History for December 2

History for December 2 - On-This-Day.com:
George Seurat 1859, Charles Ringling 1862, Maria Callas 1923 


Alexander M. Haig 1924, Edwin Meese III 1931, Aaron Rodgers 1983 - Football player 


1804 - Napoleon was crowned emperor of France at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. 


1823 - U.S. President James Monroe outlined his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere. 


1901 - Gillette patented the KC Gillette Razor. It was first razor to feature a permanent handle and disposable double-edge razor blades. 


1927 - The Ford Motor Company unveiled the Model A automobile. It was the successor to the Model T. 


1939 - New York's La Guardia Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago landed at 12:01 a.m. 


1942 - A self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated by Dr. Enrico Fermi and his staff at the University of Chicago. 


1961 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared in a nationally broadcast speech that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that he was going to lead Cuba to communism. 


1969 - The Boeing 747 jumbo jet got its first public preview as 191 people flew from Seattle, WA, to New York City, NY. Most of the passengers were reporters and photographers. 


1982 - Doctors at the University of Utah implanted a permanent artificial heart in the chest of retired dentist Barney Clark. He lived 112 days with the device. The operation was the first of its kind. 


1990 - The Midwest section of the U.S. prepared for a massive earthquake predicted by Iben Browning. Nothing happened. 


1993 - Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot to death by security forces in Medellin. 


1994 - The U.S. government agreed not to seek a recall of allegedly fire-prone General Motors pickup trucks. Instead a deal was made with GM under which the company would spend more than $51 million on safety and research. 


1997 - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of telephone fund-raising by President Clinton and Vice President Gore. It was concluded that they had not violated election laws. 


2001 - Enron Corp. filed for Chapter 11 reorganization. The filing came five days after Dynegy walked away from a $8.4 billion buyout. It was the largest bankruptcy in U.S.history. 

You Won’t Believe What Ferguson Protestors and Obama Just Did

You Won’t Believe What Ferguson Protestors and Obama Just Did:

"Also in attendance was tax cheat Al Sharpton and not in attendance was a single person from the Ferguson Police Department. What Obama is trying to do is create a top down government, instead of leaving governing to individual communities."

After More Than a Year, This Is the White House’s Response to a Petition to Declare the Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group | TheBlaze.com

After More Than a Year, This Is the White House’s Response to a Petition to Declare the Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group | TheBlaze.com:

"After more than a year, the White House finally responded to an online petition asking that the Muslim Brotherhood be declared a terrorist organization, and the answer is no.

“We have not seen credible evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced its decades-long commitment to non-violence,” the White House said in response to a “We the People” petition that garnered 213,146 signatures — more than twice the 100,000-signature threshold to trigger a response."


How much worse does it have to get before Americans realize our enemy is inside our government? 

Prisoners get millions from IRS in bogus refund claims, watchdog finds | Fox News

Prisoners get millions from IRS in bogus refund claims, watchdog finds | Fox News:

"According to the report, more than 137,000 phony tax returns were filed in 2012 using a prisoner’s Social Security number to the tune of $1 billion. While many of the fake refunds were flagged and prevented by the agency, the IRS issued $70 million in bogus refunds.

This was a significant increase from 2007, when more than 37,000 fake tax returns were filed for amounts equaling $166 million."

How Miriam Carey’s U-turn at a White House checkpoint led to her death

How Miriam Carey’s U-turn at a White House checkpoint led to her death | The Washington Post
Do you remember Miriam Carey? 
Her remarkably public death at 34 mesmerized us for a couple of news cycles.
Then we moved on pretty quickly.
I had to look up her name when I first started puzzling over this case.
The main thing I remembered was that incredible video — the one showing the two-door black Infiniti surrounded by Secret Service officers with guns drawn near the Capitol Reflecting Pool.
The car looks trapped.
Suddenly the driver backs into a squad car and accelerates away.
There’s the sound of gunfire while tourists take cover on the West Lawn.
The Infiniti reappears, making a loop around a traffic circle, and proceeds up Constitution Avenue to what would be the fatal encounter outside the Hart Building.

What an afternoon. We were told that Carey “rammed” White House and Capitol “barriers.”
That she tried to breach two security perimeters.
That she had mental problems.

District Police Chief Cathy Lanier said federal officers acted “heroically.”
The House of Representatives offered a standing ovation.

It was easy to call this a tragedy and turn the page.

Except that some of what little we thought we knew hasn’t held up. 
The part about ramming White House barriers and trying to breach two security perimeters? 
Not exactly true.

