LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES

I have long felt that liberals are concerned about groups (women, minorities, sexual orientation) whereas conservatives are more concerned about individuals (self made man, individual responsibility), but also local communities.*  Please note that ALL the 12 step programs emphasize individual responsibility.  Liberals,  I think, believe that you should be able to screw up to a certain degree (not kill people though), and it shouldn't make you pay for it the rest of your life (e.g. St. Paul, the great redemption story from persecutor of Christians to being the major advocate of Christianity.) whereas conservatives tend not to forgive screw ups, ever.

I think the liberals too admire the person in a group (e.g. poor) who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps, but they feel the group has great impediments in breaking out.  I had a friend from the coal country of West Virginia who said that the main way people could break out of this community was through football.  Often those who have broken out feel, "I did it.  Why can't they?" a common conservative stand.

* I call the community aspect the" Kansas conservative" where, if your neighbor's barn burns down, everyone bans together and has a barn raising, not some outside group comes to raise the barn (e.g. the government).   It is sort of an expanded individualism.  Conservatives often point out that the government was not involved in restoration of San Francisco after the famous earthquake versus the liberals promoting government being heavily involved in recovery, e.g. from the New Orleans flood with accusations of not doing enough, fast enough.  On the other hand, there are conservatives who accused the president from not being involved enough in Mid-Western floods and tornadoes.  I recall one Kansas conservative who said, "We were doing all right before 'gimme politics'."

GLOBAL CONSERVATIVE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT

For some years now a global conservative religious movement has been going on.  It is most marked in Islam of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, but a less deadly form, exists in Christianity, particularly in the U.S., where conservative Christians seem to have taken over the Republican Party.

Women are being sent to jail over abortion issues.  Consider the case of the woman who tried to procure "Morning After" pills for her daughter:*

In Pennsylvania, a woman has been sentenced to a year and a half behind bars for illegally procuring so-called “morning after” pills on the Internet for her 16-year-old daughter, who had an unwanted pregnancy. The mother had no health insurance, and there was no clinic nearby for the girl to obtain an abortion. (And if states like Texas end up getting their way, there will be lots of places where women’s health clinics will be shut down from over-regulation.) The mother is a single parent. One can only imagine how desperate both the mother and the daughter were.

But there was no acknowledgement of how awful it must have been for the mother to have to seek reproductive and abortion care for her daughter. Instead, the woman is suffering exactly the fate people said was just an hysterical conspiracy theory. She’s been named a criminal, convicted of performing an illegal abortion and is going to prison. The fact that the teenager will be without a mother for a year and a half doesn’t seem to trouble those who went after her, either.

Or consider the case of the Iowa woman who was only thinking about abortion"**
"Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.

That's when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn't always been sure she'd wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She'd considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose."

And the trend is growing.  consider Colorado that recently had a vote on personhood (that failed this time):
This fall, the people of Colorado will have the opportunity to vote onAmendment 67. Though the measure’s proponents are marketing it as a way of bringing justice to a woman and the fetus she lost after a collision with a drunk driver, Amendment 67 is not a law designed to protect pregnant women. Rather, it is a total overhaul of Colorado’s criminal code that would give law enforcement officials grounds to potentially arrest, prosecute, convict, and imprison women and mothers. ***
 .............................................
This is not true. Well-documented research shows that hundreds of women in a number of states have been arrested, detained, or forced to undergo medical procedures based on the legal principle that Amendment 67 would establish if enacted. Moreover, the women targeted for these arrests have overwhelmingly been low-income mothers and mothers of color.***
............................................

Once the word “child” is redefined to include the unborn, no further legislation is necessary before criminal laws become applicable to pregnant women. For example, in South Carolina, a decision that the word “child” in the state’s criminal code included viable fetuses was enough toimmediately apply criminal laws to pregnant women, including those who used drugs or experienced stillbirths.

Similarly, the Alabama Supreme Court recently decided that the word “child” includes the unborn from the moment of fertilization in their state constitution. Using this new and expanded definition of the word “child,” research from National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found that more than 130 women have been arrested under the chemical endangerment of “children” law, passed in 2006 to penalize adults who take juveniles to dangerous places like methamphetamine labs. However, prosecutors have since used it to punish women who used marijuana or another controlled substance while pregnant, even when they gave birth to healthy babies—which has been in the majority of cases.***

...........................................

According to a Personhood USA press release, this Alabama decision—which makes it possible to sentence mothers to lengthy prison terms away from their children—is a “monumental victory.

The Christian religious right wants to define "personhood" as beginning with fertilization of the egg; however, pregnancy really only begins when the egg adheres to the womb wall and can take 10 or 12 days to do so.  Pills like the morning after pill interrupt this adhering process.

Women better watch out or they will lose control of their lives.  Will we eventually regress to the "good old days" when women couldn't vote or, even earlier, not own property?  My allegiances are to the born, i.e. a baby is out of the womb and has taken a breath on its own.

* http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2014/09/08/pennsylvania-women-sent-to-jail-over-abortion-and-morning-after-pills
** http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/14/956120/-Iowa-Woman-Jailed-for-Thinking-about-an-Abortion
*** http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/10/07/keep-mothers-jail-vote-colorados-personhood-measure/

DEPORTATIONS BY FISCAL YEAR

How have deportations been going?

