Friday, July 20, 2012

Ten Pieces of Bad Economic News the Media's Ignoring

Ten Pieces of Bad Economic News the Media's Ignoring
1. Weekly jobless claims shot up to 386,000.
2. Foreclosures are hitting our most vulnerable citizens.
3. Factory activity contracted for a second month in a row.
4. Home sales dropped a whopping 5.4% -- the biggest drop in nine months.
5. Retail sales dropped for the third straight month.
6. Consumer confidence dipped to 84.7.
7. U.S. business inventories increased by .3%...
8. …sales dropped .1%.
9. Food prices are skyrocketing.
10. More Americans are getting federal disability than jobs.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb

Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR
There is a countdown; 18,500 feet above them, the missile is detonated and blows up.
Which means, these men intentionally stood directly underneath an exploding 2-kiloton nuclear bomb. One of them, at the key moment (he's wearing sunglasses), looks up.
You have to see this to believe it.

Irish Examiner USA: Americans' Ignorance About Socialism Is Unbelievable

Irish Examiner USA: Americans' Ignorance About Socialism Is Unbelievable
Socialism has never worked but it is easy to sell to those who refuse to study history which is why progressives use academia as their base of operations.
I'm willing to bet that "Animal Farm" and "1984" are no longer recommended reading in today's high schools.
Big Brother is only a TV reality show to many of the young today who regard socialism and big government as a good thing because that's how the mainstream media presents it.

Washington state to become first to offer voter registration on Facebook

Washington state to become first to offer voter registration on Facebook

Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers $250,000 Per Car

Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers $250,000 Per Car | Heartlander Magazine

Carney On Why Jobs Council Hasn't Met In Six Months: Obama Has "A Lot On His Plate"

Carney On Why Jobs Council Hasn't Met In Six Months: Obama Has "A Lot On His Plate" | RealClearPolitics#.UAdLBkTXK3M.facebook

2012-7-18 MCC Sheriff's debate

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

For the First Time, Canadians Now Richer Than Americans

For the First Time, Canadians Now Richer Than Americans - US News and World Report
The average Canadian household is worth about $40,000 more than their American counterparts

Michelle Obama's ski trip cost taxpayers $83,000

Michelle Obama's ski trip cost taxpayers $83,000 | The Daily Caller

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

PJ Media » The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease
Soon, society divided into two parts:
1) The problem solvers and innovators.
2) The whiners, who would keep saying the first group’s output wasn’t good enough.

Obama Can Haz Reelection?

Obama Can Haz Reelection?

Project Veritas: Legislators, Union Bosses Seek Funding for Digging Hole...

California Pension Takes Nosedive

California Pension Takes Nosedive | Via Meadia
Worse, the fund’s actuary recommended a lower target, but the fund rejected it — not because the current number is accurate, but because using a more accurate rate of return would place too great a burden on struggling governments!
Instead, they will close their eyes, clap their hands, and wait for Tinkerbelle to balance the books.

Dismantling of a culture

Dismantling of a Culture - Interview - National Review Online
GELERNTER: American culture had its throat slit and bled to death at our feet.
Isn’t that revolutionary enough?
The blood is only metaphorical, but to the 40 percent of [all] infants [who are] born to single mothers this year, the consequences will be real.
In a piddling few decades, the world’s most powerful, influential cultural establishment happened to get demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.
What had been basically a Christian, patriotic, family-loving, politically moderate part of society became contemptuous of biblical religion, of patriotism, of the family, of American greatness.
The American cultural elite used to resemble (more or less) the rest of America.
Today it disdains the rest of America.
That’s a revolution.

City of Compton may declare bankruptcy by September: officials

City of Compton may declare bankruptcy by September: officials - Yahoo! News
The City of Compton, a city of 93,000 people located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, must decide by September 1 whether to seek bankruptcy, according to its two most senior financial officials.

Americans Joining Disability Now Outpacing Americans Finding Jobs

Americans Joining Disability Now Outpacing Americans Finding Jobs | The Weekly Standard
As the chart shows, between April-June 2012, an estimated 246,000 Americans were added to Social Security's disability insurance program. In that same time period, only 225,000 American jobs were created.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

How the Democratic Media Spin the News

How the Democratic Media Spin the News | Power Line
He said that Obama’s comments show three related things:
1) The President doesn’t understand how America and business work. No wonder his administration has failed to create jobs.
 2) Obama’s crony capitalism: he thinks the way to create jobs is for the government to pick winners and losers, and slide money to Obama’s bundlers and allies.
3) Obama’s attitude toward small business also reflects where he comes from, the “murky political world” of Chicago where politicians and felons are interchangeable.

EyeOnMuskegon 7-15-2012

Democrats say they're worried Gov. Snyder's school funding ideas sound too much like vouchers

Democrats say they're worried Gov. Snyder's school funding ideas sound too much like vouchers | MLive.com
Democrats say they’re concerned that the team starting discussions on overhauling school funding is looking at ways to bring a voucher-like system to the state, but they’re open to seeing what the panel comes up with – and who is asked to assist.
Leaders of a Lansing foundation overseeing the plan say they’re looking to write a bill that would allow money to more closely follow children and offer families more educational choices.

