so they were breaking the law to “save” these children, some of whom were probably actually had living relatives.

So, much like William Calley, they likely, “destroyed families to save them”.

You must understand, notwithstanding all the stories about Voodoo in Haiti, the populace there is overwhelming (80%) Catholic, and these people were not rescuing people from Voodoo, but from Catholicism, which they see as not Christian, and hence a road straight to hell.

This is the evil that true believers do: Stealing children from the families.

As to the disposition, should it be determined in court that they are guilty, they should go to jail for a very long time.

Any consideration in terms of sentencing on the of the sincerity of their faith will just encourage more people with similar world views to do similarly evil things.

FWIW, I chose the Al Jazeera link just because it f%$#s with these people, here is the Google news link.

Illinois Primary Results

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Well, Governor, for both parties is still to close to call, but for Senator, Alexi Giannoulias is the Democratic Nominee, and Mark Kirk is the ‘Phant nominee.

Unfortunately, Mr. Giannoulias last job, his current one is as state treasurer, was as vice president of his family’s bank, Broadway bank, which appears to be circling the drain.

So the Dems just nominated someone who will be campaigned against as a corrupt banker……………This is like when the LaRuchians won the nominations a few years back, which put Republicans in just about every state wide office.

Well, if the banks problems get worse, I hear that Martha Coakley is looking for something to do.

Chicago Tribune Election Center

If You Have Extra Cash…………

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You might want to give it to Wikileaks, which has suspended their operations because they have run out of cash:

Wikileaks, which has published anonymously contributed information that is both confidential and controversial, has one thing in common with many more-traditional media outlets: financial troubles.

The site has posted confidential 9/11 pager messages, tangled with banks and the Church of Scientology, revealed inner workings of the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and shared snippets of e-mail from vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Now, though, Wikileaks has shut the site down at least temporarily.

“To concentrate on raising the funds necessary to keep us alive into 2010, we have reluctantly suspended all other operations, but will be back soon,” a note on the Wikileaks site said Monday. “We have raised just over $130,000 for this year but can not meaningfully continue operations until costs are covered. These amount to just under $200,000 PA [per annum]. If staff are paid, our yearly budget is $600,000.”

These guys do very good work, whether it’s uncovering things like money laundering, providing secret draft agreements on an “IP reign of terror” treaty, and torture manuals US military manuals for maltreating detainees.

Previous Wikileaks posts here, they have been a source for my scribblings not infrequently.

Brutal

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Stephen Colbert absolutely destroys Harold Ford, who has decided to try to run for Senate in New York, or maybe he’s just looking for a payoff not to run, but he’s been showing just how little he believes in.

He confronts him on his flip-flops, and exposes the fact that he has never voted in New York.

It couldn’t happen to a more smarmy hypocritical lying bastard .

Like Bukakke* with Knives

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Only $1.59, and I get a whole new definition of “facial”

Ok, so about the only plus to my being unemployed is that I make it to the gym 3-4 times a week, and do the stationary bicycle, get told by Fox News that we’re all going to die, and then I shower.

Well, I shave 2-3 times a week, I have a beard, so hitting my neck and the sparsely hairy parts my cheeks† does not have to be a daily thing.

I like to shave in the shower, and to do any fine work in the mirror afterward. I know my face well enough, and the hot water softens the hair and makes the shaver work better.

So, I got a new disposable razor, a Bic® Comfort 3® Pivot, because it was what what was on the shelf.

Well, one of the features is a, “Twin lubricating strip with Aloe vera and Vitamin E for sensitive skin. Improves shaver glide over the skin and reduces irritation.”

I kind of figured that it didn’t mean much, you see this crap all the time on consumer products.

I was wrong. There I was, in the shower, and this razor is oozing this clear stuff onto my face.

Ewwwwww!!!!

*If you don’t know, you can always check out the Wiki, but it’s NSFW.
†The upper ones cheeks, I don’t shave my ass. Sharon ‡ likes my hairy ass, thank you very much.
‡Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Idiot

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So, Barack Obama is offering millions billions in subsidies loan guarantees for the nuclear industry as a part of his cap and trade carbon emissions bill:

President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.

Obama singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address, and his spending plan for the next budget year is expected to include billions of more dollars in federal guarantees for new nuclear reactors. This emphasis reflects both the political difficulties of passing a climate bill in an election year and a shift from his once cautious embrace of nuclear energy.

