That Screeching You Hear Is More Brakes

…screaming as they protest the sudden deceleration.

NY Fed Manufacturing Growth Slows Sharply in April

The pace of manufacturing growth in New York state slowed sharply in April to its lowest level in five months, the New York Federal Reserve said in a report on Monday.

The New York Fed’s “Empire State” general business conditions index dropped to 6.56 from 20.21M in March, far below economists’ expectations for 18.00. It was the lowest level since last November.

Oh, not to worry, lads! TWO geniuses in charge there. Obama AND Cuomo have it all well in hand, so back to your hives!

On Twitter, They Are Arguing If K-Mart Just Made

…the greatest commercial eh-vah.

“I just shipped my drawers!“

Sort of slipped those classy Martha Stewart bonds, but what the hell, eh?

Smart Power: Super Reset Button Edition

Yeah, the Adults In Charge are just doing swimmingly

Tit-for-tat bans on US and Russian officials travelling between the countries have plunged relations between Moscow and Washington to a new low on the eve of a high-level US visit to Russia’s capital.

The diplomatic row is an awkward backdrop for Tom Donilon, US National Security Adviser, who is due to hold talks with Russian officials in Moscow on Monday, partly in preparation for a summit between Barack Obama, US president, and Russian president Vladimir Putin tentatively scheduled for June.

On Saturday, Moscow banned 18 US officials from entering Russia after the US the day before published a list of 18 Russian officials barred from the US and subject to US asset freezes owing to their alleged involvement in human rights abuses in Russia.

This must be this masterful “flexibility” our Glorious Leader promised us.

“Dancin’, Dancin’, YEAH!”

I have no idea.

And They Call It “Puppy Love”

…for a reason.

Point of Order With These Senate Gun-Control Morons

Gun bill clears Senate hurdle as filibuster falls short

…Senate Democrats, joined by 16 Republicans, were able to overcome an attempted filibuster by GOP senators opposed to the current bill. Those senators could still slow-walk the debate, but the Senate will eventually begin votes on amendments — one of which is considered crucial to winning support for a final vote.

The White House called Thursday’s tally an “important” but “early milestone,” as both sides of the issue prepare for a grueling debate — one that is being waged in Washington and on the airwaves.
The amendment likely to be at the front of the line is one from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., which would scale back the call for universal background checks.

The plan would expand checks to gun-show and Internet sales, but exempt certain personal transactions.

Do the fuckin’ IDIOTS think you just go to Amazon/Murderous Weapons o’ Death R Us, order you one up and BANG! It appears on your doorstep via UPS?

IT LEGALLY HAS TO BE DELIVERED TO AN FFL, not your house, work or girlfriend’s apartment.

Translation: a federally licensed firearms dealer, WHERE, GUESS WHAT?

You get to go through ALL those checks anyway and WAIT to pick it up.

What am I thinking. Of course they do. And no one will believe otherwise.

ths update: If you’re feeling froggy about the issue, here’s Senator Toomey’s Facebook page.

more ths: Time to revisit some rankings:

21 NRA ‘A’-Rated Senators Part Of 68-31 Vote To Defeat Filibuster Of Background Check Bill goo.gl/fb/9um81

— Rob Port (@robport) April 11, 2013

The Best Thing About Ebola, the Air Force Jedi Weather God?

The phone calls telling you when and where to batten down the hatches that you can put MONEY on.

Like an hour ago, for this evening, complete with dissertation why it’s happening.

Rock ‘n roll.

I adore that kid.

Are They Trying To Tell Me Something?

Amazon today recommended that I buy a “Granny Fork.”

Stunts

Please note the following, all from the same article

Obama slams Republicans for gun reform ‘stunts’

AFP – President Barack Obama accused Republicans of stooping to political stunts to block gun reform, in a fervent appeal delivered close to the site of the Newtown school massacre.

…”Some folks in Washington are already floating the idea that they may use political stunts to prevent votes on any of these reforms,” Obama told a raucous crowd during his second gun control rally in a week.

and

Joining Obama on Air Force One later to head back to Washington to begin an intense lobbying effort were 12 family members of victims of the Newtown shootings.

