COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
News helicopters all over the place.
ReplyDeleteYou would think they just won a war or Peace.
Delete77-74 Villanova
ReplyDeleteSounds like it was a great game.
I've had my eye on Melania Trump tonight. Doesn't speak English all that well, but what a first lady...
DeleteAnd the school kids of America will finally be out from under those stupid lunches Michelle Obama foists on them.
The Pubes will probably make it mandatory for all times and seasons. (Even in Summer)
Delete...otherwise they'll feel like white Racesissys.
I saw a video once, undercover, showing which foods the kids were actually eating, and which foods were getting tossed in the lunchroom garbage can.
DeleteNeedless to say, Michelle's program is causing a giant waste of money and food. All that dumped food could go to some food kitchen somewhere and maybe do some good.
How many kids after all long for a cold carrot and a soggy Brussel's sprouts ?
My sis loved raw carrots though I'll say that, loved them like a horse. Always had a carrot in her mouth.
DeleteNever had any cavities either. Whether those two things are related or not I don't know.
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ReplyDeleteFrom the previous stream in an article by Joan McCarter in the Daily Kos
The US just had its 73rd consecutive month of job growth, gaining 215,000 jobs in March. So what about that "job-killing" Obamacare?
Hospitals, doctors' offices and other healthcare settings added 36,800 jobs in March, representing roughly 1 out of 6 jobs that were created in the entire U.S. economy last month.
That's after an amazing February, with 38,100 new jobs in the sector. So it's creating healthcare jobs, and it's not killing any other jobs.
Hmmm.
One out of six jobs. About 17%.
For two month?
And from this, if I'm reading this right, Ms. McCarter seems to be saying that Obamacare is responsible for creating all these healthcare jobs. I found that somewhat interesting, so...
I pulled a BLS report from 2012 B.O.I., Before Obamacare Implementation.
https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/chws_bls_report_2012.pdf
While total U.S. employment dropped by over 2% between 2000 and 2010, health care
employment grew by more than 25% during the same period. [Page 4]
Projections from the same report predicted that between 2010 and 2020, healthcare jobs would represent 25% of the total increase in US jobs. [Page 5]
It seems the reported results are running below projections.
As was pointed out, the chart in the article was pretty simple, one line showing the monthly rise in private sector employment since the passage of Obamacare.
Here is another that is almost as simple, just two lines. [See page 3 of the following link.]
http://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2014/spring/art03.pdf
Unlike the chart in the article, this chart has been truncated on the right hand side but expanded on the left. It covers the 10 year period between 2004 and 2014. One of the lines (blue) on this chart mirrors the employment changes on the McCarter chart though on a yearly basis rather than monthly. The second line (red) shows the steady and consistent rise in healthcare jobs over that 10 year period.
One interesting feature on the chart is to note the slope of the total employment line (blue) from 2004 to 2008 and the slope following the most recent recession. However, more interesting for this discussion is the slope of the healthcare employment (red) line which is positive and steady over the 10 year period regardless of economic conditions.
Obamacare may affect healthcare jobs. Or, it may not. But there is certainly no way of knowing from the ‘evidence’ presented by Ms. McCarter.
BLS has indicated that healthcare will be one of if not the fastest growing industries going forward. But rather than credit the increased employment opportunities to Obamacare, they have suggested a growing population, an aging population, and increased life expectancy as the main drivers.
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We're nearing the million doctor deficit.....without a doc you have no healthcare no matter what your insurance policy might say.
DeleteWe would have been better off creating a whole new generation of medical schools, as the wiser heads said all along.
galopin2 might be able to rustle up a shaman, though.
Alligator piss and rum, and catfish brains with a little drumming and dancing, can cure lots of conditions.
DeleteJust saw the final shot with a couple seconds left from w a a y out - three pointer for the three point win....
ReplyDeleteCollege basketball at its best !
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ReplyDeleteMore DNC Dirty Tricks or Much Ado About Nothing?
We shall see.
Sen. Bernie Sanders' name will not appear on the Washington, D.C., primary ballot at this point, after Democrats failed to turn over Sanders' paperwork in time.
The Democratic Party failed to submit Sanders' primary registration paperwork on time to the D.C. Board of Elections. While the party received paperwork and fees from both Sanders and Hillary Clinton's campaign, it only turned over Clinton's forms on time.
That means as of today, Clinton is slated to appear on the ballot, but Sanders isn't, according to a report by NBC-4. Sanders' campaign said it handed in its forms and $2,500 in fees earlier this month and ahead of schedule.
Democrats did not inform the board of its oversight mistake until a day after the March 16 registration deadline, which will create another hurdle to including him. A Washington, D.C., voter has already filed a challenge against Sanders' eligibility.