Business survey: Michigan should spend to aid Detroit recovery

Business survey: Michigan should spend to aid Detroit recovery | Crain's Detroit Business:
Businesspeople think Michigan needs to open the purse strings and help fund infrastructure, job training and aid for a post-bankruptcy Detroit if the state wants them to benefit more from the economic recovery. 
....Ciura also placed top priority on state assistance to Detroit in its recovery after its plan of adjustment to exit an $18 billion bankruptcy takes effect next week. 
So did 38 percent of respondents in the survey, and 79 percent said it was at least somewhat important. 

13 Facts About Ferguson the Media Will Never Tell You

13 Facts About Ferguson the Media Will Never Tell You:

"According to protesters who erupted in violence after a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., this was the case of a white policeman shooting an unarmed black teenager with his hands in the air in a community plagued by racial tension."

Bragging rights: See where Michigan cities rank on 'best of' lists

Bragging rights: See where Michigan cities rank on 'best of' lists | MLive.com

African-American Journalist says “The Issue Here is Black Criminality, Not the Behavior of Cops” - Eagle Rising

African-American Journalist says “The Issue Here is Black Criminality, Not the Behavior of Cops” - Eagle Rising:

"Jason Riley is an accomplished journalist with the Wall Street Journal and on Tuesday he made some major waves with what may go down as the most Un-PC comment ever told.

Riley was on Fox News speaking with Megyn Kelly when he said,"

Utilities' report warns of energy shortage: Consumers, DTE urge building new power plants

Utilities' report warns of energy shortage: Consumers, DTE urge building new power plants | Crain's Detroit Business:
Michigan's two largest utilities -- Consumers Energy and DTE Energy Co. -- are mounting a major public relations effort to make legislators and electric customers aware that a shortage of power generation reserve could occur in Michigan and the Midwest starting in 2016.
The public education campaign began last month with the release of a utility-commissioned report by Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants Inc. called Electric Reliability in Michigan: The Challenge Ahead.
The use of the word "reliability" in the report surprised some experts because that word generally is used by state regulators -- and even DTE and Consumers themselves -- to describe the frequency and duration of power failures caused by storms. 
But utility representatives said that because of the planned retirement of nine coal-fired power plants in Michigan over the next two years, reliability now also means the ability of power companies to provide adequate electricity to customers at peak demand. 

Robot Proves Antarctic Ice Thicker than Thought

Robot Proves Antarctic Ice Thicker than Thought:

"On Monday, the team responsible for the study asserted in the journal Nature Geoscience, "We suggest that thick ice in the near-coastal and interior pack may be under-represented in existing in situ assessments of Antarctic sea ice and hence, on average, Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought." SeaBED traversed both east and west Antarctica, taking measurements across 50 hectares and finding ice as much as 16 m"

Oh lordy, we bad! (specially in Detroit!)-----The 5 Worst States for LGBT People

The 5 Worst States for LGBT People | Rolling Stone

5. Michigan

States like Tennessee and North Dakota present strong cases for inclusion as the last spot on this list. Tennessee is one of the eight "Don't Say Gay" states, as well as ranking high in income inequality and poverty and low in public support for same-sex marriage. Gay Tennesseans are also less likely to know someone like them, as the state has the fourth-smallest percentage of LGBT citizens. It's got nothing on North Dakota, where only 1.7 percent of the population identifies as LGBT, the lowest in the nation. 

Protests in front of the federal court in Detroit, Michigan on February 25th, 2014. (Photo: Courtney Sacco/Corbis)

But we're going with Michigan. While having more gays than those others, the state has a disproportionately high hate crime rate, with one survey ranking Michigan as high assecond in the nation. These incidents largely target transgender women of color. In 2013, Detroit resident Coko Williams was fatally shot after her throat had been slashed. The previous year, police found the mutilated torso of 19-year-old Michelle Hillard; Michigan Live reports another woman was "burned so badly she couldn't be identified for 11 days." An attack on a lesbian couple in April further highlighted the inadequacy of the state's laws in prosecuting hate crimes.

This wave of anti-LGBT violence is part of the reason why Detroit was named the most dangerous city in the nation for gay travelers, and the survey also cited the metro area's dwindling number of gay bars and high poverty rate...

Retail Disaster: Holiday Sales Crater by 11%, Online Spend Declines: NRF Blames Shopping Fiasco On "Stronger Economy"

Retail Disaster: Holiday Sales Crater by 11%, Online Spend Declines: NRF Blames Shopping Fiasco On "Stronger Economy" | Zero Hedge
Last year was bad. 
This year is an outright disaster.

As we reported earlier using ShopperTrak data, the first two days of the holiday shopping season were already showing a -0.5% decline across bricks-and-mortar stores, following a "cash for clunkers"-like jump in early promotions which pulled demand forward with little follow through in the remaining shopping days. 

