Category: Uncategorized

Oh, Wonderful: World economy trapped in ‘death spiral’ says Citigroup

Oh joy… 🙄

The global economy seems trapped in a “death spiral” that could lead to further weakness in oil prices, recession and a serious equity bear market, Citi strategists have warned.Some analysts — including those at Citi — have turned bearish on the world economy this year, following an equity rout in January and weaker economic data out of China and the U.S.”The world appears to be trapped in a circular reference death spiral,” Citi strategists led by Jonathan Stubbs said in a report on Thursday.”Stronger U.S. dollar, weaker oil/commodity prices, weaker world trade/petrodollar liquidity, weaker EM (and global growth)… and repeat. Ad infinitum, this would lead to Oilmageddon, a ‘significant and synchronize – Source: Citi: World economy trapped in ‘death spiral’

Makes you want to go right out and spend a bunch of money, doesn’t it? 🙄

BREAKING MICHIGAN NEWS: Two Michigan State Republican Senators, Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat exposed in adultery scandal, used offices to cover affair

Todd Courser, R-Lapeer, and Cindy Gamrat, R-Plainwell - Busted for adultery using their office to cover it up. What morons!
Todd Courser, R-Lapeer, and Cindy Gamrat, R-Plainwell – Busted for adultery using their office to cover it up. What morons!

This is a big scandal in Michigan and it was exposed by the Detroit News, which is a right-leaning newspaper here in the Detroit area.

Via the Detroit News, where you can hear the recordings made:

Lansing — State Rep. Todd Courser planned the distribution of a fictional email alleging he had sex with a male prostitute in a bid to conceal his relationship with Rep. Cindy Gamrat, according to audio recordings obtained by The Detroit News.

Courser, a Lapeer Republican, said on one recording the email was designed to create “a complete smear campaign” of exaggerated, false claims about him and Gamrat so a public revelation about the legislators’ relationship would seem “mild by comparison.”

Interviews with former House employees and the recordings show freshman lawmakers Courser and Gamrat, R-Plainwell, used their taxpayer-funded offices to maintain and cover up their relationship. Courser, 43, and Gamrat, 42, rose from the ranks of tea party activism, battled establishment Republicans to win seats in the House last year and formed their own legislative coalition.

The real kicker is this:

The pair are socially conservative legislators who often invoke their Christian faith in pursuit of new legislation governing gun rights, abortion and marriage. Their political alliance dates back to Courser’s unsuccessful 2013 race for Michigan Republican Party chairman when Gamrat ran as his vice chairwoman.

But since being sworn into office in January,the self-described tea party “gladiators” have fought with Republican leaders. In an unusual move, Courser and Gamrat wrote a “liberty response” to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s State of the State address in January — the kind of retort that typically comes from Democrats.

In April, House Speaker Kevin Cotter kicked Gamrat out of Republican caucus meetings after she was caught leaking confidential discussions among GOP members. In one of his lengthy emails to people involved in Michigan politics, Courser called the House speaker a “bully” who was waging a “witch hunt” and who was “dead set against (Gamrat’s) efforts to advance liberty and freedom.”

The sad part:

“It will make anything else that comes out after that — that isn’t a video — mundane, tame by comparison,” Courser, a married father of four, told Graham.

[…]

During two meetings recorded by Graham, Courser and Gamrat, who is also married and has three children, did not dispute the aide’s characterization of their relationship as an extramarital affair. They acknowledged the aide’s discomfort but neither directly confirmed nor denied having a sexual relationship.

Here’s the deal, if these accusations are true and seeing that it was reported by the Detroit News; they most likely are. These two birds need to resign and I mean right away. This is not only a blemish on the conservative movement, the tea party; but also on the Republican Party in Michigan and the Republican Party and the Christian right as well.

Others via Memeorandum: Yahoo Politics, Guardian, Daily Mail, NPR, Slantpoint, The Daily Caller, Daily Kos, Political Wire, KFOR-TV, Fox News, Associated Press, Washington Post, Jezebel, Fusion, Raw Story, Right Wing Watch, Talking Points Memo and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Update: No sooner than I hit publish, I go back to the Detroit News website and I see that Michigan Rep. Candace Miller is calling for their resignation as well:

Lansing — U.S. Rep. Candice Miller on Friday called for the immediate resignation of state Rep. Todd Courser following a Detroit News report that the lawmaker tried to get a House aide to cover up his relationship with Rep. Cindy Gamrat.

“Based on these revelations, under no circumstance can Todd Courser continue to represent the residents of Lapeer County, who are good, hard working community and faith-based folks,” said Miller, a Harrison Township Republican, in a statement. “This behavior is a slap in their face, especially from someone who presents himself as a moralist.”

Miller’s resignation call came hours after House Speaker Kevin Cotter announced an “open ended” investigation in the conduct of Courser and Gamrat, who are freshman Republican lawmakers with deep ties to Michigan’s tea party movement.

Even the Tea Party people are saying that these two need to go as well:

One prominent southwest Michigan tea party leader also said Friday Courser and Gamrat should step down.

“I think probably the best thing for them to do is resign and get their own personal lives straightened out,” said Gene Clem, president of VanKal Patriots, a Van Buren and Kalamazoo county tea party group.