They’re not “stunts” if you’re DOING IT FOR THE CHILDREN.

Oh, and shut up.

Stupid Company Tricks

I don’t know if JC Penney’s is salvageable.

I do know that any company that gives someone a clause like this when they hire him

Johnson will likely take a hefty paycheck with him. Recent regulatory filings show that he was guaranteed a $150 million payout if he resigned or was fired, Business Insider reports.

deserves to fail, and any Board that signs off on such a ridiculous package should be publicly flogged.

As Our Wonderful President Makes His Points to Adoring Fans On the Backs of Dead Children

…his MSNBC toadies go looking in their viewing audience for a stable individual they can whip into a frenzy.

Martin Bashir: Do GOP Senators Need a Family Member Killed to Prevent Gun Control Filibuster?

…BASHIR: But Congressman, is that what needs to happen to move these Senators to stop threatening a filibuster? Is that really what needs to happen?

That you need to have a member of your family killed in order for you to do what the American people want you to do?

CUMMINGS: I hope not. I don’t wish this pain on anybody.

BASHIR: None of us does.

The little rodent’s subtle, isn’t he?

Dear Mr. President ~ May I Reiterate My Earnest, Heartfelt Sentiments Yet Again?

You SUCK, Skippy. Please believe I mean this with ALL my heart.

Why US Jobs Market Is Going to Get a Lot Worse

…Weakening labor demand, not rising layoffs, is the key problem with the U.S. economy, according to Shepherdson. The weakening demand is mostly coming from smaller firms that are below the radar of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) survey, which reflects national factory activity.

The National Federation of Small Business job survey has done a decent job in foreshadowing movements in payrolls in recent years, according to Shepherdson, and it’s this report—due to be released on Tuesday—that’s warning of troubled waters ahead, he said.

“While actual job creation appears to be rising, plans to create jobs [in March] took a dive, falling 4 points to a net zero percent of small employers who plan to increase total employment. It seems that the stamina for growth is waning,” William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist for the NFIB said in a press release last week.

As You’d Expect

Tramp the dirt down.

— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) April 8, 2013

ths update: In that same vein, of course Our Present, the King of Self-Promotion, is “carrying on Maggie’s work”:

Here in America, many of us will never forget her standing shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan, reminding the world that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history—we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will. Michelle and I send our thoughts to the Thatcher family and all the British people as we carry on the work to which she dedicated her life—free peoples standing together, determined to write our own destiny.

Of course he is.

Never Forget This

God Bless You Maggie.

RIP Dear Lady

Baroness Thatcher has died

Baroness Thatcher has died at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, her spokesman Lord Bell has announced.

Lord Bell said: “It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning.

“A further statement will be made later.”

We could really really use her now.

Spam Of The Day

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I have to get me a pair of “defense spectacles”.

Man, I Can’t STAND This Guy

His cartoony 5% give back, while he keeps his vacays, rockstar parties, weekend golf outings, fashion icon wife’s jet-set destinations and kids’ ski or Bahama Island trips and constantly LYING PIEHOLE running about how fucked up I am, make me want to puke.

You balled THIS up, Skippy.

US Job Creation Plunges, but Rate Drops to 7.6%

…Moreover, the drop in the jobless rate was little more than a statistical anomaly, with the labor-force participation rate tumbling to a 34-year low of 63.3 percent. However, a broader measure of unemployment that counts the discouraged and underemployed also fell, declining to 13.8 percent from February’s 14.3 percent.

The actual level of employment dropped by 206,000 and the number of Americans considered still in the labor force tumbled by 496,000.

“Having such a disappointing figure in March will have a volcanic negative impact on sentiment in critical economic areas, such as housing,” said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner at LandColt Capital. “Wall Street will not be happy, and are certain to punish stocks today.”