Smart meters: State mulls health, privacy risks of new electricity meters being installed at Michigan homes

Smart meters: State mulls health, privacy risks of new electricity meters being installed at Michigan homes | MLive.com
The Michigan Public Service Commission recently released a staff report that generally supported smart meter deployment but recommended utilities allow customers to opt out of using the new technology.

THAT LOOKS BAD!

Media Fail: Chevy Volt Makes NO Money, Costs Taxpayers Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Per Car

Media Fail: Chevy Volt Makes NO Money, Costs Taxpayers Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Per Car | NewsBusters.org
And with GM’s new 60-day return policy, it looks like you can buy a Volt and cash the $7,500 bribe check.
Then return the Volt - and keep the $7,500 bribe cash.
How’s that for Taxpayer coin stewardship?

How Close Are We to New Great Depression?

How Close Are We to New Great Depression? - Business News - CNBC
“If this credit bubble pops, the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.”

OMB's Stockman: "We're At The Fiscal Endgame"

OMB's Stockman: "We're At The Fiscal Endgame" | ZeroHedge
His warning is that unlike in past periods, today "we are completely paralyzed, there is an ideological divide on taxes and entitlement like we've never had before" and while he realizes that "the debt problem doesn't become a debt problem until the market suddenly have a wake up call and realize that if the Fed doesn't keep printing, it's game over."

Monday, July 16, 2012

Muskegon area radio stations partnering up with Local Sports Journal to bolster coverage of area sports

Muskegon area radio stations partnering up with Local Sports Journal to bolster coverage of area sports | Local Sports Journal
Radio stations WLCS- FM 98.3 and WVIB-FM 100.1 along with Local Sports Journal have announced a partnership that will benefit Muskegon area sports fans starting with the fast-approaching high school football season.
Jon Russell, operations manager and high school play-by-play at WLCS-FM along with Jason Goorman and Ron Rop, co-publishers of Local Sports Journal, announced the partnership today.

The Vélodrome d’hiver Round-up: July 16 and 17, 1942

The Vélodrome d’hiver Round-up: July 16 and 17, 1942 - Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence

The real history for the book "Sarah's Key".

Conquest’s Laws

Conquest’s Laws
By John Derbyshire
Several readers have asked me for Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of politics.
As best I can remember, they are:
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will
sooner or later become left-wing.
3. The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by
assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the Church of England and Amnesty
International as examples.
 Of the Third, he noted that a bureaucarcy
sometimes actually IS controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies–e.g.
the postwar British secret service.

TODAY’S SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Choices Matter In Avoiding Poverty.

Instapundit » Blog Archive »
TODAY’S SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Choices Matter In Avoiding Poverty.
UPDATE: Reader Bill Reece writes:

I had a law professor who taught the traditional business related law classes at my law school who followed the Chicago School’s “Law and Economics” Theory of Law.
I will never forget my first week of Contracts Law in my first year in law school.
I came to this class as a poor kid whose family had basically lost its dreams of a working-middle class lifestyle when my Dad’s job at US Steel disappeared along with thousands of others in 1981, six years earlier.
I came from a pretty liberal background, and knew next to nothing about economics and business.
I had managed to get to law school by earning a scholarship based on my undergraduate work while facing these tough economic times.
This professor said something that was shocking to me, and at first upsetting.
He actually would go on to use the expression often in the classes I took from him (4 over three years of school).
“There is a cost to being poor.”
At first it seemed glib and uncaring, but as I sat through his classes and as I talked to him outside of the classroom, I realized it was said more with pity and regret than anything else.
And from my family’s experience, I recognized pretty quickly and far better than any child of the upper or upper-middle class, that he was all too correct.
The consequences of bad life decisions, made many times over, cost people heavily.
Dependence, like addiction, begins with choice.
We don’t want to admit this uncomfortable fact, but in the beginning there are conscious choices that leave people in the thralls of dependence, poverty, addiction, depression, and many other dead-ends in life.
And the lesson this professor offered to me was that we make these outcomes more likely by excusing the choices that lead to them rather than confronting them.
I can also pinpoint that week as the moment that I began to stop being a liberal and eventually became a libertarian

Sunday, July 15, 2012

From Seat to Shining Seat

From Seat to Shining Seat - By Mark Steyn - The Corner - National Review Online

By Mark Steyn
"I hope you’re sitting down for this one…
Navy’s New Gender-Neutral Carriers Won’t Have Urinals"

Penn State: Here are 10 steps to recovery

Penn State: Here are 10 steps to recovery
As shocking as Louis Freeh’s report is — and it is about as horrific an indictment of institutional corruption as college football has ever seen — there is an opportunity for the good people at Penn State (of which there are plenty) to recover.