Depoprtations by Obama administration:
Deportations in FY 2014: 315,943*
Deportations in FY 2013: 368,644*
Deportations in FY 2012: 419,384**
Deportations in FY 2011: 396,000***
Deportations in FY 2010: 400,000*** 
Deportations in FY 2009: 409,849*, ***
Deportations by Bush administrations:
Deportations in FY 2008: 358,000***
Deportations in FY 2007: 318,000***
Deportations in FY 2006: 280,000***
Deportations in FY 2005: 245,000***
Deportations in FY 2004: 240,000***
Deportations in FY 2003: 210,000***
Deportations in FY 2002: 165,000***
Deportations in FY 2001: 186,000***
Deportations by Clinton administration (last two years):
Deportations in FY 2000: 185,000***
Deportations in FY 1999: 175,000***

Still Obama has deported more illegals (2,309,830) than any other president, and counting.  President Bush (Bush-43) deported 2,002,000 during his eight years.

* http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-deportations-in-fiscal-2014-lowest-since-obama-took-office-1418100326?wpisrc=nl-wonkbk&wpmm=1
** http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/24/record-number-of-deportations-in-2012/
*** http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-u-s-deportations/

ROLLED HIM AGAIN

When President Obama came to office, he thought that he could get together with the opposition and work out deals.  He slowly found out that to get 20% of what he wanted, the Republicans had to get 80% of what they wanted.  Worse, then they would beat him over the head with his compromises, i.e. delaying the end of the tax cut for the wealthy.  Finally the President realized he was being rolled.

So he then adopted a confrontational approach with the result that little got done.  Perhaps the biggest thing was when he stood up to the House about their threat to shut down the government, which they did.  Something I found to be odd was how important people felt about the National Parks, Monuments, etc. being closed.  At any rate, the government reopened at a considerable cost to the government.  Nearly as important was the "sequester" that he thought were so draconian that surely congress would act to avoid them, but they didn't and the automatic cuts began.  Well, at least the DOD budget was cut a bit.

Now to fund the Federal government through next September, the President has agreed to incredible compromises.  One awful one lessens regulation of financial derivatives.**  Another allows political parties to  get an order of magnitude more money from individuals.**  Rolled him again.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_budget
** http://news.yahoo.com/sound-smart-2015-appropriations-bill-161002683.html;_ylt=A0LEVvztpJFUSnYAODEPxQt;
http://crfb.org/blogs/budget-gimmicks-cromnibus-bill

TORTURE

In my classification, there are two types of torture: physical pain and mental pain.  The worst type is physical pain.  It seems hypocritical of us to try enemies for physical pain like waterboarding and then do it ourselves and say it legally is not torture.  Physical pain is torture.

Mental torture includes things like sleep deprivation which has been said to get the best results.  Our enemies have used it and we adopted it.  I'm not sure it is a crime.  I would tend to say it isn't.  I don't know what long term damage it does to the recipients.

People speculate on how more modern parts of warlike drones - will be viewed in 10 years, largely because of collateral damage.  It is naive to think that using group troops instead of drones would result in no collateral damage or even less collateral damage.  Plus how many of our troops are you willing to sacrifice to get the target?  I  support drones, but not indiscriminately.  If in 10 years it is decided that they should be illegal, then so be it.

It is incredible to think that war should be done in a surgical manner involving only military personnel.  War is messy and violent.  In WW-II, how would you classify the Dresden and Tokyo firebombings and the Hiroshima and especially Nagasaki* atomic bombs?  Such events were not made against military targets but in an attempt to break the will of civilians and their leaders.

* It seems like we dropped it because we had it.

YET MORE GOOD NEWS ON THE ECONOMY

Seems like every day we get more good news on the economy.  The latest is that the Thompson Reuters/University of  Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index is at an 8 yr high at 93.8, (the highest since January of 2007).  The final November reading is 88.8, also good.  Consumer expectations came in at 86.1 (the highest since January 2007) from 79.9, and the gauge on economic conditions rose to 105.7 from 102.7 (the highest since February 2007). "Expected wage gains rose to their highest level since 2008, and consumers voiced the most favorable buying attitudes in several decades," survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement." (http://www.cnbc.co/id/102263893?trknav=homestack:topnews:8)

CONTINUED GOOD NEWS ON ECONOMY

...November’s wage growth marked the fourth time this year that wages have grown at least 0.3% in a month, and there hasn’t been a single month that recorded falling wages. That phenomenon hasn’t happened since at least 2008. Wages have remained stagnant for years for a variety of reasons. The financial crisis, and the ensuing spike in unemployment, forced many Americans to take a job–any job–to get back on their feet. Many took jobs they were overqualified for and agreed to take a pay cut just to get back into the workforce. The unemployment rate fell but wages hardly budged. But something might be changing, albeit slowly, that is causing the wage shift.*

The economy has seen a net gain of more than 6 million full-time jobs since the official end date of the 2007-09 recession, which was in June 2009. The economy has witnessed a net increase of just 311,000 part-time jobs over the same period, according to Labor Department figures**.

The increase in full-time jobs seems to be contrary to politicians saying that most new jobs are part-time.

The best places to live are in the Northeast and Midwest. The only "Southern" state to be in the top tire of the good list is Virginia if you still classify it as a Southern State.

