Networks

Ever wonder what the letters in the alphabet networks stand for? Well, you’re in luck. I recently found an old dog-eared copy of TV Guide and, on page 52: found the following revelations to help us decode these network abbreviations:


CNN — Colluders’ News Network

MSNBC — Maligners Shoveling Noxious Bull Crap

CBS — Crazy Before Sanity

CNBC — Can Not Be Candid

ABC —  Actively Berating Conservatives

PBS — Pretty Banal Simpletons

NBC — Nasty, Bilious Cowards

 NPR — Neo-Progressive Radicals


I was not surprised at these translations ... are you?

Extra! Extra!

Read all about it!

The White House has taken the logical position (to me) that it does not have to respond to Adam Schiff subpoenas unless and until Nancy Pelosi holds an impeachment inquiry vote in the full House ... see: CNBC Article. This of course should evoke a three-alarm fire in the hair of Democrats and the media. Watch for it.

So far, Pelosi has tried to have her cake and eat it too ... by holding off on a full House vote to save those Democrats in swing districts from having to jump on the impeachment train. Now, she either must hold a impeachment inquiry vote in the House, or litigate this Trump decision and try to maintain momentum as this controversy moves through the courts.

Unless, of course, Representative Adam Schiff (or Nadler) can manufacture another media-supported hoax. Wait for it.

China Juggernaught

Here are four charts that clearly depict why China has been and is an economic juggernaught ... the first chart in particular. It’s animated and deserves multiple playings. See: CNBC Article

Soybeans

If one just reads the headlines, one would think American farmers are on the ropes. However, looking at the above chart (source: CNBC), one can see that things are not quite as bad as supposed. Add to this the fact that Trump has pumped tens of billions of tariff-collected dollars into US agricultural subsidies ... and that China has just agreed to import more US pork and soybeans ... farmers here may be doing a little better than OK ... not what the media are saying.

Lessons: Kind reader, at a moment in time there is only so much food in the world ... and always look behind the headlines ...

Headlines

2020 Dems criss-cross nation building up early black support

Stocks post 5-day losing streak, much worst week of 2019 after anemic jobs report

Zuckerberg ‘has secret panic chute’ underneath conference room ...

America created just 20,000 jobs in February

Judge expands pool of separated families that may require reunification

Beijing is worried Trump may walk away from the ramble, like he did with North Korea

Ilhan Omar trashes Obama, ‘Hope and change’ was a mirage ...

House votes in favor of illegal immigrants voting ...

Warren attacks Big Tech in neighborhood Amazon abandoned

Algeria was silent during the Arab Spring. Now it’s streets are erupting in protest

‘Empire’ Smollett indicted on 16 felony charges ...

CNBC: Facebook’s  Zuckerberg gives us ‘no reason’ to believe privacy plans

Headlines

How a private meeting with Kennedy helped Trump Ger to 'yes' on Kavanaugh

Texas is CNBC's top state for Business in America this year

Clooney injured in scooter crash in Italy ... thrown 20 feet ...

Liberal law prof in NY Times: Kavanaugh great pick ...

Trump's neglect of Europe goes beyond angry tweets

Tesla has signed an agreement to build a factory in Shanghai

Trade deficit with China hits new record [high] ...

Libya: 700,000 migrants waiting to board boats to Europe ...

Trump's solution for reunifying migrant families: 'Don't come to this country illegally'

More than a third of small businesses can't [find workers to] fill open jobs, matching a record

Trump: Seeing Putin will be easier than meeting with May ...

Booker: Trump nominated Kavanaugh for Get out of Jail Free card

Headlines

Trump blames Putin for 'Animal Assad'

Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers tactics similar to Cambridge Analytics

Russia calls [Syrian] gas attack fake news

London adding knife control

Graham predicts new push for immigration deal

Today's youth are increasingly unhappy and they reject capitalism

[U.S.] Military run of fatal accidents: Coincidence or crisis?