The Democrats called the incident a minor administrative dispute, according to NBC's reporter Tom Sherwood. Party chairwoman Anita Bonds, a member of the city council, said the city could choose to fix the problem by holding an emergency vote.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/30/sanders-off-d-c-primary-ballot-after-dems-bungle-paperwork.html?intcmp=sem_outloud
There is still plenty of time to get this straightened out. We'll see what happens.
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6 arrested, 30 hurt during Villanova post-game celebration
ReplyDeleteRead more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/3-arrested-7-hurt-during-Villanova-post-game-celebration.html#mLD18d8OFpgt7bLU.99
Syrian rebels on Tuesday allegedly downed a Russian fighter jet belonging to the Syrian air force and captured the aircraft's pilot, sources linked to the opposition reported.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the report, the Syrian regime's Sukhoi 22 warplane was downed by an anti-aircraft missile over the northern village of Kfar Jalis.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a plume of smoke was seen as the plane caught fire before it fell in the Talat al-Iss highland where al-Qaida affiliated rebels have come under heavy bombardment by Syrian and Russian jets after they captured the area this week.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-Syrian-rebels-shoot-down-warplane-450286
This will get interesting...
Maybe he will meet Ron Arad in prison?
Not knowing a thing about Ron Arad I looked him up in Wiki -
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Arad_(pilot)
His fate seems unknown, but very grim.
The Israelis certainly take extraordinary efforts to look after their people.
DeleteHighlights
ReplyDeleteThe ISM non-manufacturing index rose a solid 1.1 points in March to a 54.5 level that points to solid economic growth for the great bulk of the nation's economy. New orders are very solid at 56.7 for what is their strongest rate of monthly growth so far this year. Backlog orders, at 52.0, show plus-50 monthly expansion for a third month in a row.
And strength in backlogs is a particularly good sign for employment which, however, has been flat in this report, at 50.3 in the March report for however a 6 tenths gain. Output is especially strong as the business activity index, at 59.8, is showing its best rate of growth in 5 months which points to acceleration for the overall economy. In perhaps an early sign of the positive effects of the lower dollar, the new export orders index is up a very sharp 5.0 points to 58.5 in what follows a 7 point surge in February.
This report is very positive and contrasts sharply with the very soft services report released earlier this morning from Markit Economics. And the contrast isn't due to the extra components in the ISM report -- construction and mining -- which are mixed in the month with construction up in the ISM data and mining down. This report is closely watched and optimists can point with confidence to its indications of strength.
ISM Services
Advice of Villanova Coach to his players:
ReplyDelete"Concentrate on everyone else, and not on yourself"
That last three pointer seems to have been a fast break play they had practiced many times.
Damn, it was not broadcast out this way this year.
Great game all the way through, it's being said, and classic celebration at the end.
Another day in Earth Neighborhood -
ReplyDeleteFLASHBACK: Top German Journalist Admits Media Completely Fake: 'We All Lie For CIA'...
Icelandic PM Resigns...
Putin orders creation of National Guard to fight terror, crime...
((((Average sex lasts 5.4 minutes...))))
Court: Employers Must Allow Workers To Sit On Job...
Court: Jet Can Be Impounded Over Compensation to Passenger...
NKorea Able to Mount Nuclear Warhead on Missile, South Says...
FEDS: Man enslaved, sold women he called wives...
((((REPORT: Wife fed husband to dog....))))DRUDGE
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ReplyDeleteOnce again, Trump proves he is nutz! Very, very nutz.
Donald Trump's campaign released a memo on Tuesday that said it would force Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to cut off billions of dollars in money transfers that Mexicans who are living in the U.S. send home.
"Mexico currently receive $24 billion in remittance payments annually from the United States. This provides substantial leverage for the United States to obtain from Mexico the funds necessary to pay for a border wall," his campaign said in a statement.
If elected president, the memo explains, Trump would threaten to change a rule under the Patriot Act to cut off some of the money Mexico receives through wire transfers. The memo said the majority of the $24 billion a year "comes from illegal aliens" that they send back to their families...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-explains-how-he-would-force-mexico-to-pay-for-border-wall/
The last I heard blackmail is a crime. To Mr. Trump it is a negotiating tactic.
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Play Video
Trump and Cruz in tight race as Wisconsin heads to the polls
But if Mexico agrees to make a one-time payment for the border wall, Trump's campaign said he wouldn't move forward with the rule change.
Quirk proves himself yet once again a legal illiterate.
DeleteBlackmail ?
Nah
These folks are not supposed to be in the USA working here taking our jobs in the first place.
Call it a 'privilege to work in USA tax'.
Call it 'you pay, or go away' if you like.
Brilliant idea.
Puts the pressure on the Mexican 'Government' too.