Seven years after the credit bubble burst, just two of the 12 countries that went through systemic financial meltdowns in 2007 and 2008 have reclaimed enough ground to reach their previous peaks in per-capita GDP: the United States and Germany. And Germany isn’t looking so hot these days, given that it’s teetering on the edge of deflation.***

* http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/12/05/are-wages-finally-snapping-back/
** http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/12/05/november-jobs-report-how-many-new-jobs-are-actually-full-time/?mod=djemRTE_h
*** http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-how-the-us-economy-got-its-mojo-back/2014/12/01/6831e8e0-79a1-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html?wpisrc=nl-opt

FERGUSON, MO, POLITICS

It seems weird to me that more blacks in Ferguson, MO, aren't in the local politics.  I'm sorry to say that it looks like Ferguson residents don't care until some tragedy happens.  See the following quotes:

Ferguson’s population is two-thirds African-American, yet the mayor, five of the six City Council members and nearly the entire police force are white.*
......................................................................................
It’s true that Ferguson’s municipal elections schedule doesn’t encourage turnout. These elections take place in April, far from the traditional voting day in November. They also occur in nonpresidential years, when turnout by minorities and young people traditionally drops. In the most recent municipal election, only 12 percent of registered voters — white, black or otherwise — cast ballots. Voters can change those dates.*
......................................................................
At Brown’s funeral, a family member called on mourners to make themselves heard at the polls. But only 204 residents of Ferguson registered to vote from the time of the fatal shooting to the Oct. 8 registration deadline for voting this year — only 204 in a city of 21,000 people.*

*http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/11/26/ferguson-voting-matters/19536643/

MAJORITY NOW SAY THINGS GOING WELL

According to a CNN/ ORC International poll conducted Nov. 21-23 [2014] of 1,045 adults, 52 percent of people said things are going well, including 8 percent who said they were going very well. This compares to 48 percent who said things are going badly, including 33 percent who said things are going pretty badly, and 15 percent who said things are going very badly.*

This is in contrast to August and November polls of 2011 when only 24-28% said things were going either fairly well or vary well and September, October, and December polls of 2010 when 25-29% said things were going fairly well or very well (less than 1% doing very well).  The worst month since 2005 was the November 2008 poll where only 16% said that thing were fairly well (less than 1% very well).

We've come a long way, Baby.

The best poll year was 2000 when January polls were 80 and 81% doing fairly well or very well (all time best starting in 1974) to  a LOW of 72% in June!  Let the good times roll.  Oh, for those bubble years!

* http://webmailb.juno.com/webmail/new/5?session_redirect=true&userinfo=8b254f2f4f26b1dc56d8fe41da329a7b&count=1417202894&cf=SP2&randid=771484870

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IN 5 MIN.

A source has come to my attention that exlpains global climate change in various time limits.  I present under 5 min. here: http://www.howglobalwarmingworks.org/in-under-5-minutes-ba.html

IMMIGRATION REFORM II

I can't believe that President Obama's Executive Order on immigration will be ovterurned in the courts.* There are an estimated 11.5 million illegal immmigrants in this country.  If he exempts from deportation 5 million, that still leaves an estimated 6.5 million to choose from.  He may deport as many as 400,000 illegals/year over the next two years (800,000 total).  There are plenty more than enough illegals to choose from for deportation.

Obama plans to deport illegals with criminal records and those who arrived here illegally during his term in office (whether they have had children during this period or not).  I have no idea except that this grouping may fulfill the total deportations during the next two years. If not, there are plenty of others around to fill the gap.

I think that the last in should be the first out is a sound policy because it helps discourage illegal migration.

The whole foofarah is over nothing really.

* Also see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/11/immigration-reform.html

IMMIGRATION REFORM

So now with President Obama's modest Executive Order on immigration, the Republicans are REALLY not going to do anything on immigration (or hardly on anything else) instead of just doing nothing on immigration.  When are we going to elect more adults to our congress?

My take is that our deportation king President has just set priorities on who will be deported and particularly will focused on those who have criminal records.

There has been quite of bit of mention on the Executive Order limitation on illegal immigrants having to have been in this country for 5 yrs or more and only to parents of American citizens or that are here legally.  Aside from 5 yrs being a nice round number, it essentially says that you have to have arrived here before I became president (actually 6 yrs would be more accurate but doesn't sound as nice).  In other words, if you have illegally come here during my tenure, you are fair game for deportation.

I still consider it a mystery as to why Republicans in the House did nothing on the Senate immigration bill.  For example they could have picked out completing the fence, adding the 19,000 new border patrol members and increasing the number of drones added and just pass that.  Of course, the Senate would either reject it or not even take it up, but, heck, they passed eliminating the ACA something like 50 times.  They could have added an immigration bill to it.  Perhaps they were wise enough to realize this would make their relations with the Hispanic community even worse.  But as it was, the party of no immigration bill (not even voting on the Senate bipartisan bill)* in the House and shutting down the government paid no penalty in this last election.  It even appears that the electorate liked all the inaction and rejection.  They even got a larger share of the Hispanic vote.  So it is said that Democrats just don't turn out for mid-term elections.  Well, Democrats not voting is actually voting for the Republicans.  A pox on both political houses.

