RIM is now giving away free PlayBooks to developers willing to write an app for the beleaguered tablet. The deal is good, even if all a developer does is repackage an Android app to run on the PlayBook.
Heck, some sharp coder might even figure out a way to use BlackBerry email or calendars on the useless crapslab.
Think of how much fun we’ll have with Roseanne Barr over the next few months, as she runs for President. Really:
“Both the Democratic and Republican parties are bought and paid for by corporate America and cater to the needs of the highest bidder as opposed to the people they claim to represent,” Barr said in a statement on Green Party Watch. She adds that she’s been “a tireless advocate of Occupy Wall Street” since its beginning.
Roseanne Barr is going to save the planet.
Sweet.
The good news: “Nonfarm payrolls jumped 243,000” last month.
The bad news: The unemployment rate is nowhere near the BLS’s damned lie of 8.3%. It’s somewhere more like 11.5%. I haven’t even started digging around for the U-6, but it can’t be much lower than 15%, and perhaps still higher.
As usual, Tyler Durden is happy to scare the bejeebus out of everybody, which he did to me this morning with the following chart.
What’s it mean? I’ll let Tyler explain:
Sick of the BLS propaganda? Then do the following calculation with us: using BLS data, the US civilian non-institutional population was 242,269 in January, an increase of 1.7 million month over month: apply the long-term average labor force participation rate of 65.8% to this number (because as chart 2 below shows, people are not retiring as the popular propaganda goes: in fact labor participation in those aged 55 and over has been soaring as more and more old people have to work overtime, forget retiring), and you get 159.4 million: that is what the real labor force should be. The BLS reported one? 154.4 million: a tiny 5 million difference.
Shorter version: The old are staying in the workforce because they must, and the young are dropping out of the workforce because they have no hope of finding work.
So forget the big, red “8.3″ glowing above the mast at Drudge. This country is still very deep in a very long employment crisis.
UPDATE: Hold on to your breakfast, but 1,200,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force last month — a record.
Down in the comments, “pldew” said “as you were saying” and shot me this link:
North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler won’t seek re-election to the House.
The former professional football player, a frequent critic of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, announced in a statement Thursday that he will not seek a fourth House term.Shuler says he and his family have discussed his running for governor, but Shuler’s statement does not reveal any decisions. Shuler says he intends to spend more time with his wife and two young children.
Republicans in the North Carolina legislature redrew the state congressional lines, making Shuler’s district more friendly to the GOP.
And the emerging Democratic minority continues to veer to the left.
Trifecta: Is President Obama really the most polarizing president in American history?
From Jim Geraghty on Twitter: “Rep. Heath Shuler had only two donations from individual North Carolinians last quarter. Retirement watch?”
That’s not a good sign Shuler plans to stick around another term — which should tell you something very important about this election year.
Two years ago, I beat most of the bigs, in predicting how many seats the GOP would win in 2010. Just three days before the election, I wrote:
And that gives you a Republican majority of 242-193 — a mere 13 seats shy of the supermajority the Democrats have enjoyed these last two years. That’s a pickup of 64 seats, and as decisive a repudiation of a ruling party as any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes.
The GOP picked up 63 seats. Not bad for a guy sitting at home in his pajamas. But how did I get there, without having an in-house pollster and massive databases and a roomful of geeks with advanced degrees in statistics? I used my — wait for it — judgement. I came up with a few rules of thumb, concerning Cap & Trade’s effect on Appalachia voters, Obamacare on suburban voters, and weak Democratic freshmen. And then I looked at individual candidates, and applied a little Kentucky Windage to each race. Shuler’s race was an easy one to call, and I did so three months before the election:
Former quarterback Heath Shuler is all over the place in NC11. In just a month, he’s gone from Leans Dem to Likely Dem then back to Leans Dem. He’s socially conservative and voted against Porkulus and Obamacare. This seat’s probably safe for the Democrats.
Shuler’s seat was safe in a midterm Tea Party wave election that absolutely murdered Appalachian Democrats. Two years later, President Obama will top the Democratic ticket, presumably with an incumbent’s coattails — and Shuler isn’t bothering to raise any money from his own constituents?
Something is fishy about that.
Either Shuler feels so safe he doesn’t think he needs money — or as Geraghty wonders, he’s heading for the exit.
The former seems unlikely, to say the least. The latter tells me that President Obama has become absolutely toxic in North Carolina. And that’s not the only sign we’ve seen recently, with NC’s Democrat governor Bev Perdue announcing just last week she won’t seek reelection. Her reason? For the Children™!
Yeah, I don’t think Obama’s re-coronation ceremony in Charlotte this summer is going to do him much good there come election day.
An important observation from Al Nofi:
In 1871 the Prussian General Staff, which between 1864 and 1871 had scored three successive triumphs, against Denmark (in 272 days), Austria (70 days), and France (295 days), numbered just 70 officers, a figure that by 1914 had risen to 650, on the eve of a much less successful undertaking.
I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere, if you squint hard enough.
The PJ Tatler kept me busy last night, trying to figure out what happens next in the GOP nomination fight.
Pack your bags for Annandale, my Left Coast friends:
California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today.
Translation: Sacramento isn’t making its Visa card payments, while racking up additional debt on the MasterCard.
I watched this same stuff from up close, twenty years ago, when I was living in Northern California. Eventually, the tech boom came and papered over California’s chronic problem with taxes that are too high, spending that is out-of-control, and a regulatory behemoth that teeters between being laughably stupid and stupidly evil.
