The Frankish Reich

Oh, I agree with that. It’s a far worse experience now, worst in my memory (I went in January). But …. To assess whether there’s any negative impact on the parks, we’ll really need to wait till fall, when those who’d already booked have completed their vacations. There’s a lot of wishful thinking here.

Nobody goes there anymore; it’s always too crowded

That’s what I thought, but the numbers are … weird. The best data we have says: - pre-COVID (Feb 2020): 63.4% - May 2022: 62.3%

I hope you’re sitting down because … I agree. We got a bit carried away with the whole “entanglement” thing in the religion cases. I see no constitutional bar to funding (through its students) a school operated by a religious organization. Even one with a religious orientation. One caveat: a hard-and-fast no funding to religious schools rule is easy to administer. It’s religious? It doesn’t get state funding. Not even by subsidizing the tuition it’s students pay. The Maine rule announced today? That brings us more litigation. It requires state oversight over curricula and minimum standards. Does a strict orthodox school that teaches only scripture and interpretations of scripture (but no math, science, world/US history, etc) qualify? I say no. Same with a strict Koranic school - the type the Taliban believes is the only true education. We are subsidizing students (and, in turn, their schools) to ensure access to the basic educational requirements we think every school should have. 30 hours of reading, writing, arithmetic per week with 3 hours of religion (of your choice)? Fine. The reverse? Not so fine.

Huh?

You are attempting to argue with the poster previously known as Deranged Rhino, or the poster currently spewing Deranged Rhino’s nonsense under the moniker DR’s Ghost. Unfortunately, many of the choicest DR cuts here were eliminated when he (I think it’s a he, but …. they?) was banished from this fair and resplendent land. A brief reminder may be in order: - All-in on QAnon. The magnificent stupidity of the 500 page “Q Analysis” thread is, I hope, preserved somewhere. - A UFO conspiracist too! - Fully believed the Hilary’s arrest warrant was signed, and that Trump would be gloriously restored to the throne before the inauguration/within weeks/by the following summer/umm, someday real soon. - Completely sold on the Baby-Eating Fountain of Power cult idiocy that inspired the Pizzagate would-be shooter to go looking to shoot up the basement of a DC pizza restaurant where kids were held in captivity, only to find that said restaurant actually had no basement Who wouldn’t be inspired by such a mind? He’s doing his own research!

In other words, the things you are observing are TOTALLY CONSISTENT with a low unemployment rate.

Thanks for the intelligent/informed comment. I think I agree with everything you said. I do continue to hold some gold (about 5-7% of my portfolio combined, both in the “already mined” ETFs and in the “still underground” gold mining corps) because I agree that the Fed will soon lack the will to go full Paul Volcker this time around.

To answer the question posed by the OP ... Perhaps this kind of thing has something to do with it? https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/texas-republicans-vote-on-platform-during-convention/2996415/ The GOP platform calls homosexuality an abnormal lifestyle choice.

http://mathcenter.oxford.emory.edu/site/math117/historicalBlunders/

Your ECON 101 exam: The top line is the S&P 500 since Biden's inauguration. - 3% The middle line is the EAFE since Biden's inauguration. - 18% The bottom line is EEM since Biden's inauguration. - 28% Discuss. Extra Credit: Do the same for gas prices in the USA vs. Europe vs. Japan vs. Emerging Markets. Extra Extra Credit: Do the same for inflation rates.

Not to be rude here, just honest: I take it your training is in the culinary arts. I don't know a hell of a lot about that, so I'm not about to critique your understanding of cooking. Maybe you should follow the same rule when it comes to economics?

In other words, you think they are colluding, as evil capitalists are wont to do. I think I heard that one somewhere before. Bernie Sanders? Karl Marx? I've mentioned the Horseshoe Theory of Politics before - the far left and the far right weirdly converging. And that's what we have here.

I can't even guess at what this is supposed to mean. What is a "gas powered EV?" And in what economic model does a moribund industry (your take on fossil fuel companies) have the market power to do what you're accusing them of doing? You do see that you are essentially agreeing with Biden here - that the oil companies are taking advantage of the Russia-Ukraine war to price-gouge? It's nonsense when he says it, and nonsense on stilts when you say it. And finally: "the whole make hay as the sun shines." Is this a bad google translate of some foreign idiom?

Well, my age (and my kids age - I’d saved enough to cover college) does have a lot to do with it. And I didn’t move completely out of the market, just heavily rebalanced. I’m fine with missing out on some of the run up since I’m not sweating the bear market now. I’m not sure what’s “partisan” about criticizing Trump’s (and Biden’s!) Fed Chair … I just quoted Milton Friedman, but maybe that was waaaay over your amateur investor’s head. I hope your risotto is better than your economics.