* And many other things like rejecting background checks on guns, raising the minimum wage, failure to endorse the President's actions in Iraq and many others.

DOLLAR INDEX RECENT HISTORY

The Dollar Index (DXY) was originated by the Federal Reserve and was originally designed before the Euro came into being, therefore it may come as no surprise that the Euro makes up more than 50% (57.6% actual) of the dollar index with Japan being number two at 13.6%.  The Pound Sterling (11.9%), Canadian Dollar (9.1%), Swedish Krona (4.2%), and Swiss Franc (3.6%) follow.  The Dollar Index is a weighted geometric mean of these six currencies, our six most important trading countries (Note: China is not on the list.).*

Very recently the Dollar Index has risen sharply, i.e. the dollar has strengthened, making exports from the US more expensive and imports less expensive that will no doubt widen our trade deficit.   Below is a graph of the Dollar Index going back through 2006.  You can see that the Dollar Index is now at its third highest peak since the Great Recession;  however it has been much higher and topped 120 briefly in 2001 and didn't drop below 100 until April of 2003.**  It has remained below 100 ever since.  It dropped below 72 in April of 2008.***  It closed on November 19 at 87.11.

Figure from BarChart: http://www.barchart.com/quotes/stocks/$DXY


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Dollar_Index
** http://futures.tradingcharts.com/historical/US/2001/0/continuous.html
*** Actually there was a "flash crash very briefly in the dollar index in April of 2007.

INCOMES POST THE GREAT RECESSION

Even though there are now more jobs than before the Great Recession, a recent report* by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and IHS Global Insight found that new jobs pay 23 percent less than the positions lost in the recession. The wage gap is "significantly larger" than that of the country's last recession and recovery, the report found, and implies $93 billion in lower wage income.  Job losses have been prmarily in manufacturing (avg. $63,000) and construction (avg. $58,000) and replaced by lower paying jobs in hospitality, healthcare, and administrative support (avg $21,000-$47,000).  The median household income in 2012 was $51,017 which, when adjusted for inflation, was the lowest since 1995.

The metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of the workforce with incomes above $100,000/yr (above 40%) are: Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT (41.8% with a median income of $81,100/yr in 2013); San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (45.4% with a median income of $93,500/yr in 2013), and Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria (44.1% with a median income of $88,100/yr in 2013).  SanFrancsico-Oakland-Fremont, CA came close at 38.4% (with a median income of $75,900/yr in 2013).  Metrolplitan areas with the fewest percentage above $100,000 (below 10%) are:  Gadsen, AL (7.4% with a median income of $34,900/yr in 2013); Muncie, IN (9.1% with a median income of $36,000/yr in 2013);  Yuma, AZ (9.3% with a median income of $39,700/yr in 2013); Brownsville-Harlington, TX (9.4% with a median income of $30,800/yr in 2013 Ranked 363); Ocala, FL (9.4% with a median income of $37,700/yr in 2013); Fort Smith, AR,OK (9.6% with a median income of $36,300/yr in 2013); Morristown, TN (9.6% with a median income of $39,200/yr in 2013);  Cumberland, MD,WV (9.7% with a median income of $36,100/yr in 2013); Joplin, MO (9.7% with a median income of $37,700/yr in 2013); Wheeling, WV,OH (9.9% with a median income of $42,400/yr in 2013).

Though fewer adults are getting married, remarriages are up.
Whether Americans remarry or not matters because marriage is correlated with financial well-being. Some 7% of remarried adults live in poverty, compared with 19% of divorced adults. The median annual personal income of remarried adults is about $30,000, $5,000 higher than for divorced adults.**

* See August 2014: Income and Wage Gaps Across the U.S.:  http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies/ I encourage you to look at the entire article.
** http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/11/14/more-americans-are-saying-i-do-again-and-again-and-again/?mod=djemRTE_h

REPUBLICANS AND HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR

So the electorate in its wisdom has turned congress over to the party that caused the problems.  But all may not be lost.  For example, President Reagan instituted the rule that Emergency Rooms had to take all comers.  This was huge.  I think it was one of the two most major things of his presidency (the other was breaking the Air Traffic controller's Union).  Having Emergency rooms be the primary care source for the poor was maybe as large as the ACA, though it drives up the cost of those that can pay.  And then President Bush (43) got passed (if barely) Medicare D, the prescription drug provision.  Of course it had the weird "doughnut hole" that wasn't covered but it was huge too.  A benefit of having Republican  presidents pass health care provisions is that they remain unopposed.  You don't hear of any opposition to Emergency Rooms having to take all comers even though it clogs the emergency rooms.  You also don't hear opposition to Medicare D.  Neither of these had any attempt to cover the costs.  It is only the ACA that is opposed, certainly because it was passed by Democrats even though it was a conservative bill and attempted to cover the costs.  Like Medicare D, it is flawed but was the best bill that could have passed.