DeBlasio criminal justice director busted -- for gun possession

Mnuchin warns of 'potential' trade war with China

Conservative Koch brothers network breaks with Trump over brewing trade war with China

Hungary's Orban wins third term in power ...

John Kerry 'obviously' wrong about Obama administration removing chemical weapons [from Syria]

In a Nutshell

CNBC has done a good job summarizing all the winners and losers in the GOP tax package which is expected to be enacted on Tuesday. Even though "carried interest" has not been eliminated, its holding period has been increased from one to three years to qualify -- small victory.

This reform was sausage making at its best ...

Anyhow, spend the halftime of the NFL game you are not going to watch today studying this information packed chart ... CNBC Synopsis. I think the stock market is telling us that this will not just be good for US companies ... but for our economy in general. It certainly will have consequences for the 2018 midterm elections ... possibly even more so than sexual harassment charges.

Crossed Fingers

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made a surprising revelation on CNBC this morning ... and that is that people earning a million dollars or more a year will see, under the new tax laws, their taxes go UP on average by 3%! If this be true, then not only is this a good populist stance, but it flies in the face of all the Democrat demagoguery ... that this tax reform is a gigantic tax cut for the wealthy.

This Chuck Schumer claim is predicated on the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) ... an elimination which I hope doesn't happen (see featured post on this blog ... Taxing Times ... which basically is an updated form of an AMT). But, if Mnuchin is being truthful, then I applaud the efforts of Congress on tax reform.

My fingers are crossed.

Silicon Flats

Mad Money's Jim Cramer has identified the ten best stock investments since the market panic of 2008 and they are not the ones you would expect ... not Google (aka, Alphabet), not Amazon, not Apple, not Facebook, not Microsoft. In fact there is only one Silicon Valley company in the group, Netflix. These stocks have moved up anywhere from 1,861% to 6,545% and their names (in descending order) are: Incyte Corp. (biopharma), United Rentals (equipment rentals), Regeneron (biotech), Alaska Air (airlines), Windham Worldwide (hotels), Netflix (media), American Airlines (airlines), Priceline (travel info), CBS (media), and Fifth Third Bancorp. (banking).

To read more about these winners, see: CNBC Article.

Culture of Corrumpion

Today's unemployment numbers were a shock! Estimates were for 150,00 to 200,000 new jobs to be created ... the actual reported number was 38,000 ... quite a miss ... see: New York Times Article. Still the unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.8% ... a big drop considering the paltry new jobs being created. This was because the US workforce participation shrank by an almost unprecedented 500,000 after months of steady gains ... very suspicious.These mostly poor "statistics" could not have been better news for Hellery Clinton for a number of reasons:

1) They should keep the Federal Reserve Bank from raising interest rates this or next month or maybe not until December ... auguring well for the incumbent party in an election year

2) Like what was hinted at on CNBC this morning, if the true employment numbers were actually higher, they can be put in the bank and pulled out this coming November ... right before the presidential election

3) The Obummer administration can still brag about this (phony) low unemployment rate caused by this suspiciously large workforce shrinkage

Am I suggesting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has become politicized and fiddles its reporting to help Democrats? Yes I am. And it is at least the third time that I think this has happened there in the last four years ... see: my Parboiled blog entry and the hyperlinks contained therein for the sad details. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, once a proud purveyor of the best data available, now seems to be engaging in subterfuge ... making up data to suit the political needs of its Washington bosses. And, it also seems that the stock market is beginning to discount these shenanigans ... for it is not down nearly as much as one might expect given today's dismal unemployment report. Perhaps Wall Street is rooting for Hellery?

If, as I suspect, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been corrupted by this Obummer administration ... can we then add it to this administration's culture of corrupted ... the corrupt IRS (remember the Tea Party denials), the corrupted Justice Department (remember Fast and Furious), the corrupted State Department (remember Benghazi), the corrupted EPA (remember the killing of the coal industry), the corrupted Secret Service, the corrupted Department of Education (remember Common Core), the emasculated Defense Department, the corrupted Veterans Administration, the corrupted NOAA (remember climate change data "adjustments"), the corrupted Health and Human Services Department (remember Obamacare), the corrupt Energy Department (remember Solyndra, etc), among many others?