However, not even we predicted the shocker just released from the National Retail Federation (NRF), the traditionally cheery industry organization, which just reported absolutely abysmal numbers:
sales during the four-day Thanksgiving holiday period crashed by a whopping 11% from $57.4 billion to $50.9 billion, confirming what everyone but the Fed knows by now:
the US middle class is being obliterated, and that key driver of 70% of US economic growth is in the worst shape it has been since the Lehman collapse, courtesy of 6 years of Fed's ruinous central planning. 

...Also did we mention the NRF is perpetually cheery and always desperate to put a metric ton of lipstick on a pig? 
Well, hold on to your hats folks:

He also attributed the declines to better online offerings and an improving economy where “people don’t feel the same psychological need to rush out and get the great deal that weekend, particularly if they expected to be  more deals,” he said.

Whatever Happened to Inflation?

Whatever Happened to Inflation? - Reason.com
In recent years, U.S. federal deficits have declined from more than $1.2 trillion to less than $600 billion. 
This is not because the government has made hard choices to raise revenue or cut spending but because rising asset prices have resulted in greater tax receipts from the wealthy. 
Yet this windfall can only last until the next meaningful correction in asset prices. 
If tax revenues fall, growing federal deficits would compel the Fed to print the difference. 
In that case, foreign banks would need to buy even more dollars to maintain their currency valuations. 
If they lose the will to keep pace, the dollar would lose relative value. 
A weaker dollar could be the spark that finally ignites significant CPI inflation in the United States.

Story to watch: Teens beat motorist to death with hammers in St. Louis | Twitchy

Story to watch: Teens beat motorist to death with hammers in St. Louis | Twitchy:

"A 32-year-old man was beaten to death with hammers by at least two teens early Sunday morning on Itaska Street.

The victim was identified as Zemir Begic, 32, of the 4200 block of Miami Street. He had injuries to his head, abdomen, face and mouth. He was taken to St. Louis University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead."

Who Boycotts Wal-Mart?

Who Boycotts Wal-Mart? | National Review Online:
Social-justice warriors who are too enlightened to let their poor neighbors pay lower prices. 
...Ironically, the anti-Wal-Mart crusaders want to make life worse for people who are literally counting pennies as they shop for necessities. 
Study after study has shown that Wal-Mart has meaningfully reduced prices: 3.1 percent overall, by one estimate — with a whopping 9.1 percent cut to the price of groceries. 
That comes to about $2,300 a year per household, savings that accrue overwhelmingly to people of modest incomes, not to celebrity activists and Ivy League social-justice crusaders.

Ultimately, these campaigns are exercises in tribal affiliation. 
The Rolex tribe, and those who aspire to be aligned with it, signal their status by sneering at the Timex tribe — or by condescending to it as they purport to act on its behalf, as though poor people were too stupid to know where to find the best deal on a can of beans. 
Or call it the Trader Joe’s tribe vs. the Wal-Mart tribe, the Prius tribe vs. the F-150 tribe.

How Much Obamanomics Has Cost Us

How Much Obamanomics Has Cost Us:

"What has been the price tag for the audacious Obamanomics experiment? How much has it all cost — the bailouts, the debt, the stimulus plans, the printing of cheap money, Obamacare and all the rest?"

WOW: Look at how much Walmart pays their employees when there is NO MINIMUM WAGE laws

WOW: Look at how much Walmart pays their employees when there is NO MINIMUM WAGE laws

History for December 1

History for December 1 - On-This-Day.com
Mary Martin 1913, Stansfield Turner 1923, Woody Allen 1935 


Lou Rawls 1935, Richard Pryor 1940, Bette Midler 1945 


1835 - Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales. 



1913 - Ford Motor Co. began using a new movable assembly line that ushered in the era of mass production. 


1941 - In the U.S., the Civil Air Patrol was created. In April 1943 the Civil Air Patrol was placed under the jurisdiction of the Army Air Forces. 


1943 - In Teheran, leaders of the United States, the USSR and the United Kingdom met to reaffirm the goal set on October 30, 1943. The previous meeting called for an early establishment of an international organization to maintain peace and security. 


1952 - In Denmark, it was announced that the first successful sex-change operation had been performed. 


1955 - Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, AL, refused to give up her seat to a white man. Mrs. Parks was arrested marking a milestone in the civil rights movement in the U.S. 


1959 - 12 countries, including the U.S. and USSR, signed a treaty that set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, which would be free from military activity. 


1969 - The U.S. government held its first draft lottery since World War II. 


1991 - Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Soviet Union.