Various And Sundry News Items

Here are a few stories that I thought might interest you.

NBER's 'recession' is a load of crap
Randall Hoven opens the lid on the toilet:

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official caller of recessions, recently said we are now in a recession that started one year ago, in December 2007.

"The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months."

The rule of thumb for defining a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real growth in GDP.  This is now the second recession called by the NBER in the two terms of President George W. Bush, yet in neither case were there two such consecutive quarters.  In fact, at no time in Bush's Presidency were there two such quarters.

Of all 11 NBER-called recessions since 1947, only one other involved no two consecutive quarters of negative real growth.  That was the recession of April 1960 to February 1961.  However, that recession involved one quarter with significant negative growth, -5.1% annualized, and a cumulative -1.0% growth for a whole year

Compare that to Bush's two "recessions."  In 2001

• No two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
• Worst single quarter: -1.4% annualized.
• Year-to-year: +0.2% (positive real growth, 4Q2000 to 4Q2001).
  

In 2007

• No two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
• Last four quarters: -0.2%, +0.9%, +2.8%, -0.5%.
• Year-to-year: +0.7% (positive real growth, 3Q2007 to 3Q2008).
  

In all the other nine recessions since 1947, the NBER-called recession involved at least one quarter of year-over-year negative real growth.

President Bush deserves some sort of prize for getting two recessions assigned to him, yet never presiding over either (1) two consecutive quarters of negative real growth, or (2) year-over-year negative real growth.  I think that's a first.  It certainly is in the last 60 years.

Hoven goes into much more detail about other measures of 'recession', such as unemployment, GDP, disposable income, international considerations, and even the tremendous complexities of understanding a calendar.  All aspects come out to the same conclusion: blame Bush, not Clinton.

This report is a load of crap, and should be treated as such.


Gun sales booming

Gun sellers say the election of Barack Obama is helping them avoid the recession. Sales of new guns are booming - up an estimated 50 percent in the suburbs.

In Wednesday's Truth in Politics, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports the gun lobby spent big trying to defeat Obama this year, outraged by his promise to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons. On talk radio, he was denounced as a "gun grabber." Now, as Obama heads to the White House, millions are rushing to reload.

"Once people started to realize that the Democrats had a better chance, or seemed to have a better chance, they started getting nervous about certain gun regulations," said Illinois Gun Works' Owner Dan Mastrianni.

Recent gun sales are up nationally 42 percent. In Illinois, they are up 38 percent; and in Chicago's suburbs 50 percent.

It's no secret that Obama intends to curtail gun sales in some form or other.  Whether it's an outright ban or a more subtle measure like raising the taxes on ammunition by as much as 1000%, people are concerned that their rights to gun ownership will be reduced through the next four years.  Pass the ammo, please (while you still can)!


Government sucks at border security

Seventy-four percent (74%) of U.S. voters continue to believe the federal government is not doing enough to secure the country's borders, even as President-elect Obama has named a new secretary of Homeland Security who is opposed to a border fence.

Just 11% say the government is doing enough to secure the borders, while15% are undecided in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans and 73% of unaffiliated voters don't think the government is doing enough to control the borders, compared to 64% of Democrats.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters say gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers in the country

Ya' think?  It's kind of hard to stitch up a wound when it's still bleeding profusely.  I don't recall seeing any number less than about 65% wanting better border security for the past two years.  This is clearly something that a vast majority of Americans want, and the duration of that desire is a major indicator of its importance.  Will the new administration and Congress do it?  I'll just point you to my post from yesterday to answer that question.


Wal-Mart is booming

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says November same-store sales rose 3.4 percent, as consumers shopped more ahead of the holidays as gas prices dropped.

Same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least one year, rose 3.4 percent at Wal-Mart stores and 3.5 percent at its Sam's Club warehouse division. Including fuel, same-store sales rose 3 percent.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, on average, had expected same-store sales to rise 2.1 percent.

The liberal Left's favorite whipping boy of a business is doing well during tough economic times.  Why is that?  Because they bring a huge number of products to the public at very low prices.  The worse the economy is, the less people have to spend, and that means they look to lower cost options, including Wal-Mart (in addition to providing millions of jobs).  How is that a bad thing, as the Left likes to suggest?  Answer: it's not.  Go Wal-Mart!


The silence is deafening

Tom Friedman asks in his New York Times column today why we haven't seen Muslims protesting in the street after the Mumbai attacks:

On Feb. 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Muhammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

So what can we expect from Pakistan and the wider Muslim world after Mumbai?

I can provide an answer: apathy and rationalization, and not just from Muslims.  Deepak Chopra blamed it on the Bush administration and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as if the causation was reversed.  While Bollywood condemned the terrorist attacks, some followed Chopra's example.

Hot Air poses the obvious questions that those of us on the Right have asked over and over:

Has Friedman seen massive protests in the streets against radical Islamist terrorists in these Muslim countries, ever?  Did any of them protest the 9/11 attacks, or the Madrid attack, or any of the large-scale attacks on Western civilians or previous attacks in India at all?  Either we heard ululating or deafening silence, punctuated with a few diplomatic missives about solidarity and the occasional criticism on the effect the attacks have on Muslims.

In other words, we can either expect delight or a collective yawn from the Muslim world.

Here's the bottom line:

And what does that tell us about the attitude towards the terrorists among the Muslim nations?  They may not endorse terrorist attacks, but they certainly don't strenuously object to them, either.  While we're wringing our hands over interrogation techniques, and not for bad reasons, they're indifferent to mass murder.

Muslims will not care about terrorist attacks until the cost becomes too high for them.  The risk-to-reward ratio hasn't reached that level yet, and probably hasn't come near it.

Honestly, I'm okay with a bit of terrorist discomfort to get information out of them.  Not to the extent of cutting off limbs or electrocuting them (or any of the other methods used by the terrorists themselves on innocent civilians and children), but sleep deprivation, loud music, standing up for hours at a time, and waterboarding are all great.  Where's our perspective on this?

In regard to the non-terrorist population, I suggest we start implementing a system of wide-spread profiling of Muslims and anyone from a Muslim-dominated country (that includes European countries, too).  It's a perfectly rational and reasonable security measure, and those who are innocent have nothing to hide from such measures.  If it becomes too much of a burden to Muslims, maybe they'll finally start cleaning their own house.  Until that time, though, the Muslim community at large should be considered a collective accessory to terrorism.  I'm happy to revise that statement when a significant, coherent, consistent, and outspoken group of Muslims begin taking action to monitor, report, and fight terrorists in their midst.  Until then, each incident of thunderous silence only proves my point.

There's my two cents.