Unlike many others, I decided I wasn't going to venture out on Friday unless it was absolutely necessary (which it was), and then only to make a trip to an ATM and then to our Village Store to pick up important stuff, that being lottery tickets for the MegaMillions and PowerBall drawings on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
I did venture out to WalMart to pick up a few necessaries for the next two weeks, but limited myself to that task and nothing else. Even though it was now Saturday the WalMart parking lot was packed, as was the store itself. It took me far longer to check out than it did to pick up the few items I needed. I expect that will be the case for the next few weeks as Christmas shopping is in full swing.
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I have to agree with Thomas H. Kee, Jr. that the Dow is “outrageously overvalued.”Earnings and revenue simply don't support the Dow's 22 percent increase this year, he maintains in an article for CNBC.Between three rounds of quantitative easing – that means printing money like crazy – the Dow has reached new heights. But it is an illusion. The economy isn't anywhere near that strong as we have seen between high levels of unemployment (the U6 rate, not the U3 rate), a continuously declining labor participation rate, and an increasing number of workers going on to disability (yet another form of unemployment that pays better, particularly for older workers permanently displaced from the work force).
The Federal Reserve's asset-buying stimulus has a huge impact on stock prices, he warns.
"If you are buying the Dow Jones industrial average, make sure you know what you're doing because when the music stops, when changes to policy actually become a drain on liquidity, you do not want to be left without a chair."
Like all illusions, the Dow will eventually return to reality and I expect there will be a major correction. While I am no expert I am going to predict there will be at least a 3,000 to 4,000 point drop in the Dow when that correction comes and it's going to be ugly.
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The false story that will not die. Call it a sign of chronic Bush Derangement Syndrome.The only other story that still lingers on is the bogus “I can see Russia from my house!” claim made by the Left, another case of chronic Palin Derangement Syndrome. (For those of you out there who still believe it was Sarah Palin who uttered that phrase, it was Tina Fey portraying Sarah Palin in an SNL skit who said that line.)
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You know it's getting bad when a Canadian tourist is denied entry into the US because was once hospitalized for clinical depression. She was supposed to be going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise departing from New York, but was refused entry unless she received medical clearance from a DHS approved doctor in Toronto before she was allowed entry into the the US.But that's not the worst of it.
One has to ask the question, how is it that DHS had access to confidential medical records in Canada?
This crap has got to stop.
(H/T Instapundit)
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Is this a precursor for taking Detroit private?Will the Detroit Police Department come under the auspices of the Security Concepts Division of Omni Consumer Products?
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Was Obama's efforts to propagandize Thanksgiving into yet another effort to sell the increasing unpopular ObamaCare a #FAIL?Umm, yes.
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One question many of those who support ObamaCare have been unwilling to answer: Who will be treating all of the new Medicaid patients?Most of those Medicaid patients will end up in Ers because they won't find doctors who will take any more Medicaid patients than they already do, if they take any at all.
One of the biggest failings of ObamaCare is that it did not in any way make more health care available. All it did was add more patients with health insurance, and as we should all know health insurance does not automatically equate to access to health care. In fact with many of the disincentives built into ObamaCare it's likely there will be less access to health care for everyone...but it's 'fair', at least according to the President's definition of fair.
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The late Doris Lessing had no use for Political Correctness or any of its offshoots, seeing it as nothing more than a leftover of communism.Over 20 years ago, I heard Lessing speak at a conference on intellectuals and social change in Eastern Europe at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. It was 1992, the dust still settling from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Lessing opened her memorable talk with a warning: “While we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives.” She was not talking about the East but the West, where coercive “social justice” had reinvented itself as “antiracism,” feminism, and so forth. “Political correctness” had become, Lessing said, “a kind of mildew blighting the whole world,” particularly academic and intellectual circles—a “self-perpetuating machine for dulling thought.”As Lessing stated, it is a blight, trying to change the language of thought so thoughts that are antithetical to socialist 'ideals' will be difficult, if not impossible to express. While seen by some as a means to reduce offending stereotypes, instead it is an insidious means of stifling dissent. It is just another form of fascism used to impose the disease that is socialism on humanity.
(H/T Maggie's Farm)
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If we need yet another example of end-stage socialism all we need to do is look south to Venezuela. When El Presidente Madura accuses 99 percent of businesses of price gouging and vows to punish them, you know the end is near.All he will manage to do is drive them out of business and there will be no other businesses around to pick up the slack. All this shows is a stunning lack of understanding about economics, a usual fault with socialist societies. It isn't until their economies collapse that change away from oft-proven wrong socialist/Marxist economic theory takes place. Once capitalism re-establishes itself and the economies are once again thriving, the socialist economics disease reasserts itself and the same downward spiral starts again.
You'd think that after almost a century of this foolishness that the anti-capitalists would realize their economic theories don't work. But then again, such theories have more to do with power and very little with economics. As long as 'they' get theirs they don't care about anyone else.
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Is it any surprise the White House has insulated itself from reality when it comes things like health care, the economy, and foreign policy?Not really.