Muppet Labs Experiment 5T832: Ghost Hunt
Year: 2010
The NFP is Out
And Non-Farm Payroll fell by 131,000 last month, though that is because the US Census cut 143,000 temp jobs.
In the private sector, the seasonally adjusted private payrolls rose 71,000, less than the predicted 90K, and well under the 125-150K necessary to keep up with workforce growth.
Additionally, the May and June numbers were revised down by about 97K.
Why people aren’t running around with their hair on fire about this, I simply do not understand.
Funeral for a Friend
Click for full size
The Truck is Here
It Hooks Up
It’s Pulls It Up
Ready to Roll to the Bone Yard
Play It Off, Elton
As I mentioned a month and half ago, my wife’s Honda Odyssey died, and we got a new car.
Well, we finally completed arrangements, and donated the car to Kars4Kids, and they picked up the car, a 1994 Honda Odyssey.
If I recall correctly, we picked it up in 1998, used, and when it breathed its last, it had 262,930 miles, so it was not a bad run.
I’m glad that this is finally over and done with, but there is a bit of melencholy associsted with the event.
In any case, scroll down for your dose of Elton John.
Why Yes, The Obama Administration is Paying to Offshore Your Job
It’s called the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO),and USAID is spending $30 million dollars to train workers in Sri Lanka in order to outsource IT jobs from the United States:
Under director Rajiv Shah [an Obama political appointee], the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.
USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort, while its private partners are investing roughly $26 million.
“To help fill workforce gaps in BPO and IT, USAID is teaming up with leading BPO and IT/English language training companies to establish professional IT and English skills development training centers,” the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said in a statement posted Friday on its Web site.
“Courses in Business Process Outsourcing, Enterprise Java, and English Language Skills will be offered at no charge to over 3,000 under- and unemployed students who will then participate in on-the-job training schemes with private firms,” the embassy said.
Oh, I forgot to add, they are also doing this in Armenia.
I don’t think that Barack Obama really wants to send your jobs overseas, but I do think that there are people in his administration are “strongly free trade” and they think that being “strongly free trade” means that agencies of the US government have an obligation to move jobs out of the country in this manner, on the theory that one day, eventually, these countries will develop a middle class that will buy the sh%$ that we make.
Still, if this is not on the front page of some right wing blogger in the next 3 days, I would be very surprised.
It betrays a level of political incompetence and arrogance that positively boggles the mind.
I’m going to check and see if it is on Slashdot, and if not, I’ll do some blog whoring with the story.
Clovis’s Lobotomy Scar! What the F%$#?
Remember when I posted about Barry Ritholtz’s masterful take-down of the ongoing scam that is the Glen Beck Goldline scam?
What? You don’t?
Look at my last post, including the informative graphic.
That’s it, just scroll down a bit……Do you see it not?……Good!
Now, look to your left, where the tall banner ad is.
What do you see? Why it’s an ad from the scamming pig-felching rat bastards at Goldline!
If you don’t see it, here is the add, with the phone number obscured.
You see, Google™ Adsense™ is at it again.
I’m beginning to think that they don’t use computers, but instead they use trained monkeys to determine which ads to serve!
If they aren’t serving scammers, or right wingers like Fred Thompson pitching extension of the Bush Tax cuts, then they are pitching spammers like Constant Contact.
Unfortunately, I am way too small a fish to attract anyone else…………I dream of the day when I qualify for Blogads.
<Banghead>………</Banghead>
Again, as always, please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.
Beck’s Fools Gold
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Anatomy of a scam
Barry Ritholtz has a masterful takedown of how Glenn Beck and Goldline are scamming his audience by selling them grossly overpriced gold coins.
It explains very clearly why Goldline is under criminal investigation in its home state of California.
Go read.
Summers and Geithner Rule the Roost
After being ignored for 18 months in favor of the disastrous policies of the Geithner/Summers tag team, Christina Romer is calling it quits.
The ones who understand what needs to be done leave, the incompetent stay, and the status quo remains.
Feeling mopey changey right now.
No Big Surprise
The Annual Report of the Board Of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance And Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds is out and Social Security is just fine, and healthcare reform has improved Medicare’s financial picture.
This is not a surprise. If you follow this at all, and possess the math skills required to engage in basic counting, and are not demagoguing this for political advantage, then you already know this.
Of course, the conditions that I have stated rule out 95% of the reporters, 99% of the pundits, and 101% of the Republicans out there, (someone must be hitting the button twice) so we still get the “youngsters will never see social security” bullsh%$.
