Disclosure: I believe this kind of deception has been going on for a long, long time ( 30 plus years )
Read the whole thing to get the full flavor
What puzzles me is that with such large numbers of people without jobs or adequate jobs, how can retail sales continue to hold their own? If people still had their house ATM or were increasing their credit card debt, I could see how they could keep spending at pre-recession levels. But people are paying down debt, not increasing it. Something just doesn't jibe IMO.
With the current job situation, I would expect to see retail sales at something like 90% of the bubble years sales. Do you have any retail sales data that verifies the stress in the employment situation?
Sunny Jim
Reply To Sunny Jim
Sunny Jim
Retail sales are not what they seem
I have written about this before but not enough. The published numbers are based on "same store sales". Think about all the companies that have gone bankrupt. Take Circuit City for an example. Gone. The doors are closed. Some of those shoppers went to Best Buy where same store sales rose.
Also remember that Best Buy and many other chains closed weak stores. The result: same store sales went up again.
Government methodology for reporting retail sales is based on sampling stores in existence. It does not factor in stores not in existence but recently were. Nor does it handle closed stores even when the chain is still doing business.
Government reporting of retail sales is fatally flawed. As an aside, this blog is my daily must-read on the economy. No agenda, no politics except to display some of the fiscal insanity being perpetrated.
You may not agree with his conclusions but you can never say he is bullsh*tting you.
No one I knows gets a dime for this endorsement, including this poster
The Bush administration got a lot of things wrong but at least they usually had some idea of who America's adversaries were and who America's friends were. For example, Bush's policy of maintaining the special relationship with Britain was a simple recognition of the close bonds of alliance, friendship and interests that the British and Americans have had since World War I. In contrast, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are apparently clueless about some of the most basic aspects of foreign policy: supporting one's friends and fencing in one's adversaries. The declaration of neutrality on the issue of the sovereignty of the Falklands issued by the US State Department is clear proof of the uselessness of the Obama administration.
In the grand scheme of things it makes little sense for America to give moral support to the Kirchner government in Argentina. Kirchner is no friend of the US and Kirchner's government is in deep domestic trouble for its gross mismanagement of the economy and its attempts to suppress the press criticism of the regime at home. One has to wonder what benefit America gets out of hurting Britain on this issue. Perhaps Obama thinks that the more Leftist Latin American regimes will somehow approve of the US. If that is the case, he is truly mistaken, as most Latin American nations dislike the Argentineans, and have little sympathy for the mess Argentina got into over the Falklands. But this mess is just typical of the drift in US foreign policy if one can say that it even HAS a coherent foreign policy these days. As I said, at the core of the problem is a simple inability to recognise and support our friends over adversaries. In his first year in office Obama made numerous apologies for America's past to the Third World, he effusively greeted the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, he bowed low to the Saudi ruler, and called for a reset' of relations with Russia all the while implying that America was at fault for all these problems. At the same time he rudely undermined the security of America's Eastern European allies by cancelling the ballistic missile defence with no notice and no prior discussion, he failed to push for a free trade agreement with Colombia America's strongest ally in South America and he supported Chavez's allies when they tried (luckily unsuccessfully) to unseat a democratic and pro-US government in Honduras.
A big part of the problem is a Secretary of State who is a lightweight as far as foreign policy is concerned. Obama brought Hillary Clinton into the cabinet for domestic policy considerations. He needed to put Mrs Clinton and her husband under tight control. As a powerful senator from New York, she would probably have taken over as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party and been able to challenge Obama's Chicago Gang' for control of the party. Despite the acclaim that America's mainstream media has heaped on Hillary Clinton over the years, her foreign policy background and experience before becoming Secretary of State was to accompany her husband on foreign trips and preside over first wives' dinners for the spouses of visiting heads of state. One learns a lot about protocol and ceremonies but this is no preparation for the real work of making policy. Clinton has no experience or education in foreign policy. She speaks no foreign languages and has never lived abroad. She lacks the intellectual temperament to be a foreign policy leader. Like Obama, she has long surrounded herself with sycophants.
On assuming office, Obama's vision of foreign policy was simple: he would repudiate past American policies and the whole world would melt before the president's charm. The administration somehow thought that we really didn't have enemies with agendas completely hostile to our own there were just countries that had become offended by US actions and they would happily cooperate with America as soon as the evil Republicans were gone. Well, it hasn't worked and there was no Plan B. With a president overwhelmed by domestic problems, Hillary Clinton has failed to step in and set a foreign policy vision. Simply put, she does not have the brains or the experience to develop a coherent foreign policy vision for America. This is how we get policy mistakes on issues such as the sovereignty of the Falklands.