HOW ABOUT AN ASTEROID OR WOULD YOU BELIEVE A COMET

Yesterday (November 12, 2014) the European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft Rosetta landed a package (Philae) on a comet (67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko).*  It was a very complex mission just to get to the comet.  Periodically I have been ready to break out in tears all day (the 13th).  In the early 1970s I was a member of a working group in NASA on Missions To Comets And Asteroids.  I’ve waited more than 40 years for this.  The ESA had a good mission to Halley’s Comet in 1968, but a mission by the U.S. couldn’t be sold.  The Japanese and Russians also had less sophisticated missions.  The U.S., however, did have a space craft reprogrammed to fly though the tail of Halley’s.  This sort of completes things for me, especially if the measurements planned are taken.  It didn’t happen on my time table, but it happened.  I’m glad to have lived long enough to experience it.

The lander is not a total success in that its anchoring did not work (so drilling is perhaps impossible) and it is in the shade of a cliff for now.  As it goes around the sun, perhaps it will get some illumination.  Still  many measurements will be made before its primary batteries run out.

Previously, the NASA spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker landed on the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros, though it was an orbiter and was not designed to land.**  It was able to collect some valuable information, however, from its gamma-ray spectrometer for a couple of weeks.

My participation in the working group of Missions To Comets and Asteroids was probably the most exciting two years of my life.  We would ask the trajectory engineers (trajectory shapers) what kind of a mission we could have in, say, 1983 and a month later we would come back and these engineers would say something like you could go by asteroid such and such, comet thus and so, and rendezvous with comet whatever.  We had a hard time selling missions to small bodies comets and asteroids so the idea was if we could put several together it would be more sellable, but at the time it didn't work.  We did have some successes, however, with targets of opportunity.  A dust storm on Mars permitted pictures to be taken of the two satellites of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) and a storm on Jupiter enabled pictures to be taken of satellites on Jupiter, including the near Jupiter satellite Io where active volcanoes were observed (see the poem Io at http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/07/io.html).  Over many years, NASA was to become somewhat more interested in small bodies, perhaps because of the engineering challenges that supplied in getting to them.  I was to learn about all sorts of space tricks like Jupiter gravity assists in getting space craft to these small bodies.  .  (The report of the panel was published as Stuhlinger et al., Comet and Asteroid Mission Study Panel, l972, Comets and Asteroids:  A Strategy for Exploration:  NASA Technical Memorandum, NASA TM X-64677, 93 p. [where I was one of 11 authors])

* (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/13/comet-picture_n_6150592.html)
** http://science.nasa.gov/missions/near/

NOT SURE WHAT IS GOING ON

There were many strange things about this last election.  Perhaps the most weird was the re-election of Sam Brownback as governor of Kansas.  His tax cuts ruined the economy of Kansas and he degraded the schools, but the electorate reelected him anyway.  Are Kansas Republicans constitutionally unable to vote for anyone but a Republican no matter how bad?

The House Republicans love to tell how many bills they have passed that are held up in the Senate (I can't recall if it is closer to 240 or 420), but they never tell us what these bills are to do.  We know that something like 50 are to repeal the ACA (Affordability Care Act), what are the others?

New York Times, Oct. 22: “Some of those things will help,” Matthew J. Slaughter, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, said after reviewing nearly four dozen measures that House Republicans have labeled “jobs bills.” He cited some business tax cuts, for example, even as he cautioned about the cost of such actions.

“But,” added Mr. Slaughter, who served on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, “it just struck me as sort of a compendium of modest expectations. If you ask me, ‘What’s your ballpark guess for how many jobs are going to be created?,’ it’s just not many.”

So there are nearly 4 dozen "jobs bills" passed in the House, but even a Republican economics professor says they are mainly for show.

But then there are some House bills proposed by Democrats that are also held up such as:

"A bill penned by Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) regarding the Coconino National Forrest is anticipated to be included in a package of Natural Resources bills that will come for a full Senate vote later this year, her office said. (http://thehill.com/homenews/house/200228-house-dems-to-senate-dems-pass-our-bills)"

Or the even noncontroversial bill by a Democrat that:

Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) has sponsored a bill aimed at naming an outpatient clinic after the late Major General William H. Gourley. It cleared the House in November.   

“It's nothing more than a bill to name a building so I am not sure why it's being held up,” Farr said. “I'd love to see it move.” ( http://thehill.com/homenews/house/200228-house-dems-to-senate-dems-pass-our-bills)


Such things sound silly except Harry Reid (and I am no fan of his) is trying to get the House to act on the Senate bipartisan immigration bill, perhaps one of the most important bills of recent history.  If that is his plan, it is not working.

VOTING WITH THEIR POCKET BOOKS

Why was there a Republican wave this last Tuesday (November 4, 2014) when ALL the economic news is good.  Why didn't the Republicans face a penalty for doing nothing, for shutting down the government, for not enacting background checks for guns when more than 80% of those polled wanted it, for not raising the minimum wage when more than 50% of those polled were for it, for the House's failure to vote on the Senate immigration reform bill that passed the Senate with 68 votes, eight more than needed.  In view of slow employment increase, why was there no infrastructure bill?  Why was there no penalty for the Republicans doing nothing?

The problem is that the employment numbers , in spite of the large increases, are only back to where they were when President Obama took office, and the steep decline in the numbers of jobs started before he took office but continued for some months after he took office.  And wage increases are not only not keeping up with inflation, but household income has actually dropped.  In states with better economies, like North Carolina, the Democratic Senators only lost narrowly, but in states where the economic recovery was poor, like Arkansas, Democrats did poorly.

