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The global warming fear mongers are at it again. Twice recently they’ve been caught in the act-- not only are they lying, they're so desperate that they're starting to look ridiculous. “Three years of observations show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year,” reports the UK’s University of Leeds, “twice as much as when it was last surveyed. A team of scientists from the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, led by researchers at the University of Leeds, have produced the first complete assessment of Antarctic ice sheet elevation change.” Like...

UNKNOWN QUESTIONER:“Um, you mentioned the Health Insurance Exchanges for the States. And it’s my understanding that if the States don’t provide them, that the Federal Government will provide them.”M.I.T. economics Prof. Jonathan Gruber:“Yeah, so these Health Insurance Exchanges —once you go on MA-HealthConnect.org and CRS [is] in Massachusetts—will be these new shopping places. And they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. “In the law it says [that] if States don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The Federal Government has been sort-of slow in putting in this backstop, I think partially, because they...

President Barack Obama, who in his political dotage is enthusiastically getting in touch with his inner Otto von Bismarck to such an extent that we half expect him to start sporting a walrus mustache and a pickelhaube, on Saturday treated the ailing republic to another lecture on the theme of “economic patriotism,” by which he means an arrangement under which companies adopt tax strategies that maximize the amount of money they send to President Obama and his colleagues to dispose of as they see fit. He demanded that companies “embrace an economic patriotism,” presumably one defined by Barack Obama, rather...

SIX YEARS AGO, Jeanne Shaheen was quick to attack then-Sen. John Sununu on the cost of gasoline. This was a time when New Hampshire consumers were paying around $4 a gallon. In television ads and on the stump, Shaheen argued that the senator deserved blame for not doing more to bring prices down. Her supporters even held protests at his offices to highlight her position. One of her supporters went so far as to dress up as a gas pump to follow Sen. Sununu around at events claiming he wasn’t doing enough to “help the middle-class” deal with fuel prices....

Here's the question, not of the day, but of the month: Who's Winning the War in Ukraine? That may sound like a simple question, but it isn't. That question leads to a second question "In whose eyes?" It also depends on the definition of "war". And it also depends on the definition of "win". And finally it depends on which media source you believe. Military Aspect From a military aspect, I have seen reports from both sides. The Western media portrays Ukraine on the march with the rebels surrounded, and losing ground. Is that accurate reporting? I will let you...

This week, in the aftermath of the Q1 -2.9% GDP disaster, the biggest "non-recessionary" drop in 67 years which was blamed on harsh weather (because there have never been harsh winters in the past 67 years), we get the first glimpse of what Q2 GDP was in the US economy. It is expected to print just shy of 3%. However, one person disagrees: Gary Shilling believes that not only will Q2 GDP be closer to 1% than to 3%, there is a fairly good chance it could be negative, which of course would mean that the US economy has officially...

British lawyers are getting ready to hit Russian President Vladimir Putin with a multi-million pound class action suit for his alleged role in the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine this month, an English daily reported. According to British daily The Sunday Telegraph, senior Russian military commanders and politicians closely-linked to Putin will likely be also included in the suit, set to take place in American courts. “There has been talk of civil suits against Malaysia Airlines, but those immediately responsible are not only the separatists who are alleged to have fired the rocket at Flight MH17,...

The state of Arizona executed double murderer Joseph Wood this week. The convicted killer was injected with a combination of lethal drugs that eventually caused his death; however, it took too long according to some observers. After being administered the drugs, Wood lingered for almost two hours before dying. Witnesses included reporter Troy Hayden who said the execution was “botched” and that Wood’s last words were similar to “a fish on shore gulping for air.” While Hayden complained that the execution was “very disturbing to watch,” U.S. Senator John McCain noted that it was “terrible” and amounted to “torture.” During...

You won’t know whether to laugh or cry after perusing these stories that will be added to our “great moments in government” collection. For instance, did you realize that American taxpayers were saddled with the responsibility to micro-manage agriculture in Afghanistan? You’re probably surprised the answer is yes. But I bet you’re not surprised that the money was flushed down a toilet. Here are some excerpts from a report on how $34 million was wasted. American agricultural experts who consider soybeans a superfood…have invested tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to try to change the way Afghans eat. The...

