SAN DIEGO'S PROBLEM, AMERICA PAYS FOR IT!

1979!  What a great time to roll into San Diego and become a new resident of what was back then, America's Finest City.

Fast forward to today.

Homelessness in San Diego has surged in recent years. A January tally put the number of transients in the city at over 5,600, up more than 10 percent from last year. The total number has risen more than 40 percent since 2014. 

The chairman’s idea is for the city to construct temporary housing on the practice field of Qualcomm Stadium, where the San Diego Chargers played until 2016, and the San Diego State Aztecs play.

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles is skyrocketing. 

In just one year, the figures revealed that the homeless population in the city grew 20% while the numbers for the wider Los Angeles County were even higher at 23%.

As if looking at those numbers isn’t cringeworthy enough, The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported Wednesday that 6,000 homeless young people were tallied across the county in January, a 61% increase over the 2016 total. Most of the young people are ages 18 to 24. All the youth shelters have waiting lists and affordable housing is tough to find, even with a rent voucher, according to Heidi Calmus of Covenant House California, an international youth homeless services agency with a branch in Hollywood. “The system is overwhelmed,” Calmus said Tuesday night as she and a colleague, Nick Semensky, delivered toiletry bags and sandwiches to young people living in the streets.

Despite efforts to combat the problem, the number of homeless continue to go up.

And just like during the last economic crisis, homeless encampments are popping up all over the nation as poverty grows at a very alarming rate.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than half a million people are homeless in America right now, but that figure is increasing by the day.  And it isn’t just adults that we are talking about.  It has been reported that that the number of homeless children in this country has risen by 60 percent since the last recession, and Poverty USA says that a total of 1.6 million children slept either in a homeless shelter or in some other form of emergency housing at some point last year.  Yes, the stock market may have been experiencing a temporary boom for the last couple of years, but for those on the low end of the economic scale things have just continued to deteriorate.

Obamaisms..........

"Failure by Congress to raise the U.S. debt limit "could plunge the world economy back into recession," President Barack Obama declared Friday, and he acknowledged that he must compromise on spending with Republicans who control the House to avoid such a crisis. Obama urged swift action, saying he doesn't want the United States to get close to a deadline that would destabilize financial markets. He said he was confident Congress ultimately would raise the limit. "We always have. We will do it again," said Obama, who voted against raising the debt limit as a freshman senator from Illinois." The statement merely underscores that the president is now in contention for the Nobel Prize in hypocrisy: after all compare this statement to Obama's now supremely ironic remark from March 20, 2006: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." 

They sure do. And in order to replace the current failed leadership, they will gladly start with a new president.

Goldman Sachs in the "old" days..........

A fine of $550,000,000 is a total joke.  That is 3% of the GS bonus pool!!

 

How much "free" money does GS make daily by borrowing at the discount window and reinvesting in 10-year treasuries?

 

This is how it worked then.......... and now..........

 

1) GS fraudulently screws up our financial system and economy.

2) Deemed TBTF, The Fed tells GS to convert into a savings bank.

3) GS now borrows freely at the discount window and uses taxpayer $$$ to buy treasurys.

4) Obama DoJ sues GS for fraud.

5) GS settles with the government and pays the fine with $$$$$ it earned  at 0% interest from taxpayers.  All at zero

 risk.

 

What a racket.  

de Blasio, the RICH and NYC Subways...............

Yo, Billy.   The rich don't ride in your subways.  Never have.

It's been limo's, taxi's or choppers as you well know.  UBER & LYFT these days.   I bet you've never met a rich person in New York that can't wait to pay more taxes to government!

It doesn't appear that economic principles are alive and well in New York or California.  

The last few middle class taxpayers are about finished.

Yes, Bill, it will get ugly.   New York City deserves you and your ilk.

Tired. Sick. Tired.

As a sexual libertarian it doesn't matter to me who you want to screw.   Color, age, race, sexual gender, you name it as long it doesn't cost me money via tax dollars misspent or illegal or morally wrong have at it. You want to change yourself into a unicorn have it.  Do it on your dime please.

In the end God will sort it out and it won't be pretty.

Are you like me and so dam tired of the letters  L   G   B   T day after day after day?

Stop the madness, Liquor Guns Bacon Tits makes far more sense.

Texas has one less thug.......maybe two...........

A 60-year-old Texas woman wasn't taking any chances Monday morning when she heard two intruders enter her home, grabbing her pistol and shooting one of the would-be thieves dead, police said.

The woman, who was not immediately identified, confronted the two armed men after they entered her Harris County home through an open garage door around 11:30 a.m., WTSP reported. 

Cathy Hanks, a neighbor, said it's not surprising the woman fired her pistol when she saw a threat in her home, explaining: "That's really how we are. That's just Texas."

"It's the state of Texas. If you're going to go into someone's home, you're going to get shot," Hanks said.

Harris County Sheriff's Office's spokesman Thomas Gilliland told WTSP that both intruders -- neither of whom were identified -- were armed with pistols when the woman confronted them. She fired several shots and struck at least one man, who collapsed and died in her front yard. 

