Sometimes when you wrestle with Satan, he wins.
Inconsequences: It is widely acknowledged that most of the several billions of dollars to be spent on this election will be targeted at a handful of voters in a small handful of 'swing states." If you are not one of them, your vote doesn't really matter, so why not educate yourself on the platforms of the emergent third parties and vote for one of them?
Cognitive Dissonance: Federal government-hating Bobby Jindal (R-LA) is already criticizing Obama for not sending more disaster relief money to the state. The President had already signed an emergency declaration, long before Isaac came ashore, which made federal money available for emergency operations. Let's talk about the deficit.
Prejudice: The headline announcing a sudden plunge in consumer confidence noted that it fell in the face of “record high stock prices.” Most consumers do not own stocks, do not follow the market and are far more concerned about being able to stock the pantry and fill the gas tank.
Black & White: The Republicans intend to move Medicare and Medicaid "away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model. Translation: Kill M/M as they now exist and give people vouchers to buy inadequate health insurance from Wall Street. They will "save" M/M by letting people die and call it fiscal responsibility.
It's A Feature, Not A Bug: An Israeli judge has ruled that crushing US citizen Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer was not an act of negligence by the Israeli army. They did it on purpose.
Potemkim Villagers: Those coal miners standing around at a Romney rally were there because it was mandatory, the mine had been closed for the day and the bosses told them to get on the buses and go. They were not paid for the day, say they went out of fear of retaliation, and claim they were made to contribute to the Romney campaign. A spokesman for the mine said “We had managers that communicated to our work force that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend the event.”
Fat Lady, Humming: The June (just released) Case Shiller report showed a 0.94% y/y increase in US house prices. Never mind that last week there was data showing that the price of new homes was falling, Shiller is talking about existing houses, which appear to be from a good vintage and appreciating.
Children, Left Behind: One out of four American children has chronic health conditions such as obesity or asthma, more than one in five lives in poverty, over half of America's post-secondary students will leave school without graduating.
Tin Ear: Gov. Christie (R-NJ) says the R's should not “cater” to women. Can hardly wait until they stop.
Another World:The Romney campaign, responding to charges of falsehoods in their ads, said their strategies are not “dictated by fact checkers.” Remember the Bush White House that made its own reality?
Essence: When Lexmark announced it will cut 1,700 jobs; naturally its stock jumped 15%.
Easy Choices: Which would be the safer thing for a government to do? A) Cut retiree pensions, public health spending and other social safety nets, or B) Loose 50,000 or more trained soldiers onto the streets to shift for themselves. Beta? Right.
Porn O'Graph: Code Blue.
The Parting Shot:
Crowd scene.
4 comments:
Prejudice-No, my friend, I'd say around half of the stock market is owned by consumers, at least theoretically. It might be more appropriate to say that half of the market is funded by consumers, in the form of 401(k) and pension funds. However, since the mutual fund industry has been designed to obfuscate the fact that 401(k) contributions are little more than a Wall Street tax, most consumers have no idea where that money goes. Instead, they pat themselves on the back for their financial savvy for reallocation from the "aggressive" fund to the "conservative" fund without ever realizing that they are still primarily invested in the stock market. (I had the "privilege" of watching a coworker, slated to retire in 2009, lose half of his retirement savings in 2008 because he believed the his 2010 Target Fund description, which said it was designed for stability, not growth. It turned out the fund was over 60% in the stock market.)
I'd say another 30% of the market is QE in the form of direct cash infusions from the Fed via the primary dealers. Of course, guess who ultimately pays for that? Thus, we really are the stock market and, oddly enough, when it crashes again it will the remaining 20% of the market who profits. Guess who holds that fraction?
re Inconsequence - in terms of choosing someone to vote for that you actually agree with, our friends at Wikipedia have a useful article
United States third party and independent presidential candidates, 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third_party_and_independent_presidential_candidates,_2012
on home prices: the average interest rate on fixed rate 30 year mortgages in July was 3.55%, a full percentage point lower than Freddie Mac's had the 30 year mortgage rate at a year ago...a simple mortgage calculation shows that the monthly cost per $100,000 on a 30 year mortgage in july of 2012 was $451.84, compared to the $509.66 per $100K one would have paid monthly on a 30 year mortgage last July; that means to buy the same house a year ago would have cost a potential homeowner 12.8% more in payments monthly than it would cost under current interest rate regimes...so even should July's home price indexes show a 2.8% year over year gain in the principal price of the house, it would still mean that potential home buyers are only commiting 10% less to homeownership than they were a year ago...the so-called housing recovery is merely a fiction of Fed manipulated interest rates, which will not stay this low forever...
CKM,
Shame on you for your race baiting bias slant on LAPD news.
You forgot to mention how they beat the snot out of middle class white women also for no good reason.
You see LAPD lives up to it's slogan,
To protect themselves from everybody by serving a can of whoopass to everybody.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8790284
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