Oddly Enough This Didn’t Rate A Mention On CNN

I can’t imagine why

The trustee for the now-defunct U.S. brokerage firm MF Global, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, issued a 124-page investigatory report blasting former MF Global CEO and Obama bundler Jon Corzine for “negligent conduct,” employing trading strategies with lax oversight, and surpassing board-approved limits for European trades.

The report says the vaporization of $1.6 billion of MF Global customer money was largely the fault of Corzine.

“The risky business strategy engineered and executed by Corzine and other officers and their failure to improve the company’s inadequate systems and procedures so that the company could accommodate that business strategy contributed to the company’s collapse,” said the report.

Thank goodness for Dan Collins.

I’m Screwed

But as I of course know the cause of my chrome-dome-ification is Global Warming Climate Change I can take no small bit of comfort in knowing that my death can be blamed on BUUUUSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bald men are at greater risk of developing heart problems than those who retain a full head of hair – but only those with hair loss on top of their heads, and not at the front, are affected, new research suggests.

While baldness is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), men who have a receding hairline are not at heightened risk of the condition, according to a study in the journal BMJ Open.

Sigh.

RUSH, RUSH, RUSH! Like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

…the White HOUSE wants to shove through another half baked proposal with no general in-put in hopes of a big Obama win.

White House encourages Democrats to rush immigration bill through Congress

President Obama believes that the expected bipartisan immigration reform proposal should not receive extended scrutiny by lawmakers in committee, according to his spokesman, who said that immigration debates in past year should suffice.

“[A]s veterans of the Senate know, this issue has been under consideration at very serious levels periodically for a long time now,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during the gaggle today. “There is a great need to act on comprehensive immigration reform and a great opportunity to do it now, as the President has made clear. It has been in the past, and seems to be now, a bipartisan priority. And that is as it should be, in the President’s view.”

Carney was rejecting Rubio’s call for “regular order,” which would entail multiple hearings on the bill and provide senators with greater latitude to offer amendments to the bill.

And why should Carney object to the Senate doing it’s “regular” business?

Because that means deliberations are out in the light of day, open to questioning from all senators and John Q. Public has a clue what’s going on.

Top Dem rejects Rubio’s request for a slower immigration bill process

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., brushed off Sen. Marco Rubio’s request that he abandon his plan to rush the gang of eight’s immigration proposal to the Senate floor, promising only to consider scheduling one hearing to review the legislation.

“The Judiciary Committee is capable of swift and thorough action,” Leahy wrote to Rubio today. “As soon as we have comprehensive immigration legislation to review, I will consider scheduling a hearing, in consultation with Senator Grassley, the Ranking Republican on Committee, and Senator Schumer, the Immigration Subcommittee Chair, to examine that proposal.”

Rubio has been working in private with seven other senators to develop a bipartisan immigration bill that could pass through the Democratic Senate and the Republican House. Despite his participation in the negotiations, he practically demanded that Leahy commit a committee process that would allow for a thorough review of the bill.

“A rush to legislate, without fully considering all views and input from all senators, would be fatal to the effort of earning the public’s confidence,” Rubio wrote last week, as The Washington Examiner’s Byron York reported.

“Earning the public’s CONFIDENCE“!?!?!? Uncomfortable if one’s hoping for an ObamaCare-like triumph. The only “con” in that is attached to “job”.

HELP US, MARCO-BI WAN! You’re our only hope!

You’re the only thing between a fair public hearing or passing the bill to see what’s in it.

Even This Stimulus Failed

A $423,500 Stimulus program.

To study “Correct Condom Use”

Zero jobs.

But probably many smiles…

For Kcruella

From a fellow fan.

Viva los Metadors! Tu gotta believero!

— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) April 4, 2013

My Ebola is in Mourning

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts, Cancels Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault

Disney has laid off the staff of LucasArts and cancelled all current projects.

Staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio’s current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio is no more.

Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that’s unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for “one or both games,” but nothing happened. “With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever,” our source said.

A second source also told Kotaku this afternoon that the chances of Lucas licensing out 1313 are very slim. The odds are “effectively zero,” the source said.

And there is a black, black cloud over Tucson as he attempts to absorb this.