#3
Nah, this is what happens when you take your foreign policy cues from Hugo Chavez. (Don't believe me? Name one time where Obama didn't fall into line with Latin America's ugliest dictator....then get back to me.)
As I understand it, and I'm here to learn, is that the inconsistancies of the US administration changes can be a headache for others. This particular administration has not only gone the position for friends route but coupled with a number of parallel positions. So far I think Clinton! has been the best appointment* but what power does she have when there are one or two other departments to go to which cover the same field and are higher up on the hierarchy.
#5
...and Kirchners government is in deep domestic trouble for its gross mismanagement of the economy and its attempts to suppress the press criticism of the regime at home.
Even though Kirchner's government doesn't like us, I'm certain Bambi recognizes a kindred soul in Kirchner's policies.
#6
That is, the czar system is disruptive to the power and authority system except as a reward package. Great Lakes czar, really?, Think about that, a shipping issue down St. Lawrence who do you go to?
#7
Barack Obama is dirty back-stabbing b@stard. What kind of @rsehole green-lights an invasion of an ally that's been fighting alongside his country's forces for a decade, non-stop? He is happy to encourage events which could well lead to the same British forces fighting alongside US forces in Afghanistan dying in the South Atlantic repelling a foreign invasion.
His being an incompetent fool is becoming increasingly dangerous to us all.
#8
What kind of @rsehole green-lights an invasion of an ally that's been fighting alongside his country's forces for a decade, non-stop?
The kind who's grandfather was imprisoned for spying against the British forces in Kenya while in their employ during the Mau Mau insurrection. Next question please.
#12
Agreed. Apologies to our bretheren, I am embarassed to the point of nausea. Just know that they are the shitbirds of inconsiquence and that I, for one, have your back Brits.
#13
If my memory serves me correctly, I believe many of the residents of old Albion heaped accolades and adulation upon our man Barry Soetoro during his nomination and run for the White House. The winds, how they do change.
#14
I believe many of the residents of old Albion heaped accolades and adulation upon our man Barry Soetoro during his nomination and run for the White House.
And Americans didn't? Certainly the usual suspects over here did - but they did everywhere.
#15
Quite right Bulldog. And it was the feckless voters here in liberal 'la la land' that actually brought Barry to the throne. The debauchery was totally self inflicted. Our economy will soon be Argentinisized, thence the Mugabe-lite Executive Orders, thence land and property transfers and Plaas Moorde. ANC Tribal governance on a grand scale.
#16
I for one, apologize to our UL allies for the dipsh*t our nation picked to drive the USA over a cliff. You have been faithful partners, allies and friends for a very, very, long time, and notwithstanding that little issue of urban renewal in Washington in 1814, and your lack of clarity during the unpleasantness of 1862-65, we honor and appreciate your partnership. Barry will pass, but he is a menace to all of us for a while yet, and when he and his are diminished in November of this year, his remaining 2 years will be frothy with efforts to fool the people again.
Once bit, twice shy, I think he has one term to wreak havoc, and then we try and right the mistakes.
#18
I can only hope that Barry does not get a second term.
Posted by: Dave UK ||
02/28/2010 15:15 Comments ||
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#19
Not as much as we do, Dave....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/28/2010 15:19 Comments ||
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#20
The One is stabbing one our closest allies in the back?
Who would of guessed?
The problem is that the election of The One was overwhelmingly supported by the British as well as the rest of Europe.
Why are the British surprised by this?
Posted by: Black Charlie Shating3160 ||
02/28/2010 22:55 Comments ||
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By AL GORE
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy -- the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.
But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.
I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere -- as if it were an open sewer.
It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.
But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel's scientists -- acting in good faith on the best information then available to them -- probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.
Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.
Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/28/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
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#1
Sniff... sniff... Yep. Grade AA Bullshit.
Al, PROVE IT, dickhead. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And its not a "two mistakes", its wholesale fabrication as well as suppression of contrary data, and a pile of data that does nto conform to the theory, as well sa flawed models that cannot explain the MWP, etc.
Notice how he diodges all that, and states his conclusions as if they are already proven.
Al, old buddy, thats a logical fallacy. Meaning your argument is completely invalid.
Go away, curl up and die someplace you fatassed fuckwit.
#3
Saw the headline and the author and assumed Al was telling the other carbon trading millionairs that they might as well come clean because the scandal isn't going anywhere.
Should have known he'll fight on until the flow of money really dries up.
#4
I'll believe what Al Gore's peddling once he and his fellow "climate professionals" (Prince Charles, Laurie David, etc.) give up their private jets, entourages, and glittering conferences to hold their meetings online via Skype or other electronic means.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2010 7:31 Comments ||
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#7
No shit, Al. If it weren't for the natural gas companies, who you tried to destroy, I'd be freezing my ass off in "the warmest winter in 50 years". The first winter in 10 years snow fell. The first snow I've seen here that did not melt in less than a day. Yep, climate change sure affected my lifestyle and budget.
