With an eye on the World Cup, Vanessa Huppenkothen!

The punditry on Mexican television is so much better than anywhere else! (gigglesnort)
Allow me to make my case. 

Let the record show Exhibit #1. 

Vanessa Huppenkothen, she of German/Mexican decent currently working for Televisa Deportes.
 
Exhibit #2

 

Yes, it’s Mexican World Cup TV reporter, Vanessa Huppenkothen --for the win! 

Seriously, if someone is to be smuggled across the border……..….. Aye Papi Chulo que rico!  #worldcup

An excellent must read recap of the failures the Administration perpetrates and worst of all, fails to learn from. Or, is it the Cloward–Piven strategy deployed while the masses stayed happily uninformed?
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."~ Attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

Ignoring the path to recovery

By: George F. Will

Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 9:00 p.m.

     It is said that the problem with the younger generation — any younger generation — is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting. Barack Obama, forever young, has convenient memory loss: It serves his ideology. His amnesia concerning the policies that produced the robust recovery from the more severe recession of 1981-82 has produced policies that have resulted in 0.1 percent economic growth in 2014's first quarter.

June begins the sixth year of the anemic recovery from an 18-month recession. Even if what Obama's administration calls “historically severe” weather — aka, winter — reduced GDP growth by up to 1.4 percentage points, growth of 1.5 percent would still be grotesque.

The reason unemployment fell by four-tenths of a point (to 6.3 percent) in April while growth stalled is that 806,000 people left the labor force. There are about 14.5 million more Americans than before the recession but nearly 300,000 fewer jobs, and household income remains below the pre-recession peak.

Paul Volcker, whose nomination to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was Jimmy Carter's best presidential decision, raised interest rates to put the nation through a recession to extinguish the inflation that, combined with stagnant growth, ruined Carter's presidency. Then came the 1983-88 expansion, when growth averaged 4.6 percent, including five quarters over 7 percent.

Ronald Reagan lightened the weight of government as measured by taxation and regulation. Obama has done the opposite. According to Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, four of the five largest yearly totals of pages in the Federal Register — the record of regulations — have occurred during the Obama administration. The CEI's “unconstitutionality index,” measuring Congress' delegation of its lawmaking policy, was 51 in 2013. This means Congress passed 72 laws but unelected bureaucrats issued 3,659 regulations.

The more than $1.1 trillion of student loan debt is restraining consumption, as is the retirement of baby boomers. More than 40 percent of recent college graduates are either unemployed or in jobs that do not require a college degree. This is understandable, given that 44 percent of the job growth since the recession ended has been in food services, retail clerking or other low-wage jobs.

In April, the number of persons under 25 in the workforce declined by 484,000. Unsurprisingly, almost one in three (31 percent) persons 18 to 34 are living with their parents, including 25 percent who have jobs.

So, the rate of household formation has, Neil Irwin reports in The New York Times, slowed from a yearly average of 1.35 million in 2001-06 to 569,000 in 2007-13. However, a Wall Street Journal headline announces that Washington has a plan: “U.S. Backs Off Tight Mortgage Rules.” It really is true: Life is not one damn thing after another; it is the same damn thing over and over.

There is, however, something new under the sun. The Pew Research Center reports that Americans 25 to 32 — “millennials” — constitute the first age cohort since World War II with higher unemployment or a greater portion living in poverty than their parents at this age. But today's millennials have the consolation of having the president they wanted.

Source: http://triblive.com/opinion/georgewill/6188362-74/percent-growth-recession#ixzz34jJcdEo1

Read more: http://triblive.com/opinion/georgewill/6188362-74/percent-growth-recession#ixzz34jJHooiA

Ultimately, what should we view as ideal from the standpoint of a societal overview.

Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome reinforces the ideals of Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, and the Declaration of Independence. 

The ideal is equality of opportunity, rather than equality of outcome. We are all entitled to the pursuit of happiness, we are not entitled to a guarantee of happiness. IMO

Come back to bed!

‘Global Cooling’, ‘Global Warming’, ‘Climate Change’; Ok, now ‘Climate Disruption’. 

It never ends this search for wording to back up an ideological/political agenda. 

I’m going back to bed! 

http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/Brian_Cigol/media/image03_zps7447d6f7.gif.html#sthash.BwGheRZs.cmfs

US gains 288k jobs, most in 2 years; rate 6.3 pct.

May 2, 12:08 PM EDT

US gains 288k jobs, most in 2 years; rate 6.3 pct. 

 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-02-12-08-32

Most news sources "conveniently" omit the most important paragraph from the report: "the drop in the unemployment rate from March’s 6.7 percent came as the agency’s survey of households showed the labor force shrank by more the 800,000 in April. The so-called participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, decreased to 62.8 percent, matching the lowest level since 1978, from 63.2 percent a month earlier." So for every new job, 3.5 folks dropped out. Policy success, ahh, no.  

America is still utterly clueless that the unemployment numbers being trumpeted by the media are always the BLS's U-3 index number. This index is so deliberately deceptive that they are useless if you really want to know how many Americans are out of work. The BLS U-6 index ("alternative index") is missing key data, but is much closer to reality; it is showing 12.3% unemployment for April 2014. The real numbers on shadow statistics dot com show over 20%. Our situation proves that Americans are happy being lied to if it lets them ignore a growing problem for a bit longer.