I Give Up!
So says the Stewart.
So say we all:
Cement Successfully Injected into Spewing Hole
Unfortunately, it wasn’t Rush Limbaugh.*
Still, the people of the Gulf coast can expect a few more years of pre-oiled shrimp.
*I considered another prominent right winger *cough*Sarah Palin*cough*, but decided that the sexist overtones were a bit much.
Economics Update
It’s jobless Thursday, and initial jobless claims rose again, by 19,000 to 479,000, with four-week moving average increased by 5,250 to 458,500, and continuing claims fell by 34,000 to 4.54 million, though a lot of this may be people running out their string on normal benefits.
I would note that this number has been bouncing between 450K and 480K for a few months, and that this number is around 100,000 more than is needed for a recovery in employment.
Meanwhile, in central bank land, the Bank of England kept its benchmark rate at ½%, effectively 0%, and it’s asset purchase program, aka quantitative easing, aka printing money, remains essentially unchanged.
Finally, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit an all time low, 4.49%. (!)
Kagan Approved By Senate
So Barack Obama gets his 2nd Supreme Court Justice through the Senate.
I think that she’ll be depressingly conservative, but I’m a fan of Kagan’s old mentor, Thurgood Marshall as a good place to put the ideological center of the court.
I hope that her lack of judicial record will mean that she is a pleasant surprise, but I would take 2:1 odds against it.
Remind Me, Once Again, Don’t Piss off Jon Stewart
I think that Colbert might have been a bit harsher, but jeebus, it’s like watching baby seals being clubbed, which, interestingly enough is something done by Canadians. (You’ll get the reference when you see the vid)
Yep, he goes after all the repeal the 14th Dredd Scott dead-enders.
OK, This is a Harsh Takedown
Stephen Colbert, playing along with Laura Ingram’s literary conceit that her book, The Obama Diaries, is real, absolutely destroyes her and her book.
When he says, “I’ve read a fair amount of this book, and I know he’s not supposed to be a dumb guy, he’s a great orator, but this writing is terrible,” he’s telling Laura that she cannot write for sh%$, for example.
Ouch.
Senate Approves State Aid Bill
They got both Senators from Maine to vote against a filibuster, and so it goes to the House, where Nancy Pelosi has promised to hold a special session to pass the bill.
It’s 26.1 billion in aid to the states for education and Medicaid, and it’s needed.
Google and Verizon Hammer Nails in Net Neutrality’s Coffin
My guess is that Google has given up on the timid Obama administration, and Obama’s timid FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who falls over when the incumbent players say “boo”, so Google is throwing in the towel, and is negotiating with Verizon to pay extortion money to insure that it doesn’t get shut out of the telcos last mile:
Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.
The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.
Why is Google throwing in the towel?
Well part of it may be because Verizon is a major player in mobile phones, and they don’t want to be locked out:
People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon’s ability to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased.
Or maybe it’s because all this hopey changey crap is nopey change crap:
Since the court decision, involving Comcast, in April, the F.C.C. has been trying to find a way to regulate broadband delivery, and that effort has been the subject of a series of private meetings at the agency’s headquarters in recent weeks. At the meetings, officials from the nation’s biggest Internet service and content providers, including Google and Verizon, have tried to reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated in light of the decision. Those meetings continued this week, apart from the talks between Google and Verizon.
Yes, you have a group of people doing bad things, and destroying a public resource, and even though you have the authority to regulate, all you have to do is redefine broadband, and you are good to go, you are working to, “reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated.”
That’s like banks trying to reach a consensus with bank robbers.
The incumbents are not valued members of the community, they are parasites who use an accident of history to attempt to act as highwaymen.
It’s not tough to reregulate this sh%$. You can’t now because a few years back, your Bushco predecessor made it so:
The F.C.C., meanwhile, favors a level playing field, but it cannot impose one as long as its authority over broadband is in legal doubt. It has proposed a solution that would reclassify broadband Internet service under the Communications Act from its current designation as an “information service,” a lightly regulated designation, to a “telecommunications service,” a category that, like telephone service, is subject to stricter regulation.
It’s very simple. Make a new finding. The old one was a payoff to the telcos for campaign bucks, warrantless wiretapping, and a failed free market ideology.
Make that ruling, and then, when you have a big stick, you can get to the rule making.
First, get a firm grip on their balls, and then negotiate.