He’s now calling for a new generation of nuclear power plants.

I understand how he might have to cut a deal with lawmakers who are bought and paid for by supporters of the nuclear power industry in order to get a global warming emissions bill passed, but you don’t start the negotiations by giving into them.

You make them come to you to get a deal. If you give them everything they need at the start of the process, then they will just knife you later to get more, see Nelson, Ben, and Lieberman, Joe.

Even if you support nuclear power, you keep it in your back pocket until the time is right to get the votes.

At this point in the process, you have the threat of a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) hanging over the heads of coal and oil companies, and you use that to twist arms.

Unbelievably stupid.

Economics Update

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Well, we had mixed signals, with factory activity rising faster than expected and construction spending falling faster than expected.

As to what you follow, I’ll go with disposable personal income and personal consumption expenditures, where spending went up less than income, increasing the savings rate, meaning that the consumer is still well into the “paradox of thrift”, and as The Big Picture observes, most of the increase in personal income is from government stimulus spending, but Obama has decided to go all 1937 on the budget. (Separate post for the budget)

Meanwhile in central bank/bond finance land, the Obama’s budget, along with the industrial growth reading pushed bond prices down, and yields up.

Meanwhile, in Oz, the Reserve Bank of Australia kept its benchmark rate at 3.75%, it had been expected to raise the rate to 4%, and so its currency took a hit.

Meanwhile in currency and energy, the ISM’s index of national factory activity drove both oil and the dollar up.

We Are F%$#ed

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It appears that according to Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, nothing can be done with the largest majorities in a generation:

This is the emerging talking point from the White House and Congessional leadership: It is a mathematical impossiblity that Dems will ever be able to get anything done without cooperation from Republicans.

Ignoring the fate of supermajority requirements for ordinary business (see taxes, raising, budget, California, f%$#ed), the voters hate weakness.

They hate it even more when you are the ones who are supposed to be in charge.

Why bother voting for a Democrat when they are unwilling to do anything, because the tiny minority in the corner is saying nasty things.

Let me refer you, once again to Josh Marshall’s bitch slap theory of electoral politics:

Let’s call it the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.

It goes something like this.

On one level, of course, the aim behind these attacks is to cast suspicion upon Kerry’s military service record and label him a liar. But that’s only part of what’s going on.

Consider for a moment what the big game is here. This is a battle between two candidates to demonstrate toughness on national security. Toughness is a unitary quality, really — a personal, characterological quality rather than one rooted in policy or divisible in any real way. So both sides are trying to prove to undecided voters either that they’re tougher than the other guy or at least tough enough for the job.

In a post-9/11 environment, obviously, this question of strength, toughness or resolve is particularly salient. That, of course, is why so much of this debate is about war and military service in the first place.

One way — perhaps the best way — to demonstrate someone’s lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves — thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.

Demonstrating Kerry’s unwillingness to defend himself (if Bush can do that) is a far more tangible sign of what he’s made of than wartime experiences of thirty years ago.

Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person’s supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who’s receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.

This is certainly what Bush’s father did to Michael Dukakis and, sadly, it is what Bush himself did, to a great degree, to Al Gore.

In other ways, Bush’s bully-boy campaign tactics play to his strengths, albeit unstated and unlovely ones. Many of the polls of the president have shown that while people don’t necessarily agree with the specific policies he’s pursued abroad many also intuitively believe that there’s no one who will hit back harder. There’s some of that ‘he may be a son-of-a-bitch but he’s our son-of-a-bitch’ quality to the president’s support on national security issues.

This meta-message behind the president’s attacks on Kerry’s war record is more consequential than many believe. So hitting back hard was critical on many levels.

All the silly little political orgasms over who stood and who didn’t at the SOTU speech, or how Barack Obama came off better in his tête-à-tête with Republicans does not matter.

If you cannot be trusted to fight for yourself , you cannot be trusted to fight for us.

Are these guys trying to lose both houses in 2010?

Deep Thought

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Why is it that washer fluid reservoirs in your car always hold something like 2-3 quarts, which means that when you refill it with a new bottle, you have a more than half empty bottle to bang around in your trunk?

These things are blow molded, and can easily be made in to irregular shapes, so that they could hold, for example, 5 qt, and then you could toss the bottle after you filled the tank.

It’s kind of like hot dogs coming in packages of 10, and hot dog buns coming in packages of 8.