SAR #12091

I sometimes use facts to prove a point.

Up and Upper: Personal income in the US increased 0.2% last month, but spending increased four times that (0.8%) and the personal savings rate to 3.7% from 4.3% in January. We've been down this road before.

Unexpectedly: Japan's industrial production unexpectedly fell 1.2% in the last quarter, as the GDP shrank 2.3%, also unexpectedly, after falling 0.9% in 2010 and 5.5% in 2009.

Old News: Active investing is a mugg's game.

Routines: Every day my wife asks "What did the market do today?" and every day I say "Why do you care, we don't own any stock."

Friends In Low Places: Senate Republicans blocked Obama's effort to end Big Oil's tax breaks. Bread, buttered and all that.

Number One With A Bullet: DHS is buying 450 million rounds of .40 caliber HST bullets designed for “optimum penetration for terminal performance.” You've been warned.

Comfort: The majority of medical implants have never been tested by the FDA.

Fear and Loathing: Those who lose their jobs suffer lasting damage to their earnings potential, their health and the prospects of their children. And the longer it takes to find a new job, the deeper the damage appears to be. It is too soon to know, but it seems likely that our current unprecedented numbers of workers who have been unemployed for getting on two years are going to experience more severe impairments than those of earlier generations.

Spot Quiz: Are the austerity programs undertaken in the Eurozone self-defeating? Yes.

Farm League: US drone attacks are ramping up in the off-stage war in Yemen, along with cruise missiles, aircraft attacks and navel bombardments. Naval bombardments?

Water Is Still Wet: Scientists are finally figuring out how and why early exposure to germs is a good thing, why playing with pets and hanging around farm animals confers lifetime health benefits. Antibiotics and antibacterials do just the reverse.

Democracy In-Action: In the US a well-educated 25-year old white woman has a life expectancy that is 8.6 years longer than a poorly educated black woman of the same age.

Aesop's Fables: The moral of the current Republican hand-wringing and posturing over abortion, gay marriage, contraception, evolution, global warming and national health care is that there is a moral crisis and it is the Republicans' morals that are the problem. If they'd do what they claim and proselytize for less government involvement in personal decisions, this fluff would all blow away.

Porn O'Graph: Old, but interesting, news.