And then, white male Democrats do not seem to turn out for mid-term elections for reasons not known by me.  Blacks and Hispanics did come out and Democratic women did come out for Democratic politicians if not in the percentages as they do in presidential elections.  Would Democratic candidates have done even more poorly if they had come out for the advances in medical care and lowering of medical inflation?  Would they have done more poorly if they had strongly noted the increase in the economy and job recovery even if there is a long way to go yet?

Well, there seems to be some optimism that now that Republicans control both houses of congress, we will see more bills passed, something on immigration, for example.  But the Senate bipartisan immigration bill was never voted on in the House and thoughts are that it would have passed with sufficient Republican votes if a vote was allowed.  It is expected that the Keystone XL pipeline will now pass (as I believe it should), and I would expect our Center Right President to sign it.  Not mentioned is drilling in ANWR (Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge) as I think should occur under some stringent conditions.  We don't really know if there is even any economic amounts of oil there.  How much of the religious agenda of the religious Republican Party will be pursued?  The Republican party has become such a religious party that I even wonder if it is even a legal party.  And will Republicans get rid of cloture in the Senate to get their bill through?

Well, let's be optimistic and think that now that the Republican are in control of congress, they will agree to some things they formerly opposed.  I tell myself that they will, but I can't help but wonder if they even know how to.  I'm a little more optimistic about the Senate than the House  Time will tell.

WAGES UP, UNEMPLOYMENT IN CITIES DOWN

All the economic news seems to be good, but according to the media and polls, people don't recognize it.  Perhaps it is too recent for them.

Wages gains are now confirmed to be the best since 2008 (http://www.cnbc.com/id/102140846?trknav=homestack:topnews:20)

Unemployment in one-third of the cities is below 5%: (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/29/jobless-rate-below-5-in-nearly-one-third-of-u-s-metro-areas/?mod=djemRTE_h)

Consumer Sentiment Index is up: https://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerconfidence.cfm  The index surged to a score of 94.5 in October, up from 89.0 in September.

For other economic news see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/employment-and-consumer-sentiment.html; http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/consumers-are-better-off-finally.html

THE GREAT AMERICAN NON-CRISIS - EBOLA VS THE FLU

As the current hysteria, fanned by the media, moves to quarantine health workers with no Ebola symptoms, I presume people are dying from the flu or flu related causes like pneumonia, but is the shot mix designed  last February working?  Did they guess right?  I did hear one news flash some time ago that the flu season arrived early this year.

Now we have some answers after nearly one month of  the 2014-2015 flu season that officially started September 28 (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/).  There has been one pediatric death recorded so far (in the previous season, there were 109 pediatric deaths reported for the whole season). It was in North Carolina, but we are still in the beginning of the flu season and not yet in the peak period for ILI symptoms  occurs as early as early December (2012-2013) to as late as late February (2010-2011) (http://www.flu.nc.gov/data/) though the 2009-2010 flu season peak for happened early and had already occurred by October 23rd.

 Note that the 2010-2011 ILI visits is missing from the figure above.

 Figure: Annual ILI trends from the Influenza-Like Illness Network (ILNet) for 2010-2015.  Note that the 2009-2010 year is missing from the above figure.

DEATHS FROM DOMESTIC AND "FOREIGN" CAUSES

I have long been fascinated by how we Americans view deaths - those we seem to overlook and those that make us hysterical.

First consider deaths from causes domestically.  For example consider guns.  There were just over 11,000 homicides by guns in the U.S. in each of 2010 and 2011,* over 18,000 suicides and 700-800 accidental deaths; yet we do next to nothing to regulate guns.  The final figure for gun deaths in 2011 for all catagories is 32,351.**  Then there are automobiles.  In 2011, the final figure for automobile deaths is 33,783.**   Those who have had life changing injuries from automobile accidents must outstrip that large number.  Automobile deaths are down markedly from their all-time high owing to increased safety features; yet this remaining huge figure is tolerated with calm.  Lastly I'll mention flu.  Flu strains often are imported from foreign sources, but, because there is a flu season every year, we consider the flu to be a domestic disease and don't seem to pay much attention to flu related deaths.  In a good year, the number of flu related deaths may be as low as 3,000 or as high as 49,000 (!) in a bad year.***  Yes, there is some attention made of deaths from these domestic sources, but it certainly is not hysterical.

Now consider the reactions of Americans to a small number of deaths from foreign sources.  We are terrified of any deaths from terrorism on U.S. soil.  We want our privacy but we demand there be no deaths from terrorism, not one.  We opposed staying involved militarily in Iraq until two American reporters were shown being decapitated by ISIS in Syria after which hysteria ensued.  All of a sudden attitudes changed to wanting to return to war in Iraq.  Up to 70% of those polled favored air strikes.  In a poll reported by Fox News, 52%  of Americans favor returning ground troops to Iraq if air strikes should not be enough versus 42% who oppose using ground forces.****  Among Republicans 66% favor sending ground forces versus 29% who oppose using ground forces if air strikes prove to be insufficient.