The Obama FED Trump Stock Market Bubble

All good things come to an end.

Having dismissed the "big, fat, ugly bubble" during his presidential campaign, President Trump is now tweeting how his tenure has promoted the market higher.   22,000 has a nice ring to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, blues and reds listen up.

The FED is in control.   If Trump can get tax reform and get some folks off the couch and back to work, so be it.  Good for him.  The market will scream higher.  But, the Fed normalizing interest rates?  Are you done laughing yet? Until then, please, no crow Mr. Trump. Loud and clear, this move isn't on you.  Janet Yellen and Obama kept this fraud going far longer and now you want to take credit?  GMAFB pal.  Okay,   but while you are taking credit for stocks could you please build a mile or two of wall while you are at it.  Maybe a half mile somewhere.  Just to say you tried to keep a campaign promise?

For now, the non-GAAP chicanery will continue in the financial engine rooms for sure.  Top-line, revenue growth is a tough find these days. And an anemic GDP isn't going hyperbolic any time in my life.  I will bet you on that.

My wish is that President Trump stop embracing the bullshit of the markets as anything he conned up.  Help Americans and stop the madness at the FED Mr. Trump!

When the algo's are turned off and Mom & Pop in Mandaree, Manderson or Mission are getting their stock market holdings creamed and the big bullshit banana's running banks are spitting out their bourbon from fear I will want to put some money to work.

Until then, watching this shit show unfold is rather entertaining.  The K Street crowd of bribers has got to be happy.   Ginning up some bullshit in south east Asia, McCain style,  is right up their alley after decimating the Middle East.  George W. Bush did the Middle East a "bang up" job in keeping his daddy's legacy alive.   I just wish all of those fine American men and women who lost limbs were whole and sane today.

May God bless America.  We need all the help we can get.

Syria and Arizona's McCain

Syria’s great historic cities of Aleppo and Damascus have been virtually destroyed – along with its lesser towns and villages and nearly the entirety of its economy. There are 400,000 dead and 11 million internal and external refugees from an original population of hardly 18 million. The human toll of death, displacement, disease and disorder which has been inflicted on this hapless land staggers the imagination.

Yet at bottom this crime against humanity – there is no other word for it – is not mainly Assad’s or Putin’s doing. It can be properly described as "McCain’s War" in the manner in which (Congressman) Charlie Wilson’s War in Afghanistan during the 1980’s created the monster which became Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.

Even the fact that the butchers of ISIS were able to establish a temporary foothold in the Sunni villages and towns of the Upper Euphrates portion of Syria is the direct doing of McCain, Lindsay Graham and their War Party confederates in the Congress and the national security apparatus. That’s because Syria’s air force and army would have stopped ISIS cold when it invaded in 2014 if it had not been weakened and beleaguered by Washington’s oppositions armies.

But why did Washington launch McCain’s War in the first place?

The government of Syria has never, ever done harm to the American homeland. It has no military capacity to attack anything much beyond its own borders – including Israel, which could dispatch Assad’s aging air force without breaking a sweat.

Moreover, even if a purely sectarian civil war in this strategically irrelevant land was any of Imperial Washington’s business, which it isn’t, Senator McCain and his War Party confederates have been on the wrong side from the get-go. The Assad regime going back to the 1970 was Arab Baathist – a form of nationalistic and anti-colonial socialism that was secular and inclusive in its religious orientation.

Indeed, as representatives of the minority Alawite tribes (15% of the population, at best), the Assad regime was based on Syria’s non-Sunni Arab minorities – including Christians, Druze, Kurds, Jews, Yazidis, Turkomans, and sundry others. Never once did the Assad’s seek to impose religious conformity – to say nothing of the harsh regime of Sharia Law and medieval religious observance demanded by the Sunni jihadists.

The point is, the Syrian opposition recruited by Washington for McCain’s War exploited the grievances of ordinary Sunni citizens, but it was led by radical jihadist military commanders. Washington’s endless charade of "vetting" these opposition fighters to ensure that aid only went to "moderates" was a sick joke.

Such moderates as existed were mainly opportunistic politicians who operated far from the battle in Turkish safe havens – or even from temporary residences in the beltway. It is a proven fact that most of the weapons supplied by the CIA and the gulf states were either sold to the Nusra Front and other jihadist factions or ended up in their hands when the CIA’s "moderate" trainees defected to the radicals.

So the question recurs. Why did Washington embark on this tremendous, pointless folly?

The answer is straight forward. Washington has become an Imperial City populated by a permanent class of sunshine patriots and self-appointed global field marshals like Senator McCain, who do the bidding of the military/industrial complex and its far-flung Warfare State apparatus.

That is, they identify and demonize the enemies and villains that are needed to keep the money flowing into the Empire’s $700 billion budget. In this case, Assad drew the short straw because as a member of the greater Shiite confession in the Islamic world he was naturally allied with the Shiite regime of Iran.