Hodge-Podge Page

Consumer confidence crashes in October

Rick Moran

It's hard to be optimistic when consumers have so little faith in an economic turnaround.

Reuters:

Consumer confidence unexpectedly dropped to its lowest level in two-and-a-half years in October as consumers fretted about job and income prospects.
In other data on Tuesday, U.S. home prices were unchanged in August, pointing to a market that continued to stabilize but has yet to gain traction.
The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes fell to 39.8 from a upwardly revised 46.4 the month before. It was the lowest level since March 2009.
Economists had expected the index to rise to 46.0, according to a Reuters poll. September was originally reported as 45.4.
The present situation index slipped to 26.3 from 33.3, while the expectations index declined to 48.7 from 55.1. The expectations gauge was also at its lowest since March 2009.
"Consumer expectations, which had improved in September, gave back all of the gain and then some, as concerns about business conditions, the labor market and income prospects increased," Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement.

Most people appear to be hanging on to their cash for dear life, investing in their own savings or, just as likely, paying down their debt just in case they too, join Obama's most successful program to date; the unemployment line.

Obama's foolish Libya war

David Lawrence

Gaddafi said that he was the revolution when he took over from the original establishment.  If the naïve advocates for change throughout the world, think that he was such a monster, what do they think the new revolutionaries will be when they take over from Gaddafi? The new government has already declared Sharia law. As in Saudi Arabia, women will have no rights.  We've given the men democracy and constrained the women to misogynistic theocracy.  Good work Obama.
Murder is a much overrated way of changing government.  It is a bullying sword rather than the vote. The reins will pass from a dictator to Islamic caliphate. A revolution that starts in bloodshed ends in bloodletting.  Grabbing power is not a moral improvement.  It is a repetition of harsh ugliness. The revolutionaries have no respect for the rule of law.  They dragged Gaddafi's body around the streets of Sirte like it was a side of beef. If you can't respect the dead, how will you respect the living?
The fools in America think that getting rid of a dictator, Gaddafi, who abandoned his nuclear weapons and sold us oil, will be good for our country.   It makes no sense.  We should have left him in power and aided the Persian version of the Arab Spring in Iran to topple Ahmadinejad.
Obama accused Bush of fighting the wrong war in Iraq.  What about Obama's fighting the wrong war in Libya instead of Iran?
Obama doesn't realize that Gaddafi was a quasi-ally as Mubarak was a true ally.  The simplistic Obama likes change for change's sake.  He was elected on the vague concept of change. He doesn't care that his change changed us into a second rate nation and turned the Middle East into a tinderbox.
You can go to Harvard and still be a fool.  Just as you can drop out of college and be a genius like Steve Jobs, who considered Obama a one term president.
I haven't prayed since I was a kid and my prayers failed to save my grandmother from cancer. Right now I am saying a prayer that Obama is a one term president.

Hollywood fetes the president

Rick Moran 

Hollywood liberals put their money where their mouth is last night at a $35,000 a plate dinner for the president's re-election.
The Hill:

"I carry around a little checklist, and I think we've gotten about 60 percent of it done so far," Obama said. "And that's not bad for three years, because I need another five."
The president joked that his recently announced plan to allow homeowners to refinance mortgages would free up money so they could go watch Smith's movies at Johnson's chain of movie theaters.
"Today, I announced helping homeowners refinance their homes, because a lot of them are underwater now and so they're having trouble refinancing," Obama said. "But that could free up billions of dollars for American consumers who can then shop and go to Will's movies and spend money at whatever business Magic has and could help grow the economy overall."
Obama also criticized Republican leaders in the Senate for preventing votes on his jobs package.
"We have not gotten a single Republican vote out of this current Senate," Obama said. "And it's primarily because they don't think that, politically, it's advantageous to do so. And I think that's a mistake, and so we're putting pressure on them."
Later Monday evening, Obama spoke at a $5,000-per-head event at the home of actors Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. Actress Eva Longoria and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were also in attendance.

Obama may be as popular as the plague elsewhere in America but the warm reception he gets from the mega-millionaires in Hollywood only shows how truly out of touch he is with ordinary people.

Rhode Island looking more and more like Greece

Rick Moran

Walter Russell Meade on the massive debt burying the state of Rhode Island:

Years of blue social policy have wrecked local and state government finance in the country's smallest state, and now the bills are coming due. Services are being cut to the bone and elderly retirees are losing money they thought was secure.
In Rhode Island, it is Democrats, not nasty union-hating Republicans, who are doing the dirty work. Democratic mayors are telling their unions that there isn't any money - not because they are vicious corporate stooges who hate working people and want to see them suffer, but because There. Isn't. Any. Money.
Because Rhode Island listened to timeserving blue politicians too long, and union leaders and public sector workers lost their grip on any mathematical realities beyond the numbers at the ballot box, the pension system grew more and more out of control. State and local governments lurched into a crisis. Vote yourself a raise, vote yourself a pension: why not?
But there is financial math as well as political math and in any war with financial arithmetic, the money numbers win. If there isn't any money, the checks won't clear. Ultimately, you will have to fire existing workers, stop paying pensions or a mix of both. That is where Rhode Island is now: its economy can't generate the revenue to support its existing governance system and to pay its pension obligations.

As Meade points out, this scenario is apt to be repeated in literally dozens of states, cities, towns, and townships across the country. In most instances, the taxpayer is on the hook to make up the difference in contributions from workers and payouts. The number is in the trillions of dollars and no one is doing very much to stop the slide into catastrophe.
Read the entire article by Meade who dissects the mindset of liberals who are in a state of denial over the tragedy they have wrought.

Bumbling Joe

David Frum

“When he rises to speak, he does not know what he will say. As he speaks, he does not know what he is saying. When he sits down again, he does not know what he has said.”
That old House of Commons joke about a certain kind of garrulous parliamentarian applies to America’s own Joe Biden.
CNN broadcasted an interview with Joe Biden on Sunday in which he indulged in speculation about his 2016 chances:

Vice President Joe Biden left the door open to running for president in 2016 – he said he’d “make up my mind on that later” – and suggested he was physically and mentally prepared for the challenge.
“I’m in one of the — probably the best shape I’ve been in my life,” said Biden. “I’m doing pretty well. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. And as long as I do, I’m going to continue to do it.”

If you watch the interview, you see that Biden didn’t really intend to talk 2016. Mostly he wanted to rebuff an insinuation that he was maybe getting too old for politics. Having started talking, however, he could not stop himself – and he ended up creating a story unhelpful to him and to his administration.
As problems go, it’s not the biggest in the world, certainly not as big as other problems that Biden has created with careless talk – about rape, about not criticizing forced abortion in China, etc.
But if we’re already thinking about the Democratic succession, here’s a question: why is Joe Biden even allowed to remain on the 2012 ticket? Wouldn’t President Obama do himself, his party, and the country some good by replacing Biden with a candidate who could be credible in 2016?