Then consider the hysterical reaction of Americans to Ebola, unlike the flu a "foreign" disease.  We have saturation coverage by the news media on a case by case basis.  Even though we were assured that Ebola is hard to get, a super hysteria has occurred, stimulated by some heath care officials getting Ebola who were handling patients with the disease in Africa and one patient in the U.S. who handled a dead person in Africa.  People apparently discontinued air travel trips.  Some worried whether it is safe to live in New York.  They didn't believe the experts that the disease is hard to get.  This has unbelievably become a political issue.  Not even the fact that none of the Duncan family (the man who acquired Ebola in Africa) has come down with Ebola nor have more than 50 others that he had contact with seems to have eased the hysteria.

What a contrast!  We accept deaths from guns, automobiles and the flu with equanimity, but lose our sanity over something we consider "foreign."

P.S. Both nurses exposed to Duncon in Texas are now pronounced Ebola free.  The reaction to a physcian in New York, who had been treating patients with Ebola, has come down with the disease, but the news media hasn't been able to stir up as much hysteria over it though they incorrectly announced he had a temperature of 103 degrees when actually it was 100.3.

* http://usconservatives.about.com/od/capitalpunishment/a/Putting-Gun-Death-Statistics-In-Perspective.htm
** http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
*** http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm
**** http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/01/fox-news-poll-majority-supports-ground-troops-to-battle-isis-if-airstrikes-not/

MONICA LEWINSKY - AGAIN

So Monica Lewsinsky is in the news again.  You know, the young woman who flipped her blouse up so that womanizer Bill Clinton could see her bra strap that left him salivating.  Clinton survived his affair with her and being only the second president to be impeached, but Monica hasn't fared very well.  Didn't her mother ever tell her the "The woman always pays?" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Lewinsky)

What I would have done in a similar situation, I really don't know.  I have a saying that "Untested Virtue Is No Virtue At All,"  and I never had pretty young women come on to me.

I heard a large excerpt of what she said, and it was pretty good so far as it went.  She didn't say she regretted getting a President impeached and ruining the last years of his presidency.  But the acts themselves were not all that bad (Though what they did sounded ugly in print, apparently they never had intercourse.).  Her real sin was that she had to blab about her affair.  It used to be that women kept their mouths shut if they managed to have a affair with the President, but she just had to tell an enemy of the President.  Today is different, women tell.

I knew from the beginning that Clinton was a womanizer, but I thought he wanted to accomplish some things enough that he would keep his pants zipped.  In this I was wrong, it was like handing a recovering alcoholic a martini.  Irresistible.  And there were those other woman who couldn't forgive Hillary for not divorcing the SOB, though I suppose there were others who understood and who also had remained in a marriage in spite of infidelity.

At the time, there were others with Salvic names in the news, like Ted Kaczynski who didn't like modern technolgy and bombed technologists.  I put Lewinsky and Kaczynski in a poem called "the Balkenization Of America (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-balkanization-of-america-poem.html).

For awhile it was lots of fun.  In case you have forgotten, for example there was Henry Hyde*, who led the impeachment hearing in the House, who had to admit to a multi-year "youthful indiscretion in his 40s" with a married woman.  And then there was Rep. Helen Chenowith of Idaho, a viscous critic of Presidnet Clinton's behavior, who admitted to a six-year affair with a married man ( "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it." ).**  Dan Burton had to admit to even fathering a child out of wedlock.***  Lastly, there was Rep. Bob Livingston incoming Speaker of the House who resigned even before he took office due to four known affairs, one within the last three or four years.**** 

*  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hyde
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Chenoweth-Hage
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Burton
**** http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/livingston121998.htm

THE BALKANIZATION OF AMERICA (POEM)

Lewinsky,
Kaczynski,
I don’t want either agin'st me.
With bombs, technologists does he blow?
In a biblical sense, did the President this young woman know?
Is blowing up people now just swell?
Is it all right to kiss and tell?
Did the President deflower this innocent virgin?
Or was it right to stop the technology burgeon?
What gives with these confusing Slavic names
Who play all those weird and dangerous games?

1998


A very young American Olympics skating gold medalist at age 15 is
Tara Lipinski, which brings to mind a couplet:

How can anyone so short and slight
Do figure skating so out of sight.

Also Monica Lewinsky’s mother’s maiden name is:

Marcia VILENSKY.

EBOLA AND THE FLU

The news media is trying their best to whip the public into hysteria over the two nurses who apparently have come down with Ebola.  I listen to the Ebola news just long enough to hear if there is anything new.  There isn't except that the first nurse is now in good condition.  No one outside the medical profession in the U.S. has come down with Ebola, though I guess we await developments on the journey to Cleveland by the second nurse.  We may yet close all air traffic to the infected African countries.

In the meantime many hundreds of children have come down with envirovirus and one child has died, which is as many as have died from Ebola in the U.S., yet the new media seems immune to this development.  If you Google envirovirus, you only get reports up front from last September.  So far as I am concerned, Ebola in this country is a non-issue, as of now.

There is also the little matter of this year's flu epidemic, something I feel is far more important than Ebola (http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/flu-season-coming-early-and-hitting-hard/37803/):

"The H3N2 strain tends to affect the elderly population more severely and a season with predominant H3N2 activity typically leads to more hospitalization and deaths.
..........................................................Another difficulty with the flu vaccine is the time required for its mass production. Vaccine strains are chosen in advance, sometimes as early as February. While experts do their best to predict the pattern of the viral strains, often the strains contained in the vaccines end up having an almost insignificant effect on the flu season."