But then the tech bubble burst — but the taxes went up even higher, the spending went up, up, up, and the regulatory behemoth became even more behemoth-y. Meanwhile, the folks who brought you this mess — Democrats, mostly — have gerrymandered themselves into a permanent majority. They were helped along by two of the worst Republican governors in American history — Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They spent their combined 16 years in office either tarnishing the GOP brand beyond redemption, playing along with the Progressives’ malicious idiocy, or both.
The once-Golden State will end up as Michigan del Mar before this is all over.
The Beast is set to chew off whatever is left on the husk of the American economy:
“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”
The CBO may estimate that all these tax increases, new taxes, fees and penalties will result in 30% higher revenues — but I tell you right now that that won’t happen in this economy. We’ve long since reached the point of diminishing returns of how much Washington can wring out of an economy it has hobbled.
Commerce Department: US economy grew at 2.8% annual rate last quarter.
John Crudele: The economy grew at a mere 0.6% rate last quarter, for a grand total of 0.15% growth during the super-swell holiday season.
Or as I call it: Merry effing Christmas.
Crudele’s figures look a lot more honest than Washington’s. Here’s how he figures it:
In Friday’s number the government used 0.4 percent as the rate of inflation. Zero. Point. Four. Percent.
In which country is inflation that low? Certainly not in America. Absolutely not in the last four months of 2011.
The consumer price index, which is put out by the US Census Bureau, had prices up 3 percent for the year.
And the rate of inflation used in calculating the third-quarter 2011 GDP was 2.6 percent; in the first and second quarters, combined, the rate was 2.5 percent; it was 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.
So how does the Zero-Point-Four-Freakin’ percent sound now?
That’s how Commerce got to the not-very-inspiring 2.8 percent growth it reported last Friday.
Let me put this another way in case you are missing my outrage.
If the inflation figure used in last Friday’s GDP figure had just remained the same as the 2.6 percent rate from the third quarter, Washington would have had to report fourth-quarter annualized growth of just 0.6 percent.
Pathetic.
Has Newt closed the gap with Mitt in Florida? I talk to PJTV’s own Alexis Garcia, who’s been covering the action live from the Sunshine State.
On Sundays, I watch the talking heads shows. On Mondays, you get a little Hair of the Dog. What’s in it for me, you ask? Endless entertainment and cheap thrills!
This week we’ve got the Newt implosion, the Bob Schieffer happy dance, the return of Jake Tapper, and Austan Goolsbee joining the Media-Government Complex.
But just in case- would you mind getting me a little something-something from off the top shelf?
What happens when you crowdsource the remaking of Star Wars, 15 seconds at a time? The evil opposite of awesome. Unless it’s the opposite of that.
Honestly, I’m torn.
The President tanks in reruns, MRC does some candid camera action on OWS, ABC News cleans up Bill Clinton’s act, and what really happened when the TSA detained Rand Paul — all on another exciting episode of… The Week in Blogs!
BONUS: Special parking places for electric cars? What a wonderful idea!
In 2006, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their last great album, Stadium Arcadium. Problem was, it was a double album. Had they kept it down to the best dozen cuts, it would have been great. As a double, it was merely very good.
Prince did something similar. Emancipation was a great double album, maybe up there near Sign O’ the Times. Problem was, there were three discs. Too much filler; not enough meat.
Anyway, “Dani California” is not one of the songs RHCP should have cut to make SA a great album.
A massive sales increase of 128% last year vaulted Apple past Samsung to become the world’s #1 smartphone vendor.
Can you imagine how well Apple would have done if the iPhone 4S hadn’t been a flop?
ONE MORE THING: Does she work at all for the money? Not if we’re talking about Motorola, which Google is in the process of buying for $12 billion-with-a-b:
They shipped — shipped, not sold — 5.3 million smartphones in the quarter. As a reminder, Apple sold 37 million.
For the full year, Motorola shipped — shipped, not sold — 18.7 million smartphones. As a reminder, Apple sold 37 million smartphones last quarter.
They shipped — shipped, not sold — 200,000 tablets last quarter. TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND. As a reminder, Apple sold 15 million tablets.
For the year, Motorola shipped — shipped, not sold — 1 million tablets. As a reminder, Apple sold 15 million tablets last quarter.
We talked earlier this week about channel-stuffing — well, here it is in action again. What should frighten Google is how Moto was able to stuff its channels with comparatively little product. But a little is still a lot, when you can’t sell it for a profit.
A “nation of dependents?” It sure looks that way:
Direct payments. The amount of money the federal government hands out in direct payments to individuals steadily increased over the past four decades, but shot up under Obama, climbing by almost $600 billion — a 32% increase — in his first three years. And Obama’s last budget called for these payments to climb another $500 billion by 2016, at which point they would account for fully two-thirds of all federal spending.
People getting benefits. According to the Census Bureau 49% now live in homes where at least one person gets a federal benefit — Social Security, workers comp, unemployment, subsidized housing, and the like. That’s up from 44% the year before Obama took office, and way up from 1983, when fewer than a third were government beneficiaries.
Food stamps. This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That’s 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. This surge was driven in part by the recession, but also because Obama boosted the benefit amount as part of his stimulus plan.
If you paid attention to the President’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday, you heard an awful lot about money coming into Washington (taxes) and an awful lot about money going out of Washington (benefits and subsidies). What you didn’t hear much-if-anything about was how to curtail our ever-increasing dependency.
It’s almost as if President Obama prefers to keep us this way.