Anchor Babies

You've heard the liberal talking points ... you can' deport 11-12 million illegal aliens ... it would cost trillions of dollars to do so ... how are you going to overturn the Constitution? (Not that we haven't done this in the past.) These shibboleths are just a bunch of hogwash. We can indeed fix our illegal immigration problem if we have the spine to do it.

Donald Trump was confronted with a reporter's hostile question at the Iowa State Fair Monday about the high cost of deporting all the illegal aliens. His answer was, as usual, right on point ... "What does it cost us not to deport them. We either have a nation or we don't have a nation." As it turns out there is a recent analysis on what it actually might cost to round up and deport some 11-12 million illegal aliens (CNBC calls them "undocumented workers" ... we should only hope that they all are working). The number arrived at was 5 to 15 billion dollars a year over a twenty year period ... see: a somewhat slanted  CNBC Article. To me 10 billion dollars a year is a mere pittance ... a rounding error in the United States' $3.8 trillion annual budget.

I further suggest that it is vital we start these deportations with the dangerous criminals ... and leave the ones with verifiable jobs and families to the latter years. In between here would be my rough priorities in terms of who gets booted out ... gang members and small-time criminals with multiple misdemeanors ... those granted amnesty fraudulently  ... illegals from terrorist nations ... aliens carrying false or multiple identities ... the mentally unstable ... people on welfare or who have come here to drop anchor babies ... and, finally, non-core family members of illegals. But I might make an exception for illegals who have served in our armed forces for two or more years and who have been honorably discharged.

And Donald Trump's (actually Jeff Session's) suggestion on how to pay for these deportations ... with a tax on the $123 billion of remittances that aliens send home every year ... makes enormous sense ... see: Business Insider Story.  A 5% tax should do it.

Climate Change Horsesh.t

An Effect of Climate Change

CNBC has posted a slideshow listing 10 countries predicted to be hit hard by climate change …see: CNBC Story, The countries that they tag are the Philippines, Nigeria, Vietnam, Haiti, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Malawi, Fiji, Sudan, and Japan. The effects of climate change listed by these Chicken Little’s are typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones, sea-level rising, flooding, and droughts as well as (guffaw) volcanoes, landslides, earthquakes and decreased tourism.

When I was younger these events (except for decreased tourism) used to be called natural disasters, acts of God, or even forces majeure. Now, the climate alarmists have co-opted these things, labeling them “climate change,” and blaming them all on that evil gas, carbon dioxide … the very same gas that is the primary reason that life on Earth is possible. Without it, we would not be here. And these yoyos have gotten the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to dub this gas a “pollutant.” Excuse me, but they all need to go back to school and re-study their science.

CO2    

MICHAEL J. FOX

I just heard Donny Deutsch give a promo for his hour long interview with Michael J. Fox this evening (Nov. 2, 10:00 PM on CNBC). In this promo, Donny Deutsch specifically notes that Michael J. Fox’s demeanor changes from the beginning of this interview to its end “because it took a while for his meds to kick in.” I think we all should check out this interview so that we might see for ourselves whether what Rush Limbaugh said early this week makes any sense. Rush said then that Mr. Fox’s commercial (which he had made for the Democrat candidate for the Senate from Missouri … saying that embryonic stem-cell research was essential for developing a cure for his Parkinson's disease) showed him either acting or “off his meds” because the symptoms of his disease seemed overly exaggerated. (Apparently, Mr. Fox had previously indicated in his book that he had used this tactic in the past to exaggerate the symptoms of his disease for effect when he was appearing for public-relations purposes -- like testifying in front of the U.S. Senate).

The result has been another political firestorm where Rush Limbaugh is the ogre and Michael J. Fox is the victim. We now have the rare opportunity to see for ourselves whether Michael J. Fox might have been used as a (willing?) sympathy-producing pawn in the Missouri and other political contests. So watch (at least the first and last five minutes).