Say, Al, have you cut down on your $30,000 yearly utility bill any so as to leave a few kilowatts for the "other America"?
Posted by: ed ||
02/28/2010 7:37 Comments ||
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#8
Good point Bobby.
You don't have to wish away unicorns - or Man Made Climate Change - because they don't exist.
You have climate change - just has you have horses with no horns. But the Climate Change doesn't have the 'uni-corn' of being cause by human actions. Its perfectly Natural.
#10
He is speaking up because its threatening something "important": his wealth making portfolio.
I think Soros went over to him and pulled the string in his back.
Love how he mentions our dependence on imported oil and neglects to mention his administration made it worse by preventing drilling and development here.
#12
Why is it every time I dance an Al Gore rhythm I end up with by nary a thought in my head?
Yesterday was golf. Tonight, snow angels. Know what I call it...February.
Great picture Anguth. Al G complaining about (the complete hubristic notion that humans can change the) weather is like Robert Downy Jr. complaining about hollywood lifestyles.
#14
Al Gore: I am here to educate you about the single biggest threat to our planet. You see, there is something out there which threatens our very existence and may be the end to the human race as we know it. I'm talking, of course, about Manbearpig. It is a creature which roams the Earth alone. It is half man, half bear, and half pig. Some people say that Manbearpig isn't real. Well , I'm here to tell you now, Manbearpig is very real, and he most certainly existsI'm cereal. Manbearpig doesn't care who you are or what you've done. Manbearpig simply wants to get you. I'm super cereal. But have no fear, because I am here to save you. And someday, when the world is rid of Manbearpig, everyone will say, "Thank you Al Goreyou're super awesome!" The end
Posted by: Al Gore ||
02/28/2010 13:03 Comments ||
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#15
I have long suspected nationwide hanky panky with temperature readings, in that nowhere else in my area are temperatures the same as the official reading, taken in the middle of a concrete and asphalt airport, but they are very similar to each other.
The way to expose this is to get half a dozen people in the major metropolitan areas of the US to regularly submit two temperatures they have daily taken, at 6am and at 2pm. Then they just post them to a web site.
This way, a far more accurate temperature reading could be made.
Statistically, it should be more moderate than the official high and low reading, because 6am isn't the coldest and 2pm isn't the warmest times of day, regularly. However, they can show significant variation from the norm, if it happens over a period of time.
#16
'Moose, I know anecdotes don't equal statistics, but I can tell you that it's always about 5 degrees colder at my house than the "official" (airport) temperature is.
They say on the radio it's above freezing, but I've learned to be careful because I'll still have ice on my steps. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/28/2010 18:14 Comments ||
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#19
This is one way of dealing with the carpetbagger. UKIP would ban Al Gore film in schools
Al Gore's global warming film would be banned in schools under plans by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to court the climate sceptic vote.
#1
And the phenomenon is not limited to Islamists--strong links to science and engineering studies have been found among neo-Nazis, too, and engineers disproportionately supported Hitler and Mussolini during World War II.
I suspect this article is mostly bullshit. I was going to go through why I think the engineer thing might work for the jihadis, but if the article starts out saying "...and most of them were nazis and fascists in ww2..." it's a worthless piece of fermented sewerage to begin with.
#2
Actually, Snowy Mountain, the article may be on to something. I have noticed the connection between Muslim Engineers/Scientists/Doctors and Jihad.
I attribute it to the tension these profession have between the Scientific Method and the Koran. A Muslim engineer spends all day acting like the Scientific Method is superior, and then goes home and acts like the Koran and Hadiths are infalible and literaly true.
Since the Koran makes claims that are contradicted by science, and the Hadiths claims that the earth is flat, the guy has a problem. It's kind of like taking a tab of acid every single day. It's no wonder they want to kill some one.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/28/2010 14:20 Comments ||
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#3
IMO, technical training---let alone attempts to compete in engineering, let alone sciences---reinforces Muslims' inferiority complex.
#5
HMMMMM, HMMMMM, wehell, I can say something thingy(s) zabout US UNIVERSITIES, ENGINEERS, USDOD-FEDS, MIL OFFICERS + INTEL-PYWAR, + MILTERR PERSONAGES, ETC. BUT WON'T.
As MADONNA would say in "MTV ROCKUMENTARY",
BBBBUUUUUUURRRRRRRPPPPPP!
D *** NG IT, SHE WANTS TO ROCK [Twisted Sister], ALL IN ALL SHE'S JUST ANU-U-U-THER BRICK IN THE WALL!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By James Corum
By AL GORE