DeleteThey don't want these peons back, but they like the money being sent back.
If the Mexican 'Government' ponies up for the wall, the flow of funds back to Mexico won't be interrupted.
The Mexican 'Government' has been torturing folks coming over their southern border from Central America to get the word out to back home that they are not wanted in Mexico.
Trump's plan is a humanitarian gesture in comparison to that.
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DeleteWhen Trump loses the presidency, the IMA (Idaho Mensa Asylum) has indicated that they will offer him the job of team mascot.
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You're a Teratoid.
DeleteYou should be caged.
(He'll have to look it up, folks - he he he he)
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DeleteI did have to look it up.
And can I see why you might use the term. Where paranoia rules monsters abound. Coming from Idaho, home of systematized delusion and the Bigfoot Hunting and Badminton Society it is only natural your mind would drift in that direction.
Be careful out there. Fenrir is coming.
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Old Solution to New Paradigm
ReplyDeleteCan it Work? We Will Likely Never Know.
Maybe everyone is overcomplicating America's economic challenges today. Maybe there are no deep mysteries behind the slow growth, the stagnating incomes and the widespread economic anxieties that have given rise to populist movements on the left and the right.
Maybe the problem is simple: too many workers.
That is the argument made in a new paper released by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, which theorizes that the world economy is suffering from an oversupply of labor and too little demand for the goods and services those workers produce.
But the solution, they say, also is simple, though politically unpopular: roads and bridges, and a lot of them...
{…}
{…}
DeletePenned by investment banker Daniel Alpert, the paper, builds on his 2013 book “The Age of Oversupply,” and it's Third Way’s latest effort to shape the liberal policy conversation in the 2016 presidential primaries. It does so in decidedly un-centrist fashion — by embracing a larger infrastructure spending program than Bernie Sanders does.
It starts with the fact that the emergence of China, India and other developing nations has added billions of hands to the global workforce over the past quarter-century.
In the paper, Alpert laments the “suddenness and extent of the integration of over 3 billion people into a global capitalist market, that really only hitherto consisted of about 800 million in the advanced economies.”
He argues that worker influx has triggered a wave of low-wage job creation in America. He notes that nearly half of the jobs created in the current recovery have come in traditionally low-wage sectors such as retail services and leisure/hospitality; annual incomes in those sectors average about $25,600 a year. Only about an eighth of the jobs created in the recovery have come in the higher-wage sectors of mining, manufacturing and construction, where annual incomes average $55,200 a year.
In an era of expanding trade, those new workers from emerging economies compete with Americans (and workers in other wealthy countries) for jobs and push down their wages. But the new workers often save a large amount of their earnings, Alpert argues, and thus do not spend enough on American goods and services to create a classically virtuous cycle of trade raising everyone's living standards…
{…}
{…}
DeleteCutting taxes won't solve that problem, Alpert writes. Subsidizing investment and holding down interest rates won't either, he adds, nor will raising the minimum wage or pushing more workers into labor unions.
“The most important thing we can do is get more people employed in high-paying jobs,” he said in an interview -- and that means overcoming the market signals that are pushing companies to invest elsewhere, or hoard cash. “If we don’t intervene, this is not a 10-year cycle problem, it’s a Japanese style problem" of permanently slow growth. "We’ll be talking about this in 20 years.”
Intervening, he says, requires a "bold change in policy focus" for the United States. Which is to say, a $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending program, at a time when Congress remains dead set against big new spending plans. Alpert estimates it would create 5.5 million jobs…
------------------------------
Alpert says the government should borrow the money for infrastructure, echoing the liberal economists Larry Summers and Brad DeLong. They argued in a 2012 paper that with interest rates low and economic activity depressed in the wake of the Great Recession, government spending on infrastructure could pay for itself, in terms of new tax revenue generated by increased economic growth.
There's no alternative to such spending, Alpert says, because the oversupply of global labor is preventing private business from investing in U.S. workers on a similar scale - because, he says, such investments would not turn a profit. A government infrastructure program, he argues, would be a kick-start, rebalancing global demand to meet the global labor supply and returning the global economy to a more virtuous state for all…
This idea has been proposed for years. It has been ignored for decades slowly turning the US into a good impersonation of a third world country. Money for ‘shovel ready’ jobs was allocated at the start of the recession but quickly disappeared when it was found (surprisingly) that there were no shovel ready jobs. The two Democratic presidential nominees have proposed large investments in infrastructure building. Will it happen? Unlikely.
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Here's the thing: how bad can "the economy," and "wages" be if
ReplyDeleteIndividual Income Tax Receipts are Up 7.6% YOY for the first 5 months of the fiscal year,
and
Social Security Receipts are Up 4.4% YOY.