Sheesh. I can hardly believe it myself. Lucas Arts has been almost as much a part of our lives as the Brat has. In the early 90’s, when he was a young lad and world famous Jedi, breaking into the online games to design starships, make custom skins for people and DOS bombing miscreants who cheated (not to mention win copious amounts of tournaments), the folks at Lucas Arts liked what his evil, creative, self-taught little brain could do, going so far as to offer him a spot at Skywalker Ranch for his freshman summer of college, if he [insert DUM DUM DUMMMM music] “kept his grades up”. If only he’d been a senior in high school instead of going into his sophmore year. So much for that carrot with his “oooh, something shiney/did-that-on-to-the-next-thing” personality, and any hopes we had of living off of our kid like any self-respecting Lohan or Jackson parent went ‘poof’.

My only consolation is that Ebola ~ never one to mince words ~ would have been canned the second he heard about JarJar Binks anyway, so it’s not like it would have been a long term thing.

But, still…

Charlton Heston on SNL

Right after the Brady Bill was signed. Humor and BIG ones.

It Would Be Easier to List What the Administration Has Delivered “On Time” Than What Is Tardy, N’est Pas?

As it is, this little laggard of a deliverable is certainly…awkward.

ObamaCare in Trouble? Exchange provision delayed, as lawmakers push to repeal another

Parts of ObamaCare are starting to fray, even before full implementation.

The Obama administration now says a special system of exchanges designed to make it easier for small businesses to provide insurance will be delayed an entire year — to 2015.

“Lots of small businesses struggle with providing insurance for their workers so this was supposed to facilitate it and make it easier for small business to do this,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “It was a huge portion of the sale job. When they passed the law in 2010 there were many senators and members of Congress who were saying ‘I am doing this because it’s going to help small businesses.'”

The exchanges were designed to give workers a range of choices supported by dollars from their employers. But now they will have only one choice until 2015, which could mean they can’t shop for insurance that includes their current providers.

Capretta said the administration is “way” behind schedule.

So you might not get to keep your current insurance (AS PROMISED), even before they have anything to replace it with that you might (or might not) prefer. Way to go, El Presidento!

I found myself nodding in agreement with Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt assertion the other day ~ Obama wasn’t frogmarched out of office for the simple fact that the horrible, miserable, ill-considered, unimplementable provisions of his monstrosity of a Health Care takeover had yet to kick-in, and start to severely discomfit the very people who had bought into and voted for him, ergo, IT. So, no harm, no foul, check the box for Barack.

NOW, some months after his little paw has safely made it in the air to assume the office yet again, the PRICE we are all paying for the money-for-nothing types is starting to come into focus and the mewling is beginning. Oh, STOP, Juicy Couture, making your employees part-timers, you brutes! NEWSFLASH, girlfriends! You’re on the ass-end of the trend:

Part-Time Workforce Surges Ahead Of ObamaCare Mandate: Gallup

The shift to part-time work accelerated in February ahead of a key, midyear ObamaCare deadline, Gallup reported on Monday.

Gallup’s survey found that the percentage of part-time workers as a share of the overall labor force surged to 20.6%, the highest level in data going back to the start of 2010 — just as the employment recovery began.

The report provides the most dramatic evidence yet of the impact the 2010 health law is now beginning to have on employers of modest-wage workers and — even more importantly — on their workers.

Catch that? “In FEBRUARY”? And who already had secured a second shot at his gig? Yeah. I like this quote, too ~ goes to my earlier post:

“Policymakers should not be misled by the surge in part-time jobs in early 2013,” noted Gallup Chief Economist Dennis Jacobe. “The economic reality is that the U.S. job situation worsened in February.“

Oh, SNAP.

So your hours are cut to part-time, you could very well lose what insurance you have right now, leaving NO access to any insurance for the forseable future because the guy you voted for doesn’t have a plan yet, and the plan he and his botoxed witch sister passed lets all this happen FIRST, without making sure you’re covered in the meantime.

But they had to pass it to find that out. Let the pissing and mewling begin.

ME-owwwww.