I pulled money out of the markets when COVID hit because I did not anticipate the truly unprecedented governmental interventions that propped the market up for the last 2 years. Knowing what I know now, that was a mistake. But it was a rational decision at the time. For example: I pulled money out of high yield (“junk”) bond funds based on my reasonable expectation of a wave of defaults. That didn’t happen because the Fed did the previously unimaginable: it intervened to prop up junk bonds. I think all of these interventions were harmful in the long run, and not just because I missed out on some of the fake money rise in the markets. My point is this: some of you guys want to have it both ways: Blame Biden for the bursting of the bubble that was deliberately created by the Fed before Biden was even President. Biden hasn’t exactly made things better, but as I learned from the conservative economist decades ago: inflation is always and everywhere the result of loose monetary policy. If you made a lot of money in the markets over the last two years, good for you. But you do realize you are cheering on government creation of a bubble economy? And now bitching about that very same bubble bursting? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/08/10/the-fed-bought-more-blue-chip-and-junk-bonds-and-has-started-making-main-street-loans.html

Yep. Not just 2 of the best players in baseball - it’s one sure-thing first ballot hall of famer (Trout) and the best two-way player in the history of baseball (Babe Ruth pitched and hit at world class levels, but not at the same time). And somehow they won’t even make the playoffs?

So I guess the extraordinary market interventions that the political branches and the Federal Reserve took over the last 27 months had nothing to do with the remarkable gains in the market? The gains that are now being washed away by a return to reality? I should know. I moved a bunch of money out of the markets when COVID hit based on the rational expectation that a pandemic would launch the world into recession. Government interventions - truly extraordinary ones like propping up the junk bond market that I stupidly didn’t anticipate - delayed that by 2 years, but I missed out on a lot of the run-up. Just like I’m missing out on the thrill of the decline right now. TINSTAAFL

You mean the eviction moratorium signed into law by TRUMP as part of the CARES act in May 2020? And extended by TRUMP’s CDC in September 2020? (I’ll grant you subsequent Biden admin extensions, but really - Trump started it and continued it)

Quick addition from the Five Guys “nutritional” information — each meal on this ticket was about 2150 calories. That’s right in line with what’s recommended for a FULL DAY of eating. So 21 bucks to stuff your face for a day. Sounds like a deal to me.

Another example of why those polls that have a "Generic Republican" defeating Biden, or your state's senator, or your local rep, don't mean anything. Because they never nominate a "Generic Republican." They nominate a total wacko, and the Dems wind up retaining control of Congress. (I say this as someone who is ready to vote for a good, old-fashioned Republican, but who realizes that no such thing can get through a Repub primary anymore)

In his defense, I too have sometimes confused "Hitler" and "Churchill." Or "Mussolini" and "Pope John Paul II." They both lived in Rome. It's confusing! (But remember, Biden is the senile one)

What, like 18 U.S.C. sec. 101 defines "cop?" "Cop" is a colloquialism. It has no set meaning. It has the meaning people ascribe to it. Feds are, in fact, Law Enforcement Officers. And yes, most people in DC wouldn't hesitate for a moment before referring to the Capitol Police as "cops" if they were pulled over by them in their area of jurisdiction. This is the silliness our insurrection defenders now engage in. Semantic games.

Well, what a clever retort! Blue Lives Matter, but the Border Patrol Agent who killed the Uvalde shooter was wearing his green uniform! So you'll have to think about whether his/her life matters for a bit.

Exactly. What the House Committee is trying to do tonight - and with mixed results so far - is to refocus public attention on what really happened. The "insurrection" wasn't just the storming of the Capitol in an attempt to shut down the formal counting of electoral votes. It was the scheme - a cynical scheme, thought up by cynical, unethical lawyers and consultants like John Eastman - to subvert the process by: (1) stirring up a mob - a mob chanting things like "hang Mike Pence!" - to intimidate the Senate (including Pence in his role presiding over the Senate) from completing their largely symbolic/formal duties (2) intimidating Pence into "rejecting" electoral slates from pivotal states, and encouraging Trumpists in charge of those state governments to appoint phony/pro-Trump slates, and, (3) thereby stealing the election by counting fake electoral votes. Let's not lose sight of that. The mob were a tactic of a planned insurrection (or coup if you like), not the insurrection in and of itself.