So, although I did get a flu shot, I and many others, particularly at continuing care facilities, may still be exposed.  All it would take is someone in the kitchen handling food to come to work or a visitor with the flu and have it run rampant through the membership.  Time will tell what happens.  Symptoms of seasonal flu are:  fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, and muscle aches.

The following is excerpted from a CDC report (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2014-2015.htm):

Is there treatment for the flu?

Yes. If you get sick, there are drugs that can treat flu illness. They are called antiviral drugs and they can make your illness milder and make you feel better faster. They also can prevent serious flu-related complications, like pneumonia. For more information about antiviral drugs, visit Treatment (Antiviral Drugs).

What is antiviral resistance?

Antiviral resistance means that a flu virus has changed in such a way that antiviral drugs are less effective. Samples of flu viruses collected from around the United States and worldwide are studied at CDC to determine if they are becoming resistant to any of the FDA-approved influenza antiviral drugs.):

EMPLOYMENT AND CONSUMER SENTIMENT PICTURE

New applications for unemployment are at a 14-yr low, lowest since 2000.*  This does not necessarily say that the employment picture is equally as good.  What it may be saying is that layoffs are down, but hiring is not necessarily up.  Consumer sentiment is the highest since 2007.**  All signs are of an improving economy and optimism:  optimists now edge pessimists (though a plurality of those who don't know still dominates), wages and job openings doing well, the U-6 (unemployed plus underemployed) is decreasing nicely, though still above the "all time low" set in April of 2006.***

Yet, many people feel that the recovery has not reached them.  A reason for this may have been shown on Meet The Press (October 5, 2014), communities along the north-south interstate highways are doing well and those farther away are either doing less well or are even falling behind.  I have been unable to locate the figure so I'll quote a bit of the text that gives an example:

"Well, because the road to recovery is taking different routes. And that could mean trouble for Democrats in November. Let me show you another graphic and a map. Along the major interstates running north to south in the U.S., the fives, communities close to those highways are in the economic fast lane. These are the mostly urban areas that do favor Democrats, where economies are thriving and people are actually heading back into the job market at a rapid pace.

Much more rapidly than in rural America, farther away from those interstates. In fact, take a look right here in Washington D.C., along the I-95 corridor. From July 2010 to July 2014, the unemployment rate dropped nearly two points. And 35,000 more people felt encouraged enough to actually go into the job market.

150 miles to the southeast though, in rural Gloucester County, Virginia, the unemployment rate also dropped less than a point. But that was simply because nearly 1,200 fewer people are actually out there looking for work. Let's go to I-35 in Iowa, in Polk County, home to Des Moines. Not only was there a drop in the unemployment rate of two points, but 4,700 more people actually are in the job market."****

* http://www.cnbc.com/id/102092928?trknav=homestack:topnews:15
  http://www.cnbc.com/id/102096833?trknav=homestack:topnews:1
*** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/consumers-are-better-off-finally.html; http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/economy-job-openings-doing-well.html; http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/unemployment-underemployment-rate-u-6.html
**** http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-october-5-2014-n218796

CONSUMERS ARE BETTER OFF - FINALLY!

More good news, consumers say they are financially better off now than a year ago has finally turned positive.*
For the first time in this upturn [i.e. since 2009], more consumers say they are better off financially now than a year ago compared with the share saying they are worse off. Plus, a high 83% of workers feel very or fairly secure in their current jobs.

Like reports done by the Conference Board, Thomson-Reuters and the University of Michigan, the most encouraging facet is the optimism about the future. According to the ASR poll, 35% of consumers think they will be better off financially a year from now, outnumbering the 12% who expect to be worse off. Driving that hope is expectations about pay: 31% think their personal income will be higher over the next 12 months versus 14% who expect a pay cut.

  This finding goes along with increased wage growth and job openings.**  But before we get too excited note that nearly half of the participants must have said that they don't know.

* http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/09/29/at-last-more-consumers-say-they-are-better-off-
than-a-year-ago-than-worse-off/?wpisrc=nl-wonkbk&wpmm=1
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/10/economy-job-openings-doing-well.html

WAGES-JOB OPENINGS DOING WELL

The number of job openings are the highest in 13 yrs.*

Click to enlarge.

In addition wage gains have picked up.**

Click to enlarge.

"In the third quarter, ADP says, pay rose fastest, about 4.8% over the year, for financial and construction workers. Construction firms have faced a shortage of skilled workers as the housing market has recovered. Pay hikes of at least 4.2.% were broad-based across all major industries, the report says."**

"The number of positions waiting to be filled rose to 4.84 million in August, the most since January 2001, from a revised 4.61 million the prior month, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. Hiring and firings cooled, while fewer people quit their jobs.
.......................................................
Considering the 9.59 million Americans who were employed in August, today's figures indicate there are about 2 people vying for every opening, up from about 1.8 when the last recession began in December 2007. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/business/job-openings-in-us-rose-by-230-000-in-august-to-13-year-high-of-4-84-million-1.1103937#sthash.STB5EoaY.dpuf"

* http://www.marketwatch.com/story/job-openings-hit-13-year-high-but-hiring-drops-2014-10-07
** http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/08/adp-wage-growth/16880335/