Here are Professor Peter Morici's forecasts for upcoming economic data. Forecast Prior Observation Consensus Week of July 28 July 28 Pending Home Sale Index - June 103.3 103.9 104.2 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index 13.0 11.4 12.0 July 29 S&P Case/Shiller Index - May Twenty City Y/Y 9.9 10.8 9.9 Consumer Confidence - July 85.5 85.2 85.5 July 30 ADP Employment Report - July 236K 281 235 GDP - Q2 (a) 2.7% -1.0 3.1 GDP Implicit Price Deflator 1.8 1.3 2.0 July 31 Initial Unemployment Claims 300K 284 305 Employment Cost Index - Q2 0.5% 0.3 0.5 Employment Cost Index -...

Just for once, wouldn't it be great if President Obama actually defended American business, instead of attacking it? Just once?Wouldn't it be great if Obama acknowledged that U.S. firms are overburdened by the highest corporate tax rate among developed countries, and as a result are becoming less and less competitive? Wouldn't it be great if he said he wants to fix this tax imbalance in order to grow the economy faster and give U.S. businesses a leg up on the global scene? Couldn't he just say that? He could say it like this: "Look, I don't want to drive businesses...

While this past week may have been pretty much nothing in the way of general asset growth (metals flat off --stocks flat in market under pressure), it's been a great week for geek number thingees, in fact we updated the link list to include Business Insider's Chart page (hat tip to Wyatt's Torch) and we've been into the income shifts that have turned the Great Recession into the gift that keeps giving.  Chgogal gave us the headsup to the  NYTimes piece "The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less" and Wash. Post Chart study Median household incomes have collapsed since...

he NSA made me slather my face in make-up. Or, it didn’t make me, exactly. But last spring, I found myself wandering around D.C., wearing dazzle camouflage for the first time. It was a sunny Saturday, the capital swamp neither frigid nor muggy-oppressive—perfect for walking. It took me 45 minutes to get all the makeup on, to get the pencil right and the hair dangled just so. I spent the day hanging out with some friends around Adams Morgan, a neighborhood seemingly developed by former hippies who had gone into non-profit C-suites or opened boutique restaurant-bars. I told my friends...

General Motors said Thursday that its second-quarter earnings fell 85 percent, as recall costs chopped $1.5 billion from the bottom line.

Swift Boat Captn wrote: And things were so great before Obama took over. Let's go back to the Chimp's economy that he started by turning surpluses into deficits then finished by losing 800,000 jobs per month and Wall Street on the brink of extinction. - This Won’t End End Well: Obama Giveth X and Taketh Away 7.6 Percent More Dear Comrade Kerry, In February 2007, when the terrible, evil George W. Bush was president, there were 2,427,000 more jobs than there are today. In February 2007, when the terrible, evil George W. Bush was president, there were 5,167,000 fewer unemployed....

Ask Jason Fraser how many jobs he applied for after graduating from a St. Petersburg law school last year and this is what he says: “Maybe 10 or 20 when it was some place I wanted to work. Maybe 50 when I started getting desperate.’’ After searching as far afield as Ocala and Miami, Fraser finally landed a public defender’s post in Pasco County in June. But his months of job-hunting raises another question, one that nags at many in the legal profession: Does Florida have too many lawyers? Since 2000, the number of licensed attorneys has swollen from 60,900...

When companies are heading for the door as fast as they decently can, you have to ask yourself why? President Obama's approach is a rather different one; let's just lock the door and stop them from leaving.On both sides of the US political divide, America's apparent corporate exodus via so-called "inversion takeovers" is a source of growing concern. However, their response to the problem could hardly be more different. Broadly, Republicans want to deal with the issue by lowering corporate tax rates; but Democrats want to stop the outflow by changing the rules. As things stand, these allow companies to...

Conservatives need to get over their insecurities about not being cool in the eyes of liberals. ear Reader (including the many new anti-Semitic and just plain bat-guano crazy people who’ve wandered into my life in recent days), Last night I said on Twitter: Forgetting may not be the right word. Though if this was the Soviet Union, teams of fat-fingered bureaucrats would be airbrushing his likeness from all official records. In case you’re not up to speed, let’s recap. It’s really a wonderful, feel-good story for the whole family. In the Halbig decision this week, the court ruled that according...

Nevada Power has amended its general rate increase request in a filing Friday with the state Public Utilities Commission, raising the revenue requirement to $37.8 million from the $20.8 million sought originally May 2. The effect of the new request, which totals about 81 percent, would be to impose an overall increase of 1.64 percent instead of the 0.9 percent request in the original filing.

<p>DENVER (AP) — Officials at some Denver homeless shelters say the legalization of marijuana has contributed to an increase in the number of younger people living on the city’s streets.</p> <p>One organization dealing with the increase is Urban Peak, which provides food, shelter and other services to homeless people aged 15 to 24 in Denver and Colorado Springs.</p>