They’ll be gone by Monday, because this now is a major national story. They screwed themselves; and now they have to pay the piper. Sin does that, it only destroys, why it does not pay to do stuff like this, at all.

Chuck Schumer on Wall Street and Left & Right Wing Blogs

I found these two quotes to be interesting, they’re from an interview in The New Republic:

IC: You and Mayor Bloomberg, in 2007, said that reregulating Wall Street would cause people to flee overseas to London. That is very different than Warren.

CS: It has got to be, to me, a careful balance, OK? Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession. And to sit there and do nothing, or do what the Republicans want—repeal Dodd-Frank—makes no sense. But on the other hand, I think that you just don’t attack Wall Street because they’re successful or rich.

I just unsuccessfully, with Bloomberg, supported raising the building height in midtown Manhattan, so we could build more office buildings. Office buildings are our factories—imagine the people of Michigan saying, “We don’t want to build a new auto factory, because the Ford family will get richer, or the person who builds the factory will make money.” You’ve got to look at the effect on average folks. The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year. I’m not saying Elizabeth does this, but there are some on the far left who just have a visceral hatred of Wall Street. It’s counterproductive.

IC: You don’t think Elizabeth Warren makes a villain out of Wall Street?

CS: I am just going to leave it at what I said.

Okay, I get this, he is an anti-populist, most mainline establishment Democrats are. This is because they get most of their funding from big businesses, believe it or not. Warren is a fluke and what I would call a liberal version of a Tea Partier. Grassroots and all that.

However, this quote here really made me wonder:

IC: Forget Warren then. Is this a problem for your party?

CS: You don’t want to go after them for the sake of going after them. The left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti–Wall Street. It’s not the right way to be.

IC: So are the left-wing blogs as bad as the Tea Party ones in this case?

CS: Left-wing blogs are the mirror image. They just have less credibility and less clout.

We do? That is news to me. I have not had anyone from the Republican Party contact me at all. Of course, I am a Paleoconservative and a good majority of the Republican Party is pretty much Neoconservative; but I digress. I think Schumer might be overstating that one a bit. I can tell you this; if Schumer is saying that the right-wing blogs are taking marching orders from the RNC, then he is very highly mistaken. Anyone who reads the blogs on the right knows that the grassroots/tea party crowd, which does make up a good amount of the Blogosphere; is not very happy with the RNC at all.

So, this idea that the right-wing blogs have some sort of special inside clout with the party, I believe, is a mistaken assumption on Schumer’s part.

Others: Post Politics, Mock Paper Scissors, Daily Kos, Shakesville, Talking Points Memo, Outside the Beltway, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Dish, Althouse. (Via Memeornadum)

Cuban/Canadian interloper Ted Cruz takes a page from the Bush Administration playbook

This is so fitting considering that this idiot charlatan is supposedly some sort of a Conservative champion. Which on its face, is a huge, poorly timed joke:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) believes that when his critics attack, they’re not just going after him, but also taking on “the American people.” Following his lively conversation with Jay Leno last Friday, the senator attended an “exclusive, top secret” dinner in Los Angeles, where he shared those thoughts with the conservative website Politichicks.

Cruz said he was “encouraged” by the personal attacks he’s received from both Democrats and Republicans “because I think all across the country, I think people are getting energized, they’re getting engaged, they’re speaking up. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Changing the country isn’t easy. And the establishment is going to fight back. In both parties, they don’t want to change.”

“And so, the reason—the nastier the attacks get—I mean, they’re directed at all of us, they are directed at the American people,” Cruz continued. “Because a lot of the folks in Washington don’t want to be held accountable.”

via Ted Cruz: When You Attack Me, You’re Attacking the ‘American People’ | Mediaite.

Now where have I heard this one before? Oh, yes! That’s right! It was said by the Bush Administration in 2003, when the Bush Administration decided to invade a sovereign Country based on bad intelligence from Germany. “If you are against us, you hate America and want to see it invaded by terrorists.” This is the same thing, a neoconservative line.

Ted Cruz? Tea Party? Don’t make me laugh; this idiot is nothing more than an Cuban interloper that is making a mockery of the Republican Party and Conservatism in general. Not to mention the fact, that Cruz just took a page from the biggest neoconservative Presidential administration in history.

The Sunday Night Music Express Presents: Gordon Lightfoot

This posting is dedicated to the the 29 men who lost their lives on the Edmund Fitzgerald lake freighter 38 years ago. May they rest in peace.

As the winds of November whipped through a park beside the Detroit River, 29 lanterns flickered at the water’s edge and bagpipes wailed as about 60 people gathered Sunday evening to remember the 29 men who lost their lives on the Edmund Fitzgerald lake freighter 38 years ago.

“It’s appropriate to have this here because the ship was built 1,000 yards south, and it unloaded all the time 1,000 yards north,” said Tom Abair, 62, codirector of the River Rouge Historical Museum.

In a heated tent set up beside the park’s lighthouse, Abair and other museum volunteers displayed mural-size photos and a model of the famed ore carrier that sank in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, in a gale. Source: The Detroit Free Press

Lyrics:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that big ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the Gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
with a crew and good captain well seasoned,
concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
when they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang,
could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing
And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too
’twas the witch of November come stealin’
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin’
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya”
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
and the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when ‘is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
in the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams;
the islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
with the Gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee”
“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early”