Remember, we are dealing with The Phone Company here, and to quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.”
They may be essential, but they aren’t allies.
Then again, I’m being an optimist. If you look at the Obama administration’s actions, whether they be healthcare, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, etc., it’s clear that their MO is to talk about reform, and then to give the malefactors what they want, so this could be by design, rather than by incompetence or cowardice.
In either case, treating the Obama Administration, and their FCC Chairman as the enemy and a bad faith player still gives activists the best policy, so I would suggest that this is what net neutrality activists do.
Avoid the veal pen conference calls, and light fires under them.
Economics Update
Well, in the “why do they do this any more” department, we have the ADP private employment survey, which predates the official US DoL figures by all of 2 days, saying that private payrolls will increase by a rather unimpressive 42 thousand.
The total figure will be much worse, of course, since the US Census is still shedding the temporary workers they hired for their 2010 enumeration.
On the GDP front, it appears that the inventory data which contributed to a large portion of recent GDP gains was wildly over optimistic.
On the other hand, the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing index rose in July rose to 54.3 from 53.8, beating expectations, in June, and mortgage applications, including purchase applications, rose again.
Michelle Maglalang Malkin, Anchor Baby
Yes, immigration hardliner, and frequent railer against immigrants having “Anchor Babies” to secure residency status, was anchor baby herself.
Go figure
When Alan Keyes Calls You Crazy………
You are completely batsh%$ insane:
“The 14th Amendment is not something one should play with lightly,” Keyes said in response to a question from ThinkProgress at the Tea Party Express press event today. “Lindsay Graham used the term — as people have carelessly done over the years — referring to the 14th Amendment as something that has to do with ‘birthright citizenship’ and we ought to get rid of ‘birthright citizenship.'”
“Well, let me see,” Keyes added sarcastically, “If citizenship is not a birthright then it must be a grant of the government. And if it is a grant of the government, it could curtail that grant in all the ways that fascists and totalitarians always want to.”
This is like Keith Richards telling you that you do too much drugs.
H8* Amendment Declared Unconstitutional
Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that California’s anti-gay marriage initiative is unconstitutional:
A federal judge in San Francisco struck down California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, handing a temporary victory to gay rights advocates in a legal battle that seems all but certain to be settled by the Supreme Court.
Wednesday’s decision is just the latest chapter of what is expected to be a long legal battle over the ban — Proposition 8, which was passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote — and proponents were already promising to appeal, confidently predicting that higher courts would be less accommodating to the other side than Vaughn R. Walker, the judge who issued the ruling.
You can be sure of that last bit.
While I cannot speak to the proclivities of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, I know that they are a rather liberal circuit, but that is it, but I am aware of the proclivities of the Supreme Court, and I cannot see this ruling surviving there.
My assesment of the court:
- Scalia has publicly stated his position, even before hearing a case in numerous public speeches.
- Alito and Roberts chomping at the bit to throw red meat to the “cultural conservatives.”
- Thomas wants to find an ethnic group to crap on.
- Kennedy being of an age where gay marriage squicks him out, notwithstanding his opinion striking down the criminalization of gay sex in Lawrence v. Texas.
- Between Sotamayor and (almost certainly on the court by the time that this is heard) Kagan, there is at least one vote, and probably 2 votes there for “Civil unions is good enough,” which is, after all, Barack Obama’s official position.
What worries me is that if Roberts has the votes, he will cast the broadest net possible, as he did in the Citizens United and Heller, and so do his level best reinstitute the criminalization of homosexuality, and probably take a big hack at Roe v. Wade.
It’s a good decision, and I support it, but I think that the ratf%$#ers on the Supreme Court will do whatever they can to turn this to evil.
What needs to be done now is to put Scalia on his back heel. He has prejudged the case, and has admitted it in public, so he must recuse himself.
Of course, he won’t, not unless the pressure placed on him forces him to.
We need to go after him the way Scientology went after judges they targeted, though obviously no one should drown his pet dog.
I am saying that it is clear that on numerous occasions, in numerous public events, Antonin Scalia has stated that his mind is made up on gay marriage.
As such any rudimentary understanding of legal ethics mandates that he recuse himself, and that Antonin Scalia does not posses even a rudimentary level of legal ethics, so unless there is a constant drum beat pointing out this fact, he will sit on the case with no intention of reviewing either the facts of the law fairly.
*Proposition 8=H8=Hate, OK?