Respectfully Submitted,

Buff

The Cloward Piven Strategy

 Key provisos:

Cloward Piven Strategy

• Create ever-growing constituencies DEPENDENT on the government for their livelihoods directly through entitlements, social safety nets and government suppliers in the private sectors!
• Regulate and tax the private sector into submission (healthcare, banking, small businesses, real estate, autos) and demise while legislating demand to their crony capitalist supporters.
• Politicize and control the allocation of credit (mortgages, student debt, consumer financial protection agency, Dodd Frank, etc.)
• Control the public schools and teach dependence, childlike trust in government and that you are ENTITLED to something for nothing (health care, food, pensions, disability insurance, shelter) and not taught to think for themselves versus conventional schooling of self reliance, ability to solve problems, logic, importance of hard work, reading, writing and arithmetic and the lessons of history.
• Have a main stream media report misinformation as FACTS for the useful idiots created by the public school monopoly.
• Create growth in government and its obligations that COMPOUND faster than economic growth and tax receipts.
• Debase the currency to impoverish the middle class and create desperation for growth, while removing the obligation to pay for their BENEFITS (47% of the country pays no fed taxes).
• " When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can always count on Paul's support. "

January 17, 2014

Paul Krugman, Vanquished

By Jon N. Hall
It is always satisfying when one sees an insufferable jerk get his just comeuppance. And when the jerk is a bully who thinks he's always right and all others, save his acolytes, are not only "always wrong" but "knaves and fools" as well, then it is especially sweet to see the jerk shown, on point after point, to have been consistently wrong.
In "Krugtron the Invincible," economics historian Niall Ferguson uses Paul Krugman's own words to filet the Keynesian economist. Ferguson's three-part, 7,421-word article is a pleasure to read, and not only for those interested in economics.
But on economics, perhaps the most devastating of Ferguson's takedowns is in Part 1 where he details Krugman's serial predictions about the imminent collapse of the euro currency. Ferguson provides quotes from no fewer than eleven articles, from April 2010 through July 2012, to demonstrate how wrong the economist was. Ever the gentlemen, Ferguson concedes:

Now, I happen to be rather a euro-skeptic myself. I opposed the creation of the euro and predicted at the outset that the experiment of monetary union without fiscal integration would ultimately degenerate. But today, as you may have noticed, the euro is still intact.

In Part 2, Ferguson asks why Krugman had been "so bold" in predicting the collapse of the euro. The reason is because Krugman "had so completely failed to predict the U.S. financial crisis." If one can't predict, one can't be taken too seriously as a scientist." So Krugman had to get out front on the euro crisis. Hence: the need to be bold.
In Parts 1 and 2 Ferguson makes an air-tight case that Professor Krugman has been quite deficient in his analyses and predictions of late: "One might have expected a little more humility from an economist who so clearly failed to understand the nature of the biggest financial crisis of his lifetime until after it had happened."
Those who have no use for Krugman the economist will find the first two parts delicious in their itemizing of his bad predictions. But in Part 3, Ferguson goes beyond economics, making a wider appeal. In it, our Scottish historian looks at the nature of history and the place of the "public intellectual" in modern society. And he states why he is responding to Krugman's vendetta against him:

You may ask: Why have I taken the trouble to do this? I have three motives. The first is to illuminate the way the world really works, as opposed to the way Krugman and his beloved New Keynesian macroeconomic models say it works. The second is to assert the importance of humility and civility in public as well as academic discourse. And the third, frankly, is to teach him the meaning of the old Scottish regimental motto: nemo me impune lacessit ("No one attacks me with impunity").

With this meticulous article, Ferguson conducts a master class on how to respond to one's critics and intellectual enemies; I highly recommend it. There are hyperlinks out the wazoo, and as for Krugtron the Invincible, there's no place to hide.
The reason people dislike Krugman is not because he's a left-winger, nor because he's consistently wrong about matters economic. Rather, they dislike him because he has no manners; the guy's a jerk. If Krugman delivered his opinions like a gentlemen, readers would consider them, perhaps lament that he is again wrong, and then move on. But Krugman is a piece of work; his nastiness might remind one of MSNBC's Ed Schultz or Martin Bashir. One of the more compelling parts of Ferguson's article is when he turns to the loss of civility in public discourse. Krugman is poison to that discourse.
The word "fraud" does not appear in "Krugtron the Invincible"; Ferguson is much too decorous and gentlemanly for that. But if Krugman were to be called a fraud, it should not be because he's so frequently wrong; it should be because he positions himself as the authority. Delivering his pronouncements ex cathedra, Krugman seems to have some insatiable need to be infallible. Because he must have no doubt about himself, he must have nothing but doubt about others, and even impugn their motives.
Economics, if it is a science, is certainly not a complete one. Economists are continually being surprised by how the economy behaves. (Behave, economy; that's not how you're supposed to act.) Nonetheless, we must make sense of the economy. And to do that, we use economics, deficient though it is at prediction.
In this time of economic uncertainty, when Congress has run four back-to-back trillion-dollar deficits while the Fed created other trillions out of nothing, economists need to possess at least a smidgeon of self-doubt, a modicum of modesty.

Source:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/m-paul_krugman_vanquished.html#.Utl70SfNaCc.gmail

Utterly brilliant and no-one comes to mind that is more deserving of this dressing down than the sanctimonious Paul Krugman. 

Read Niall Fergusons' entire article here: http://www.niallferguson.com/journalism/miscellany/krugtron-the-invincible-part-1

Oh, it's long, but delicious!