Treas.Gov
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ReplyDeleteRule 40b, how the GOP establishment can steal the election.
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Trump has headed back to NYC, leaving Wisconsin, an odd thing to do if you were expecting to do well.
ReplyDeleteOne hour to the closing of the polls.
Why Are Americans Not Included in Panama Papers?....Drudge
ReplyDeleteGood question.
It must be because we're all such honest, tax paying citizens.
The Hope of the Earth.
The Donald seems to have not appeared in the Panama Papers.
DeleteExit poll first hints say Wisconsin is 'too close to call' which is good news, if correct, for The Donald.
ReplyDeleteVote, and buy Gold and Silver from Rosland Capital because all hell may break out this year.
ReplyDeleteWhat's in YOUR safe ?
Judge Napolitano now has come right out and flatly said 'Hillary WILL be indicted'.
ReplyDeleteI sincerely hope he is right.
She has earned it, and richly deserves it.
Her supporters ought to be indicted as well on gross stupidity charges.
DeleteFox News has already called Wisconsin for Bernie Sanders over Hillary.
ReplyDeleteFox News calls Wisconsin for Ted Cruz.
DeleteOpening offshore accounts is not illegal and Mossack Foensca insists the firm is “beyond reproach”, however it specialises in setting up shell companies with proxy directors that can make their true purpose impossible to see.
ReplyDeleteThe company said it regarded the leak as theft and always followed the “letter and spirit” of the law when it comes to contracts and accounts.
...
“Our services are regulated on multiple levels, often by overlapping agencies, and we have a strong compliance record.”
For all of The Elephant Bar's rabid Hillary supports, including galopin2...
ReplyDeleteTuesday, Apr 5, 2016 08:12 AM PDT
This is how the FBI destroys Hillary: The 10 questions that could end her White House dreams
H. A. Goodman
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/05/this_is_how_the_fbi_destroys_hillary_the_10_questions_that_could_end_her_white_house_dreams/
DeleteThis article first appeared in 'The Huffington' Post, a favorite of at least one Hillary supporter here.
Advice of Villanova Coach to his players:
ReplyDelete"Concentrate on everyone else, and not on yourself"
This would be good advice for The Donald too, whose wonderful 'self' is his first and last topic of conversation.
Security forces control 70% of Heet, ISIS members besieged
ReplyDelete(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – Heet District Council revealed on Tuesday, that the security forces controlled more than 70% of Heet District west of Ramadi, while expected that the coming hours will witness the liberation of the remaining areas in the district.
The Head of Heet District Council Mohammed Mohannad al-Hiti said in a brief statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “The security forces are continuing the liberation of Heet District backed by the international coalition aviation,” pointing out that, “ISIS is controlling less than 30% of the district, and those areas do not exceed five kilometers square.”
Hiti added, “The remaining ISIS members in Heet District are besieged,” indicating that, “The next few hours will be crucial for the military troops, after advancing on all the axes of Heet and crossing the Euphrates River.”
Heet Wave
Governor of Anbar announces return of over 6,000 families to Ramadi, Anbar
Delete(IraqiNews.com) al-Anbar – The governor of Anbar Suhaib al-Rawi announced on Tuesday the return of more than six thousands families to the district of Ramadi, while pointed out to the opening of the Department of Irrigation east of the district.
The media office of Suhaib al-Rawi said in a statement obtained by IraqiNews.com, “The governor of Anbar Suhaib al-Rawi has accompanied the families returning to areas that have been stabilized in Ramadi,” noting that, “The governor confirmed the return of more than six thousand families as well as the return of life to the streets of Ramadi.”
The statement added, “Rawi opened the Department of Irrigation and Abu Zeid al-Hilali School in Joabh east of Ramadi,” asserting that, “The government departments returned to practice its business in the district, [in addition to] returning the initial services to all the neighborhoods that have been secured by local and international teams.”
Home, Sweet Home
40 ISIS militants killed in cleansing battles of Baghdadi vicinity
Delete(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – On Monday, Heet District Council in Anbar Province announced, that 40 militants from the so-called ISIS were killed in the cleansing battles of al-Baghdadi vicinity west of Ramadi (110 km west of Baghdad), while pointed out to the destruction of three car bombs and four rocket launchers.
The Head of Heet Council Mohammed Mohannad al-Hiti said in a press statement received by IraqiNews.com, “The joint security forces carried out, at noon today, a large-scale security operation on ISIS gatherings in Baghdadi vicinity, killing 40 ISIS fighters and destructing four rocket launchers.”
Hiti added, “The security forces also managed to destroy three car bombs,” pointing out that, “Combat troops were deployed in the vicinity of al-Baghdadi in anticipation of any terrorist attacks in the coming hours.”
Iraqinews