Saturday, March 8, 2014

SAR #14067



The house always wins.

Debt Collection: We have, again, misread the situation between Russia and its neighbors. It is not an invasion, it is simply an effort on Mr. Putin's part to maker sure Ukraine keeps paying the vig on the $2 billion it owes Gasprom. When are we going to realize that the whole world does not revolve around US and that a whole lot of things simply are not our business?

Punched Line: US household wealth surged in 4Q2013 as stock market gains in and the increase in home prices rose. Which is good news for those who own stock or have house mortgages that are not underwater. And jobs. Jobs are good to have, too.

Because He's : The Republicans have refused to let Obama fill 33 ambassadorial posts – we have no Ambassador in countries as important as Canada, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as places where we are fighting al-Qaeda like Yemen. Of the 33 nominees, all but 5 have been waiting for over 100 days and over half for over 200 days. Because... Fill in the blank.

Rest In Plains: Among the dumb things The Donald said in his talk to the Conservative Political Action Conference was his reference to the "late, great Jimmy Carter". Two wrongs don't make a right.

Re-defined: There’s a growing meme wandering around in Washington to the effect that a) full employment means 6.5% unemployment and 2) the long term unemployed don't actually count. Ah, the new normal.

Fox/Henhouse: The USDA, in order to save money and not lives, is turning regulation and monitoring of the nation's poultry industry over to... the poultry industry.

You Don't Want The Truth... The Senate conducted an investigation into the intelligence and military's use of torture and produced a 6,300 page report at the cost of over $40 million. The main conclusion seems to have been that the report's findings are too disgusting to let the public read and thus were highly classified. Your Senator can't give you a copy, he's not cleared to know what was done in our name either.

Emphasis: As part of the public debate over the US response to the situation in Ukraine, I'd like to point out that half the public schools in the country are in dire need of repair and that 20% of US kids do not consistently get enough to eat.

Texas Taxes: The 'no income tax' states - those that rely on sales taxes - are in the smoke and mirror business, pretending to care for the poor by not taxing their income while letting the rich off lightly. In Texas, which has the fifth most regressive taxes in the country, the rich pay an effective tax rate of 3.2%, the middle class pays 8%, while the poor pay 12%. Most Texans pay more in taxes than the folks in tax-happy Californian. 
 
Six of One... California leads the nation in both millionaires and food-stamp recipients. Correlation in not causation.

Porn O'Graph: Mean streets.

The Parting Shot:
 School's Out.

6 comments:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mistah charley, ph.d. said...

the photo at the bottom reminds me of an old joke, built on the structure of the Miller Analogies Test and the satirical phrase "a fish without a bicycle"

a psychologist without ____ is like a fish without _____

response options include


a theoretical orientation...school

scales...scales

clients...smaller fish

Blissex said...

«The Republicans have refused to let Obama fill 33 ambassadorial posts – we have no Ambassador in countries as important as Canada, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,»

That's exactly how democracy is supposed to work: politicians make political decisions and if voters are happy with those decisions the politicians get re-elected.

If voters want (or even just don't care) to stop the executive branch from appointing ambassadors, it is their sovereign right to do so via their elected representatives, and then they will eventually suffer the consequences, because it is after all their own country.

That applies not just to not confirming ambassadors, but also to TARP, PATRIOT, stopping paying extended unemployment benefits, welfare reform, warrantless searches, and all the other political decisions that voters have convincingly endorsed by re-electing the politicians who proposed and enacted them.

Anonymous said...

Debt Collection: It is debt collection, however, who is collecting the debt? From a Zerpohedge comment:

"Later, one of the senior officials of the former Ministry of Revenue and Taxes reported that, according to his information, last night, at the order of one of the "new Ukrainian leaders" the entire gold reserve of Ukraine has been sent to in the United States."

We don't know who owes who.

RBM said...

Correlation is not causation

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Right. I appreciate the assistance. That's what I meant...

But (in my own defence) neither is coincidence.

ckm